Today, I want to let you in on a TOP secret….
The Most Important Parenting Tip You will Ever Receive.
And it has to do with (you guessed it right ) - YOU.
Let me start with a question. What do you really want for your children? What outcomes do you desire for your children as you raise them? Some of the answers I get when I ask parents this question are - I want my child to be: happy, successful, live a purposeful life, kind, love God, responsible, a great and influential leader, resilient.
I believe you resonate with a few, if not all of these outcomes.
Here’s the thing. As parents, we spend lots of time, resources and energy trying to figure out what it is we need to DO to get these outcomes. We spend a lot of time asking questions such as: Is what am doing enough for them? Will my child turn out right? Am I doing the right thing? Will my child be ok without me? Am I too hard on my kids? Am I too easy on them?
These are the kind of questions that make us wish that parenting came with a manual. You know, a manual with simple do-it-yourself instructions like:
To raise great, amazing, respectful, smart, successful children - this is what you need to DO….
We may not have a simple do-it-yourself manual for parenting. However, here is what I have discovered....if we desire these great outcomes, there is a ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL tip that EVERY parent should consider.
Self-Awareness.
Scores of research on effective parenting boil down to this - The best predictor of a child’s well-being is a parent’s self awareness.
Self-Awareness. The ability to monitor our inner world, particularly our feelings, our thoughts, our beliefs, our past experiences. To ask yourself this very crucial question - what am I bringing into this moment with my child?
Dr. Shefali Tsabary says - ''Unless you are fulfilled, you will use your children to complete you. You will teach them how to live with your unacknowledged fears, your rejected emptiness, your forgotten lies—all the while unaware you are doing so”.
What, in your parenting, might you be unaware you are doing? Are you using your children to complete you? Are you teaching them to live with your fears, emptiness and unresolved past experiences?
I invite you into a journey of candid self-reflection. Consider these questions...
Do I tend to REACT or RESPOND?
How do I handle challenging situations?
What is the first thought that comes to mind when I wake up in the morning?
How do I speak to myself, especially when I ‘fail’?
Whose voice do I hear when I perceive I have failed?
What do I REALLY believe about myself?
Psychologist Carl Jung said - Until You make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.
It is time to bring to the conscious, all those feelings, thoughts, beliefs and experiences that hold us back from being self-aware, conscious parents. Why? Because the very best of outcomes for our children depend on our capacity for self-awareness. You can be part of our community of self-aware parents as we journey together through our 10-week Stawi Champions Parenting Program.