The essence of a child, a chid's spirit if you wish, is pure and full of love. It is therefore both strong and fragile. It is strong because as they say 'love will conquer all', and indeed children can almost get away with murder sometimes. It is fragile because they don't know anything else, and it makes them dependent on adults who have forgotten about unconditional love and purity.

 

So how do we do it - breaking the spirit of our children?

Here are some of our most common mistakes:

1) Shouting or in some other way, taking our anger
out on our children (message: we are angry with
you on your own);

 

 

2) Urging our child to hurry up or do something else that they are crying (message: your are not OK the way you are, you have to be different);

3) Lying to our children, or making promises we do not
intend to keep, being sloppy with our promises,leaving
our children with a feeling they cannot trust us
(or anybody else for that matter);

 

4) Forcing our children to do something they don't want to do or that is against their nature, like 'say hello
to Auntie', or 'sing us a song' (message: do what we want you to do, your wishes are not important, do not listen to them).

Caroline Panesar - [email protected]