Conscious Parenting
Dr. Omar Javaid
Conscious parenting is about knowing the difference between your own (deepest) needs, and the needs of children, and avoiding using children unconsciously, or controlling their behavior impulsively so that you can fulfill your own needs.
It is not the job of the children to fulfill the needs of the parents when they are young. When they grow a little, you may ask them for some help, like to get you a glass of water, or if they are old enough to buy groceries from a nearby shop. But to expect them to fulfill your emotional needs when your children themselves are dependent on you for ‘emotional regulation’ is nothing but unjust. Once the children have grown into emotionally healthy adults, they may offer emotional support to parents as well, but not when they haven’t even achieved puberty.
Unconscious parenting therefore would be bad for the kids of course, as your desire — especially if it operates from the subconscious— to fulfill your own needs can stop you from developing an unconditional relationship with the children. Your children would have to honor your needs to get the due attention and care, which is rather their birthright, so they must not have to barter it with you. They must receive your care and love without any conditions attached.
Unconscious parents do not deliberately attach conditions, their behavior is rather distinct when children comply, and unfriendly — so to speak — if children do not. Even minor stuff like eating breakfast on time, in a certain quantity, at a certain speed, is expected from kids as otherwise the parents will be irritated (I am guilty of making this mistake). The irritation here, even if it doesn’t lead to reprimanding the child, is likely caused by some unfulfilled needs of the parents. If this behavior persists, the children would eventually learn to eat in a certain way or do their homework or anything, not to fulfill their own needs, but to manage the behavior of the parents.
This disturbs the very foundation of the very nature of the relationship between the parents and their children. Also disturbing the relationship children have their own selves.
Children, especially before they reach puberty, must feel safe and accepted without having to do anything special for their parents, this is their fundamental but not so often discussed need. At a young age it is not their responsibility to take care of us, but to be taken care of. This is of course not possible all the time for parents, but as per some experts, even if parents are available for their children roughly 2/3rd of the time, unconditionally fulfilling the psycho-social-emotional needs of the children, that is sufficient enough for children. Such parents are referred to as ‘good enough parents’ in literature.
However, it is difficult for the parents to do so 2/3rd of the time if children are seen as a source to fulfill their own unfulfilled needs. Parents of course do this unconsciously.
Alternatively, if parents become conscious of their own needs, they can try now to stop expecting their children to fulfill them, or find alternative ways, for that matter.
The key is of course self-awareness, a strong and healthy connection with the deeper parts of the self, and sufficient psychological literacy to understand the needs as soon as they emerge from deep within.
So, which needs do parents have, and what is the psychological mechanism which makes them expect their children to fulfill them?
To answer this question, one has to take a little in-depth look at the structure of the psyche.
Children’s behavior is raw, and unstructured, and reminds us of our childhood when we had a similar nature. But our raw nature could have been crushed under the disciplinary control of parents, or the education system. This raw side of ours doesn’t disappear, it only goes into the background, into this part of our being which Jungians refer to as the shadow. The parts of our psyche that contains the rejected parts of the self.
We do not just learn to reject a part of ourselves, but also the behavior of elders or parents or teachers, which made us reject that part. Gabor Mate suggests that we do so to fulfill our attachment needs, as we are also conditioned via the carrot and stick to behave in a certain manner to feel accepted by others. Typically, fear is the tool that is used — unintendedly mostly — in the process to make children behave in a certain manner.
So, when our children act similarly in front of us, their acts remind us of the rejected parts of our being. In psychology, it is referred to as projection. An event reminding us what is there in the dark, generally inaccessible, parts of our psyche. That freaks us out. Because the stuff which is there in the shadow is the stuff that has brought the rejection of our parents, and that was a life-threatening scary experience for us when we were very young. As for a 3-year-old, for example, their parents are a lifeline, and a rejection from a parent even for a few minutes can be a haunting experience, filled with frustration and a sense of betrayal as well.
These childhood experiences are not consciously remembered all the time, but the autonomic nervous system (ANS) remembers, the experience is rather hardwired deep in the brain (in a brain region referred to as the amygdala), and ANS can trigger a threat response the moment our child’s behavior appears similar to what we were forced to suppress in our childhood. ANS operates below conscious levels, which means it can react and make decisions to protect us from a threat even before we make a conscious decision to do so.
