20 – For the Love of Children

Pin Cushion Cactus (Mammillaria spinosissima)

Keyword – Motivation

What would love motivate us to do if we truly understood the innocence of a child?

Children arrive open, vulnerable, curious and dependent upon the adults around them. They are learning about themselves, love and the world through what they experience — absorbing far more through feelings and relationships than they are able to intellectually understand.

For The Love of Children invites us to remember this innocence and consider the responsibility we have towards it. Children do not begin life knowing how to hide, please, defend, control or disconnect from themselves. Protective behaviours can develop as they adapt to the emotional environments in which they are growing.

Like the Pin Cushion Cactus, those protections may eventually appear as “spines” — withdrawal, aggression, compliance, hiding, pleasing, controlling or shutting down. Rather than simply judging or correcting the behaviour, this essence encourages us to become curious about the tender child underneath: What happened? What might this child be feeling? What is this behaviour trying to protect?

Around the crown of the cactus, delicate flowers emerge amongst the spines like a beautiful lei. They remind us not to mistake the protection for the child. Even amongst fear, hurt and defensive behaviours, the child’s individuality, sensitivity and capacity to flower remain.

Loving children therefore asks something of us. It invites us to examine our own unresolved injuries, expectations, fears and behaviours and consider what children experience in relationship with us. Are we asking them to adapt to our wounds, or are we willing to heal and grow so that we can offer them greater emotional safety, truth, freedom and love?

And perhaps remembering the innocence of children can soften something within us too. We were once children learning and adapting to the environments around us. Understanding how protective patterns developed can bring compassion for ourselves while giving us the opportunity, as adults, to examine them, feel what lies beneath them and choose differently.

Invitation: This essence invites you to remember the innocence beneath a child’s behaviour — and to explore what love would motivate you to heal, learn, change or create so that children can feel safer to remain connected with their feelings, individuality and natural capacity to flower.

Loving qualities: Innocence • Compassion • Nurturance • Emotional safety • Curiosity • Patience • Respect for individuality • Loving responsibility

Patterns revealed: Judging behaviour • Conditional love • Control • Emotional neglect • Adult expectations • Suppressing feelings • Suppressing individuality • Lack of curiosity • Unhealed parental patterns • Reacting to protective behaviours