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Hi Abram,

As I was trying to edit a post and then trying read your post my tired little one could not stop demanding my attention. I felt annoyance and frustrations rising so I put her down which really upset her, said I have to go, walked to the lounge and whacked the couch very hard quite a few times. I felt scared I was scaring her as I heard her falter. I was also scared that my emotions were fuelled by spirits and then started to cry. She crawled out from the bedroom and I gathered both of us up fed her then we both went to sleep.

Do you go to your room to put your frustrations into pillows? I do find this helps but acknowledge there is much more to do to reach the underlying causes from my childhood. Thank you for your honesty and I am glad you posted this. I am feeling that being a parent holds the greatest challenges as well as the greatest joys.

Love and best wishes.

Marion

Hi Abram,

Nicky's suggestion is the best of all.

Marion your story reminded me of something which had a huge impact on my faith in this process and how our feelings impact children. At Mary's last workshop a young mother bought her baby with her. During the introduction on the first night the baby cried and cried. Mary said a lot of people were projecting I think from memory judgement at the mother for bringing the baby. I know I was judging the mother thinking it was too late for the baby, it needed to be in bed ect. it was horrible and ironic since I had/have anger about how I was always found to be wrong as a young mother. At that workshop there was a large room at the back where people went to process. I can't recall now if it was the same night or the next day, but I encountered that young mother in the processing space with the baby on her lap. The mother was sobbing and was surrounded by people in very emotional states. The baby was now sitting there happily and contentedly occupying itself. I'm not sure not sure now if previously the baby had been feeling how the mother felt about being projected at or was feeling projections itself, either way it was the most remarkable demonstration of how we impact children with our feelings and how genuinely feeling them relieves children of the burden. The other thing was that we are all like the small baby but have many layers to stop us expressing our what we feel.

All my best Elvira

Actually that situation is an example also of how I refused to soften to a perfect LOA event. I really struggle with hearing baby, toddler crying because of the things I have been unwilling to feel. I don't even know now how much progress I have made because I haven't heard a baby cry for a long time. God was so loving because even though I shut the whole experience down with judgement, he still gave me an enormous gift that day as did the. mother and baby.

Marion,

What I've noticed when processing emotions around my children is that when processing anger I need to go somewhere where they are not. It is scary for my children to hear me scream or watch me get into my anger. I'm not sure if they feel me projecting it at them because I'm not truly owning it or if they are making a connection between what they did and me getting angry and therefore feel I'm mad at them. Another possibility is that over the years my wife and I have made them responsible for our emotions and so now they assume it is because of them. It is not easy to process emotions while being alone with young children and I find it one of the most challenging issues I'm currently dealing with.

I've processed grief around my children and it didn't appear they were affected by it. I'd have to say this is related to true grief. There have been times that I've gotten into crying, mainly because my addiction (not being listened to or loved, etc.) was not met, and they later came up to apologize to me. That tells me they feel responsible for my emotions in that situation and I've conditioned them to believe that.

There are many times I feel stuck in a place of feeling like anything I do will be unloving. For instance, let's say my children are not listening to me and are screaming at me. In that moment I'm being triggered and am feeling angry/frustrated because my addiction of being listened to or loved is not being met. If I go to my room and get into my anger I'm leaving my kids alone and wonder if they are feeling abandoned and rejected. If I stay there and get into my anger they feel abused. If I stay there and try to go under the anger and cry about my addiction not being met they seem to feel guilty and responsible. I could try to suppress my anger and be loving with how I respond, though they are probably still feeling my projections. You can see how it is very complicated and confusing.

I'm assuming all of this would be different if my children didn't feel responsible for my emotions. However, now that they do it seems that nothing I do related to emotional processing is loving (as you can see in my example above). Getting into true causal emotions would be the key, though I find I need to go through my anger, then repentance and remorse, and then I might scrape the surface of some causal grief related to how my parents hurt me with all this when I was young.

As I sit here and try to feel my way through this it seems logical to me to feel through my emotions when with my children. For instance, if they are yelling at me and I feel angry I can close my eyes and take deep breaths and try to completely own my anger. I would begin to recognize that my anger comes from my addictions not being met and so I might cry about that. If I continued with this path I would get into the grief about my past and how my parents instilled the belief that I should be treated with love and respect and be listened to. If through this process my children seem to feel guilty or apologize I can get into my remorse about making them believe they are responsible for my feelings and explain this to my oldest who is 6 and can understand.

If I figure anything else out along the way I will share. I'm always open to feedback from others who may have a different perspective or see where I'm out of harmony with God's truth and love. Thank you all for the dialogue as it helps me reflect and feel through this challenging process.

