Abraham-Hicks on Kids…
I found Abraham-Hicks about 10 years before I had kids. I knew from the first cassette I ever listened to that the information they were sharing would be the greatest influence on my parenting when I did have kids. Now, a little over a decade into parenting I find that it has in fact been the case. “What would Abe say?” is usually the first thing that crosses my mind whenever a situation arises that requires some sort of decision making on my behalf. In the case of my particular family I have taken the Abe info to what most in our society would consider EXTREME. My girls have been mostly unschooled and are given much more freedom than most parents are comfortable with. That’s what works for us. My oldest learned to really be able to read when she was 10– just this past year. And now reads books in their entirety at a pace comparable to most her age. My nearly 9 year old isn’t yet interested. And I“m not worried. But LOTS of others are terrified on our behalf. “Aren’t you worried…” is the most common question I’m asked. And honestly, my answer is, “No, I’m not.” I gave birth to one 5 pound preemie and one 10 pounder that was 10 days ‘overdue.’ And they are both average weight and height now. I just don’t think it matters much.
I know the most important thing for me in raising my girls is that they are open-minded, compassionate, thoughtful thinkers, and have a good sense of discernment. I am fully aware that the jobs they will have someday have not yet been invented, so I am not at all worried about them spending hours in a classroom somewhere amassing loads of information based on old forms of thinking. Recently, a woman struck up a conversation with me about why my kids were not in school. She said, “Aren’t you worried they won’t be prepared?” Later, when we were alone my 10 year old says to me, “I don’t get it… Why would that lady think I wasn’t prepared? Prepared for what? I mean, I know how to read, so if I didn’t know something, wouldn’t I just read about it and then know it? What’s the big deal?” Exactly. I love how Abraham always says that you cannot hear an answer to a question you have not yet asked. And to me that’s what school was for me. I was not interested in what I was learning until the last 2 years of upper division in college. All those years of stuff I found painfully boring and only 2 years of the interesting stuff. Why? Do I think I’m better for having learned and then forgotten all the parts I wasn’t interested in?
Actually, my answer is no. I would have much rather spent all my days like my girls do, making up songs and dances, making their own games or changing the rules around to the ones that we buy, figuring out how to cook– even if it means ‘buttering’ a pan with cream cheese (actually that was their cousin– but I will always eagerly do the dishes & soak a pan when creativity and organic learning has taken place) discovering stuff in nature & just enjoying themselves. Something we have become quite aware of in our travels around the world is that Americans in general have a hard time with ‘being’ and are so very wrapped up in doing. So watching a child spending more time in being than doing is quite unnerving to many adults. Productivity is still very wrapped up in doing in our culture. But that’s not how it really is according to Abraham, is it? Taking action from a place of disconnection is a million times harder than lining up energy first and then taking action. And isn’t playing and enjoying life lining up energy?
So, how do your kids line up their energy? What kinds of things do they enjoy? What gives your family joy? What do you do as a family to get into the vortex?
Category: Parenting, Uncategorized
Your daughters are so lucky to have such a loving Mom who realizes their ability to get in touch with “who they are”. I’ve taught in public schools for 40 years and I’m about ready to give it up rather than torture the kids any more. I look for ways to make it fun for them and they love it.
Raising kids is fun! We have an 11 year old and he has been homeschooled since forever! I am proud to say I manifested the way to homeschool him through the knowledge I had at the time. Although I knew about Abraham Hick well before I had my son, I became very focused and determined to raise him to be him and nothing less. This seems so easy, but like you all have talked about — the masses don’t usually get it but that’s okay. I found out early on that if I was 100% lined up with my intention it almost made it impossible for anyone to be contrary to my face. The world is full of people who want your child to conform to everything from school to religon along with many others. Ultimately when a person meets my son and sees who he is and how he conducts himself — no one can question that something went terribly right! He is awesome and a walking inspiration to me everyday. I agree that parenting has been one part that has been left to the side — but I think becuase it’s like all relationships — you get what you give. As a nation and a world many feel that they need to control their children or else they will run wild. That is, in fact, an expectation that could be met. Instead, see what happens if you let your child make their bedtime. My son has done that basically his whole life. People look at me strange when I share this but what they find out quickly is that Zai is excellent at knowing when he’s ready to go to sleep. He’s never needed to push against sleep and therefore it has never been a problem.
I can’t tell you how excited I am for this community because this is my thing..I love being a momma and I find so much satisfaction in sharing and talking with other like minded people. XOXOXOXO
YES! It is so much fun to meet other like-minded Mamas! And I so often try to express the very notion that you explained here to ‘overworked’ mamas– that allowing the children to make his/her own decisions removes most of the ‘work’ of parenting. Not to say that we give up responsibility for them, but still being present, yet not interfering. For example, near a body of water. So many parents yell and their kids when they are toddlers, pull at them and guide them away from the water. If only they would just be quiet and stay next to them– the chances of their child falling in are so incredibly rare when the child is trusted to make their own decision. It is only when they are rebelling against their parent, trying to run away from them that they end up falling in. But that is the parents’ fault, not the child’s. Then they say, “Well, my child is different than yours. Your kids are so careful.” When the reality is that my kids are careful because I’ve never pulled on them or planted some irrational fear in their heads and I’ve trusted that they are guided by their own inner guidance system, towards well-being. That, right there is the most basic difference I think, is that most parents believe they need to be their child’s guidance system and don’t trust their child has one that works inside of themselves. It’s so simple! Sometimes I just want to shout it out to everyone. hahaha. It’s just so simple.
