The Cost of Disconnecting Children From Their Life Force

There is so much conversation right now around children and education. Unschooling, homeschooling, traditional schooling, classical education, Montessori, Waldorf, microschools, screen time, how much time children should spend outside, how rigorous academics should be, when children should learn to read, whether they should be pushed more or protected more. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what childhood should look like and what children need in order to become successful adults.

And honestly, I understand why these conversations feel so important. Parenting carries so much weight because we love our children deeply. We want to make the right decisions for them. We want to protect them from unnecessary pain. We want reassurance that they are going to be okay.

But the more I observe these conversations, the more I notice how much fear is woven into them too. Fear of children falling behind. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear that if we do not choose the right path now, we may somehow ruin their future later. Fear that our children will struggle socially, emotionally, financially, or academically if we fail to guide them correctly.

And because of that fear, I think many of us start looking for systems that promise certainty. We search for the perfect method, the perfect curriculum, the perfect structure, the perfect philosophy. We want something that makes us feel like we can guarantee a specific outcome for our children if we just follow the right formula closely enough.

But children are not formulas.

They are not machines we program into success.

They are human beings with their own timing, personalities, interests, sensitivities, gifts, struggles, and desires. And I think somewhere along the way many of us stopped trusting that unfolding process. We became so focused on creating successful children that we forgot to stay curious about who our children actually are.

I hear things all the time like, “I hate watching baseball, so I don’t want my child to play baseball,” and while I completely understand the feeling behind it, I also think moments like that reveal something important. Our children are not here to become smaller versions of us. They are not here to fit neatly into our preferences or identities. They are their own people, and I think one of the greatest responsibilities we have as parents is creating enough space for them to discover who they are for themselves.

Not through complete chaos or lack of guidance, but through observation, curiosity, exposure, and trust.

I see this constantly with my own children. I really wanted my son to love karate because I could see all the benefits in it. Discipline, focus, confidence, body awareness, emotional regulation. It made sense to me and I wanted it to fit because I thought it would be good for him. He tolerated it. He participated once he got there. But it never truly lit him up, and deep down I knew that. Looking back, I think I kept him in it longer than I should have because I was attached to what I hoped it would do for him instead of paying attention to what it actually felt like for him.

At the same time, I really did not want football to be the thing. Football was not what I pictured for him at all. But after one flag football lesson he came alive out on that field. There was a completely different energy in him. Confidence. Excitement. Joy. Presence. It was one of those moments where I had to step outside of my own ideas long enough to recognize that this wasn’t actually about me.

And I think parenting is full of moments like that if we are willing to pay attention.

So much of it is less about deciding who our children should become and more about noticing who they are already showing us they might be.

I think this applies to learning too. Of course practical skills matter and I understand why parents feel anxious about academics because I feel it too sometimes. I would love for George to start reading fluently. There is a part of me that wants that reassurance and wants to feel like he is “on track,” but when I try to force structured reading exercises, it feels like torture to him right now. Yet this same child can spend endless amounts of time building, digging, creating, solving problems with other children, and participating in kids council at Rooted Grove where he gets to communicate, negotiate, collaborate, and share his perspective.

So I find myself asking over and over again, is he not learning or is he simply learning in a way that does not always fit neatly inside the boxes we have been taught learning is supposed to fit into?

Because when I really step back and observe children, I see learning everywhere. I see it when children are building forts and trying to figure out why the structure keeps collapsing. I see it when they are negotiating over resources, organizing games, solving conflicts, experimenting in the creek, identifying bugs, asking questions about death and nature and weather and animals. I see literacy beginning in storytelling and conversation and curiosity. I see math in measuring, building, sorting, counting, and creating. I see leadership in conflict resolution and collaboration. I see science in mud, flowers, decomposition, observation, and experimentation.

And I think somewhere along the way we started believing that if learning is joyful, embodied, self-directed, or connected to play then it somehow is not rigorous enough to matter.

