“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

THE STATE OF CHILDHOOD IN
RELATIONSHIP TO HEALTH, AND HINTS FOR PARENTS

We will begin the next chapter, which is to be called: “The State of Childhood in Relationship to Health, and Hints for Parents.”

(Long pause.) For adults, ideas of health and illness are intimately connected with philosophical, religious, and social beliefs. They are even more entangled with scientific concepts, and with science’s views of life in general. Children, however, are far more innocent, and though they respond to the ideas of their parents, still their minds are open and filled with curiosity. They are also gifted with an almost astounding resiliency and exuberance.

They pick up their first ideas about health and disease from parents and doctors, and by the actions of those people to their own discomfiture. Before they can even see, children are already aware of what their parents expect from them in terms of health and disease, so that early patterns of behavior are formed, to which they then react in adulthood.

Many children acquire poor health habits through the well-meaning mistakes of their parents. This is particularly true when parents actually reward a child for being ill. In such cases, the ailing child is pampered far more than usual, given extra special attention, offered delicacies such as ice cream, let off some ordinary chores, and in other ways encouraged to think of bouts of illness as times of special attention and reward.

I do not mean that ill children should not be treated with kindness, and perhaps a bit of special attention — but the reward should be given for the child’s recovery, and efforts should be made to keep the youngster’s routine as normal as possible. Children often know quite well the reasons for some of their illnesses, for often they learn from their parents that illness can be used as a means to achieve a desired result.

Often parents hide such behavior from themselves. They deliberately close their eyes to some of the reasons for their own illnesses, and this behavior has become so habitual that they are no longer conscious of their own intent.

Parents frequently foster such behavior. Some are simply too busy to question a child about his own illness. It is far simpler to give a child aspirin, and send a child to bed with ginger ale and a coloring book.

Parents who are aware of these facts can start helping their children at an early age by asking them simply the reasons for their illness. A mother might say: “You don’t need to have a temperature in order to avoid school, or as a way of getting love and attention, for I love you in any case. And if there is a problem at school, we can work it out together, so you don’t have to make yourself ill.” Again, the reasons for such behavior are often quite clear in the child’s mind. So if the parents begin such questioning and reassurance when the child is young, then the youngster will learn that while illness may be used to attain a desired result, there are far better, healthier ways of achieving an end result.

Some parents, unfortunately, use the nature of suggestion in the most undesirable way, so that a child is often told that he or she is sickly, or weak or overly sensitive, and not as robust as other youngsters. If that kind of behavior is continued, then the child soon takes such statements as true, and begins to act upon them, until they do indeed become only too real in the youngster’s everyday experience.