By Lydia Wilson
For The Bali Times

KEROBOKAN ~ As I mentioned in my previous articles, “Our beliefs shape our lives,” for they create our feelings, attitudes and behaviours, which affect our successes or failures in life.

When a child is born, they are pure and innocent. They are like a blank canvas ready to be painted. It is up to us parents what kind of pictures we wish to paint. For how they turn out when they have grown up is a result of what they have experienced and learned during their childhood.

All messages, whether negative or positive, that have been imprinted in their subconscious will become their beliefs that will affect them for the rest of their lives, unless they can change them. The trouble is a lot of us don’t know how to easily change our negative beliefs. We spend many years suffering until we figure out a way to change them permanently.

Our beliefs are usually created through messages that have been repeated over and over until they bypass the critical filter of our conscious mind and are accepted as true by our subconscious.

However, up to the age of five, children don’t have the ability to filter out a message that comes in. Whatever messages they are given are straight away imprinted within their subconscious. As they grow up, even though they have started to gain the ability to filter messages that come in, in a moment of shock their filter temporarily disappears and the message they see, hear or feel is imprinted within their subconscious. When angry, parents sometimes shout at their children, which shocks them and often negative messages follow.

Can you imagine what kind of effect messages like “You are an ungrateful child!” or “You are so stupid!” or “You will never amount to anything!” would have on a child later on in his or her life? Sometimes when we feel irritated or angry with our children, we don’t realize that our words and actions can create such a negative effect on their happiness.

Have we ever thought of shocking them but then gently and lovingly giving them positive messages instead? Would it work? Yes!

Sometimes grownups don’t realize that their children, however young they are, do understand what we are saying to them, for their spirit is as old as we are.

During my training in past-life regression in 1997, we had to practice in class with a partner. My partner then was a 38-year-old lady who upon regression to the day she was born started crying uncontrollably. When I asked her why she was crying, she said: “My mother says I’m ugly.” Her words were like a bolt of lightning to me, for without realising the effect of them, I made the same mistake with my son on the day he was born.

I remembered that afternoon when the nurse brought him to me for the first time and she brought me the wrong baby. It was a 3-day-old baby girl who looked sweet and adorable. When I pointed out to her that it was not my baby, she apologized and brought my son. Like all newly born babies, his skin was wrinkled and his head was still a bit out of shape. When I saw him, my first thought was how ugly he looked compared to the other baby, who of course was three days old and her skin had smoothed out. While I was feeding him that evening, my husband came into the room and not knowing that babies do understand what we say, I told him about the incident of the switched baby and how ugly I said he looked compared to the baby girl. I couldn’t believe it when suddenly my son started to cry very loudly, as if he understood what I was saying. So I quickly and gently told him he was a handsome little baby now and I that loved him very much. The moment I said that, he stopped crying and went back to his feeding. For eight
years I didn’t know for sure if babies do understand our words, until that day when I did the regression on my practice partner in class. When I went home that night I told my son the story of the switched baby, apologized for my ignorance and told him again that he was a beautiful baby then and grew even more beautiful as time went by.

I have had clients who heard what their parents were saying even though they weren’t yet born.

Barbara (not her real name) came to see me because she had been feeling depressed for a long time and often had suicidal thoughts. She told me that all her life she had felt unwanted and unworthy of love and didn’t know why. When I asked her about her childhood, she told me she had had a good childhood and had loving parents who had given her a lot of affection.

During a session, she regressed back to the root cause of her unwanted feeling, which stemmed from her being conceived out of wedlock. Her mother was 17 and her father 18 when she was accidently conceived. She could hear for months how her grandmother insisted to her mother that she should abort the baby. It was not until the fifth month into the pregnancy that her mother made the decision to say “no” to her grandmother and firmly told her that she was going to keep the baby. By the time she was born, her parents were married and they loved and cherished her. But the words her grandmother repeatedly said to her mother during her pregnancy had already been imprinted in her and gave her the belief that she was unwanted. Understanding what brought about the negative imprints made her realise that she was worthy of love and healing her inner child brought her self-confidence back.

When we realise children do understand what we are saying, we think twice before we say anything negative about them. I also feel that when we want them to do or not to do something, by giving explanations as best as we can in the language that a child of their age understands creates a win-win situation between us. The power struggle of “Do this or don’t do that because I said so” only brings resentment and confusion in a child’s mind because they don’t understand why they have to do or not do something. Having learned from a lot of clients in my practice since, I understand now that the confusion can be imprinted deep within the subconscious and create a lot of problems later on in life.

I would like to end this article with a beautiful poem:

Children Learn What They Live

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn…
If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight…
If a child lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive…
If a child lives with pity, he learns to feel sorry for himself…
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy…
If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilt.

BUT

If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient…
If a child lives with encouragement, he learns to be confident…
If a child lives with praise, he learns to be appreciative…
If a child lives with acceptance, he learns to love…
If a child lives with honesty, he learns what truth is…
If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice…
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith in himself and those about him…
If a child lives with friendliness, he learns the world is a nice place in which to live…

WITH WHAT IS YOUR CHILD LIVING?

Dorothy L. Law
Till next week, love and light.

Lydia Wilson is a transpersonal hypnotherapist and trainer based in Kerobokan, Bali. If you have a question you would like answered in this column, write to Lydia at bluelight7@gmail.com. For more go to www.bluelight7.com