How do we teach our children to be balanced, compassionate and loving people in a world where they are constantly being shown that competition, violence and materialism makes you a powerful person?
In our last Project Resiliency Chat, one of our participants asked that we look at how we can guide our children into adulthood and give them the gifts of being balanced and compassionate humans. This article will begin to open up that conversation.
There are many important elements in teaching our children but one of the most important is mindfulness. We are constant mirrors for our kids. When we become stressed, it becomes their stress. They see, hear and feel how we handle our stress and they begin to do the same.
They see, hear and feel how we judge, compare and relate with others and they will do the same. How we eat, take care of ourselves, love one another and ourselves, are in fact what we are teaching them. So the more mindfulness we have around ourselves the better we can be at consciously teaching our little ones.
The first step to teaching peace is to emanate peace. This doesn’t mean that we need to be peaceful all of the time, this means that when we aren’t, we become aware and we choose healthy ways to calm ourselves knowing that in our actions we are teaching our children.
Will peace suddenly appear as soon as I’m mindful of my own inner chaos? Most likely not!
Being mindful can give us the opportunity to experience peace amidst the chaos! As we know, the chaos of the mind never really goes away, it will just fade into the background as soon as we make peace the dominant frequency.
When a child sees you frustrated and then sees you mindfully pause and take a deep breath, he will be learning peace.
When your child hears you communicate and say “I’m feeling really frustrated right now, I think I need to take a breath,” he will understand how to create peace for himself.
The next time your child is stressed or upset you then can begin teaching him how to take a deep breath, how to connect with his body, let the air in and let the frustrated energy out. He will know how because he will have seen you do it.
The breath and the body are doorways to learning peace. When we teach our children we learn too.
Peace Time at Night
Night time is a wonderful time to begin teaching peace to our children. This is when our kids need to wind down and ground out. A common and difficult task for both kids and adults alike! Creating a calming environment in a child’s bedroom can dramatically change night time energy from wired to calm and can teach them how to take care of themselves in a loving peaceful way. Stories, music, essential oils, conversations or prayers of being thankful can help children feel calm, safe and secure. Again, remembering we are mirrors and that authenticity is paramount, conversations, prayers and intentions with kids should carefully come from our true feelings. Children always feel the disharmony if our words are contrary to the energy they feel coming from our hearts. So stick to the things that you are truly thankful for not what we are “supposed to be” thankful for and your child will receive a clear understanding of gratitude.
Teaching our children requires a loving commitment from ourselves to look deeply at our own imperfections and frailties so we can become more open and loving people. Not an easy path by any means but a tremendous gift.
When the message to our children is,
WHEN I AM PEACEFUL, I AM POWERFUL
we begin to pave the path of love and sensitivity within their world, upon which they can travel on throughout their lives. Peaceful Powerful Children will one day be Peaceful Powerful Grown-ups that can lift and transform our world. Imagine that…