Motherhood is, at the very least, a 21 year commitment of intentional guidance until our children are ready to become part of this fabric of society. But if a mother is giving herself to her job, home and relationships, she can feel there is little left for her child.
After learning through the Gene Keys that our children are not integrated adults until the age of 21, it's clear our "work" is to help our tiny humans come gently into this world, learn their 3 bodies of awareness, and build a life of their own so they can be well equipped for their life ahead.
Each stage 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 physical and material forms of the world around them, what is separate from them and to find their own joie de vivre.
During this time of worldly discovery, being surrounded by mindful adults is just as important as airplane zoomies, chasing bubbles and splashing in a kiddie pool of water. The modeling of truly joyful adults, living their own miracle of life as a positive experience, becomes a crucial mirror that children need to see from a very young age. The best investment we can make as a Mother, is choosing to surround our children with healthy, integrated adults to model a world that is a physical expression of miracles around us.
This doesn’t mean we put all kids in a bubble to protect them from the world. Baby bubbles aside, it matters who is in their orbit from day one. 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 his/her own life.
When children are faced with challenges, its most helpful when 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 children 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. That's where their support system of healthy, joyful people come in to play with them.
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 pace 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 schooling 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. For example, 7 year olds like collecting things, they like having a best friend and are suddenly painfully aware of mistakes.
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 and responding through emotions (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: 1. Our ability to listen, 2. Our ability to communicate clearly, 3. Our willingness to take responsibility for our own feelings without a sense of shame.
These are important reminders for children 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 having 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. And sometimes a supportive, “let it out” is all they need to hear from their parents.
The biggest arbiter of this awareness is projection, our subconscious judgement about ourself that we attribute to our children. Adults who are not fully integrated tend to project this assumption that children “should know better”, “have nothing to cry about", or “need to hurry up”. But children are still learning how big this world is and will continue to learn through all interactions with adults in their life, until the age of 21.
What I have noticed most is the importance of allowing children to grow into their emotional intelligence (and make plenty of mistakes) in the safety of their own home and not in the public eye, not even in school. Social ridicule and rejection is painful for them and without a strong emotional co-regulator, they can shut down. 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. Reminding them that not all homes are a stable source of love, support and protection can help them see why peers behave differently from them.
Mothers then raise the bar little by little so our children can meet the quality of the family structure that we, as their parents, have set in place. When we can engage in conversations and daily plans and allow our children to make decisions through their own intuition, including financial ones, we will have successfully guided them through this stage.
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 is shown to attract high emotional frequencies like an immediate feedback loop, which would then impact their chemistry through their body in a beneficial way - from health, to relationships and creative expression.
As an aside, this is where human design is a tremendous support. Looking at our teens body graph can help point to areas of openness where our teen can be influenced to be out of alignment, sensitive to environments, or what can drain their energy to the point of exhaustion.
What adults perceive as a teen's bad attitude can often be a reflection of a teen out of alignment, not just hormones. This can feel like a tornado of low frequencies, making our teens 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 the imbalance and resolution.
Our teens mental awareness forms into personal intelligence and inner authority by taking cues from the outside world. When they know what and who to trust in the world, they know what and who to trust in their own life. And it's up to us as parents to vision hold for our children, reminding them of what they are skilled at, what comes naturally to them, and what we admire about them when they feel out of alignment. Every effort to co-regulate will help them find, embody and recognize what is them and what is not them.
At this stage, teens are entering into high school, a pinwheel of demographics and personalities. Some children have been given the freedom to explore their own physical and emotional awareness and those present as positive mental attitudes. Highs and lows are healthy, what matters is how quickly they can return to their baseline with our love and support.
When a teen (or unintegrated adult) feels dis-regulated, I have found that the gift lay in finding which phase is the most under-developed and revisiting it together to guide them back towards joy in life. This comes through play that builds back trust in our physical surroundings, through releasing emotions, and through heart-felt communication. Active listening through a difficult memory and taking responsibility/ placing the responsibility back for something that happened in the past will help realign the truth to what our brain was having difficulty resolving on its own.
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.