This week I’ve been thinking about the dual process that goes on in parenting.
How are are with our children, from when they are babies in the womb, has profound implications on the way their life unfolds. How we mirror them, how we perceive them, becomes how they perceive themselves. They learn their core beliefs about life, love and relationship from us. They learn how to speak and how to think from the family and culture they grow up in. They pass through many developmental stages whilst all this happens, from the undifferentiated oneness of babyhood, to increasing differentiation and individuation as they get older.
Whilst all this is going on, we are also developing and growing. Becoming a parent in itself changes us. And as our child or children move through each age and stage, so are we given an opportunity to evolve. We can reclaim parts of ourselves that were left behind at each age of our children. Our child’s experiences remind us of things that we experienced at the same age. Our children are like magnets, pulling us to evolve in places where we were frozen, or stunted. Our reactiveness gives us clues to this. The bigger the reaction, the more likely we are being called to reclaim something in ourselves.
As our children move away from the early years of childhood oneness with Life, and develop egoic separate-sense-of-self personalities, and then enter teenagerhood, we may increasingly be called to the next stage of our own development, to reclaim the states of wholeness that we forgot when we left our own young childhood.
So, we may begin to learn more compassion for others. Humility, a sense of connection with others, other parents, and people all over the world. We might feel connected with a bigger sense of life, nature, the earth. We might find ourselves caring deeply when a tragedy strikes people on the other side of the planet. We are being called to become more inclusive, more loving, more compassionate, and more deeply connected with all beings.
I believe each one of us is a unique soul with unique gifts to give the world, whilst also being One with all. As parents, the extent to which we can honour both our child’s own uniqueness as well as her deep connectedness, has a radical impact on how much she is freely connected with her true Self as well as her connection with everything. And this affects how easy it is for her when she comes to adulthood and feels the longing to re-find her connectedness at a new level of consciousness.
And this, I think, is why parenting is such a fertile ground. It profoundly shapes our child’s life path, whilst also offering us the opportunity to develop on our own evolutionary journey.
Our children evoke in us a greater capacity for intimacy, connection, contribution, empathy, communication, connection with ourselves, and a sense of belonging to the lineage that goes back to our ancestors and forward to our children’s children.
So, when your baby is crying in the middle of the night, your toddler is having a tantrum, your eight year old won’t get off the iPad and your teenager is wanting to stay out later, your responses to them influence both of your life’s journeys. What beautiful gifts our children give to us. We get to contribute, and to grow!
As usual, I’d love to hear if you’ve been thinking along similar lines lately.