Raising Spiritual Children - Weekly Energy Boost

45:03

45:03

Raising Spiritual Children - Weekly Energy Boost

by Elisheva Balas

Rated

4.8

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talks

Activity

Meditation

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Everyone

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120

Parenting in the modern world can be overwhelming. This week, we’ll discuss some of the challenges and how as parents we can instill spiritual values in our children in a healthy and balanced way. Episode 3 of 4. Original airdate: 10/18/21

Parenting Children Challenges Resilience Emotional Intelligence Authenticity Spiritual Parenting Building Resilience Spiritual Beliefs Balance Spirits

Meet your Teacher

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Meet your Teacher

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Transcript

Good morning, Everyone. Good evening. Good afternoon, Wherever you are. And welcome to this week's Weekly Energy Boost. My name is Ellie Sheva, And I'm here this beautiful Monday morning with David. And we are in the second installment of this week's, This month's theme of family, Connecting to family. This is the episode that we're going to be focusing on children. And not only children, But raising spiritual children and what is really asked of us in being parents. This may not be an episode that works for everyone, Because not everyone is a parent. But the cool thing is that everyone is a child. Whether you're actively in a relationship with your parents or not, Even today's episode is going to be for you. And every week on the Weekly Energy Boost, We strive to present our listeners with the most powerful and practical tools to navigate the coming seven days, Inevitably also providing powerful life lessons and tools that you can use any day of the year, Any year of your life. But this particular month, Which is the month of Scorpio, Where everybody tends to be a little bit more Scorpio, As you mentioned last week. The interesting thing is that one of the Scorpio superpowers, Which is also one of their greatest weaknesses, Is the desire to control. And I think when it comes to parenting, Whether we're talking about us as parents or even our parents, The Achilles heel for all of us is control. And that's one of the reasons that this week's theme is so timely is because part of what really trips us up and makes us fall into the mistakes we can make as parents and the mistakes our parents made as well is that desire to control. And how difficult it is, I think that that's the hardest button that we get pushed as parents, That gets pushed within us, Is when we feel like our kids are out of control or things are no longer going according to our agenda and our plan. So today, David and I want to explore how to instill the most, I want to say desirable qualities within our children, Regardless of who they are and what they're made of, But also how we can navigate that rocky terrain known as parenthood with the best mindset, With the best consciousness. I'm super excited about this topic, Especially since we were talking a little bit about it on the way over here. And I'm always inspired by some of the wisdom that Elisheva shares with me with her personal experiences with children. And I'm also thinking, How do we relate this to people who don't have children right now, Right? So that it's not just like, All right, I'm just going to tune out because I know that some people can't have children, Don't want to have children, Don't have children yet. And the Zohar talks about the power of bringing children to this world. The Zohar also is very specific about the fact that children doesn't necessarily mean biological, Your biological child. The Zohar also refers to the fact that when I'm responsible for someone's life being enhanced, Or when you give somebody the power, The tools to take control over their life, Especially spiritually, In many ways that you inject a soul into this person, You enhance the soul of this person, Which is the same thing that you do when you have a biological child. Hence, The people's lives who you change, In some way become your children. And it fulfills that spiritual obligation of having children. For sure. And there's a quote that I borrow from a very famous child psychologist who actually, Given what David just said, It actually applies to what David said as well, Not only with your own biological children, But you may have a team of coworkers that you lead, Or even in your community in an organization that you volunteer. And it almost applies to every situation in which you find yourself leading even only one other individual. So this is the quote. Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label. Your job is to provide the right environment and nutrients and to pull the weeds. You can't decide what flower you'll get or in which season it will bloom. It's beautiful. So what's for me, Okay, So I have, As many of you know, Who listened to the show for a while, I have six kids. The oldest is 24 and the youngest is five. So when I started, When I became a parent, I don't know if it was not cool to read parenting books or to invest in that. I don't know. It wasn't as big of a industry as it is now. You have parenting. Parenting coaches and classes in my day, In my day, It sounds like I'm 700 years old. Back in the day, A parenting course was literally like a childbirth course. You know, There wasn't, I didn't know of any courses I could take. I had friends who had kids older than me that I respected their advice. I had my own parents and grandparents to look to, But there wasn't, It didn't seem like there was the amount of information 25 years ago, The amount of resources that there are today. And as I went on and became a teacher and started even to give parenting courses, And of course these are not parenting courses in the sense, In the conventional sense, These are spiritual parenting courses. These are, The audience is students who, Students of spirituality, Specifically Kabbalah, Who want to learn how to take those Kabbalistic principles and bring them into their home and live them with their children. And I think that that's the first place to go to in this conversation is that you can take a course, Your kids can take a course. We have classes for kids. My kids go to a school here in Los Angeles that teaches them Kabbalah, Teaches them spirituality, Teaches them the rules of the game of life in every subject that they study. But if they come home and I am not living by those same principles, Right, That's really, I think, The key here is that you can't, I'm going to borrow a metaphor that Karen Berg, Not metaphor, Illustration that Karen Berg used to use. You can't teach your kids not to lie. And then when the phone rings during dinner, Ask them to say, Tell them, Tell them I'm not here, Right? That there, That dissonance that we talk about within us is also something that we cannot have in our homes, Right? That we teach one thing and we behave a different way. Actually, A student of my husband's recently reached out and said, I have to give my kids spirituality classes. What do I do? Where do I go? And the first, My first response, He said, Well, You know, What should I recommend to her? And I said, Listen, If it sounds to me like she's desperate and if she's desperate, It means that she's not leading by example, That she finds herself in a reactive position and is worried that her son is going to learn to be reactive from her. And therefore she needs somebody else to tell him not to follow her lead. So the first, The first step really is to embody all of the, The principles, All of the values, All of the qualities you wish your children to embody and be those things. They're not what ends up happening. I think this is a sociological phenomenon. Either our kids become exactly like us or the polar opposite of us. And there isn't anything in between when it comes to our kids. They either look at us and I, And say consciously or unconsciously, I'm going to grow up to be like mom or dad, Or they say consciously or unconsciously, I am going to be the polar opposite of that person. And our goal, Or really maybe we should dial back a little bit and say, What is the purpose of even having kids? You just totally segued into a different direction. I was really, I was following you. Okay, Keep going. We have time. Then we can go into the purpose of having children. But I, Cause as you were saying it, Every, I think almost every parent's heard this before of how they need to emulate what they want their children to be in the house. But if you actually think about your day, Think about the interactions that you had from the moment you woke up, The way you spoke to your children, The way you spoke to your partner in the house, The way your, Even your own thoughts, Like how are you talking to yourself? Because your children can hear your thoughts. Children feel energies. And when you're in a place of neediness or sadness or personal judgment, Even though externally you're not vocalizing any of it, Your children feel that and then they become anxious. And when you're in a place of certainty and you feel whole and you feel the light of the creator inside you, Your children feel that. So it's kind of like a 24 hours a day. Your children are just absorbing whatever you are, Not just externally because I think a lot of times, Not just parents, But people think that, Well, I have my outward facing life that people see and then I have my private life that nobody knows about and I can hide that. You see this a lot of times in people who are married but they don't want to be married. And they think, Well, We're going to create this facade for the children and then behind the scenes we're going to have this other thing going on, Which is bitterness, Resentment or just apathy and we're just kind of roommates and whatever it is. But there's no hiding of the energy. The energy is the energy and it is known not just to the people in your home but is known to everyone in the world. Ultimately who you are on the inside will be known to everybody on the outside, Which that just leads us to one place, Being authentic and taking full responsibility for the thoughts, Words and actions that are going on internally. Well, That to me is one of the most annoying things about being a parent is that as the parent and again, Going to David's example, As the manager, As the owner, Etc. , My mindset, My consciousness is