Parenting – Being Mindful!

Yes, I know that this Sunday Brunch was supposed to be a podcast, but travel schedules have not allowed me enough appropriate space to record. My desire to not let this Sunday pass by without sharing a bit of something from so many things that are brewing in me has resulted in this blog of today.

The last week’s blog was written from the airport, and this this one is getting created in the airplane. And the difference is just not me flying high in the sky, but also the flight that my soul is experiencing at this moment. The impact of the last six days and the sixteen beautiful souls that I was surrounded with is still to be understood in its completeness. For this moment, I just want to let it be in the feeling zone.

I thought that I would share about how the last week went and what all I experienced, but instead what is coming up for me is to share about something I came across at the airport last evening. Not the most pleasant of experiences, yet one which has so much of learning to share with everyone.

So, this was a family of four. A father, a mother and their two young daughters. The daughters seemed to be around ten and fifteen years old. And the parents too looked relatively younger.

I was sitting at the waiting lounge and had about seventy minutes before the boarding commenced. And these seventy minutes gave me some good lessons on how not a parent-child relationship, and a husband-wife relationship in front of their children needs to be handled.

The whole matter revolved around the disagreement between the parents and their elder daughter.

It caught my attention, when suddenly, I heard that daughter scream and say, ‘Go, and do whatever you can, or better start your never-ending yelling as you always do. I am used to it anyways; you enjoy your time.’

There were many people who turned their heads and noticed, and then eventually back their own conversations, or earphones for the songs or movies that were glued to.

One, I was alone, second, I am not used to earphones, and thirdly, the coach in me became curious. I knew that I had no opportunity to contribute to the calming down of the situation, but the opportunity to learn something about relationships that had showed up for me, I could not let go.

As I am still unable to figure out how I can best sequence it out here, I am going to try and write about what happened and then what my observations and learnings are from them.

The first scream from that girl was the last one from her too. And after that she chose to express herself through tears of anger, burying herself into her phone (which she knew her mother desperately wanted her to put away and listen to her), and scribbling on her phone screen in the fastest typing speed that I have even noticed someone move their fingers to.

The father’s role in all this was to show wide open eyes to the daughter, the one time she screamed, and then came just two statements from him, which were followed by him sitting next to the mother, with his eyes closed. And those two statements were, ‘I am not someone who will take your tantrums and stay silent.’ And ‘This is what I get as a father, after working so hard and earning for them whatever they want, giving them a life of luxuries.’

And now I come to the one, who was my main source of learning here. The mother. Whatever role the daughter and the father played, took just 3 – 4 minutes of the whole seventy minutes, and the whole of about an hour was when it was the mother who played active.

From making direct statements at her daughter while staring at her with anger and frustration, to simply speaking some random stuff looking up at the ceiling (obviously with an intention of her voice reaching the daughter’s ears), to looking at the husband venting out her anger and frustration while he was sitting there with eyes closed, and not even responding or acknowledging.

I do not remember a lot of her statements, but it went from directly picking on her daughter’s academic performance, to being on the phone always, to being disrespectful, calling her useless, to comparing her to her other friends. It went from comparison with friends to comparison with her cousins, from being lazy to not being mindful about the importance of money.

And it was not that the ranting was only aimed at the daughter, it got transferred towards the husband also multiple times, by him being blamed for not being strict enough, for him not being a helping partner in parenting, to even he is being solely responsible for the mother’s suffering because of his way of handling/mishandling the children.

As if that did not surprise me much, I also saw her shifting her focus from her daughter to her own childhood, and she was such a wonderful child to her parents and did everything which she finds her daughter not being anywhere close to. Unfortunately, this was not the biggest surprise, and she even mentioned that her own parents were still not happy with her and had so many expectations from her, and never gave her enough money or a lifestyle which is being enjoyed by her daughter today.

What an hour that was!

And let me now focus on the few key learnings and messages that I extracted from it.

By the way, it is important for me to mention here that in all this the younger girl was sitting there all quiet and still trying to not become a scapegoat, but her eyes moving in all directions, trying to pick the words and actions, and make her own meaning from those.

The lessons I learnt or got re-enforced for me are:

• Parenting is a teamwork. And differences (if any) must not be expressed in front of our children. It not only diverts attention from the issue at hand, but at times even fuels it further with the child taking advantage of it.
• While focusing on an issue which is about the child, we must avoid bringing in our own pain-points as parents, which may actually be a reflection of our own struggles while earning money.
• Trying to manage our child is no power game. It is not a battle of cementing supremacy or authority.
• Becoming angry and losing control of our emotions, does not only divert us from the issue at hand, but also covers the message we want to give to our child with layers of drama.
• Our children receive as mere animated actors and not serious messengers when they find a pattern of uncontrolled rant in our parenting.
• The childhood we lived was different times, and it is least serving to bring both the good and bad of the times that have passed into the times of today, especially when the situation at hand is not a pleasant one.
• We provide the best opportunity for our children to understand when we speak to them in the context of times that they are living in.
• There must always be an honest reflection on the issue of our unresolved issues with our parents making an impact on how we perceive ourselves as parents. These were two different relationships, between some very different type of individuals.
• We must always strive to have a one-on-one dialogue with our child, rather than getting into a monologue, which we believe is being aimed at our child, but always hits a non-listening ear.
• Reflection rather than reaction is the best way of ensuring an appropriate handling of your child.
• How it is being said, can make what is being said much more impactful.
• As parents we must be mindful that best intentions do not get layered under our not so good way of communication.

Takeaways are many more, and I think it would be good to speak about them somewhere else, some other time, at some other platform.

For today, I would just like to close by saying a last thing which is equally important and that is to be mindful about the presence of your other child in such situations, and to be conscious about the fact that they do have a voice going on inside of them, amidst all the noise that is happening around them. This one simple mindfulness can help us avoid creating a similar situation again in future, both for our child as well as ourselves as parents.

Let us as parents, enjoy this blessing of parenthood. Acknowledging the challenges that come with it, and embracing the blessings it carries within, let us as parents relieve ourselves and our children from expectations, that may be unrealistic and are only detrimental to the growth of all the individuals involved and the parent-child relationship itself.

Let love lead!

Much Love,

DeepCoach RB