Raising Spiritual Children – Spiritual Media Blog

Raising Spiritual Children Sean Murphy

Unfortunately, today, more than ever before, despair over the meaninglessness of life is urgent and topical on a global scale. Our industrial society tries to satisfy all needs, and our consumer society even creates some needs to satisfy them. But the most important need – the basic need for meaning – is often ignored and neglected. And it is so “important” because once the will for meaning is satisfied, a person has the capacity and the ability to deal with suffering, frustrations and tensions, and is prepared to sacrifice his or her life if necessary. Just look at the various political resistance movements throughout history and in our own time. On the other hand, when the will for meaning is frustrated, people are just as likely to take their own lives, and they do so in the midst of all the welfare and abundance around them, and nevertheless. Just look at the staggering number of suicides in typical welfare states such as Sweden and Austria. Viktor Frankl

As parents, Viktor Funkl paints a vivid picture of the peril: are we raising resilient children to face an ever-changing future, or are we allowing them to sink into despair?

An important consequence of the two worlds hypothesis is that we cannot expect our genes to be the sole determining factor for our children when they come into the world. Besides genes, children are born with psychic gifts, memories of past lives, and possibly karma. As parents, we can have the greatest impact on our children’s development during the early formative years, which is the perfect time to start building resilience by helping them find meaning.

A parent’s goal is to act as a role model, coach, and advocate.

Role modeling is the most important of the three jobs of parents. We cannot live our children’s lives, and we must accept from the beginning that it is in our best interest to do so. This benefits the whole family. And the more virtues we can show our children, the more likely they are to learn these virtues by imitating our behavior. As we will see later, this is not always the case. Depending on the child’s temperament, he may choose to reject the parent’s example. And it is not the parent’s fault. Coaches can only do their job, but players need to do their job too.

Coaches should look for a child’s unique skills and provide opportunities for them to be expressed. Coaches encourage children to stretch themselves, explore their limits, and build resilience. By focusing early on a child’s strengths and aptitudes, coaches can help children learn what success looks like and explore what is meaningful to them. Furthermore, it is easier to recover from defeat in areas of strength than in weakness. Only after a child has learned how to succeed and recover from failure should they be encouraged to try tasks that they are not so good at. A wise man once told me: If you spend time working on your weaknesses, you will become mediocre. But if you spend time on your talents, you will become extraordinary..

This is easier said than done. There are social pressures and systems that push children to be equally proficient at many tasks. If a child’s strengths are not within the bounds of societal norms, it will be difficult for them to learn how to succeed in the ways I have described. And even if they learn to succeed in areas that are not valued in society, they may still feel like failures in areas where most of their peers are successful.

The role of a coach can be tricky if your child’s skills are outside your area of ​​expertise. But that’s the role of other coaches, and a good coach can take cues from other scouts. If someone else discovers your child’s talent, be prepared to outsource that part of the coaching. A child only has two parents, but can benefit from many coaches. Some skills our children have are ones we ourselves don’t realize or appreciate. This is where the role of the cheerleader comes in: cheering on your child and pushing them to perform at their best.

Early childhood development

From the first days of life, children can learn much more than many people realize. True, their brains are not yet fully developed, but their minds are fully aware and conscious. The only real problem is that babies have not yet developed the ability to express their consciousness. In her life’s work, Caroline Eliaschef has shown how much babies learn in the first months of life and discovered how to listen to them by learning to read their body language.

Before you have children, I highly recommend trying the Hoffman Process. It’s a way to find out what your parents did wrong in raising you and avoid passing those same mistakes on to your children. We all unconsciously adopt many behaviors as a result of the way we were raised. We can’t eliminate them all, but it’s wise to be aware of them before you inadvertently pass them on to your children.

Bob Hoffman’s lifelong work examined the effects of parental behavior on children during their development. Most people I know who have undergone Hoffman training come away with the same question: “Why isn’t this important information taught to all future parents in school?” Why don’t we learn that the first five years of life are the most impactful and that behaviors developed during this time are difficult to overcome?

It’s the second part of the question that has the most impact: what we teach children in the first five years of their lives will have the greatest and most lasting impact on their lives. What is strengthened here is not reading or math, but social behavior and emotional stability. These lay the foundation for successful networking and relationship building that we now know is more important for lifelong success than academic expertise.

