How to parent young children in a conscious way
Feel empowered by empowering themLet Conscious Parenting create more joy, confidence, and calm in your home
Creating The Future
If all you ever are is a present parent, that will be enough.
A Conscious Parenting Coach is someone that has been extensively trained in child development, psychology, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. As a Conscious Parenting Coach, my focus is the relationship, either between the parent and the child or between both parents. Because our children’s behavior is their best attempt at getting a need met, undesired behavior from the child most often points to a parent who, for some reason, isn’t able to tune in to the child’s needs.
My job as a Conscious Parenting Coach is to identify what is blocking the parent from tuning in, and guide them to resolve it so they can fully connect with their child. The theory behind Conscious Parenting is that we all have at least one child that will “trigger” us, meaning they awaken some unresolved emotional pain from our own childhoods and that, by healing those pieces of us as they arise, we can actually use the relationship with our child for personal growth.
Parenting in a conscious way is not hard. You’ll simply Empower, Understand, Calm, and Teach. Keep reading to learn more and access all of my blogs on parenting!
Step 1: Empower
The ultimate goal is raising a successful adult
Unlike old parenting paradigms that used fear to condition children and attempt to control their behavior, Conscious Parenting focuses on empowering not only the parent but the child as well. In this way, we give them the tools to function as successful, smart, well-liked, respectful adults.
Recommended Reading: The Authentic Wife, Quantum Love, The Untethered Soul, The Conscious Parent, The Awakened Family, What Happened To You, The Four Agreements, Eastern Body Western Mind, How Toddlers Thrive, Unconditional Parenting, The Gift of Fear, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, Superpowered: Transform Anxiety into Courage, Confidence, and Resilience
Behavior: How Not Using Stoplight Charts Can Improve It
The use of stoplight charts negatively impact the child at worst and are an ineffective tool in managing classroom behavior at best. There are a variety of different evidence-based programs that teachers can utilize instead, and some that encourage the added component of mindfulness to take self-regulation and cognitive ability a step further. Work with your teacher and school to help them help your child today.
Step 2: Understand
What Stage of Development Is Your Child In?
While babies in the animal kingdom seem to jump up and move on after birth, human babies have complex brains that develop over the first 25 years of their life.
Unless you’re a pediatrician or psychiatrist, chances are you don’t actually know what exactly is happening in your child’s beautiful head and how this manifests in their sometimes frustrating behaviors.
Understanding child development, attachment science, nervous system science, emotional intelligence, and brain science empowers you to support your child where they are and not second-guess your own choices or behavior.
Recommended Reading: Eastern Body Western Mind, The Language of Emotions, How Toddlers Thrive, Unconditional Parenting, The Gift of Fear, The Whole-Brain Child, The No-Cry Sleep Solution, Why We Sleep
Recommended Videos: How To Reprogram Your Mind by Bruce Lipton, Why Do We Lose Control Of Our Emotions, The Parenting 3.0 Show
Step 3: Calm
Harnessing the powerful influence of your body’s energy
Using knowledge of brain science, emotional intelligence, and nervous system science, we can help our children understand the wisdom of what they’re feeling and feel safe and in control of their bodies.
When you’re stressed, your brain is in high beta brainwaves. You can change these to more soothing alpha or delta brainwaves through meditation, which helps you get out of the primal part of your brain that reacts so you can choose a response instead.
Likewise, your heart moves into erratic heart rhythms under stress which depletes your energy AND causes your loved ones to match the erratic energy of your body.
Energetic coherence is a smooth, steady rhythm needed for optimal function.
Recommended Reading: The Science of HeartMath, Science of the Heart, The Language of Emotions, Mind to Matter, The Emotional Intelligence and Power of Our Hearts, The Gift of Fear, The Motherhood Evolution, Calming a Wigged Out Autonomic Nervous System Using the Vagus Nerve, Children, Emotional Regulation, and Polyvagal Theory – Dr. Arielle Schwartz, Neuroception: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe
Step 4: Teach
Boundaries, communication, and values
Teaching children isn’t hard or even a mystery. Why? Because all we have to do to teach children is be the people we want them to be.
It really is that simple!
