Healthy Parents Raise Healthy Kids
Family Dynamics and Homeopathy
Jane Tara Cicchetti, RS Hom,(NA), CCH
Because homeopathy is a gentle, natural system of health care that uses completely non-toxic remedies it is an ideal choice of treatment for children and many health conscious parents use homeopathic remedies to treat their children for colds, flu, injuries and other acute ailments. When symptoms continue to return or ailments are more serious, the problem is beyond home treatment and constitutional treatment by a homeopath can often successfully supplement the care of the child’s pediatrician. Successful constitutional treatment, however, requires that the homeopath perceive what needs to be healed in the child.
Over 200 years ago, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, said that it is the homeopath’s obligation to perceive what needs to be healed in the individual. This means that the homeopath must consider not only the physical body but also the mental and emotional sphere and inherited factors. He or she must also look at the individual’s environment to see if it contains causes of disease and obstacles to cure. This requires a macrocosmic perspective; looking at the whole person considering the entire environment in which the individual lives, and evaluating his or her interchange with that environment.
A huge part of a child’s environment is the parents, in particular the mother, who is most times the primary caregiver and the first person the child bonds with. Even in these changing times, it is still the mother who carries the child during pregnancy and nurses him or her in infancy. Because of this most intimate relationship, there is a powerful connection between the health of the mother and the health of the child on the mental and emotional levels as well as the physical level. Therefore, if we are to perceive what needs to be healed in a child, we must look at the health of the parents and ideally treat the parents so they are as healthy as possible.
It is not unusual for a concerned and loving parent to bring a child to a homeopath because the child has physical or emotion problems when the parents are stressed out, sleep deprived or overwhelmed with the responsibilities that go along with being a primary caregiver for small children. They may be depressed or anxious and unable to enjoy the relationship with the child who they love so much. Or, there may be unresolved health issues (emotional or physical) from the past that deplete their energy and vitality. In cases like this, it is very likely, that treating the mother first will have a very great impact on not only the mother, but the whole family and improve the health of the child. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. If we attempt to treat a child when the parents have significant health challenges the child may not respond to treatment. This applies to any kind of treatment, not only homeopathy. The parents may continue to look for solutions to the child’s difficulties without any positive result.
The most holistic approach is to have the mother and father treated homeopathically before the conception of the child.
When the great psychoanalyst, Carl Jung began to work with a man who had no dreams, he noticed that the man’s son was having many dreams that related to the father’s situation. Jung used the son’s dreams to begin the analytic process with the father. After a while the man began to have his own dreams and the son ceased to dream the dreams for the father. This is a wonderful example of how connected children are with the parents.
A very wise man once told me that a child is nourished by the love between the father and mother and that the child thrives and develops through this love. I agree. The best care that we can give to our children is to be healthy and have a healthy and loving relationship. Developing a loving relationship requires time and dedication on the part of a man and woman. No health care system can give that to us but a good homeopath can point the way and help to improve the health of the family so this development has a greater chance of taking place.