YOUR CHILD DOESN’T NEED TO EARN YOUR TRUST
Because so few really trust the wisdom of life, people tend to project
their lack of trust onto their children. Consequently, our society believes
that trust has to be earned.
I believe that not only do our children not need to earn our trust, but
they need to know that we trust them implicitly because we see them as
fundamentally trustworthy. Just by their presence, our children have
earned the right to be trusted. To ask them to earn our trust reflects an
insecure, power-hungry attitude that’s charged with both fear and ego.
To have implicit trust in our children requires that, as parents, we
display a basic reverence for and trust in life. The degree to which our
children feel trusted by us reflects the trust or lack of trust we ourselves
have. When we come from the mindset that all of life is wise, and
therefore all its manifestations good, we see our children this way. We
frame all mistakes as emerging out of a pure place. If this is so, where is
there any room not to trust our children? On the other hand, if we are
anxious and doubt our ability to transform life’s struggles into spiritual
gold, no matter how we assure our children that all will be fine, we
unconsciously transmit the opposite message. As parents, we
communicate trust or distrust in the subtlest ways.
The questions we ask our children, the lectures we give them, and the
unsolicited advice we dish out all convey trust or distrust. For instance,
when we repeatedly ask our children how they are doing, believing they
must be going through something or other, we unwittingly communicate
our own anxiety and hence our mistrust of life. By constantly checking