What a 7-year Old Can Teach You About Nurturing

Our house was broken into last week. They came in through an open window and stole all our small electronics, some of my jewelry and – perhaps most offensive – took bites out of the Top Pot Donuts my brother in law had brought us! And in the course of finding their chosen loot, they made a mess of our house.

We asked friends to take our sons Ethan, 7, and Logan, 3, for the evening so we could work with the police and secure the house. After the dust settled a bit we picked up the kids. As you can imagine they had a lot of questions. Ok, mostly Ethan had the questions! He said he was scared that the house would look different. We told him, “It does in some places.” I gave him a tour the house and of course he was most concerned about his room. All toys and piggy banks were intact, so all was well for him.

Then I took him to the master bedroom. He looked at the clothes strewn about, the dresser drawers turned over on the floor and pieces of jewelry scattered everywhere. He was quiet. He walked to our closet only to see that every inch of the floor was covered with papers, keepsakes and clothes. After a moment, Ethan turned to me and said, “I feel so sad for you and Daddy.” There it was…the cleanest use of nurturing I had experienced in a long time.

In the 12 Elements of Power model, the third pair of Elements is about “How We Relate To Ourselves and Others” and the two Elements in that pair are Nurturing and Providing. Providing is all about fixing, helping, paying for, or some other version of taking action to help someone else or oneself. It’s an important Element for sure, but it’s terribly overused in our culture. We so over-provide that we forget the power of simply caring…the power of Nurturing. Ethan tapped his power of Nurturing because he’s only 7 and doesn’t know much about his ability to Provide yet. He’ll learn about Providing soon enough, but until then I’m reveling in how great it is to receive his Nurturing.

The next time something unsavory occurs in your life or to someone you care about, I invite you to experiment with just Nurturing. Say things like, “wow, this must be hard” or “how are you feeling?” or even, “I really care about you”. Notice what comes up as you offer nurturing. Later, you can ask things like “what can I do for you?”, but just try for a little bit to simply care FIRST. I think you may be surprised at how powerful that can feel. Having been on the receiving end of both a nasty event and some clear, clean Nurturing this week, I know that someone simply caring can absolutely hit the spot.