Janusz Korczak, the great Polish writer and physician who went to his death rather than abandon the children of the Jewish orphanage he directed in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, once observed that the challenge of children lies not so much in their inexperience or lack of education, but in the way they demand that the world reach up to their feelings.
In a sense, that’s the goal of Sonia Choquette’s book, The Wise Child: A Spiritual Guide to Nurturing Your Child’s Intuition (Three Rivers Press, May 1999). Choquette explores the power of the intuitive connection between parent and child through stories from her own life and the clients she counsels. It is a kind of primer for parents on reaching up to their children’s feelings.
Choquette’s message is a basic one. Listen with your heart. Trust your intuition. Confront your own fears to be better able to help your children manage theirs. Above all, teach your children to value their feelings, to not be afraid to express themselves, even if it may contradict what others say.
For Choquette, intuition obviously entails much more than 900 numbers with "psychics standing by" or dazzling predictions of the future. Being intuitively attuned is really another way of describing the self-aware life, the capacity to live more creatively and intentionally. Accordingly, teaching children to trust in themselves, to live with creative intention, begins in those first, critical early cues or perceptions that the world they inhabit is one of "interested and caring eyes."
The push and pull of parenting
The beauty of The Wise Child is that it is filled with simple, illuminating stories and anecdotes that show how the interested and caring eyes of parents make a difference in a child’s life. Choquette shares one story from a family vacation when she and her husband and two daughters were staying in a country farmhouse high atop a ridge. Her daughter Sonia, then aged nine, wanted to ride an old, rickety bicycle down the hill and back with her father. Unsure she could make it back up the three-mile rise, Choquette drove the car to the bottom of the hill in case young Sonia needed a ride back.
After pedaling to the turn-around point, Sonia pleaded with her mother to let her ride the bike back up the arduous hill. Choquette had her doubts but agreed to let her try. So Sonia trooped back up the hill, staying right behind her dad, an experienced bicyclist, while mom followed closely behind in the car.
"Finally they crested the last hill and coasted victoriously into the farmhouse yard," recalls Choquette. "Much to my amazement, Sonia had done it. . .without missing a beat. She ripped off her helmet and ran joyously toward me.‘Wow! Mom, I did it! Surprised?’‘You bet I am!’ I exclaimed.‘How on earth did you find the strength?’
"Beaming with pride, she answered,‘Easy. I imagined that Daddy pulled me and you pushed me, and I just rode along in the middle!’"
This is a wonderful example of how the presence of parents lends power to children’s natural desires. Of course, as Choquette reminds us, giving children your full awareness and attention does not mean hovering over them, projecting your every fear, or being a control freak. And, it’s worth saying that it also doesn’t mean sacrificing your own path in life. The interested and caring eyes of parents allow children to naturally discover who they are, to test the waters of their expanding worlds both safely and adventurously — but without feeling either stifled or abandoned. Just loved.
The Ritalin generation
Unfortunately, this is also the age of Ritalin, of school violence, of overworked and single parents and latch-key lifestyles. So many children today hunger for love and authenticity in their relationships, a love that often seems to go unrequited. More than thirty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke eloquently of the "clouds of inferiority forming in the little mental skies of our children" as a consequence of poverty and racism. It is a voice whose message still resonates with relevance. Yet, even in surroundings crowded with opportunity and luxury, as the tragic school shootings in Littleton, Colorado testify, young emotions can also endure, forlorn and friendless.
"I think we’re in a real crisis," says Choquette. "There are so many of us who when we were young were perhaps not well connected with our primary caretakers or did not feel appreciated. Consequently, we don’t know how to be with our own children, let alone appreciate what magnificent spiritual beings they are."
Choquette notes how profoundly disabling it can be to live in an atmosphere of unrelenting toxic stress or anger, and how common such a state of affairs has become. "In America this condition has become epidemic," she notes. "As parents we need to shake ourselves out of the tendency to accept such toxic conditions, both for ourselves and for our children."
A spark of caring humanity
Notably, recent studies of abused or neglected children reveal that those who display more resiliency in later life were likely to have shared the experience of having been able to recruit "others’ invested regard," as researcher Gina O’Connell Higgins reports in Resilient Adults: Overcoming a Cruel Past. That is, resiliency is not so much the product of a hard life as it is the result of some spark of caring humanity, some "locus of hope," existing within an otherwise troubled environment.
"Children know if you’re really present, they know if you really care," says Choquette. "Even though you may give a child everything, if you are not truly interested in being connected to them, they will feel it energetically. I think that’s part of what happened in the Littleton tragedy. Those kids had everything, materially speaking. But obviously something had gone wrong. At some level, I think that crime was the result of feeling so deeply unlovable, enough that it could provoke rage on a colossal scale."
Undoubtedly, every child needs guidance and structure, education and respectful discipline, physical safety and nourishment. This is the infrastructure in which the house of healthy emotions is protected and allowed to flourish. But where effective parenting begins is in healthy communication. And this means more than just providing children with information or rules. It’s about tuning in to children’s feelings, being a good listener.
