"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you."
Kahlil Gibran

When you first hold your tiny infant, there is an overwhelming sense that he or she belongs to you. This is a natural human instinct, to be sure - one that leads parents to care for and protect the most vulnerable of the species. Even before birth, perhaps before conception, parents talk about what they want for their child. They have images of what their son or daughter’s behavior and life will look like.

Raising their child becomes a process of shaping that little being into what often amounts to a mini-version of Mom or Dad. Increasingly this is not even enough; parents want their child to be so much more. This means starting earlier than ever with structured lessons and activities. Children are losing the opportunity to grow naturally; to evolve in alignment with their true selves.

It reminds me of the currently popular designer bamboo plants. Small bamboo stalks are forced into a variety of shapes. Aesthetically they are pleasing, even intriguing. I have a couple. Pretty as they are, when I water them I feel a tinge of sadness, for I have walked through tropical bamboo forests and I know how natural bamboo grows. Children can be shaped as easily as the supple, young bamboo, but is that really what parents ought to do? Certainly, when they are young, they need to be taught acceptable behaviors. It is when they become old enough to express themselves that we need to be very conscious of what we are doing.

Too often, the thoughts of children are not validated. It is one thing to teach them how to behave, but another to tell them what and how to think. If we do not validate their thoughts, either they withdraw from us, creating their own worlds inside their heads, or they cease thinking their own thoughts. If they are kept so busy with structured activities, or their minds are engaged with television or computer games, they simply do not have time to think. Their minds need fertile space and nurturing in order to grow.

With parental focus so much on what children can do and what they have, there is little importance placed upon who they are. Who they are is not who we create. Who they are has to do with the presence of their soul which was there, fully formed when they were born.

The soul is like the flower blossom that exists, for a time unexpressed, within the plant, and gradually emerges. Conditions around the plant allow for the blossoming to occur. Unfavorable conditions may mean the blossoming simply does not occur. The human soul blossoms to the extent that life conditions allow for that.

It happens best when the uniqueness and individuality of a person are drawn out. Too often, parenting and teaching suppresses that uniqueness and individuality, especially when it is contrary to what the adults expect from the child. If a child is so busy conforming to the agenda of adults, where is there room for his or her soul’s agenda? Adolescence is when there is a big push for the soul to express itself and yet this is the time when the pressure to conform to the adult’s way of thinking and seeing the world is the greatest. It is no wonder families often experience conflict at this time. Each generation is, being a later edition, more evolved than the one before. We must allow for the new growth that is inherent in our children, rather than pruning them to be like us. It takes strength and courage to allow our children truly to be themselves. It also requires that we trust the divine spark dwelling within each of them.

Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist and author of such books as Dancing Soul: The Voice of Spirit Evolving. She can be reached at gwendall@shaw.ca