BUILDING THE SUBCONSCIOUS

I have brutally denied people from gifting my son chocolates, even if it has broken their heart and made them curse me under their lips. I choose my son's health over pleasing people. Shamelessly guilty, that I am. Agreed.

But yesterday a friend of mine asked me "what in the world are you going to achieve by not allowing him chocolates, biscuits and stuff, once he is off to school making friends and attending birthdays, he will eat them anyways? Don't try to control him so much." And I instantaneously replied "I know I sound like a control freak and when he has friends, he will get influenced but I am trying to be his subconscious mind." Later that day I was seriously in the awe of my own statement and even tried to think whether I made any sense or just wanted to shoot an impressive sentence and win the argument. For a few days I tried to figure out how subconscious mind worked and even googled if it can be manipulated.
I believe, that if we put something to practice everyday for a month, then it develops into a habit and when you ardently follow your habit then it trains your subconscious. And you know you feeded something to the subconscious when you naturally turn towards it rather than forcing yourself in that direction.

When A gets hungry, his mind projects to him the foods that he knows and has liked so far. He comes running to me asking for Poha, upma, chapati, jaggery, dahi or finds his dabba of Almonds and cashew nuts and goes munching around (this dabba of dryfruits, jaggery, roasted peanuts and dates is an inevitable part of our short and long trips also). We just put him, actually all of us for his sake, to practice good habits and he himself made them his second nature. And I am hopeful of many more practices that I find valuable and necessary and sow in his mind this time around, will flourish into a habit some day. So, I believe we do mold their subconscious either knowingly or unknowingly. What you want ingrained in your child should be your priority rather than assuming what is in trend will eventually influence them and let loose. At twos and threes they are more porous than any other ages and we should definitely make use of it in the right way.

ANYHOW...
This was the theory part of what I considered my achievement as a mother but I saw the practical example shortly after writing this article and so delayed sharing it to experiment every part of the theory.

A got serious stomach infection the next week I wrote my "theory". Leave alone my subconscious mind, even my common sense shuts down when he is unwell. I did all the things that I had sweared not to do ever after becoming a parent. From offering him the " no no noways food" to letting him sleep before the TV, I did everything that I consider bad. I just wanted to feed something to his frail body and make him sleep without burning his already meager calories. Though I feared he will demand all this even when he is in good health and will throw my two year long habit building efforts out of the window. But, after fasting for two long days as his appetite resumed, his habits did too.

I did not publish it yet and a few months later A caught viral infection. And this time around instead of pestering him to eat foods that I thought would help him and getting him medicated from the very first day of infection, I trusted his body and his senses and let him take the lead. He knew he was weak and needed to rest most of the day and asked for food that he felt would comfort him like warm milk, varan bhaat and pistachio all as substitutes for the main meals of the day and in very little quantities. I let him trust his body while I trusted him and things went well.

These incidents taught me much need lessons
1. The subconscious mind can be trained.
2. Like animals who have full knowledge of what went wrong in their systems and how can they cure it, we humans have it too in us and that too from a very young age. We have just eventually learned to not listen to our instincts and our bodies. And this draws my third learning.
3. I have to trust A's decisions and choices in times of sickness and otherwise, given the fact that I took care of the first learning very much successfully.