Recognizing Your Child’s Passion Signature

Teaching your children how to work with their emotions and integrate new parts of self is like giving a two-year-old a fork and teaching him how to feed himself for life. Through their passion signatures they will come into maturity in their lives. So if they can see themselves as a Lover or a Creator at age six, that’s great, as they’ll have a leg up on the rest of humanity. By identifying their motivations and fears, you’ll know what they need to learn to do for themselves. Then you can show them possible ways to do it.

The Prophet/Escapist: The Escapist child comes from a newborn baby that did not feel welcomed into life or who experienced traumatic conditions of some kind before, during, or just after the time of birth. This child fears annihilation and needs someone to establish a consistently safe environment. Once the child begins to trust you as a reliable source of stability, he or she will be emboldened by the connection and begin to reveal him or herself, and also to integrate the incredible gifts and motivation of the Prophet.

Another important way to support this kind of child is by facilitating the child’s participation in activities, such as dance, gymnastics, yoga, or swimming, that strengthen physical awareness and a deeper connection to the body. You can recognize a Prophet/Escapist child because the child often gets a dreamy, faraway, or vacant look in the eyes and has an uncanny understanding of spiritual concepts.

The Lover/Vamp: The Vamp child comes from an infant who did not feel thoroughly nurtured between birth and the age of two. This child fears abandonment and needs ongoing reassurance of your love and admiration. Gentle touch, soothing vocal tones, and frequent words of praise and encouragement are signs of intimate connection that help the child internalize a sense of being whole and valuable. They let him/her know you care.

Two important ways to support this child are by facilitating the child’s ability to take care of him or herself in small and larger ways, and also by mirroring for the child how valuable his or her gifts, talents, and sharing are to others. Offering genuine acknowledgment for staying in the process of a multi-phase task, and teaching how to take pleasure in being engaged in a process for its own sake—rather than only for the recognition of an outcome—will help the child integrate the remarkable generosity of the Lover. You can recognize a Lover/Vamp child because the child is fussy when you leave, seeks a lot of attention—both positive and negative—and is compassionate by nature.

The Creator/Martyr: The Martyr child emerges from being a youngster whose needs were overridden, neglected, or ridiculed between the ages of two and five. This is a child whose pride of accomplishment may have been stifled or stolen. Because the child fears engulfment and also humiliation/exposure, he or she needs you to honor his or her individuality, privacy, space, and accomplishments. If you make it a point to let the little Martyr know that you can and will take of matters (because you are an adult and he/she is still a child) this gives the child permission to be more playful and less serious and vigilant.

You can recognize the Creator/Martyr child because he or she is a helper bee fluttering around adults and worrying if there are problems to be solved. In order for this child to develop a voice in the world, a loving adult—hopefully you—needs to put the focus on the child for a change. Because this child has an uncanny knack for problem solving, mediation, and communication, you can facilitate the child’s development by getting him or her involved in artistic enterprises: painting, sculpting, writing, acting, dancing, and singing, to name only a handful. Whenever possible give the child center stage and be faithful to the intention of being a neutral and supportive listener.

The Warrior/Conqueror: The Conqueror child comes from a young Warrior, usually between the ages of 5 and 12, who has been pushed around, humiliated, or brutalized by a competitive or dominating opposite sex parent. This child fears being wrong or weak/vulnerable, and needs help in softening his or her demeanor so others can approach and befriend him/her. If the young Conqueror is a bullying presence in the schoolyard, it’s wise to be clear with the child about the limits of social tolerance. Encourage the child to apologize for any wrongdoing, and help him/her develop empathy for other people’s feelings perhaps by volunteering for someone less fortunate, or joining a peer support group.

What your Warrior/Conqueror child needs most is your respect and admiration. For some reason, the child has not felt safe to be receptive and has become a fighter. The child needs to learn how to distinguish friend from foe, and that many people are loving and trustworthy. Since this child is older, you can have a conversation in which you plainly discuss your perceptions of the world and your intentions for the child. By shifting gears in your own life, you will permit the child to shift gears as well. Furthermore, you can provide the Warrior/Conqueror child with opportunities to explore the gifts of leadership by enrolling him in team sports, debate societies, religious charities, school governance, and future leaders societies for teens, where he/she can be mentored by caring adults and receive loving supervision and wise counsel.

The Visionary/Perfectionist: The Perfectionist child has been trying to figure out the rules for most of his or her life, and now—in preadolescence or teen-hood—has pretty much got the system down pat. Trouble is, rules are inflexible, black-and-white parameters for behavior, whereas the real world has lots of gray areas in it. If the kid stays a rigid adherent to what someone envisioned at an earlier date, that child has no room to grow or innovate. The gift of the Visionary is to be able to understand structures and figure out what’s ideal. Maturity will teach the child when it’s important to transform a structure and when to leave it alone. So you need to encourage the youngster to keep asking questions.

It is important to expose the Visionary/Perfectionist child to as much human diversity as you can—people who are rich and poor, fat and thin, of every ethnicity, of every religious persuasion, of many ages, and who do many different jobs—and discuss what’s wonderful or interesting about each person. Let the child know that you would like to support him or her in exploring the world and his or her talents. Honor the child by asking him or her to consider what to learn and then suggest a plan to you. Show by your personal example that developing competency and expertise begins with being a novice and trying new things. Failure is an important step on the road to success.

Above all else, it’s critical that your children of every passion signature learn to cope with activation. Emotional fluency can guide them to manifest the lives they want. Instead of growing up physically while continuing to act like ten-year-olds, fluent people grow up physically, emotionally, and spiritually. You can help children avoid the trap of repeatedly fighting a fear of abandonment, engulfment, domination, humiliation, or annihilation. Maturity is about keeping the spontaneity and curiosity of a child without the ignorance. Understanding fear as a signal of positive expansion, rather than a warning beacon that they’ve stretched their wings “too far,” helps children avoid getting stuck.

If your child seems frozen at an immature state, reach out to the child and let him or her know that it’s safe to keep growing up that part of him or herself. Just before a developmental transition is accomplished, there are usually signs of a child’s reversion to an earlier stage. Children do this naturally in an attempt to determine whether or not their parents are going to stay with them and be consistent even if they grow up and change. They do it for reassurance. Will Dad still be there when I come home from my day at nursery school? Will Mom still treat me the same if I go to sleep-away camp and experience my individuality? Can I assert a different opinion from theirs (or say no to them) and still be loved and comforted? As a parent, connection with you is enough.

The old way our society coped with fear was to suppress it and do what we could to eliminate the source of discomfort. The new way of coping is to see fear as though it is the light bulb in a refrigerator. “The door is ajar, the door is ajar,” it indicates. “Maybe whatever is triggering this fear represents something your soul put in your path to remind you of a part of you that got frozen in the past.” What is here to be healed? That’s the question that most needs to be asked when you or your children feel afraid.

Excerpt from The Passion Principle, Copyright Donna LeBlanc 2006

Article Source: http://mylilpeanut.com

Donna LeBlanc, M.Ed., is a New York City based psychotherapist and author of THE PASSION PRINCIPLE: Discover Your Personal Passion Signature and the Secrets to Deeper Relationships in Love, Life and Work. Contact her at www.donnaleblanc.com or 1-877-63donna for in-person and telephone coaching sessions and seminars all over the country and abroad. TV appearances: INSIDE EDITION, MONTEL, DONNY DEUTSCH.

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