Parenting Spiritual Kids
Are we parenting a spiritual child?
In many cultures around the world, there was a particular approach to raising spiritual children. Often times, they were identified by a spiritual elder. From there, they were raised and taught the spiritual ways appropriate for the child. Once trained, the child (now adult) fulfilled a particular role for their communities as spiritual elders, shaman, sages, priests, priestess’s, healers, and so on.
Historically, many of these spiritual teachers knew something about raising a spiritual child. First off, every child is capable of becoming a spiritual elder. For the sake of cultural brevity, we’ll refer to these folks as spiritual elders. While all children are capable of becoming spiritual elders, for some, this purpose is not why they are here. This is where many spiritual elders stepped in and often gave specific children spiritual training. They could clearly see the child’s life purpose.
Before we jump into the center of this, let’s give a quick description of purpose. Imagine an old-fashioned wagon wheel. As the wheel rotates around, so do the spokes. The spokes serve as strength to keep the wheel strong around the entire wheel. If one spoke is absent, the wheel is liable to develop a flat spot, become weak, and eventually break. In Oneness, we all have a unique purpose that keeps us as a whole strong. We all make up a unique spoke in the wheel of Oneness.
Our current world culture is often asking us to be like each other. There isn’t room for the varying purposes that makes us all strong. With everyone being pressed into the new cultural confines of our global society, we have become stagnant, weak, and sick.
Luckily, many of the kids being born today can plainly see this sickness in society. There is a strong push for acceptance and empowerment of these unique purposes we all have. The stagnant nature of spiritual growth in our current society is still being held onto with a ferociousness. The only thing constant is change. This is a well-established scientific fact. We have stopped spiritually growing but the world continues to change around us rapidly. Our fight with this change has created such a friction, that society is holding on by a thread. And our children know it.
Spiritual kids are extremely sensitive. This is what makes them spiritual. They do not belong in the fading violent society we have today. It was necessary then to use violence to maintain some magnitude of order. This could be physical violence or psychological violence. Psychological violence stems from the perception that someone believes that they are better or of more value in some way than another person. Often parents see their child as subordinate to them. While this is necessary in teaching a child on how to navigate a violent world but the world is becoming less violent. It may not seem like it right now, as the media is largely reporting on the chaos around the world. But there is major growth in peace and acceptance in some quiet places around the world.
While it may appear that the world is falling apart, there is a mending that is occurring. A few of us are seeing this mending and know exactly what is being discussed here. And some will have to dig deeper.
Spiritual kids often experience childhood as a series of traumatic events, nearly one after the other. There is often lying and manipulation in the family that a spiritual child will feel before they see the physical evidence of it. This feeling of betrayal is massive and as a little person figuring out how to deal with their massive emotions, there is a parent that is ridiculing them for their emotional fit. It’s an obnoxious situation because it’s an adult’s job to aid the child in handling their emotions in a healthy way. Instead, the parents berate and belittle the child before they empower them.
Well, lets be honest. We as parents may not have been taught by our parents. We cannot teach and empower our children when we don’t know how ourselves. The blind is leading the blind. In this situation, nobody is to blame because each parent had some adults in their life that didn’t teach them when they were young. At some point, we say enough is enough, and we explore a different approach.
Ellen was four and an extremely sensitive spiritual child. She could feel people before they came through the door. If someone was angry or had ill intentions, she became needy and fussy. Usually, in five minutes, an angry person would walk through the door. Unfortunately, this angry person was usually her mom.
Mom was raised in a very loving, kind, and a culturally traditional family. Mom was brutally and violently raped when she was a teenager. She was offered medical service, counseling, as well as the traditional cultural methods commonly used. Aside from the emergency medical response, she refused any help.
She experienced so much emotional hurt from the rape, that she replaced it with a more comfortable emotion, anger. She would not allow herself to experience or show hurt as this would give her transgressor victory. At least, this is what she believed to be true. So, mom became a very angry person and lashed out at anyone she deemed beneath her. Unfortunately, this included little Emily.
Little Emily was so sensitive that she was needy and fussy a lot. Mom was angry most of the time so Emily felt this most of the time. Crying would move her strong emotions but Mom did not want a weak girl. ‘She needed her to be strong if she is going to face some of the hardships she faced in life.’ So, mom berated and reprimanded her crying by calling her names like, “don’t be a crybaby” or “buck the fuck up.”
Sometimes this is called hardening from a parent’s perspective. We may think we are doing it out of love but really were imposing our hurt onto our child. We are hurting them and then telling them to ‘suck it up’ when they cry. It’s a form of psychological abuse and many parents have no idea they are doing it. Whatever a parent hasn’t learned from in their past, they pass on the bad habits to their children, and they on to theirs.
A spiritual child knows more about the emotions going on in numb parent like Emily’s mom. A spiritual child will try and fix their parent so they can be a better teacher for them. However, this is grossly out of their skill range from their birth to adulthood. A spiritual child will end up severely traumatized by adulthood and a far cry from being able to fulfill their specific spiritual purpose.
Spiritual elders know how to raise a spiritual child because they were once one themselves. If necessary, cultural tradition would have them largely raised by the spiritual elder. This harbored them from the traumas being passed down from their parents. This allowed the child to fulfill their spiritual purpose as a specific spoke in the wagon wheel. The community and world were stronger for it.
Unfortunately, many of these spiritual children are growing up with parents who cannot and are not teaching them what they need to know to live their life purpose. The children are grossly traumatized and a miniscule version of the person they are meant to be.
As parents, we must heal and learn from our uncomfortable past to be able to teach and empower our children to handle this world in a healthy way. There is nothing wrong with our child or any child for that matter. It is us as parents, adults, or society as a whole, that should teach and empower them. If our child is falling short, it is because we don’t know how to teach them. Sure, we could find a professional, a doctor, a therapist, or the like. They might know of a few things that could help. But if we have a spiritual child, a therapist isn’t going to be able to give them what they really need.
Finding a spiritual elder for your spiritual child, would be one option. However, our current world culture doesn’t really accommodate this. It does in some ways but for many parents, there are no options available.
A spiritual child requires extreme gentleness, kindness, and respect. In reality, all children require this but this is exceptionally so for spiritual children. Caregivers need to have largely worked through their past to the point they have truly healed and grown. This way they can pass on what they have learned to their spiritual child.
A spiritual child will know if a parent is lying or making something up. They will feel really uncomfortable because they are experiencing some form of betrayal from their parents. They will feel it without any physical evidence to support their extreme discomfort so, it will be very confusing for them. A parent who doesn’t know they have a spiritual child will hide this physical evidence as a lie, which is where the confusion comes from. The hurt a spiritual child will feel will be enormous. They know that their parent is their guide and a feeling of betrayal like this, quickly diminishes trust. The consequences of the diminishment are one of the most challenging things to heal.
A parent will think ‘they are just a child and this answer will suffice.’ Really, they don’t know how to help them. Perhaps it was something their parents told or taught them. To a spiritual elder, this parent has become numb to life. A numb parent is inept in properly raising a spiritual child.
As parents, when we accept our past (the good and the bad) and we heal and learn. We become better parents for our children in general. We empower our children through teaching them about the things they are curious about. If our children are curious about something, it is likely speaking to their purpose in life. Embrace their interests and empower them to be the best at their aspirations. If you suspect you have a spiritual child, seek the help you need to heal and learn from your past. This will make you an expert on life and therefore, parenting. Look to your spiritual elders if you have them.
P.S. Know that some organized religions downplay this form of spirituality as a religious practice and they will likely be unable to help a spiritual child.