Heart4kidsadvocacyforum's Blog

We are “Called” as a society to make our children a priority in our lives as family, community, nationally and globally. I realized the urgency for us to re-define our priority with and for children. I think that the Pandemic has unveiled many aspects of our lives that we were not aware of because we basically live in such a tail spin, trying to navigate survival in this complex lifestyle. We don’t have time to stop and observe who we are and how we are responding to life. It has not been easy to handle the challenges of this pandemic! Besides the insurmountable situations that lost of income, housing, food, health, and our children’s education, has impacted our survival, there has for parents, been the challenge of “what to do with and for our children to keep them happy, healthy, safe, and emotionally whole”. We were not prepared for these situations, and I feel it is a lack of leadership and planning on a national, state, and local level, that has forgone their responsibility to their citizenry!

There was and still is not safety net! There is no forethought on “what happens is…”. We should never have been in a position to have to figure out, “how will we provide an educational system and protocol to meet the needs of our children. What do we need to have in place that will provide services for our children, if they cannot go to a brick and mortar facility. We have gone to the moon. We have landed technology on the planet Mars. We have not figured out how to educate our children in or out of the “brick and mortar facilities”! We have not acknowledged that children have different needs not just in how to deliver content to enhance their knowledge base, but what in fact that knowledge base should be that will actually be culturally and globally relevant to enhance their lives. This is a perfect opportunity while in this storm to observer, record, evaluate, and plan how we can make major changes in our educational system to put things on the right track.

This is a non-perfect, but yet perfect time and opportunity for parents, to stop, look and listen to the “soul essence” of their children. What do I mean by “soul essence”? That eternal element of their child’s being that is their “soul essence”. It is their true being. This is the part of a child that we should be identifying with. This is the sacred element of our child’s being that speaks for who they are and what they need. We are the guardians of their precious “soul essence”. This is what not only parents have to be in tune with, but what each person that is interacting with our children must acknowledge. We as teachers must realize the importance of tuning into a “child’s soul essence”. It is not about the physicality of a child or what we perceive to be their character or personality. It goes much deeper than that and requires deeper observation, listening, and reflection on our part. I think if parents, teachers and children take advantage of this period of isolation to begin a ritual of being in a “sacred space” with our children-students, we would be amazed at what we would discover and how organically, we would change in our approach and texture of our relationship with them.

I believe that relating to children from their “soul essence”, we would actually see ourselves perhaps for the first time since our own childhood. What a blessing this time of space and disconnect from our “normal ritual of life” can have the possibility of being for us and our children. I get a feeling that when teachers are looking at their children in the zoom format, they can actually take the time out to zoom in on each student throughout the course of the session, and tune into that child. Studying their facial expressions, the tones in their voices, the look in their eyes that are the “windows to their souls”, can reveal that which we are searching for even in ourselves as well. This experience will redefine our relationships and how we formulate them. It will help to cultivate a healthy vital relationship and in some cases, renew the quality of our relationship with our own children as parents and teachers. I am excited about the potential of us moving into this direction of “caring for the souls of children”! What a different modality of relating to them and serving them. We can do this!!!