Rebirth in a poem

I hold that when a person dies
His Soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise,
Another mother gives him birth,
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old sould takes the road again.

~John Masefield

Don't think of a monkey!

Don’t think of a monkey! Don’t think of a monkey!  Don’t think of a monkey!

What is on your mind?  Let me guess, a monkey.

The minds of children work the same way as ours.  When we use the words “don’t” or can’t” our children tend to skip them and typically just hear the rest of the sentence.  Some examples of this quirk of the mind:

You can’t have desert before dinner.

Typical result:  Child obsessively thinks about desert, and often continues to ask.

Don’t hit your brother!

Typical result:  It doesn't take long before the hitting continues.

You quickly see the pattern here.  There are some things you can do to work with the mind of your child and not hit a brick wall with your perfectly reasonable (to you!) directives.  You can offer alternatives:

You can have one fruit before dinner.

Or:

We are having desert after dinner.

Touch your brother gently.

Or:

You can hit the pillows if you like.

I am sure you can think of many options that would work well for your family.  Have fun playing with language and notice any different results you get.  This is not a magic solution for children’s behavior, but does make a difference.  Please share anything you notice when you practice this!

An Intuitive Moment

All kids are intuitive.  Sometimes it is up to us to regognize it or it might be easily missed. 

One mom in the group was going somewhere by car with her daughther.  Her daughter had taken her shoes off in the car and refused to put them on.  The mom told her she really needed to put them on, but the daughter stubbornly refused.  So the mom, a bit irritated, agreed to put the shoes on.  While doing so, she discovered a tiny tick on her daughter's foot. 

The mom immediately stopped being upset and thanked God for her daughter's unusual behavior.

Sometimes intuition shows up in strange ways, but it is definitely worth paying attention to!  

Compassion by Einstein

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourself from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (1949)

A lovely aspiration for us and our children. 

Dreams

Dreams are important.  They can be clues to the stressors in our lives.  In Children they can reflect the stressors and the good things in their life.  We should be asking our children about their dreams they can tell us so much about their inner world.

Children's art

Have you noticed that when young children draw they fill up the whole paper with exuberant color? But sooner or later this expressiveness is replaced with unsure figures, often not filling the space of the paper. And by the time we become adults, many of us have been told that we are no good at art, and we may actually believe this even though as children we loved drawing.

When children draw, some draw colors around people and animals.  Often a well meaning adult tells them there are no colors there, just like a child is sometimes told that they should not draw a face green or or a tree yellow. 

There really is no reason to tell children how to draw.  If they are interested, they can get some art education as they grow up, but there is no benefit to the young child to be instructed to draw the limited reality that adults see. 

So let them experiment and don't limit their expression!  Maybe then, we will have more beautiful surroundings as our children grow up and create more color in our world.

Intuition

Is it intuition or is it chance.  Sometimes there can be a fine line.  A parent in our group this week related a story of how she though Angels were whispering in her ear.  She was turning left on a major intersection when she had a thought to slow down and stop.  She wasn't sure where this thought came from or why.  She is not in the habit of stopping in intersections but the thought was compelling.  Just as she was about to stop she thought over her actions and knew she had to continue through the intersection.  The car rounded the corner and a few hundred yards in front was a beautiful deer crossing the road.  More than likely if she had continued her speed she would have crossed the deer's path.  Luckily she had slowed the car and escaped a collision.  She believed it was not chance but divine guidance that helped her to slow down.

We often receive messages and intuitive thoughts that can help us and change us.  It is not limited to adults, children can receive these messages too.  Its just a matter of are we listening.