"Who" is the Inner Child
Your Inner Child is who you were as a child, even though now you are an adult. It represents one half of the ongoing "inner conversations" happening between your Inner Parent and your Inner Child. Your Inner Child is uniquely you, more private and personal than any other aspect of your being.
Your Inner Child is not "the ego" as typically described by psychology. This title would go to the Inner Parent who, like an outer parent to the best of its ability, is in charge of taking care of and guiding your Inner Child through this crazy experience called your life.
Your Inner Parent has the leadership position for the two voices and is the self that deals primarily with your life's day-to-day outer tasks and activities. Like an outer parent, it can do this in a superbly functional way, or it can completely forgo its responsibilities leaving the Inner Child to run amuck with no supervision or guidance whatsoever.
"What" is the Inner Child?
The Inner Child is your joyful, playful, friendly, excitable, emotional, romantic, curious, feeling side. Depending on your mood, energy level, and what is going on in your outer life, this could be reflected by positive or negative emotions. An easy way to understand your Inner Child is simply to know or observe outer children ages 0-12. At any various moments in time, your Inner Child could experience any age range.
Like an outer child, the Inner Child would normally be the happy, fun-loving, and adventurous part of you looking to explore life and all its facets with energy and enthusiasm. It would be the self who falls in love with music, art, and people. It would be attracted to bright shiny objects, exciting adventures, and newness for the sake of newness.
"When" is the Inner Child?
Your Inner Child is all day, every day, from morning until night, Monday through Sunday, from birth to death. Your Inner Child is constantly active within your Inner Conversations UNLESS, it has somehow been neglected (initially by your outer parents and now by YOU) or abused (again outer parenting or perhaps drug or alcohol addictions) to the point where your Inner Child has simply shut down or given up.
Although complete shutdown can happen thankfully, it is rare. Yet, each of us could have some parts of our Inner Child which have been hurt to a point of closing down or turning away from what were once joyful activities. Hurt and heartache are painful, and it would be natural to shy away from experiences that have been painful in the past.
Another aspect of the Inner Child is when you become aware of its intuitive element. As such, your Inner Child is in touch with people and events around the globe IF the Inner Parent is sensitive enough to listen and tune into your Inner Child's ability. The Inner Child is also the inner self responsible for and connected to your memories.
However, just because your Inner Child is potentially accessible, it does not mean that it is present and accounted for in your daily life. This is where it is up to you, as the Inner Parent, to be conscious of and collaborative with your Inner Child so that it feels not only allowed, but invited and respected as an important participant of who you are in the outside world.
"Where" is the Inner Child?
How can you find or locate your Inner Child? "Where is he/she" is perhaps the most important aspect of the Inner Child to consider. As mentioned earlier your Inner Child is one half of the internal dialogue called your Inner Conversations. Yet how can you tell which voice is which?
These inner voices can be tricky to access since your Inner Conversations are estimated to take place at a rate of 800 to 1000 words a minute. However, it is possible to slow down your Inner Conversations and learn to identify which voice is which.
The easiest and most successful way is to begin a series of half-hour sessions in which you, as the Inner Parent, sit down with your Inner Child and ask questions allowing your Inner Child to answer however it likes.
"Why" is the Inner Child?
All humans of every race, culture, and religion are "Self-Parenting" their Inner Child, even if they are not aware of this consciously. Why is this the way our mind works? This borders on the philosophical or religious and usually I don't talk about this topic. However, to complete this discussion with the big "why" question based on the 5-W's of the Inner Child, let me suggest one option.
From my view, the Inner Child is one aspect of our triune selves, who, teamed up with our Inner Parent (ego self) and Higher Self (spiritual self), work as one to learn and grow from the various people and life experiences we encounter.
Not many people know that the first comprehensive definition of the Inner Child, with all its aspects and powers, came from the work of Max Freedom Long, who wrote the book, The Secret Science at Work. He was interested in how the Hawaiian priests class (the Kahunas) were able to perform their extraordinary methods of healing.
Max researched and deciphered the linguistic elements of the Hawaiian language to explain the healing system of the Hawaiian priests in modern terms, which he called Huna. One of the components of this system was the "three selves", which he termed the Lower Self, Middle Self, and High Self.
Once I connected the Lower Self to be exactly like a child in 1970, I begin looking for established outer parenting teachings to apply to this "inner child." Lucky for me there was an awesome system for outer parenting developed in my hometown called, P.E.T. by Thomas Gordon. His book was very helpful for understanding outer Parenting methods
After my book was released in the US and Australia, many authors and speakers jumped on the "inner child" bandwagon with their books and programs. However, they were still one or two generations behind the unique understanding of what Max Freedom Long discovered combined with the system modeled from P.E.T. for getting to know your "Inner Child." Unless you practice the SELF-PARENTING Program for an ongoing period, you won't truly know the value and power of these methods.
I hope you enjoyed this news-style summary of the Inner Child and
how this concept was made public for the first time. Since 1987, there
have been various systems and authors, who claim to have developed these
methods but the SELF-PARENTING Program stands alone for originality and
commitment to the daily practice of healing your Inner Child.
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