Nurture Your Child's Gift

Following is the "Introduction" to Nurture Your Child's Gift: Inspired Parenting. You can read it here or go to the bottom of this page to save the file to your PC and read it off line.

Nurture Your Child's Gift calls for a revolution. It upsets the comfortable, fundamental assumptions about the way we engage our children and foster their development. Nurture Your Child's Gift asks us to see our children as living souls who come to this world with a unique gift and dream to fulfill. Their life journey can be the discovery and expression of that vision. If we knew that our children were our planetary and societal salvation and held the answer to the questions of how to survive and thrive into the next century, how would we treat them? This book provides an answer.
Dr. Caron Goode

Parenting Revolution

Collectively, the statistics regarding our children's state of consciousness are frightening. Research shows a worldwide trend of increased suicide, depression, and loneliness. Stress in children as well as aggression, worry, eating disorders, and learning impairments are high. New studies in the U. S. indicate growing violence and antisocial behaviors in our schools. The trends, however, are global--transcending culture, society, school, religions, and family.

In our efforts to see that our children survive in today's world, we have denied their individuality. We've asked them to do what appears safe rather than what their heart truly desires. In addition, many have lost hope. How can this trend be changed?

To make this happen, a parenting revolution is called for in the way we view and treat our children, especially if we want them to reach their full potential, make their unique contribution to society, and find satisfaction, fulfillment and joy in life.

A Whole Child Approach

We have become fragmented in our worldview and developed segmented disciplines in our society: medicine treats the body's symptoms; psychology deals with the mind; education trains the intellect; and religion cares for the soul. However, in the last fifteen years the field of psychoneuroimmunology has demonstrated that the mind and body are one system and the components cannot be isolated from one another. To do so creates disorder.

The concept of wholeness has combined the various disciplines and presents a menu of options from which parents can choose appropriate techniques to assist their children in the skills required to successfully recognize their gift and live their dream. In the institutions of higher learning, we have:

Nurture Your Child's Gift assists parents by providing the latest information for a whole-child approach to empowering the dream. It shares mindbody advances from such fields as medicine, sports, psychology, and education and applies them directly to developing our children's esteem, empowerment and expression, building blocks of dream making. The techniques can be as simple as playing the right piece of music to soothe ruffled emotions and as natural as taking a deep breath to ease stress symptoms.

The Dream-Vision for Life

Children who have vision find their joy in life. They have realized their gift, touched their creative core and found their dream.

The dream in each person's heart steers the course of his or her life. It sparks their passion for being alive. The dream unfolds and refines its expression throughout childhood, adolescence, and beyond. Following one's inner direction, however, is often discouraged by society in general and our education system in particular, both of which value conformity. We must revolutionize our view of parenting to support rather than deny the dream.

The dream is a vision of innate potential, of the natural gifts, that our children bring with them into this world. Experts used to believe that children entered this world tabla rosa, a blank slate. Yet any parent or person who has worked with children knows that each child, when nurtured and encouraged, develops according to its unique temperament and abilities. If accorded supportive life circumstances, a child will fulfill that specific dream or particular life task.

The contributors and author of Nurture Your Child's Gift believe that the vision in every child needs to be recognized and encouraged. This requires a daring and bold response. We as parents need a collective agreement to no longer see our children as unknowing beings to be impressed and programmed with society's traditional culture and limitations. Rather, to find our child's gift and nurture the dream requires the highest kind of love--one that is volitional--based on the child's needs and potentials. It requires effort to observe, learn, make mistakes, perform re-takes, and be conscious of our modeling. It is, however, the loving way that we have all asked for.

* * *

Gifts and dreams take time to emerge in any individual. We can, however encourage it to reveal its identity through specific mindbody techniques that foster emotional openness, increase physical relaxation and which support the development of intelligence and intuition.

For example, think of the human mind and body as an energy loop. In optimal conditions, energy flows freely throughout the bodily systems. If we are surrounded by intense negativity, stressed out, or experience trauma, the loop gets blocked and paralyzes us in some way. Blocked energy shows up in our children as their being "tuned-out" from stress and mentally distracted or depressed. Their emotions may take wide swings. They feel stuck, frozen, paralyzed, angry, intense, or inert. They develop attention deficits and learning disorders.

On the other hand, when we are "in the flow," our energy is open. We feel good, energized, fluid, inspired, expectant, trusting, animated, invigorated, and enlivened. The wholistic applications of breathwork, music, creative problem solving, self-dialogue, affirmation, and imagery assist children to harmonize their mindbody system.

We can change the world, one remarkable family at a time. Nurture Your Child's Gift advances a revolution in child rearing--in the way we think about and act towards our children. It provides easy and natural approaches to realizing children's gifts and dreams.

Whole Child Parenting

What empowers successful parents? The ability to observe or see what works or what doesn't work and the flexibility to change course. This is called awareness or mindfulness in our daily life.

For instance, our parenting is not simple as black and white, just good or bad, or right or wrong choices. We can convey through our language and actions that we all have several choices in any situation. By learning to be mindful and aware of what we put into action, both parents and children can learn to make choices that work. Too, rather than labeling and belaboring mistakes, we can take basketball coach Jim Harrick's words to heart. He says, "The team that makes the most mistakes will generally win the game."

To be a parent means to make mistakes, but we don't have to take them personally. A sense of humor and a dose of love are what we call parenting with heart. This book emphasizes an openhearted parenting style that helps a family laugh together, learn from each other, breathe together, enjoy music with each other, and look at life through a creative lens.

Nurture Your Child's Gift speaks to whole child parenting as a revolutionary approach to move us beyond our comfort zone, to stretch for our children's visions and to support our children's gifts. Esteem and empowerment are the building blocks for the dream's expression and help children achieve their personal success. This book documents the research in support of mindbody technologies for child rearing and moves away from conventional education. We want to inspire parents and children to creatively express themselves and learn to appropriately manage their emotions and thoughts.

The sections of this book called Reflections are to help parents remember their own wholeness, unique temperament, and personal dream. We encourage you to help yourselves in order to help your children. Use this book as a resource and reference for new ways to approach parenting when you feel stuck. To encourage the revolution in the way that we think, buy another book and present it to a friend. Why?

The child who is a visionary or dreamer will be a maverick. He or she will also be a progenitor of ideas and creativity. These children don't always fit into the conventional systems of education. As parents, we can help and prepare them to use their gifts wisely and share their dreams as global citizens.

© 2001 Dr. Caron Goode. All rights reserved worldwide.

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