When communication works, it is also very much a two-way street of mutual understanding and learning. Our ability to teach our children begins with the extent of our openness to what children have to teach us. And they do have some things to teach us! Their natural openness and enthusiasm, their eagerness to learn, offer us the gift of their constant vigilance. If nothing else, children are paying attention, and they can be amazingly perceptive of whether our emotional style rings true.
Choquette describes the story of one client, a man named Martin, who learned something about the power of a child’s intuitive sensibility. A highly intellectual if emotionally reserved man, Martin had a vested interest in keeping his life ever calm and pleasant. Unfortunately, his always pleasant demeanor had alienated his five-year-old daughter, Gloria. What was especially perplexing to him was that his wife and daughter tended to battle a lot, yet Gloria seemed to prefer her mother’s company to his.
Apparently, the little girl’s instincts told her that dad’s "all is well" approach to life was not real. It wasn’t coming from the heart. What she wanted more than anything was a heartfelt relationship with her dad, even if at times that meant showing irritation, enforcing discipline, or setting limits.
When children feel assured in their own hearts, they become better attuned to the emotional tenor of a situation, to the "vibes" of the people around them. They become better able to protect themselves and act in their own self-interest. "Our heart is the well of insight, bright ideas, and sudden solutions," writes Choquette. "It is here in our hearts that we become aware of the subtle hidden side of things and so often the‘truth’ of what we are dealing with in life."
When children listen to their own hearts, they often teach us a few things, too, like how to occasionally laugh at ourselves. This was a lesson the preschool teacher of Choquette’s daughter Sabrina learned on one less-than-perfect workday. Apparently, the teacher was not in the best of moods that morning as a result of an argument with her husband before work. As a result, her patience with the children wore thinner than usual.
The situation reached a point at which the teacher, exasperated by the children’s behavior, ordered the entire class to take a "time-out" in the corner. The children marched off to the corner, chastised. There they hung their heads for several minutes. Then Sabrina had an idea. She whispered something to the other children and a roomful of little heads nodded in enthusiastic agreement.
Sabrina walked over to her teacher. She leaned up to her ear and quietly spoke. "Ms. Agnes, we’re all feeling fine in the corner. Would you like to sit with us in the corner until you feel better, too?" The children had zeroed in on the real problem — the teacher’s unhappy mood. Ms. Agnes, disarmed by the sudden truth of a child’s words, burst out laughing. The children’s time-out was over.
Reaching up to children
There is, as yet, no precise scientific explanation for how intuition works. But there is little question that intuition is used in every walk of life, including that of science. In fact, as Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., observes in Awakening Intuition, many scientists and inventors have credited intuition with helping them to accomplish their goals. Jonas Salk, for example, discoverer of the polio vaccine, always described creativity in science as a blend of reasoning and intuition.
Notably, the root of the word intuition is tuere, meaning "to guard, to protect." Being a good parent or supportive adult certainly involves many practical demands, rules, and responsibilities we expect both ourselves and children to follow. Parenting by definition means protecting children as they emerge in their own light as unique human beings. But where it all begins is in a vibrant, caring connection. This is the message of The Wise Child.
Like Choquette’s daughter pedaling up the hill, drawn along by the push and pull of supportive parents, children acquire their own internalized sense of equilibrium in life from the adults who influence their world. A parent or other adult’s ability to be present in empathy and appreciation for a child’s feelings helps foster the kind of environment that encourages self-confidence, creativity, and security. This is the gift of feeling loved and respected.
Being a good parent or role model is not about perfection. It is not a matter of choosing between a rigidly authoritarian or more deliberately permissive parenting style. Neither is it a matter of showering children with false praise or undeserved compliments. It is a matter of giving children what they most need, the sense of being cherished. Choquette’s book helps you remember that. She reminds us all that children live a kind of intensely sentient existence, their feelings and curiosity often soaring above the learned restraint of the world of self-consciously deliberating adults. Her book urges us to reach up to our children’s feelings. They deserve it.
Eleven Ways To Be In The Moment
1. When you leave work, leave work.
2. Go for a walk with your child, holding hands if possible.
3. Have a family meal (preferably home-cooked) with everyone present at least once a week.
4. Have story time after dinner at least once a month. Tell your children stories from your childhood. Tell them stories from your parents’ childhood as well. Let your children ask questions, and follow their line of curiosity.
5. Don’t take phone calls during dinner.
6. Don’t take work phone calls in the evening or on weekends (or at least during predesignated hours set aside for family).
7. Tell your children a bedtime story that you make up.
8. Keep one day a week free to rest, relax, and connect with one another.
9. Do projects together with your kids.
• Plant a garden.
• Do yard work.
• Paint their room.
• Decorate cookies.
• Bake a pie.
10. Avoid television as a substitute for true together time.
11. Turn off the radio and have conversations instead.
The Wise Child: A Spiritual Guide to Nurturing Your Child’s Intuition, by Sonia Choquette, Ph.D., Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999.