Ready to Rock and Roll with Me?
Someone who knows me well told me recently that I can get inspiration from anywhere. It’s so true. I’m one of those people who’d be happy looking at a tree in the forest all day. This morning, my latest inspiration came from a small rock in my shoe.
Yes, one small rock.
I tried so hard to ignore this one small rock because I desperately wanted to continue my morning exercise.
Finally , I leaned down to take it out of my shoe and that was when it hit me. This realization.
Actually, the realization came in two parts.
The first part went something like this:
A child’s feelings can be something like that small rock in my shoe. It’s there, it’s solid, it’s real and yet, I’m wanting it to go away at first without actually paying much attention to it. Why won’t it just leave so I can continue on my walk?
Think you’re getting the picture here. Sometimes, our children’s feelings are just like this rock. The feelings that your child has are very real, very ‘solid’ from your child’s perspective. From your perspective as the parent, your child’s big feelings that have him/her crying, screaming, kicking, hitting, slamming doors are all things that you may just want to ‘go away’ so you can get on with whatever it is that you’re doing. To move through life ‘as planned.’
Yet, it’s these big emotional moments that really wake us up to having the deepest connection with our children. When you can focus your undivided attention on holding the space for your child to move through a big feeling, then something miraculous happens. You get a quality of connection with your child that enriches everything that you’re doing from that point forward.
When you pay attention to your child’s feelings and needs, you are taking that rock out of your shoe.
Now, for the second part of my realization that really rocked me to my core.
I realized in that small moment of feeling pestered by this small rock in my shoe just how significant things that are really not that significant can seem at times. Your world really revolves around your perspective.
For a moment, my perspective was altered (pain, instead of a pleasurable morning walk) and I drew my attention away from my larger intention of why I was even on that walk in the first place! (to reflect on some areas in our new Parent Coach Training program….my favorite thing being to walk and brainstorm.)
It was then that I realized just how quickly and significantly a perspective can shift.
And, isn’t it the same in our parenting?
You may be feeling calm and satisfied during your day and then your child does one thing that really sets you off and there shifts your whole perspective.
So, how do you retain your perspective while allowing for you and your child to go through the veritable plethora of emotions you may find yourselves experiencing daily?
In order to answer this, I need to take you to my son’s preschool and something that touched me deeply last week while I spent some time there.
We were all gathered around in a reading circle after nap time ( I was visiting) and the new teacher was trying to read a book to all of the kids, ages 3-5. Many of the kids began fidgeting and needed to move their bodies, given that they had just been sleeping for a while. As I watched my son and his friends fidget, play, laugh and intermittently wrestle each other, I was amazed at the new teacher’s response.
She calmly connected with each one of them and had these very fun, engaging conversations about what they were doing. What amazed me was her demeanor. The fact that nobody was really listening to the book and wanted to do something else wasn’t bugging her at all. She used the moment to really connect with all of them. I felt as if there was something magical taking place in those moments.
Later that afternoon at the school holiday party, I talked with the new teacher and acknowledged her for how great she was at connecting with the children. She just smiled and knowingly said, ‘Yes, I’ve been used to working with special needs kids before I came here. If one of those kids could just sit up while you were reading, it was a huge accomplishment. It just shifted my perspective to what’s really important.’
‘Wow’, was all I thought.
It was one of those moments that stopped time for me and I realized that this has got to be one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves as parents:
‘What is really important here?’
You can anchor yourself in your intention for yourself and your child.
You can anchor yourself in the quality of connection that you’d like for you and your child to have.
You can anchor yourself in the knowingness that all is ok.
You can anchor yourself in a greater perspective that answers that question for you of what’s really important.
And when you can find your anchor within your greater perspective, then the rocks seem to dissipate and life truly seems to roll.
Have You Been Buzzing Like This Lately?
She started off by telling me everything wrong with her child, as so many of us do. 
