Dear parents, do you have mom/dad guilt?

I found myself yelling at my kid way more than I imagined. And this only got worse after we welcomed our second kid recently. Every day, I pledge to take it easy and treat my child differently, but the same patterns (yelling, belittling, throwing tantrums) recur, often leading to guilt and shame. I thought something had to change either with my child or my parenting style. This was when I encountered the teachings of Dr Shefali, a renowned psychologist and international speaker primarily focusing on Conscious Parenting. I took her conscious parenting course after going through some of her talks and shows online. Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey have endorsed her work on parenting as groundbreaking and revolutionary. And after going through the course, I couldn’t agree more. Though I took the course, it is not that I understand it, perfect it and know what to do from here on. Knowing something intellectually is different from integrating ideas. However, just being aware that there is an old and new way of parenting allows one to have a deep transformation within us over time.

Consciousness is not a destination. It is a commitment to an ever lasting journey.

In her course, she debunks some myths around parenting and shares some mental frameworks and skills to help connect with our kids better. While I can’t do any justice to her course by condensing it into a blog post, I want to share some of the myths about parenting I learned from her. But before we get into it, let's understand conscious parenting.

Consciousness Parenting is against the traditional and mainstream parenting. The traditional parenting is more about the child, whereas the conscious parenting is about the parent.

The Doctor says the obsession with making our children successful comes from within us, our sense of lack. We use our children to complete something within us. So, unconscious parental love is probably, an unconscious parental need, and she encourages us to raise the inner child within us. It is only when we parents understand that we have an inner child left over from the vestiges of our childhood that needs to be raised and become whole; it is only then we can aspire to begin to connect to the child before us. With that premise, here is the first myth about parenting.

Myth#1: Parenting is about child

Here is a hard-hitting question: Why did we choose to become parents? My teenage was messed up for various reasons, and I want to re-live it with my kids. That's my “Why?”. If you ask yourself this question, mostly, it starts with an “I”. So, is it not out of our own needs or desires that we have chosen to become parents? Then, why not take time to own our egos and take accountability? Our children don’t owe us anything, and no need to say that we are sacrificing things for the sake of our children.

The problem is not your kids, its you.

Dr Shefali suggests stopping parenting out of our own egoic agendas. Controlling in parenting will never work. Instead, she recommends using our relationship with our child as a mirror to know who we truly are. No one can teach us more about ourselves than our relationship with our children. Our children are our teachers; they are our mirrors.

Myth #2: Good parents are natural

We primarily respond to our kids instinctively; instinct by nature is primal, which is part of the problem. So, to think we should know how to respond to our children is irrational.

Unfortunately, parenting requires no licensing or professional education though it is one of the most challenging jobs in the world. Parenting is also one of the steepest learning curves ever, and we need to learn, unlearn and relearn. Also, parenting for each child is different as each kid is different.

So, Dr Shefali says, parenting consciously requires dedicated cultivation of daily and moment-by-moment awareness. Raising children is an organic process and an eternal land mine of the unknown. We are more present with our kids when we evolve to be more conscious.

The juice of parenting is to focus on the present.

Myth #3: Every parent wants their kid to be happy and successful

This sounds very normal and sounds downright selfless. But this is the cause of significant disconnection with our children. We end up causing more harm than good, and according to Dr Shefali, this is the root of all problems because wanting these things for others sets up resistance.

What happiness means for one person may be unhappiness for another. Pain is an integral part of life, and this idea of non-pain is an illusion. So, Dr Shefali suggests to stop wishing anything at all. Instead, if we were to wish for anything, wish them the joy of experiencing life in the present moment as it appears. Teach them that pain is natural and inevitable and that all experiences are worthy so they stop chasing happiness. Allow your children to embrace their (emotional) pain, and allow them to feel their own experiences. Just observe and resist all your urges to fix them; allow those feelings to experience as is; allow them to experience failure and unhappiness without your projection. They will understand the transformative power of pain. When they see that they can handle and even transform pain, you have given them the power of resilience.

Similarly, we all crave success. No one knows what true success is. Success cannot be defined in narrow metrics. Shifting away from external success to the true experience of life in the moment with the self is the critical shift we need to make.

We want our children to be comfortable in their own skin. To celebrate who it is they are and to accept who it is they are. Self-acceptance actually leads to the highest sense of inner peace.

