How I'm Parenting Differently
The only way out is through
There’s a few things I want to out of life:
I want to help myself notice what’s already inside me - my true goodness.
I want to help other parents enjoy their lives too.
If I just look for my own inner happiness I will never be truly happy, my brand of happiness only comes from helping others first.
So I’m going to do both at the same time.
I have my baggage. I am not perfect. In fact it has taken me many (many) years of therapy to decide I really don’t want to be perfect.
My baggage comes with me no matter where I go. It’s not something that goes away. In fact, I am glad to say it’s something that is going to help me help others. It will have its purpose. Just like my kids are my most valuable teachers so too is my baggage.
I recently shared the full story about how I became the most popular parenting expert you may have never heard of before, but here’s the short version:
I have always been a caregiver. When I had kids of my own things kinda went crazy though - emotionally. I decided the best way to hold on was to learn everything about children and their development so I could bring empathy and understand to my parenting - which was definitely lacking.
I read and read and yeah those books were great. I did learn things that provided a well of empathy when interacting with my kids. And I really do know a ton of things about “ages & stages” to this day. You add that research to a professional nanny career of 20+ years and I can back up my advice with the life experience of trying it on a plethora of personalities first.
What I couldn’t do was make my experience any better at home with my kids.
This was confusing because I was loved my clients and made my charges super happy and smart and independent. All this made me think I could be a super parent - but I wasn’t and if I looked closely this was my experience growing up as well.
My mother was a teacher her whole life and so you would think - oh wow you had a perfect childhood - nope not really. Try praised in the classroom, crazed in the family home.
Her baggage was heavy. That’s all I will say about that. She had also adopted 3 children bringing our brood up to a total of 5, her personal quest to make the world a better place for just one more child. It all was almost too much to carry.
And so the merry-go-round of habitual parenting responses was there just waiting for me to jump on. And for a while, scared, I rode that carousel of yelling and self-sabotage, but I also tried and tried to figure out a way off the ride because I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.
Avni Patel Thompson, a wonderful mom and start-up founder just recently said:
I feel like all parenting decisions fall in one of two camps:
a) my parents never did this, so I’m going to or,
b) my parents always did this, so I’m going to
Hard to escape that we are all a product of our childhoods, one way or another.
Feels relatable huh? We’ve all been there justifying or pushing away - it’s a real part of the parenting journey.
Unfortunately, I don’t think either of these choices work in the long run. I believe we can actually make the choice to escape them all together. To live somewhere outside the two - a third zone of opportunity, what the Buddhists call “The Middle Way”, and what I call parenting differently.
Those two choices always exist and they come to mind every day as I interact with my kids, but to parent differently is to stop and say:
“How does this feel for me right now?”
Your brain will rush to fill in answers to this question:
Oh you’re so messing him up right now
or
But this worked for mom so keep trying
or the doozy -
Don’t be mean!
but there’s also the answer deep in your heart, the one that says:
I want to hug him even though he’s hitting me right now
or the one that says
I need to walk away from this argument even though it will feel like she has won
To parent differently we need to start with our heart first.
Practicing to check in with our own comfort and happiness level is most important - even before our child’s comfort and happiness levels. It’s not selfish to have boundaries with our kids, and it’s also not giving up to notice how hard it is and take a break.
The choice to care for ourselves first is so different from what may have been modeled for us as children, it also doesn’t necessarily jive with what we planned to “get” out of our own parenting journey when we started thats almost impossible to see it as a choice in the beginning.
This self -awareness only comes from practicing how to notice what makes us happy and also what makes us sad or hurt.
As we parent differently we open up to the multitude of choices available to us instead of just what our parents did or did not model.
Join the community, we need you.
There is a whole sea brimming with creative ideas just waiting to burst from the depths of our own hearts.
Until we can remove the dam of scarcity, the dam of self-criticism and shame, we won’t even realize that we carry what we need inside us.
I want that for you, and I want it for me too. I think we can do it together - will you join me as I venture into that sea bursting with love and opportunity?
