In childbirth class (many years ago), my husband and I watched a video of a newborn doing the 'breast crawl,' actually making her way independently from her mom's belly to latch on for her first breastfeed. That is amazing, isn't it? They seem helpless, but they truly aren't. Human beings are born with a strong sense of what they need and how to get it. As parents, we are wise to attune and listen to them. When our baby turns away from someone who wants to hold him, or when a toddler refuses a food we think she would like, or when a child has trouble falling asleep, we can pay attention. When a child says that he doesn't want to play at someone's house, or a young person complains about being teased or chased, we can listen and even thank them for telling us. If we do this from the time they are small, when our children become tweens and teens, we will be in the habit of trusting them to know things, and they will be in the habit of trusting us to believe them. But we can start at any age. Listening and attuning is not the same as indulging every whim. When a child doesn't like a food we can respect that preference without whipping up a special meal! Attuning to our children's innate wisdom, capacity for self-care, and drive to be where they need to be helps them grow up trusting their inner knowing. It builds deep understanding between our children and ourselves. It helps to place us firmly on the same side, as allies rather than adversaries.
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Growing up, I believed that independence was the ultimate goal and dependence was immature, needy, and even shameful. Over years, life experience, counseling, mindfulness and meditation, and many wonderful teachers have helped me to understand and begin to embody the importance of deep interdependence and connection. Wise thinkers and speakers share about it much more eloquently than I can. Here are some of their words: “The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” ― Joanna Macy “The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independence we must first invite dependence; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he is giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness.” ― Gordon Neufeld, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers “The corporate world is also a manifestation of people’s disconnection from their heart, where people believe manipulation is the path to getting what they want and therefore the way to succeed. People often use the excuse that “everyone does it.” When a child learns at home that not everyone does it, things can start to change. The corporate world even celebrates the cutthroat approach of stepping over others, knifing them in the back, and scrambling to the top of the ladder at the expense of colleagues—behavior that reflects an inability to connect with and care for others.” ― Shefali Tsabary, Our of Control “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.“ -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Interbeing: If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are. If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is. Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.” - Thich Nhat Hanh Independence Day is about sovereignty, the right to self-determination, a new and higher way of approaching governance and rights. We celebrate the independence declared in our country, an imperfect independence that didn't recognize the rights of many human beings but represents an elevation of democracy, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for this country. As we celebrate the 4th of July, we can celebrate it both for our country, ourselves, and our family. Nationally, are we cultivating true freedom? Rather than being ruled by fear, are we living as a courageous country, aligned with the highest truths rather than the convenient ones? As citizens, do we support this country's highest form of democracy or the judgmental, intolerant, or self-serving voices that try to turn our political system into a game or low form of entertainment? For ourselves, are we living as freely as we can? Not free in the sense of being cut off from other people, which is not real freedom. Are we becoming free of the unreasonable and unhealthy demands of our personality? Willing to live as open-hearted, brave, strong beings in this world? And as I've been writing about all week, are we raising our children to discover their own sovereignty and interdependence? Helping them to grow up as caring, connected, and strong people who stand for truth and justice for all rather than grasping only for their own desires? Helping them to know their own innate goodness, abilities, and being so they can serve their own purpose and help make this a more perfect world? Writing about sovereignty this week brings me back to practice. That sovereign part of myself is not the same thing as my wants and desires, my feelings, or my beliefs and conditioning. It's something both deeper and more diffuse, my Being. To connect with it, I practice. An Awareness Practice: Beginning to sit, I let my body settle into stillness. I make the little adjustments that I need to get comfortable, alert, upright, and relaxed. I settle into my body, being aware of sensations. I listen, hearing the birds outside, the neighbors' air conditioner, cars driving. I feel the warm air. Pulling my awareness inward a bit, I feel the breath all through my chest and belly. Moment by moment, I notice how that feels, just resting in it. My mind wanders, thinking about the breath, thinking about this practice, thinking about what I need to do today. Sometimes emotions show up--worry or frustration or happiness. My body gets restless or hungry. I welcome these thoughts and feelings, sort of imagining welcoming them to sit down next to me. And come back to the feeling of breathing, this moment, and the beautiful experience of being alive now. As many times as my mind wanders or feelings come up, I make some space for them next to me and then gently return to the present. Doing this, I'm practicing being. The quiet presence that I touch into, the stillness under the thoughts and sensations, that's the true sovereign being that I am turning things over to. I think of heart-centered parenting like riding a bike. When you bike you have an overall sense of balance, but you aren't balanced in each moment. You lean to the left or the right as you pedal, throwing your balance in one direction or the other. Pedaling over rougher terrain or steep hills--like parenting through challenging times--has you off balance more of the time than when you're coasting. We all have aspects of permissive parenting in us, and we all have aspects of controlling parenting in us. This crazy job we're doing; recognizing the heart and soul of little bitty humans and nurturing it through the many stages of their lives, in our transitional and confusing culture, under the influence of probably imperfect conditioning, to adulthood and beyond; probably won't be perfectly and precisely balanced! It's more like riding a bike, there's a working balance, an approximate balance. Perfection just isn't the goal. We're here to learn. Our balance comes from paying attention, keeping our eyes wide open so that we notice if we've forgotten the soul nature/sovereignty of our child and remember it. Keeping our eyes wide open so we notice when we've gotten controlling, pushing our own agenda rather than helping the truth unfold. Noticing when we've gotten permissive, forgetting the power and strength of our child. Noticing when we've lost ourselves, forgetting that we, too, matter. Just like riding a bike, we're constantly noticing if we're leaning too far to one side and correcting. An experienced rider doesn't panic when the bike leans too far, they just correct, just as a skilled parent learns to notice and adjust as necessary. Sometimes it takes a lot of looking and reflecting to see our own controlling tendencies, but the truth is that we all have them! Both permissive and controlling parenting are going to come up in us. It's the things I can't see in myself that scare me the most, because not seeing them doesn't mean they aren't in me, it just means they're unseen. So consider if and how yesterday's post about permissive parenting along with today's post relate to you even if the specific examples don't resonate. So if and when you're being a controlling parent, it may look like:
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