the driving force in creating my reality but also my children's reality and the outcome of my interactions with them. So that if I'm, To David's point, Busy trying to hide the true reality, I'm going to find situations in which my kids are hiding things or somehow in some other maybe five-year-old version or ten-year-old version doing what I'm doing so as to bring my missteps to the forefront of my consciousness. And that, When I say it's annoying, It's also painful because the system, The universe is rigged so that the most powerful mirrors for me are going to be my kids. And I'm saying it's the most painful also because when you look at the qualities that you dislike in your children, Undoubtedly they're the qualities that you most dislike in yourself and you want to undo those qualities within them so they don't grow up to be like you. They don't have the same patience issues or stubbornness or laziness. We try to live vicariously through our children. The truth is that by our transformation of ourselves, We help them to transform those qualities. And that's actually, A few weeks ago you mentioned that when your wife took the intro to Kabbalah years ago, She was like, Well, I'm too busy for this. That's one of the things that I tell people is that they say, Well, You know, My life is so busy. I'm driving the kids and then I'm working and then I have to take care of this and then there's homework and I don't have time for spirituality. If you are a parent, You do not not have time for spirituality. You cannot, In my opinion, At least you can't afford not to bring that mindfulness and that practice into your life because the expense is not only on you, It's on your family as well. It's on your children as well. And our perception is yes, We want the best for our children. But what is wanting the best for our children even mean? This is a great point you brought up in the car. So just drive it home right now. Everybody wants the best for their children, But. But let me find that it's a great quote from another, I think he's a child psychologist. This is an eye opener, What Alicia was about to say. Yeah, Hold on one second. I wrote it here in my notes. Musical interlude. La, La. Now I can't find it. You weren't looking at something when you were talking to me, You had it. I summarized it, But I want to I want to give the quote where the give the credit where the credit is due. The basic idea is that human beings are the only species that are concerned with the happiness of their children. I'm sorry, I'm not paying attention to the camera one second there. That human beings are the only species that are not concerned with. Or they're more concerned with their kids happiness than they are with their survival. And that's a big deal. That's a big deal, Because what that says is that I want to give them what they want, But not what they need. And if we're honest with ourselves, When our kids are upset with us or disappointed in us or I mean, I don't know how many times, Especially in the last year and a half, Our kids have had expectations of maybe their birthday parties being a certain way or any other outcome, And they're disappointed. So what happens? We try to make it up to them. Right. We want them to be happy when the real I don't know, In those moments, I try to remind myself the real gift is teaching them how to be resilient, How to accept the disappointment and defeat with grace and with certainty that something better is coming. And that I have the choice how to react to the situation, How to define it, How to let it define my experience. As opposed to what? As opposed to telling, Oh, It's okay, Here, Let's go to Disneyland instead. So you're basically saying, You're saying what exactly? You're saying to give them the tools and the space to go through their process in pain versus numbing the pain immediately through some form of what's the word? Distraction. Okay. Many times it's distraction, Right? Your child doesn't get the toy that they want, Here's an ice cream cone, Right? We're trying to say don't focus on the challenge, Take your mind off the challenge and be happy. Take your mind off the challenge. I think that's the essence of how the negative side works. The negative side, You're going through a painful process and instead of allowing it to take its course and revealing the light of your soul and revealing secrets about who you need to be, We distract. And that is the essence of reactive behavior. People learned that in Kabbalah 1, That step one, You're going through a painful process, You're going through something confusing, Something you especially don't understand, Which is the definition of painful, You should pause and allow yourself to go through it for a moment. But with children, When they go through a painful process, We don't want to see that as parents, So we want to immediately fill up their pain. So essentially, We are reacting to our own pain and then we're making sure that they don't even have the opportunity. We take away their free will by giving them some form of energy or stimulation so that they don't feel pain. As best illustrated by participation awards, Right? When I was a kid, The first place got a ribbon, Second place and third place. Now everybody gets a