When we’re not caught up in fight or flight and dysregulated nervous systems, we can easily empower our children and model for them the way we hope they’ll grow up to “be” in the world.
Recommended Reading: The Art of Empathy, Never Split The Difference, Boundaries*, Nonviolent Communication, How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen, How To Win Friends & Influence People, Methods of Persuasion, Playful Parenting, Unconditional Parenting, Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids, The Positive Parenting Framework
*This book condones spanking. I don’t! There are great lessons in it outside of the parenting sections
Here’s What I Know To Be True
About Parenting & Parent Coaching
Parents have the power to give the world a hero or a villain. It depends which one they are in their own home. And historically, every hero has a guide.
Being a parenting coach is about helping a parent re-parent themselves even more than it's about raising the child. Once the self is raised, relationships come into balance and harmony.
We aren't born knowing how to parent when we live in a world divided, at war, in poor health. The model will be reflected back to us in our external world. If you aren't happy with it, your power is in learning a new way to parent.
Parent coaches must remind their followers often that the problem is childhood conditioning, which can be fixed. The problem is not the parent.
Re-programming your brain from its childhood conditioning doesn't mean you'll always get it right from now on. It means that you have the right foundation from which to work.
There's no outside influence more dangerous in a child's life than having a parent too busy to be PRESENT with them
Whatever you think you're protecting your child from is only an old wound you haven't faced yet
I believe a return to firmness in parenting is coming, but from a place of not letting a child experience people, places, or situations that don't align with their worth.
Even if you think you are a detached, conscious parent, if you still struggle with anger then at some point you have bypassed the imperative need to take care of yourself first.
In five years, I believe almost everyone will have a coach or mentor just like they have a smartphone they carry everywhere. Soon everyone will want a guide on tap who knows them and can help them get where they want to go.
We're no good to anyone else unless we take care of ourselves first.
We allow others to grow when we ask them for help
But I Turned Out Fine?
Understanding the importance of empowered parenting
So often we think that because we aren’t in jail or hurting others, our childhood didn’t affect us. We “turned out fine”, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.
The truth of the matter is that most of us living with parents who were raised with the authoritarian parenting paradigm experienced something called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
According to the CDC, “ACEs can have lasting, negative effects on health, well-being, as well as life opportunities such as education and job potential. These experiences can increase the risks of injury, sexually transmitted infections, maternal and child health problems (including teen pregnancy, pregnancy complications, and fetal death), involvement in sex trafficking, and a wide range of chronic diseases and leading causes of death such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and suicide.
ACEs and associated social determinants of health, such as living in under-resourced or racially segregated neighborhoods, frequently moving, and experiencing food insecurity, can cause toxic stress (extended or prolonged stress). Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect such things as attention, decision-making, learning, and response to stress.
Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships. They may also have unstable work histories as adults and struggle with finances, jobs, and depression throughout life. These effects can also be passed on to their own children. Some children may face further exposure to toxic stress from historical and ongoing traumas due to systemic racism or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities.”
We may feel “fine” but may have no awareness of healthy boundaries, be unable to feel and trust our emotions, be unable to regulate our nervous system and stay calm during arguments, and have a lack of empathy for ourselves and others. We may work ourselves to death and appear successful, but always feel like something’s missing in our lives.
The good news is that our children don’t have to recover from their childhood. We can change things starting today.
References:
Resources & Offerings
So You Can Be the Mom You Needed
Free Download: Quick Reference Child Development Guide
This Quick Reference Guide Contains Child Development Sections On Brain, Sleep, Travel, Nutrition, Play, Abilities, Physical, and Safety for Children Ages 0-18
Free Download: Stop Sibling Hitting
A 6 Step Guide To Help Moms Stop Hitting, Kicking, Biting, and More Without Dividing Your Kids or Creating Resentment
Course + Coaching Package: Ultimate Parent Success
This 12-week program gives you access to an online course created by the Jai Institute for Parenting plus private coaching from me to support you in your newly empowered parenting journey.
Online Class: Getting The Love You Deserve
Understand how to set and hold boundaries and limits with your husband and your children. This online course is for women whose boundaries weren’t respected in their family of origin. Help your family to love themselves without feeling guilt for loving yourself.
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