Page 33 - Tracy Anderson Magazine - Fall 2021

Because education is such an important part of parenting,
it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the responsibility. We
end up focusing too much on what to teach our children,
instead of how we’re teaching them. When we abandon the
how, what we want to teach our children gets lost in trans-
lation or worse; they learn the complete opposite of what
we intended. Often, we become too nearsighted and think
education means teaching them to adopt our political, so-
cial, and religious views, but educating children isn’t about
turning them into clones of their parents. It’s about rec-
ognizing them as completely separate, autonomous spirits
who have been born to create their own unique human ex-
perience, to become their own person.

Our job in that process is to provide them with gentle
guidance while getting out of the way as much as possible.
By forcing ideas on them about how they and the world
“should be” based on our beliefs, we may get a child who
can parrot back to us what we want to hear. In the end,
however, it’s the child who pays the price because he lacks
the discernment to make up his own mind about almost
everything. and their children will live in based on the choices we make
as parents today.
Best for Who?
EDUC A TION When parents say, “I only want what’s best for my child,” What will make that world a better one to live in, a child
while forcing rigid ideas on her or meddling in her life,
that knows her place in all the right political, economic,
what they really mean is that they want her to make the
social, and religious groups? More titles and labels? The
WITHOUT EGO decisions they would make under the same circumstanc- world doesn’t need more divisiveness. It needs more uni-
ty. It doesn’t need more forceful opinions. It needs more
es. While most parents want the best for their children, in
open-mindedness. It doesn’t need more materialism. It
this situation, they’re subconsciously reinforcing their own
egos by creating another generation that can affirm back needs more generosity. It doesn’t need more judgment.
to them what they already believe. It needs more people who can have a civil dialogue with
A lesson on how we’re teaching our children, by Dr. Sherry Sami. others, knowing they have the opportunity to both teach
Part of conscious parenting is knowing that children are and learn something, even though their viewpoints might
born into this world to choose their own path, not to re- differ.
peat ours. Life is built on diversity, with billions of different
people each with their own viewpoint. Things are supposed By teaching our children these larger concepts of life, we
to be different. That’s why there are thousands of differ- avoid trapping them in an ego-based us-versus-them men-
ent species of trees, flowers, animals, and just about ev- tality. There’s no fear of someone else threatening their be-
erything else. The world doesn’t need another you. In fact, liefs or way of life. They don’t just see themselves as in the
there will only ever be one you in all of time. You couldn’t world, but part of it and the responsibility that comes with
create another you if you tried. Yet, we still try to force making it a better place. When we focus on teaching our
sameness on the world through what we call educating our children these larger, more expansive values, the decisions
children.
they make in the other areas of life, like politics and money,
Kelly Sikkema, courtesy unsplash.com Labels and Liability tual tools to do so.
will work for good because we’ll have given them the spiri-
The impact of raising a conscious child who can think
Cultivating Concepts
for herself carries a ripple effect that reaches far beyond
her own life. The child we raise today will go on to touch
When I pick my children up from school each day, I ask
them the same three questions. The idea is to help them
thousands of people in her lifetime, who will then go on to
incorporate these broader essential values into their daily
touch hundreds of thousands of people until the impact
lives and to pay attention to the choices they’re making in
grows exponentially reaching around the world. Literally,
social situations. I want them to see how they can show up
the kind of child we raise changes the world her children

30 31