A question provided for the Instagram Challenge I joined this summer is: What is your definition of Mindful Parenting? I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, wondering if I am a Mindful Parent and how I would even know if I am a Mindful Parent.
Being Mindful means to be present and aware of the given moment. To be truly present we need to be attentive to our thoughts and actions, aware of how they affect those around us and aware of how they affect ourselves. To be honest, it seems hard to imagine being able to be “aware” while tending to an infant’s basic needs such as: food, safety and love. It’s almost oxymoronic. Who had time to reflect?
Years later a parent is confronted with the wide range of emotions that the teenager experiences. These Middle and High School years are filled with change. It can be chaotic and worrisome. I remember wondering if I was doing my job well. My self-critic was never too far away. In a short time, the child leaves the nest and is suddenly faced with navigating their own lives. All the while, a parent watches and hopes they’ve done enough. There is suddenly time for reflection.
Perhaps what I know most about Mindful Parenting during all the stages of childhood is that when my children are sad, I am sad. While they are happy, I am happy. My emotions are intertwined with their emotions. The challenge becomes how to let their life, their experiences, their emotions be theirs. In my opinion, this relationship that is indeed biologically connected, needs to begin a separation in order for everyone to individuate and grow. Perhaps Mindful Parenting is working through this challenge: How to always be available, but not too available. How to offer advise, but not too much advise. How to be a parent that allows for the child to grow and experience their own successes and failures as theirs and not ours. I suppose in order to make these decisions, it would be helpful to trust the present moment rather than be trapped in the past or pondering the future. After all, the present moment is all that we can really know for certain.