 Ok. Here we go (laugh) ... Let's ask the big question: What's the purpose of being a child? Why do we have a childhood?
When I asked a few parents I got answers like—to have fun, to play, to figure things out, to give parents a hard time, to make the time between birth and college as expensive as possible for parents ...So much follows from the way we answer this question and a large part of our attitude about how we raise our children stems from our “unconscious” answer. Remember, being uncertain is also an answer. It just means we’re ambiguous, and that will impact the attitude we have toward raising our kids.Now there may be many parts in the answer to this question. But one thing seems certain: we are children because we need to learn certain things before we become adults.If we don’t learn those things, then our adulthood is filled with uncertainty, struggle, immaturity and all those other problematic issues that plague our post-childhood years.So what are some of the things children need to learn?Well, from what I’ve observed, besides physical skills (like walking, eating, and drinking), they need to learn how to communicate, how to think, and how to feel. If we look at our kids as having 3 components—physical, emotional, intellectual—we might better understand how to approach their learning.At first, there are physical skills we need to help them with. Then as they start to learn language, we need to help them organize their intellectual abilities. Soon, they begin to show strong feelings toward things -- so we must help them organize those feelings, too.What I’ve started to understand is that one of our important roles is to help our kids learn how to organize. Now we may not generally think about it this way, but bear with me (smile).In order for us to help our kids be organized we need to know how to be organized. When our garage, tool shed or closets are in order, we go into them and find the right tool for the job. When they are in disarray, it takes “forever” to find something or we may simply use whatever is handy, even though it may be the wrong tool. We are similar to our tool sheds!When we want to do something physical, we try to choose the right way to do it. If it’s picking up something heavy--well, we bend our knees so we don’t over stress our backs, and we lift from the legs because they have larger, stronger muscles. When we are presented with thoughtful problems to solve, we try to focus on them by bringing to bear all that we know about dealing with that subject.But (and here’s the sticky part) when we are in emotional conflict, we usually flail around fighting and yelling. Why? From what I can see, we were not taught how to organize our emotional selves effectively. We grab whatever emotion we’ve been patterned to grab. There’s no organization there. The result? You tell me. A lot of conflict, perhaps?If one of the primary reasons we are children is to learn ... and learning is an organizational process ... then the areas we need to organize in our children are their physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being.So here’s another question: if we organize our kids’ physical side with play and sports ... and we organize their intellectual side with academics ... how do we organize their emotions?
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