A child does not have defences around, a child trusts what we say is true and when we laugh at her (or him), she (he) will feel bad about herself (himself). This will cause them to feel ashamed and hide that part of them. Shame and guilt are the causes of many problems.
When they grow up, they will tend to feel ashamed of more things and hide feelings and behaviours causing just shadow. As they grow up in teenage years, they might behave in ways that are not aligned with who they are, but they are unconsciously too afraid to be ‘found out’ for who they truly are. And they might arrive at a point in life in which, if they do not deal with all of that, they will drop into a crisis.
Shadow is what we see in the world, it is the negativity still suppressed. When we suppress our feelings, when we suppress negativity, we cause negativity not only in our lives - as there is a spiritual law which says ‘positive attracts positive’ - but we also cause negativity in the world. If we are to bring about the world we would like to live in, we need to bring about positivity, first healing ourselves.
We need to be very mindful of the way we relate to children, as also when we laugh at them, when we criticize them, it simply means that there is a part in us that we have not accepted fully. It happened to me recently to talk with a person who said she didn’t need any help to grow as she was an adult; but spiritual growth is not linked with age. Spiritual growth begins with honesty and responsibility of where we are and what we have created in our lives and the committment to reconnect with our wholeness, to heal ourselves and find our common divinity.
We can prevent pain, we need to help children feel good about who they are, because they are magnificent as we all are.