The power of Imprinting

How should I be towards my children? Is a question most parents have as soon as they know they are expecting. While there is no absolute “RIGHT” way of doing it - but many researchers point us toward a beautiful and conscious imprinting in our child right from conception. It is simply done by consciously attending towards our inner child ( the child within us) and being aware of our emotions, choosing how to feel and regulate a set of emotions.

Lawrence Konrad experimented the “power of imprinting” with a duck hatching eggs. When the chicks were emerging from the egg shell, Konrad replaced the mother duck with a puppy for about an hour. After an hour he brought the mother duck near the ducklings that were newly hatched. Amazingly the ducklings started following the puppy wherever it went, in much the same way that they would follow a mother duck. These ducklings followed the puppy all over the place, slept and ate with it! 

Now this took place because, as soon as the hatchlings came out, the first imprinting they had was from the puppy. The imprinting  which are usually made are strong and powerful, the subconscious registers it. For instance, imagine a dry sponge, when we place it in a sewage water, it just sucks it up. Similarly if we place it in a pure aromatic water, again it sucks it up to its capacity. The sponge is the Fetus formed during conception. It absorbs and imprints all the feelings and emotions of a mother.

In humans the time of imprinting stretches from the time of conception to the end of the fourth year after birth. Whatever imprinting that happens in the childhood creates the filter with which the child views world, life and people. The primary care givers of this period have a vital role to play in creating this filter. Soon after birth , the imprinting is from the closed people around them like all those who touched the child mostly by bathing them, feeding them and those with whom they slept influenced their imprinting permanently. Their images of these people are firmly imprinted in their mind. They will remember the shape of their face and later they will relate easily to people who resemble them. Research says, Even romantic attractions in later life will come easily to those who  resemble their early primary caregivers. 

The power of imprinting is enormous, and thereby it calls us to consciously imprinting what we want to see in our children right from conception.