It’s long been said that words are powerful, able to build up or cut down an idea in a heartbeat. Everything we create begins with a thought that is then communicated through words, actions or an image. With our health, it is valuable to consider that what we speak is what we create.

So what is the language of health?

Since our children were born, Randall and I have spoken to them as we would with anybody; we haven’t altered our words and speech to reflect a ‘baby language’ as we know that children are capable of absorbing language very easily. Just look at how preschoolers chatter in two or three languages when their home is a blend of cultures.

Importantly, I recognise that my primary responsibility in mentoring my kids is to teach them to think constructively, to ask questions and to be deliberate in what they say and do. It’s a core value I learned growing up with fore thinking parents. How do Randall and I do that, especially in terms of educating our children about health? Well one way is that we look at language and coin our own terms. We recognise that much of the language used to communicate ‘health’ is incongruent in it’s origin to what a person is wanting to accomplish. Indeed the language used today is directed towards a sick care health approach, if you can use ‘sick’ and ‘health’ in the same sentence. The language is incongruent at best!

Sometimes that means others do a double-take when they hear our family’s conversations, but it’s worth it for the difference it makes having children that are empowered in their health.

Let me show you the common process many people walk through in terms of their health:

‘Feeling’

It’s common for people to describe their health in terms of how they feel. Can you see the word ‘fee’ in there? Stay with me on this. We pay a big price for our mechanistic view of health: during their lifetime a person utilising this understanding of health will consume an average of 46,000 pills by the age of 75. The fee is one’s life; people pay dutifully with their lives as they buy into the perception of health being about how they ‘feel’.

Instead, our family chooses to look at health from a functional perspective. Can you see that life is a lot more ‘fun’ when you realise your body is an intelligent being, constantly communicating with itself via your nerve system (the master communicating system in the body) to enable you to express health? You are indeed a self-healing, self-regulating and self-regenerating organism constantly adapting to the environment in which you live.

‘Diagnosis’

If you use a mechanistic approach, when you ‘feel bad’ you will more than likely go to a doctor for a diagnosis. What do you get?

di         comes from the Greek for ‘double’ or ‘two’;

a             lacking

gnosis  knowledge

Umm…what happens to the word when the individual parts are defined and then put together? The word changes doesn’t it to ‘two who lack knowledge’ this has you remain in a sick care approach to health consuming ‘X’ to take away ‘Y’. The 10,000 foot question is do you really have ‘Y’ or is it a guess? Either way you become medically compliant and consume the medication prescribed for you.

‘Illusion’

Once you’ve received your diagnosis, reaching the point where two people do not know, you move to a place of believing you are ill:

ill         sick

u          you!

sion      condition of

That’s enough to make anybody feel terrible!

‘Pharmacy’

Since feeling terrible you have been to the doctor, received your diagnosis, created an illusion around your diagnosis, left with a prescription and now head to the pharmacy (chemist, drug store). Can you see the word ‘harm’ smack in the middle of ‘pharmacy’? Isn’t that interesting?

Upon fulfilling the prescription you leave with a treatment.

‘Treatment’

It’s quite simple at this point:

treat    to deal with

ment    the mind

So, you were under the illusion that you were sick because of how you were feeling, went for a diagnosis and then to the pharmacy to get your treatment which deals with your mind that creates an illusion that was there is now not there anymore. Hmm.

Our family has discovered another way …

Rather than use the word ‘sick’ I coined the term ‘health expression™’. We too have taught our children about the 3Ts: thoughts, trauma and toxins, which all affect the nerve system in physical, chemical and emotional ways. We have helped our children understand that the body will create a health expression via physical, chemical and emotional means to communicate that something requires adjusting inside so that their nerve system can function optimally.

Our kids have caught on!

This allows us to educate our children in the Socratic manner that I so respect my own parents for: questions, reasoning, and responsibility. When our children create (note I said create rather than ‘got’ or ‘get’) a health expression we are able to guide them by asking them whether it is physical, chemical or emotional. Sometimes they are not immediately certain but I always have the confidence that they know and it is a matter to digging in deeper to have them reach a conclusion that is truthful for them. Our children also receive weekly adjustments and have done since birth not because anything is wrong but because everything is right.

While I may know my children very well, I recognise that I do not live inside their body: each of my kids is the expert on their own systems, and they take responsibility for that. My responsibility — and joy — is to guide and mentor them and watch them flourish so eventually they will have the wings to fly and guide their own children should they chose to have them. I choose to ask them specific questions as to what their health expression is about, which empowers them to change their circumstance.

It’s a lesson of trust.

Children know their body better than anyone. So, regardless of their response, I do not consider it ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; it simply ‘is’.

Let’s look at a couple of my other favourites:

‘Try’

My father caught me on this beautifully. Once when I was young, our teacher had set us the task of writing a letter. I wanted my father’s help. Actually, I wanted him to do it for me! I remember Dad saying, ‘You start and I’ll have a look at it then.’ ‘Oh, I’ll try!’ I muttered as I walked to my room. Quick as a flash, Dad looked over his newspaper and his reading glasses and said, ‘There’s no such thing as try. You either do or you don’t.’

Well, you can imagine I was grumpy about that. He’d caught me. I didn’t even want to try, really; it was more a matter of ‘I won’t’.

However…I went and wrote the letter.

In terms of health, people often say ‘I’ve got this’ — they believe they simply ‘got it’; it ‘happened to’ them; they didn’t create it. And then they say, ‘I’ve tried everything!’ Look at the example of standing up. You either stand up or you don’t. So it’s a delusion and an illusion to think that we ‘try’ to do something.

And last but not least what about the word ‘Can’t’?  If you look at the word, you’ll see three-quarters of it actually is ‘can’. That was another gem from my parents, and my kids love this one too. ‘Three quarters of ‘can’t’ is ‘can’. So you either will or you won’t’, I’ve taught them.

Sometimes, though, they’ll forget the ‘explanation part’ when they want to share this with somebody and in frustration at hearing ‘can’t’ respond with ‘oh, you just mean you won’t!’

The joy of doing things differently.

So let me ask you this…

What is the language you use when educating children about health? If you have coined a term not listed here, I’d love it if you would share that with the Vital Moms community. Are there any words used in your home that you would like to alter?

What a privilege we have when we can model a way of thinking and communicating to our children that will empower them to change their circumstances as they wish to, allowing for better function and more fun in life.

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