wholeness of life itself.Our ego can be activated in a split-second, placing us in its clutches
before we even realize what’s happening. We are particularly susceptible
to this whenever we discipline our children. If we are in a state of
agitation, frustration, or fatigue, chances are we are going to botch the
disciplining process. Many of our mistakes when setting boundaries with
our children stem from our internal conflict, ambivalence, or tiredness—
which is when ego often kicks in the most.
We are obligated not to displace our emotional state onto our children,
no matter what the provocation. If we are aware of our tendency to come
from ego, we will recognize that we are in a fragile state and that our
judgment may be askew. Only when we are in a neutral state can we hope
to respond to our children’s behavior in the manner it warrants.
Whenever we respond to our child, it behooves us to realize that
because the child imbibed its sense of identity from us in the first place,
we are in fact responding to pieces of our own self that are reflected in
the child. This is why we barely see our children for who they are, but
imagine them as a “mini me,” which of course solidifies our ego. We
don’t realize it, but most of the time when we think we are responding to
our children, we are reacting to the pieces of ourselves that they have
internalized. This is the reason we find ourselves overly-identified with
our children, their feelings, and their problems. Unable to separate our
emotions from theirs, and unable to be objective and rational, we are in
reality identifying with something in our own past. In this rather
complicated psychological process, we unintentionally squelch our