I hear you and.…Oh…that’s scary…no school. The US is, in that respect, very different from Denmark, where I am a mom. Here, by law, you have to attend school for 9 yrs., so that posibillity never even entered my mind. BUT I am trying to figure out how to preserve my son’s (4 yrs. old) open experimental spirit, his eagerness for life, in this school enviroment where every body puts eachother down.
At his kindergarden all the old beliefs like “god is an old man in the clouds” the sentence “if you don’t xxx…then” are thriving and it breakes my heart that he grows in such a mentally restricted enviroment.…but.…..I also know that THAT is how the world still mostly looks like…so I have started letting him know that there is a difference between how things are done/thought about, out in the world and how we do and think at home and that he has to pay attention to his inner voice before he desides what to do and what to think, that nobody knows anything better that he himself does.
It does not seem like I am able to NOT create this feeling of THEM vs. US.…that we are different than the rest of the world. Because we are, but I do not want this cult’ish feeling to come about. How do you other mom’s work around this?
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And thank you for this iniciative, it is much needed
xx Marina
Yes, we spent part of last year in Berlin and most Germans had never even heard of the concept of homeschooling. They were positively shocked that it was legal. My cousin tells of stories of parents getting fined and turned away by police at the airport for trying to leave on vacation a day before the official holiday starts. wow.
The way we attempt to address the US vs. THEM issue in our house is by saying, “Everyone has their own ideas on things.” So we don’t lump ALL of society in to one lump of THEM. We just say that each individual family, church, country, group has their own perspective, but when you really look deeply every one of them wants the same things. They want to be loved & love, have fun with their families, eat good food and enjoy beautiful things– whether in nature of material, because they enjoy feeling good. They are all after feeling good, because it is good to feel good! So even though their words, laws & actions are different than ours, they want the same things that we do.
My girls have really learned this through travel. We traveled to Iran when my oldest turned 9, the year girls have to legally cover their heads. Then we were in Berlin shortly after with TONS of naked Germans sunbathing in public parks. So ‘legal’ became very clearly subjective to them. If we became German residents homeschooling would become illegal. If I walked outside with bare arms in Iran, I could be arrested. If I laid naked in the grass in Central Park here in the US, I could be arrested. So, I often refer back to these laws when anyone is saying something different than what we believe and they get it immediately.
Thank you Angelina, that was quite inspiring to read your words. I actually never thought about, that the world shows it’s diversity itself (that sounds completely silly I know) …even thoug I’m a Danish/english person and my som is Canadian/english/danish so we do have a variety of cultures in our lives automaticly– without thinking about it.
A few years back I met a young muslim mum (parents from Jordan), who had been kept out of school until 5’th grade when it was found out. She then had only 3 yrs very poor schooling and was married at the age of 14 to an old guy who made 3 babies on her. She hated every moment but because of her lack in knowledge, he could easily surpress her and her wishes by telling her lies about her rights as a human a woman and a mother and how the society works.
So it’s a multifacetted topic. There is offcause pros and cons about everything. Are you obliged to let your girls do some exams to show the “system” that they meet some kind of criteria? Note that I’m eager for information because i am interested not because I’m critisising
(I learned years ago, from a coworker, to think out of this box, when he talked about that it was time to go sailing for 6 months in asia with his children and I said that I figured he should do it NOW before the kids were to go to school and he replied: “I took my now grown kids when the were at school and I have to say that they learned much more in those 6 months than they did in 2 yrs at school! so I do not see any problem with that”)
Hello Marina.
In the US, we do not need to take exams of prove that our kids are keeping up with the school system. My oldest daughter only learned to read when she was 10 and that is something that is taught in Kindergarten here. So she was 5 years behind our society’s version of ‘normal.’ But in the US, as well as other European countries, private schools can have their own criteria. In Waldorf schools reading isn’t taught until the 2nd grade. In Europe the beginning age is also a bit later than the US. They start with reading and writing your name typically at 3 years old here in preschool.
Because I believe we really have come to this earth as creators and really use our creative capacity in creating our own lives as we wish them to be, that I have been very protective of my children’s creative playtime. I believe that when concrete learning structures are given to them at a young age, it becomes more difficult for them to access that creativity. So, that is the reasoning behind my decision to keep them out of school.
I understand what you are saying about being uneducated and how that can lend itself to being suppressed. I think there is a big difference between not attending school and being uneducated. My girls have traveled all over the world and experienced cultures far different from their own and have learned a lot about this world we live in. I do not shelter them from what is out there but really embrace it. But I let them draw their own conclusions. Once they are old enough to come across information about Iran that is less than positive (we do not watch TV– so they do not know this yet, even though we’ve been there) they will have their own experience of that country to draw on, not someone else’s opinion of it dictating what they should think of it.
And I believe so strongly that intention is everything. So, the example you shared, the intent was to keep women sown. I have deliberately kept a public school education away from my girls with the intent that they can grow and think beyond the structure of what has been set in place during the Industrial Revolution. That is when our particular curriculum in the US was instituted. We needed factory workers at that time. In the Victorian era, education was entirely different and was about playing instruments, writing beautiful poetry and for girls making beautiful handwork. But the point is, a bunch of men in a room a very long time ago, decided what was best for every child. I just don’t buy into that on any level. There is so much to choose from and the jobs that our children will have when they are adults haven’t even yet been invented! I was just telling my girls that when I was in college there was no internet or cel phones. Now millions of people use the internet as their main source of income and I don’t think there is a business in existence today that doesn’t rely on it in some form. So how can a school system that was put into place 100 years ago prepare them for the future in any way, shape or form? It is so normal for kids to hate school. Every child that my girls know that goes to school, even if they are very good students admits that they hate school. So, for me personally, I just don’t get the benefit.