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The Power of No By Valerie Thea Vandermeer To say “no” to a “Highly Aware” child intent on a particular course of action can be a challenging. These children are blessed with an incredibly powerful and unmistakable will. They are masters of energy and can project their intent outward in a virtually palpable wall of surging consciousness. I’ve seen the effect it can have on otherwise empowered, strong, articulate parents who seem to wilt under the demanding gaze of their extraordinary child. Our children’s reactions are powerful. Yes, sometimes almost overwhelming. But we must stop being afraid of these strong emotional outpourings. If a thoughtful “no” evokes a storm of protest, be in the storm with your child. Let them scream at you, let them cry deeply, let them feel the full range of their feelings freely in your presence and with your support. Thoughtfully setting boundaries won’t limit them or harm them and they must learn to accept and master their own emotional intensity. Do not abandon them in this vital task by calming the storm. They want us beside them for their own untainted, direct and passionate life experience. Being able to establish boundaries is especially important for the highly aware child. They must learn that boundaries can be erected thoughtfully to enhance life experiences, rather than from fear and closing off. They must see that a well-set boundary can bring us closer to our intended experience. We can teach them this by the manner in which we create our own boundaries in our parenting choices. One of the reasons so many parents have trouble with the word “no” is that they hold an erroneous concept of the word, which they likely learned during their own childhood. We tend to think of saying no as denying or stopping the flow of something; a negative barrier of sorts that impedes forward momentum and denies a basic human impulse. This is what so many of the current parenting generation learned in childhood. When we use the misconstrued version of “no” with children, they pick up on the mistaken idea buried in the word. They sense our own ambivalence and distrust of the word, which leaves them unable to trust it as well. And if we do say “no” to simply control or manage behavior, things fall apart even more rapidly because our highly aware children refuse to be controlled or managed. It contradicts one of their fundamental life principles -- they are the creative force defining their life experience. As my own daughter artfully put it to me at a very early age, “I am the boss of me, I get to choose about my life.” When you are able to say “no” to a child in a clear and energetically clean way, you establish a boundary for yourself. Not for them, for you. This is the old thinking turned on its head. We think that when we say “no” to our children, that we are giving them a boundary, controlling them, so to speak. We are not. We are simply stating a choice about what we are willing to experience in relationship to them. Too often, we don’t pause and examine the deeper meaning before we speak. There is a vast world of difference between the following two statements. “No. Don’t pull my hair.” and “No. That’s my hair and I don’t want it pulled right now.” The first reflects an attitude of authority over others. The second reveals a deep sense of personal authority over oneself. It may seem like “splitting hairs”, but our children have a strong resonance to not only specific language, but also to the intentions behind our verbalizations. No, does not tell them what to do, it tells them what you are willing or unwilling to do. It clearly establishes your boundaries. And it reaffirms a vital principle that these children greatly respect -- we are all connected. They are quite capable of recognizing how their behavior affects those around them and of respecting a thoughtfully expressed boundary. To explain to your child the reasons underlying your parenting choices takes extra time and effort. But this is how they come to understand the correspondences underlying life’s daily events, how they make sense and live meaningfully. Life is full of rules and challenges. Do you have to stop at a red light? No. Could you get killed if you don’t? Yes. Our children have to understand the underlying cause and effect to appreciate the structures of our society, particularly if they are to be empowered to change them someday. I often see parents struggling because they want to ensure that their children are free to express themselves uninhibitedly, unreservedly. And this contributes additional reluctance to setting up limitations or boundaries. But generally speaking, highly aware children are brilliantly able in this arena. They seem to have a direct internal line on what is true for them and clear channels of self expression. What they need from their parents is assistance in learning to understand how to use the mechanism of human expression effectively to achieve their desired consequences. Highly Aware parenting means constantly re-inventing the wheel and being deeply genuine in your self-expression. Parents must reconstruct the word “no” internally and rebuild a relationship to its inherent meaning in order to use it successfully in parenting and life. Divorce the word from your personal history and re-create a new sense of empowerment with this word, for yourself and for your children. Remember to respect its power in order to share it’s effectiveness with your children. Clean up your “no” and it will work wonders for you. Use it judiciously, but powerfully. If a child wants to negotiate a situation, ask them first to verbally acknowledge that they have heard and respect the "no", before requesting an opportunity to discuss it further. A thoughtful “no” requires a child to go to deeper resources and reflect upon what they really want. A thoughtful no can highlight for a child how choices effect and relate to those around them and can spark new levels of communication. A thoughtful no can teach a child to surrender to life’s spiritual lessons with grace. Now we are truly talking the language of the highly aware child.
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Copyright 2002-2005 Valerie Thea Vandermeer. All rights reserved. For problems or questions regarding this website contact valerie@earth-walk.net. Last updated: July 22, 2006. |
