Reverence in words

“We must guard against disrespectful, disparaging, and criticising thoughts. We must try to practice reverence and devotion in our thinking at all times” Rudolf Steiner

Children see so much of the world and take so much from it, some of which we take for granted.

They pick up on and interpret things sometimes very literally. Take for example this morning the little one snipping the ends from our Daffodils. She was making small cuts at first and shredding the ends of the flowers. I said ‘Darling, if we open the scissors wide we can fit the whole stem in there and cut it off in one go’ she took the association of what I said with when we check her teeth after she has brushed them of a night, and now when she opens her scissors opens her mouth too 😂.

This is quite a funny and innocent example of how when we say something it can be taken in and processed in a very literal way. There are times when parenting IS HARD, where we don’t always hold that flame of reverence, devotion and care, where our own inner needs and frustrations arise from a myriad of emotions and a number of reasons and we sometimes say something out of character which may frustrate our children even upset them. That’s ok...we are only human.

A BIG part of the journey as a parent is our own reflection and it’s not just considering Steiner’s words here within the context of your relationship with your children - when we have had a hard moment it’s of course right that we bring that relationship back to reverence, to love, to heal... but we should be using those words to reassure and centre ourselves if we have had a hard day.

Guarding against disrespectful, disparaging, and criticizing thoughts toward yourself is so important as a mother in being able to truly know who we are in kindness, to accept that, and to work on areas we can become better parents. You are human, you are enough, you are what your child needs. Once we are kind to ourselves and allow ourselves grace and reverence for the role we are in, we can only then move forward.

Reverence and love is something we should unconditionally give our children and ourselves. Always.