Many many parents will believe and make it their parenting style to “discipline” their child who given too much freedom is a recipe for a spoilt brat of a child who will have trouble building relationships. What is the single most important thing that is happening to our little baby come toddler? The parents are right in presuming that the child will indeed have troubled relationships and all because of a lack of freedom albeit within limits acceptable within the family home and nursery.
This is when the individuate sense of self begins to form. But what happens in reality? We stifle it. And then that same toddler will seek to depend on an externalised source of power and freedom. Are you always associating something outside of you as power? Maybe money? Friends? Fame?
We carry on a legacy of outdated parenting styles and continue to model what we ourselves were at the behest of. We are simply wired to do that. It is a very neurological phenomenon which can be changed when you train your brain to fall out of its automatic ways by manually inputting new information for the brain. As the brain gets the hang of the new way it will also become automatic. It might bring a renewed sense of self. The new brain input comes with changing or letting go some of our not so real-time values by educating ourselves beyond the confines of our self image and what we believe to be the way.
Examine your ways. Understand your own self and appraise where you are at in your own growth life. Are you happy with the status quo? Are you the best version of you that you can offer to your children as a model person?
How we respond to our children is what they will expect to be the way when they grow up. If their emotional needs were met, they will believe that these will always be met. They will seek out life situations that mimic this way. We are not just what we see on the outside; there’s a lot that goes on within just our own bodies and brains that we cannot see. We have a magnetic field. We have an energetic field that surrounds our body. Our brain and body work in synch and will pass information back and forth. We can empathise naturally because of mirror neurons.
When our life isn’t exactly what we expect it to be, we might want to look at any patterns we hold. These patterns and the holding onto them make is rigid. This rigidity is almost again neurological. For now you are wired to be that way until you can step outside of you,watch yourself, and notice that, “aha I can’t believe it, I am so inflexible, rigid and unable to see my own self,”. In that rigidity when your toddler has a hard time falling asleep you will automatically see that it’s his way of testing the waters and resisting bedtime. When you step out of that rigidity, you might notice that it is your child’s circadian rhythm that’s out of whack. A bit like what happens when we have jet lag. We can be sleep deprived and suffer a sleep debt.
There will be little point in asking around or seeking answers on the internet if you are asking the wrongs ones only built to reflect and fit into whatever you “belief” system is at that time. Have you noticed how if you are asked why you drink ovaltine at night and isn’t that full of sugar, you will be quick to support your desire to drink it with anything even something made up! We are very very clever creatures and can live in many dimensions parallel universes as well as create anything with our minds. Our mind is a tool. Although for some maybe not. The mind given too much freedom without a core self or consciousness is the sort that will “spoil” the mind. It needs boundaries limits and direction. Our children on the other hand need structure boundaries but little direction. This direction is very inbuilt.
Our rigidity also comes in when we refuse to see it from our child’s point of view. Do you also refuse to see the views of others? Are you self centred and unable to take in anything that might trigger you to look at yourself? When your baby or toddler is whining and all he wants is for his mama to pick him up, we would instinctively pick them up. BUT we are not that attuned anymore even to our own natural instincts to recognise the primal needs of our offspring. Many will say that if you carry your baby too much they will expect this and form a habit. Errmmmm well isn’t that the whole point that they do in fact come to us as many times they need us to carry them because they know they can, meaning, they are securely attached? And won’t you securing them earlier on give them a firm foundation to base any future relationships on? Again, it’s the rigidity that keeps us constrained within a particular mindset. When we are stuck in that, we fail to see our child. When our child feels invisible that’s a recipe for a really distorted sense of self in that child.
The other day I was wondering what the fuss was about caring for my toddler. I mean why does it have to be so hard? Well, it doesn’t. It’s that belief that things should be in a certain way that keeps the day going so hard. You want your child in bed a certain time, to eat a certain meal, and for you to be on top of the laundry and to start the day with yoga all the while missing the whole point of this brilliant opportunity at being free again!! Your toddler is the biggest source of freedom for you!
Stop trying to fit into what you think your day should be like or even your life. Fill yourself with what is happening right now. LIFE.
When the rigidity leaves the space is filled with simple calm and a potential to be. There are zero expectations. You are full. You are at any moment free. You are loved and don’t seek it out. There is no codependency. You child is not a tool to fill a space in you even one that has a need to “train” “teach” or be “listened to” infallibly.
That love is not a love that we find in an affirmation. It is a state of being that makes one feel so complete. We no longer seek to love or be loved. Because, we already love and are loved. And because we don’t even have the need to love or be loved, we are love.
From a place of wholeness, our children can themselves be true to their own sense of self, grow, and feel nurtured safe and seen by us. Without the rigidity, and so much fluidity, gives us the space to be, and for our toddler the space to experience their growing sense of independence. When we let go of the need to control our children “because mama or papa says”, we free them them from becoming slaves to unmet needs including their needs to self express.
Let us untie the shackles that hold our own souls from experiencing our infinity and in turn free our children from our limitations that will only bear burdensome on the little ones we so dearly love. It’s time to let go of the old so the new can come.