Hi Abram

I read your post and can relate a lot of the issues that you are presenting facing. I’d like to share with you my experiencing of parenting, and the changes that I have seen as a result of working through my emotions, and asking for Gods help along the way.

I have 2 boys, now age 8 and 10. When I started learning about the Divine Love Path they were aged 1 and 3, so I was working through things during their ‘formative’ years. There is something that I would like to point out that may clear things up, and that is, when children are young (under 7 years of age), the children are reflecting the emotions of their parents. When we start to understand this, it helps us to stop trying to manage our children’s behaviour, and start to focus on our own emotional state. It starts to become easier to see our real emotion condition because it is being reflected at us non-stop 24/7. Just to clarify, this also becomes a very intense and challenging time, because if we don’t want to see our true emotional state, and see what our children are reflecting back at us, then it becomes a very difficult time indeed. This is where humility plays a huge part in improving yourself and hence your relationship with your children, and God. I have been through many times where I just could not accept that what my children were doing/saying, and how they were behaving was actually a reflection of my emotional condition, and that it must be something else. However over time (and it took me quite some time in some instances), and with prayer you will eventually see that this is true.

Whilst this may seem an overwhelming concept, it also provides potentially your greatest opportunity to grow, as you are living with 2 emotional mirrors. I’ve often heard people say that if only I knew what my emotion was, then I could deal with it. The good news is that you have 2 people telling you all the time!! (By the way I can also guarantee that it won’t feel like good news all the time )

Here is another basic concept, that I have experienced – When I am owning my emotions (and not projecting them) my children are fine, and happy, and a pleasure. When I am not owning my emotions, they fight, get angry, and things are not pleasurable. Hence if the kids are fighting, then I would suggest that yourself and your wife are not owning your emotions in that moment, and are projecting them onto the environment, and the children are simply reflecting this.

So the next question is “What do I do as a parent, in the situation where the kids are fighting?” This is my suggestion, and what I have done in the past:

1. Intellectually acknowledge that the kids are reflecting my emotions. Sometimes just the intellectual realisation will result in a behaviour change.
2. Start praying to become aware of my own feeling at that moment.
3. If they are harming each other, then separate them.
4. If the kids are fighting then there is a good chance that I am angry as well.
5. Go to my room and start hitting the punching bag, pillow or whatever, and start verbalising what I am feeling. I find that screaming into a pillow works well (if you’re worried about the neighbours), and just say whatever come out without filtering or judging it. Alternatively, I get in the car and go for a drive and just scream everything out, and pray to know the truth and be humble.
6. If you are being honest and start owning your feelings, the children will respond accordingly

I’ve had countless experiences where the kids have been ‘playing up’, and I’ve felt myself getting angry. When I realise that it’s me that is the cause, and I can work through even a small part of the emotion at that particular time, then the kids change straight away. I’ve even had instances where I wasn’t owning my own emotions and the kids were upset and crying, and once I start owning my emotion I have felt my projection come away from them, I started crying, and they become happy or went to sleep. It’s a freakin cool to realise, that you have such an effect on your kids (both positive and negative), and can do something about it when it is affecting them adversely.

The parents soul also provides a protection for the child against spirit influence/attack, hence another benefit of owning your emotions. Again, I’ve had numerous times when I haven’t been owning my own emotions and can see the spirit influence in the kids. Similarly, once I do own the emotion the influence disappears and/or reduces.

If I may use some of the information in your posts:

“I'm being really triggered lately with my children (6 girl, 3 boy) not listening, being hurtful and unloving to each other and my wife and I. I know I have many errors surrounding these issues. Part of what I'm struggling with is letting go of the idea or expectation that my children should listen to me and/or treat me lovingly. I am so afraid of doing nothing to correct the unloving behavior that I often resort to anger and punishments.”

If you take the above concepts are reanalyse what you have written, you will start to see things a bit differently. If the kids are being hurtful and unloving to each other, then I would suggest having a look at the emotions between yourself and your wife. Correcting the unloving behaviour of children is a bit pointless if you are trying to address the effects only. The cause is actually your own emotions not being felt, and once you start to address this, things will improve.

“The challenge is to figure out how to teach her that unloving behavior has consequences without being unloving toward her.”

One of the great opportunities that you have is to teach your children how to deal with their emotions in a loving way to others and themselves. And the way to do this is to be an example to them. Whilst unloving behaviour does have consequences, it is hard to do anything else when you have not been taught what love is. If you can work through your own emotions, you will learn what the loving thing to do is, and you will be able to deal with the situation easily and quickly from a loving space.

