Raising children

Jung differentiates the first and second halves of life, with the first being largely focused on developing an identity to succeed in the world. As adolescents we explore different social groups and activities, internalizing aspects of these things to form an identity. Our identity often relates to what music we listen to, how we dress, our hobbies

Sometimes when you listen closely to your body, the message you hear is a call not for food, but for fasting. You may observe this in animals, which abstain from food when sick, and in young children, who sometimes go days eating hardly anything at all (much to the consternation of their parents!).

The one thing parents can do for their children is live their lives as fully as they can, for this will open the children’s imagination, grant permission to them to have their own journey, and open the doors of possibility for them. Wherever we are stuck, they will have a tendency to be stuck also or will spend their life trying to overcompensate.

Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.

It is a sign of the supreme wisdom of small children that they have no shame or compunction about bursting into tears. They have a more accurate and less pride-filled sense of their place in the world than a typical adult: They know that they are only extremely small beings in a hostile and unpredictable realm, that they can’t control much of what

The writer Zadie Smith puts it better than I ever could, describing having a child as a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.” Smith, echoing the thoughts of everyone else who has seriously considered these issues, points out the risk of close attachments: “Isn’t it bad enough that the beloved, with whom you have experienced genuine joy,