But what if children learn most deeply when they are connected to meaning?

What if curiosity creates deeper learning than pressure ever could?

What if a child spending hours trying to perfect something they genuinely care about develops more long-term resilience and capacity than forcing information into a nervous system that is completely disconnected from it?

I think many parents are terrified of doing their children a disservice by not pushing hard enough, but I also think there is another side to that conversation that deserves attention too. What happens when children become so disconnected from themselves that they no longer know what they actually enjoy, desire, value, or care about outside of external validation and performance?

What happens when they learn very early that their worth is tied to achievement, productivity, compliance, or fitting inside socially accepted boxes?

What happens when they stop trusting themselves because they have been taught that authority always knows better than their own inner experience?

These are the questions I find myself sitting with more and more deeply.

Because while I absolutely believe children need guidance, responsibility, boundaries, and support in developing resilience, I also think there is a difference between helping children build capacity and teaching them to override themselves constantly in order to succeed.

As a Virgo sun, I naturally analyze everything. I observe patterns constantly, and one of the things I pay the most attention to in my own children is what brings them alive. What gives them energy instead of draining it. What they naturally return to over and over again. What creates excitement in them without external pressure. What they can stay immersed in for long periods of time. What lights them up physically, emotionally, mentally, and creatively.

Because I think that aliveness matters.

I think life force matters.

And I think many adults have become so disconnected from their own life force that they no longer recognize it clearly in children either.

We spend so much time trying to fit children into boxes and then labeling them when they do not fit comfortably inside those boxes. Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too distracted. Too much. Too difficult. Too wild. Too behind. Too slow.

But what if many children do not actually need fixing?

What if at least some of those labels are reflections of systems that were never designed to honor the full spectrum of human individuality in the first place?

And what if many of the fears driving our parenting choices are actually rooted in our own wounds, conditioning, fears, scarcity, and limiting beliefs rather than our children’s actual needs?

I think this is why the conversation around education can never really be separated from healing because so much of what we project onto children comes from what we ourselves have not yet processed, questioned, or healed.

This is the work I find myself living every single day.

I live it within my own family, through the way I parent, through the way I observe my children, and through the way I continue questioning narratives I once accepted without much thought.

I created Rooted Grove Collective because I knew there were other families out there feeling this too. Families craving something different. Families wanting environments where children could stay connected to themselves while still being supported, challenged, guided, and deeply seen. Rooted Grove is a nature-based learning community built around curiosity, project-based learning, nervous system awareness, mixed-age connection, and giving children space to explore who they are instead of constantly trying to force them into who they “should” be.

And through Rooted Vitality, I work with adults and children through energy healing and energetic testing to help uncover the deeper patterns underneath emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual struggles. A lot of my work centers around helping people identify limiting beliefs, stuck emotions, ancestral patterns, nervous system dysregulation, energetic imbalances, and the unconscious patterns that keep them disconnected from themselves and their own life force.

Because ultimately, I do not think this conversation is only about education.

I think it is about healing.

I think it is about breaking cycles.

I think it is about remembering that children are whole human beings, not projects to perfect.

And maybe our job is not to force them into becoming who we imagined they would be, but to love them closely enough, observe them carefully enough, and trust them deeply enough that they feel safe becoming who they already are.

If this resonates with you, I would love to connect with you. You can follow along on Instagram at @rooted.vitality or on Substack at @alysonkrings where I share more about parenting, healing, education, nervous system regulation, consciousness, and building alternative ways of living and learning.

If you are local to Omaha, I would love for you to come tour Rooted Grove Collective and experience what we are building firsthand.

And if you feel called to deeper healing work, you can explore my sessions through Rooted Vitality. If you are new to my work, I usually recommend starting with an Energetic Mini Session which gives us a starting point to explore what may be happening underneath the surface emotionally, energetically, mentally, and physically.

You can learn more here:https://www.rootedvitalityhealing.com