OPEN UP YOUR WORLD TO THEM

Kids need to develop in your sustaining presence. As they experience you they try you on and learn how they want to do things. This give kids a sense of belonging.

Richard Geist in his paper, Empathic Understanding, gives the following examples:

• The 5year old that cooks side by side with a parent
• The 8year old that shaves next to dad
• The 12year old that takes on the same hobbies as his parents

Including your kids in your world will give them a place to feel like they belong, a sense of group identity. They will use that to become confident and mature.

Tuning into our kids and responding becomes their own ability to nurture themselves. Both Heinz Kohut and Richard Geist remind us that:

• The praise in a parent’s eye becomes a healthy sense of self-esteem.
• The parent who picks up and securely holds the cranky kid transfers a sense of peace that the child can learn to take on as their own.

As parents we long for our kiddos to grow strong and able to love other, we are wise to remember that our love will give them the blueprints for their own development. For it’s been said somewhere that we love because we were first loved.