We have often heard the saying, ‘like father like son’ or ‘like mother like daughter’, what does this mean?
To sum it up, it’s nothing too mysterious, children ‘learn what they live’ and then they ‘live what they learn’. The brain is our most powerful resource, storing information and recalling it automatically and uncritically.
We all know about the left and right brain, there is a lot written on this, however, we are going to take a look at the top and bottom brain. If we were to draw a line separating the top from the bottom brain, we can start to understand how and why children live out in their adult life, what they learnt as children.
Let’s look at the top and bottom brain. The top is your conscious mind, the thoughts and actions that come from your conscious mind are deliberate. The bottom is your subconscious mind, the thoughts and actions coming from your subconscious mind are automatic. Memory comes from a conscious level and this is why we don’t have perfect memories, whereas recall comes from a subconscious level and is not controlled by us consciously. We all have 100% perfect recall, some people may even refer to it as dejavu; that sense of having experienced something before.
If you can imagine the subconscious mind as a filing cabinet, containing individual files which are indexed. Every experience that we have as children is indexed and filed in your subconscious mind, to be automatically accessed at a later stage.
An example is, if you are running hot water into a bath and you tell your toddler it’s hot, do not go there. They are curious and have no idea of the danger, so as you turn your back, the child leans over the bath and puts his hands into the water. Ouch he burns, it’s unpleasant and very real. That experience is being indexed and filed in the ‘burn’ file in your child’s subconscious mind. A few months down the line, you are cooking and you tell your child not to touch the stove, it’s hot and it will burn him. Automatically, the burn file is accessed in your child’s subconscious mind, it is recalled on a conscious level and immediately the child steps back because he is now aware that the burn is sore. This is how children learn life lessons.
Another example is; if a child is constantly told to eat all his food, otherwise he can’t have dessert. An experience is recorded in the subconscious mind. It can manifest in adult life as an eating disorder or a weight problem because the childhood lesson that is being recalled is; ‘I must always finish my food, even if I am full’. Or the childhood lesson can be one of ‘achievements are rewarded with food’. Both leading to overeating.
We also believe that children live up to the labels we give them. If we constantly tell them they are naughty, this is recorded subconsciously. It is recalled to a conscious level constantly and the child thinks he is naughty and therefore he behaves in that way. What we could say instead is; ‘you are a good boy, but good boys don’t do that’, the child is hearing good and good is what is being recorded sub-consciously and then recalled constantly.
In the same vein, if a child lives with ridicule, he will be shy. If he lives with hostility, he learns to fight. If he lives with shame, he will learn to feel guilty.
On the other hand, if a child lives with tolerance, he will learn to be patient. If he lives with encouragement, he learns to be confident. If a child lives with praise, he will learn to appreciate it. If a child lives with fairness, he learns about justice and if a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he will learn to find love in the world.
This really demystifies’ like father like son’ or ‘like mother like daughter’. Children learn what they live and they live what they learn.
We, therefore, need to be careful, especially in the formative years, of who and what we expose our children to.
In the words of Haim Ginott; ‘Children are like wet cement, whatever falls on them makes an impression’. No matter what you say or do, it all leaves a mark on the children around you. A child who witnesses violence and arguments will be scared indefinitely until they reach an adult milestone where they can go against what their subconscious messages are telling them. This does not just happen at a certain age, it takes a lot of hard work to undo negative messages and reprogramme positive ones. It is therefore our job as parents and caretakers to positively input good wholesome messages into our children’s subconscious minds.
Having and raising a child is like buying a brand new computer. You bring that computer home and it has no operating system or programmes; you have to install those. Similarly, you have a baby and bring it home. That baby has no values or operating system. Parents along with caregivers and whomever you expose that child to start to programme the child with values, defining experiences and other inputs. All of these inputs form part of the brain’s subconscious filing cabinet. It is hard to undo what is learnt in childhood, as parents and caregivers we need to be ever aware of the programming we give our little ones. Between birth and 6 years old they will learn and record more experiences than they will in the rest of their lives. By 6 years old a child will have 60% and by 12 years old he will have 80% of his subconscious mind programmed with values and attitudes, that he will operate off as an adult.
In terms of the brain and how our children will eventually cope in the world, it is said:
Garbage in, garbage out. Good in, good out. The brain is our most powerful resource.