The Natural Child ego is the initial ego state of any human being. In this state the person is loving, spontaneous, creative, curious, intuitive, honest and uninhibited. The Natural Child enjoys life and expresses emotion freely, whether those are feelings of love, sadness, anger, fear or joy.
Much of childhood and life experience generally results in the repressing of the normal, uninhibited reaction of the Natural Child. This repression itself may be a problem and bottled-up feelings can cause severe psychological stress and even physical illness. The result is that later in life we may need to spend considerable time unlearning these behaviors and peeling off layers of repression.
Remaining in contact with the Natural Child allows us to enjoy life and not take it so seriously. People seem to respond differently to negative stimuli; a harsh word is enough to have one child in floods of tears, while another shrugs off very harsh punishment. This sensitivity seems to be innate rather than learned and should be taken into account with our children.
Treating all our children identically could be treating some unfairly due to this sensitivity or other innate factors. Wise parents recognize this and adapt punishments accordingly. The aim is to allow the child to stay in contact with his Natural Child and to express himself freely but appropriately, according to circumstances. In fact a well-balanced personality could be described as one who has excellent contact with the Natural Child ego state and whose expression of that state is appropriate to the situation.
As parents we need to understand our children so that we can make punishment fit not just the crime, but the individual as well. Explaining why something should not be done is enough for some children, while others are more resistant to correction and direction. We need to know how best to encourage an adequate level of conformity without unduly repressing spontaneity.