In School & Play: How Can You Help Your Kids' Healthy Development?

I don't have children, but I’m a lover, a life-long learner, and an observer. I had to develop my critical thinking skills to the highest levels.

Two years ago, I almost killed myself following a horrible psychological abuse. I happened to be the victim of a malignant narcissist.

Unlearning and learning again made it possible to easily spot manipulators, even the most brilliant of them who could be internationally recognized as helpers.

After re-writing my subconscious program and reconnecting with my purest gut again, I am even able of sensing the duplicity from the facial expressions and feeling the toxic energy of the manipulators without a filter. But this is between you and me! ??

Please educate yourself around the art of manipulation

Unfortunately, many of the puppet-masters belong to the educational system directly or indirectly through driving empowering programs and are impacting the sanity of your kids.

Let me give you an example: I once listened to a podcast discussing some common challenges observed at schools, and how to guide teachers in understanding and managing them.

One of the two guests was talking about a safe place for kids, and then about formal authority. Making use of this kind of authority, or encouraging it is a Win-Lose paradigm. It is one of the most common patterns between narcissistic personalities.

A rule to always keep in mind in such a context is:

Even when it comes to the most intelligent manipulators, they talk about what they believe deep inside despite doing their best to hide their ugly truth using numerous strategies.

The person was promoting safety and then talking fear. Do you really think people follow others because they are afraid of them? This is exactly the root cause of so many mental and psychological health problems. People are rather following who they trust. Can we trust with fear? Heck no!

We trust trustworthy people. Those who are principle-centered and modeling their talk. Those who make consistent deposits to elevate the Emotional Bank Account as Stephen Covey liked to call the trust reserve.

Those who are able of building healthy relationships are fueled by love instead of fear. Those servant leaders are genuinely inspiring people around them, but definitely not through formal authority. Rather compassion and moral authority.

The major problem which could occur is that — without being able to pay attention to it before it is too late — many manipulators could be sadly taken for kind-hearted leaders. How come? They are masters at psychological mirroring.

When someone mirrors us, they are doing a range of things. They may mimic us, emulate us, be interested in us, share our interest, point out our strengths, gently point out our weaknesses, and simply reflect us back. Healthy mirroring involves a person who sees us accurately, and who allows us to see them as well. It is safe. It is reciprocal. It is honest. It is kind. Having this sort of holistic mirroring leaves us feeling safe. Narcissistic mirroring is a whole other game. The process is less about seeing you in some meaningful way than it is about data gathering. ~ Dr. Ramani Durvasula

What is that supposed to mean? Those narcissists can not only mirror real servant leaders and practice their outlook but also give anybody they are interacting with the impression of being seen and listened to through their fake empathy.

More to the point, if we did not learn to question anything including our own thoughts, chances are high to be fooled by manipulative individuals.

This applies to adults; needless to talk about kids who are still building their identity, and craving others to get them… When kids open up to manipulators, it makes them victims of future gaslighting and invalidation.

This is called psychological abuse, and it takes a toll on your kids’ sanity.

To come back to the podcast, the person gave an example about an emergency happening in an airplane to support her idea about the students’ need for a strong teacher who does not have to be their friend; rather their savior in critical situations through the formal authority.

This is specifically the narcissists’ limiting belief you need to spot!

Interestingly, servant leaders are the most resilient individuals in the room. Consequently, they are always taking the right and quickest resolution in dangerous situations.

And people would follow them in any decision they take even when it sounds nonsense. Why? Because they know how much their leaders care.

Moral of the story: To all the parents in the world, I am aware of how much work you are already putting in protecting your kids from any physical harm.

I know you are doing your best — sometimes even at your expense — to grant them access to the most prestigious schools in terms of academic results.

What I am suggesting here is that protecting their mental and psychological health is equally important — if not more!

Thus, I am gently inviting you to educate yourself around narcissism and manipulation in general and to make sure you check with your kid(s) what happens during their day in detail.

The importance of play

I attended a networking event once. I was silently crying when listening to the success story of one of the panelists. The guy was bragging the exponential growth of his video games company and the huge audience was impressed and clapping.

I was having this internal talk: “You must be kidding me… What are you applauding? Are you satisfied with slowing murdering your own kids?”

It was sad for me to witness such a lack of awareness… Every single kid has the right to be raised as a kid, and stay connected to their original greatness. This is possible through real play instead of killing their creativity with the different entertainment forms among other factors:

• Having emotionally present caregivers consistently,
• Being helped to build healthy boundaries and encouraged to have their own identity,
• Staying connected to their intrinsic worth; in other words that they will unconditionally be loved no matter what they do,
• Having heir abundance mentality nurtured — that is making them willing to grow and thrive without any need to compare themselves to their peers, etc…

If only that healthy parenting style was the rule followed by all parents, we would have been living in a completely different world. Interestingly, the balance would not be fully reached to be realistic.

How come? There will still be psychopaths whose brain has been proved to function abnormally; unless the science could decorticate the abnormalities in details and probably find a way to treat them in the future…

Most of this evidence has come from brain imaging studies examining activity levels in certain regions of the brain, the results of which have caused many to speculate that there might be abnormalities in the basic brain ‘wiring’ of psychopaths that make it difficult or impossible for them to develop a normal sense of concern for the welfare of others. ~ Dr. George Simon

We also need to be honest and admit there are many character-disturbed parents who would never be able to elevate to such a noble mission; simply because the only thing they care about is themselves.

They would rather be a source of abuse. This has been previously discussed here: Shall we take our kids’ sanity more seriously?

So, assuming you are not part of this dangerous group, you basically have two options:

• Keep your kids connected to their gifted talents and the potential they would be progressively developing, and using as contributions in our interdependent world. Those passions can literally create miracles if combined with the healthy subconscious program you would be writing for them in alignment with the principles.
• Slowly killing them from the inside when hijacking both who they are and what they can offer to the world in terms of ‘dos’ requiring all their creativity and a magnificent synergy between their left and right brains.

I truly hope you will go for the first option. More importantly, you will become knowledgeable, and work on your own invasive program, so that the choice could be possible in the first place. I don’t only believe you can, but that you will also do anything for your kids!

With love, Myriam