In this paper, I'd like to show you the way back to the road of your childhood, a voyage necessary to learn what we can do to begin to heal ourselves of own wounds. We all still carry our "inner" child of our past: this "inner" child sometimes needs to have its wounds cleansed and exposed to the healing process, before we can help those children we live and play with each day avoid and/or heal their own. I have changed the metaphor from wounds and bandages to a journey. I like to think it enables us to travel back, to reexamine the bumps and glories of our passageway, and then to travel forward to experience the gift of wholeness.
Through the healing of our wounds of the past comes the restoration of our relationship with our inner child. It is this healthy relationship with our inner child that gives us the capacity to move toward the children of today. Being comfortable with our inner child will enable us to regain our own self-respect, and in turn, grant respect to the children in our lives.
Please join me on this journey, a trip during which I hope you will experience or reexperience both the beginnings of the recognition and healing of your own "inner" child and the ability to see your role as parents and adults in the lives of children as a way to facilitate their, as well as your own, stretch to wholeness. As parents and teachers, we are not in the business of producing a product. We are, instead, in charge of providing the environment for the raw material to create itself.
The first chapter will explore the preparations necessary to take this journey. We will explore parenting, its' definitions and goals. We will begin to take a look at where and how we learned to parent, and how our childhood effects our parenting today. The second chapter explains my concept of ChildCaring: parenting as a three part process; the physical needs of our child, the psychological needs of our child, and the needs of the inner child of our past. A look at whether we ever arrive at our destination in parenting will be the subject of the next chapter.
At the end of each chapter will also be found a series of questions and ideas to help the reader understand and explore the guidebook and their personal reactions and thoughts to the material contained in it. The last chapters contain an annotated bibliography of suggested guidebooks, and an outline and self-instructions for those interested in forming a group to talk for a couple of hours, or a couple of weeks (or years?) about what you've found in this guidebook.
As part of my information gathering process, I designed, and administered a questionnaire. The questions and responses have been integrated throughout the guidebook. The questionnaire in its entirety, and a summary of the statistical data about the respondents can be found in the appendix.
My desire is that this paper will be found useful for parents and teachers alike as a jumping off point. I envision this paper being used by teachers in their staff development meetings, by parents in self-help situations, by pre-schools for parent discussion groups, and by individuals who want to begin a journey on their own. In a society where self-growth is a huge money-making business, I hope this paper will provide some tools for growth without undue cost.
Ellen Bass states "We can teach our children to respect themselves, to trust their feelings, to trust their inner voice, we can teach our children their dignity, their worth, their ability to discriminate. We must learn these things ourselves so we can teach them to our children". (Bass, 1985:47) And John Holt adds, "We fool ourselves if we think ways can be found to give children what all the rest of us so sorely lack." (Holt,1976:112)
When to leave on this journey? When you are ready to give to yourself what you work so hard to give to your child. In giving this voyage to yourself, your gift to your child becomes more effective and delightful. The path is always there: it is but our choice to stop, turn around, and begin our journey, backwards through to wholeness.