How Do We Know Child has Well Developed EGO?
Naveen Varshneya
Founder’s Insights • 18 April 2022, 9:00 AM
The role of a mother is to provide unconditional acceptance called love and the role of a father is to provide unconditional protection.
A child when born does not have a mind, ego and sense of survival. It is being inflicted by parents to create a survivor out of a child.
This is how a child begins to develop survival instinct at the cost of losing the state of bliss.
If you get a chance to see children who do self-study with the help of parents rather than going to school, you can see they are kind of “Outliers” and their connection with the world is very thin. Their eyes will tell you all and this does not mean they are any less children but on the contrary, they are in the process of bringing a prodigy out of them.
As a child begins to come out of infancy, she begins to have blind faith in her parents as her well-wishers and saviour, hence remaining open and unprotected emotionally towards them as there is no such need to protect self vis-a-vis parents. This is where in some cases things begin to go wrong when a child is scolded by the father.
A scolding from a mother does not do so much damage, in fact on the other hand it makes a child feel safe and wanted because a mother spends so much time with them, plus she feeds the child 3 times a day. Love, care and acceptance flow through food and various gestures.
This is not the case with a father who spends very little time and his love for the child unspoken and often only realized when they grow up, flows in the form of being a provider and protector. Often fathers are unexpressive and mothers fail to make a child realize the importance of the father and how fathers communicate. That is why there was an unspoken rule that fathers always communicated through their wives, anything related to discipline of the child so that it goes lovingly without damage.
When the father shows anger on a child or at his wife, the child feels unprotected and violated and begin to shrink the expression of its spirit in its own home. This builds a lot of insecurity (a very high degree of it as that creates fear of life) in their subconscious. She begins to please people, turn more nice or silent or rebel depending upon her ability to defend, this ability to defend is ego.
If a child feels unsafe in some situations but overall feels loved, the child’s emotional body has the wisdom not to react to the anger of the father. But if such occurrences are more often than love and protection given or made to feel, the child, becomes emotionally vulnerable. This is the state of fragile ego and the child carries it through life.
There is a new way of cultivating their feeling of unsafe and that is transmuting this unsafe feeling to pursue something such as writing, reading, painting or some hobby in which child feels safe, loved and worthy. Such children may create prodigy but may find it hard to build healthy relationships as they grow in adulthood.
If you read through other posts (“How mental disorders are formed,” “Is your child at risk of mental disorder?”) where I have listed symptoms and early signs of disorder and if you find despite adverse situations, your child does not have those symptoms of the disorder, you can feel relieved, but be aware, the child may not be able to build a healthy relationship as she has just diverted her feeling of unsafe in some pursuit and not yet resolved.
It will help immensely if mothers come forward and speak the truth and help child open up so that suffering at emotional body is healed and mothers are capable of doing so. Mothers shall make sure that they shall keep any negative opinion about their husband only to themselves and not to try to find it becoming a voice in the child. In such sessions, a child shall be allowed to express and shall not be sympathized with.
Let me give an example to make the point further clear from my own life. I was once invited to be the judge of a business plan competition by an MBA institute in Delhi and took my daughter (12 years old) with me to expose her to the real world. A team presented their business plan, I commented and thrashed their ideas and being a very passionate speaker and entrepreneur, I spoke very firmly with each team in the open forum. I did feel very proud of myself because I was applauded and appreciated by teams and faculty for my sharp business acumen. I was prouder of myself as a father because I felt my daughter will now be impressed with me and that was the whole idea of bringing her to such a show. On the way back, with a hope to be labelled as superman by my angel daughter, I asked her how it was and her reply shocked me and got me thinking for a few years. She said, why were you so angry? it was embarrassing to see you so loud. You could be polite and yet make your point. I believe that was one of the last times, my kids saw my anger which I was proud of.
Fathers do not know that they are loud, insensitive and their outburst can be damaging. Mothers have a huge task to bring sensitivity in fathers so they begin to regulate their expressions.
