“Children Are Our Future, So What Are We Doing About It?”

The world is big. There are challenges and heartaches. There is grief and fear and pain. As adults, we are already programmed, for lack of a better word, with beliefs and labels. We have lived through so much already. Some challenges brought joy, and some brought sorrow, but they have one thing in common, growth. We have evolved. We are expansive. What a concept. This life we are living is essentially one big school, so how exactly are we helping our future children?

I personally have always loved puzzles. I like figuring things out, learning how and why something works the way it does allows me to figure out how I want to make it different or better or if I can show someone else how it works. When I was a child, everything ended with ‘but why’? Adults always say children are curious, fearless, adventurous, and carefree. Until an adult comes along and says no, stop running and playing with dragons in the store! These are amazing qualities; a type of playfulness adults should try to remember more often. The type of characteristics that allow creativity to flow.

As an adult in a child’s life, any child, teaching is everyone’s responsibility. Parents, caregivers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, pastors, and many more, all play a specific part in a child’s life. We have learned a great deal more about child psychology and early childhood education than we knew 40 years ago when I was a child. We now know that children from birth to around 7, see the world through felt perception. They go by what they feel. They are unable to fully rationalize situations. This is where psychologists feel a lot of adult traumas come from. Traumas are not always physical from abuse, there can be emotional trauma too. We now participate in therapy to go deep into our behaviors, beliefs, and actions to try to figure out how we interpreted something when we were young and then attempt to figure out the core beliefs we attached to those traumas.

Around the age of 7 or 8, children reach a phase known as ‘Age of Reason’. Per Megan Zander, who wrote, A Milestone Developmental Stage: The Age of Reason, this refers to the moral, emotional and cognitive stage where they are now able to rationalize thought patterns, (although some recent studies now believe this stage may come earlier). At this point, they are then able to control impulses. She states this is when they can see people have their own feelings. There is significant neurological growth.

Many adults have participated in inner child work, which helps heal traumas cause by mental, physical, or emotional situations and social integration in childhood. Everyone has always done the best they could with what they had. Isn’t that what our parents always told us? Well, this is true, but now we know more. With great knowledge, comes great responsibility, or more responsibility? I know I have heard that quote once or twice. Yes, we have more knowledge now and so we owe it to the children to start early and give them the tools to help build a better future.

This all brings me to my passion. I always felt my purpose was to help people, so I became a nurse. Now, since the birth of my best friend’s daughter almost 3 years ago, my purpose and my passion has evolved. I realized I wanted to help people in a different way, a way that would help change how we communicate with children. I have always loved writing. Once I started researching more early childhood education, the more I wanted to write a series of children’s books, focusing on compassion and conscious communication. As an observer, I have seen guides (parents, grandparents, aunts, etc.) bypass a child’s emotion by unconsciously calling them a ‘bad girl/boy’. Young children not only emulate adults, but they also absorb everything. Because they experience the world through their feelings, being bad, does not feel good. They do not understand the action or situation which those words were intended, such as to not throw a bowl on the floor. The adult does not mean the child is bad, such as a rotten apple and therefore they do not like them. Once a child hears this more than once, the likelihood it is they may interpret as they are less than, or not loveable. Some adults become frustrated, as they have always heard and said things this way, after all its how we were raised. Being conscious and aware of how we speak to children is extremely important. My dream is to add more books to my Magic Cat picture book series, add an education section, connections to mindful therapists, naturalists, caregivers, mindful educators, conscious living examples, other guides and parents to a space where they, as members of this Magic Cat community, can share stories as well as ask questions. To build a gathering that wants to read mindful books to their children, where we can all learn healthier ways to communicate with each other through love and compassion.

Children will then grow up to be mindful of how they speak, educate, write, live with, and love one another. Unity and acceptance for all life occurrences without deeming them bad or good. We need to come together to do a better job than those before us and not be ashamed to say so. This is their future; we need to do better by them.