Our Children's Needs

SOME LAST THOUGHTS

We can remember how we felt when we were children. We can spend time remembering our various experiences feelings and needs which we had when we were children. But even that is not enough. The conditions and environment of our childhood years were very different than those, which our children experience today. Thus we must imagine that we are our children and try to understand how they feel. Then our words and actions will be in harmony with their needs.
We need to believe in our children and ourselves. If we do not believe in ourselves, we cannot believe in our children. Let us have faith that both we and they are capable of facing life with our inner guidance, clarity and effectiveness.
Let us believe in our spiritual oneness and the power of unconditional love is the solution for every problem. Let us be consistent and respect ourselves and our children.
Let us continue our own education, our own growth, our own self-improvement, our own spiritual evolution. Let us be true to who we are and overcome our egos, our fears and attachments. Let us spend time with our children and share with them the beauty of our inner selves. Let us grow together in humility and simplicity with our children, discovering together the meaning and beauty of life.
Let us close with some words from Maria Montessori:

"Without any doubt we have in the past been the unconscious oppressors of this new human seed which bursts forth pure and charged with energy. And we have superimposed ourselves upon it without admitting the needs of its spiritual expansion. So the child has remained almost completely hidden - or very much overshadowed - by this unconscious egotism of the adult. It would be an affirmation not too well received, I imagine, were I to say that very often the adult becomes an obstacle, rather than a help to the development of the child. It is a most difficult thing for us to accept that statement that, very often, it is our excessive care for the child which prevents the exercise of his own activities, and therefore the expansion of his own personality…
"Thus it comes to pass that when we, with the very best intentions and with the most sincere wish to help, do everything for the child - when we wash him, lift him up and plunk him down on his chair, feed him, and put him into that species of cage we call his crib - in giving him all these unnecessary aids we do not really help but hinder him.
"And later on, towards the boy or girl, we repeat the same error, when - still holding to the belief that he cannot learn anything without our help - we stuff him with intellectual nourishment, we nail him to the benches of the school so that he cannot move, we make every effort to uproot his moral defects, we crush or break his will, secure in our belief that in this way we are acting for his highest good.
"And so we proceed in this manner indefinitely all along the line; and we call this education. "

About the Author: