For part 1 of Inner Child click here.
Language nutrition
A pivotal aspect of childhood is
language. One study found poor children heard an average of 11 million words by
age three. Working class kids heard more than twice as much at 24 million. Yet
children of professionals heard a whopping 43 million words, almost four times
as much! By school age the poor kids were two years behind in language
development, by age eight three and one half years behind. The gap grows
because the less words they knew, the less they could figure out on their own.
Low exposure to language was starving
those kids development and in fact is called language nutrition. This situation
also translated to doing well in many other areas of life, such as finishing
high school and going on to college. The fortunate kids were four times more likely to
graduate college, get higher skilled jobs, and earn higher wages. They were
also significantly more healthy overall through-out their lives. It
wasn't mentioned in the study, but we expect it also reduced their chance of
divorce, alcoholism, drug addiction, and health problems mental and physical.
The good news is that some of the poor
parents that spoke to, played with, taught, and read to their kids just as much as
the professionals, and their children were right there at the top of the scale
despite poverty. Also if the professionals didn't interact with their children
as much (low word count, play, reading, teaching etc.) their language and other
areas suffered just like the others.
Life and love nutrition
What does this mean to you now? That
no matter what your upbringing was, you can give yourself the attention, acceptance,
affirmation, affection, and appreciation "nutrition" you need, now
and for the rest of your life, so that your quality of life improves in all
areas just as it did for these kids. So, as we go through the different areas
of opportunity try and think of how you can support your inner child to grow,
mature, and thrive so that you too can achieve your fullest potential and
happiness.
Coping strategies
Childhood roles
Many children fall into roles within
the family such as scapegoat, sports star, sickly child, or troublemaker. These
roles may put us in a box of perception that is hard to maintain and break free
from. For example, the star student may become exhausted trying to keep up
excellent grades and suffer humiliation and disgrace should they fail to
measure up. Life is much too fluid and mysterious to impose defining roles on
children (or adults). Better to let them change and grow through various roles as
they grow and mature.
Archetypic roles
Another very interesting perspective is to view classic archetypal personas and see how they relate to us in modern times. The king has been replaced by the boss or politician, the jester is now the class clown or comedian, and the warrior is the policeman or soldier. Personality types such as these go deep into our individual and collective psyche, so can have a profound effect on our thinking, feeling, and behavior. For a close up look at this powerful dynamic here is a blog version of "Who We Are" or a full page version here.
We can change and heal
It seems our story was written many
years ago, and we will never change. We prefer to believe that through focus
and concentration on our upbringing we will gain the understanding and wisdom
that leads to transformation. It usually takes years of hard painful work to
uncover, clean, treat, and heal the wounds of youth, but we are worth it! To see
how we got to where we are check out "Who
Wrote Your Script?"
Finding our power
Kids are so amazing. They are
naturally creative, enthusiastic, authentic, kind, forgiving, and have many
other wonderful attributes. These attributes are so wonderful, powerful, and life changing we call them "Super Powers". Unfortunately, many children in severely
dysfunctional homes had these crushed early on. Some studies indicate even
those from good homes lost much of these fine qualities as they grew up in
response to educational and cultural pressures to conform. The first step to
recovering these gems is awareness, so taking time to consider your past is time well spent. For a focused post see - Super
Powers.
Conformity over creativity
Unfortunately, the educational system
appears designed to minimize these fine qualities as math comes first, then
language, humanities, and lastly the arts. Even within the arts, music and art
have a higher status over drama and dance. It seems the system wants us to live
in our heads and become university professors. We were made to think industry
and conformity were more important than artistry and creativity. Life is much
more dynamic, diverse, and distinct for this limiting mindset, and living mainly
in our heads has caused a multitude of problems we are working to alleviate by
living through the heart.
A wonderful TED Talk: "Do
schools kill creativity?" by Sir Ken Robinson faces this problem
brilliantly. In it he says: "Our only hope for the future is to adopt a
new concept of human psychology, one in which we start to reconstitute our
concept of the richness of human capacity. We have to rethink the fundamental
principles on which we are educating our children... and by seeing our
creative capacities for the richness they are. Our task is to educate their
whole being, so they can face this challenging, unknown, but possibly bright
future." For a condensed text of the video click
here.
Coming home to our True Self
Finding our abandoned, hidden, or
otherwise lost inner child can be difficult, yet one of the most, if not the most
rewarding aspects of our recovery. The early years leave deep roots with unconscious wounds, and scars that can anchor us in our past. Uncovering, embracing, and
understanding them can lead to great wisdom and transformation. Here is how one
lost child (our founding father) found his "Homecoming".
Our Habitual Persona
“Finding” ourselves
One such test is The Big Five
Personality Test. It's accuracy depends on how honest we can be about
ourselves, and may be skewed by what we believe versus how we really behave.
For a quick look at how the spectrum plays out look at a post of the summary
of The
Big Five personality Traits (plus one). Knowing our "go to"
traits can allow the understanding that leads to transformation.
Inner kids are awesome!
In closing we wish to say how much we
love and cherish our inner kids, and hope to impress on others the incredible
peace and healing available through our naturally sensitive, eager, and loving
inner kids. You may find as we have that life is so much richer and fulfilling
when we let our child lead. Good luck and good love!
One last thing
Understanding and utilizing the impact
and effect of the inner child is a life changer for many. The books do a great
job but we also like to give a taste of how much this means to us personally,
so for our founding fathers inner child's story please click
here.