Developing in cycles - Understanding the seven-year phases

Every single person develops in cycles, even babies and small children. For babies and small children are cycles very important because it helps them to build their body and mind. You might have heard about the small cycles, like a day, a week or six weeks. In this article I like to share more about the seven-year cycle. This is one of the important larger cycles that apply to all children.

The seven-year cycle explained

Unlike the other cycles, the seven-year cycle is the same for all ages. The first cycle is from 0 to 7 years, the second from 7 to 14 years, and then to 21 years, etc. The seven-year cycle is the cycle in which the soul and body develop phase by phase. Not coincidentally, after seven years all cells in your body have been renewed. Remember that cells have cellular memory? After each phase, the memories of the phase that has ended are stored in your body. So you take all the knowledge you gained in the first phase to the second, and then again to the third.

This is profound: every seven years, you are literally a new person at the cellular level. But you carry the memories, the learnings, the traumas, and the triumphs of previous phases encoded in your cells. This is why the first seven years are so critical—they become the cellular foundation that everything else builds upon.

Chakras and the seven-year cycle

Your chakras are important for the seven-year cycle. Your chakras develop in the first cycle but become stronger with each cycle. Each child starts by developing the first chakra, then the second, etc.

Each phase of the seven-year cycle corresponds with a chakra. This means that your child's first cycle corresponds with the first chakra. The first chakra stands for the foundation: the first years of your child are focused on creating her own foundation.

First Cycle (0-7 years): Root Chakra - Foundation and survival

This is the phase we've been discussing throughout these blogs. The first chakra governs survival, safety, basic needs, and belonging. During these seven years, your child is answering fundamental questions: Am I safe? Am I loved? Do I belong? Can my basic needs be met? This is why the first thousand days are so critical, and why the energetic connection between mother and child is strongest during this phase.

Everything your child experiences in these years becomes the foundation for everything that follows. A child who feels safe, loved, and securely attached builds a solid foundation. A child who experiences neglect, rejection, or chronic insecurity builds on shaky ground.

Second cycle (7-14 years): Sacral chakra - emotions and identity

The second chakra, and thus the second cycle of 7-14 years, stands for emotions, feelings, and sexual development. It's not for nothing that first crushes arise in this phase of life. It's quite possible that your child changes during this cycle. For example, they can get different food preferences, their character can change, just like behavior and other preferences. Your child can even change archetypes or start to fill the role of daughter/son, brother/sister differently.

This is when children begin to separate their emotional experience from their parents' experience. Remember how in the first cycle, your child felt your emotions as their own? Now they're learning: "This is MY feeling, not yours." They're developing their own emotional palette, learning what they like and don't like, experiencing attraction and desire for the first time.

How each cycle builds on the last

So each cycle has its own themes, goals, and development points which are personal for every single child. It can be they have to learn karmic lessons, have their own challenges or need to learn something in order to build a lovely and stable bases for their life. Each soul chooses her own development and own pace. The soul ideally experiences karmic lessons or new goals in the designated phase. Your child gets the lessons and development (s)he can handle at that moment.

But here is the thing, sometimes the wanted development of your child is in conflict of the views and values of the parents or the society. Therefore, the child is blocked in his/her development and cannot learn the lessons that (s)he needed. And here starts the trouble.

The soul wants the lessons to be learned and the development to be done. Since it was not able to achieve this in the ´right´ phase and time, it will take it to the other cycle. But the soul also recognize that the body is stronger and the mind is more challenging, so it will take more effort to proceed to learn the lessons. This means that lessons that are supposed to be learnd in the first cycle, can come back twice as heavy in the second cycle, or the third.

So, for example, a child who needs to learn her own boundaries will in the first cycle set and test their own bounderies. This can be in a civel way, like competition, not listening well, giving it all. In the second, and specially the third cycle, this can change to challenge the law, stealing, doing drugs, etc.

This is why recognize the needs of your child early matters so much. Each cycle builds on the previous one. Unfinished work doesn't disappear—it makes the next phase harder.

The transition years

It may also be that especially in the transition years (6, 7, 8; 13, 14, 15; 20, 21, 22) a lot changes in your child's life.

These transition years are often turbulent because the child is completing one phase while beginning another. They're closing out one chakra's primary development while opening the next. Parents often notice dramatic changes during these years: the six-year-old who suddenly becomes more serious and introspective, the thirteen-year-old who seems to change overnight, the twenty-one-year-old who suddenly gets their life together.

These aren't random changes—they're the soul shifting gears, moving from one major developmental phase to another. If you know these transition years are coming, you can prepare for and support the changes rather than resisting them.

The end of the first cycle is especially important, since this is also the period where your child energetically disconnect from the aura of their mother. This means that by the year of seven, your child will be on it´s own for the first time in their life. This has an huge impact on their personality and behavior, it can change overnight.

Supporting your child through the cycles

Understanding these cycles changes how you parent. When we understand this, we can stop trying to make our children conform to a single standard and instead support them through the natural phases of soul development. We can recognize that the "problem" behaviors of each phase are often the soul doing exactly what it needs to do.

If you recognize the challenges and development your child wants to face, all you need to do is to support this.