Therefore, we jump impulsively to change the external event — the behavior of children — which reminds us of what lies in our own shadow. We can use the same tactic that our parents used to suppress our behavior — which is imprinted on our ego — or we can even improvise. The goal is to avoid feeling the same fear or frustration which we felt as a result of rejection by our parents. A part of our psyche is still trying to survive in the same situation which probably occurred two or three decades back. Your ANS is trying to keep you safe! the need is safety! because your child’s behavior is perceived as a threat.
So, the first thing is to ask if the threat is here, in the present moment, or if we are projecting the past. The ANS cannot make this realization. However, while consciously reflecting on our emotional state and the reality outside of us in the present moment, we can slowly and gradually begin to see the source of the threat is not in the ‘now’ but it was in the past.
The tricky part is not to invalidate or negate the fear. Because as soon as you allow your ego to react to your emotional reaction, as the ego considers it nonsensical, the emotional content is pushed back into the shadow, only to come back more powerfully next time. The fear doesn’t make sense in the present moment for the ego, but it made sense in the past when the actual event happened.
Time does not flow for our unconscious or subconscious mind, so any program to react in a specific situation until it remains in the unconscious, will not be upgraded to match the present scenario until the program is brought into the conscious awareness.
The first thing to do is to validate the fear which you feel, which turns into the need to control, and when you feel you do not have enough control over your child’s behavior, you get angry. But the real feeling which is at the back of the chain is fear. The fear belongs actually to a past event. But it’s legit, and one must treat it as legit. It demands to be felt. It demands action. You must acknowledge with compassion the feeling and the action it demands.
If you are with a scared child. You would notice that they will talk about the source of their fear only after they feel safe in your presence. They will not if you reject their fear. Or call them stupid for being scared. They need to trust you to open up. What would it take for you to gain their trust? You need to present yourself as someone who genuinely cares about their feelings, and what they consider a threat. Once you make them comfortable in their vulnerability and the rawness of their emotional state they may start sharing what scares them, and if they trust you enough, they may listen to your perspective as well.
Now here is a twist.
This little child also exists inside of you. Your ANS who is carrying the same patterns from childhood is the very child you have inside of you. And to gain its trust and listen to the higher self, you must respond to it with compassion, and care, and take time to build trust. It’s a very slow process and may take a few months.
The biggest barrier would be the copy of the behavior of your elders, which is carried by your ego, which knows only to react in the same manner not just against the behavior of your children, but also towards your inner child.
So before approaching your inner child, you must neutralize your ego. How do you do that?
The ego dissolves when you become aware that there is an ego. It’s easier said than done. As the ego identifies as yourself, it would resist being neutralized. The key here is to acknowledge the role of the ego, which is meant to protect you, physically and emotionally, and it does so with the most honest intentions. But it can learn to do so in any manner your parents or elders attempted to do so, even if it cost you your emotional well-being.
But witnessing the ego with compassion can also neutralize it. Also, it can be asked to step back if the plan and the purpose to bring the inner child into the present moment are shared with the ego. Once the ego has been neutralized. The engagement with the inner child can begin, as described above.
So, the process is (a) to witness the ego neutralize it, (b) engage the inner child, so that the inner child can feel its fears in the presence of your higher consciousness, © build trust with the inner child and slowly bringing it into the present moment, so that it realizes that the threat is no more there. This process will go in cycles. And it may take hundreds of cycles to achieve. This can take months up to a couple of years even to complete. But it is necessary to avoid reacting to threats that are not there in the present moment. This is not just necessary for the well-being of your children, and your relationship with them, but also for your peace of mind.
Often people get discouraged due to the length of the process in the pretext of this modern culture of quick fixes. But patterns that are developed over the period of decades, cannot be altered in a short period. NLP practitioners claim to fix things in one or two sessions, but I highly doubt it, as our brain is not a machine, it’s organic, and organic change takes time by design. And it’s just not about the brain. It’s the entire nervous system, even the gut is very much involved in sensing danger and responding to it. The entire body is tuned to a threat that is not there in actuality, but the body perceives it to be there, as something in the present moment is reminding the body about it.
So, altering the entire body is a time-consuming activity. The key is to help the body and the ANS to realize that the threat is no longer there, but experts suggest, for the body and ANS to realize so, they must be treated like a little child. That’s why perhaps the term inner-child is used by experts to initiate a compassionate response to engage the parts of our self which are still in the past. Once this connection is made, these parts will begin to see from the eyes of the higher conscious self which is very much present in the ‘now’, and thus will gradually adjust their response.
It will take time, but it will be worth it, not just for your children, but for yourself as well.
