Parenting Tips for Aquarius Children

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are continuing our series on parenting tips for all 12 signs of the zodiac by taking a look at the sign of Aquarius. So this video is appropriate for those of you who have kids that might be Aquarius Sun, Aquarius Moon, Aquarius rising, maybe a stellium of planets in Aquarius,

You can listen to this for yourself if you're an Aquarius or have any of those placements because, in a way, this series is really addressing the inner child within all of us and maybe helping us to reflect on how we were raised, what was really helpful about how we were raised, and maybe what wasn't so helpful, which can help us understand a little bit more about, you know, the environment we were in and what it saw or maybe didn't see about us on an archetypal level.

So really, anyone can watch this series, and we have gone through all of the signs up until Aquarius, so you can go back and listen to any of the previous talks in this series and hopefully get something good out of it if this is not the sign that addresses your chart the best or your children.

So I have also framed everything in this series in terms of ways to support we're not trying to get something right or perfect something or get rid of the blemishes of the sign as much as we are trying to understand the sign and therefore understand our kids or understand the way that we were raised or our own inner child.

Before we get into it, as always, don't forget to like and subscribe today. If you're new to the channel, we really appreciate it welcome, and you can always find a transcript of any of my daily talks on the website nightlightastrology.com. I would love to hear from you about your thoughts, tips, or advice for parents of Aquarians or for people who have Aquarius placements in general; how do you get by?

We'd love to hear from you guys: in the meantime, don't forget to check out the website nightlightastrology.com, where you can learn more about all of my readings and courses. If you have any questions about my readings and courses, you can email us with questions at info@nightlightastrology.com.

Okay, well, there are five things that we're going to say today, as in all of the previous episodes about parenting the Aquarius children, or the Aquarius child within yourself, which I think as we age, we come to realize even though it's a cliche, and it feels kind of corny to say it; there's an inner child in all of us that still needs parenting that needs to feel like it's part of the situation.

For most of us, we find that when something in us pops up that is childlike, we think of it as regressive, and I think of it as something that's seeking understanding and incorporation that's more vulnerable. And that maybe at some point was told that you don't belong, or you don't have a place here, or you don't have a role to play. So again, I think this series could be valuable not only for parents of Aquarius children in the case of this episode but for any of us.

Anyway, there are five things that I think can be really helpful for parenting Aquarius kids. Now I grew up in a family where my dad was an Aquarius, my sisters and Aquarius mom has an Aquarius moon, and my grandparents had heavy placements in Aquarius as well, and both my mom and dad's side, now I have nothing in Aquarius except for the south node of the moon, but go figure.

At any rate, I'm very familiar with the Aquarian energy and archetype just by virtue of growing up with a family of Aquarians, and I think understanding something about their nature, but also through the years of spending time with clients and hearing from clients who are Aquarians, or let's say, since I had since we've had kids just goes back for me to 2015 I've spent more and more time talking to parents about their children's chart just happened naturally as I became a parent. These tips that I provide today are also coming from the many sessions that I've done talking to parents about their kids, Aquarian placements, and how to work with them.

The main thing to understand when working with kids is on an archetypal or astrological level that we want to understand the archetype so that we can understand and support what our kids are working with. Most of the time, behaviors from an astrological perspective in our children are not right or wrong; they're archetypal, first and foremost.

From there, we can understand how an archetype acts or behaves when it's becoming extreme or maybe when it's not getting integrated or properly recognized. It sort of becomes like; I don't know, like a, like a wild animal that's hungry or hurt or something. Most of the time, if we understand the archetypal impulse, underlying behavior, we can learn how to support it rather than trying to correct a behavior or, you know, say, this one's good. That one's bad. It starts with understanding.

So let's talk about our Aquarian kids, and these are in no particular order, but number one on my list is to support idealism. This is a fixed air sign that is ruled traditionally by Saturn. Now, Saturn has a lot of different roles that it plays; not all of them are bad, and most of the time, people are used to thinking in modern astrology about Aquarius, as ruled by the planet Uranus.

Now you've heard me say this on my channel many times I do not support the use of outer planets as sign rulers because the philosophy that was designed with the rulership system in ancient astrology was incredibly complex and very nuanced, and it was something that played a role in multiple levels of theory simultaneously.
So you can't just slap a ruler on because it has a nice archetypal affinity.

