1.  Practice self-development and self-discipline.

2.  Develop observation, contemplation, and meditation skills to nurture your relationship to guiding Spiritual Beings.  Observe your child (hair, eyes, features, limbs, color, movements, smells, sounds, for example.)  The percepts that you notice become spiritual food for Angels and Higher Beings to give you intuition and inspiration about your child.

3.  You are your child’s destiny guide, they are your teacher.  What issues do they bring up from your childhood?  What family patterns?

4.  Practice presence of mind to be able to do what needs to be done. Presence models,  ” I love you enough to be here in relationship to you.”

5.  Allows your child to live in their stream of consciousness. Slow down.

6.  Create rhythm that allows stream to flow.

7.  Pay attention to the rhythms of sleeping and eating.  These have a great and lasting    effect on the child’s bodily constitution and sense of well being.

8. Allow for downtime and slow flow time, that allows family members to digest soul experiences.  Hang out together doing nothing but enjoy each other.

9. Nurture awareness of imitation so that you do what they can appropriately imitate. Allow them to participate in your daily life of tending the hearth and home.

10.  Do not do for them what they can do.

11.  Be active with your child in daily chores, nature, games, tumbling, gardening, and care for the hearth and home.  Allow them to participate in your life.  For a portion of the day do in their presence what they can do with you.  This fosters for the child a sense of meaning, belonging and purpose.

12. Cultivate the virtues of gratitude, wonder, awe and respect.  This nurtures health and wellbeing and supports a mood of self discipline.

13. Pay attention to the environment which affects their physical organism in building their physical body.  Simple and beautiful surroundings provide the most healthy influence.  Limit technology and media.

14.  Develop a strong visual imagination of your day with positivity, firmness and love.  Nurture joy and happiness in simplicity.  Review with yourself at the end of the day what did and did not work.

15.  Visualize challenging situations with your children and how you will react in the future.

16.  Consistency and predictability creates security.  Use “No” 10% of the time and modeling and redirection the other 90% of the time.  Realize that model imperative means that they will do what you do, not what you say, as they imitate who you are.

17.  Cultivate good habits and a strong will in the early years through imitation, repetition, delay of gratification and  not too many choices.

18.  Use simple communication with phrases and gestures.  Show and tell them what to do, and avoid dwelling on what not to do.  Make statements and minimize questions and choices, which tend to be confusing to the consciousness of a young child.  Their consciousness better relates to “ we” as they do not yet feel the awareness of separateness, of I and you.  Stories have a deep effect on the child and reasoning is confusing.  To cultivate reasonable children, model reasonable behavior that reflects well reasoned choices that are in alignment with your values and feelings.

19.  Minimize adult activities such as movies, museums, lectures, concerts, tours, etc.

20.  Examine your boundaries.  Boundaries are an expression of how your higher Ego establishes values and integrates thinking, feeling and willing.  Children need a firm, purposeful, kind and benevolent leader.  They need a sense that you are in charge, the captain of the ship.

21.  Children thrive in a flock where they can learn politeness, kindness, compassion, sharing, and helpfulness, harmonizing their will and tempering the self in relationship to others needs and desires.

22.  Children can become challenging when they learn new skills.  Time for you to evaluate your relationship with them.

23. At challenging times pick up clutter, clean, change the environment.  Go outside with them.

24.  Avoid bribery, such as if you do this then you will get….  Instead the carrot and motivation  are more helpful, for example, I’m hungry.  Let’s go get something to eat.”

25.  Make a heart/physical connection daily and your child will cooperate more willingly.  Use praise sparingly, but acknowledge and express gratitude for their help, thoughtfulness and abilities.

26.  Remember, you are their destiny guide on earth and they bring important new spiritual capacities and insights from their recent sojourn in the spiritual world.

27.  Hold the highest and best thoughts of your child and that is mainly what they will manifest.

The Spiritual Aspects of the Twelve Senses and Virtues to Cultivate as One Ages

These are the virtues one can cultivate regarding each of the Twelve Senses that Rudolf Steiner discussed. One can cultivate these before old age so that the challenges of aging are met gracefully and create a positivity around one that attracts a healthy environment and relationships.

Sight- Look inward, focus on inner vision of wisdom and justice of events of destiny, especially so called failures, reversals, misfortunes and accept as needed. Be grateful for all lessons learned, peacefully and without regret. Recognize destiny as a friend.

Hearing-Listen with soul, silently, selflessly with full attention and without criticism. Hear what’s being said behind the words, through nonverbal communication. Hear what things of nature and the world are saying. Children often cannot convey what they mean through the words.

Smell-Never turn up your nose or shun others. Instead smell with compassion and love. Sense the true essence of the other one, of their I Am.

Taste- Indulge not in insult but develop courtesy. Avoid criticism and judgment.

Touch- Overcome egotistic curiosity of touching for inquisitiveness, rather touch things and people with reverence. Play instruments and develop skill with handicrafts.

Warmth- Cultivate patience, great warmth of heart, an ardent soul and fiery spirit.

Balance- Focus on inner tranquility and equilibrium.

Sense of Life- Evenness of temper and service to others.

Speech- Sense divine power of the word and be courageous.

Thought- Avoid excessive talkativeness, be silent within and contemplative. Assimilate new ideas.

Sense of Ego of Others- Go beyond appearances/maya. Sense the divine Ego, I Am of the other. Consider the interest of the other as much as your own.

If age becomes a burden strive to be a light filled soul which aims to be a blessing, not a burden.

These thoughts come from the study of Citizens of the Cosmos by Beredene Jocelyn and The Fulfillment of Old Age by Norbert Glas, M.D.