What makes a “conscious parent”? The question isn’t easy to answer, but the gist would be this: It’s about understanding your child’s behaviour by first understanding your own self.
How does this work?
We all remember the phrases: “Monkey See. Monkey Do.” or “We all turn into our mothers.” In the essence of traditional parenting (classic authoritarian parenting), no truer words ring true. We parent our children the exact same way we were parented UNLESS we–in the essence of conscious parenting–consciously change the patterns of parenting which our families or societies and institutions have unknowingly imprinted upon our ways of thinking and doing that has been shaping our operating beliefs.
In Mommy Mundo’s Mom School Series, our Community Program Director, Kit Malvar Llamas is taking moms through the first steps of the conscious parenting journey with light-hearted but information-packed and mind-blowing seminars on how we need to re-examine and evolve our parenting and why we are parenting the way we do.
Kit walks alongside our parents as she is also still learning and catching her own unconscious, conditioned ways, without going to judgment and shame and just providing practical ways to awaken us to a more conscious parenting approach that will lead to awakened families.
Kit Malvar Llamas, who is also the founder of Camp Explore, Inc. is the first Filipino who is intimately trained by Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s Coaching Institute under the Conscious Parenting Method. Dr. Shefali is renowned by Oprah as the most revolutionary in the Parenting field whose mission is encapsulated as “The way to fix the world is through parental evolution. To zone in the parent-child dynamic is to heal the planet.”
Two Mom School Online events down the line, we sit with her and try to recap just a few of the things parents need to know about conscious parenting.
1. You are not parenting your child. You are parenting yourself.
One of the tenets of conscious parenting is being aware of the inner child in each one of us and the role of the ego. The kind of relationship between our inner child and ego is projected to our children and mirrored especially by our experiences with our children.
Most of the time, parents’ expectations from their children are reflected as their own unmet needs. Have you ever thought to yourself “I didn’t like how my parents did this.” or “When I become a parent, this is how I’m going to do it.” then you end up saying and doing the same things that you did not like from your parents?
There are mirror neurons in our brains and our bodies that we inherit patterns unconsciously and at a cellular level. These are what conscious parenting makes us aware of so we can choose our words and actions accurately and mindfully.
Even with the best of intentions, the truth of the matter is that we are actually trying to correct something we experienced as children (not necessarily as a child, but as the children of our parents).
Quite often, when we parent, we are parenting the child inside us that had those unmet needs. We want for our children the things we had that we enjoyed or the things that we did not have that we wish we did. So when our child acts contrary to this, and we as parents are triggered by this behaviour, it naturally upsets us.
What is important to grasp is that our children do not need changing. They are who they are. Yes we mold and guide them, but we cannot force them to be who we couldn’t be or who we are now to be “just like us”.
Now, this is easy to say, but it’s much harder to put it into practice for the simple fact that we are doing so unconsciously. In her talks, Kit gives fantastic examples of how seemingly small behaviours actually stem from deep seated patterns we may not even be aware exist.
2. Every act is an act of communication.
“There is no such thing as a good or bad child,” says Kit. When children act out, they are communicating something. Most parents of infants understand this because their children are unable to speak. We often forget that just because a child can speak (teenagers included) does not mean they can actually communicate their feelings properly.
What we label as naughty, disrespectful, or rebellious behaviour is an act of communication. Parents can help their children by identifying their feelings and acknowledging its presence. The sooner they begin, the better. By getting your child in touch with their feelings, you also give yourself a chance to get in touch with your own.
So before you hit that button that turns you into an authoritarian parent that is asking their child to simply behave according to your or society’s standards, lean into what their behaviour is communicating to you and then be curious into what your initial knee-jerk reaction is communicating to you.
Are you upset at your toddler’s tantrums? Check in with yourself. Why is it upsetting? Simply because it’s noisy and disruptive? Why is the tantrum happening? Are they fed up with being stuck at home? Should you pause and spend a bit of time with them instead of giving them a time out?
As Kit advises: checking in with yourself is often the first step to conscious parenting. When you understand why you’re behaving a certain way, you can understand why your toddler is behaving that way, and connection and communication can then take place. As adults, we are the ones that need a time out and connect with ourselves first so we can act as adults and allow our children to act as children and not expect them to be the adults or else, we will act like toddlers like our children.
3. Listen to what you’re saying. Are you really the one talking?
So, now we’re talking, right? Are we?
In a funny, mind-blowing moment, Kit reveals that we need to be careful when we use “mother’s instinct or intuition”. Our innate “intuition” or instinct has been masked by so much noise in our culture that sometimes we may think that it is our intuition talking but it is actually our ego.
