We all want our children to be healthy and happy. When they are young we have to make some decisions for them. Especially when it comes down to the diet, we take a huge responsibility for developing healthy eating structures. The first years of a life are very important to establish these hopefully healthy patterns.
But the older our children grow, the more we need to let them make their own decisions.
And sometimes this is the hardest thing to do as a parent. Supporting our children to find their own way does take a lot from us.

This works fine as long as they stay “on track”. Or what we consider as the “right track”.
If you see your kid making a bad choice, giving in to some strange peer group pressure, it is so hard to hold yourself back and let them experience the fault and the consequences (Of course not when they want to touch a pot with boiling water). In order to be able to make such decisions, they need to make some bad ones and learn from it.
In our belief this is the only way to support our children to learn to make healthy decisions.

There is nothing wrong with a bad decision. The very interesting question is more about how you deal with such an experience.
Please ask yourself this.
What are your consequences??
We need to trust our kids. This is the main message here.
We need to trust our kids, that they will find their way. They will walk their way in any way, but the more we support them with trust, the easier they will walk it and become happy and healthy adults.
The easier they will build up confidence to make a decision (even against peer group pressure) and stick to it.
They will learn to trust their own feelings regarding a topic and not what the strong leaders of their peer group have to say, or even YOU have to say.
We want our children to be strong! Strong enough to be able to make good decisions. So let your kids learn it from an early age.
 
This is one aspect I do not like so much about the western school system. Children are not asked for their opinion, for their interest. The teachers have to stick to a system, somebody invented at some point in time. It is about reproducing data, following strange rules in a streamlined way.
It can be hard for our kids to really stay in contact with their inner guidance system that always tells us what is right and wrong.

But we as parents can do our part to support and strengthen our kids!
We need to lead by example.
How do you deal with bad decisions?
How often do you do the right thing?
How delightful do you enjoy your greens and veggies?
How much TV do you watch?

These are important questions you need to answer in order to be the best support possible.
But even if you are not living up to your own expectations, there is no problem. It's ok!
As long as you really work on yourself and try to change things for the better your kids will see that.

This is all you can expect from yourself. This also all you can ever expect from anybody around you, including your children!

Be the change you want to see in your children.
And the last aspect is to simply take it easy!
We need to allow ourselves and our children to make mistakes, and still be in love with us.
This is what we need to teach our children, because this is the emotional space in which we can change our actions for the better.
When we start to blame ourselves for not being that perfect rawfooder, that successful ever-smiling human being with no problems, that mum or dad, we separate ourselves from what we are right now.

This makes it hard to change. We spin around in circles feeling bad about this specific characteristic.
We are what we are right now, and this is good.
As I said before: The only thing you can ask yourself for is: Work on yourself to become better.
A mixture of all the points above will really help your kids to become confident to make healthy decisions, sometimes even against the group pressure.
So you see, there is so much work to do. You still can do so much to help your children, even if you think that they do not listen to you.
If you work on yourself, you will shine and radiate as a living example of health and truth. This will have a stronger effect then a 1000 words, and it gives you the power back.
You can do something about it.





WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE?

Feel free to use it, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:


Raising their raw food family, Katie and Ka Sundance want to share all their simple secrets and insights to help your family become healthier. To learn how to live a well balanced and enjoyable raw food family life, register for the free articles at http://www.therawfoodfamily.com