What you think about parenting matters Your thoughts about parenting are a conceptual filter through which you will see your relationship with your child. I am not talking about abstracted styles of parenting but about a personal relationship between a child and a parent and the parent’s feelings and opinions about that relationship. Everyone has a parental dimension whether or not they have a child. Your personal growth will limit you or expand you as a parent. Whether or not you grow as a parent, your parental skills will change. Who you are as a person will be revealed by your experience with your child. It’s interesting that a relationship so profound is often entered with so little insight.
Your child will come to own your underlying feelings about yourself as a parent. With your first child, you had never been a parent and probably had no training at parenting. Yet, you are thrust into the role to assume the responsibilities. We enter into this obligation like sleep walkers, oblivious. There seems to be a law of the mind that states that the less one’s consciousness is involved, the more engaged is one’s subconscious. Your child’s development will be nurtured by your own. This relationship cannot be escaped. You are irreplaceable in your child’s life. Parental substitution always comes with a cost, and the child always pays this cost.
Your feelings from other areas of your life will be infused into your concept of yourself as a parent. There may be nothing more definitive of you as your parenting skills. I’ve observed that parents are very defensive about their parenting skills. I think it is because there is nothing more personal. As a parent, you are very exposed. I feel this personal dimension of parenting explains why the government has never been good at parenting. This reality has political dimensions and large social implications.
Your concept of yourself as a parent is in constant development. This means that parenting is not a static skill, and that suggests there is nothing that one can point to and say, “That is parenting.” Your evaluation of your own experiences as a parent are constantly enveloped into your self concept and self image of parenting. This means that parenting is a very personal skill. Like artists, parents have their own styles. It took me many years to understand this. Every scientific parenting procedure has to be executed, like musical notation has to be performed. How the theory of parenting is executed, matters. Interestingly, the performer’s personality is deeply involved in the performance.
These emotions and concepts of yourself will permeate your interactions with your child. They will strengthen or undermine your effectiveness as a parent. Gaining consciousness of these feelings and emotions is important for your own experiential growth. There are psychological techniques with which one can gain this awareness. This consciousness cannot be acquired from scientifically developed constructs, even though scientifically developed constructs underline them. The depth of the connection between the parent and child transcends the psychological to the spiritual. I don’t think this relationship has always been recognized. Christianity may have been the first to recognize the spiritual dimension of the mother-child relationship.
Parents give many things to their children. We can never know all our parents have given us. But one of the most important gifts a parent can give a child is a model of the parents own growth as a person. Such a model teaches your child one of the true reasons for living, personal growth. For your child, personal growth will be a bulwark against many of life’s disasters. What truths will your child need? What array of skills will her experiences require? Will she know how to apply and adapt them? Life never happens congruent with our theories and platitudes. But there is one power we all possess, the force of growth, and personal growth is an expression of that power. Let your child see you grow and you will have done much to accomplish your job as a parent.
What will your own personal growth give your children? First, a positive mindset toward living. This mindset will provide your child resilience in the face of failure. Rather than trying to shield your child from failures and disasters, show her she has the power to transcends them. Show her she has the power to endure.
Secondly, a personal identity. Your child will take the personal power you have showed her and make it her own. It will express itself in ways you could not dream, let alone create. Your child’s creativity will express itself, don’t try to control it, just try to appreciate and understand it. Who she is will not be a truth your child will have to seek. It will be the foundation of her earliest memories and her life.
The third thing with which your own personal growth will bless your child is the personal resources to adapt herself to a future whose rapid change is relentless and can be destructive. For your child, this change will merely provide the soil for personal growth, because you have shown her the way. The experience of your own personal growth is the most valuable gift you can give your child. In this blog we have talked about personal growth, not personal achievement. The two are quite different. Personal achievement requires the recognition of others, it is something bestowed upon you by others. Personal growth is something quite different; it is something that happens within you; it is given to you by nature and cannot be bestowed by others. It is uniquely your resource and power. It awaits your attention; use it!!