Do you ever feel like you’ve regretted an explosive reaction? Do you wish you had your mind less concerned with things that, at times, are not even within your reach? On top of all of that, you’re still trying to be a good parent and grow a healthy relationship with your child.
Sounds like you could use some mindful parenting techniques to help you encompass it all.
Meaning And Importance Of Mindful Parenting
Mindful parenting refers to applying mindfulness principles to behaviors and attributions we take as parents. As a result, you expect to have a clearer mind, attentive to your child’s needs, open to absorb what they are offering you and interact with them in manners that will make your Little Ones feel safe and understood.
Being strongly based on meditation principles, the practice of mindfulness brings us back to the present moment. That’s especially useful if you have ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of tasks in your to-do list, or if you’ve been struggling with regret over things from the past.
Mindful parenting doesn’t mean you won’t think about the future and make investments in your child: we know that, ultimately, we’re raising our childs to be their best selves in their lives ahead. However, investing is different than worrying.
When you’re too attached to the thought of the future, you find yourself less committed to the present. This means you’ll be at risk of losing precious moments with your Little One that you won’t get back in the future – and then you’ll waste your time, again, worrying about what’s past.
See the vicious circle you got going on when you are not focused on the present?
Signs That You Have Mindful Attitudes
And how do you integrate mindfulness into your parenting skills?
You Acknowledge And Respond To Your Feelings
Mindfulness is not about making feelings go away. We all know that bad situations happen, but one of the meanings of life is overcoming them and moving forward in spite of the struggle.
Mindfulness helps you to acknowledge the tough feelings, such as stress, but to not get yourself trapped or paralyzed over them.
You Refrain From Reacting Instantly
Many times, our first reaction is not ideal. How many difficult situations could have been prevented if we only took a second to pause, breathe, and reflect over the best way to respond to something, huh?
This is one of the outgrowths that mindful parenting brings.
Taking the moment to pause, reflect about the consequences of your actions, and choosing a better route over the one you were about to go in the moment of rage can ultimately strengthen your relationship with your loved ones.
They’ll grow knowing that even if they make a mistake, you’ll accept them and help with overcoming bad situations.
How Can You Put Mindful Parenting Into Practice
Listening
Not only listening to the words, but also what that means to your child. How are they feeling while they’re sharing something with you? What emotions do they demonstrate? How do the sentiments change according to the people they are talking about?
Applying the principle in real life: you come home from work and you’re cooking dinner. Your child starts to talk about their day at school or the TV programs they’ve watched that day. Listen to what the Little One wants to share, ask questions about it: find ways to participate.
Breathing
Of course you have no other option than breathing! But this is more than taking air in and out of your lungs.
Take the act of taking a deep breath in front of a situation as a marker: once you’ve done with taking a couple of breaths and recognise you feel less agitated then you were before, only then you’re ready to take action and react.
Applying the principle in real life: your child won’t eat, despite the fact you’ve cooked the meal they’ve asked for. In addition to that, you’re running late to an appointment. You’re feeling impatient and anxious because you did everything you could to avoid being late.
Instead of yelling at the child and demanding that they eat faster, pause: take a breath, name the emotions you’re feeling, consider that yelling will hardly solve anything, and think about the best way to encourage your child to finish their meal.
Losing The Judgment
It’s all about compassion towards the child and especially yourself. This doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings (good or bad). You’ll still feel tiredness, anger, sadness, insecurity, envy… all those normal things that are part of life.
However, the key is to not think less of yourself if you feel something is considered bad, neither putting yourself above others just because you are experiencing a good moment.
Applying the principle in real life: the baby doesn’t sleep and you’re tired? It’s OK to acknowledge that, understand you wouldn’t wish to go through that, be compassionate with what you’re feeling, and then think of strategies to get your Little One to bed.
Self Regulating
After you’ve learned to breathe in and be compassionate with people’s feelings, you’re on the right track to self regulating. Put simply, it means you don’t react at once because your first impulse might not be the most adequate.
Applying the principle in real life: your child is in a tantrum in a public space. People start to stare and, apparently, make comments on your parenting skills – as if the tantrum was your fault!
Your initial reaction is to pull the child aside from the public eyes and order them to stop their whining. Does this actually solve the problem?
Or would you be off to a better outcome if you stop, breathe, acknowledge you’re uncomfortable with the yelling, and consider that the best way to react is not to hide the children away, but instead to help them calm down so you can understand what’s wrong and then come up with the appropriate solution?
Focusing On What’s At Reach
This means caring for the present and what you have a type of control of. It also stands by letting go of watching (and caring) on what other people think of you, not overstressing about situations that are either in the past, or haven’t even taken place yet.
Applying the principle in real life: you can’t control how people think of you when they’re seeing the child in a tantrum. You can, however, set your mind to pay attention to the present: detect what caused the tantrum, show your child ways that they can calm themselves down, put yourself at ease, and take the appropriate action to that specific scenario.
Applying mindful parenting is a strategy to uplift your efforts of raising your child the best way you can, preparing them to be their best selves in their future.
Make the best of your present with your child by learning the value of spending time with the family and growing your loving bonds.
