Wednesday Parenting Post: Loving in Action

PARENTING: A GUIDE TO LIFE

Parenting is not something our children ask for. It’s something we do, and they live with. They suffer with, they put up with, they thrive with. Parenting is our job. In some systems, the soul decides to come back, chooses the parents, blah, blah, and maybe yes, maybe no, and most children have the complete right to say, “I didn’t ask to be born.”

So what’s our job as parents?

Easy.

To love.

That’s it, and on the “good days,” this is easy, and on the rest of the days, it’s a job.

A good job.

The best job in the world.

Have you stayed with me: on the “bad days,” parenting is the best job in the world. Why? Because when they are being little turds, then we have to get our …together and learn what loving really is.

You know the thing from the bible, where Jesus, almost with a sense of humor, says “Anyone can love really groovy people, but can you love them when they are sinners.” Something like that, and He has to drag in the old sinners thing, or maybe it’s just the translators. Over the eons.

Doesn’t matter.

The point: when they are good, they are very, very good, and when they are “bad,” they are horrid. (Little curl in the middle of the forehead, and so on.)

And when they are “bad,” we get to discover that “bad” is in the eye of the beholder, even if they are breaking our really great stuff, or hitting their innocent angel little sister/brother, or saying “No,” for the ten thousandth time to our Wise and Reasonable Rules, Demands, Requests, Pleads, and Barks.

So, how to do that?

Well, the Work of Byron Katie is the way to go at night, later, when we aren’t on the battlefield and we need to get clear about where IS the obstacle to love: in the little horrid child’s behavior, or in our mind that doesn’t know how to unconditionally love? Loaded question, eh, and the Work, never posits one right way. It does allow us to get into our mess (Judge your neighbor/child), and slow down the mental mess (Write it down), and sort out the mess (Ask four questions), and bring the wisdom on home to our own hearts and minds (Turn it around).

But no rules, such as Thou Shalt Unconditionally love the little angels/beasts.

Nope, it’s all about understanding our suffering when we don’t love. So if we aren't unconditionally loving, we are going to be suffering.

(Don't take my word for it. Do the Work, or your work, or whatever you need to do.)

And then: back to the battlefield. What to do there, when we are ready to blow our stack, or at the very least, throw away love and get into Boss gear?

Same thing: Know what our habit is. Listen inside our minds to the voice and the words we are about to hurl out. Notice the habitual actions we want to take.

Slow down. Which is kind of already required, isn’t it: since we’ve slowed down enough to notice, instead of charging ahead in the old habit.

So, maybe way near the beginning is this: knowing we are going into the judge, anger, reaction mode. Then watching it.

Have this idea: What else could we do than what we usually do?

And then, here’s the key, or one of the keys: follow our breathing. Look at the child without a story of how they should be different. Come to a calmness inside our own bodies, and look, look, look. And wonder: what is going on? Wonder, if I were this child, what steps could the Giant make that would make it easier for me to shift out of my doo doo? Wonder, about what the child imagines the world is and should be at that moment and see if you can help the child make sense of their anger or fear or stubbornness.

Maybe then, we'd end up helping calm ourselves and the child,
and bringing clarity,
and the idea of listening to/ paying attention to/ caring about/ empathizing with another,
we might say,
something like:

“If I were you, I’d want to stay here all night, too. You are really having fun. And it makes you angry when I take you away when you are having fun. And you really don’t like me when I take you away and you don’t want to be taken away. And it doesn’t seem fair that I get to tell you what to do all the time. Is that pretty much how it seems to you?”

Something like that.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, this wouldn’t be a bad way to be if a mate or parent of co-worker or friend got angry with us, would it? (Notice or don’t notice, that I stay out of the non-truth land that NVC gets you into when it starts talking about the “needs” of another. The child/ mate/ coworker doesn’t “need” to stay, or to feel in control, but they certainly “want” to.).

So, anyway: if we slow down, find peace in our own bodies,
we get out of the me, me mode
which is the death of love
and then we can
look at the child as someone who has real and valid and deeply felt reasons of their own.

Maybe these reasons are understood, probably not, and that’s our job, too: to help them make sense of why they have good and righteous reason to hate us for a moment or a day or an hour.

So love is….

Something to learn. And learning how to slow down, give them their fury or “badness,” help them see what’s going on, work from a framework of listening, and paying attention and deep concern for “their side” of the deal: wow, that’s a long way toward love in action, isn’t it.

And if love isn’t in action, it’s probably not love.

Ciao, for this Wednesday’s parenting essay.