ribbon, Everybody gets a trophy because we don't want anyone to feel bad. So what happens? And by the way, I read an article about this a million years ago, So I can't tell you who and what, But that's one of the challenges with millennials now is that they got all these participation awards, But in real life, There are no participation awards. Your participation award is a paycheck. You don't get anything extraordinary for showing up to work. Nobody's applauding you when you get there the same way your parents applauded you just for showing up to the soccer team, To the spelling bee, To wherever we were when we were kids. So they end up being so crushed and disappointed by the reality that nobody's cheering them on and giving them stickers and awards for the minimum behavior. When I say just showing up, Right? I know kids and I took classes. I used to teach in an elementary school. I used to teach third and fourth grade and I took education classes. And one of the theories back then, And this is in the nineties, Was if you teach kids that they're going to get rewarded for doing well, Meaning the reward is doing well. That was the theory was that you have to teach kids that success is its own reward. That the effort that you put and the reward you get in accomplishing whatever you set out to accomplish is the reward. You don't need the $10 or the ice cream party or the all expenses paid vacation because you showed up to work. The fact that you do it is the reward to teach them that their own excellence is a gift. There'll be a lot of people listening who might disagree and feel upset about it. We're not trying to just voice an opinion. We're trying to share something that's rooted in a spiritual concept and it's not black and white. Not in every example is it going to follow kind of what we said, Which is that there should be some kind of scale of quote unquote awards or however you want to put it in terms of commensurate to effort. But if you really think about what is the cause of happiness and fulfillment and what is the cause of sadness and depression, It's one thing. Fulfillment and happiness comes from certainty. So there's a level of certainty. The lower level of certainty is that you have certainty in yourself, In your own ability to get things done. Which we call confidence. Which we call confidence, Which is actually it's the lower level of certainty and it's what most people strive for. The higher level of certainty is something that I've only seen achieve on the spiritual path, Especially Kabbalah, Is that even though I'm very strong or I'm very smart or whatever and I believe in myself, Which is essential, You have to have that as a starting point in your spiritual growth, But that's confidence called the lower level of certainty. The higher level of certainty is even if I can't do it, Even if I don't have the talent, Even if I was born- Even if I'm not number one. If I'm not number one, I'm number one harder. Even if the whole world is against me, Even if I'm ugly, Even if I'm not financially well off like my peers are, It doesn't matter if I'm in the worst situation possible. There's a force called the light of the Creator and there's a soulmate out there that's meant for me that even if the whole world hates me, That person will be with me. There's a certain amount of wealth that's been carved out for me that no one can touch, But I will receive when I'm ready to because that's a relationship between me and the Creator. That's a level of certainty. The benefit of going through a painful process and not numbing it is you start to have a relationship with that higher level of certainty because if you always knew that someone's going to bail you out or your brains are going to bail you out or your looks are going to bail you out or whatever, Something's going to bail you out, First, You'll probably never develop the lower level of certainty, Which is confidence, But even if you managed to somehow, You would never achieve the higher level of certainty, Which is when everybody leaves you and you're totally alone and you're broken, You basically say, Okay, Now what? And you start to have a relationship with that force and you start to talk with the force and you start to realize that the force is carrying you and as long as you don't distract yourself, The force will be there and you'll see miracles. That is what we're proposing here to help children have that relationship because children will push you away at some point. Subconsciously, They'll push their parents away if they feel that the parents are taking away their ability to achieve that higher level of certainty. Let's go back to the very beginning and share it because it's going to tie into what you were just saying. According to Kabbalah, The purpose for having children or the reason, We're not saying your intention should be, But the reality is that the reason kids are given to us is so that we can equip them to be citizens of the world. They're not ours. They're just as much ours as anything else we think we own in our life. You think you own your money, Your house, Your good looks, Your brains. As David was saying, Kids are simply ours to manage for a certain period of time. It's our responsibility to equip them with the knowledge, The