Mindful Nurturing: Parenting in Thoughtful Ways

By Tania Rose

Mindful Nurturing is a short, easy to read guide to following simple mindful parenting practices, which go toward developing a happy family life with healthy relationships. Understand your role in your children’s behaviour, learn simple techniques to turn things around, and explore parenting in a way that suits your family’s lifestyle and choices.

“Families, children, and parents, all have different needs. Parenting is a complex and intense experience, probably one of the most intense there is in daily life, and there is no manual for how to get it right. In fact, one could argue that there is no “right way”. For the most part, we parent as best we can, and using the tools we have come across or been witness to. We only know what we have been told, have experienced, or what we believe might be the best way to go about things. But parenting comes at us hard and fast, as does the pressure of getting things right, and sometimes just surviving each day makes it feel like we’re simply flying by the seat of our pants.” - Tania Rose

Tania Rose is a passionate musician, author and artist living south-west of Sydney, Australia. Since 1991 she has been actively involved in the creative arts and working with people with disabilities, as an educator, consultant and field worker. Tania’s body of work also includes audio projects in sleep and relaxation music, self-help, and children’s stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483564579

Book preview

Rose

1. The gift of letting-go

I looked back on my own childhood, and suddenly there was an epiphany. I broke down in front of my 4-year-old son, told him how sorry I was, and asked his forgiveness.

One of the first things I learnt as a parent was that I was human. As much as I wanted to do the right thing, the truth was that I was flawed. I was flawed because we all are, whether we like it or not. We get emotional, get frustrated, feel tired, feel pulled apart, and have very little time for ourselves. It’s not the best set of circumstances to build an awesome parenting foundation, yet there we are, warts-and-all, be-speckled in all our triumphant and disturbing glory, trying to get things right for our kids.

I had three boys under the age of four. Some days I felt a calmness that ebbed and flowed through me. Most of the time, I felt frantic, exhausted, and misunderstood by everyone, including my family. I wanted to raise my kids differently that I had been raised, not because I thought I was poorly brought up, but because I believed I had learned things along the way.

I was also older than some mothers, having my first baby after I had accumulated some life experience at the age of 30, which is surprisingly common these days. My more-than-a-passing-interest in psychology and creative thinking, and my determined nature, led me to a strong desire to be the best mother I could be, and yet most days seemed like a struggle.

It became clear to me one night that something had to change. It was a typical evening. I was alone with the boys (4, 2, 0), and suddenly everything seemed to cave in and I snapped. Suddenly I saw myself. I was a spitting, seething mess, physically out of control, and desperate for some kind of release. At that moment I realised how easy it can be to totally lose-it as a parent, where reality, logic, and any sense of rightness can fall to the wayside, in the wake of a mad woman, who just simply can’t take it anymore. I was alone, and I saw my own inner demons.

I immediately agonised over what was I saw in myself, and what my children must have seen in me. It was soul-crushing. In a flash I looked back on my own childhood, and suddenly there was an epiphany. I broke down in front of my 4-year-old son, told him how sorry I was, and asked his forgiveness. It suddenly occurred to me that what I missed in my own childhood was what I wanted to give my own children…real communication. I saw in myself the potential to side-step that altogether, and become yet another generational mother who would lash-out first and then never discuss it later. As a child on the receiving end of that premise, I knew only too well the hurt, confusion, and emotional distance that could haunt a child even into adulthood. The pain I felt was more than the pain of the realisation, but it was also the pain of a broken childhood heart.

It was a pivotal moment that I will never forget, because not only did we mend something that I was ashamed of, but also I found a way to forgive myself. It was humbling, and it changed everything. From that moment, I vowed to myself that I would say sorry to my kids whenever I got it wrong (which grew into a powerful and meaningful experience). I also realised that being patient with myself, allowing myself to make mistakes, and cutting myself a little slack was the best thing I could do for myself, and that any way that I could help myself was, in the long run, going to help my boys.

I came to understand that this was as much a learning process for me as it was for my children, and that parenting was something that needed to be built together. How different this was from my previous understanding, (greatly influenced by my own childhood), the notion of the mother who is never wrong, or who never admits she is. I was simultaneously humbled and empowered by this new understanding.

And so began my real journey in parenting.