I'm not saying that Uranus doesn't have some archetypal affinity with Aquarius, but unfortunately, it's the philosophy required of us when it comes to ruler ships in ancient astrology is just far too sophisticated for the modern method of just sort of slapping an outer planet on a sign that sort of has some affinity with it. So I don't use outer planets as rulers, so in that sense, I look at Aquarius as the airy masculine domicile of Saturn. That's a very particular and nuanced placement.

Saturn, among many other things, was the ruler of that which is distant. And that is because Saturn, as a planet looking up out into space, was the dumbest and most distant in our solar system, the visible solar system in the ancient world. And it was thought to sit at the gateway between this world of the gods and their influence in our mundane terrestrial world, and the world of almost like the platonic world beyond or the heavenly sphere, beyond the realm of the Divine beyond; an unknowable realm that lay beyond the boundaries of Saturn.

So, when it comes to Saturn, Saturn can be all the limits of this world. But it can also be about the alienating and strange kind of quality that we experience when we draw close to that which is beyond the known. That which is beyond the world as we understand it. So for that reason, Saturn has long been associated with things like, you know, experimental science and mysticism and artistic innovation that seeks to go beyond the known into places that are relatively unexplored.

Because Saturn sits at that gateway between what we see in this world and a world beyond, Saturn is not just a planet of boundaries that keep things in and keep things old or keep things restricted, but also a planet that represents the alienating experience of being interested in that which goes beyond.

This is also a signature of melancholics in the ancient world; as much as melancholics may also experience a feeling of being isolated, frustrated, depressed and, sort of, you know, hemmed in limited or imprisoned by the world, melancholics a temperament that Saturn was the ruler of was also associated with artistic innovation, restless romantic longings for worlds beyond and so forth.

So, it's very important to understand that the Aquarian temperament is airy, its intellectual, it's somewhat abstract, and it tends to reach into the future for things that progress beyond known boundaries and limits, and in that sense, it is actually Saturnian. Saturn is a planet that relates to mysticism and artistic longing and a sort of melancholic, wistful
approaches towards the divine.

Which is why for example, Saturn could be associated with people who live in artistic solitude or an inventor that lives, you know, in a hermitage, like somewhere in the woods or something, or even a convent or monastery where people are having high altered states of consciousness or even shamans whose hut sits on the edge of the village to borrow a phrase from John Moriarty his book.

By the way, if you guys want a really great book, let me just say The Hut at the Edge of the Village; it's called The Hut at the Edge of the Village by John Moriarity. So if you want to book that's fantastic and kind of gives you a high Saturnian vibe, that's a great book for that kind of experience.

Anyway, for this reason, Aquarians are interested in things that are ideal, that are almost platonic, that exist in this higher world of possibilities beyond the known, and so the thing is, is that Aquarian kids can be dreamers. Aquarian kids can sort of have this restless, idealistic, perfectionistic tendency, which can make it feel like the world isn't good enough or nothing's ever good enough or that there's this restless this feeling of discontent, all of which is actually a very positive part of how Aquarians grow and understand themselves and understand the world is to be somewhat idealistic and to reach into the future for different kinds of possibilities or different kinds of what other worlds could exist the interest in strange things like that.

If aliens or altered states or psychedelics or progressive scientific projects or missions to the moon, so to speak, all of which can be very Aquarian insofar as there's a probing, reaching, and searching for something higher, something more, something beyond. These do not, you know, these are not things that need to be grounded or brought back down to earth in our kids; they're things that need to be supported and, over time, anything that's unrealistic or that tends to reject the world or find that this world is just not enough, those tend to come down in time, not because we've told them, hey, keep your feet on the ground and be realistic, but because we've allowed the explorations to happen, and do their own work on the soul.

Number two, support feeling or needing to be different. Now, this means this has more to do with social identification or personal and psychological identification. So the other thing that's interesting for Aquarians is that same need to explore in terms of ideas, worlds, and subjects can also take place on the level of identity and psychology, the need to explore sexuality, or the need to explore which clique or group one fits in with best, and the need to go beyond the cliched.

Aquarians are often the ones who stand out as being very different somehow at school, even from a young age, that they're sort of alien or unique, or that they stand out and the need to explore that and move into it and explore those edges is totally natural, totally normal for Aquarians.

Now, the angst that can come along with it, or the feeling of not fitting in or of being above other people, or of no group being quite good enough, or, you know, there can be a sense in which, you know, Aquarians can alienate themselves from others as a result of this kind of restless probing for a more ideal social identification or psychological identification. It can actually be something that sets them apart to the point where they get isolated. But you still have to let it happen.