wisdom, The abilities, Whatever we can instill in them and then we set them off into the world. Even on a spiritual level, Once they hit age 20, They're not even our responsibility anymore. We may still have connections with them, Tikkun with them, Interactions with them, But they're no longer our responsibility. That's important to remember because I think a lot of the struggles that we go through as parents are because we feel they are ours and that our self-worth is tied up in their success and their failure is, We feel it's a reflection of who we are and we have to understand that they are their own beings. How do you know that? How do you know that? Look at yourself. Are you your parents' responsibility? I mean, You may blame them for a lot of things, But as a grown adult, And I acknowledge that there may be some teens who listen to the podcast and there may also be some young adults who are still living at home, But the idea that, Doesn't it bother you to think that your parents feel they own you? How dare they? I am my own human being, Right? So understand that for your children as well, Your children are not yours. It's almost like a game show. The game show is 20 years long and your task, You win. The winner is the one who instills within their children the most wisdom, The highest level of resiliency, The most social, Emotional intelligence, And the best tools to navigate challenges and to fulfill their soul's purpose. The fact that you want them to be educated, You want to put the roof over their head, You want them to be nutritionally, What's the word? You want them to be healthy, That's the word. You want them to be safe, You want them to be healthy, You want them to be happy. That's all bonuses. The expectation of the universe is that you will instill within your children. The expectation on our parents with us was that they will instill us with everything that we need in order not to be successful, Not to be happy because the success and the happiness are byproducts of doing our soul's work. You may think right now, Well, Okay, I missed the mark. Now what do I do? I can tell you how many people have told me that they have with their children, Whether their children are in their 20s, Their 30s, Their 40s, And so on, Come to spirituality, Take classes together, Et cetera. It's never too late. But I think the paradigm shift is an understanding that our kids don't belong to us. And our responsibility with them is not what society has told us, It's what the creator is telling us. I am giving you these unique souls for you to instill gifts and knowledge and wisdom and tools into and then set them free. So here's another beautiful secret that you brought up that as soon as we rely on something or lean on something or use something to fulfill a lack inside of us, We degrade that thing and that thing starts to die. Everything in this world that we have a relationship with where we are using it to fulfill some pain we have, We are essentially taking from it and we are draining it of energy. And this can happen with children. It can happen to all of us. We're supposed to have a relationship of circuitry, Of giving and empowering that goes both ways. However, If secretly, This is usually a subconscious thing, I didn't achieve something in my life, So I'm pushing my child to achieve that thing. Or I'm so afraid of how I'm going to be viewed as a parent, I'm pushing my child to be a certain way. If somehow the way we have a relationship with our children or anybody for that matter is tied to some lack of mind that I haven't dealt with but I'm trying to fulfill vicariously through somebody else, We are eroding that relationship and the Creator always takes away that which I lean on to fulfill a lack or to hide a fear. And this happens all the time, All the time until we become self-confident and then until we start to rely on the higher level of certainty which is the relationship with the Creator. That's when things can flourish and thrive around us. And sometimes, It's called Tsim Tsum, It's called the contraction where the child rejects the parent because it feels that it's being taken from. And I have to talk to parents who say, I don't understand, I did everything or whatever and the child still wants, Is rebelling against the relationship. And sometimes, There's a lot of aspects of correction and soul's purpose and tikkunso, I'm not saying this covers all angles. Sometimes it has to do with the person feeling that they're being used in some way. Well that goes, I think, Back to the most important, One of the most important concepts we teach in Kabbalah 1 is also one of the most important things we need to teach our children which is that we are here to be the cause. And the irony is that when a child is born, They are the opposite of the cause, Right? They're hungry, They can't feed themselves. They're tired, They need help falling asleep even. They need to go to the bathroom, They can't take care of that themselves either. They want to go to their bed, They can't physically get there without help. So in a way, At the beginning of our relationship with our children, We learn that we are the cause and they are the effect when in fact we're actually here to teach them that they are the cause, Not