Conscious Parenting - The Early Ages of a Child

Let the curious mind remain

The key aspect of mental development during these years is the ability to grasp abstract concepts and understand cause-and-effect relationships. Children begin to demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of the world around them, going beyond concrete experiences to explore “what-if” ideas and principles. For example, they may start to understand that pushing a glass off the table will make it fall and break or if they say “this”, “that” will happen. These early experiences with cause and effect foster critical thinking and put down a framework for how a child will behave as it grows up.

Remember when we played doctor/patient with our siblings or friends? At this age, children have a high tendency to take different imaginative roles during their playtime, which lets them explore all the possibilities this life could offer as they grow up. Some naturally are drawn towards more studious roles and others have a liking for something physical and manual. During this stage, parents have a big role in gender identification and passing on societal ideas of what a boy should be learning as opposed to a female toddler. 

Parents can inadvertently pass on social norms, gender stereotypes and their own expectations to their kids by simply encouraging one child to engage in a specific activity. Male toddlers, for example, could be encouraged to play with trucks and tools, or perhaps take the role of doctors, while female kids are naturally pushed towards playing with dolls and makeup kits. Both of these acts foster creativity, however, for a female child, the idea of wanting to look beautiful on the outside, perhaps like a Barbie doll, slowly becomes a reality which can lead to obsession with how one looks and cause significant self-esteem issues in their late age.

Research published in the Journal of Child Development by Smith et al. (2018) explains the unsurprising fact of how early exposure to such perceptions of themselves and their roles in society can lead to low self-esteem and body image issues as they grow older. The study conducted followed a group of girls from diverse backgrounds over a span of ten years, examining the impact of early play experiences on their well-being and self-perception. The findings revealed that the girls who were exposed to narrow, limited and stereotypical activities during their younger age demonstrated significantly lower levels of self-esteem. 

Parents should recognise that by simply buying these toys, they are shaping the reality of the child. A boy exposed to guns and tanks is more likely to dive further into such a subject, especially given the amount of content which is readily available online now. This can have a significant impact on a young child’s mind and move them away from the reality of life which lies in exploration of and respect for all life. The question is why do parents do this? Why do we blindly follow norms which are going to narrow down possibilities of experiences and opportunities for a child? The answer lies in our own adult mind and its programming. 

Most of us don’t realise that we may be following a pattern which has been passed to us over generations and solidified into what we call culture, habits and society. We are made to believe that “fitting in” is the right thing to do and unfortunately our minds believe this. It is just easier that way, because to live a life of totally fresh ideas, concepts and questioning, is hard if not impossible for many. The good news? It is certainly doable if somehow you decided to read this book and dive into this subject. A mind which is curious to understand and go beyond what it has been programmed to know and think, will keep looking and find answers. 

For far too long we have seen trauma, habits and a limited conditioned worldview passed down generations leading to extreme physical and emotional pain and a sense of unexplained suffering. Our children grow up having to choose sides based on the religions, cultures, countries and other such identifications given to them. They are made to defend themselves and fight others. They are programmed who to like and who to dislike and so on. All this sits in their minds like it is sitting in our adult minds, in the shape of an assumed personality - our ego.

The journey of defending this ego and not getting “hurt” by others starts at a very young age for all of this and we continue to follow this pattern until we hit our deathbeds. The question we are exploring here is if this identity has anything to do what actually happens in our lives? We will explore a little deeper to understand why defending an identity or a personality hasn’t anything to do with living a happier and more fulfilled life. 

A personality or an image of oneself is not absolute in nature and lies in the perceptions and conditioning of the perceiver. The way a child looks at their mother is totally different from a neighbour looking at the same mother. The child has an idea of its mother's personality and identity, all generated through experience and stories shared within the family. The neighbour also has an image albeit very different, based on her own experience with that mother. Everyone has their own idea and image of that person who we refer to the mother for reference hare. In fact, she also has an idea of a character, an identity or a personality of herself, which is unique and limited to her own knowledge. 

If all these images represent her, based on who the perceiver is, is it then possible to defend an absolute character or identity? It is not. For some, how she speaks is absolutely divine and for others, she may be very annoying. Is it her role and purpose in life to align all perceptions about her to what her perception is about herself? That is virtually impossible but of us live our lives in this friction of changing what others think about us. 

To associate with, and defend this adapted identity, is like being in an aternal battle where you are alone and the enemy is everyone else. As adults, we need to understand that changing perceptions of others is not the purpose of life. The identity and character we end up defending is purely made up in our minds and it is not the absolute reality. Every interaction with humans, animals or nature will teach you something about ourselves. We have to realise that all that we experience is nothing but myriad expressions of life; the same life which is living inside you. We have to understand that what you think of something or someone, is also a subjective programming of your mind. The moment you open your eyes, what you see and define as good or bad is also only a web of connected definitions and experiences stored in your mind. In essence, at a given point in time, you are only really observing a story running in your mind and not the absolute reality. 

All of us took the form of a limited body and mind to experience the diversity of experiences life has to offer to the life inside us. Our purpose is to experience all expressions of consciousness directly and in much detail, without our limited conditioned mind with its identifications. As adults reading this book, we are very heavily conditioned to take many things in life for granted; not by any of our own fault but just by learning language, defining and mentally understanding concepts we humans have defined to make sense of all that we experience. Our kids, however, have the chance to have a much wider and deeper experience of life if we attempt to consciously break the eternaloop of conditioning and programming which is transferred through us.