Question: I work with school-aged children. Sometimes I do not know how to deal with them. I am not an authority to them. It seems that children these days have no respect for authority at all. If I treat them as equals, they start to lead me. If I am strict, they find it funny. How to deal with today’s children?
Answer from the Ascended Master Mother Mary through Kim Michaels. This answer was given during the 2026 Lithuania Conference.
Well, you are certainly not alone in feeling this way. But the reason is that we are in a transition period where many children are being born that are meant to bring society forward, but they are not fully aware of this. And so, you have these children that do not respect authority, but on the other hand are not mature enough to lead themselves. I know this is a very delicate consideration, but you have to find a middle way where you do not set yourself up as the traditional authorities. But on the other hand, you affirm in yourself what you will allow and not allow. In other words, you are not asking them to accept an authority figure. You are not creating this role of an authority figure, and you are stepping into it. But you are in your mind firm that you are a human being, you have a particular role in that situation, and they should respect you as a human being and treat you as a fellow human being who has a role to play. And you have a right to expect and demand from them that they do not allow the situation to descend into anarchy or chaos, because that does not serve them either.
It is more instead of having this old image where you have this authority figure, even going back to quite frankly religions and biblical times and priests and popes and this and that, you have a right to expect that children will respect you as a human being and will treat you as a human being. But for you to establish that, you need to work with your psychology and come to a point where you are not divided in yourself. You could in a certain sense say, Jesus talking about a house divided against itself, so you could say that there are dark forces that are constantly seeking to divide you in your own mind, to make you a house divided against yourself, by using your subconscious self to pull you in this direction and that direction. And you could look at a class of school-aged children as dark forces trying to divide you in your own mind. And the only way to maintain your sanity in that environment is to work with your psychology so you overcome the selves that can cause them to divide you. You are standing firm, you know who you are, you know what you are going to do in that situation, and you have a clear expectation that the children will respect you as a human being.
Again, I am not saying this is a cure-all answer, but it is at least a good step. And then perhaps you also need to work in the situation in the school with other teachers and authorities to establish that kind of an environment where you can say you have mutual respect, not the blind obedience to authorities that you had decades ago.
Copyright © 2026 Kim Michaels