Mindfulness Parenting: Learning To Be A Mindful Parent
There are many myths about the practice of mindfulness . Is it meditation? Is it yoga? Is it leaving the mind blank? The answer is no. This technique consists of focusing on the here and now with mindfulness and awareness. Applied to parenting, this practice is known as mindfulness parenting .
Stress is a reaction of the body that mainly deprives us of two capacities with which all people are born. The first is to pay attention and the second is to enjoy the small, to amaze ourselves. Without both capacities, it is very difficult for us to detach ourselves from what weighs us down every day.
When to practice mindfulness parenting?
A good solution to be able to restore that attention and enjoyment can be parenting mindfulness . But before explaining what it consists of, let’s put a practical example to understand when it might be indicated to practice it.
Imagine parents with two young children, whose working hours are endless, so they spend little time at home. In addition, they are overfunctional, their expectations and demands are very high, they are perfectionist, oriented, meticulous, and highly achievement-oriented.
In this context, it is quite likely that when you get home after an eternal work week in which your resources have been pushed to the limit daily, you will find it difficult to stop. That is, they will continue demanding and demanding the maximum. It may be that when something does not go as expected or wanted, they explode. And here in the middle are the children.
Thus, the moment one of your children does something wrong or disobeys you, that parent is likely to yell at you excessively, scold you disproportionately, or pay for your high level of physiological arousal. That is why we say that the stress response sometimes does not adjust to the circumstances that precipitate it.
Emotions should not control behaviors
These parents are probably living with such a high level of stress that it is impossible for them to manage more demands from their immediate environment. Whether it’s cleaning a tomato stain from your child’s clothes, sending him to pick up his toys, doing homework, or asking him to get dressed. They are overwhelmed and that is why they pay for that self-demand with the first obstacle they encounter. It’s completely understandable, but this doesn’t make them bad parents.
In this sense, we can say that their emotions control their reactions and this can make them lose control. Can this parenting model harm children’s development? Yes, because, in addition to scaring them, they may be missing a golden opportunity to teach them the importance of mindfulness.
It is important that, as parents, we are able to manage our own emotions and our behavior, because only then can we teach the little ones how to manage theirs.
What is mindful parenting?
It is the alternative to being a prisoner of your own emotions. Consider that, if we are stressed, our emotional thermometer will be predominantly “negative”, since it is likely that, instead of joy and enthusiasm, we feel guilt, shame, anger, rage, frustration or fear.
Mindful parenting is paying attention to the here and now, to what is taking place in this very present moment. It is accepting what has happened, rather than trying to change or ignore it. It is to remove the emotions of which we have spoken and recover the attitude of enjoyment and apply it to all areas of life.
This does not mean that we do not scold our children or that we do not set limits or rules for them. It means that this scolding or that imposition of limits must not be motivated by emotions that we have not been able to control. Being a mindful parent is paying attention to what it feels like.
Breathing with mindfulness parenting
If at any time you have been able to feel identified, I suggest you try a simple exercise that will take a minute. Yes, a single minute of your day, but that, nevertheless, helps to become fully aware and reduce that level of stress.
Try closing your eyes and, for a minute, count the breaths you take. So an inspiration and an expiration count as one breath. Concentrate on the air that you catch and that you expel. When you’re done, open your eyes. How many breaths have you taken? Have you seen the amount of thoughts that you have tried to cross while trying to focus on your breathing?
Paying attention and recovering that capacity for wonder, openness and interest so characteristic of childhood is good learning, right? The mindfulness parenting intended that the decisions we make as parents have as our basic emotional control itself. And may the rules by which we educate come free from judgment.
