Parenthood! Can you ever be prepared for it? I don’t think so, and the truth is, although there are no perfect parents, some parents are better than others. Ouch, I know that stings, but to be effective parents, we have to grow so much ourselves.
The Essence of Family and Parenting
Parents make families in more ways than one; not only do they biologically produce the offspring that some people feel makes a “family” (that is another post), but they also set the tone for the household and how children will learn and grow.
Reflections Across Generations
Parenthood allows us to see ourselves and prepare our children to be better people than we are. I am often told that in Indigenous American culture, the totem pole represents many generations standing one on top of the other, giving reverence to the idea that we are a reflection of the parenting that came before us.
The Path to Conscious Parenting
Conscious parenting is the mindful approach I recommend for parenting throughout a lifetime. There is less emphasis on the present moment and more on looking at the family system as it grows holistically. Before I became a parent, I worked with children as a therapist. Still, I was unaware of my personal commitment to parenting despite helping to raise children within my extended family system. Despite the many years of training, internships, and volunteer activities, I was so lost. We went through childhood, right? How hard can it be?
The Challenges of Authentic Parenting
If we are authentic parents marching to the beat of our internal drum, parenting can be really difficult. It is difficult to drown out the sounds of someone else’s values and emotions and decide what is right for you. We live in a noisy, messy, bossy world.
Daily Practices of Conscious Parenting
To be a conscious parent, we look at our daily choices and realize their impact on our children and, by extension, our community. To be conscious parents, we must make a little extra time to listen and speak with our children daily to discover what is happening in their internal world.
Envisioning the Future
To be a conscious parent, we must parent with the end in mind; we must have a vision for our children about where we want them to go yet allow them the flexibility to choose their path while still enforcing the law of self-sufficiency with them. We want them to make meaningful contributions to our culture and community, not take from it. So yes, this task of parenting is much harder than we know, yet our impact is greater than we realize.
Parenting and The Holistic Store
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