Parenting yourself and your child: What are your eyes on?

Do you ever feel like it’s hard to parent your children who are struggling when you yourself are struggling with the same things?

Our tantrums may look different, our insecurities may be about different things and our habits may be more ingrained, but really from a human perspective, we are not much different than our children.
Discomfort is discomfort. Anxiety is anxiety. Fear is fear. We all go through the ups and downs of life, feelings and making choices. How can I best help my child when I am feeling lost?

Well the real question to me is “what do I have my eyes on?” Am I looking to see my own ability to be resilient, to bounce back from mistakes, to believe that underneath all of my crazy thinking there is a healthy human being with an internal psychological immune system that works perfectly (when I don’t think my way out of it).

Or are my eyes on critically noticing mistakes, judging my actions and my imperfections and feeling bad about not getting it right.

If you are doing that to yourself, you can be pretty sure you are doing that to your children as well. It’s a mental habit of thought that has you judge, be critical or feel insecure. Nothing more than that. But if you don’t know that, you can create mountains out of molehills about your bad character and continue to judge yourself harshly. This only perpetuates feeling bad and more undesirable behaviors.

The answer lies in what you have your eyes on. You can learn about habits of thought in order to not get so tripped up by them. You can learn the role thought plays in why you feel what you feel. You can learn how all human being operate in order to understand yourself and your child.

Once you see this for yourself, it will be easier to see it in your child. It will be easier to let yourself feel and not be afraid of your child’s feeling either. We never need to fear an experience when we understand how it is created.

One thought on “Parenting yourself and your child: What are your eyes on?”

  1. Frima Burger says:

    My kids are BH grown but I have used your technique on something else! My daughter got a dog and I have been petrified of dogs my whole life probably bec my mother AH hated all animals. I keep telling myself that my fear was due to an erronious thought that all dogs are dangerous and a threat. When by my daughter’s house, I find myself repeating to myself to “change my wrong thoughts to more realistic thoughts such ad that most dogs which are pets are loving creatures. I am not 100% pet free but definitely have come a long way!

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