Moving into the age of Aquarius is a paradigm shift. In order to make the transition as smooth as possible, it will be necessary to change our old habits, thinking, and patterns of behavior. Among the things that necessitate a change is the way in which we raise children.
To understand, let’s take a look at the current way of raising children. (Note that when I talk about “raising children”, I am focusing on the way that children are disciplined.) The “old-school” method is a system of crime and punishment, which closely resembles that or our current legal system and also the dogma of the Christian religion (with its idea of hell as a punishment for sinners).
Crime and Punishment
Under the current disciplinary system, we often teach children that certain actions are right and others are wrong. At other times, we simply assume children should “know better” regardless of whether or not this is actually the case. Either way, children are given punishment for their “bad”’ actions. This punishment leads to the following issues:
- It teaches children that making mistakes is bad. As a result, children not only learn to fear making mistakes, but also learn that they are not “good enough”.
- Punishment leads to shame. This in turn results in individuals who will deny doing what they’ve done due to the stigma of shame that has been attached to “being bad”.
- Punishment also cultivates a contempt for – and distrust of – authority. This is especially true in cases when the person believes (rightly or wrongly) that they are often unfairly punished.
Keeping in mind the issues with punishment, it should be noted that this type of system was not “wrong” per se. It had its place, just as the laws of the Old Testament in the Bible had their place. But as humanity evolves, old systems that are outgrown must be replaced with new systems. This is analogous to the need to use different parenting styles when raising teenagers versus raising small children.
The Transition
It is worth noting that a transition is already taking place in our legal system and in our religious beliefs. For example, there is currently a movement in the United States regarding the decriminalization of marijuana possession and use. This is a fairly recent trend, and one that is gaining ground quite rapidly. Even more recently, a few locations in the U.S. have either decriminalized the use of psychedelic mushrooms, or are considering doing so. In other words, we have come to a point in time where there is the acknowledgement that outlawing drugs appears to cause more harm than good.
Religious views are also changing as well. Many people are starting to reject the idea of a punishing God and are embracing an actual unconditionally-loving God instead. Even the pope has hinted at the idea that hell is not a real place, although he has had to walk back these comments due to pushback from members of his own church. Regardless, the proverbial writing is on the wall: religions of the New Age will either have to transition to the concept of an all-forgiving God, or risk becoming obsolete.
New Age Parenting
In order to parent children in the New Age, the following goals need to be considered.
- Children should be taught that it is OK to make mistakes, and that mistakes are a necessary part of growth
- There should be no fear or shame attached to making mistakes.
- Children should be taught in a way that allows them to learn directly from their mistakes. If possible, children should be taught in a manner that makes it fun for them to learn from their mistakes.
Consequences Instead of Punishment
First of all, children do need rules as a healthy part of growing up. Children who are allowed to do whatever they want will have a hard time working and living with others later in life. However, New Age parenting involves consequences for bad behavior that do not involve the fear of pain. Here are a couple tips for disciplining children who are breaking the rules or engaging in unwanted behavior.
Give the child a decision. Examples:
- “If you continue this behavior, you will be put in timeout. It is your choice.”
- “If you want to play here, you must be more quiet. If you don’t want to be quiet, you need to go play in the other room.”
Explain your reasons for what you are asking. Examples:
- “I don’t like to live in a messy house. Please take your things out of the living room and put them in your room.”
- “When you are in the street, you could be hit by a car and that makes me scared. So if you choose to play in the street, I will ask you to come inside.”
In short, parenting should be focused on teaching children to make choices by guiding behavior, and not trying to control it. For more practical advice on parenting, I recommend the book The Parent’s Handbook by Dinkmeyer and McKay.
Beware of Transference
It is important that you never discipline a child if you are angry. If you do get angry from your child’s behavior, it is best to “give yourself a timeout” (if at all practical) before addressing the child’s behavior.
One of the issues of punishment is that it allows for the dysfunction of transference. To explain transference: many times parents punish their children in an attempt to “right the wrongs” that occurred to them when they were children. For example, a sibling might have always shouted at her sister. Once this sister becomes a parent, she in turn is angry every time one of her children shouts at the others, which could lead to this child being unfairly punished.
Transference can lead to manipulation. I.e., when a parent becomes angry due to certain actions, some children use this as a means of “getting even” at the parent by repeating the action anytime they want to make the parent angry. Additionally, becoming angry at a child for their actions makes it difficult (if not impossible) to properly discipline a child.
Furthermore, anger directed at children can result in many behavioral problems for the child, including bullying behavior. In other words, children will often repeat the patterns of their parents. Therefore, parents should never act toward their children in ways that they don’t want their children to act towards others.
The New Age Children
What has worked in the past for disciplining children will increasingly no longer work. This is because the children being born in this age are different than children in the past. For the most part, children are more spiritually developed.
This does not mean that the children who are now coming into this world are going to behave as angels. On the contrary, the physical world is a world of duality; hence it is a difficult experience for everyone regardless of their level of development.
But what it does mean is that the children cannot be treated “as children” any more. For example, telling a child to do something because “I told you so” just isn’t going to work. The new children are not going to take kindly to parental laziness and manipulation. As a result, there should not be any arbitrary rules, and all disciplinary action taken should be clearly understood by – and discussed with – the child.
ADHD
As previously commented, the old way of setting rules and expecting children to follow them is increasingly going to be found not to work. This has become a problem not only for parents but for the school system, which has decided that the New Age children have a problem with paying attention.
But it isn’t the children who have the problem. These new generations are actually being born with higher levels of intuition and creative thinking. The left-brained classroom environments are not well-suited for these types of children, and they find the learning style of sitting at desks in little rows while listening to lectures to be quite dull.
Initially, the behavior issue was being addressed by drugging the children, although I think there is more of a recognition now that this does not help the problem, but is simply a way of ignoring it. The real issue is not the children, but that the school system itself has become outdated. As a result, it appears that school teaching methods and classroom environments are starting to be updated to accommodate the needs of these new generations of children. Locally where I live, the children in elementary schools often sit around tables with other students, and there are activities throughout the day that allow the children to move about the classroom when desired.
Autism
There is nothing wrong with autistic children. They simply are so advanced in terms of multidimensional capabilities that they are unable (at least initially) to adequately operate under the limits of a linear reality. Think (hypothetically if you must) about aliens who can think telepathically. To humans who can’t communicate telepathically, these aliens would easily be considered as unintelligent because they don’t talk.
Autistic children can communicate in ways that “normal” people can’t. These children can see human energy fields and communicate via multi-dimensional means. The fact that we can’t understand their communication does not mean there is something wrong with them. It is we who have not yet developed these skills yet, and so the problem is really with us. Think about how frustrating it must feel for autistic children to be in such a situation.