On Conscious Parenting

Recently I was privileged to complete an online course with Dr. Shefali Tsabary on Conscious Parenting and I will never be the same again! She challenges the traditional parenting approach, the burdens of unconscious parenting, that have been passed from generation to generation and awakens us to higher consciousness, to our better selves.

My relationship with my own children is now transforming day by day and I find it more peaceful, more intimate, more blissful.

I have previously read one of her books before, but I could not even finish it. It did not resonate with me. I questioned a lot of things and I disagreed with some of her ideas. I found her approach too “granola” and not suitable for the real world.

Perhaps I was not ready to hear it back then; perhaps I was still “asleep”. But this course, at this time and place hit the spot right on!

Below, I would like to share my top 10 Dr. Shefali’s lessons on Conscious Parenting that stood out the most for me. I hope you will find them eye opening too and I hope you will be inspired to be a better, more conscious parent. Read one lesson per day and give it a serious thought over the day. See if you can incorporate it into your life.

1.Parenting is not about the child. It is about YOU – the parent. How often do we get mad at our children because they are not doing something that WE want them to do? Think about it.

In the most obvious example, do you get upset when you’ve paid for your child’s piano lessons and she doesn’t want to practice? Well, it’s your Ego that wants her to be a pianist because her being a pianist makes YOU feel like you are a good, proud parent. So you see – it’s about YOU. Your child may not want to be a pianist. She might want to be an artist or a scientist.

In a less obvious example, do you get upset when you are trying to get to school on time yet you’re always late because it takes forever for your child to get dressed and brush his teeth? Again, it’s about you. (What? You ask). Your child is being a child. He wants to play and do a hundred very important things before he will let you get him dressed (talking about small children here). It’s your role, as a parent, to calmly guide him and explain on what is more important – those hundred things or being late to school.

I know, I do the “explaining” every morning and my child still choses to be late. It’s frustrating. It hurts our Egos. It drives us nuts. But it’s a learning curve for the child. Changes and growing up don’t happen over time. It’s our choice to start yelling at them until the steam blows off our heads … Or, we can chose to keep trying to be creative and nurturing and accept that we might be late. I accept that every morning.

Love your children, at their best AND at their worst

2. Think about your upbringing. Are you repeating the parenting patterns of your parents? Chose the ones that serve you well. Drop the ones that don’t serve you.

3. See your children for who they truly are.  In our hectic world today, take some time to slow down and observe your children. Who are they really? What do they like and don’t like?

4. Let’s talk about emotions:

A: Respond, don’t react. Yes, if you do any sort of meditation, you know what I’m talking about. In the moment of heat, when you are most frustrated or angry (or insert any adjective), watch your feelings rise and fall. PAUSE. Do you really want to spill your “sh*t” onto your child right now, or can you take a breath, calm down and approach the situation more calmly and rationally?

B: No more emotional dumping: Seriously! We tend to lose our patience more towards the end of a crazy busy day when we are most exhausted. Or not. Sometimes this happens in the mornings too. We tend to accumulate little pains here and there throughout the day, or week, or months, (or just a few minutes for some), until it all piles up into a big dump full of crap and we feel like screaming our heads off.

Any little trigger, whether it is your child doing something you don’t like, you stepping and rolling on a chu-chu train left in the middle of the kitchen, or your husband coming home from work (what a relief!), might tempt you to just dump all your accumulated emotions onto your child (or husband!). You might feel a bit relieved (it’s like having a good poop after being constipated), but neither your child nor your husband will appreciate it.

Find other ways to dump your emotional baggage and spare your family. The choice, of course, is yours.

5. Reflect on your cultural archetypes. Think about the way our culture perceives Beauty, Success, Happiness, Wealth, Achievement, Family, Love, Marriage etc … I’m copying this straight from Dr. Shefali’s list. Think about what these mean to you and how you “impose” or navigate these with your children?

I grew up being a competitive chess player and a very hard working person. I had dreams that when I have children, I will make them chess champions because they would be the better, improved versions of me. I know how to navigate the ropes in competitive world.

But when my first daughter was born, I looked at this cute, tiny little blob and I literarily told myself: “screw my dreams of raising you as a chess champion or anything else that I (me!) want. I want you to grow up and be who YOU want to be. Just be true to yourself. I love you!”

Yes, being competitive is an important skill these days. My gosh, we as parents start ‘em young!  Having a certain status in society, accumulating wealth and other successes shapes us into who we are and how we fit into this world. And it’s a really scary world! But imposing our believes, forcing our children to be someone who they are not so that they could “fit in” requires a … delicate balance.

I think this is one point I don’t quite agree with Dr. Shefali. She seems to be all hands down. She let her daughter discover ballet at age 8 but by that time her daughter was already “behind” the girls her age and was put into a beginner class with 6 year olds. Well, I think Dr. Shefali missed out. I think she should have introduced her daughter to ballet much earlier instead of letting her discover her own passion as she grows. Perhaps she could have pushed her daughter a little if there was some resistance, or tried to inspire her one way or another.

I could write a whole essay on this and argue both sides, but my main take-away – always strive for the balance and what seems right.

6. Identify and evaluate your expectations: Are your expectations reasonable? Are they worthy? Can you really expect a 3 year old to always be jolly and not throw tantrums? Afterall, he hasn’t learned how to master and control his emotions. WE, as adults, still struggle with out emotions. We throw our own tantrums, except that we deny doing it ourselves and label them as “drama” when we see other adults do it … and we don’t go rolling on the floor in the grocery aisle. But a lot of us still haven’t mastered emotions, so what do you expect from a 3 year old?

