Each phase is a span of 7 years total:
The first stage is from ages 0-7 and this is called the development of their physical awareness.
The second state is from ages 7-14 and this is called the development of their emotional awareness.
The third stage guides them out of childhood and young adulthood into their true nature as an integrated adult. This stage is the development of their mental awareness.
In the Gene Keys, this completion of cycles “determines whether a child enters adulthood as an integrated adult or as a wounded child posing as an adult.”
Stage 1: Physical Awareness (0-7)
When a child is born, until age 7, their experiences will help them discover the physicality of the world around them, to trust that life truly is a joyful occasion and they find their own joie de vivre.
During this time of discovery, mindful adults are just as important as airplane zoomies, blowing bubbles and splashing in a kiddie pool of water. The modeling of truly joyful adults who live their own miracle of life as a positive experience becomes crucial as a reinforcement mechanism in the lives of children.
This doesn’t mean we put all kids in a bubble to protect them from the world, although we tried to do that. Because if they are put into a bubble with an adult who is an energy source of fear and worry, that will deplete the innate trust that a child has for life.
It does mean that when they are faced with challenges, they are met with adults who help them to remember there is still love, play and happiness to be found. Fights, injury, pandemics and even divorce may challenge a child to give up their trust in the physical truth of the world, but it’s not up to them to course correct, it is up to every single adult in their life to bring that memory back into resonance within their own spiritual DNA.
I think of this often, especially around children who come into my life. If they are still under the age of 7, my greatest purpose is to help them feel the absence of fear. Sometimes just taking our foot off the gas of life allows that idle peace to give way to joy once again.
This is the gift and beauty of heart coherence, and the reason why biological scientist Peter Gray wrote his book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. This very book began my own journey in understanding the role of public schooling (and public interactions with adults) and how to protect those precious first seven years with more play, less pressure and a true absence of fear.
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Stage 2: Emotional Awareness (7-14)
From the age of 7 until age 14, a child’s emotional awareness begins to develop. A wonderful read, Yardsticks by Chip Wood, demystifies common behavioral milestones in the classroom by age.
This is a child’s time of emotional connection and discovery with others as they are immersed in a world of new personalities around them (before culling exclusivity to mostly peers by the age of 12, bringing forth the “see me” - “leave me alone” - sandwich).
Emotional awareness has to do with three main things that we refer to as emotional intelligence:
- Our ability to listen
- Our ability to communicate clearly
- Our willingness to take responsibility for our own feelings without a sense of shame.
These are important reminders for young boys who are raised to believe that emotions are a sign of weakness. Acupuncture, TCM, GNM, and homeopathy have all built foundations on an intrinsic link between releasing emotion and a positive impact on human health.
The simplest approach to developing emotional intellect is that when their parents listen, they will listen. When their parents communicate clearly, they will communicate clearly, and when their parents take responsibility for their own feelings, they will take responsibility for their own feelings.
The biggest arbiter of this awareness is projection, subconsciously holding traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else. Adults who are not fully integrated tend to project this assumption that children “should know better.” But children are still learning and will continue to learn through all interactions with adults in their life.
Now 13, my son will further develop his mental awareness as he enters into high school this Fall. What I have noticed most is the importance of allowing teens to develop their emotional intelligence (and make plenty of mistakes) in the safety of their own home. The home is a sanctuary where we protect them, provide much needed eyes and ears to their endeavors, and continue to teach the values of the family, especially when surrounded by the influence of peers.
We raise the bar little by little so they can meet the quality of the family structure that we, as his parents, have set in place. He has been included in conversations and daily plans and allowed to share his Generator gut responses. We compliment him when he dedicates his time to something meaningful to him and the way he follows through with others. We share set him up with his own spending account so he can budget, earn allowance and use his own discretion with financial decisions.
We choose to raise him in balance with tradition and ingenuity - this means he understands his role in society is to provide a sense of physical and emotional safety to the people in his life but we also homeschool, provide him with personal freedom - whether it a business, individualized sport or just staying up late with friends - experiences will help him practice his emotional awareness with others.
Stage 3: Mental Awareness (14-21)
After a child builds a strong foundation of physical and emotional awareness, he/she begins forming mental awareness as they prepare for their parlay into young adulthood at the age of 21. Adult or not, a positive mental attitude attracts high emotional frequencies into our aura, which would then impact our chemistry through our body in a beneficial way - from health, to relationships and creative expression.
On the other hand, a pessimistic attitude would magnetize low frequencies into our aura, making us lock in with a negative mental frame of mind and low frequency behaviors like poor health, isolation, and addiction. These are not failures, they are energetic signals to find where the imbalance lay.
Mental awareness forms into personal intelligence and inner authority by taking cues from the outside world. The mirror of the world is finally front and center.
At the start of this phase, teens are entering into high school, a pinwheel of demographics and personalities. Some children have been given freedom to explore their own physical and emotional awareness and those present as positive mental attitudes.
Other children, however, have been stifled by a lack of integrated adults to teach them and have lost the memory of their own joy for life. Being around other teens will further compress their experiences as the outside world becomes a mirror unto themselves. The joy of life gets harder to remember.
When a teen (or unintegrated adult) is lost, I have found that the gift lay in entering back into the phase that was underdeveloped and revisiting it together by reminding them of the joy in life, often through play (0-7), and / or their ability to communicate, listen and take responsibility (7-14) for something in the past.
Spiritually, life will always give us chances to integrate fully in childhood. And even if an adult chooses not to have children, there is still a great responsibility for every adult to model a life of intentionality so the children of our world are sprinkled with the subconscious memory that there is goodness everywhere.