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Parenting

How to be A Mindful Parent

15 January, 2014

Today’s How To Be A Mindful Parent contribution could not have come at a better time! Mindful parenting is difficult at the best of times but moving to a new country and trying to figure out what we’re doing seems to have made this even harder. The wonderful Lisa Hassan Scott’s How To Be a Mindful Parent made me stop and reflect on what I need to do to become more present in these hectic moments.How to Be a Mindful Parent - 3 lifechanging yet simple practices

There are some days when it feels as though the world is against me. Today we’re ten minutes late for the dentist. We’re trying to leave the house when one child suddenly announces that he needs to use the loo (not a number one, you understand), the other two are bickering instead of putting their shoes on, the lunch still hasn’t been made for when we get home and I remember that I’ve missed a deadline and there won’t be time tonight to work on anything. My mind is busy, busy, busy and I’m wishing I could escape from this stressful situation.

Mindfulness is the opposite of having a busy mind: it is filling the mind with only one thing at a time. Sounds easy, right? Of course you know from experience that it’s not.

Try sitting down and staring at a candle flame or a pebble or a flower for five minutes or more. For most of us, within the first minute we’re thinking about our shopping list or the ridiculous thing we said yesterday or the work we’ve got to get done tonight. It’s not easy to fill the mind with a single thing.

Mindful parenting involves allowing the mind to focus solely on this present moment with our child(ren). It involves letting go of worries about the future or anxieties about the past. It involves letting go of labels, expectations, and our own personal baggage that can get in the way of a truly authentic experience with your child.

At the heart of Mindful Parenting is Connection
After all, this is the aim of mindful parenting: connection. A mindful parent seeks to establish a meaningful connection between the parent’s authentic self and the child’s authentic self. We let go of what we are expected to be, what we used to be, what we hope to become. We allow our child and ourselves to simply be who we really are.

It’s essential to first let go of thoughts about being ‘good at it’ because it is simply a practice. With mindful parenting we release judgements and criticism; we practice acceptance. We are all learning and growing every day. You wouldn’t expect to sit down and play a Chopin sonata after your first piano lesson, and similarly nobody’s going to be a totally mindful parent all the time. Give yourself a break.

So allow me to offer up some ideas for how our parenting could become more mindful, and as a consequence, more meaningful.

Check in with your thoughts
1. We can become aware of our thoughts. If you do only one thing to engender deeper connection with your child, this is it. Imagine your mind like a television screen, a canvas or a blank wall. Across the surface of the mind thousands of thoughts float each day. Some are fleeting, others draw us in and invite further consideration. When we are in the hothouse conditions of parenting, gentling a crying baby, supporting a toddler in a tantrum, dealing with older children who are arguing—in all of these situations myriad thoughts arise. When we are low, we might think:
“I can’t do this.”
“I’m not cut out for this.”
“Why is this happening to me?”
“I wish I were somewhere else!”
“I hate this.”

And when those thoughts take over and multiply, parenting is invariably harder and we feel more disconnected from ourselves and our children. We might end up behaving in ways that aren’t in keeping with our overall parenting philosophy. Then the critical thoughts arise (“I’m a bad mother”) and these sow the seeds for further disconnection and unhappiness.

When you become aware of your thoughts you find yourself in the driver’s seat. Instead of being at the mercy of your thoughts you are in charge and can choose to divert the mind or interrogate the veracity of those thoughts. You are not your thoughts. Practice checking in with yourself and watching what pops up on the canvas of your mind. You may start to notice patterns. The first step is awareness.

Get Grounded
2. We can ground ourselves. To bring ourselves smack dab into the present moment we can make ourselves completely physically present. Grounding usually has to do with our relationship with the Earth. So you might stand for a moment and sense your feet touching the floor. You might stop and become aware of your physical body and the space that it occupies (more often than not you may also become aware of where you’re holding on to tension—raised shoulders, clenched jaw, etc.).
But my favourite way to ground myself is completely child-centred and harnesses the power of human touch. I just touch my child. The sensation of his skin, the chubby dimples of his knuckles, the flyaway down of his hair—all of these feelings draw me away from unhelpful thoughts and straight toward my child. This is no absent-minded touch. It is a meaningful interaction that makes our connection real on the outside, so that we can connect deeply from the inside.

Breathe
3. We can breathe. Goodness, it sounds so simple, doesn’t it? From the moment we’re born, til the moment we leave this life we breathe. It’s automatic, totally involuntary. The rhythmic, pulsating, wave-like movement of the breath can become a cornerstone of calm in our lives. Focussing on the ebb and flow of the breath can drown out the unhelpful thoughts that lead us away from connection with our children. Instead of the din of thoughts (“What a mess!” “There’s too much to do!” “I can’t possibly meet everyone’s needs today!” “What a horrible day this is!”), we can let the mind hover over the calm tidal inhalation and exhalation.

When we’re stressed, we usually clench the tummy muscles, shoulders and face. We lock up the breathing mechanism and instead of filling the lungs, the breath only reaches the upper chest and ribs. Allowing the breath to move right down towards the tummy softens those muscles and calms the mind. When parenting is hard and you need connection with your child(ren), try the pursed lips breath: breathe in through the nose and when you exhale lightly purse your lips and gently but smoothly blow the breath out until you have released every little bit of breath. You may be surprised at the length of your exhalation and how quickly your tummy becomes involved. Repeat as many times as you need to calm yourself and let go of tension.How to be a mindful parent

Each of these three ideas is a practice. It’s something we try to do as much as possible during the day, but there are times when we might not feel as though we’re terribly good at being mindful. All of our responsibilities won’t go away, but mindfulness can help to bring a little more peace to pressured moments.

