The Shift To Conscious Parenting
Conscious parenting is a new style of parenting that shifts the focus to how your thoughts, feelings, reactions, and impulses influence the needs and feelings of your children.
Sometimes, taking a step away from an experience and viewing it with a new sense of awareness is the best way to see it for what it is. Parenting, with all of the expectations and stressors that come with it, can overwhelm our ability to be the intentional and connected parents we want to be.
One aspect to note before we begin
Try not to let the concept of conscious parenting itself be another weight on your shoulders — it’s all about being easier on yourself. Being kind to yourself, learning to forgive yourself, and having patience will all help you in being a better parent. Each of us has messed up or made a mistake (let’s be honest — lots of them) that we feel guilty about.Conscious parenting, in part, aims to deconstruct these sources of shame and resulting dysfunction.
When entering our lives as parents, it can be easy to fall into the same pitfalls that our own parents did throughout our childhoods. This can be especially difficult to avoid when we are at our most stressed or vulnerable.
Defining conscious parenting
The recipe for conscious parenting? Combine mindfulness practices and thoughtful parenting techniques to create a new, cohesive approach to parenthood that fosters a heart-centered environment for our children.
The pillars of conscious parenting
1. Self awareness
A closer connection with yourself and your inner child is an integral part of conscious parenting. You can’t effectively treat your child as a true individual, as a person in their own right, if you do not do the same for yourself. This means taking the important time aside to assess, and better understand our unhealthy reactions, assumptions, baggage, and anything else that can undermine our ability to be our best selves and the best conscious parent for our kids. If you’re experiencing a negative emotion, don’t just sit with it as if you deserve it. Try to examine where it’s coming from and go from there. (Therapy is a great resource to create more self-awareness.)
2. Less self-rewarding expectations
It can be hard to not live through your child — to want them to succeed or achieve in an area that you, as a parent, are personally interested in.
But forcing a sport or interest on a child can limit their ability to find their own personal interests and passions. By emphasizing their own interests during childhood, we help our kids develop a better sense of self as they become adults, serving as a strong driving force behind their careers, relationships, and livelihoods in adulthood.
3. Independence + individuality
Allow your child their own space, room to make mistakes, and even the ability to disagree. As parents, it's common to wish for our children to carry similar beliefs as us, whether it's religion, politics, or personal preferences. However, allowing your children to critically think about their own identity, beliefs, and way of working through the world will give them so much more independence as they age.
My good friends were masters at this. Their young son would ask, “What do WE think about this?” and his dad would answer, “Well, Daddy believes this. What do you believe?” Think of the independence, self-respect, and intelligence this helps a child to develop.
4. Creativity
Another core aspect of conscious parenting is an emphasis on fostering your child’s creativity. From using sensory tables at a young age to provide a stimulating creative environment, to supporting their own interests and talents — encouraging creativity is key.
Limiting toys that are hyper stimulating and that take away the role of creativity from the child is worth considering. Toys that make noise or are very visually engaging unfortunately take away opportunities for the child’s creative input (as much as kids love them). Encourage your children to use that inborn, creative powerhouse: the imagination!
5. Emotional health
Most of us grew up being told to eat our vegetables and look both ways before crossing the street. But, oftentimes, skills to encourage our emotional intelligence and health were overlooked. An important part of self-care is learning how to ground ourselves, find peace, and work through stressors.
Resilience, or emotional strength, is one of the foremost keys to emotional health. With conscious parenting, we aim to foster resilience in our children. Awareness of where our feelings are coming from, where they are going, and why allows us and our children to build emotional resolve and to be healthier people.
Conscious parenting is about being conscious of your child’s health inside and out by incorporating these healthy habits into their daily interactions.
Conscious parenting vs. gentle parenting
Whereas conscious parenting emphasizes the awareness of our own baggage, feelings, and learned behaviors as imperfect, but growing individuals, gentle parenting places the emphasis on the child’s feelings. As the name implies, gentle parenting champions kind and gentle interactions with your child at all times. However, while they aren’t the same techniques, these parenting methods can work in harmony together, leading to a mindfully compassionate parenting style.
A more thoughtful, conscious parenting style
Conscious parenting does not mean that you can no longer encourage your child to do and believe the things you value; traditions and culture could not be passed on otherwise. However, it does mean a more careful, conscious approach. Consider how much more treasured these values and beliefs will be when we encourage our children to love them the same way we do: freely. And, importantly, don’t forget to be kind to yourself along the way!