Imagine the following situation: you are going to adapt your child at school. He cries and you are in shambles, unable to understand why you feel so bad about leaving him there. What happened?
Now, you are at home, following the routine of the day. Soon, your little one starts a conflict, refusing to fulfill the agreement to collect the toys scattered around the room. In 2 minutes, you’re yelling wildly at him. When you realize your reaction, you feel shame and guilt.
Why does it happen?
All the reactions you have are usually based on what you have felt and the experiences you have had in your own life. If you feel uncomfortable about leaving your child crying at school, it is possible that your parents would sneak out when you were a child, so as not to see them cry. And when they did this, without knowing it, they ended up generating a feeling of insecurity in you . After all, you didn’t know what had happened. One hour they were there, in a second they were gone.
Well, you grew up and forgot all of that. However, that feeling was kept in a box in his mind. Suddenly, when your son cries at a farewell, everything comes up. Just hearing his cry makes you uncomfortable.
When you were a little girl and trying to express yourself, you were almost always not heard. Because she was not heard, she had behaviors that defied her parents. Then maybe they would scream, as a way to interrupt their behavior. You grew up and it was all kept in you. Today, when your child does something you don’t like, your reaction is also to scream. But why do you act like that? Because we carry within us a mental model based on reaction and not on the development of thinking before acting .
That way, when kids do something that they don’t like or are outside the rules, we get angry, frustrated or even furious. And then we allow our emotions to take over our entire system and we start to act on “autopilot”.
What conscious parenting proposes
Conscious parenting means understanding why we do what we do and breaking a cycle of repetitive patterns. We are so conditioned to preach sermons, to shout to be heard, to punish to interrupt something we don’t like, that we forget how painful all these things can be to another human being. It is about becoming aware of our pains, anxieties, fears and joys, so that we can understand what needs to be done to act differently.
But, conscious parenting also means understanding that the child is not your “mini-self”. That is, he is not someone who came into the world to fulfill his dreams. To paraphrase Shefali Tsabary, children are spirits that throb with their own trademark. So it is important to separate who you are from who your child is.
Son is not property
Convinced of the best intentions of making our children responsible and capable of dealing with the world when they become adults, we ended up imposing our agenda on them. And we often forget to look at what makes sense to them. That is, what makes your hearts beat. We do not realize that when we impose our way of seeing the world on our children, we are also limiting their spirits.
Conscious parenting is first to perceive and accept yourself , then to look at the other. It is also opening the boxes of memories and emotions that we have left closed for a long time, and looking at what is inside of us. It means feeling, reframing experiences and memories.
That way, we will be able to stop reacting to our children’s behaviors in order to act consciously . It is about listening to our children, honoring who they are, being present in their lives and also giving them limits and discipline in a respectful way.