the effect. And the whole idea, You know, You hear stories about, Like you said, These parents, They give their kids everything, Right? Every, The best of education, Opportunity, Clothing, Technology, Everything that you could ask for and more credit cards, Cars when they turn 16, Etc. And so forth. And then the moment the kid turns 18, They move to the other side of the country and they live in a studio apartment with seven people and wait tables at a dive bar, Right? Whatever. Why do they do that? Because they are so suffocated, Right? They haven't had the opportunity to create their own reality so they are full of resentment and anger. Sometimes kids don't even talk to their parents and their parents did everything for them with the best intentions. But again, Going back to that quote, Which I finally found of course, It's Donald Akutagawa and Terry Whitman. Humans are the only creatures that devote energy to making their offspring happy. The rest of the animal kingdom is devoted to fostering competence to survive in the world. So the idea of being the cause, Why I go back to that all the time when it comes to raising kids is because if kids understand they are the cause, That means a million different things. That means I can choose how I feel about this. I can choose how it affects me. If I don't like what I'm going through, I can change it. And I think as parents, It's our job to cultivate that perspective in them. That's not a natural perspective. Think about it when a baby is born. One of the aspects of the Apiguard test is that when you put your finger or any object in the child's hand, Their natural reflex is to close their fingers on the object. If the child doesn't, The doctors understand that there's something wrong. We are born as pure desire to receive for the self alone. We are born to be takers. And the part of us that desires to share and create and initiate comes later. If it didn't, We wouldn't survive. That's how the capitalists explain it. If our first desire wasn't self-preservation, The species would die off eventually. We are then later imbued with another aspect of the soul that causes us to want to share. What happens is that comes in the preteen years, Which is really the definition of adolescence. Why are the teenage years so difficult? It's because I've been a taker all my life and now I've been imbued with this desire to create, To be independent, To share, To influence, But I don't have any of the tools to do that. But I want to do it anyway, Mom. But I want to do it anyway, Dad, So leave me alone. Or back off. Or I can do whatever I want. That I can do whatever I want. That's like nails on the chalkboard for some of us. It comes from the internal conflict. Not that the child will be able to say, Mom, I'm having a conflict with my desire to receive, My desire to share. The child won't articulate that. But that is what happens in adolescence when the sweet, Loving, Cute bundle of love that you didn't sleep for for six years suddenly turns on you. It's because they can't resolve the conflict of the desire, But I want to be taken care of, But now actually I want to be the one taking care. I want to be the one initiating. I want to be the one creating. There's different things that you can do to help your child recognize their creator nature. I think that's what David was saying when the kids turn against their parents because the kid actually becomes the source. Think about your own self. Maybe you have grown kids, But when they were little, You just don't want them to love you. You just want their hugs and kisses and cuddles. Why? You get energy from it. It feels good. My child is loving. It must mean I'm doing something right. It's funny because David and I took a workshop years and years and years ago. I'm not even sure you remember this and the person leading the workshop said, How can you get to the heart of the individual? I don't remember this. How do you touch the heart of the individual? Give them a compliment about their children. This sounds familiar. He said, What warms a person's heart the most, Assuming they have kids? When they feel that their kids, When someone tells them something good about their children. Buy them in a second. Your son came to me and told me, Thank you. What a good boy. Then you feel so, You don't feel good when you do the right thing. You feel much better when you know your kids did the right thing. In that moment, What are you doing? You're taking energy from your kid. I feel good because they're a good, That's my reward. The truth is that is my reward. You know your child is out there contributing to society, Being a beacon of light in the world. There probably isn't a better feeling. But recognize that's not you, That's them. That's the hardest thing to be able to separate. My child is an individual and this is maybe what's difficult about letting the kids leave the nest is that I'm not in charge anymore. I don't have a say anymore. It's not on me anymore. Maybe on one hand it's freeing and relief, But on the other hand it's painful because that was a huge, Being a parent is a huge source of energy. It's also a big excuse people use. Oh, I can't, My kids. I have kids. I can't do that anymore. I can't go out anymore. I can't