Being able to manage one’s emotions and behaviours is a great way to teach children how to manage their own. This is why airlines give us instructions to put our oxygen masks on before we put it on our child. Parents should have the ability to regulate their behaviour before they model regulation for their child. Unfortunately, when parents are stressed out, exhausted and overwhelmed they cannot be fully available to cater to their child’s emotional needs.
Mindful parenting is all about being aware and create a warm and accepting environment for the child.
Your attention may well be the greatest gift you can ever give your children, and mindful parenting is a way to help you to do that.
Children: Naturally Mindful?
It may come as a surprise to most, but children are naturally used to being mindful. They may not be aware of it, but they live in the moment.
They do not think about their past or future. If they are hungry in the current moment, they will cry and get cranky. But as soon as they get their food, they will be happy. They will not dwell on the fact that they were hungry and cranky.
As we grow up and become adults, we start moving away from being mindful. We worry about our future, make plans about everything ranging from what clothes to wear the next day to what our future will look like 10 years down the line.
The reason we tell ourselves we need to plan is so we feel in control of our life. Sometimes we focus so much on the planning that we forget to experience the present moment.
We may miss out on beautiful moments with our child because of this.
Picture this: you are busy writing an important email and your child comes asking you to help them with a drawing. Your first reaction might be to dismiss your child thinking that email is more important. But is it really?
What really is likely to be more important in the overall scheme of things?
Just spending time with your child is not enough. A mindful parent is aware and sensitive to their child’s needs and emotions. Mindful parenting is about empathy and emotional intelligence.
Being aware and more understanding of the child’s emotions is key to bringing them up to be secure and happy people.
How is mindfulness different from meditation?
It is a common misconception that being mindful means to meditate. It is, in fact, the opposite of it.
While mindfulness is the awareness of some-thing, meditation is the awareness of no-thing.
Mindfulness is being present in the now and paying attention to your emotional/physical responses and most importantly, not judging.
Once you are able to be fully aware of the situation, you will learn to accept things you may not have accepted otherwise. This helps you to be more open and non-judgemental.
Responding instead of reacting
Mindfulness is all about being aware about your emotions. In a heated situation, being aware will mean that you are able to control the emotions you feel and regulate them.
When parents feel tired and stressed out and their children require their attention, they may feel like snapping at them. Mindful parenting will help them to understand that they should respond to the child’s demands and not just react.
By becoming aware of your emotional response in the moment, you can focus on the feelings and slowly you will understand that that is all they are. Feelings. This perspective will help you take control of these feelings, instead of them controlling your behaviour.
You can then be able to respond to your child without letting your emotions cloud your mind.
Fostering forgiveness
Being parents is a tough job and you may not always get things right. This can lead to feelings such as guilt or even shame of not being the “perfect parent”.
To be able to be a mindful parent, you should be able to forgive yourself for doing certain things. Forgiveness will help you accept yourself.
Forgiveness is not just for yourself but also your child. Creating a non-judgmental environment where you forgive your child for making mistakes will help improve your relationship with them.
It will enable you to accept your children for who they are, not who or what you would like them to be. This may also help to reduce the unrealistic expectations you may have from yourself and your child.
It’s okay to not be the perfect parent.
Be the adult you want your child to grow up to be
From birth to the age of 6, the mind of children is like a sponge, soaking up huge amounts of information from their environment. They absorb everything around them, effortlessly, continuously, and indiscriminately.
If we learn to be mindful, our children will learn the same from us. They will learn to respond to negative situations in a controlled manner and grow up to be the well-rounded adults we want them to be.