Raising Conscious Humans: Raising Children With an Inner Compass

Rachel Lim (0:00)

Hi everyone, welcome back to Raising Conscious Humans. If you're joining us for the first time, this is a six-part series where I'm sitting down with Hwee Keng Maeder to explore what it really takes to raise resilient, self-directed, emotionally grounded human beings. And honestly, I've been thinking a lot about our first conversation with Hwee Keng. There was one thing which she shared. She told a story about a child at a zoo.

The child just walked straight past the giraffes and the elephants, crouches down on the ground, and becomes completely fascinated by an ant. She said, that's what we're trying not to kill. Because when I look at Ollie and Kira, I see that too. All their questions, their curiosity, the fascination with things I would normally walk straight past. And it makes me wonder, what happens between the child who asks why a hundred times a day, and the teenager who only wants to know whether something is going to be tested? What happens between learning because you're curious, and learning because you're being graded? But maybe the deeper question I realize is this.

When do children stop trusting themselves? When do they stop trusting their own curiosity, their own instincts, their own interests, and start looking outside themselves for validation and the answer? Because there was also something else that Hwee Keng said in our last conversation that I found myself coming back to again and again. She was talking about Max and his competitions when he was younger. And she said there was a moment back then where she had to stop and ask herself, is this for him or is it for me? I think that question sits beneath so many of the decisions we make as parents. And I think it also sits underneath today's conversation too. So one of the first things I wanted to ask you as we kickstart Episode 2 is, what do you think is the difference between a curious child and a compliant child?

All children, starting from a certain age, they always ask a lot of whys. So the curiosity is an inborn thing. They are always asking, why? Why is the sky blue? Why is it like that? I don't know for better or the lack of knowledge or we don't want to deal with so many questions and we stop. We said, I don't ask so much. It is why it is like that. And so from our constant tearing down the whys and just asking them to accept the way it is, that's how we nurture, indirectly, very compliant children, right? Don't ask why. Don't ask why. The message is, don't ask why. Just accept.

Indirectly, we are telling them, right? I don't know a lot of parents here, but I think it's also our upbringing, if I think about it, because our generation wants to portray themselves as an authority figure. But if you are an authority figure, then you have to be authority. You need to know everything. So they don't want to be confronted with what they don't know, and what they don't know, they say, don't ask.

Don't ask. Just accept it, right? Maybe they don't have the time, maybe they don't have the knowledge, maybe they don't have other more important things in mind, like the very basics of putting food on the table. I don't know. But for sure, now we come to a different age where we can say, look, I bring out your curiosity. You're curious? Oh, you make me curious too. Let's all be curious about it and let's go and explore and discover. Yeah. And Hwee Keng, I'm also curious as a mom yourself, as a human being. You know, sometimes I also catch myself when it happens to me and like, okay, all in Kira, I'm asking so many different whys. And I found myself being a little bit irritated, annoyed or impatient. What should I tell myself or what do you tell yourself?

You know we are all human, right? It depends on when they ask the questions. And there are good days and there are bad days, right?

And I guess one of these things that if you already know that you have a bad day, you say, oh, you have very good questions. How about you take note of this question or ask one today because I don't have that capacity to answer all of them? We work on maybe one or two, you know, just break it down and say, wow, how brilliant. You have so many good questions. Let's try to tackle them slowly because they are good questions and you deserve attention for your answer. However, I don't have that attention, right? So you also, I think what you do with the children signals to them how you handle life, how you manage it. And you can send these subtle messages to them. And Hwee Keng, I want to go back to the little story you had in the first episode on the child that was at the zoo, that walked past the elephants and the giraffes and really just crouched down and was so fascinated by an ant.