Parenting from Heart
Creating the Right Environment
When it comes to the Inside-Out understanding, there are two understandings that lie at the heart of parenting:
- Children always carry with them all the well-being, wisdom, and common sense they will ever need. It only needs to be drawn out and nurtured in the kind of loving environment that will help it flourish.
- Children access this innate health and wisdom by understanding that they have it, discovering where it comes from, seeing how they think in ways that keep them from realizing it, and recognizing that it appears most when their minds are calm or clear.
Then they can let it guide their lives.
When we create the kind of environment that draws out their natural health and wisdom, we naturally guide children in healthy ways and away from unproductive feelings and disruptive behaviors.
Living In An Environment of Love and Positive Feelings
Nowadays we often see children taking less and less responsibility for themselves. If anything goes wrong, they try to blame someone or something else. They always have an excuse. They treat their parents and other adults with contempt. And they’re becoming increasingly unhappy.
Here’s a typical scene:
Your teenage daughter decides to go to a party without informing you. When she gets home, you confront her about misrepresenting her whereabouts and not coming home by curfew. You give her the talk about having given her your trust and certain freedoms, and how she should show you more respect.
Your daughter completely shuts you out, and listens to nothing you’ve said. She’s heard you say it 100 times and it has stopped registering. Instead of taking in its truth, she gets snotty and angry, and yells at you, “You just don’t understand anything!”
To you as the parent, trust is at stake. You need to know what your daughter is up to; whether you should stay up until she’s home safely, or whether she’s staying at a friend’s house, or God forbid your mind runs wild and she might be lying in a gutter somewhere.
To your daughter, whenever you get on her case about anything, rather than listen, her mind begins to scramble trying to figure out what she can say to protect herself, locking out the words, saying over and over to herself, “This is so stupid!”
The majority of parents come across as, “This is the way it’s going to be and if it’s not, here’s what will happen.”
But in the end, kids make their own decisions, no matter what parents say.
This kind of parenting invariably results in the butting of heads and a fight. A power struggle, as the child is trying to assert her power and your power is holding it back.
What your child wants is love. What she hears is you’re always on her case, how disappointed you are in her, how she’s let you down, and how she can’t live up to your expectations of her.
You can tell your child to do anything, as long as you say it with love and understanding. No matter what you say to her, it needs to be communicated in a non-accusatory way- in a loving way.
If love isn’t being felt in the moment, only then do issues of power come into play. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.
Try: “Honey, would you mind picking this up please?”; instead of “How could you do this!”
Even when you’re mad, especially around little things; “Drake honey, you left the light on”, and saying it with a smile on your face. Thing get across better to kids that way.
This is the only thing that matters in parenting.
What our kids feel from us in the moment Is the only thing that really matters.
It must go to the heart. Whether it’s our kids, kids we work with, or kids we teach.
We can see it in those who work best with kids. You know, those teachers that students love and adore. Those individuals naturally create a loving, supportive, light hearted feeling.
Children and teenagers feel it from them- even when they’re tough and demand a lot. This is why they’re so good with kids and help them have breakthroughs in understanding.
For the most part, it doesn’t even matter what we say. It’s what our kids feel coming from us towards them, from our hearts.
When we approach parenting this way, our kids are a delight to be around, to have around. You develop the most wonderful, warm, loving relationship. Your child is also happy and self-assured.
If we want our children to both respond to us well, and live a life of well-being, they must live in a loving feeling.
The #1 most important thing we can do for our children is to create a loving, supportive, caring, respectful, lighthearted environment for kids to thrive in.
A loving environment is a moment by moment thing.
The feeling we have at the time is the environment the child is living in at the moment.
When we feel angry, our children are living in an angry environment.
When we feel scared, our children are living in a fearful environment.
When we feel disappointed, our children are living in an environment of “I can’t live up to their expectations.”
No matter what we try to communicate to them at those times, they feeling we have inside of us is what they pick up, and the environment that surrounds them at the moment.
If we are fearful, or anxious, or worried, or angry, or disappointed, or any number of other emotions, our children are not living in a loving, caring, supportive, environment at those times- even if we generally show love to our children and tell them many times a day that we love them.
Commit to ignoring your thoughts of disappointment about what she is or isn’t doing right. Before you communicate anything to her, watch what’s in your heart and be sure to send out love. Go out of your way to create a loving environment around her at every moment- especially every moment you want to communicate anything to her.
Everyone responds to love, respect, caring, support, lightheartedness. Everyone responds when there is a good feeling in a relationship.
