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Won't Somebody PLEASE
Think of the Children?
By Kristen N. Fox
"Won’t Somebody PLEASE
Think of the Children!" If you’ve watched only a handful of “The
Simpsons” episodes, I’m sure you’ve seen the character of the gossipy
minister’s wife cry this phrase out during a public drama or event, whether
there were actually children involved or not. It seems to me that
“thinking of the children” has become a catch phrase that many don’t even
think about as they use it. And it’s often used as an excuse to
try to limit someone else’s behavior, whether it’s what someone else puts
up on the internet as a web page, or whether or not adults should be allowed
to own handguns.
I think that the whole
notion of “childhood” and “innocence” has been idealized beyond the point
of recognition, perhaps because many adults have lost their own inner
child. When I was of “child” age, I felt like a person, not like
a “child”. I had real thoughts and real opinions about what was
going on around me. I often hated being told “you’re too young to
understand,” mostly because I felt adults used that phrase as an excuse
because they either COULDN’T explain something to me or they didn’t feel
like taking the time. In fact, according to the history we see in
movies, it’s only recently that children’s clothes looked much different
than just smaller versions of adult clothes. But now, there’s this
broad line drawn between “child” and “adult,” not just the clothes, and
unconsciously perpetuating this belief isn’t doing us a lot of good.
My biggest issue at the
moment is the idea of repressing society with restrictive laws in order
to “protect the children” instead of educating the children about how
to navigate safely and make decisions for themselves, empowering them.
First off, I’ll tell you that I do NOT have children right now, and I’m
not criticizing the way anyone else chooses to raise their children -
I’m seriously pondering how to bring the ideals of “education”, “resistance
is futile”, “you get what you focus on” and “conscious creation” into
my relationship with any future children I may have.
For instance - take the
million mom march, a recent expression of the desire to restrict or prevent
handgun ownership, mostly fueled by recent incidences of children bringing
guns to school and shooting schoolmates and teachers. To me, the
issue this brings up isn’t one of gun control, it’s of the issue of how
so many people seem afraid of guns and seem unwilling to deal with their
own fears about them - so much so that they want this SYMBOL of their
fears banned so that they can feel okay again for the moment. And
doing it “for the children” sounds so nobel and RIGHT somehow, doesn’t
it?
I was raised in a household
where my mother absolutely hated guns and wouldn’t touch them or even
look at them, and my father collected guns, both rifles and handguns,
and taught hunter safety courses. The moment he started bringing
guns into the house, he started telling my sister and I all about them.
We learned how to hold them, how to check to see if they were loaded,
how to shoot them, how to clean them, and even how to reload the ammunition
from scratch. My sister was even on the high school rifle team.
Still, my mother wouldn’t go near them and my father kept them locked
up properly in the basement. So I chose my father’s belief system
about guns instead of my mother’s, as did my sister. My mother DID,
however, teach us how to use kitchen knives properly and safely, so I
also didn’t grow up being inherently afraid of sharp or pointy objects.
What we resist persists.
And what we fear is also what we reject, and it comes back to haunt us
as long as we continue to give in to the fear and refuse to LEARN. Just
as learning about a disease in order to cure it doesn’t mean “giving in”
to the disease, learning about how guns work and how to use them, doesn’t
mean “giving in” to them. It just means having one less bag of issues
to let go of, so we can focus on attracting or creating what we ARE interested
in.
Many schools now have
“no tolerance” weapon’s policies where if you are seen with anything that’s
considered a weapon you’re either sent home or suspended or expelled.
I read an article where a first grader had inadvertently brought a small
pair of nail clippers to school in his backpack and they accidentally
fell out while he was pulling out his books for the day - and he was suspended
for a few days! I wondered at who decided what was a weapon and
what wasn’t. Given the right motivation, I’m sure you could stab
and kill someone with a ballpoint pen or hit someone over the head with
a good sized frying pan, like in cartoons - this says to me that outlawing
certain “bad” objects isn’t anything more than a temporary fear-reliever.
As an “adult”, I also
had the priveledge of hanging out with mothers and fathers of young children
who decided to speak frankly about sex with their children instead of
hiding it from them and making it into some forbidden or difficult topic.
Their children asked questions when they had them, and the parents were
honest with them - of course, they had to be honest with themselves first
as well. As I did with guns, these children were growing up with
a healthy awareness of their own sexuality.
I remember the day I was
over to a friend’s house - it was late and her elementary age sons had
a few of their friends over. They were scanning through the cable
channels, trying to find a good movie, and came across this rather humorous
television show from France - it was a talk show and the participants
were sitting in chairs, speaking to each other calmly and avidly, in French.
But they were totally naked. My friend’s kids laughed, as did my
friend and I, but the kids’ friends were sitting in shock and kept looking
over to see if they were going to get into trouble. (I think they
were even more shocked to see us laughing our heads off!) After
a few moments, one of my friend’s sons turned the channel to the movie
they had wanted to watch in the first place - no big deal.
I didn’t feel like I grew
up without my “innocence” for knowing how to handle guns. I don’t
think children who grow up knowing about sex have lost their innocence
either. I think we lose our innocence when we decide that there
is evil out there in the world from which we need to keep ourselves protected.
In this way we learn to constantly guard ourselves (there’s a difference
between awareness of something and throwing up a wall to resist it) and
focus on what’s “out there” that could hurt us, instead of putting our
attention on what brings joy into the world and what makes us happy.
In this way, we also learn to react instead of choose. The more
aware we become of everything around us, the more obvious it seems that
we can’t hold EVERYTHING we don’t like at bay, we have to just let it
flow through us, so that we can bring our REAL choices into focus/manifestation.
Some of the most important
aspects of being a conscious creator is that we understand that what we
resist persists, and that the world around is a reflection of our own
belief systems. I really like the idea of educating my own children,
not only about things like guns and sex, but about acknowledging, validating
and working with their own emotions and thoughts. “Kids” don’t just
shoot a schoolmate because an adult thoughtlessly left a gun laying around
- there are beliefs and thoughts and emotional issues underlying everything
we create in physical reality, including this.
I love the idea of teaching
my children how to weigh everything they experience in physical reality
against their own sense of integrity, instead of a hard set of rules.
I love the idea of teaching children to trust themselves implicitly, to
listen to their inner guidance. No, this inner guidance will NOT
always match up with “adult” ideas of what’s safe or desireable or polite
or acceptable, but this fact doesn’t change when one day people have a
birthday and turn 18 either. And yes, it will be quite a challenge
for any parent who chooses to raise their children like this - they will
have to be honest with themselves about their own beliefs and emotions
and reassess things constantly. But if that’s what I’m trying to
teach my children to do in the first place, isn’t it best to model that
exact kind of behavior? How can I teach my kids to listen to their
own integrity if I’m lazy about following my own?
So, is it the children
we’re thinking about when we try to clamp down with restrictive laws,
or are we trying to avoid our own fears? If we’re not willing to
learn about something that scares us, how can our children learn to deal
with their own fears? And if we learn to forge our own path through
the constant input and excitement of physical reality by listening to
our own inner guidance, our children can learn to do the same. AND
keep their own happy and strong inner child with them even after they
officially become “adults.”
[Originally published
on Themestream, June 2000.]
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