Parenting With Self-Awareness
We are going to look at the importance of self-awareness when it comes to relating to our teenagers, or anyone else that we interact with. There is a skill to communicating that requires some personal awareness in order to be effective.
Individually we all have our own beliefs and perceptions about our selves and the world we live in and the people we interact with, which can have a huge influence on how we individually relate to one another.
As parents wanting to connect with our teenage children we need to look at our selves first and ask a few questions about our perceptions and beliefs. How were we parented? Was it with openness and understanding or was it strict and limiting or some range in between? Are we passing down to our children the same programming, expectations, structures that we had to adhere to? Do we judge our children as being “bad” or “good” based on their behaviour.
How is it that sometimes our children can trigger emotional responses in us like anger, frustration and hopelessness?
Part of the fun of agreeing to play these roles with our children is the immense growth they are here to assist us with, as we are here to assist them.
If our children are triggering some of the above-mentioned responses then we need to look at why? Here is where the opportunity lies for our own growth because if we can look at what ever it is that we are feeling (with honesty) then we would realize their behaviour really isn’t the problem!
The challenge really lies in identifying why when they don’t clean their room, do their homework, or seem defiant, does it evoke anger, frustration or any other strong emotion? Generally it can be traced back (again if we are being honest with our selves) to some belief/expectation/fear that we have taken on from our own past experiences, which we may now be projecting on to our children.
Once we have identified the belief/expectation behind the emotion then it’s up to us to look at it objectively and decide if it serves to hold on to it. Is this belief /expectation valid? Is it beneficial to our growth or is it limiting us and impeding us in our ability to live from a place of peace and love, which is our natural state?
We as parents have to do our own work first if we hope to be able to communicate effectively with our children so as to minimize needless drama or conflict. It’s about taking full responsibility for how we respond in any given situation. This is where we have the choice of what kind of example we want to be to our children. No matter what is being triggered by our teen we always have the choice as to how we are going to respond to it.
When we the parents strive to clear our own limiting beliefs and perceptions we begin to see our own beauty and potential. This also allows us to gain a better understanding of this personal learning process giving us valuable insight into how our own self-judgment can restrict the relationship we have with our children or other people we interact with.
When we judge our selves and our perceived responsibilities to our children based on society, our culture, our religion or even our own parents, then we put undue expectations on ourselves to play our parent role a certain way. We can also put those same expectations and judgments on our children. Now I’m not saying this may not work IF you want to stay in that role and IF your children are also willing to fully play that role with you, however chances are that if you are here on this planet at this time that is not the case!
We may start out playing a certain expected role with our children with good intentions, however our children because they came here for their own expansion and to assist us with ours, often want to experience something different than what we the parents have in mind.
The other part to this is our children are not necessarily consciously aware of their teaching role or that all the challenges they are experiencing are for their growth.
If the adults in their life have done their homework and have experienced the process of letting go of their own baggage (limiting beliefs), then they are in a far better position to understand what their teenager is experiencing and able to respond from a place that empowers their teen to move through the challenges with loving support and not with judgment, fear or anxiety.
It’s highly beneficial if we can actively demonstrate to our children the ease in which relationships’ can flow, which is facilitated most effectively when we uncover our own divine nature and see and care for our children as another aspect of our divine selves.
