Raising an Enlightened Child – Part 3

by Rhonda Sheryl Lipstein | Feb 15, 2009 | Namaste Love Whispers

Part III: Enlightened Teaching

“Discipline”, ooohhhhh don’t like that word, didn’t like it as a kid and don’t like it as the mom, so let us change the word “discipline” to enlightened Learning and Teaching shall we 🙂

Our children, if we allow them to so be, are our greatest teachers of unconditional love on the pathway to SELF enlightenment, and this could not hold more true than when it is we, providing the lessons.

How do you teach your child what is right from wrong, acceptable from not acceptable and maintain LOVE?

Well, maintaining my motto of allowing “Zion to lead me”, he too was… very much an active part of the lessons prepared and taught by me for and to him.

Life is all about stages, we are continuously going through stages through out our lives, only with children, they are far more obvious as they are usually accompanied by physical changes/abilities of vast proportion.

What your child needed to know when crawling on the floors was far different from what they needed to learn once walking around on their own two feet, let alone beginning to use their mother tongue as a means of communicating.
With each of these stages come different lessons and different opportunities for growth, and for each opportunity, a new lesson for both parent and child to learn.

I always looked at lessons Zion was to learn as opportunities for ME to best learn how to communicate appropriately, that he will understand why the lesson was so important for him to learn in the first place.

This of course initiated a lot of talking. Oh my poor boy, he knew all about the theories of our Universe before he was able to string enough words together to form a complete sentence!!
Still, talking is KEY!!!
Allways explaining to him the “WHY?” for any lesson, the reason behind that which I was telling him, so that he may make his own decision as to its relevance and thus comprehend its significance.
And people wonder “why” our children go through the AWESOME stage of “why’s”…..it’s how they come to understand the world around them and how they fit into it- however “tiresome” the constant interruptions of “why, Why? WHY?” we are inevitably going to hear.

Of course, talking in and of itself did not always yield the results desired, or the lessons appropriately and fully learned.
Sometimes, though I must confess, with all my talking, sometimes was really rarely, we had to resort to the good ‘ol “behaviours have consequences” rule of thumb.
What “consequences” speak to a child whose only other affected being is their caregiver? They aren’t out in the big world where making the wrong decision can cost them a good grade, their job or even a friend. We’re sooo not there yet.
For children, consequences are relevant to what is important in their world and in their world, toys, play time and the freedom to express themselves as they so desire are that which is relevant to them.

I’m not into the basic needs paradigm, “don’t listen and no dinner tonight for you” consequences, nor am I any fear based, “if you don’t lisent you’ll lose my love” consequences either, so we went straight to toys, games and freedom of expression.

Here’s the thing, I didn’t go to toys, games and freedom of expression, Zion did!!

Ya see, with the whole “follow the leader” motto of mine, when lessons were being taught repetitively and not learned “appropriately”, Zion and I would have another one of our “talks”, only this time the talk was more of a question:

“Zion, you know when you do xyz, Mommy is not very happy, and you know that I have tired many ways of explaining why this makes Mommy unhappy to you, but it doesn’t seem to be working. I know it can be difficult to remember so what do you think will help you to remember the lesson?”

As you will notice, I did say “it doesn’t make Mommy HAPPY”
That’s a pretty big one all by itself, as far as consequences go.
When you are raising an enlightened child, thus giving them respect as an individual and DOing all YOU DO with unconditional LOVE, the idea and more so FEELing of Mommy not BEing Happy is an AWEsome motivator to learn to change inappropriate behaviour.

This is not the same as threatening love lost, for Zion was also told in the very same breath that Mommy was not happy about something that Mommy will ALLways LOVE YOU, no matter what.

This is very important. Perhaps a moment to ponder…..
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Then, when “Mommy isn’t happy with XYZ”  manifesting the learning desired, we would discuss the things that Zion loves to do and perhaps if he was not able to engage in those activities for a period of time, would that be a motivating factor in assisting him to remember the lesson.

Of course our discussion was a little less sophisticated than that, however, the idea was the same.

This is how our “behaviours have consequences, affects, both good and bad” stage all began and once you begin it, it is extremely easy to make use of there after.

Invariably Zion would suggest that he not be able to play with this, that or the other toy/game/t.v./video, after, as we had agreed, he had been given three opportunities in a row to learn a lesson that just didn’t “catch on”.
He would choose what game or toy that would be off limits, and we would also discuss the length of time, usually 1 day to 1 week depending on the nature of the lesson to be learned.

This interactive teaching provided Zion enormous gifts. First, he was aware of the lesson to be learned, the specific behaviours he was engaging within that were less than acceptable, and then empowered in the resulting consequence if he did not seize upon the opportunities to learn the lessons provided and change his behaviour. This not only empowered him but also gave him a sense of responsibility greater than that of merely pleasing Mommy, for he was now an active participant in his learning, and thus even more so, actively aware of his responsibility in participating in any given behaviours in the first place, “good or bad”.

I must admit, there were and still are some lessons that just seem to take forever to learn, the endless opportunities for growth completely ignored, but eventually or at least once in a while, a little “eureka” light bulb goes off, and the lesson taught is demonstrated in spades!!!

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Blessedly BE,

Radiate Soul Light/roni