How to Let Your Children Expose Your Inner Child

Finding your inner child is difficult in this day and age. I love having children because they are constantly guiding me towards my inner child. How do they do this? Just by being themselves, young, naïve and full of life.

Walking on Thin Ice – Towards My Inner Child

One morning in march, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with my Inner child by going for a walk. It was -3 degree Celsius with a blue bird sky and a very strong spring sun. For those of you who don’t live in Canada, this is actually fairly mild weather for us in March. It was a beautiful and unexpected day. What made it even more amazing was that there was very thin patches of ice sprinkled on the path. Walking on ice is not most peoples idea of fun. However for me, that morning, it was amazing.

Explorers in Training

When I dropped my kids off at daycare that morning there were small collection of ice puddles in the parking lot. My oldest son ran excitedly to stomp on the very thin ice that had formed overnight. His devious little brother followed in with contagious enthusiasm. And of course, so did I. There is just something so primal about breaking ice with a step. Feeling the ice shatter below the carefully placed boot. Than, hearing the satisfying crunch as the weight shifts onto the ice, watching the lines spread in all directions.

I love watching my sons be explorers. I am always incredibly grateful to spend time with them and retrograde to a toddler myself. Playing is such an important part of life. As adults and especially as parents we often forget how important it is to have fun. There is an inner child screaming to come out in all of us. Having kids is helping me reconnect with that incontestable need.

Playing is Contagious

After a few minutes of parking lot fun, I was inspired to go for a walk. Our local “forest park,” seemed like the perfect place to enjoy more ice cracking. Boy did I get what I was looking for! We had just had a series of thaws and freezes which left the path littered with indented footprints. Holes of various sizes were filled with small and not so small ice patches. Each patch had a perfectly formed, thin crisp beautiful white film. That’s where the real satisfaction is, the thin white ice.

I hopped from ice patch to ice patch. All the while just thinking, “oh here is one, ohhh, and another, and another.” I was so engrossed that I didn’t see the middle-aged couple that was walking in the opposite direction. When I realized they were there my first thought was they must think I am nuts. But no, they had just realized what I was doing and they were happily laughing.

Drawing Others In

You see, the inner child is contagious. It draws others out to play. I just wanted more, and I greedily stomped around the park looking for more ice. My path crossed many other passersby’s mostly elderly folk who looked at me with a mixture of confusion, and amusement. Eventually, I was lucky to cross a man who looked to be in his late 70s. Who upon realizing what I was doing decided to join in the fun. When the ice was broken all around us, we both laughed, smiled and continued on our way. My inner child was having way too much fun. Is there such a thing?

That morning, I became a toddler again. All this because I took just a few minutes to let my toddlers be kids on the way to daycare. Its truly beautiful what happens when we are present. My kids bring me there more often than anything else in my life.

The Inner Child Plays in the Present

I think that as adults we forget sometimes the importance of letting our inner child out. It lives within us and just wants a chance to explore again. I think this is why we like video games, board games, playing sports, and being with our children. It reminds us what its like to be in the moment. To just play, do our best, explore, learn and grow without effort.

I love that my two toddlers allow me to feel this way daily. As destabilizing as it is I am trying to partake as much as I can. Indulging puddle jumping after day care even if we have no rain boots or pants on. Getting dirty and sliding in the mud because, it’s amusing and freeing. Being able to abandon yourself to the present moment is one of the most amazing parts of being human.

What is the Worse that Can Happen?

We spend so much time thinking about the consequence that may come later. We forget that the only time we actually live in is now. Sure, I have two slopping wet boys covered in mud, and my car is filthy. Nonetheless those few seconds of pure joy that come from letting go. Along with the memories of that moment makes it all worthwhile.

I know toddlers are energy vampires. They demand us to be present both physically and emotionally. That demand, is so simple and so full of love that it is hard to refuse it. Life is beautiful and toddlers are the little chaotic beings that menace the status quo. They remind us of the beauty and joy of just being present.

How Can We Incorporate more Play into our Lives?

This is bringing me to what concerns me about our current world. The phenomenal amount of pressures our kids experience at such an early age. Children need to get to daycare, they must be clean, we must be there before a certain time. There is a lot of pressure from society to “be” a certain way. This pressure is often what gets in the way of fully letting go and enjoying the moment.

Why are the expectations so high and who are those expectations really serving? It seems very selfish and way overboard. I was recently fairly shocked to learn that my sons were expected to eat in silence at daycare. In addition, they have multiple times during the day were they must sit quietly and independently. If kids cannot their true selves at daycare than where are they going to be allowed to? When do they have time to connect to their true inner self? No wonder it is so difficult for us to connect with our own inner child.

Prioritizing our Inner Child

At some point our society became obsessed with micromanaging and quantifying things and we forgot what was the most important. We forgot what it truly means to live. We spend our life trying to achieve unattainable goals, at the detriment of our own health. How does that actually serve us?

Making Decisions that Matter

I have been wondering for a long time, how our decisions impact our most precious resource, our kids. How did we build a world where they are not at the center of our decisions? Sure, we are all self serving and our own well being is important. Order is important and I am not suggesting complete chaos just a little bit more wiggle room. When greed, power, and money are at the center of decisions our kids cannot be put first. Our kids childhood is being crushed in the name of order. How long can we keep holding on to these values as a society?

Somewhere in the process, we’ve forgotten what it means to live. Children are becoming increasingly difficult to deal with in formal settings. Why? Because they keep exposing what we already know but don’t want to face. That we’ve made life boring, predictable, and a labor of suffering.

Our children are building a foundation for who they are going to be. They are building their inner child. It is our role as parents to make sure we make space for them to do that. The easiest way isn’t to crush their inner child, but rather the much easier alternative of joining in.

I could not be more grateful for my two-house terrorists. They remind me everyday what joy and play looks and feels like. They invite my inner child out to play, and I am going to join in. Will you?

If you Want to read more about how to reconnect with your inner child, check out my other post: How to Make Your Inner Child an Ally.

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