Soul Journey Guidance

The other night at the dinner table, I looked across at my son and asked, almost teasingly, “How old are you again?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “I’m nine.” Then he stopped, looked down at his plate, and added softly, “But my soul feels like it’s five.”

That answer caught me. It wasn’t just words—it was a window into something deeper.

He wasn’t talking about being behind, or about struggling. He was naming something many of us forget: that the number of birthdays we’ve had doesn’t always line up with the age of our soul.

Some souls come into this life carrying wisdom far beyond their years. You meet children who speak like little philosophers, who notice things adults overlook, who seem to have “been here before.” Others, like my son in that moment, carry the innocence of play a little longer. They may be nine in body, but their soul still craves the joy and wonder of being five—where toy trains, planes, and cars feel like the whole world.

Neither is wrong. Both are needed.

As parents, it can be easy to worry when our children don’t act the way society expects for their age. But the truth is: our role isn’t to push their soul to “grow up” faster or to silence the wisdom that feels older than their years. Our role is to honor both—the physical age of the child we’re raising, and the soul age of the being inside them.

That means letting the nine-year-old still play like he’s five. That means respecting the five-year-old who sometimes speaks like a wise old sage. It means allowing them to unfold at their own rhythm, to meet their lessons and joys in the timing their soul needs.

When we hold that space, our children feel seen—not just as bodies growing older, but as souls becoming whole.

So maybe the next time your child says something that surprises you, that feels beyond their age—or younger than it “should” be—you’ll pause. You’ll remember that age isn’t only a number. Age is spirit. Age is energy. Age is soul.

And the greatest gift we can give our children is the freedom to live in both.