I know from personal experience, and also from life experience, that mindful parenting is essential to this world healing. We parents come with many preconceived ideas that are just plain wrong. I have heard way too many times, "Oh yeah, I already know I will be paying for my kids therapy". Now, that can be a positive, because at least there is acknowledgment that parenting is a huge job, and that sometimes we screw up, and we know we are leaving an impact. But, I think it is our responsibility to try to parent with the idea in mind that we want to create the least amount of damage. We don't want our kids to have to go through years of therapy to learn to be emotionally mature people. It is good that there is that option, but it is us adults that have to get the therapy now, in order to be the emotionally mature person. Break cycles of unhealthy parenting. That does not mean you can blame anyone. You can't blame your parents. They did the best they could. But if you can see that it should have been done differently, do it. Learn how. Immediately.
Parents, allow your children to be them! Allow them to first, be children. Allow them to express themselves. Not who you think they should be. Provide gazillions of opportunities for experiences, but don't force them to stick to anything they hate, at least not at a young age. That is not how to teach them to follow through. If they get to be older, and they have begged you to do a certain thing, and have promised they will see it through, then yes, hold them responsible to seeing it through. Unless, what they are doing is causing them such distress, and they can admit they were wrong and learn from it that way. I guess what I am saying is, you will need to always balance everything so that you are not enabling them, but also so that you are not torturing them. They may go through katrillion of phases and it is your job to love them unconditionally, through each and every one of them. You need to teach them to be kind to themselves and others. Teach them positive self talk from the moment they can first understand that. You need to teach them how to eat food that makes their body feel good, and allow them to sometimes eat food that makes them happy, but is not good for them nutritionally. You need to teach them to take care of themselves physically, so that they can preform at what THEY like to do to the best of their ability. Teach them to be respectful to those that earn respect, and teach them how to react respectfully to those that don't. Please, don't say kids don't come with a manual, as an excuse to stay uneducated about your unique child. In this day and age, with the babillions of libraries, and Amazon, and Google, and with the wealth of books and material written on, I think almost every subject, you can read about most things and educate yourself. The one that will educate you the most, will be your own child, in many, but not all cases. There are also gobs of support groups on-line. I think Facebook has a support group for most conditions, life style choices, interests, etc. but I could be wrong.
Eckhart Tolle
Perseverance, by Kimberly Evans.
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