This is how I grew up: “Good children are seen and not heard.” Especially if we went out for a meal or in any public space, it was an expectation that we did the right thing and spoke when and if we were spoken to. We didn’t play a lot and definitely didn’t chat with adults as we were “children.”
Looking back, I can see why I feel that I wasn’t seen or heard and how much that affected me. I remember doing a healing session and saying those words, “ I wasn’t seen or heard”, and the tears that flowed from that session. To be seen and heard sounds like such a small and simple thing, but for me, I felt the enormity of those words.
From that, I want to share this: Children are very intuitive, and they are often aware of much more than we give them credit for from an early age.
How do we see and hear a child? We put away any distractions—our phone, the television, another person, our thoughts (the hardest ones)—and fully concentrate on them. We feel what they say, listen, and act as sounding boards.
We can do this according to the development and age of any child.
When we listen to children, we learn. We are our children’s guides, and to do that, we walk beside them while setting boundaries. When we do this, we give them the most significant gift we can give them—our time.
I have been a busy single Mum and have not always lived by this. I juggled work and everything that got in the way, but I also feel its effect on my children. Sharing how I would do it now may make a difference.
Gabor Mate writes that the “relationship with parents is the earth, the rain, the sun and the shade in which a child’s development blossoms” He also advises “to create space in the child’s heart for the certainty that they are precisely the person that the parents want and love, in fact, they cannot do anything or be any different to earn that love, it’s unconditional.”
Imagine those words to you as a child.
To give children our time, they must be seen and heard!
I believe that if we don’t see and hear our children, they get louder and louder until we do!
