Last week, I challenged you to hand the control of your child’s life back to them. I knew it was confronting, but it was by no means to discredit the love any parent has for their children.
In fact, a parent’s love for their children cannot be measured. It is one of the greatest passions that transcends heartbreak, disappointment and sorrow.
This love, however, is one of the primary sources of problems between parents and their children. It is because parents love and care so much that they “interfere” in their children’s lives. It is because they want to help their children to have what they see as the shortest, smoothest path to a better life that they chime in. It is also for love that parents are willing to risk their most valuable relationship with their children, sometimes going as far as yelling, scolding, screaming, and threatening them, just to ensure their children are doing the right thing and making the right decisions.
If parents knew of a better and more effective way to communicate and respond to their children, of course, they wouldn’t choose to yell, scold, scream or shout.
The good news is, there actually is a better way to a more harmonious and peaceful approach to parenting. With a simple mindset shift, a different picture will emerge.
As mentioned in my blog last week, Nancy loves her daughter to bits. It was out of love that she felt the strong need to sway her daughter’s (Yin) decision to???. But what she couldn’t see in herself was that her love turned into over-protection, and the over-protection turned into control and manifested as her own anxiety.
Taking Nancy through deconstructing the issue with her, this was how the conversation went:
Mindset Shift
“Do you want Yin to be confident of her own decisions and to believe she is capable of facing whatever challenges may occur to her? Do you want her to feel like she is an empowered decision maker? Don’t you think these are essential qualities that help to develop a rock-solid personality in her?”
I went on to explain to Nancy, “If you try influencing her to change her decision, you are sending her the message that she should doubt herself because you doubted her. It also indicates that her ability to make decisions is also questionable. You may give her the option of deciding about what she wears to a party, to choose her own hairstyle or what shoes to wear, but when it comes to the big decisions in life, you are uncertain of her decision-making ability. Is this not conflicting for her?”
Nancy went quiet. She was deeply reflecting on her actions.
I then went on to play the devil’s advocate, “Let’s say you are right! She absolutely hated her choice and things did not work out. What has she learned? She has learnt to believe in herself, give her passion a good go and learn the skill of making better choices in the future. Perhaps she may also realise that a hobby may not be a career. MOST IMPORTANTLY, though, she has learnt that at some stage of our lives, we make poor choices, but that is NOT the end of the world and she can go on to learn the skill of fixing up her poor choices. Aren’t these far MORE POWERFUL and transferable skills to learn?”
Knowing the Trap
It was clear to me that Nancy had fallen into the trap of focusing on the outcome instead of embracing the lessons learned from focusing on the process.
She was also unaware of transferring her anxiety and fear to her daughter. At the same time, she sent mixed messages to her 18-year-old leading to her being a bit more confused.
Unfortunately, many of us are like Nancy. Parents need to develop the skill and ability to be introspective and intervene with our own unsupportive emotive reactions that originate in our fears and anxieties.
Stopping Yourself from Falling into The Trap
The development of such power requires one to have a clear mind; clear enough to see through the various masks of our own barriers. Settling the mind takes time, just like a ripple in a pond takes time to disappear and for the water to look still again. The skill requires one to find a quiet time daily to just sit and be non-judgemental, using awareness of one’s breath as the tool to stay in the present moment and not manufacture more thoughts.
I usually suggest to my clients to start with 5-minutes of ‘stillness time’. If they have a busy schedule, I suggest that they wake up 5 minutes early. This is a practice that I have personally adopted for many years now. This is also one of the critical factors in my own transformation and for all my clients. It is the tool that many well-known successful personalities like Oprah Winfrey, Tony Robbins and Dr. Shefali Tsabary use for themselves and have helped many hundreds and thousands of people to create transformation for themselves.
It is not until we become the bystander and the observer of our own mental drama that we can develop the powerful skill of introspection and break through our habitual emotive reactions. Developing new skills and breaking away from old habits takes time. When this skill is developed, you will have no doubt that every 5 minutes you spend daily are the best minutes of your life.