“This morning my daughter and son were throwing things at each other and I told them to stop and had to get in between them. My daughter kept throwing things so I told her she needed to come with me to the room. She refused. I said “I’m going to count to three and take you to the room”. She came with me to the room and laid on her bed. She put her hands over her ears as she didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I was short for time and had to leave to go to work. I sat for a bit giving her a few seconds, but not long enough for her to be open to the discussion as I know she could feel my anger toward her. I told her “I’m not going to let you throw things at us or be unloving” and walked out of the room. I started to cry as I was feeling very angry that she was being so disrespectful. I was afraid for her and her future relationships as she is acting very mean very often and afraid of others perceptions of me as a parent. I was sad because I know I have contributed to this unloving behavior. I’m feeling unloved by her. I felt very powerless and confused as to what to do to help her.”

If your daughter and son are throwing things at each other, maybe have a think about what they are reflecting in relation to the emotions that you and your wife are projecting at each other, as this is what is being reflected. I think it was a good course of action to remove your daughter and explain that you are not going to let her throw things and be unloving. It’s also great that you felt your sadness about the situation.

Children will generally reflect the emotion of the same sex parent, eg boys tend to reflect dad, and girls reflect mum. Hence your daughter is most likely reflecting her mum, and your son is most likely reflecting yourself. This is great because you will be able to see your own emotions as a male primarily in your son, and also your female related emotions with regards to interactions with your daughter.

I’ve had a similar thing happen with my partner over the years (not the boys mum). Whenever were/are angry at each other, the boys will fight and argue and pick on each other. When we are in a good space the opposite occurs, they play happily without a care in the world.

“I feel this pressure to show some positive results as my wife is skeptical of all this and has been saying "you're always in a bad mood...show me the benefit of doing all this (referring to being humble to my emotions)".”

It makes it harder again if you are being pressured by someone to produce results, but maybe the above will help with this, and if your wife is at least open to the concepts I have outlined above, then she may even be able to see it herself, which will help both yourselves and your children greatly.

This post turned out to be a bit longer than I expected, and there is much more to share, but if you have any further questions, I’ll be happy to help out where I can.

Cheers
Justin

Justin,

You described a lot of what others have been trying to get me to accept and apply. It seems like there is a brick wall that I and others are trying to break down for me to fully believe, understand, and apply these concepts. The reality is that I'm really afraid to have faith this is true and I know that it is related to me not wanting to own my emotions and feel them instead of blame my children. I often get caught up in trying to intellectualize what I'm doing instead of just feeling!

I often say we are like robots and we repeat our habits and patterns in life. This seems to be part of the problem. I'm repeating my old habits and patterns of blaming others for how I feel and feeling as though I need to control my environment. Our lives are so busy with two young children and full time jobs, etc. It is easy to get caught up in the "to do list" and to fall back into auto pilot mode/robot. To change these patterns (thinking instead of feeling, blaming others for our emotions, etc.) it is imperative to reflect on the intentions/values we are trying to live by or else we are in auto pilot again. With all this said, I realize I need reminders in my life to stay focused on these new behavior patterns. I plan to put reminders around my house and on my phone as well as setting an intention when praying in the morning and then reflecting on how I did at night.

After one of my previous posts that you referenced regarding my children fighting and having to separate my daughter, I have seen a shift both in myself and my children's behavior. I feel like I did some productive emotional processing during that example, which has probably helped. I've also really been trying to acknowledge my feelings and feel them more often and I think this has a lot to do with the positive changes.

I shared your post with my wife and she was open to the suggestions. We agreed to practice owning our emotions and trying to look at our issues within our relationship with each other that may be reflected to us in our children. What a gift this really is for us and parents to address where we are out of harmony with God's love and truth.

Thanks so much for your feedback and suggestions.

Hi Abram,

I just wanted to make a quick post, as others have already said quite a lot.

I am Justins partner and we have been together, on and off for the last 5 years. We got together when Justin's boys were 3 and 5 years of age.

Something that I have found really cool is that in the past we've had situations where the boys would be playing really loud, running around the house (probably spirit influenced)... and all this 'uncontrolable' behaviour completely stopped when Justin and stopped avoiding talking to each other about how we felt right in that moment ( the boys settled down on their own and played quietly on the floor - without us even saying anything to them).

So you may find it interesting to just experiment with your wife by talking honestly and openely with each other (not just when the children are 'playing up' - but to practice this every day). As even Justin and I just acknowledging how we felt in the moment - by saying it out loud to each other, without attacking each other - really helped because before that we were just avoiding how we were feeling. I have found though that this only works when both Justin and I have been open *in the moment* to talk with each other about how we were feeling. If one of us wasn't open to doing that, the boys would still reflect the tension between Justin and I.

