A child’s true nature is love.
So why do they sometimes act in ways that don’t seem loving?
Well, they need two main things to help them stay connected with their innate lovingness:
A loving and compassionate environment
AND
Support to express painful feelings that otherwise accumulate and mask their true lovingness.
This is a COMPLETELY different paradigm to the one that many of us grew up in – the behaviourist paradigm, which holds that a child needs to be taught to be caring and needs punishments or rewards to ‘make’ them be helpful.
The parenting paradigm that we hold has a profound effect on how we feel and how we respond to our children.
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I remember when my children were babies and I had the sense of them being wise souls.
I’m so grateful that for many years before becoming a mother, I was immersed in developmental psychology and psychospiritual psychotherapy.
Because I’d focussed SO much on these, both academically and therapeutically, and had had 10 years of weekly therapy, had worked for years as a psychotherapist, and had been a researcher in infant development for years too….
This meant that I could stay deeply focussed on what my babies and children needed as souls, to flourish in the world.
What we focus on as parents makes a huge difference on how we feel and how we are able to respond to our children.
If we stay focussed on knowing that their experiences are having a profound effect on their soul’s journey, this can help us stay more connected with our lovingness, and thus we’re more able to respond empathically and effectively.
Having a psychospiritual focus can really help us keep on connecting with the love that we are, so that we can help our children stay connected with the love that they are.
That’s why one of the key sections in my Psychospiritual Parenting Course is the psychospiritual context.
I want to help parents remember and stay connected with the bigger picture of parenting.
It can be so easy to get immersed in the day to day challenges and all the things that need to be done, and forget that how we are responding to our children is having a huge impact on the development of their personality, and the extent to which it’s an accurate representation of their soul.
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I wonder when you feel most loving with your child?
Do you notice it’s at particular moments – perhaps when they’re cuddled in your arms, or sleeping peacefully?
Do you ever wonder what prevents you from feeling loving with them 100% of the time?
I believe that our true nature is lovingness and willingness.
And yet our true lovingness often gets covered up by old-fashioned thoughts, unmet needs and old childhood hurts that we haven’t healed yet.
The older our children are, the more likely it is that we have had times of feeling all kinds of painful feelings when we’re with them.
Some of them are from old-fashioned thoughts that we internalised when we were children, about the causes of children’s behaviour.
Some of them are from chronically unmet needs in us – such as for support, connection, community, empathy, acknowledgment, appreciation and so on.
Some of them are from unheard feelings from our own childhoods that come up to be heard and healed when our children do things that remind us of our past.
The wonderful thing is that on the journey of Psychospiritual Parenting, we are invited to:
Keep on choosing to think in ways that are aligned with OUR values, not the beliefs that we grew up within;
Learn to value our needs and find ways of honouring and meeting them;
Heal from old hurts that come up as parents.
At the moment, I’m really enjoying focussing on the first one of these – I keep on choosing to remember that I AM LOVE, when I am tempted to respond to my children in ways that aren’t coming from that identity.
If you want to come home to your true nature as love and will, and you want to help your child/ren stay connected with their true lovingness and willingness, you might enjoy my Psychospiritual Parenting Course.
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Do you find yourself being with your child and feeling feelings that feel very far away from loving?
The more intense those feelings are, and the more they seem to be out of proportion to whatever your child is or isn’t doing, the more likely it is that those feelings are from the past.
This is the way our psyche is designed to heal.
Whenever we experience something in the present that reminds us in some way of a painful past experience where our feelings weren’t heard, we experience those feelings in the here and now, as if that situation was happening NOW.
This is such a paradox.
It can make parenting really hard, AND at the same time it’s a psychospiritual invitation.
The more we can NOTICE when we are having big reactions, and see these as OPPORTUNITIES for healing old hurts so that we can live more and more in the PRESENT moment, the more we can become who we really are.
The first key is recognition.
When you recognise that those feelings are from the past, NOT FROM NOW, there is also a you that is bigger than those painful feelings here present with you.
The more you notice your themes and what things your children do or don’t do that help you connect with your themes, the less likely you are going to project that movie from the past on to the present.
This is an aspect of my Psychospiritual Parenting Course.
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I’m so honoured to be the mother of my daughter and son.
Yesterday, my 16 year old daughter was really sick. I held her in my arms and remembered how she was when she was 3.
My 11 year old son has some big feelings bubbling at the moment. He has 5 teeth wobbling out and is having some big cries. I’m listening lovingly.
I sense we’re all on the cusp of a developmental shift.
To me, motherhood has taught me about unconditional love.
Not just in a fluffy sense, but in a when-shit-hits-the-fan-sense.
There have been many times when things have been hard, and I haven’t stayed connected with the love that I am, and I’ve responded in harsh ways.
And yet, many many more times than that, I HAVE stayed connected with the love that I am.
I’ve been able to respond lovingly, compassionately and empathically when they’ve had big feelings, when they’ve said harsh things to me, when they’ve lashed out, when they’ve retreated from connection.
And as the years went by, I learnt how to respond lovingly to myself, even, and particularly, after those times where I’d lost connection with my true lovingness.
I believe that our true nature is lovingness and willingness.
And the more I know my true self-sense of lovingness and willingness, the more I’m able to stay connected with that, whatever is going on.
And those times where I get identified with old hurts, or past powerlessnesses, I’m deeply compassionate with those parts of me. I know that they come out when they’re needing to be lovingly heard and healed.
To me, parenthood is the most profound of psychospiritual journeys.
We are invited to COME HOME TO WHO WE REALLY ARE.
As we help our children to stay deeply connected to the home of their soul.
That’s what I’m here to share.
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Our culture has a kind of massive confusion around parenting.
Parenting is one of the BIGGEST opportunities for psychospiritual development.
It’s a full-time intensive immersion.
Not only do our responses have a PROFOUND impact on the extent to which our children can be who they really are in the world.
But also, we have the opportunity to get free from all the harshness, coercion, shame and guilt that we internalised when we were growing up.
We get to reclaim all the parts of us that we needed to hide or judge.
We can heal from the hurts that we experienced and reconnect with our needs, feelings and passions.
We get to REMEMBER WHO WE REALLY ARE!
We get to help our children BE WHO THEY REALLY ARE!
We can sometimes get caught up in believing that parenting is mundane, but it’s actually MIRACULOUS!
If you’re into this kind of stuff too, come and check out my Psychospiritual Parenting Course.
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I’ve been fascinated by the Inner Marriage for many years.
So I was so excited to find that there are really tangible ways to develop an inner marriage between love (the feminine aspect of each of us) and will (the masculine element of each of us), especially as parents.
When I keep connected to my identity as LOVE, I find it so much easier to respond to my children in loving ways. That way, I am also reflecting back to them their true nature as LOVE.
When I choose to consistently stay connected to my WILLINGNESS, parenting flows so much more easily.
Our children respond to our willingness, rather than what we want, or when we are wilful or powerless, because willingness is an energetic thing.
And the more we live from our willingness, the more we’re connected with our life energy and the flow of energy through us, which really helps with parenting!
The inner marriage between love and will, and helping our children stay connected with their true nature as love and will, is a primary part of my Psychospiritual Parenting Course.
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