Honor Thy Children

Perhaps another commandment should read,

"Honor thy children."

When we honor children, we honor ourselves.

When we honor a child's perceptions and understand their emotional, cognitive, and physical limitations, we are offering our children the right to be small, to need, to want, and to experience unconditional love.

When we attune ourselves with their needs at any given moment, and we meet those needs lovingly, we teach our children to love themselves and to eventually learn how to meet their own needs. They will learn they are important and worthy of respect.

When we teach our children proper boundaries, and we ourselves model healthy boundaries for them, we honor our children's right to say 'NO' when they mean NO and yes when they mean yes. They will not be resentful adults who distrust, persecute and need to control others, and instead, they will be creatures attuned with love and thus, they will manifest that love in return. We also teach them to believe they are too magnificent to ever tolerate someone who could abuse them. They will KNOW they are worthy!

When we are fair with our children, we teach them fairness, kindness, and compassion. As we need to enforce boundaries with them, they will trust in our fairness and far less struggles will ensue when they hear the word 'NO' from us.

When we are aloof, distant, indifferent, and we are easily emotionally torn from our children, they experience these moments as abandonment. It can take a lifetime to undo the shame that comes from inconsistent and unpredictable nurturing. Honoring these sacred bonds is a spiritual practice in and of itself.

If we want our children to honor their mothers and fathers, we must first learn to honor ourselves, stand up tall, speak our truth, be fair to ourselves and others, and put an end to needing to prove everyone is wrong and we are right. Instead, we must honor our children and see them as the precious gifts they are.

And the sooner we honor them, the sooner they will honor us in return.

Be wise, stand tall, be fair, and love like your life depends upon it because it does.