Children are not cars on the assembly line of life

For his blog, The Night Sea Journey, SGF writes about contemporary pressures to grow up in "The Lost Childhood". He introduces his concerns with, "As a teacher in a public school system I often wonder about our society, what it values and it's impact on our children. It seems to me that too many kids today are not allowed to be children. Too many are not getting their basic life needs met. They are driven away from their basic qualities of spontaneous play and youthful vitality towards the goals of our society's desires driven largely by capitalism!"

SGF quotes Thomas Moore's Dark Nights of the Soul through his post, including Moore's view, "We repress the child by forcing children into religious and character building camps, by excluding them from social life, by containing them in poorly equipped and dispiriting schools, and by demanding that they grow up quickly through extra lessons and limits on play, and by surrendering them to too many au pairs and babysitters. In repressing the child, we keep the troubling human soul and specifically it's child qualities away from adult pursuits."

SGF then links Moore's observation, ""Many people live in emotional darkness because they have never fully enjoyed a child spirit in their overly serious lives," to Michael Jackson's recent death.

Blogger shares Moore's views of parenting

Today, Elizabeth A. Leib blogs about Thomas Moore’s parenting tips, presented in this month’s Natural Awakenings magazine. Leib writes, "[Moore] connects spirituality with parenting and the ways it can, for those who are alert, remove false virtue and increase faith. I particularly share his idea of the end goal: to help a child become a thoughtful, engaged adult."

In his article, Moore suggests, "When you understand parenthood as a spiritual calling, you will be able to do the work better and with deeper satisfaction. Spiritual vision gives valuable emotional distance and disentangles your own past experiences and complex emotions from the present, so that you don’t pile them up on your child. In this way, spirit and soul work together to make for good parenting."

This is an easily available download of Moore’s November-December column in Spirituality and Health.