We are all born with five primary emotions: fear, anger, sadness, joy, and love. When expressed in healthy ways, fear protects us, anger allows us to set healthy boundaries, and sadness allows us to shed healing tears for what we have lost. Joy gives us the zest to live life with passion, and love gives us the comfort of positive relationships. These make up our basic emotions and drive the myriad of feelings we may experience throughout our day.

But these emotions can become blocked and unhealthy, and it is love that suffers the most. The word emotion comes from the Latin emovere, which means to move or to give rise to movement. When emotions are gone, we become motionless and emotions become immobile. It is easy to imagine that this can happen to a child. A young child who does not want to endure the pain of being alone or feeling unloved protects himself by closing off some of his emotions. Over the years the layers thicken, and as an adult we find that they are almost impenetrable. Viktor E. Frankl

Founder of Every HeartDr. Mel Levine is an inspiration to many parents, not just those with “difficult kids.” He specializes in “kids with learning disabilities,” but admits that he has yet to find one. He blames it on parents and teachers not recognizing the diverse talents that children are given, and instead labeling them. He tells his patients that each child has a toolbox with many different tools, but that sometimes schools and other places don’t allow them to use all of them. Kinesthetic learners, for example, are at a disadvantage in a traditional classroom environment where they cannot use movement to aid their analytical process.

Lewin’s methodology and strategy areLearning disabilities” For kids, they’reusually” Children. In fact, invalid Like music therapy, it should be used generally with all children. Certain music has a positive effect on brain function and may be beneficial for mood disorders. The reasons for this positive effect are substantiated by the research of Dr. Emoto and Blanche Merz, who independently discovered the therapeutic effects of certain music composers.

There is a deep spiritual meaning to it All kinds of hearts. The spirit world is very diverse. It is filled with spirits with many different gifts. Although our society does not value many of these gifts, we can still help our children use their spiritual gifts to succeed in life.

Author’s journey

When my daughter was born, I asked my wife to promise me that I would support her no matter what she wanted to do. This turned out to be the hardest promise to stay true to, but also the most rewarding. This doesn’t mean letting my daughter do whatever she wants, but letting her take the lead in choosing her life path, even if we know it will “end badly.” But there is no bad ending if we learn from our mistakes. My daughter’s first big decision was when she was 3 years old. She wanted a house with a pool, so we agreed that if she learned to swim first, that was fine. By 8 years old, she was a top swimmer in all strokes. The key is to stick with your choice over time, while making sure she understands the consequences of the choice. After all, it’s not the destination that matters, life is the journey. By the time she was 13, swimming had served its purpose. She realized that even if she was very skilled, it wasn’t what was meant for her. But it was the only school-wide recognition she received.

At age 6, she told us she wanted to join the choir where her friends were singing. We told her, “If you want to join the choir, you have to practice every day, go to practice every Friday night, and sing at church for two hours on Sunday.” Since neither of us could sing, this was not an activity we could coach. So we became cheerleaders and got to know her new coach. Singing opened the door to many other fulfilling pursuits.

Don’t be afraid to let your kids go as early as 14. If you haven’t shown them your values ​​by then, showing them in their teens won’t work. We allowed our 14-year-old daughter to pursue a career in Hollywood and helped her become independent and self-sufficient so she could live on her own and have a career in Hollywood (we lived 3,000 miles away). By 17, she was strong enough and wrote the best college admissions essays. The great thing about letting go young is that you don’t have any regrets. She met actresses who went to college only to realize at 30 that it wasn’t for them. A few years of youth is not a big deal.

Quote

The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy: Expanded Edition with New Afterword by the Author, Viktor E. Frankl, Meridian, 1988, 167 pages.

Eliatiev, Caroline. Das Kind, Das Eine Katze Sein Wollte: Psychoanalytische Arbeit Mit Säuglingen Und Kleinkindern. DTV, 2013.

Lawrence, Tim. The Hoffman Process: A World-Famous Technique for Forgiving the Past, Healing the Present, and Empowering People to Change the Future. Bantam Books, 2004, p. 99.

D., Mel Levin M. A Mind At A Time, Simon & Schuster, 2002.