So, through their inner validation and worth, they can develop their authentic self, which is what we as parents should aim for ourselves and our kids.

Myth #4: A good parent is a loving one

We are conditioned to believe a good parent is a loving one. The assumption about love can be misguided. What does love truly mean? Love is one of the most undoubtedly bonding elements within humans and serves as the base and foundation of our feelings, especially towards our children. However, the harsh reality is we forget how love is not actually selfless. So, when we say we love someone, we love them out of a conditionality. Dr Shefali says the conditional act of love doesn’t feel like love to our children. We should acknowledge that our love is heavily tinged with need/dependency/control/expectation, which inevitably distorts the pure sentiment of love. So, our feeling of love then becomes tinged with attachment around what we need to feel loving. The next time we claim we love our children, she challenges us to ask ourselves:

Is your love free of need/dependency/control/expectation?

True love requires that we see the object of our love as independent of us. This means we are full within ourselves that we can help, guide, and serve the needs of the other person we love.

Can you love yourself so much / Can you consider yourself as so worthy that you don’t need your children to give you worth?

When we shift from our own lack to our own wholeness, we can release our children from an attachment-based relationship to a transcendent one. Of course, this is true for any relationship.

Myth #5: Good children and bad children

One of the things we constantly impose on our children is our labels and our judgements. We don’t realize it, but Dr Shefali says these labels deeply colour our relationship with our children. By labelling them as good/bad/sweet/obedient/shy/lazy/rebel, we limit their infinite and eternal potential because we are now boxing them into a feeling that that’s who they are.

Society has told us what a good and bad child means. A good kid is obedient, doesn’t push back, doesn’t question authority, is compliant, and pays attention; in other words, a good child is like a sheep. They make us feel worthy, strong and successful. And a bad kid dares to have an opinion, has a strong will, is loud, impossible to control, doesn’t conform, doesn’t listen, or is a troublemaker. Maybe, these are kids with a strong will, and because of their strong will, they clash head with us parents.

Are they really bad or they are just being children who are so grounded in their inner knowing?

These children challenge the parents to think in a way, to look at life differently. And Dr Shefali says the bad kids are awakeners to their parents, while the good kid will keep their egos intact.

Every kid or human being desires to know if they are seen/as whole/worthy or if they matter. So, if we can attune to those inner needs, maybe the bad kid doesn’t want you to focus on their behaviour. Perhaps they are yearning for you to look deeper. Every bad behaviour communicates a need. So, she suggests asking ourselves:

Why is my kid choosing these behaviours? How can I help to mitigate their inner needs?

Similarly, maybe a good kid may not be a good kid after all — maybe, they are tired of being compliant; perhaps the good kid is so yearning to speak their mind. Maybe, they are waiting for an invitation to remove their mask and be allowed to express themselves.

Myth #6: Parents need to be in Control

We parents think we have a sacred obligation to control and dictate to our children. We are disguising our control in the name of caring, but what are the reasons behind the desire to control? As kids, we all feel helpless when our parents control us. And this helplessness, as we grow up, transforms into a great desire to control our kids. The desire to control others is a distraction from the control over ourselves. And Dr Shefali suggests asking ourselves:

Were you ever given a chance to explore your own destiny. So, its the same emotional legacy that you may pass on to your kids.

We are mostly afraid that if we don’t raise our kids with the same prescription we grew up with, how will our children be happy or successful? So, you see, we get abducted from our authentic selves, and we rob our children of their authentic selves, and then they begin to develop an enormous sense of helplessness. This lack of inner governance and trust in who they are often leads them to look for outside people to give them a sense of validation. So, the Doctor suggests training our kids to look inward and to allow our children to have their ultimate last word on their destiny. In her own words:

Our children don’t need a parent. They need a deeply connected spiritual guide who allows them to discover who they are without pushing them. A Spiritual guide empowers children to make conscious choices for themselves. So, make sure you are a caregiver but not a commander.

With that, here are some parting notes from the Doctor. Your children came to you so you could awaken to your most authentic self. They allowed you to use them as ignition to your evolution. And it is through your inner healing that you will have allowed them to discover, unleash and manifest their authentic truest selves. And everyone in your radius is now invited to do the same. The future of the planet lies in parental evolution.