[Written around 2006.]

People who are not fully enlightened have children to be rescued by them. This goes for parents who adopt as well as for those who procreate. Those who adopt at least are not responsible for the creation of a new perfect existence to be twisted, which is good, but this does not change the illness in the motive. And often it makes the illness more virulent, because many adoptive parents feel more justified acting out their unconscious needs in exchange for the service they’ve done. Continue reading →

[Written around 2006.]

A spoiled child is an enraged child. Children become enraged when their deepest emotional needs get neglected. Most parent advocates argue that firm limit-setting – and even punishment – is the antidote to spoiling. This is untrue, and only ignores the depth of the problem. The real antidote to spoiling is that parents find ways to meet their children’s needs. Children who get their deepest needs met never become enraged – and would never put up with being spoiled. Such children have nothing to be enraged about. And yet, most parents lack the capacity to meet their children’s deepest needs. And figuring out how to gain this capacity is simply too hard for most parents. Continue reading →

[Written around 2005.]

Unconsciously most parents believe they own their children. Parents believe that because they have created their child this child is parental property. In reality, however, parents have it backwards: It is children who own their parents.

To grow strong, healthy, and fully emotionally mature, a child needs parents who are completely devoted to him. This is a parent’s primary responsibility in life. A child needs parents who care for him to the radical degree that they become essentially selfless – and yet, at the same time, have such strong and unwavering senses of who they are as individual adults that their connection with their emotional center is unwavering. Continue reading →

[Written in 2004.]

People procreate in an attempt to have their children rescue them from their own unresolved pain. They may couch their desire to procreate in concepts like biological drive, societal and familial expectation, and love for mothering, and these may all be partially true, but underneath these surface motives people who have not resolved all of their childhood traumas have children because they really just want to be loved. And this is not fair to the child, because no child asks to be born, and no child has the capacity to rescue his parents. Only deep healing – through the resolution of one’s own childhood traumas – can rescue people from their own buried horrors. Continue reading →