I’ve written other posts on Expectations, so I’m going to stop on this one here.

7. Labeling, “good”, or “bad”: Have you ever told your child “you’re mean”, or “you are a good girl”, or attached any other label onto her? No good, my dear parents.If you call them something bad, that’s just plain bad. You’re pushing their “bad” behaviour further into a hole re-enforcing it deeper. Or you simply hurt their feelings, because children, are neither bad or good. They just are.

On the other side, if you label them as “good”, you are putting pressure on them to live up to that expectation and it’s a lot for a child to take. One day, she will crack and do something that in your mind is “bad” and then what? You will ask “Oh, what happened to my “good” child, where did she go?” Your child might “rebel” because she no longer wishes to be viewed as “goody do”; She just wants to be true to herself and not live up to your expectations.

Growing up I always the “good” girl. I gave no trouble to my mom whatsoever cause I always listened to her and did what every parent wanted her child to do (go to school, do your homework, work hard, no drugs etc).

But then I grew up, moved out and got my own opinion on things, some of which were different from my mom’s. All of a sudden, in my mid 20’s and 30’s she started labelling me as a “teenager”.  I finally earned that title because I disagreed with my mom on certain things, rebelled even, and was no longer the “good” girl.

You are setting yourself for a trap if you start labelling your kids!

P.S. I’m still, overall, a “good” daughter, and me and my mom love each other very much.

8. Be your child’s Spiritual Guide. This is my absolute favourite take-away and perhaps the hardest to accomplish. I thought a lot about what it meant to me. But I cannot put it into my own words that would sound better than in the words of Dr. Shefali. So the notes below are all her words:

-“Our role as a parent is to be a Spiritual Guide, for the sake of deeper connection.”

-“This is not a laissez-faire approach. It is a hands-on approach towards parent’s own level of consciousness, connection and engagement. And a hands-off approach from control, dogmatism, hierarchy.”

-“You are not a manager, fixer, or possessor.”

-“You are [your child’s] co-travaller in his life.” (Note: I absolutely love this idea!)

-“We need to be grounded in our own spiritual groundness.” (Note: I find this very hard to do but when done is very rewarding!)

Characteristics of Spiritual Guide:

-“Focus on internal essence of the child, their unique inner being.”

-“Realign energy to focus on the process and present moment/experience; not the goal or future outcome”

-“Release expectations”

-“Detach from how the child experiences her life. Don’t judge. Allow every experience to be experienced authentically by the child.”

-“Embody the qualities you wish to see in your children.” That is, lead by example.

-“Be the reflector of your child’s spirit.”

9. Spiritual Guide Mechanics: Dr. Shefali calls upon drawing the key elements from Nature whenever you need a tool to handle a situation. The four elements in Nature, of course, are: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.

She says that everything has an anti-dote to be balanced out. “When children feel an emotion, see how nature would balance it out on the other spectrum of energy.” For example, if a child is on fire (yelling for example), think Earth – respond in calming tone (be down to Earth). If a child is stuck on something and is showing a lot of resistance, think Water. The water flows through obstacles and always finds a path to least resistance.

10. “Shifting from being your child’s disciplinarian to being a co-creator of boundaries”. This is another big one for me and I am still processing/pondering about this one. The questions Dr. Shefali asks you are these:

-“What does it mean for you to shift from being your child’s disciplinarian to being a co-creator of the boundaries?”

-“How much of your thoughts and speech have been relying on the archaic forms of discipline?”

For me it’s an easy answer – most of it! Whenever my parents would want me to do anything, say get dressed and go to school, and I would be doing my own business (I’m 5 years old here), they would always threaten me with something. For example: “if you don’t get dressed now, then I’m leaving!” And, they would put on their coats and leave the house. The only caveat is that they would never actually leave. They would just stand outside the door, waiting for a miracle to happen (i.e. me getting dressed).

Today, having grown up with that model, I do the exact same thing automatically (unconsciously)! Except that I don’t leave the house, it’s too cold outside. I just get dressed and pretend I’m seriously leaving by fidgeting with a door knob.

Threatening to give up on waiting, trying to help your child with something is very common and seems to be effective (the child will finally co-operate), but it always ends up with tears, stress and some yelling or agitation. One day, I even threatened to cancel Christmas! Mama Grinch I am!

I am still figuring out how not to threaten, when we are, say in a rush to get to school. But I did the following:

A: Expanded my children’s boundaries by giving them more time to procrastinate getting ready.

B: Accepted that despite my best efforts we might still be late to school. And I am ok with that. My Ego doesn’t even feel offended anymore. Makes things so much easier!

C: Asked my older child what we can do to get to school on time. She did not have any realistic suggestions but we are working on it.

D: I started to get up earlier in the morning to prep everything so that when my children wake up I’m ready to go for them. That’s what I tell myself anyway. But when the alarm hits 6:40am, and especially after a sleepless night … (oh there are so many still! My children alternate between who will wake mommy up at night for some unconceivable reasons such as “there is something on my foot, take a look” and there’s nothing!) … I fail to get up early. And whose “fault” is it in the end that we are late to school? MINE! Yes my child fidgeted and procrastinated, but it was ME who got up late and ran around the house like crazy doing last minute preps for the day. I knew she would procrastinate but it was me who ran out of time and patience along the way and narrowed our boundaries.

I hope you found some of these ideas useful and inspirational. I will be writing more chronicles on how my parenting skills are doing, as I keep working through these ideas, so stay tuned. Leave me a note/comment on what your thoughts are about these 10 lessons?