Our Children Are Here to Teach Us

I have two loving, vibrant and energetic children, ages two and five. I spend most of my days with them, and this is by design. They are my most precious beings and I understand how much of my life has led me to this point of helping to understand and nurture them.

My son regularly talks about his “brother” (and he doesn’t have a brother in reality) he calls Michael. (I had told him about Archangel Michael as a source of protection when he was scared at night, so this could be connected somehow.) He says his brother is invisible and only he can see him. His brother sleeps in his room with him at night. Sometimes Michael comes to dinner with us apparently and plays with Arran in various places. Michael even draws pictures too, and along with his grandfather, sometimes speaks Spanish. Sound familiar? The average “imaginary” friend or is it a spirit connection?

Children are naturally intuitive. When Arran was about 1 ½ years old, he would repeat words that I had only thought in my head. I remember him asking me for a complicated word once (“gulley”) and I decided not to say it to him since it was too hard. A few seconds later, he said the word, “gulley.” I was shocked. I have other connections with my children, extending beyond the time of their birth.

I believe that my children are here to teach me as much as my role as a parent is to teach them. I also believe that they are here to help heal the planet as part of our shift in consciousness to a shared love and connection with each other and the Earth. Some people may believe children like this are what some call “rainbow or crystal” children.  And as new souls recently born, they are close to the Source and to the spirit realm since they were just there!

We can learn so much from children about what that Divine Source energy (or God) is really like. He also talks about God and that God is light and love. Now where did he get this from? Maybe from something I said at one point? Yes, it’s possible. But what if it’s something more?

I was told years ago by psychic reader that I needed to prepare myself to parent these children. That they would be high-vibration and have many gifts to share with the world. I knew this too as I regularly visit them in the spirit world before they were born in my dreams.

My children have helped push me (on a subconscious level) to come into who I truly am, as a person with a message to help uplift others. It wasn’t until after my daughter Alice was born that I finally gave up fighting in my non-profit job and accepted that I needed to make a change. I hired a life coach, meditated again, and this time asked for higher guidance to assist me. And with some gentle nudging, I started experimenting and eventually my business, Soulful Work Intuitive Consulting, came into existence.

Still, this doesn’t mean that I’m a perfect parent who nurtures my children holistically and spiritually at all times. I sometimes still find myself getting “derailed” by the chaos at home with my sweet little monsters (oops I mean, children). I’m human. Even though I teach others about their true, spiritual selves, I am not always a tranquil, at peace parent that lets nothing phase her.  My pulse can rise when “problems” (like fighting over a toy, whining about not getting candy, or saying my name repeatedly for me to get them something) come up or when I get impatient with how long it takes to get ready in the morning.

Now, I’m not all that bad. I generally try my hardest to be as calming and as tolerant as possible with them, and I like to goof around and have fun with them as much as I can. But when it comes to tantrums, or blatant disregard for what I want them to do (more on that in a moment), or whining, I get triggered. I try to smile, but I feel myself getting annoyed. I try to hold it in, but sometimes it doesn’t work so well.

I also have a new business that I work on technically three days (24 hours) a week, but really more like 40 hours a week, counting all the evenings and occasional weekend and late nights.

As my business is about helping people find spiritual fulfillment in their lives, of course I need to stay aligned and balanced too, quieting my mind/meditating whenever I can, doing a short a morning yoga routine (albeit this is usually about five minutes long) and regularly asking for ans receiving guidance from beyond.

I wonder sometimes what the lesson is for me about the chaos of child-rearing when I’m just trying to live a peaceful, balanced life?

Indeed, it must be about patience. Especially since mine gets tested over and over.

Ah, patience. There it is. My life lesson. Maybe that is the answer here. I believe that we all come into life with a lesson to learn, or a “personal life purpose” as some call it. These could be about unconditional love, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, or any other possible effect of any persistent pattern that you see in your life. In addition to Patience (it warrants being capitalized now), I know that I am to learn also about acceptance, especially about my lack of control over situations. There is probably something about Selflessness and Sacrifice in there too (as there would be for any parent).

