Do you ever feel powerless with your child/ren?
Do you ever feel a sinking feeling, alongside the thought that either you or your child can get their needs met in a situation, but not both of your needs?
I would say that the majority of my most painful parenting moments have been when I’ve been feeling powerlessness, and have flipped over into power-over.
Have you ever been in that moment, where your child doesn’t seem to be listening, or won’t do what you ask, or won’t stop what they’re doing, and you feel so powerless, then so frustrated, that you then do something you regret?
Does it make sense that power-over behaviours often stem from a sense of powerlessness?
Powerlessness is so excruciating; we often simply want to avoid experiencing it.
Not having choice, not having agency, not having autonomy – these are so painful at the core of our identity, that we will avoid feeling the feelings associated with it.
And this is why the power-over paradigm has been passed on from generation to generation.
Enough people experience big powerlessness as children to grow up and then use power-over others.
Our whole culture is based on this domination paradigm.
Even if we didn’t grow up in an authoritarian family, most of us growing up in this culture would have experienced thousands of times of not having choice, of being coerced, and our feelings around this not being heard.
These feelings that we didn’t ever get to express – the frustration, the fear, the powerlessness, the outrage, often show up when we are with our children.
Even if we’re aiming to parent with consciousness and without power-over, we might find ourselves having big powerlessness feelings show up.
Our big reactions when they don’t appear to listen or cooperate, or when they say, “no,” often stem from our own experiences as children where our requests weren’t heard, the adults around us didn’t cooperate with our requests, or they said, “no” to us.
All of this information can help us profoundly in our parenting, as we help create a new paradigm with is no longer power-over children, but power-with children.
We have the opportunity to heal from our own experiences of powerlessness as children, and help our own children so that they have much fewer experiences of powerlessness.
We can also listen to their feelings around powerlessness so that they aren’t carrying so much into adulthood, and are less likely to fall into compliance, inner coercion, depression or aggression.
Parenting profoundly shapes culture.
In raising the next generation freer from the dominion paradigm of coercion and should’s and power-over, we are raising a generation of human beings who won’t feel the powerlessness that so many of our current politicians and business leaders clearly feel.
Someone who knows their true inner power would never use the power-over that happens all around the world, to certain nations and cultures, children, animals, and Gaia herself.
Coming home to your own true power as a mother, hearing and healing your power-hurts, and helping your child/dren stay connected to their true inner power so that they don’t need to resort to power-over makes a huge difference to our planet.
If you want to learn more, I have a free Intro Course to Power and Powerlessness in Parenting HERE and a longer version HERE.