Hidden messages

My oldest son came to me and said, “Look mom I’ve found all the hidden signs”. He was referring to his book about wizards and magicians, where the reader is challenged to find certain number of hidden signs. I tried to find them but didn’t succeed to find all of them. He is only 4,5 years old and had no problem what so ever in finding all of them.

It doesn’t stop to amaze me how perceptive and observant children are. It is really little that passes through their “radar” unnoticed. It’s wonderful, definitely! I love the capacity of appreciation of small things that my sons have. They can make me stop at my activities to make me appreciate some little thing. Many times these small things during the day make my day more beautiful.

This is why I stop now to reflect on the hidden messages that I, all of us adults, are sending our and other’s children. Things we do without reflecting that are sending them constant messages. I call them hidden messages when we are not aware that we are sending them.

For instance when we are busy with some “adult thing” and our children are demanding our attention and we “pretend” to listen to them but we really aren’t. And they notice, no doubt. Is this the kind of listening model we want to show them? Would we really like them to listen to us in the same way?

There are of course positive “hidden messages”. Every time we prioritize them before ourselves we are sending them the clear message, even without any words, “I love you very much!” When we nurse them when they are ill we are also sending them messages of love even without words.

Let us be more like children by appreciating more the small things and by being more cohering between what we do and what we say, and between what we say and what we really wanted to say…

I’ll come back to that…