Parenting: A journey of awareness

I am a mother of two young children, both under 5 years of age, a preschool age daughter and an infant son. Being a parent comes with many opportunities to view, engage, interact with and understand varied parenting styles. This opportunity brings with it the struggles of comparison and doubt, as expected. The most important learning for me as a parent has been to accept the fact that there is no perfect parenting style. Consequently, there is no perfect parent. This, for me, was quite a disappointment initially, to be honest.

The coveted trophy that most of us parents seem to be running behind didn’t exist.

Were we to understand that all our efforts to raise perfect beings was not to be recognized on at least a local, if not a global, platform? My second disappointing discovery followed soon enough. The ideal child: the perfect angel, the baby that surrenders to parental commands instantly, lives only as per our expectations, etc. etc.  was to be found only in fiction apparently. The silver lining of the dark cloud of these discoveries lay in the fact that now I didn’t need to run behind these recognitions. Now that these concerns were out of the way, it gave rise to a new conundrum. What would then be my motivation to be a good parent? This was the fresh storm that began brewing within my grey matter.

While searching for the answer to this question, my newest finding caught me off guard, as it threatened to upend my life significantly. I discovered that being a good parent had a lot to do with me rather than with my little ones. This is where I discovered the power of self-awareness and mindfulness. Allow me to explain. The goal of all parenting, rewarded or unrewarded, has been about bringing up a good human being, one with a good set of values and principles. Hopefully, the product of all that effort would be a person who would be a positive contributor to self and society.

Yet, what I have undoubtedly learnt in these few years as a parent is that effective parenting is best done, not by enforcing changes on the child, but by changing myself to set a better example.

And this is the crucial place where the various parenting styles begin to diverge. While many experts write volumes and volumes of literature on the dos and don’ts of parenting, most will make a fleeting mention of the fact that we need to model good behavior ourselves to see it reflect in our children. All adults from generations ago have known that children copy what we do and not what we say. When there is a discrepancy between our words and actions, they will tend to pick up on our actions and repeat them. Yet, what has been common knowledge, however, has rarely been taken deeper than that. In order to take it deeper than conversational wisdom, I find it crucial to discuss the role of self-awareness in parenting.

Let me begin by recounting a personal incident. As I don’t have my family around to support me through the journey of parenthood, I need to depend on hired help. A few months ago, due to certain unavoidable circumstances, my nanny had to leave the job. She was a young woman whom my daughter loved and admired. During the period of transition, I ensured that my daughter was well informed of the changes and was supported through them by my husband and me. She seemed to be coping very well, adapting to the new nanny instantly. I was surprised yet unconvinced about it. Needless to say, in a few days, I received an update from her preschool that she had begun acting up at school. Her behaviour had gone through a drastic change there. Initially perturbed, I pulled myself together and began holding conversations with her again. Slowly and steadily, she began expressing her sorrow and fears at the changes happening at home. She was afraid that things were going to change for her at her second safe place, which was the school. This incident taught me a very powerful lesson about parenting. Often times we hear people make generic statements like, ‘Children are very flexible. They can adapt to change easily.’ However, in reality, I saw that my daughter was struggling with it. As I paused to process what was happening with her, I remembered that I had always struggled with change, ever since my childhood probably. It had taken me many years of self-awareness work as an adult by learning to name my emotions, allowing the unconscious to surface, to be able to get better at it. Even today, when I am faced with an unexpected change, my first reaction is to get defensive and resist it. All these years of self-work has helped me to identify the symptoms of discomfort earlier than before and learning to work through it. It hasn’t made them go away or made me a master of change. Yet, the power of self-awareness lies in the fact that I can now hold myself together better than before.

The apple indeed doesn’t fall far from the tree. Hence, it was not surprising that my daughter was also struggling with adaptation to change.  However, my self-awareness journey and self-reflection habit played a key role in me allowing my daughter to go through change and adapt to it at her pace. I often wonder if I would have been as patient with her had I not been aware of my own inner processes and patterns. I wonder how this change would have impacted her, if, instead of supporting her, I were to come down on her and force her to adapt to it instantly. Even today, despite being a young child, she often confronts me when she notices a discrepancy in my words and actions. She is like the traffic police lurking behind the signal, ready to catch me when I violate laws. If you are an Indian, you know exactly what I am talking about. At such a junction, I tend to admit my faux pas or try to explain myself, depending on the authenticity of my actions.

The crucial point I wish to make here is this. We often tend to assume that parenting means teaching the right values and manners to our children, ensuring they learn appropriate discipline and behavior. While this is obviously a part of the process, I wish to differ only in the means with which this needs to be achieved. We expect kids to be perfectly behaved, angelic dolls. We have a world of expectations from them. Yet, we refuse to let them be humans. As adults, we struggle to deal with difficult emotions, express ourselves effectively or cope with change. Yet, without blinking an eye, we expect kids to be perfect in all of these. In order to bring up good human beings, we need to first be so ourselves. To be a good human being requires better awareness of oneself and the ability to bring the unconscious patterns and behaviors to one’s awareness. As a parent, you can reprimand your child and even punish him to behave appropriately. However, decades of research have proven that a compliant child is not the goal of parenting. It is only through modeling appropriate behavior and living an authentic life yourself that you can bring that behavior out in your child. When your child sees you accepting your mistakes, apologising where appropriate, taking remedial action, he learns a better way to deal with his difficult feelings. In order to do so requires the practice of self-awareness and self-reflection, both of which are habits that can be cultivated with conscious effort.

To summarize the importance of self-awareness, I wish to quote an often-repeated metaphor. If a seed that you have planted is not growing well, what do you do? Do you fix the soil, provide nourishment, sunlight and water; or do you reprimand the plant for not doing its job well? Do you tend to fix the environment it is growing in, or do you rebuke the seed? Same is the case with parenting.

If a child isn’t growing up to his best abilities, you need to fix the environment you are providing him with.

In order to fix the environment, which involves you as a parent, you need to first understand what needs to be fixed. Through our journey of Finding Self, this is our key goal. We help you with tools and techniques so that you can make your unconscious become visible and conscious to you. What is visible can be examined and changed. What stays invisible is unavailable for action. Children are wonderful resilient seeds who, when given an opportunity, blossom and make the world a more beautiful place. All they need are proactive parents who are willing to do their part in providing a better environment to the best of their abilities.