Like any other childhood ability, intuition fades when it is not recognized and nurtured. Psychiatrist Alice Miller, author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, says the only way children learn to identify what they feel or know is by having that feeling seen, understood and "mirrored" by a caregiver. If a parent ignores or disapproves of certain feelings, Miller says, the child forgets or suppresses them. In the same way, when we tell children who report intuitive experiences, "Don't be silly," or "Don't make things up," they learn to ignore their inner truth. Psychologists, teachers, and intuition trainers agree that the best thing we can do to strengthen children's intuition is to listen to them. That sounds easy enough. But the blinding pace of modern life makes it difficult to sit back, accept our children for who they are, and find out what gifts they have brought with them into the world. Instead, we rush at the baby, and later the child, telling her who to be rather than watching and waiting as she unfolds.

In the face of this, says psychologist Thomas Armstrong, author of Awakening Your Child's Natural Genius and The Radiant Child, a child's true self withdraws. "If you don't accept a child for who they really are," he says, "they go inside, lose themselves and develop an entirely false front."

Creating a nurturing and secure environment is the best thing a parent can do to encourage intuitive ability in a young child. Popular pediatrician and author T. Berry Brazelton says that freedom from serious emotional distress is necessary for a child to develop intuition. "Children use something like intuition all the time to monitor their environment," he says, "but it can only come up when they are (emotionally) free."

According to author Joseph Chilton Pearce, a child who feels threatened by her environment cannot risk paying attention to her own inner reality -- a problem that he believes is exacerbated by frightening images on television. Our children are "hyperalert to the external world," says Pearce. "How then can they screen out the outer world and attend to what's inside?"

Daniel Goleman, psychology reporter for the New York Times and author of the best selling book Emotional Intelligence, points out that recent research shows that negative emotions such as anger, frustration, and fear, trigger the release of chemicals that "jams the circuits" in the brain, blocking intellectual and intuitive discovery and growth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Penelope Kramer is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, AP wire service, WFN.com, and Parenting, Fitness, Intuition, Yoga Journal and New Age magazines, as well as in the book Diverse Voices of Women. She's also co-written two financial self-help books for women for Hyperion Press.

At the start of her career, Penny got to see first-hand how children learn while student teaching sixth graders in Durham, North Carolina. After graduating from Duke University, she worked as a writer and production assistant for a public television station in Hershey, Pennsylvania, editor of a national newsletter for the Environmental Defense Fund, a reporter and feature writer for several San Francisco papers, line editor for Yoga Journal, and associate editor of Intuition magazine, before becoming a full-time writer.