help anymore because I've got to go home to the kids. Now raise your hand if you've ever used your family as an excuse. We all do it, But again, Then we revert to effect and let that situation become the cause. Something that, Because we spoke about the ability to allow the kids to thrive and go through a process, Something that also helps me and there's no cruise control concepts. I like to call them cruise control concept. People are like, Just tell me what I do. That's all I'm going to do and I'm going to keep doing it. I'm going to do it well. I'm going to tell everybody no. Yeah, I'm a people pleaser. Now I'm going to tell everybody no for the rest of my life. Yeah, Exactly. The power of Kabbalah is that you have to say no and yes interchangeably all the time, But the problem is people say yes when they should say no and they say no when they should say yes and that's how the negative side works. To move forward in life, You always have to use opposing concepts, But at the perfect time, At the non-reactive time. Something that also helps me to remind me to give space for the children to go through a process is that no matter what you do, The kids also have a process. Think about yourself. Think about all that you went through in your life and maybe you had parents that tried their best to shield you from it or maybe you had parents that weren't involved at all, But no matter what, You're still going to go through your process. Sometimes the way I look at it is kids have to go through something. A lot of this stuff is already pre-written. There's no way that you're going to unwrite the rules of their destiny of their tikkun. They've had thousands of lifetimes before you and they're carrying all this baggage in and now we think we're going to write the new script and that's not how it works. There's a lot of baggage that's coming and a lot of this stuff, This baggage is forming their consciousness also. This is a fight. The fight of your child's baggage from thousands of lifetimes. Imagine an unhealthy body, Someone who walks into a trainer's office or a dietitian's office with this 40 years of being in the worst health and now you have to help guide this person back to a better course. There's other forces at play and some of these forces have to unfold organically as well. So I'm always kind of reminding myself of that and also not being hard on ourselves because I guess there's not, I don't know a parent that's hard on themselves so I don't know if you know a parent that's hard on themselves or I'm sure every parent thinks they're a great parent, But we're also very hard on ourselves because we're trying to control the process of our children and control thousands of lifetimes and it's impossible and your ego will take a beating at some point when you realize that you can't do that. So that doesn't mean you're totally hands off either and you're disconnected. These are the two opposing ways of parenting. One is step in maximum effort as best you know how, Making sure you follow the guidelines that we just laid out for you. At the same time knowing to let go and as Elisheva said which is you're just a manager, You're managing a soul. It's not you're a soul, You're managing a soul and allowing them to go through their process as well. It's very difficult and I don't want to make it sound like anybody has it easy, Right? I think parenting is one of the more difficult jobs you can accept as a human being on the planet, But there are, I want to make sure that you guys know also through the episodes that we've done this month that there are tools that can help you navigate the parenting terrain. I can also see from the comments that there are people who are, They have their own specific struggles or challenges that seem like nobody understands, But I can give, Maybe I'll spend a couple of minutes giving some examples on how to help your child become the cause and to David's point, You could probably use it at work with the team that you work with and in almost any other situation, But just in terms of helping them, Recognizing let's say you see your child and you want to empower them to be the cause. By the way, The other challenge, I shouldn't say other, There's so many, But one of the challenges that we face as children is what I call herd parenting, That you try to parent your kids, Assuming you have multiple children, As a unit when they are all unique individuals with unique strengths and unique challenges and on one hand, Yes, They live in the same house, They might share a bedroom, They certainly share parents, Economic status, A home, A religion, Et cetera, But they are unique individuals and Kabbalah teaches, We talked about in the earlier episodes, That the children choose their parents based upon what they need instilled within them in order to accomplish their tikkun. For example, You're looking at each of your individual children and their unique abilities and when I say abilities, It's also based on age. Your older child may be able to do more than your youngest child, But each of them need to be challenged to be as responsible as they can for whatever they can be responsible for. It may be easier for you to clean up after them. You may do a better job in cleaning up after them, But if