It comes in the willingness to pause for a second and really look at our thoughts, or at the emotions that can pull at us as we plow through the hours of our days as a busy parent. When it comes to thinking about your children’s behaviour, is it possible for you to see that much of your feeling that you need to control or direct your children’s behaviour in a certain way comes from some prior conditioning? And perhaps even from the fear of not succeeding in meeting the expectations of that conditioning? For example, the other day, Olive said she wanted to kill someone. Now, she’s 3 years old, so this of course sent me into a panic “Oh my God, how can my little angel have this thought and say it so boldly out loud? What have I done as a mother to instil such violence in her thinking? Perhaps she is picking up on some deep inner rage and suffering that I haven’t dealt with yet and this is the result…yes, this is proof of what a terrible job I’ve done as a mother” and on and on. These thoughts are almost imperceptible because they happen so fast, but they imprint a deep feeling that this behaviour must stop and be covered up immediately. So then, I feel that more than anything, my job now is to strongly (and without delay) get the message across that these thoughts “I want to kill her” are uninvited, unwelcome and they must be pushed away and never rear their ugly heads again. And then it is easy to see why it felt natural (and the ‘right’ thing to do) to admonish Olive for thinking such negative thoughts and saying them aloud, without really taking the time to ask her what that meant to her and where it might be coming from.
But there is another option. What if I were to stop in the instant of hearing ‘I want to kill her’ and just let myself be stunned for a moment. And stay there, in that moment, in an open (not pushing anything away) curious (being super aware and unattached to the reactionary flood of my own thoughts/reactions/emotions, as well as staying attuned with what appears to be going on in Olive) and totally present (stay completely alert with all senses in the moment), way. Who knows what might happen? Just doing this alone is enough to withdraw attention from the conditioned/reactionary mind and into the vast intelligent awareness that will bring forth a perfect ‘solution’ or ‘action’ if needed. At the times when I’m really falling prey to my emotions (always fuelled by negative thoughts about myself that I am believing in that moment), I find it helpful to employ Byron Katie’s questions from ‘The Work’. So in this case, I could ask ‘is it true that she shouldn’t be saying this?’ ‘is it true that I need to reprimend her for this?’ and then I have to be willing to stay present in that ‘not-knowing’. Only from there can an intelligence beyond the reactionary impulses of my emotional/mental bodies arise.
As parents we think we are supposed to ‘know’, isn’t it supposed to be our job to teach right from wrong and instil values, morals and good behaviour? I believe we need to deeply question our role as parents in relation to the specifics of how and why we guide our children’s behaviour. This is tricky territory I know. There are so many different schools of thought on how to raise a child, and so many of them have brilliant and profound ideas on guiding behaviour. But all of them still have subtle blueprints of what the ‘ideal behaviour’ looks like. So this in itself is already imposing an external ideal on a child which limits her own capacity to express and discover her own uniqueness, her own creativity, her own innate wisdom. What if we refocused our role from trying to guide our children’s behaviour, to that of providing a space where they can discover their innate intelligence, creativity and compassion that operates as the foundation upon which all other learning (which is secondary) takes place? The knowing of the self is first.
Sounds good, but how the heck do we do this? Obviously we can’t condone our children’s negative or violent thinking or behaviour, so how do we consciously attend to it? I believe that a powerful starting place is to notice the affect their actions/behaviour have on us – and being truthful about that (to ourselves, if not to our kids). We could sit quietly and not engage with our reactions, but instead just be fully present, and know this is enough. This is unconditional support, this is loving, this is being present. When appropriate, we could start modelling to our children what we do when unsavoury thoughts arise in us; we can show them that we recognize that we have a choice to believe those thoughts or not (even if they come from the most authoritative source – society, our parents, our longest-held beliefs, etc). We can be willing to show our vulnerability of ‘not-knowing’, but also show the strength of what that ‘not-knowing’ allows to come forth. We have a great opportunity and reason to model a conscious questioning of thoughts, even and especially if we believe we can never be freed from them. Through that, we can discover the falseness of those beliefs, and then directly experience a greater, deeper, more compassionate, creative and loving knowingness (that doesn’t ‘know’ anything for certain, but is certain in and of its presence) that effortlessly emerges. This is your true self – this is your presence, your intelligence beyond your thinking mind. This is the unconditioned, unknowable part of us that needs to be called forth if we are to raise children who never become separated from their essential selves. By nurturing the recognition of and allegiance to our deep/true Self, we create for ourselves the opportunity to raise children who will be able to remain creative, joyful, and naturally loving into adulthood. With their innate creative intelligence intact, these same children will also be able to effortlessly contribute creative and compassionate solutions for the planet and for humanity.
At the end of the day, we could just be more gentle and compassionate towards ourselves for not knowing what to do… we could just love everything within that inner parent that is trying so hard to ‘get it right’. And of course, we can keep noticing the vast and tender awareness that all of this is happening within.