Parenting Values
Last week my daughter (7 years old), came home sharing a story about feeling left out with some other girls at school. First, the fierce lioness mother started ripping to the surface in me, next I felt my own little girl that had been left out too, and felt everything super big and personal, then I was able to ground myself and think about what was helpful for her…
I thought there were a few lessons to be gleaned here (without knowing the full objective story): we all need to be taught to set boundaries and advocate for ourselves… talk to the teacher and share with your friends that your feelings were hurt; we all live in our own movie and sometimes other kids are not thinking about our feelings, and we need to learn to take things less personally.
It sounds like heavy lessons to learn for a little 7-year-old girl, but I was her. I remember my feelings feeling so big in my body. I took things so personally, I couldn’t imagine that I wasn’t at the center of other people’s movies. I couldn’t imagine that they just weren’t thinking about how their actions would effect me. And I see with my adult clients and myself still… that it is hard to imagine that things are just not about us. That people are often insensitive or just unaware of how their behavior could effect you because they come from a different family, different culture, different country, different emotional sensitivity, etc… We all don’t think and expect things to be the same.
So in the end, I feel it is my responsibility to teach my daughter to express herself and her needs in a soft and non-critical way, assert her needs by talking to authority figures when necessary, setting her boundaries of who she wants in her life and to what degree, and learn to see that not everything is about her: she needs to take things less personally.
My lesson was to calm both my instinctive roar of Mama and the cries of my little girl that knows profoundly the hurt that little girls can inflict on each other. As I try to balance the desire to shield my children from the inevitable pain that we must all face in growing, I hope that the lessons learned in the conflicts serve to make them emotionally grounded, problem solvers, critical thinkers, open-minded (curious): able to imagine another person’s opinions and values, while knowing their values, able to see when they are wrong (humble), and feel strong enough to fight or let go depending on what the situation calls for (flexible). So much that I hope to pass on to my little people…
Are you interested in working on your personal development? Are you looking for a life coach or a life consultant? Are you feeling stagnant? Do you want to jumpstart change?
My transformational approach is a process where awareness, alignment, and action work together as catalysts to create momentum for change.
*Awareness is knowing what you genuinely want and need.
*Alignment is the symmetry between our values and our actions. It means our inner and outer worlds match.
*Action is when you are conscious that what you say, do and think are in harmony with your values.
Together we build an understanding of what you want to accomplish, and delve deeply into building awareness around any thoughts and assumptions that you may already have. To truly transform your life, I will empower you to rethink what’s possible for you.
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