they are capable of cleaning up after themselves, They should be empowered to do so. To me, That's a perfect example. Maybe you'll do it faster, It'll be easier for you or maybe they have homework to do or maybe you're in the kitchen and you're tired of asking them, But at the end of the day, By you defaulting to, I'll do it anyway, You're taking away their. . . You're detracting from their ability to be the cause. I think one of the other things that you can do is empower them to problem solve. I think that for us as parents, It's also easier to tell them what to do than it is to help them strategize better approaches, Especially even after the fact. Your kids have an argument over something. Maybe they're fighting over a toy or who gets to watch TV or who sits in the front, All of those sibling-related things, And after the fact, You can say to one of them or both of them, Wow, That was really tough. What can we do next time so that things work out differently? It's very easy to bark out the response when things aren't going well or the solution when things aren't going well, But the more that you challenge them to come up with the solutions themselves, The better equipped they are going to be in the long run to be the cause and to handle their own challenges. It definitely helps. I shouldn't say it doesn't help. That's why I mentioned my kids go to a school. We have created this school where kids can learn this 9 or whatever it is, 8 o'clock in the morning until 4 o'clock in the afternoon imbued within the rest of their studies, But my point is they don't have to go to a spiritual school in order for you to share these concepts with them. If you have taken Kabbalah courses, If you want to take Kabbalah courses, You can teach them those same things. Nothing about Kabbalah is rated R or illicit or there may be teachings about intimacy and sexuality, But it's not about that. It's really distilling down those concepts that you yourself as a student learn on the level that they can understand and living them. That also means being able to say, You know what? I got reactive before. I actually had a fabulous conversation with my kids the other day. My son said to me, My oldest, Not my oldest, My 10 year old, He said, You know, You were a bit aggressive before. And I was like, Really? How do you mean? And he said, Well, You wanted me to brush your teeth. You wanted me to brush my teeth, But you were like, Brush your teeth instead of can you brush your teeth? And I was like, Wow, That is such great feedback. I didn't even notice that I barked it that way. I'm going to be more conscious of it. And if you catch me again, If next time you see it happening, Let me know. Now you may say, Well, Your child should respect you. It was disrespectful that they called you on your stuff. My goal in the home is to create an environment where everybody is open to feedback and everybody takes responsibility for the part of them that's not perfect. Also for the part of them that's perfect, But especially for the part of them that's not perfect so that then my son is able to say, You know what? I shouldn't have said those things and I'm going to be more responsible about that next time. And the next time you hear me talking like that or you see me doing that, I want to be called out on it. And what we're modeling that behavior. I had another quote I wanted to share, But basically, You know, The idea is that, I wish I could find it now, But I don't want to waste the rest of the time we have. The gist of the quote was that inevitably our kids will not do what we tell them to do, But they will emulate what we actually do. And so being aware that you can bring them into a spiritual practice just by bringing them into your own spiritual practice. I'm working on this. I'm trying to be more patient. I'm trying to be more mindful of my words. I'm trying to, You know, They tell me, Oh, Well, You're, You know, The famous one, You know, You're on your phone. We were going to go swimming. So my daughter said to me, But you're always on your phone when we're at the pool. So wow, That's huge feedback. Amazing. Maybe I'm going to leave my phone behind the next time we go to the pool so that I can be there fully present. And obviously we could talk about, We could probably give 20 episodes just on raising spiritual children. But we don't have time for that because the energy is ever shifting. However, I'm like, Well, What am I going to do with that? Having a Kabbalistic Astrology reading on your children is a very powerful way to understand what, What are the tools that they need? What is the wisdom that they need? What are the challenges that they need help being equipped for so that you can do the best job as a manager that you can do? Please continue to send us your questions, Like, Rate, Review. All of your feedback and all of your sharing is really at the foundation of what we do here at the Weekly Energy Boost. And I can't wait to see what next week episode, Next week's episode brings for all of us as a parent, I can tell you as a family member, As a daughter, As a sister, Et cetera, I am learning so much from these episodes with you. So thank you for being there to listen to us and we will see you next week on the Weekly Energy Boost.