When I started Aware Parenting, I thought it was something I could “do” to my daughter.
I thought I would listen to all of her feelings, meet all of her needs, and she would grow up completely free from all control patterns, completely in touch with all of her feelings, and really a completely free human being.
It took me a while to realise that this doesn’t give justice to Aware Parenting.
It is not something that we do.
It is something that we embody.
And that is why the image of the butterfly landing on the hand is so apt.
Because if we want our children to stay connected with their feelings, then we need to BE someone who is connected with our own feelings, and thus our child can resonate with that and express their feelings with us.
If we want our children to value their needs, it is not enough just to value their needs; we need to BECOME a parent who values our needs, so again our child learns, through being with us, ‘landing on us’, how it feels to value our needs.
If we want our children to have relatively few control patterns,we cannot just do that to them. We need to also gradually become a parent who listens to her feelings rather than reaching for Facebook or a cookie whenever we get upset.
And if we want our child to stay connected with her true self, her own unique self, we need to gradually reconnect with who we really are, so again we become a place for them to land and know who they are.
This process cannot be forced.
We cannot make her feel her feelings, be connected to her needs, let go of control patterns, or live her own unique life path.
We can only invite her to do that, through living it, more and more ourselves.
And that is why I often say that parenting is such a path of transformation.
Our love for our children, and our desire for them to be free from the unmet needs, pent-up painful feelings, control patterns, and general squishing that we have experienced, means that we will be inspired to grow, change, and shift things in ourselves, in ways that perhaps nothing else would inspire us to do.
It is about us, compassionately, with humility and without judgment, taking those steps, one by one, to more and more become the hand that the butterfly can land on.
So that we can gradually, lovingly, gently, increase our capacity to value our needs, listen to our feelings, move past our control patterns, allow more intimacy, enjoy true presence, and reconnect with our own unique selfhood.
And the more we do that, the more we invite our child to do the same.