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Protecting Your Child's
Innocence
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By
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. |
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We
love our children and we want them to be safe – safe from people who could
harm them and destroy their innocence. At the same time we don't want to
scare them and perhaps create timidity or nightmares. How can we protect
them without harming them?
Obviously, we need to educate our children regarding the fact that there are
people who want to do them harm. We need to teach them not to speak to
strangers, even when the strangers appear to be nice, never accept rides
from people without previous arrangements, never allow people to touch them
inappropriately, and so on. We need to teach them the facts of safety. We
can also teach them self-defense. When my daughter was 12 and very tiny for
her age, we both took a wonderful self-defense class – called Model Mugging
or Impact Training - where we learned to defend ourselves against an attack.
Even a small child can learn powerful methods for getting away from an
attacker.
In
addition, there is another very profound way we can help our children to be
safe. We can teach then to discern the difference between people whose
hearts are open and people whose hearts are closed. Many children are highly
intuitive and can often sense energy, yet when we don't discuss and validate
this level of knowing, they might learn to discount their inner experience.
I once
counseled a woman in her 50's, named Miranda, who told me this story: "I was
eight years old and walking home from school with my best friend. A car
pulled up and a man offered to drive us home. This was before most children
were educated regarding not getting into strange cars. It was a hot and
dusty day and both of us would have loved a ride home. However, something
inside felt wrong, and I had been taught by my mother to trust my inner
feelings. As my friend started to get into the car, I grabbed her and said,
`No. Please don't go with him. Let's just walk.' She didn't listen to me and
got into the car.
She
didn't come home that night and the next day she was found dead."
Miranda was deeply traumatized by the death of her friend. For years she
thought it was her fault for not forcing her friend to walk home with her.
It was only later in her healing process that she accepted her helplessness
over her friend's choice, let go of feeling responsible for her death, and
felt grateful for trusting the truth of her inner self.
The
point of this story is that Miranda was safe because of having learned to
trust her inner experience, her feelings. This is what we need to teach our
children.
How
often do you inadvertently invalidate your children's inner experience? If
your child said, "I don't like Uncle Bob," would you ever say, "Don't be
silly. Uncle Bob is a very nice man and he loves you very much." If your
child said, "I'm not tired," would you ever say, "Of course you're tired.
You've been running around all day." If your child said, "My teacher is
treating me differently than she treats the other kids," would you ever say,
"I'm sure that's not true. You're just too sensitive." All of these
statements invalidate children's feelings and inner experience and teach
them not to trust themselves.
Part
of our job as parents is to teach our children to trust a deeper level of
inner knowing, the level that says in the heart or stomach, "This feels
wrong." "This feels bad." "This feels dangerous." "I have to get away from
this." We can't always know the truth from our mind or our eyes. Sometimes
the truth comes through the body in our feelings. For example, Miranda said
that the man who killed her friend was very kindly looking and friendly. He
had a big smile and looked like he would never harm a flea. On the outward
level, there was nothing that spelled danger. But her body knew differently.
Her body picked up a different level of information – the energy level. On
the energy level, we cannot hide our intention. There is an energy
transmitted from a person with a closed heart who is intent on doing harm,
just as there is an energy transmitted from a person with an open heart who
is intent on being loving. Miranda picked up the energy of this man's intent
to do harm. She could not consciously know what he was going to do, but she
did know that it didn't feel right. It felt wrong.
In
addition to teaching our children to avoid all strangers and physically
defend themselves, let's protect our children's innocence by teaching them
to discern the difference between an open and a closed heart. Let's help
keep them safe by validating their feelings and inner experience so they
learn to trust themselves. |
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Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and
co-author of eight books,
including "Do I Have To Give Up Me
To Be Loved By You?", "Do I
Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved
By My Kids?", "Healing Your
Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and
"Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be
Loved By God?" Visit her web
site for a
FREE
Inner Bonding course:
http://www.innerbonding.com
or
mailto:margaret@i... |
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