Everything that her child wasn’t. Everything that her child wasn’t doing right. Everything that she secretly wished were different. We talked on and on. Her voice on the other end of the phone, growing quieter, as if she was suddenly whispering some ancient mysterious puzzle that I would all of a sudden be able to solve.
Then, finally, she stopped.
And all I could hear was this buzzing in the air. This distinct buzzing of messages passed down. Do this. Be this. Don’t do that. How could you do that? All of the messages that she must have received as a child buzzed around in the whisper of her deepest, darkest secrets that she was now holding about her child.
I suddenly became acutely aware of the power of all that buzz. All of those messages buzzing around, re-circulating themselves, becoming alive once again, pushing her child further and further away from her.
Sure, we all want our children to be kind, well-behaved, smart, affectionate, gentle, loving and…..(……) Yet, what happens when they’re not? What happens when your child doesn’t show up the way you’d like him/her to? What kind of thoughts race through your head?
You may be thinking, ‘He’s rude,’ ‘he’s obnoxious,’ ‘he’s awful,’ ‘obsessive,’ ‘withdrawn,’ ’inappropriate’….some kind of a nuisance.
You are beginning the buzz or maybe you’re continuing the buzz from an earlier generational buzz that was created for you as a child.
‘You’re rude.’ ‘You’re inconsiderate.’ ‘You’re disorganized.’ ‘You’re not a good listener.’ ‘You’re selfish.’ ‘You’re rude,’ ‘obnoxious,’ ‘awful,’ ‘obsessive,’ ‘withdrawn,’’inappropriate’….some kind of a nuisance.’
The buzz that we hear about ourselves is often the buzz that we begin to hear about our children.
So, what IS all of this buzz anyway?
It’s the buzz of judgment. Places where you may have felt judged as a child. Places where you may have felt misunderstood. Places where you felt like you were being placed within a box and labeled, maybe without you even knowing it.
So, now, we are continuing the buzz with our own children.
We relegate our minds, thought by thought, into a place of judgment because we’ve felt judged in some way in the past.
Yet, the buzz doesn’t end there.
We enter into collective agreements based on judgment.
We share the buzz with others. We worry about the buzz. We obsess about the imagined implications that this kind of buzz holds.
If my child is rude, for example, then that means that he will be (fill in the blank.)
Secrets begin to buzz. Opinions are formed. You invite others to buy into the buzz.
You essentially set your mind on a very fixed place with all of this buzz…a place that creates the walls around where your child will now live.
For with every recurring ‘buzzing’ thought that you may hold, you are creating a very distinct listening of your child and you are inviting your child to show up the exact way that you’re thinking about them.
Your child will actually become the buzz, right before your very eyes.
So, you’re child throws something in your face or screams at you or runs out of the house without his clothes on (if you’re in the mighty toddler years).
Now, you may be thinking, ‘He’s rude,’ ‘obnoxious,’ ‘awful,’ ‘obsessive,’ ‘withdrawn,’’inappropriate’….some kind of a nuisance.
And, guess what? He is and will continue to be.
As long as you’re holding and continue to hold this thought about him. As long as you continue to buzz.
Crazy as it may sound but the way that another person shows up in your world, including your child, depends largely upon the listening that you have of that person.
All of our thoughts create this intricate web of listening for another and the other can only live within the listening that you have created.
Your child lives within the listening that you have of her.
Suddenly, she was quiet again on the other end of the phone.
Yet, this time she wasn’t whispering any more buzz about her child for we had named the buzz. We had called it out into the open.
She suddenly realized that all of this buzz had continued to propagate all of these unsupportive feelings and thoughts about her child.
This time she realized that the love that she had for her daughter well surpassed the power of all that buzz.
So, in a moment, one beautiful moment, she dropped all that buzz and was left with one remaining thought.
The thought?
‘There’s my lovely daughter.’
And suddenly, her daughter in that very moment, became lovely.
(Epilogue: Over the next week, her bond deepened with her daughter as she found herself having new thoughts about her daughter no matter what her daughter did. She began to accept all of her daughter as lovely. )
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