Eastern medicine, childhood development, and the importance of protecting what enters our minds
By Dr. Patricia Nichols
We spend a great deal of time thinking about what we feed our children. We read ingredients, consider nutrients, and notice when certain foods leave them uncomfortable.
But what about everything else they consume?
The arguments playing on television. The frightening images passing across a screen. The constant noise, rapid transitions, and adult conversations they cannot yet understand. These experiences enter their world, too.
What we take in through our senses deserves our attention. Nourishment extends beyond the dinner table.
We Digest More Than Food
In Oriental medicine, an organ system encompasses more than the physical organ. The Stomach receives food and begins the digestive process, but its channel extends beyond the abdomen, traveling around the eyes, nose, and mouth and ascending in front of the ear toward the forehead.
This broader understanding invites us to consider the relationship between what we receive and how we process it. In my approach to explaining Oriental medicine, digestion provides a framework for understanding our experiences as well as our meals.
What we see, hear, smell, taste, and say—and the thoughts we continue to entertain—all give us something to work through. A conversation can be difficult to swallow. An experience can leave a bad taste in our mouth. We may need time to chew on an idea before we know what to do with it.
Our language already recognizes this relationship.
Think of the Stomach as beginning the process of receiving and breaking things down. Something has entered our awareness. Can we take it in? Can we begin to understand it? Can we make it manageable enough to work with?
Then comes the Spleen.
In Oriental medicine, the Spleen is associated with transforming what we receive into nourishment. Applied to our emotional and mental experiences, I find this a useful way to explain discernment: our ability to recognize what is useful, draw something nourishing from it, and release what we do not need.
We encounter an opinion, a disappointment, an argument, or an unexpected change. What part resonates with us? What deserves further consideration? What can we learn, and what belongs to someone else?
Sometimes something uncomfortable contains a lesson we need. Sometimes something loudly presented as truth has very little value for us. Discernment gives us the clarity to work through that distinction.
This is where I see the strength of the Spleen: being able to find the silver lining in an otherwise difficult situation. We can recognize that an experience was painful while also understanding what it taught us. We can take the useful part without carrying every piece of it indefinitely.
When this capacity struggles, things become muddled. We replay conversations. We become tangled in other people’s opinions. We cannot see the forest for the trees, and the whole experience begins to bog us down.
We have consumed something that we are still struggling to digest. Meanwhile, more keeps coming in.
Children Are Still Learning How to Process the World
Adults have experience to draw upon when deciding what to believe and what to release. Even so, many of us struggle with it.
Children are still developing that capacity.
The early years, including the period before roughly seven or eight, deserve particular care. There is no single birthday at which discernment becomes complete. A child gradually learns to question, compare, understand context, and recognize that something said with confidence may still be untrue.
Until those abilities develop, children depend heavily on us to help interpret what reaches them.
An adult may hear a frightening news story and understand that it happened far away. A young child may hear the same story and wonder whether it will happen in their bedroom tonight. An adult may recognize political commentary as someone’s opinion. A child may experience the speaker’s anger and certainty without understanding what either means.
The information has entered. Making sense of it requires support.
Through the Oriental medicine perspective described here, we are asking a developing system to receive and transform an experience. We need to consider whether that experience is appropriate for the child’s present capacity.
Repeated, overwhelming stress can affect developing stress-response systems, particularly without adequate support. Caring relationships can help buffer those effects. A difficult moment does not determine a child’s future, but the environment we create around them matters.
We should be asking what children are absorbing from the atmosphere around them, as well as from the content we deliberately place in front of them.
The Kidneys: Fear and the Foundation of Development
In Oriental medicine, the discussion goes deeper than how we receive and digest an experience. We also consider how that experience affects the foundation of a developing child.
The Kidney system stores Jing, often translated as essence. Within this traditional framework, Jing supports growth, development, maturation, and our constitutional foundation. The Kidneys are also associated with fear. These relationships help explain why Oriental medicine gives particular importance to protecting a child’s developing reserves.
Consider the difference between encountering something frightening and continually living within an atmosphere of fear. A difficult moment may pass with reassurance and comfort. Repeated exposure can leave a child anticipating the next frightening thing, even when the adults around them believe the moment is over.
The foundation of a young child is still developing. Their understanding of the world, their capacity for discernment, and their ability to settle after a disturbing experience need time and support. Describing that development does not require us to assume the Kidney system literally remains “open” until a particular age.
