Do you want to achieve emotional and spiritual enlightenment? Do you envy people who can go and sit on the mountaintop and meditate all day? Often as parents we feel more like the woman on the left! However, as part of my series of tips on parenting, I want to highlight the capacity our children have for causing us to grow emotionally and spiritually. For many people, kids provide a much more powerful Zen training than you can get in most monasteries.
Have you ever been on a retreat,or even just on holidays, and felt incredibly serene, only to reenter the world and lose your cool? We all have. Learning in a quiet, peaceful environment to find your calm center is a completely different thing than in the mundane world of parenting! Yet given that most of us live in a world that is not like a retreat environment or a continuous vacation, learning to peaceful in the real world is much more valuable.
Have you noticed that some of your friends who don’t have kids are that much more rigid and less resilient and flexible? Necessity is the mother of invention (note, not the father!). So it makes sense that if we don’t need to become more flexible and resilient, we likely won’t. Yet as so many spiritual leaders teach us, accepting what is, even while moving to change the future, is the cornerstone of peace and enlightenment.
Now you may not be experiencing parenting as peace and enlightenment! I certainly didn’t the first few years. I struggled with rage issues, depression and general overwhelm. However, in learning to get to a happier place, I began to learn to accept what I couldn’t change. I also began to learn how to change things, usually by starting with how I was creating the situation that was driving me nuts!
Parenting has been the single most healing and exciting journey that I have ever been on! Yet the irony is to the some naive souls, okay, a lot of naive souls, in the outside world, it is the least exciting thing I’ve done. When I worked at the legislature, or traveled by myself or lead groups in China or did tours in Alaska, those were what the world projects as exciting. Yet through it all, I carried a ton of baggage and did not evolve near as quickly as when my wings were clipped by parenting.
Wherever you go, there you are. That saying only made sense to me after parenting. I learned that sometimes the most exciting journey is the one within, as we learn to overcome our personal internal mountains. My kids reflect back to me where I am doing well, and where I need to grow. Unlike the monastery where I can leave my troubles behind, parenting requires me to learn to navigate those troubles and to overcome them. Slowly over time, I am achieving more and more nirvana now, more and more peaceful, serene moments while fully in the world, dealing with the many things that could irritate or distract me.
Do you see your kids as your Zen masters? If you don’t, just shifting to that perspective can result in a lot of peace. You will approach your children’s problems and discipline issues from a much calmer, more loving perspective. Instead of seeing your kids’ behavior as bad, you will see the opportunity to reflect and learn from them.
How have you created the behavior you are seeing in them? I don’t mean that in a blame way at all. Rather, how can you shift your energy and behavior so that your kids shift in turn. If you have any issues with being overreactive or getting angry, this shift will help you see your child differently, and therefore stop the anger before it starts.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. This is one of the tips on parenting that I wish I’d learned when my kids were small. How do you accept the moment with your kids, and how have they caused you to become more peaceful and in the present? Share this post with your friends and family as well, and offer them the gift of seeing the gift in the mundane challenges of parenting!
It was never more clear to me, until after having kids, that it is really just the everyday events and rituals that make memories special. I realized that every moment counted, and more importantly, I realized that every day didn’t have to have some fabulous thing going on to create special memories. The best memories for kids are sometimes the simplest times walking in the forest, planting a garden, talking about books at the library, etc. If you live in the moment, really be “present” in the moment with kids, you will realize very quickly, they don’t need Disneyland, all they really want is a “present” parent to live in their moments with them.
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Jacqueline Green Reply:
April 10th, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Great point Marsha. It is easy to get caught up in trying to give our kids big moments, that we forget that life is made up of a series of moments, many of them simple, and deeply joyful. Kids do recall simple times so fondly, especially with a present parent. Thanks for sharing!
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I needed to hear this today. Thanks!
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Jacqueline Green Reply:
April 10th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Glad to help Cheryl! As I said before, this is what I needed to hear when my kids were young, over and over.
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This is it!! I often wish there were an easier way. Truly there is wonderful growth that comes when we are willing to see our children as great teachers and their difficult behaviors as opportunities to look inside ourselves and heal. As this healing occurs we bless ourselves, our family and future generations. Children are gifts from God! Thanks for the reminder of how lucky I am on so many levels to be down in the trenches as the mother of my children.
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Jacqueline Green Reply:
April 12th, 2011 at 6:32 pm
I agree Tammy that I wish there was an easier way too! In some ways though I think that parenting is the easier way, because I do see some single friends who just don’t have to learn to be more patient, etc. and therefore seem to be much less happy. Yes, children are gifts from God and our healing is our chance to do God’s work in the world and bless so many. Thanks for sharing Tammy!
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I believe it is indeed the everyday “special moments” that are important to our children later in life. Mother being home for their child(ren) when they come home from school as opposed to having to go to a sitter and wait for “quality time” sometime after supper. Society today is raising children to expect an expensive birthday/Christmas gift, or an organized birthday party at some establishment together with all the fast food. What happened to kids games at home with a cake made by mom in her own kitchen? We wonder why our chldren are so materialistic? A picnic in the park, a hike in the woods, catching crayfish at the creek – are these not quiet peaceful moments where we can gather our own thoughts, share pleasures with our children and conquer our troubles together? We need to change society so that expectations go back to family roots, not just buying something for happiness. Growing up we always had a holiday, camping in nature so the cost was not so high, it kept us away from television and amusement parks and we didn’t miss them a bit. We were always allowed to have friends over for a sleepover and what fun we had, without video games etc. I continued those patterns but in the ever changing society have felt that I needed to justify this to other parents who both were working and continually “gave” their children things instead of time.
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Jacqueline Green Reply:
April 11th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Great point Theresa. It is harder and harder to live a simple life in the midst of so much materialism. Still it is possible to set our own values, and you clearly are doing so. Your family will remember and cherish these memories, and your values will be deeply rooted in them. Thanks for sharing!
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