But I thought that I had learned so much this far in my life! Clearly, that’s a laugh, as there is still work to be done.

It’s almost like my children are providing me with a fertile “training ground” for truly honing my craft in Patience. If I view it like this, things start to make more sense. I see why, on a grander scale, my children are in my life. I am not perfect. I am human, and as humans we all get tested and can’t always keep our cool. We are meant to express ourselves emotionally, and if we were to hold it in, we could really do ourselves some emotional harm.

That doesn’t mean that I yell at or hit my kids (okay, I have occasionally yelled). But I do ask them to take breaks if needed (at least my five year old son does). I have learned sometimes that children act out because something has bothered them in their day, because they feel disconnected from us as parents.. or sometimes they are just tired and hungry.

These tiny humans are fallible and they learn by testing boundaries. I signed up for this when my husband and I decided to have kids. Hence, my other lessons in Selflessness come in.

I sometimes wonder how parents who don’t think about these things handle energetic children. My heart breaks when I hear of a parent who has hurt their child, sometimes irreparably. I can only imagine the suffering that parent experienced as a child, probably with little experience in child-rearing (parenting doesn’t come with a manual!) and few positive role models to learn from. It is easy to understand how someone with a screaming child could get triggered to act on impulse in a way that they surely would regret later on.

I also understand that children don’t operate on timelines. And they have much to teach us, as adults, about that. Why should they care that we have to be somewhere at a certain time? They are simply living in the moment of what they’re doing… going on the swing or studying a bug. And isn’t that a wonderful thing? It is our society around us that forces children to mold to it. To strict time schedules (all those lessons and play dates!), to us feeling like we need to control them. When I was a kid, I was happiest just playing outside with friends, having a limited schedule and routine – I only had to come in for dinner when it was ready. Free to explore my own interests, to be creative and to learn on my own and with friends. Sure, I took piano lessons, but that was about the only scheduled thing I did each week as a child. And yeah, sometimes I went to camp, but my parents would make sure I had a good part of my summer just to hang out at home (granted I was supposed to do something educational too).

Later on, I chose to participate in sports in high school, and sadly that came with packed schedule of practices and games that left me with little to no time to do anything creative, especially since I would come home to hours of homework left to do. I would enter my next day of school, getting up way earlier than teenagers are biologically meant to, as sleep-deprived and stressed.

And what about all of the children who are over-medicated these days for ADHD or depression? A study done in Finland found that when children take regular breaks/recess, they are more focused in school (and their “symptoms” disappeared). And of course this makes sense. Children have boundless energy! They want to move their bodies and explore! Sadly, many American schools are shortening recess and reducing times allocated for creative play (art, music and foreign language. And as many children being born now are more psychically open and pick up on other people’s energy (as empaths), it’s no wonder that so many seem to be out of balance. Without understanding how to manage their intuitive gifts, children can suffer immensely, and need, more than ever, adults who truly understand how to help them.

In this new age of growth, love and unity, is our job as parents to learn about how we can support them in our paradigm shift. Children are wired to help us connect with each other as part of our coming into the era of shared consciousness, compassion and support. We must remember that most of us adults have been programmed by society not to understand how they operate, since they are wired different.

It is we adults that need to adjust our ways and learn to help foster the healing work that children are here to do. They have so much to teach us. Let’s open our hearts, minds and souls to a new way of parenting, of teaching and supporting children in a holistic education and in nurturing their intuitive gifts that could transform the world as we know it.

That’s all for now, folks, and thanks for reading.

P.S. For those of you still here, join me this Sunday, if you’re local, for a workshop this Sunday afternoon on Quieting the Mind in Everyday Life, and how we can get past the mind chatter and begin to “re-wire” our brains in small moments anytime!