Self-care
One of the fruits of all of these practices is self-compassion. With time and practice you will become more aware of the way self-critical thoughts beat you down and prevent you from living authentically as a parent. Don’t let them win: persevere. Even better, if you can get to a Yoga class, a one-to-one teacher or a meditation class, then do. In my opinion, it’s the best investment you can make into your parenting.

Trips to the dentist only come round twice a year, but as a parent I face challenging situations every day. There’s no one recipe for being a “good” parent. With mindfulness we let go of those value judgements and we simply aim to be the parent our child needs. No parenting manuals, no how-to’s. Just real, satisfying, meaningful connection.

©Lisa Hassan Scott 2013.

Lisa Hassan Scott is a Yoga teacher, freelance writer, breastfeeding counsellor, home educator and mother of three children ages 4, 8 and 11. She blogs at lisahassanscott.co.uk.

Parenting

How To Be A Gentle Parent

7 January, 2014

This is a weird old month for us- settling into a new country and trying to get a new website off the ground (Wonderthrift.com – do have a look!) I’m thankful that some of my ABSOLUTE favourite parenting authors and bloggers will be helping me out over the next few weeks, continuing the How To Be A _______ Parent series.

First up with this second round is Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of the wonderful Babycalm and Toddlercalm books. Here Sarah gives a beautifully honest and nuanced perspective on gentle parenting.

When Lucy gave me the title of this guest post my first thought was “easy peasy, I should get that written in an hour tops”, but I have to confess, three days in and I’m still pretty stumped. It should be easy right? Especially as she gave me the option of writing a bullet point list, but something is stopping me, it’s hard! (then again isn’t everything in parenting?)

I keep coming back to the idea that ‘being a gentle parent’ is just something that you inherently are. The clue is in the title “how to BE a gentle parent”, not “how to DO gentle parenting”….and I think this is the cause of my difficulty, how to write an article giving advice to people to change who they are? That’s not so easy!

Then again, as soon as I get engrossed in this thought I keep coming back to the good old ‘nature V nurture’ debate. If gentle parenting is all about the being rather than the doing, then nurture theory tells us we can and do change as a result of our environment. Perhaps the key to gentle parenting therefore lies in our own childhoods, in the way that we ourselves we raised, but if we were not raised in a wholly gentle fashion does that mean we cannot break the mould with our own children? I don’t think so.

I do think that perhaps the hardest thing about parenting isn’t the arduous physical demands – the sleepless nights and the like, it’s about coming to terms with our own upbringings and realising that we need to work on fixing our own internal problems before we can even begin to think about working on those of our children (because all too often issues with our child’s behaviour are rooted in our own). Navel gazing is a necessity for all parents in my opinion and if you allow it to, the experience of parenting can be the start of an intensely important, enlightening and often painful period of personal growth. I think this is where ‘being’ a gentle parent kicks in.

It starts with us, the parents, and who we are – it’s not about a set of rules or guidelines to follow or things to ‘do’. I think that’s why I have had so much trouble writing this article, nevertheless here are some points I feel are important:
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1. Recognise that in order to be the best parent you can be to your child you need to think about your own childhood. This might take the form of realising how privileged you were and realising how amazing your own parents are and how much you owe to them, or it could take the form of realising that you were treated anything but gently and recognising the importance of not subconsciously using the same techniques on your own children that were used on you. Often it will involve having to forgive your parents and sometimes yourself too.

2. Making a pact with the guilt monster. All parents feel guilty, about pretty much everything, it’s an inherent part of being a parent, but it’s so important that you don’t be so consumed by guilt that you close your mind to information that may make you hurt. What you did three years ago, a month ago – or yesterday – is in the past, leave it there and forgive yourself. When you know better you do better, if you didn’t have the information you have today how could you have done differently? Don’t let your guilt blinker you to learning and growing and ‘doing better’ for your child.

3. Growing up. I’m not really sure how to phrase this point, I know what I mean but I’m not so sure it’s going to come out in the inoffensive manner I mean it to. Making the momentous decision to bring a new life into this world is a big deal. It *will* change things (everything) and you won’t be able to hang onto your old life, not all of it anyway. For me one of the biggest crux’s of gentle parenting is about losing the selfish parts of our personality, life isn’t just about you any more, it’s about a delicate dance of balancing your needs to cope and the needs of your child.

4. Following on from this point is the really crucial idea of mind-mindedness, or in less psycho babble jargon – empathy. Trying to understand how your child feels whenever possible. It’s hard sometimes – boy is it hard, but if you can try to imagine how your screaming baby/tantruming toddler/stroppy teenager feels, everything is easier and your actions will be very different. Quite simply if you treat your children how you would like to be treated in the same position you’ve pretty much got gentle parenting nailed.

5. What do you need to be able to do all of this? Support and nurturing yourself. If you’re struggling to do this all alone and you’re all wrung out, however do you expect to ‘be there’ for someone else? This is the biggest problem with our society today, parenting is so fragmented from the support network we’re supposed to do it in! If you don’t have that lifeline no amount of babywearing, breastfeeding, bedsharing or AP books are going to help, in actual fact – these props (none of which are necessary for gentle parenting in my opinion) might very well contribute to point number 2. the all consuming guilt, if you don’t have support in place. I might have put this last but it is at least as important as my first point if not more-so!

So, there you go – no special recipe or “5 step plan to gentle parenting” to follow, I don’t even really think there is such a thing as “a gentle parent” really, we’re all just people doing the best we can to muddle through and trying to inflict the least amount of damage possible onto our kids!

Sarah Ockwell-Smith is a mother to four, a parenting author and co-founder of GentleParenting UK. A new gentle parenting website launching in Spring 2014 on www.gentleparenting.co.uk – until their launch you can find them on Facebook and on Twitter.
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