On training the inner child to kick ass

Your inner core self needs love and patience from you, to go with you into the world at your side.

Would you raise a garden well, by withholding sunshine and water from it to "make it tougher"?

You inner child is a part of you that is at your core. Its not able to give love and patience to itself. To a certain extent, it probably does not believe that it deserves it. This is not an intellectual belief founded on any sort of evidence; it is an emotional belief that is the only way it can explain a world that isn't fair. When you're young, your parents are your world. If your parents are imperfect, it can't be their fault. The young mind isn't ready to contain that kind of information. So the emotional decision is made that what's wrong with the world, must really be the fault of the child.

Give yourself at your deepest levels, this love and patience. This sunshine and water that might not otherwise reach these depths.

This practice will give you the core to be healthy in all ways. And yes, the ability to think for yourself. Thinking for yourself is a brave act, that is in many ways based on faith in yourself.