The holidays can be a time of joy as families gather to celebrate their love for each other. It also can be an intense time in which sometimes children are exposed to powerful statements from family members, statements that according to author Muriel James in her excellent book Breaking Free, are actually experienced by a child as a kind of spell.
“Spells”
How and why can this happen? It is because children are very often in a trance-like state. At such times, they are acutely vulnerable to what is being said to them.
Parents and caregivers often unwittingly use hypnotic techniques of trance induction followed by hypnotic suggestions when they are having serious conversations with their children.
In these moments parents and caregivers may come very close to a child’s face and say something in a dramatic, forceful way like, “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” in the same way a hypnotherapist might direct a client.
Parents and caregivers often use hypnotic voice tones when they whisper or speak slowly and emphatically, which is how a hypnotherapist speaks when inducing a trance.
Parents and caregivers can put children into trance when they repeat certain rituals or phrases. “Do you understand me?” “Don’t think for a second I don’t know what’s going on in your head.” “You better take this in now because I won’t be saying it again.” Sometimes parents and caregivers call a child by their full name only when they are about to go into a strong message event. The child hears their full name being used and knows a different kind of conversation is about to take place.
Parents and caregivers sometimes force children to chant back to them the commands the parents or caregivers are making: “Tell me again that you will never, never do that again. Look me in the eyes and say it!” Or, “Say you are sorry! Say it!” These exchanges can be more powerful, lodged more deeply in a child’s soul because of the way they have been transmitted with the child being forced to repeat words.
Once parents and caregivers are aware of this category of messages and how often they may have used it without realizing its power, they may now understand why children so often avoid directly looking into an adult’s eyes or put their hands over their ears; they may be trying to avoid being put into a trance state by that parent or caregiver.
This can be a frightening realization, but parents and caregivers can benefit from understanding the power these commands can have on their children. Because the trance-like state is unavoidable, it is important for parents and caregivers to use this power carefully and in healthy ways.
Parents and caregivers can be encouraged to be very aware, intentional and careful when they speak and behave in these more powerful ways with their children and can use the potential for increasing the impact of messages by transmitting messages of encouragement, nurture, hope, capability, value.
“Marjorie Louise Smith, I want you to listen very, very carefully to me. Look in my eyes. I love you today and I will love you tomorrow and for the rest of your life. There is nothing you can do or say that can stop that love. Do you understand me? Tell me you do. Okay, you are to remember this even when you make a mistake or do something you know is wrong. My love is a part of who you are. No matter what, we will work things out.” By having a parent transmit this message using the more powerful methods of “casting a spell,” Marjorie Louise is more likely to store this message in her core belief system in ways that make it very difficult to change or erase.
How Children Think
It is also very important for parents and caregivers to understand that, during the first six years of life, children experience the world as a sort of magical place because they do not have the ability to understand the many complex properties of the things around them.
Children are not cognitively developed enough to understand cause-and-effect or abstract concepts and have to rely almost entirely on other people for information about how the world works.
As a result, messages are processed in very different ways than in older children and in adults.
Telling a very young child that there is a monster in the cookie jar that will bite her hand if she takes an Oreo without permission is perfectly plausible to her. An older child can more easily blow off such a statement.
There are many dimensions to this kind of “magical thinking” (which does not necessarily stop at the end of childhood) and parents and caregivers need to appreciate how easily children can confuse and misinterpret things because they think this way. (An excellent and important reference book on this subject is The Magic Years by Selma Fraiberg.) This tendency to operate using magical thinking contributes to the whole process of easily receiving the spells parents and caregivers can cast.
Young children also think in concrete terms. If parents and caregivers are taking a child on an airplane “to see Grandfather and Grandmother,” the child might expect to see Grandfather and Grandmother living on the airplane.
Young children often think in absolute, black and white terms. Something or somebody is either good or bad, right or wrong. Young children tend to be one-dimensional, not able to factor in many considerations in their assessments. Thus, messages that come in must be simplified. Things that a child cannot process adequately often are filtered through magical thought and are categorized as totally one thing or the other.
The Combination of Spells, Magical and Concrete Thinking
Language, meaning a person’s choice of words, can take on even more significance considering this extra dimension of appreciating the power of spells, magical and concrete thinking.
Since it is inevitable that parents and caregivers are going to transmit messages in a hypnotic way, they can be careful to use gentle, flexible, appropriate words rather than rigid, absolute, short-sighted commands.
Absolute commands can be dangerous even when the intent is to convey something positive, because they can set up impossible expectations.“You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” for example, is potentially unhealthy since so many circumstances are beyond control.
Suppose a woman was given this spell throughout childhood by her parents and caregivers: she is expecting her first child and really wants a vaginal childbirth. What happens to her if the physical circumstances are such that she must have a cesarean delivery? Will she believe that she “failed” to get through the vaginal delivery because she didn’t try hard enough?
If the message had, instead, been: “Sometimes you can succeed by trying your best,” she would have been programmed to look at her achievements and disappointments with more flexibility and been able to avoid the guilt and over-responsibility that can result from thinking (magically) that she had the means within herself to change the physical realities of childbirth.
There are some messages that merit being absolute.“Always wear a seatbelt,” “Never swim alone” and “I will always love you” are examples of relatively safe absolute messages parents and caregivers can communicate to children.
How spells are delivered often determines their power, what parts of a sentence are emphasized and when the statements are made (Claude Steiner, Scripts People Live, 77). A child told by a parent, “You are really a smart kid,” may start to receive the message as an affirmation, but it becomes a threat as soon as the parent adds, “…so you have no reason not to get all A’s in school.”
Spells can be defined as compelling incantations or formulas with magic qualities. They can be positive, negative or somewhere in-between. Parents and caregivers can use both good magic and bad magic. “Good magic can be distinguished from bad magic by the effect that it has on its recipient. If it has the effect of adding power to the recipient it is good; if it decreases power it is bad” (Claude Steiner, Scripts People Live, 78).
Unhealthy spells can prevent a child from achieving autonomy and personal freedom; they can keep a child from being able to see reality clearly: “You’re naturally lucky; things will always go well for you,” may keep a child from believing he needs to try.
Healthy messages give “encouragement and attributions of intelligence, goodness, perceptiveness, beauty, health, etc.” (Steiner 77). Healthy spells affirm a child and encourage him to achieve autonomy and self-trust: “You are learning how to trust your feelings” (Muriel James, 43).
This can be powerful information for parents and caregivers who may have never realized the ways they cast spells on their children.
At this holiday time when there are so many intense conversations, I think it is important for parents and caregivers to appreciate the potential they have to cast spells on the children in their lives and to become intentional about sending messages that are affirming.
Invitation for Reflection
- What information in this blog had a strong impact on you? What about that information was powerful?
- Do you recall as a child having a parent or caregiver transmit what you now can understand was some kind of a hypnotic spell? What specifically did they say and how did they say it? How did this message impact your life then and even today?
- What do you want to be more careful about saying and doing to the children in your life?
- What you want to be intentional about saying and doing in order to transmit healthy spells on these children?
Diane Wagenhals
Director Emeritus, Lakeside Global Institute