I would like to say that I noticed what I mentioned above, more when the boys were a bit younger. I haven't noticed it so much lately but that could possibly be because I have been angrier and not owning my emotions, and it could also possibly be because the boys are older now and not reflecting the environment so much in the sense that they completely reflect it when they are under the age of 7. And that they are making their own free will choices now.

One other thing I thought I should mention (from reading your posts): it feels as though you are worrying a lot about feeling your causal emotions instead of feeling the *exact emotion that comes up straight away when you children are displaying whatever behaviour*. If that's anger, then it's good to go bash a punching bag (like Justin mentioned). If it's fear, take yourself away and breathe diaphragmatically into your fear. If it's grief, take yourself away and cry.

One thing that I have noticed in the past (this was a few years ago) that when Justin would go and bash the punching bag but he was *blaming the boys/me* for his anger, we would feel afraid. When he would switch into owning it, we would be fine. (He would be off in his room and we were in the lounge room).

You may find though that initially to get into the anger (by physically getting it out) you may just have to start in the blaming place. I have found if I start here and then direct it towards God (kind of in an emotional conversation) that that can really help me actually own the anger as *my own feeling* - not blaming others.

One other thing that I thought I should mention is that you'll have to be willing to experiment with feeling and experiencing your emotions. Because if you're not willing to give that a go, it's not going to change anything because you'd just be trying to work it out all intellectually.

Woops, that was supposed to be a short post

Arvarna

Hi Abram

Just as an aid to acknowledging that perhaps we don't want to accept that our emotions as parents have any effect on our children I was just listening to this video this morning and it struck me it could be relevant where Jesus talks about wanting to blame other people/ our kids as the cause of the problem. It's the part that deals with not wanting to face the truth or painful consequences of our creations. that could be a factor to deal with first that you want to blame your kids rather than taking responsibility and that is why your daughter in particular is rebelling as she feels this projection at her and it angers her even more.

http://youtu.be/1Gu0BArRW5U

You might also want to have a look at peter and Eloisa's blog here

https://petereloisa.wordpress.com/learn ... -a-parent/

Hi Abram, I hope you don't mind but I wanted to respond to Justin's post about how useful his suggestions have been with my almost 12 month old. Also Elvira's and Arvarna's. Perhaps some of my experiences may be helpful for you and your partner. Please let me know if it is an issue in any way.

Hi Justin, your post has been really helpful to me over the last couple of days. Dave has been working away and I am pretty sleep deprived and heading to the heavy end of my monthly cycle. Missy is incredibly clingy at the moment, especially as Dave is away. Yesterday and today thanks to your post I spent much time toing and froing between missy and either outside or my room. At one stage I had the start of a tantrum behind the carport after using the pipe on the ground which felt very young.

If I am not feeling any emotion I have been responding as much as I can to her unhappy behaviour by doing what she is doing. Even just going "aaaaarghie aaaaar" and shaking my body when she is making a noise similar. This made her laugh which was not my intention but a nice outcome. (Smile)

Tonight she really objected to getting her nappy and pjs on after her bath, throwing herself backwards and screaming. I was really tired, felt yuck and was wanting to lose it but put her extended on the lounge room floor and went to my room and thrashed the bed with the towel. I went back, she was turning the pages of her book. She was ok to sit on my lap and comfortably we turned the pages of the little book we love to read together before going to bed. I felt so sad afterwards and felt mum must have really hated me at times, dad too probably.

A friend said mum probably put me in a room and let me cry alone and m was displaying attachment issues inside me. Mum said she cant recall anything til I was 2 when she really shouted at me ... I feel much happened earlier than this with my brother only being 18 months older, she being in a new country, new expensive house, very limited funds, addictive bartering style relationship with lots of arguments plus a being very controlling and demanding type. What comes up in me towards m is scary at times. Fortunately DT strategies have intervened.

Arvarna, thank you for your honesty and sharing. I blamed God at one stage today sending hate and anger in his direction. I think this is a cop out for me as my dad has received none of my projections, I am starting to feel that I am still too terrified of him even though he passed June 2014. My guides gave me a taste of the level of terror in a dream the other night. Your post has some good relationship info. So important. Increasing togetherness and owning our emotions as much as possible in the relationship with Dave has helped me feel safer, enabling more beautiful times for the three of us recently but on the other side of the coin, occasionally opening up more intense projections when certain addictions are not met.

Abram, the deeper stuff I think I have only just touched on but incrementally the shift seems to happen as the will to change grows.

Elvira, I appreciated your comments last week. Have had so little time to post. Justin pointing out how much of a reflection under 7s are has opened my mind further ... and hopefully my heart as well.

Thank goodness for Divine Truth teachings and sharings. It continues to save my sanity and my relationship.