Consciously Unconscious

Last night I made a conscious decision to finish my parenting day as an “unconscious”, or “unaware”, parent. I’ve been on this eye-opening, thought provoking 3+ weeks Conscious Parenting Quest with Dr. Shefali Tsabary and learned a great deal what conscious parenting is about.

But last night … I decided to forget it all. After a bad night sleep from previous night and 20 hours of fasting (for medical reason), I’ve had enough of ‘yester-day’. As the ‘dreaded-last-push’ bed time approached I summoned my girls (2 and 5 year olds) with an attractive offer to brush their teeth. Standing in the bathroom with a tiny flosser in my hand, almost ready to call it quits, I said, (ok shouted): “girls, it’s time to brush your teeth and go to bed.” But no one came.  The cheer, singing and laughter continued from girls’ bedroom.  The usual. So I stormed in their bedroom, VERY aware of myself and not feeling a tid bit guilty and threated: “if you don’t come and brush your teeth your NOW, I am going to bed! … and I will never give you candy again … nor pizza, and will cancel all your fun tomorrow!” The girls ran into the bathroom, competing who would be first. There was a little quarrel, followed by a fist fight and then tears. My 5 year old lost because she had to go to the bathroom that very same moment but my 2 year old, even though she got to the sink, refused to open her mouth…

Thirty minutes later, I managed to finally brush everyone’s teeth and get them to bed. There were tears, there were hugs, there was laughter and singing, some yelling, and everything in between.

Laying beside my 2 year old, in the dark room, waiting for her to fall asleep (as I always do), I melted onto the yoga mat on the floor and it never felt so good. “Another day is over. I carried through…”

I was not a perfect parent nor did I even strive to be one today. So what? I wasn’t horrible either. I was just a human …. In this roller coaster parenting journey – we sometimes raise the bar quite high and we might be very aware of it (sometimes the truth hurts), but let’s not beat ourselves up when WE don’t meet OUR OWN expectations. We are only human and being human carries a lot of responsibility. Dear parents, let’s give ourselves a break now and then and celebrate our strengths and weaknesses. I salute you all, moms and dads … and even single humans! 😊