Jack and Jill, a popular children’s magazine, ran a feature called, “I Used to Think…” where an 8-year-old could contribute a story about an old misconception about the world.
Beliefs like “the tree-tops touch the sky’ and ‘my mom always knows where I am’ were common.
I watched 2 6-year old boys almost come to blows about whether the tooth fairy was real, and I simply could not convince a 4-year-old that it was a cartoon character and not he who had smashed the monster.
It is completely normal for children to believe this way. And it’s the job of parents and other caretakers to gently help kids to understand how the world really works.
The problem comes when children don’t talk about their beliefs about the world — especially when they are under stress. Parents often accidentallly cause the stress by making unrealistic threats or promises or simply repeating ordinary statements like ‘boys don’t cry’ or ‘stop asking for stuff.’
If you were on the receiving end of experiences like this, and most of us were, they may still be shaping your view of the world.
It may be time to start really listening to the stories you tell yourself and see if they are causing unnecessary anxiety or stress in your life.
This paragraph is a comment I wrote about a passage on Page 68 of Letting It Go: Relieve Anxiety and Toxic Stress in Just a Few Minutes Using Only Words (Rapid Relief with Logosynthesis®.)
You can see the passage in the book. You can also see the excerpt here. This link will take you to Bublish.com where I regularly publish comments on parts of this book. This is a site where authors share their work. You can subscribe to my musings, there, as well as to the musings of many other authors. It’s a great place to learn about new books and I recommend that you visit.