The following article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as
author resource box at end is included, with hyperlinks. Notification of publication would be appreciated.Title: Protecting Your Child’s Innocence Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2004 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 823 Category: Parenting
PROTECTING YOUR CHILD’S INNOCENCE By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
We love our children and we want them to be safe – safe from people who could harm them and destroy their innocence. At same time we don’t want to scare them and perhaps create timidity or nightmares. How can we protect them without harming them?
Obviously, we need to educate our children regarding fact that there are people who want to do them harm. We need to teach them not to speak to strangers, even when strangers appear to be nice, never accept rides from people without previous arrangements, never allow people to touch them inappropriately, and so on. We need to teach them facts of safety. We can also teach them self-defense. When my daughter was 12 and very tiny for her age, we both took a wonderful self-defense class – called Model Mugging or Impact Training - where we learned to defend ourselves against an attack. Even a small child can learn powerful methods for getting away from an attacker.
In addition, there is another very profound way we can help our children to be safe. We can teach then to discern difference between people whose hearts are open and people whose hearts are closed. Many children are highly intuitive and can often sense energy, yet when we don’t discuss and validate this level of knowing, they might learn to discount their inner experience.
I once counseled a woman in her 50’s, named Miranda, who told me this story: “I was eight years old and walking home from school with my best friend. A car pulled up and a man offered to drive us home. This was before most children were educated regarding not getting into strange cars. It was a hot and dusty day and both of us would have loved a ride home. However, something inside felt wrong, and I had been taught by my mother to trust my inner feelings. As my friend started to get into car, I grabbed her and said, ‘No. Please don’t go with him. Let’s just walk.’ She didn’t listen to me and got into car.
She didn’t come home that night and next day she was found dead.”
Miranda was deeply traumatized by death of her friend. For years she thought it was her fault for not forcing her friend to walk home with her. It was only later in her healing process that she accepted her helplessness over her friend’s choice, let go of feeling responsible for her death, and felt grateful for trusting truth of her inner self.
