Parenting classes often focus on how parents can better understand their child’s development and behaviors, and how to develop parenting skills that are mostly about behavior management strategies. These are certainly necessary for effective parenting, but they are not sufficient. There is one key ingredient missing.
In fact, without this important prerequisite, all the parent education in the world that focuses on setting realistic expectations and using effective consequences is a waste of time and money.
What’s this one key ingredient? Self-care for the caregiver. If you’re feeling stressed out, pissed off, dumped on, or burnt out, then you can’t use any of the other parenting skills. You may want to, but you just can’t sustain effective, loving nurturance and limits if you’re not fully recharged first. You can’t give your child your best if your not at your best. And your child can’t respond very well to even your best parenting, if he or she hasn’t taken time to de-stress and re-energize as well.
So, how do you (and your child) recharge your batteries and keep them positively charged? How can you share your best selves with each other during family time together, rather than saving all your leftover stress and resentments of the day and taking it out on one another with garbage behaviors that leave you feeling more drained and guilty and bitter?
Modern neuroscience is confirming what many peaceful, patient souls have known for centuries: moments of mindfulness, practiced regularly, can go a long way to relieving stress and promoting happiness.
What is mindfulness? Some parents are concerned it’s some new-age fad, or some religious cult. It’s neither. It’s simply a way of being fully present in the moment, without a lot of distracting, self-defeating thoughts, without the nagging worries and judgments that sap our joy, without the struggle to resist or grasp for things beyond our control. It’s about being aware of what is happening in the moment, right now, and accepting that, then making a conscious choice for how to respond in a loving, compassionate way, rather than automatically reacting in some mindless, often angry or anxious, way.
How do you develop a habit of mindfulness? Like anything else, with practice. Patient, persistent practice. There are many ways of developing mindfulness. Here’s one tip that you can start with to help you develop more peaceful, mindful ways of relieving stress in your daily life – called mindful attention.
Spend a few minutes, right now, just paying attention to the sounds in your environment. What do you hear? Listen some more, what else do you hear? Nearby voices or music? Distant traffic? Wind blowing? The buzz of electronica? A sudden bird chirp or siren or rattling furnace? Your breath? Your heartbeat. Shhhh. Just listen. Focus on hearing whatever is surrounding you, and just take it in. Don’t judge it, or yourself. Just enjoy the sensations and the awakening realization that you’re surrounded by many different sounds at any given time. They’re happening whether you’re aware of them or not, whether you approve of them or not. Now, you’re just paying attention to them. And appreciating them.
Or you could do this with sights – what do you see, when you focus just on the things before you? Focus and see things for what they are, just as they are, in this moment in time. Not how they were yesterday, or a minute age, not how they’ll be next month, or how they should be. Just how they are. Or do this with the sense of smell or taste. Enjoy experiencing your senses in the here and now.
Notice that when you’re paying attention to just these senses, worries fade away. Or maybe a distracting thought pops up, and you recognize it, but you don’t become controlled by it. You acknowledge it, and let it go. You return to your focus on the senses, gently and directly. A few minutes of this, several times a day, can release built up tensions and rejuvenate your soul. Outside in nature is particularly refreshing, but not necessary. You can do this whenever, wherever you are. Just pay attention to what is here, now. Observe it, appreciate it, and let it go. And move on to the next thing.
There are many things in our hectic, crazy worlds we can’t control. One of the few things we can control is our minds – what we pay attention to and what we think and feel. We have many choices, and we can go about mindlessly reacting to the world that we see as doing things TO us. Or we can mindfully attend to what is happening, accept it, and choice to respond to it with lovingkindness. This doesn’t mean we have to like or approve of everything – our child’s whining or defiant behaviors, for example. It just means, we can choose to respond more compassionately – to our kids and our selves – when we come from a place of mindful appreciation and peace, first.
Then we can put those other parenting skills to good use, guiding our children to make more respectful, prosocial, healthy choices for themselves as well.
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