Letting go is a powerful and important tool in enabling both change and flexibility, both extremely important in the ebb and flow of the family unit. Try as you might, you can never predict how your children are going to be, what situations they are going to be faced with, and how you are going to react or respond when unexpected events unfold. Predictions are fine, when they can be predicted, and some things can, but for everything else it’s just a hotpot of life experiences.

So how can you let go? Firstly, you need to tell yourself it’s OK. When stuff happens, it’s OK. You’re OK. Everything will be OK. You will find a way. It’s this reassurance which can help open the door to helpful thinking. When we comfort a loved-one, we keep telling them it’s OK, because we instinctively know that once they truly believe it, things will start making sense to them, their thoughts will become clearer, they will be able to make decisions, and they will relax. Telling ourselves that everything is OK is the best advice we can give ourselves too.

Letting go isn’t giving up. It’s not giving in, nor is it handing over. It’s about taking the pressure off yourself and giving you some room to breathe, to think, and to see clearly. Letting go allows us to break free, take some time, and be mindful. It can be one of the most important gifts you can give yourself as a parent.

Parenting shouldn’t be about control. Sure, there are some things that need to be controlled, such as the danger factors for a child, but holding on tightly to the reins isn’t what makes a child good. It’s an old-fashioned notion that a child will only be well-behaved if you rule with an iron fist. Psychology can show us just how damaging that kind of parenting can be. It’s also untrue that a child who is able to make choices will be unruly. It’s not simply black and white like that.

2. What is Mindful Nurturing?

The thing with bringing up children with mindfulness and nurturing is that neither can happen without the other.

Being mindful is about thinking, making decisions, understanding the consequences of our actions, and using some basic psychological principals which are easily understood. It’s about thinking before we speak and hearing ourselves….

…and most importantly it’s about RESPONDING rather than REACTING.

Also, but by no means of any less importance, is the notion of Nurturing. When we nurture a plant, we feed it, water it, fertilise it, and treat it with as much good as we can to enable its full growth potential. Nurturing a child is no different. We want our children to learn, love, and grow in such a way, that eventually, as adults, they have deep enough roots to seek out their own nutrition.

The thing with bringing up children with mindfulness and nurturing is that neither can happen without the other. We have to think about the way we nurture, make decisions about what is going to help them grow, create opportunities for learning, and often face our own fears, childhood baggage, and our general character traits which can make the journey less than ideal.

Let’s face it. Parenting is hard. It’s probably the most difficult thing you will ever do, outside of extraordinary circumstances. Just surviving the day with our emotions and mind still intact can be enough, let alone doing it in such a way that we can be proud of in retrospect. Kids do stuff, and not all of it is awesome. Parents also do stuff, and some of it isn’t that great either.

Cast your mind back to your own childhood, if you’re able. Was there ever a time where you felt misunderstood? Did you ever experience a time when you were wrongly accused, or when you felt you were being treated unfairly by a parenting figure? The reality is that these things happen, and quite often they are things which stay with us for life, sometimes in the form of memories and sometimes in the form of feelings which seem to rise up out of nowhere when we least expect or want them.

More often than not our experiences in childhood stay with us as learned behaviour. For some, we learned to shield ourselves from the ugly, brace ourselves for impact, and seek out things that seemed to be missing once we became adult enough to undertake that journey. Sometimes our childhoods forged deep wounds in us that we hid away from, denied their impact, or became exposed as cracks in our characters. Sometimes the bullied can become the bully, the abused can become the abuser, and the frail can become the power-hungry.

It’s a hard thing to take a good honest look at ourselves, and acknowledge where we came from and how we got to be the person we are today. Even for those people who are searching for that honesty and truth each and every day, it seems to take more than a lifetime to fully understand ourselves and the effects of who we are on those around us. There’s nothing easy about it.

Childhood is an extremely important time, which shapes us for our future adult selves. The experiences we have during these important years have lasting impacts on our adult lives. Our own children will not only learn patterns of behaviour from us, but will also learn emotional responses and coping strategies. In the right environment, these mechanisms will help them cope and deal with life’s challenges. Learning to build strategies is something that needs to be taught, or it is learned by observation.

Being mindful is simply about thinking what you are doing, and how you think it will impact on the person or situation, in both the short term and the long term. It takes some getting used to, but with practice it becomes second nature. Yes, you will STILL find you need to think about things, but you will have a pretty good idea of possible outcomes as you grow in experience. Being mindful isn’t a phase or a temporary solution. It’s an attitude,