Be careful of rules for your children.
Rules diminish responsibility.
Be careful of rewards for your children.
Rewards diminish self-esteem.
Be careful of punishments for your children.
Punishments diminish trust.
Let lessons be imposed
by the nature of things,
not by your own agendas
or your own needs.
Integrity will replace rules.
Contentment will replace striving.
Spirituality will replace religion.
Songs will replace arguments.
Dances will replace battles.
William Martin, The Parents Tao Te Ching
Come and learn about the alternatives to punishment and rewards in Attachment, Mindfulness, and the Developing Brain. Click here for a PDF flyer and to sign up – LESS THAN 2 WEEKS LEFT!
Please tell any Bay Area friends whom you think would benefit – THANKS!
The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.
Sri Nisargadatta
Resilience is a quality we all want — now what exactly is it?
Some people use the term resilience as the ability of an organism to survive extreme circumstances. Nature has provided its life forms with some amazing qualities of adaptation, and humans are no exception. But to me, survival — as important as it is — is only a first necessary step to thriving.
The next two discriminations of resilience come — once again — from the insights of Gordon Neufeld.
Gordon describes the next meaning of resilience as the ability to weather difficult circumstances — circumstances that cause pain, whether physical or psycho-emotional — and be able to bounce back in the face of these “ouchees.” This kind of resilience usually comes from having someone in our life that thinks the world of us — someone whom we are securely attached to. Somehow this internalized relationship buffers us from pain; it keeps us together where we would otherwise fall apart. It is often the presence or lack of this attachment that determines the responses of today’s kids to the current epidemic of bullying. Strong attachments shield our children’s hearts when we can’t always be there to protect them.
The last kind of resilience is the dynamic emotional process that we have been exploring in the last few posts: the fruit of the process of adaptation. This kind of resilience requires that we accept certain futilities in life — face certain limitations, lacks, losses, and fears — and allow the intelligence of the limbic system to take over and bring us to sadness and sometimes tears. Through this process of being real and confronting reality — of occasionally giving up the fight to always get our own way — we become transformed into a heartier version of ourselves. Put more simply — through acceptance we mature.
When this process is supported on a regular basis it serves the function of preserving emotional vitality, which again, is the engine of maturation. When we fail to help our children confront futilities (or fail to accept them ourselves) their hearts begin to stiffen, become defended, and inflexible.
A defended heart is a hardened heart. A hardened heart can not adapt to life. It is too stiff. A hardened heart can’t experience the fullness of fulfillment; it can’t expand. A hardened heart does not easily experience the flow of relationship; it does not let others in. A hardened heart lacks curiosity and the expanding force of self-knowledge; it sticks to the known, thank you very much. An inflexible heart can’t hold more than one perspective at a time; its dogmas guard the castle. A hardened heart remains blind to it’s own inner tenderness, innocence, need for love and relationship. It therefore never asks and never receives these jewels of the heart.
Take Home: We all need to use defenses to function in our world, and sometimes we must completely become defended in order to survive. But if survival is not in question, we should do all we can to help our children develop the latter two types of resilience. We should develop strong attachments with them that let them know:
“There is nothing in this world that can separate you from me. You are always in my heart — especially when I can’t be there to protect you.”
And we should help them confront the futilities of life and the difficult feelings that their ego would rather avoid. Our loving presence and clarity of direction are gifts born of our own maturation, and we should not deny our children these gifts by letting our own scared egos tell us that all crying is bad and should be avoided.
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Jennifer Welwood, from Unconditional
Try: Reflect on your own life: when things get tough, when you experience a real painful situation, who do you summon up for support? Whether ringing them up or simply calling upon them internally, whose presence helps buffer you from the bumps and bruises of life? More importantly, do you feel the value of having someone who thinks the world of you when the world does not? Do you feel how powerful Love can be?
Additionally, can you feel how the real difficult times of your life — if you were able to feel your feelings of vulnerability — actually made you more resilient? Can you feel that the intelligence of Life set you up to mature???
Please join us for the fall round of classes — Attachment, Mindfulness, and the Developing Brain.
And if you haven’t already check out the website for The 12 Guiding Principles of Essential Parenting.