In a sense, you can't just say, look, you have to just get along with other kids at school, you have to fit in, you can't keep looking for something more ideal, trying to, you know, kind of clip those wings, metaphorically speaking, just won't work.

So support the feeling of being different or needing to be different. And know that if you support it and celebrate it, praise it, and also take an interest, hmm, what else is possible? Yeah, I know, some of those social groups at school can be so predictable, or whatever it is, that if you move into it and allow kids to explore it, you will find that, you know, the feeling of being adaptable, and being more accepting and finding a niche takes place in time when we're not trying to correct what we see as some kind of flawed approach to social or psychological identification. But just allowing.

Number three support belonging while being different. So I put this another way, which is to say, we can also encourage the aquarian in us or our aquarian children to say, you know, it is possible to stand out and be utterly different while also belonging to something that you like, but maybe doesn't perfectly square up with who you are. So compromise, social and psychological compromise. Where do I belong? Who am I? There's never going to be a perfect fit. This is something that we can
just, you know, kind of gently remind Aquarians of that, you know, you may always feel a tension between belonging to something while also feeling like you don't belong to something, and that's what makes you so interesting.

Rather than saying, you know, what the Aquarian extreme tendency can be, which is to sometimes feel like I either perfectly belong to something or I'm just utterly different. So that's one way of supporting our children in one of the hard parts about being an Aquarian, which is to say, look, you can be different while also belonging to something that doesn't perfectly fit you.

Number four is to support the acceptance of the mundane. Now, this is something that, you know, it's like while Aquarians are probing and pressing for dreams and possibilities and ideals, and there's a kind of perfectionism present in Aquarius that can be rather alienated, and that can make Aquarians feel like this world is so full of potential, but so limited, you know, so frustratingly limited, or people so filled with potential so limited.

That experience is something that we can help soften by helping our kids say, you know, I can see that there's so much more that we're capable of as people, that there's so much more that lies within us, that there are worlds that we haven't even yet tapped into and yet, can we encourage at the same time this feeling that you know, this world is so beautiful in all of its flaws. There's something about this world that's like the ugly duckling. You know, it's beautiful in its own flawed way in its own in the way that it stands out.

So just keeping a sense of the acceptance of the world as it is because accepting the flaws, and the imperfections, and the limitations in the what it could be, but isn't yet the acceptance of all of that really eases the burden of the beautiful potentiality that Aquarians are always carrying around in themselves and in the world.

Number five is to support identification with ideas. And this might sound weird because a lot of us, you know, we don't necessarily want to get identified with an idea. I'm a person, not an idea. But what happens with Aquarians is that Aquarians might need to get identified with a philosophy with a social-political ideology with a religious group, or with a series of statements or almost like assertions, or, you know, how do I orient psychologically, identity categories maybe they're an activist for a cause or something like that?

What happens is that progressively through the identification with various values and ideas, almost like faith or belief statements, politically, socially, religiously, etc., culturally. Aquarians come to realize over time, by successive identification with ideas, that they are something more than an idea that can't happen for Aquarians or really for air signs, in general, unless they're allowed the space to go through that process.

If you have an Aquarian kid that starts getting really, really identified with a particular group, or culture or idea or political value, and you try to say, look, you know, you're trying to figure out who you are by just identifying with this group, and don't you know, that, you know, you're something more than an ideology. You know, it might sound like common sense.

On the other hand, for an Aquarius, you might be cutting off the very process by means of which one's humanity in one soul is actually discovered. So just give space, allow space, it's one of the great things we can gift Aquarians that Aquarians often gift us with is spaciousness and openness to explore how we both fit with and do not fit with ideas, socially, psychologically, religiously, politically, etcetera.

So support identification with ideas and overtime trust that Aquarians can, I mean, maybe you have to give a little bit of feedback here and there. You know, I love your ideas. I also just love you for you. Those are little things you can say but don't try to cut off that process of social and ideological experimentation. That is very much at the heart of what Aquarius's process is all about.

So, at any rate, those are some of my suggestions for parenting, but again, whether you are a parent or just the inner child within you is Aquarius, I hope that this has been useful. As always, before you leave, don't forget to like and subscribe. Share some of your comments and reflections on being an Aquarius or being a parent to Aquarius children. I'd love to hear from you. As always, it's really interesting to see what you guys have to say.

If you want to find a transcript of today's talk, it's on my website, nightlightastrology.com, where you can also explore my readings and courses, any questions at all, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com That is it for today, and we will see you again tomorrow. Bye.