Are Our Children Here to Teach Us?

We parents spend a lot of time worrying about our children. We consider the ways in which we discipline them, the things they're learning in the classroom, the less desirable things they might be hearing about in the school locker room. We weigh a lot of different matters and try to gauge when they might be old enough to be exposed to this or that. Essentially, we often fall into the habit of thinking that our children's destinies lay upon our shoulders: if they thrive, it's because of what we instilled in them; if they're suffering, it's because we failed them in some way.

The thinking in various spiritual circles suggests that we might be making an erroneous assumption there, though. Maybe our children have much more power to shape their own lives than we think. Maybe they're here to teach us as much as we're here to teach them.

To take such thoughts seriously, we would also have to accept the idea of reincarnation - or at least believe in the possibility that human beings possess souls that were conscious before their physical birth. This allows us to think in terms of a child's soul purpose: the reason why he or she came into the world in the first place. This paints a very different picture than the one we're generally accustomed to, the one that shows us children coming into the world as blank slates, and all they become being nothing more than a product of whatever society inscribes there.

Perceiving our young ones as incarnate souls shifts the parent-child dynamic in certain fundamental ways. We still live in a physical world, of course, and they still need our support and protection when they're young if they're to survive. So our essential job remains intact. But are our children not, at the same time, perhaps bringing us certain life lessons that we need to learn - that we might have even unconsciously asked for?

And if we view life beyond the confines of physical life - i.e., birth and death - then we can glimpse implications of the greater scheme of things that our old beliefs were too constrictive to allow us to see or ponder. For example, what if our children chose us beforehand? If this were true, might we not be able to accept this vote of confidence from them and relax a little in our concerns about being adequate parents for them? Such ideas suggest that everything doesn't rest on our shoulders, after all. We must do our part, but our kids really aren't expecting us to be perfect. If they were, they wouldn't have come to us in the first place.

Many of our beliefs about the nature of reality and humanity have simply been too limiting to provide us with much help in coping with our problems. If we can expand our minds a little, and try and sense a higher order to life, we might realize that nothing in our existence is accidental. In this regard, perhaps children are living a lot closer to the truth than we are. Might not this be the reason why they have so much more energy and creativity, why they laugh more and have fewer inhibitions? Maybe this is part of the lesson that they're bringing to those of us who've gotten older and more cynical, who've let our minds and hearts harden. We might do well to set aside our mantle of authority, on occasion, and simply listen to them.