Want to know what I love about being a parent? If I goof up and “blow it”, I know my son is going to give me more opportunities to practice parenting differently. Many of us could improve our parenting styles and become more successful parents if we stopped to watch our children’s behaviors from a different angle.
No, I don’t mean looking at them sideways or upside down! I believe children are one of the karmic ways we get paid back for our "choices" of the past. How is that so, you might ask. I have an exercise for you to do. to help you become more aware of your parenting style.
1. Take out a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle of the page.
2. On the left side of the sheet, write down a list of each of your child’s behaviors that make you feel angry or frustrated.
3. Then, next to each behavior, ask yourself, “Is this mirroring something in me that I used to do or still do? Is it something I feel bad about in myself or that I used to judge about myself?”
4. If so, write that down on the right side of the sheet.
If you don’t look at your own personal issues and those things you may be judging about in yourself, your buttons will continued to be pushed over and over again by your children. They will act as mirrors, reflecting these behavior to you through their behaviors until:
1. You see your own personal issues, accept them and/or heal them, and then you no longer get upset when you see the same behaviors in children and others, or
2. You continue doing the same thing over and over again, belittling children who eventually grow up feeling bad about themselves and then they, in turn, have children who do the same and the cycle continues, with no one winning.
I believe anyone who pushes my buttons acts as a mirror for me to see something about myself I haven’t yet accepted, or something I used to do and it still bothers me. I remember watching a friend of mine gossiping about people we both knew. She would often make judgments about others quite frequently and it began to bother me.
Each time she verbally judged someone, I’d begin to judge her for being judgmental. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Her judgment of others bothered me because I did it as well and didn’t like it. She acted like a mirror for me to see my own shortcomings. When I realized this, I stopped judging her and accepted her more for who she was.
When parents become upset and don’t see the reflections staring at them, they often dismiss their children’s feelings as unimportant or a passing phase. They lose some wonderful opportunities to gain greater insight into the minds and hearts of their children.
So, the next time your child acts up, see if you can step back emotionally to see what your child is telling you non verbally. Good luck! Let me know what you think about this exercise after you do it.
Until my next entry, I wish you successful parenting.