Supporting Your Family’s Human Design
By Darla LeDoux, Founder of Sourced™ and Author of the books Shift The Field and Retreat and Grow Rich

“So why bother to understand Human Design, when many of these things were behaviors we had already noticed about these kids?”

Last week I had a lovely week off with my sister and her three sons. They came to Austin, and we headed to the beach (Padre Island) for a few nights as well. My nephews are all boys, ages seven, nine and twelve. (The 12-year-old was celebrating his birthday while here).

One day we were out to dinner, and it was time for the middle one to place his order. He froze up. He couldn’t decide what he wanted to eat.

The waiter stood, somewhat patiently, as we all stared at him, willing him to decide. He didn’t. The waiter stepped away to deliver an order and while he was gone my nephew made his choice.

Two days later we were again out to eat. Again, when it came time for the middle child to place his order, he was wordless. We could feel his frustration as he stared at the five options on the kids menu. We offered him the adult menu, talked up the different menu options (“Ooh, the shrimp sounds good, that’s what your brother got.”), and tried to help him to choose.

(Both times he ordered the kids menu cheeseburger with pickles and mustard BTW).

After witnessing this experience twice, I decided to look up his Human Design. Human Design to the Rescue!

Are you aware of Human Design? Human Design is a system that helps us to understand how we are designed to operate at our best, and it draws from astrology and the iChing to laser in on the energies you have the most consistent access to in this life. There are 9 centers and a whole host of “channels” that make up our chart.

I have all of my high level clients pull their Human Design chart and share it with me as a part of our work together so I can be the best coach to them by knowing how they are designed to operate. (I refer people to Chetan Parkyn’s site as he is the first person who I purchased a reading from which rocked my world: https://humandesignforusall.com/)

I knew there would be something in his chart to help the adults in his life to understand his ordering process.

So as we waited for our dinner, I started with the 9-year old’s chart.

Sure thing, he is a Manifesting Generator in Human Design with an emotional authority. Manifesting Generator’s have a sort of two-step decision process. They have an initial decision, and then they need to try out their choice to know for sure. This can look like saying, “Yes I will do that with you,” and then taking a step toward the door and realizing they really don’t want to.

(I have a MG friend who I always thought was sort of flakey until I understood this). 

Add to this his “authority.” Authority is the way human design speaks about decision-making style. His authority is emotional, meaning he needs to feel into his decisions. For the most part this takes time. Making a quick decision from a menu will be challenging. This may always be the case, but there are a few things a parent could do to support a child like this. 

When first arriving at the restaurant, provide special attention to that child and direct him to the menu immediately. While everybody else may be able to chitchat for a while and decide quickly, he needs all the time. Asking him to imagine first eating the cheeseburger, then eating the chicken, etc. and asking how it feels today can help to accelerate the process. And of course, patience. 

Support them to learn how they work best! 

After reviewing his chart, the other kids of course wanted to know about theirs. In pulling each child’s chart, I was able to quickly see specific things about them that made perfect sense.

During the trip I had observed that the oldest was continually delegating his work to his younger brothers. Now on the one hand this may be a perk of being the oldest. On the other hand, I am also an oldest child and I know that role actually led me to taking on extra responsibility. And as a generator, I found myself having to check my judgment toward him, as I was seeing this behavior as lazy. “Could you carry this into the condo?” I’d ask. He’d take the item from me and hand it to one of his brothers to complete the task. 

In pulling his chart I learned that he is actually a Manifestor! Manifestors have a lot of “open centers” in Human Design, specifically an open sacral, which means they do not have the same level of consistent access to life force energy as I do as a Generator. On top of that Manifestors are actually meant to be the visionaries, the idea people, and to delegate the actual work to others. Here he was behaving in perfect alignment with his design intuitively! And as his aunt, now that I know this, I can support him in using this gift rather than judge it.

The youngest of the three is a Generator, just like his mom and me. With him I noticed several things about his closed centers and channels that were so spot on with his quirky personality! He has a lot of emotion about things and can be extreme in his expression of his frustration. The emotion rolls through him and he moves on however. I won’t go into the details on this, but it ‘popped’ in his chart for sure! Each of the “colored in” parts of the chart represents an energy that is consistent within the person, which we can somewhat think of as their personality. (Imagine if all personality is actually just energy that we are either accepting or judging!? Yes!)

The other thing I looked at in our mini readings were the mind and crown areas of each of them.

I looked for this specifically because in the first chart I pulled, the indecisive one, I noticed that his mind and crown centers were both filled in, or closed, and the central channel between them was also filled in. This is exactly how the top of MY chart looks. What is interesting about that is that earlier in the week my sister had mentioned that she thought he would probably become an engineer because he is always trying to figure out how things work. When I saw that in his chart it made total sense. I am also trained as an engineer!

(In my initial HD reading Chetan said “You have a brilliant mind Darla, but it is not your friend! It is great at solving other people’s problems, but don’t use it to solve yours!” Embracing this has been such a big part of my journey!) 

The oldest who is the manifestor, also had his mind and crown filled in, with a channel in between. But his channel is the channel of “abstract thinking.” This also immediately made sense as he was the one who would question the ideas behind the various things we would talk about, constantly asking for clarification or more information, or correcting anything we said that might not be totally accurate! 

The youngest child, age 7, who asked for hair color for his birthday, has an open mind and crown. He is more a man of in-the-moment inspiration!

So why bother to understand Human Design, when many of these things were behaviors we had already noticed about these kids?

Because, it’s naturally so much easier to accept and receive the behaviors of people who are designed similar to us! However it can be very easy to judge the differences we have. Most people have an easier time deciding what to eat than the nine-year-old would. An inpatient parent could really judge this and shut down his design by choosing for him or shaming him. Similarly, when asking the kids to help out and observing the oldest avoiding the work, that can be easy to judge as well. Instead we could put him in charge of delegating the work, or even coming up with the plan to begin with, to make better use of his design!

If you are leaning in, I’d recommend getting your chart and getting a reading from one of these amazing humans! If you want to explore how to highlight your business model in alignment with how you are designed and your inner Sourced Magic, we do that in my Sourced Magic Business Program (enrolling for July). 

Human Design Experts I know personally:

• Maggie Ostara: https://sovereigntybydesign.com/
• Rebecca Tervo: https://rebeccatervo.com/
• Kris Prochaska: http://krisprochaska.com/
• Chetan & Carola Parkyn: https://humandesignforusall.com/