A Child Never Forgets

Children are recorders of all information; they can feel so much more than we give them credit for. Their brains are young and fresh, they absorb everything like a sponge. A young child might struggle to articulate their experiences with words, but their emotional reactions can indicate their difficulty in finding the appropriate words. Meaning, they will show us what they are thinking when they can't say it. However, when they can't express, release, or reset from the negative, it will fester and grow inside of them over time.

This might be surprising, but in my experience as a QHHT practitioner, I've found that much of the trauma we carry as adults originates from unresolved childhood trauma.

We might have 'thought' that we dealt with it, buried it, or moved past it. However, every single person has experienced something during childhood that affected them through adulthood. This list of how the nurture experience effects us is long. It could have been having controlling parents, so we were scared to think for ourselves or we felt the need to rebel. It might have been the absence of safety and nurturing in our environment that we required to flourish without anxiety or concerns. It might have been unrealistic expectations or 'never being good enough' that drove us to feel less than our entire life. There are much more severe scenarios and minor ones, but we must acknowledge that our upbringing significantly influences the patterns in our adult lives. This is partly influenced by environmental factors, not solely family life. Our neighborhood, educational background, family social status, social networks, and community associations all contribute to this nurturing process. Basically, we learn to adjust ourselves to survive the environment we are given, good or bad. Now here is the wonderful part...we can still heal from it! We can let it go once we acknowledge how it skewed our perception of life and our connection to ourselves.

To make this transition, we have to learn something from it instead of letting it hold us back. The message might be simply to trust ourselves, and to know that we were treated unfairly. Nonetheless, we must know that we do not have to be a reflection of the past, we just have to change how we see it. This requires us to release our anger or frustrations towards those who were unaware themselves. We must recognize that many adults possess limited emotional intelligence and awareness (usually passed down from generation to generation). To move forward, we need to stop blaming the past for shaping us negatively, and start forgiving the past so we can enjoy the future. We have the opportunity to acknowledge it, understand it was wrong, and forgive those who didn't know any better. Don't always anticipate an apology; forgiving others is a gift to our spirit and elevates our karma. The individual who wronged us might never perceive it that way, and that is their karma.

We are all unique beings and we are not required to be like anyone else on this planet. In fact, it is much more tranquil when we can be accepting of each other’s true nature. This lesson was a huge one for me as a parent. It allowed me to start breaking the cycle with my own children in how I view, treat, and communicate with them. I have definately gone down some 'wrong' parenting paths before, but I constantly think about how every action, word, and thought will affect them over time (even the ones not directed at them). I love my littles (almost not-littles) and I'm making sure that they have the best understanding of this emotional process as possible. I have apologized for my mistakes and I keep trying to do better. The world is cruel enough, the support they recieve at home should be magical.

If I could give one message to parents to help their kids it would be: your kids absorb it all. The bad moods, the anxiety, the stress, the insecurities, the harsh language, the non-affection, society, peers, school. They feel it all, we can do better. We can break the cycle by allowing healthy communication to flow. We can empower them with this perspective.

-A

PS- Some kids also just like to find out the hard way. I was one of those and created my own trauma by my teen years. I do understand my own rebellion, I do understand the environmental factors. It's all still related to everything that was around me at the time. We can't prevent it all, and we're not supposed to. It's a balance of letting them learn for themselves, and supporting them while they go through it. Cheers to healing timelines and our inner-child.