Mindful Parenting - Importance of Acceptnace, Reward and Punishment

The new generation is globally exposed following the information overflow from media, internet, youtube, pro. They have a different set of problems altogether. Their territory of the physical, real-world is diminishing and the virtual world is increasing. How will you make them follow a good value system, have great relationships and do well? Answer is Mindful Parenting. Mindfulness is a practice that helps us to rewire our brain network, understand our thoughts positive, negative and help us in developing an empathetic attitude. It helps us to develop a non-judgmental attitude towards our own self & others. You need to be non-judgemental to be loving someone unconditionally. Love is magical. Why? Because it is the language of acceptance.

Parenting is all about renewed curiosity, transformative commitment, tolerating differences, showing compassion & regulating emotions. And this doesn't come naturally but with a lot of awareness & practice. We must practice now. Have you ever noticed that when there's a peak or happy moment we get super-charged, go shopping, watch movies, vacation, spend quality time with the loved ones And then there's vacuum until the next happy moment arrives! It's understandable that one can't indulge every day. But what stops us from being super-charged & spending quality time with our loved ones. Why do we need a reason to be with our kids?

Accept: Peak Happy Moment Vs Vacuum

Let's learn from an example. A kid scores wonderfully, beyond expectations, in the school exams & we immediately trigger that peak moment in our lives. Another kid doesn't score that well & all hell breaks loose. We don't celebrate because it's not worth celebrating. But look at the kid, who had put in the efforts & understandably doesn't even know what went wrong. But as parents, we not only start judging them but compare our own kids with the others who scored well. By doing this, we ourselves are creating that vacuum & distancing the kids from us for no fault of theirs. We completely forget that they are two different individuals & more so we don't even try to assess the reason for bad scores. We probably never tried to establish that kind of communication when the kid was preparing for the exams. Why blame afterwards?

Reward: A Cue from a Bollywood Movie

A recent Indian movie Chhichhore emphasized on this aspect very beautifully when a father calls his son and tells him that he would buy him a bike even if he doesn't score well. The fact of the matter is that we tell our kids what all we would do for them when they are successful, but how many of us have told our kids? What will we do for them if they fail? Are we expecting them to understand & cope with failure alone, with no guidance whatsoever? We need to tell them very firmly & keep cementing the fact, that no matter what, we as parents, are always by their side.

Why do we hurt our own children?

We as parents, hold immense transformative powers right from the time we bring them into this world. From feeding to teaching them to brush their teeth, putting them to sleep, making conscious efforts towards their cleanliness or their nutrition, to even dropping them to school. Have you noticed that we tend to lose these powers when the child starts growing And that's where we start hurting them. We tend to hurt them not because we have ill-intentions & certainly not for the lack of love.

The Reaction: An Independent Research

A research was conducted where some 11000 parents were interviewed & the results were eye-popping. Most of the parents confirmed inheriting legacies of emotional baggage in their growing years from their parents, grandparents & family in general. Since they carry this dormant, unconscious emotional baggage, all it needed was a momentary trigger & their own children were the best triggers. When we hit our children, it's not because they are some kind of evil but chances are they triggered an old wound. They make us powerless, send us out of control, make us helpless & in order to regain our supremacy, we lash out at them in reaction. When we practice mindfulness, we understand the difference between reaction & response. When our children become respectful towards us & they cross their boundaries, chances are that they are not wild or chaotic but we ourselves, have a problem with our leadership & consistency. We generally have a problem in handling conflict or simply saying No. he children come to us as whole, complete & worthy but because we have been conditioned so deeply in an unconscious manner, severed from our own sense of presence, wholeness & abundance, we tend to reflect or impose the same pattern onto them.

Questions, we must ask ourselves!

Sometimes, I wonder, why do we teach our children to look outward than inward for self-worth? Why do we tell them they can't just play & enjoy but must achieve? Why is that we tell them that they just can't have a hobby but they must excel at it too? We end up telling them that they can't dream & should they do dream, they must dream big & ironically we do tell them that if you can't succeed, they why even waste time dreaming about it?

Takeaway

It's high time that we change the spotlight to turn it inward & not get perplexed by the materialistic societal pressure. The extent to which we as parents, can laugh loudly, love deeply, risk bravely & lose freely, is the same extent to which our children will love joy & freedom.

It's time to awaken & shift the parenting paradigm to treat children as equals, as human beings. We can make this change if we take time to pause, to reflect, to connect to our own abundance. Happy Parenting to everyone!

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