Growing up in a world crazed by digital obsessions and informational overflow can be confusing, challenging and frightening at times. When your senses are overstimulated and muted at best or crushed and overrun with noise at worst, it is easy to forget that you carry the untouchable source of wisdom and magic within you.
As a child, I used to get lost in daydreams for hours, wandering the worlds of magical creatures and fairytales that were my safe haven. I longed to treasure the invisible thread to the realm that kept my imagination alive and nurtured my faith in the miraculous. It watched over me no matter how scary the world around me may have been, and soothed me when grownups did not understand the sensitive kid I was.
That invisible thread grew thinner with years and faded away just to throw a comeback when my children were born. I could see that dreamer in my son and the spot-on observer in my daughter. They have brought back the connection to the world I was missing so deeply and it’s been my aim since to preserve theirs.
How do you navigate your child’s sensitivity in the non-stop overly noisy world? How do you nurture their imagination and their ability to sense people and places without giving into your own fears and confusions? It can be a daunting task at hand if you have lost touch with your own internal navigation system called intuition, and even more challenging being conditioned by our cultural, religious and societal “norms”.
The “norm” so easily dismisses the world of imagination on which our kids build their wings by calling them weird, impractical, unrealistic, too dreamy, too naïve and so on. Not to mention the new “norm” of media and electronic devices that overpower the psyche and simply obliterate their connection to the pure source of creativity, wisdom and intuition.
Often times we are so caught up in those standards that we don’t give another thought to the ways our kids express their sensitivities and the ways we shut them down on the spot. You may see your child struggling to sit still in a crowded restaurant or wanting to leave a family gathering you just arrived to. This is not because your kid is being weird or difficult, but because he or she is trying to tell you: “I am overwhelmed by the vibes here and can’t handle the information I am thrown into. Protect me!”
Or your child may be accurately sensing the person next to them and getting thrown off by the impressions they may not understand or have the tools to process. Instead of making things worse as a parent by telling them to behave, to be polite, to sit still, etc. and teaching them to mistrust their feeling, we could pause for a moment and listen. Examine our own perceptions in the moment.
It can be even more frustrating when you bought tickets to a long-awaited show just to have your child throw a fit and refuse to sit through the show. There is little enjoyment in that and many times we may mistake their sensory overload for being moody, hyper and unruly. This is not only young children, teens as well.
I still try to avoid taking my now pre-teen kids to crowded places and questionable gatherings as much as I can, and if I have to, we do some prep work to make sure they do not function as sensory sponges leading to a meltdown. You can do your part in learning the ways your child absorbs and reads the energies around. And if it comes to having to leave whatever it is you’re participating in no matter how unfinished your shopping list is, how much you’ve invested in the event or whoever you’re afraid to upset, do it for the sake of your child. You will thank yourself later!
What if you allowed your child to show you how to trust them and yourself? What if you actually listened? Can you imagine the depth of the connection you could unveil? The depth of their own strength and confidence as a result?
Even if you can’t open your mind right away, open your ears. Listen.
Get interested in what they are trying to show you or tell you without the need to question or brush it off because it makes you uncomfortable.
Be teachable. Let your heart remind you of the kid you once were too and look at your child thru the lenses of unexplored worlds, magic and possibilities. No matter your beliefs, you can learn to access and nourish your own inner GPS system, building a foundation and becoming your child’s safe haven that they deserve!
~ Written by Marina Shapiro Elbert
Marina is a highly intuitive Mom to two highly-intuitive kids ages 9 and 11 who are the source of her inspiration and motivation. She is a certified Ro-Hun practitioner, a Medium and a Metaphysical Artist. Her visionary gifts and integrative formula have helped countless individuals to experience deeply transformative and long-term life shifts. Her mission is to provide support and guidance to promote personal growth and help create a purposeful life filled with harmony and meaning. Read more of her short writings on Colors from Within blog: www.colorsfromwithin.wordpress.com
