Have you heard of Conscious Parenting?
Parenting Consciously instead of by default.
Working on yourself instead of trying to “change your child” to match up with “your will”.
It’s currently something I myself have been working on.
Many of us live and react by default. Not really knowing what is good for us, nor what we want for our own life, following what we’ve been taught through our upbringing and external programming.
Same with our parenting - usually never thinking consciously about how WE want to parent…but just by default - how we were raised and by what everyone else doing and is telling you what to do.
This is why I find conscious parenting so interesting - it stood out to me because a lot of what it teaches matches up with my own healing journey and how I coach others.
Healing consciously from with-in.
Becoming the change you wish to see.
Conscious parenting is all about knowing your triggers, reflecting and changing your patterns.
It’s doing the internal work on yourself instead of reacting outward.
My Story
I personally have always been triggered by whining. When my children whine… it would literally drive me insane. A feeling inside of me of annoyance, of anxiety and eventually anger.
Guilt would always set upon me when I overreacted to these triggers, ending with yelling, shaming and spanking.
I knew what I was doing was not how I wanted to parent because I would feel extreme guilt upon reflection, but I wasn’t sure how to change it. It was automatic for me… it was my default setting - coming from how I was raised.
Before I had even found conscious parenting, I had began working on changing this habit, and ran across a book called “Parenting for the Kingdom” which I highly recommend.
Here it showed me what parenting for God looks like and that began my implementation outward towards my children… but it wasn’t healing my ill feelings of anger when I was triggered.
When I found Conscious Parenting - the two aligned.
Duh, I thought… I needed to do the healing with-in like everything else!
THIS IS WHERE THE MIRACLE HAPPENED and when it changed.
Success Story!
The other day, my oldest child hit my youngest, because she was angry that she had taken something from her. Obviously, this “hitting” pattern started from me (forgive me Lord).
The whining began. I was slightly annoyed, but I walked over to see what had happened.
After getting the story I had MADE a choice. I did not get triggered further in anger like I normally had, where there would have been “punishment” via spanking for hitting “rolls eyes at my contradiction”.
Instead, I had no further internal trigger. I understood the story, I understood that I had a choice and I walked my child away to talk to her about her reaction explaining how we have all began to do better and how I wanted her to be better too.
She then, on her own asked for forgiveness, which warmed my heart - I told her of course I forgive her, but it’s her sister that she should be asking… she nodded her head, walked over and asked her sister for forgiveness and they gave each other a big hug 🥰
It was the sweetest moment and I honestly felt like I had finally did my job well!
No guilt, but legit happiness from overcoming my own weakness and showing my daughter the right thing to do.
I know continuing to heal myself (in spite of any failures) will reflect outward and change our whole family dynamic when it comes to our character, behaviors and actions. This is God at work here.
This is His family and His Kingdom and we must work consciously, in unison with Him to change ourselves, our family and create a better world with Him.
I hope this story inspires YOU to do the internal work and live and parent more consciously.
