Towards A Middle Ground Approach to Parenting

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A few thoughts about getting to a middle ground approach:

In my last post I talked about finding a middle ground approach between very strict, directive parenting, and focusing mainly on building self esteem at the expense of limit setting and accountability.  Where to start?  Often when I am working with parents I find that they feel very worried about whether they are doing a good job, whether other parents know more intuitively how to parent, whether other people's children are just better behaved than their own.

When parents talk about this I get a very strong sense that they are feeling a sense of shame, and that they personally are "not good enough".  They are often much harder on themselves than anyone else would be towards them. It makes me think that a good place to start is for parents to find a way to be kinder to themselves.  This reminded me of some things I have been thinking about in my own life.

Sometime around New Years my 24 year old daughter asked me if I had made any resolutions.  I was surprised by the question and said I don’t tend to do that, but I wondered if she did.  She told me that she regularly makes resolutions 3 or 4 times a year, and proceeded to tell me about her current one.  I was so impressed by her self-insight, wisdom and this practice of resolutions.  I decided that I would make a resolution this year to be more compassionate to myself.

I often advise parents I am working with to be compassionate towards themselves. How can I advise others to do it, if I am not practicing compassion towards myself?  Also, how can you actually make yourself be more compassionate towards yourself, how does one operationalize it?

I started to read a few books on the topic; I’ve been thinking a lot about it and talking about it with my husband and close friends.  (I’ll list some of the books I am reading below.)

One approach I decided that I could do was to look at myself with curiosity, not judge what I was noticing, but let myself be interested in it, in a kind, empathetic way that I would use towards others. 

I decided to try to meditate every day, alternating between a few guided meditation DVDs that were recommended to me. (See below)

The very first time I did it I noticed that during the meditation, when my thoughts were wandering, as they naturally do for everyone during meditation, I was even sometimes having imaginary conversations in my mind with different people in my life about what they thought about what I was thinking.  I was very taken aback; I was imagining other people’s judgments about my thoughts.  It was all coming from me. I thought about it, gently, for a few days and I realized I don’t really want so much of my thinking time to be spent like that.  And I try to notice when I am doing that, and let it go.

Around the same time, I had a day where I had no scheduled appointments, and a long list of non-urgent things I wanted to do.   In my head I started making a schedule of how I could get the most things done, in the most efficient way and I started to feel very anxious about everything I had to get done.  In the spirit of noticing with curiosity I stopped, and thought, “wait a minute, this is a day with no scheduled commitments,  nothing on my things to do list is urgent, but I am about to make it a very stressful day”.  And I changed my plans.  I thought about what actually needed to be done in a timely way, and what I felt like doing, as opposed to what I felt compelled to do.  And I kept reminding myself that nothing I was doing was urgent.  I had a calm day.

A few days later I thought to myself, in a gentle way, “You know, I think 80% of my stress is self generated". I just let that thought sink in.

Last weekend I was having a hard time with something, and I found that I was constantly ruminating about the problem.  I did talk about it with my husband, and then said, “okay, enough I need to focus on something else”.  As I did other things I realized I was having conversations in my head about it with the other players and I would keep getting more and more anxious and upset.  I decided at one point to just write out those ruminations in a letter I would not plan to send.  I found the process amazingly freeing.  And I was able to make a choice to stop ruminating.

In keeping with my current, "being compassionate to myself" theme, I know that I can’t always stop and be curious and not get lost in my own self-judgmental thoughts.  I can’t always keep perspective about what stress is coming from a really urgent situation or a self generated urgent situation.  And I certainly don’t want to be harsh about the times when I can’t be compassionate!  It’s a process, and the goal is to be noticing, to be kind to myself, and make some small changes, as they feel manageable.

I realized that this whole process is very relevant to what I was noticing when meeting with parents. Brene Brown, Ph.D., LMSW, in The Gifts of Imperfection writes about shame.  Shame is the feeling that we are bad, as opposed to the idea that sometimes we might behave badly.  Shame is a horrible physical and emotional feeling and we generally try to avoid it like the plague. 

If we think that a way we have been approaching parenting isn’t working effectively, we jump to thinking we are bad, we feel shame and it's hard to actually do anything differently, tell other people about our struggles, and get help.  We judge ourselves so harshly as parents and assume everyone else is judging us just as harshly as well.

What if parents could make a conscious choice to be compassionate to themselves instead of harsh?  We could look with curiosity at parenting situations we are in, and think about what is happening, what is working, what is not working, and how in small ways we could start changing those things that are not working.  If it's hard to come up with some strategies, we could think about asking for help from someone who also wouldn't approach it in a judgmental way. If there is any unsafe parenting behavior going on, parents immediately need to get outside help.

However, I am referring more to the fact that most parents love their children, and do the best within their own abilities, experiences, knowledge and intuition to parent their children.  Maybe the best place to start is with compassion and curiosity.

Some books I have been reading:

The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown, Ph.D., L.M.S.W., Hazeldon, 2010

The Mindful Path to Self Compassion, Christopher K. Germer, Ph.D.,The Guilford Press, 2009

Far From The Tree, Andrew Solomon, Scribner,2012

Some Meditation Tapes

Meditation Made Possible Volume I, Bhavani Lorainne Nelson

The Mindful Way Through Depression, Jon Kabat-Zinn

Creating Calm in Your Life, Rivka Simmons

Mindful Meditation, Susan Wood