Thich Nhat Hanh

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   What you remark on out loud in a child, day after day, is not a neutral description of them but a choice about which part of them gets watered.

   Planting Seeds · 2011

   A child told constantly that they are disobedient receives an identity, not a correction.

   Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk, developed a mindfulness practice adapted for families and schools. The image of seeds comes from Buddhist psychology: consciousness is a store in which every seed exists, and the watered ones grow. Applied to raising children, the idea has a direct counterpart in Western research on selective attention: what you comment on is reinforced, and a child told constantly that they are disobedient receives an identity, not a correction. The proposed practices are simple and easy to ridicule until they are tried: the mindfulness bell, which stops the whole house for three breaths; pebble meditation, in which a child holds four stones and breathes with each, naming an image — flower, mountain, water, space; and beginning anew, a form of reconciliation in which appreciation is expressed first, then regret, then hurt, in that order. The second contribution is for the adult: you cannot transmit a calm you do not have, and the parent's own breath is the first tool available in any conflict.

   “Each of us has seeds of joy and seeds of suffering in our consciousness. The ones we water daily are the ones that grow.”

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