a different take on children

If I had had my way on how he should spend his summer holidays, Pavan would have been here today. Its a seven day residential programme for kids. Click on the image to read. Among other things, kids are made to get up early and to wash their own clothes. I have also heard that they put sprinklers and music and kids dance under the water. Hopefully, next year I will send him.

As it is, its been tough to divide him between in-laws and parents. Why do parents only get their children during the school days? We also need to chill out with them, otherwise their opinion of us will confirm to being disciplinarians.

Here is a Nithyananda newsletter I received in the mail today. It made me think about how I whirled, for a few minutes, during the BSP last week, and the thought that kept repeating was, 'Yes, I am doing it. I can do this! ,' till fear of losing my balance overcame me and I held a hand of another dancer and slowly stopped whirling. Surprisingly, I did not feel dizzy.

Words from the Master

Posted: 30 Apr 2009 02:52 AM PDT

Swamiji, how can we protect our children from developing these kinds of problems?

To be frank, you cannot fully control it. You cannot control all of the child’s interactions with society. But there are some things you can practice at home.

As I said earlier, don’t suppress the child’s other half. Let it freely express and experience itself in different ways. Don’t teach it to be gender conscious.

Just allow the child to be its own natural self, giving it adequate opportunity to explore itself. Children when untouched by social conditioning are by nature so comfortable inside their own boundary.

You might have noticed babies playing with their genitals, or pulling their big toe to their mouth and doing similar other things. These things just show that they are so comfortable and loving inside their own boundary, exploring and enjoying. But we don’t allow them to do these things. We immediately stop them when they do these things. We tell them that it is wrong. It is good to allow them to explore.

And when it comes to their clothing, it is always better to dress them in single-piece clothing instead of two-piece clothing. The latter gives them a sense of dividing their body into two and with time, they forget and become insensitive to the lower half of their body. It is almost a division in their Consciousness. That is why today, if you are asked to visualize yourself, almost always, only your upper half will come to your mind. You simply neglect your lower half.

Just allow the child to be free in its ways, even if it means that you have to take certain risks. Children have with them a certain sense of intuition and instinct. So, you can take the necessary precautionary measures and allow them to explore.

Also, children are so total in their expressions. So don’t suppress them. They don’t know to bring in their mind and exhibit superficial or hypocritical behavior. We have all mastered the art of hypocrisy by allowing our mind to exercise restraint. We never express totally.

And, allow them to use both their hands freely. We all discourage them from using the left hand for various things. Why can’t the child be ambidextrous?! There is nothing wrong in it. Arjuna in the Mahabharatha was ambidextrous. Did you know that? When we hear of these things, we listen with awe but fail to understand that we are also perfectly capable of these things, if only we gave ourselves the chance!

One more thing: If you have noticed, all children enjoy whirling. Whirling is their way of allowing centering of their energy to happen. You can whirl freely only when your Manipuraka chakra around the navel is clean. Children are so innocent and worry-free and hence they are able to whirl effortlessly. But do we allow them to whirl? When we see them whirl, our head starts whirling and so we stop them! We tell them, “Sit in one place! It’s not good for health” and what not. I tell you, just allow them to whirl. Place a blanket beneath them so that even if they fall, they don’t get hurt.

One more thing: Never instill fear in your child! Let him be free; let him climb and fall a few times. If you constantly discourage the child, it can lead to various phobias like height phobia, darkness phobia and what not, which can later turn into fear of climbing, of taking unknown new decisions etc. Just follow these simple things. It will do.

Yes…?