Helping Children Realize Their Full Human Potential

During the past holiday season, my six-year old grandson spent the day with me. As a treat I let him open an early present. He took one disappointed look at it, tossed it aside and said, “I didn’t want that.”

I wasn’t disappointed or disturbed by his reaction, as I realized fully that at his age he hasn’t learned to harness his feelings and monitor his words according to the customs of our culture. I also appreciate the fact that one of the precious attributes of young children – which we all secretly enjoy and often envy – is that they speak their truth.

The situation caused me to think back to the number of times that my own and other people’s children demonstrated similar reactions. As “good” parents, we all responded in the same way. We focused on not allowing Aunt Martha’s feelings to be hurt and thoroughly chastised the child until s/he apologized. This usually resulted in either the child being reduced to tears, or becoming angry and defensive.

We were totally unaware of how that experience might affect the child. We didn’t know that the way in which we helped our children become socialized – whether it was a positive or negative experience for them – would affect all future interactions with others throughout their lives, as well as the chance to realize their full human potential.

While we’ve always known that it isn’t desirable for children to indiscriminately say hurtful things to others, now we realize the equal importance of teaching this in a way that honors the feelings of the child and Aunt Martha.

I also believe that focusing on Aunt Martha and publicly humiliating a child is a negative experience on more than one level. It teaches a child that our true feelings are wrong, and in order to be acceptable and loved by others we have to repress and deny them. Feelings are an important part of us and to deny or suppress them ignores a very valuable aspect of what it is to be human.

Since we live in such a highly commercialized gift-giving environment, and children experience this at an early age, it is a natural opportunity to teach a more enlightened and conscious approach to giving and receiving.

We need to realize as mature adults that every gift we give will not be the person’s heart desire. Yet, we can hope that after thinking about the person – shopping, purchasing, wrapping and presenting the present with genuine affection and caring – all of this will be considered by the recipient as part of the gift itself.

A wise and caring response for recipients would be to focus more on the giver than the gift. It then becomes possible to recognize the person’s action and to truthfully respond in a way that honors the giver and the recipient. This can be role-modeled by parents and gently and lovingly taught to children.

The children of today and tomorrow will be eager to express their full human potential and to live mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually satisfying lives. It is our responsibility to be sure they have a positive foundation and the clear guidelines to be successful. This also makes the world a better place.

As a postscript, not only was my young grandson open to hearing about a more loving way to respond to a gift, he was able to retain his sense of self-worth and joyous disposition. As his parents came to pick him up, he turned to me and said, “Mimi, of all the old people I know, you are my favorite.”
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Copyright 2008 by Fern Stewart Welch

The author’s book THE HEART KNOWS THE WAY—How to Follow Your Heart to a Conscious Connection with the Divine Spirit Within is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.