The underlying concern is the burden placed on a child who cannot yet fully understand what they are receiving.
If a child repeatedly encounters messages that the world is dangerous, that conflict is everywhere, or that safety can disappear at any moment, what are we asking that child to carry? How much of their experience is organized around fear, and how much gives them the opportunity to feel secure?
Modern research offers a parallel, although it does not establish the traditional Kidney–Jing explanation. Severe or prolonged adversity without adequate support can disrupt developing stress-response systems and increase later health risks.
For me, the practical significance is clear: emotional safety belongs in our understanding of nourishment. A predictable rhythm, a reassuring adult, and an environment with room for rest help support a child who is still growing into the world.
We are helping children digest today’s experiences while tending the foundation they will carry forward.
Steiner: The Child Receives the World Through Their Whole Being
Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, placed great importance on the impressions surrounding a young child. He described the child in the first seven years as a whole “sense organ,” receiving the environment through their entire being. Within his educational philosophy, what children experienced around them helped shape their development.
Consider the responsibility contained in that idea.
Our children experience our words, but they also experience our tone, our gestures, our impatience, and our tenderness. They watch how we handle frustration. They live within the pace and emotional atmosphere of the home.
Steiner was not writing about smartphones or social media. Applying his ideas today, however, invites us to consider whether the volume and intensity of what children receive respects their ability to process it.
Here is where I see a meaningful relationship with Oriental medicine. Both perspectives encourage us to consider the person receiving the input. What can they take in? What can they make use of? What requires more time, protection, or support?
Don Miguel Ruiz: What Children Hear Can Become What They Believe
Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, brings another important dimension to this discussion.
Ruiz describes a process he calls “domestication”: the ways we learn the beliefs, expectations, and rules of the people and culture around us. In his account, children adopt ideas about themselves and the world before they have fully developed the ability to evaluate them. Those accepted ideas become agreements that can continue shaping their lives.
These agreements are not necessarily conscious decisions. A child does not need to announce that they accept a belief for it to influence their understanding of themselves.
Ruiz also describes how approval, rejection, reward, and punishment can teach children to measure themselves against other people’s expectations. Acceptance may come to feel conditional on being who others want them to be. His work encourages adults to examine inherited beliefs and question those that limit them.
Consider how this might appear in everyday life. A child repeatedly called difficult may begin interpreting their needs as a problem. A child praised only for achievement may come to associate being loved with performing well. These are ways of applying Ruiz’s perspective, rather than inevitable outcomes of any single interaction.
The connection to digestion is significant. An idea can enter from the outside and become part of the framework through which we understand everything that follows. We may carry it for years without remembering where it came from.
As adults, we can revisit that material. Is this something I know to be true, or something I learned to accept? Does it reflect who I am now? Is there anything useful to retain, and what am I ready to release?
That is discernment applied to our own history.
For parents, Ruiz’s perspective also brings us back to the power of our words. We are helping children develop a language for understanding themselves. Our descriptions of them, our responses to their feelings, and the beliefs we repeat about the world all deserve care.
We will sometimes speak poorly or react impatiently. Returning to the child, clarifying what we meant, and acknowledging our mistakes gives them another experience to draw upon: words can be reconsidered, misunderstandings can be repaired, and learning can continue.
Pay Attention to What You Allow In
These perspectives meet around a shared responsibility: being thoughtful about what we receive and what we help our children receive.
Pay attention to what is playing in your home. Listen to the conversations children can overhear. Notice the emotional tone of the videos they watch and the messages they receive about who they are. Stay curious about what they understood, because their interpretation may be very different from yours.
Then turn that same attention toward your own consumption.
What happens to you after an hour of political commentary? How do you feel after watching strangers fight online? What thoughts remain after scrolling through images of other people’s lives?
Research on trauma-related media has identified a cycle in which distress can lead to more viewing, followed by further distress. Continuing to consume information does not always help us process it.
There comes a point when we need space to work with what we already have.
Allow yourself to pause. Consider whether the input is helping you understand, respond, or grow. Notice when you are returning to the same material without gaining anything useful. Take what has value, and practice letting the rest go.
Give children that space, too. Time to play. Time to ask questions. Time to be with an adult whose attention is available. Time for an ordinary experience to be enough.
We carefully consider what goes into our children’s bodies because we understand that nourishment matters. What enters their minds deserves the same thoughtful attention.
What are we asking our children to digest—and are we giving them the support and space to do it?