Our instinct is to REACT (ego) : lose our temper, be judgemental, control, and punish our children so we are just “re” acting or just replaying generational patterns that have been masked as our intuition like the moments when we start saying something to our child that our own mothers told us!
If we invest so much money, time, and force (even) to put our children to school and enroll them in so many classes to succeed (a.k.a. rich) and be happy (because they have so many friends and money)… how come we, as parents, invest so little with ourselves to be parents? We just assume and rely that we have the mother’s instinct and intuition to do what is “right” for “my child?” How do we know that?
This is what conscious parenting is all about. It is a quest to ask questions, to stop and go within, unmask, shed the layers, tame the ego, heal the inner child so we can be our most authentic selves and shine from our clear intuition and respond from accurate instinct and not reaction from fear and scarcity.
Conscious parenting is not assuming that “mother’s instinct and intuition is always right”. That is careless and maybe, pure conditioning. This is evidenced by so much trauma caused by our own mothers and us mothers to our children. Again, it is not to blame, shame, and wallow in guilt because that’s ego but it is to understand that part of us, parenting our inner child first, and start the healing process.
Just as we cannot assume that our instinct and intuition is always right, we can also cannot claim that we are already “conscious”. Conscious parenting is a journey not a destination.
Conscious parenting is also about realising when we are reflecting the voices of our own parents. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but doing it consciously and even with a lot of humor, is what is key. Because it gives you a chance to check in with yourself, connect with the feelings and thoughts driving what you’re saying, and reviewing how that might affect your relationship with your child.
4. Let go of strategies. FLOW.
Conscious parenting doesn’t employ one specific strategy. It is not one-size-fits-all-children. Since every child is different, conscious parenting understands that every child will have to be loved differently, communicated with differently, and connected with differently.
What is important is that we, as parents, learn how to flow. Each situation is different, and so constantly going back to a strategy may only lead to more stress and misunderstanding. Approach each situation as new just like every moment is new. Every breath is new.
When you practice conscious parenting, you seek “connection before correction.” It is an important reminder that children might not be the ones that need the correcting, rather our own reactions as parents is what needs adjusting.
5. Your child’s milestones and behaviours are entirely up to you and your reactions.
Learning to flow also means not comparing your child to anyone–other kids or how you were as a child. This means you can create your own developmental milestones for your child. If your five-year-old isn’t reading yet, conscious parenting screams: THAT’S OKAY. It doesn’t make you a failure as a parent, and it doesn’t mean your child is behind. Conscious parenting aids a child’s development, it does not dictate it.
6. Boundaries are key.
Another tenet of conscious parenting focuses on boundaries. It forces you to answer the question: What type of parent do you want to be? The revolutionary thought here is that in answering this question we discover that many of our boundaries are actually set within ourselves and for ourselves.
In a very concrete example, Kit talks about screen time. How can we ask our children to curb their screen time if we ourselves do not. Remembering ‘monkey see, monkey do,’ the clear boundary for screen time begins with the parent giving themselves that boundary too. “It’s amazing how the arguments and tantrums related to screen time simply disappear when the boundary begins with you,” commented one mom.
7. Know and accept that you will be different.
Something conscious parents need to be ready for is that they and their kids are going to be different from many other kids and parents. In these situations, Kit encourages parents to play around with humour and again just flow. She shares a story about how her eldest sister got a failing mark in accounting, and how on the day her sister told their father, he proceeded to celebrate. He took the whole family out to dinner to celebrate the fact that her sister had tried her best!
At the time, Kit thought it was odd that her sister was being rewarded for failure–the concept that “ failure should be punished” was imparted to her by culture but how her own parents were different ignited her own curiosity about conscious parenting! Now, her sister is one of the most loved mentors and leaders by teams in the banking industry.
In the very clear example, Kit shows how other people may–whether they know it or not–teach your kids more traditional methods of behaviour or thinking, but staying constant to conscious parenting will help keep your parenting style on track.
8. It’s a lot of work.
Let’s face it. Parenting is a lot of work, no matter what kind of parenting you employ. The extra work involved in conscious parenting has to do with doing a little more thinking and being a bit more aware of not falling into normal and comfortable patterns. Literally, it involves staying conscious of what you are doing! What all parents who want to adopt this style of parenting have to remember is that, as Kit says, “You are never done. You never arrive. You can never say, ‘Okay, I’m conscious.’ It’s a constant journey.”
Kit Malvar-Llamas holds a degree in International Development at Cornell University with her focus on “Youth Development for Environmental Sustainability” and studied in Ateneo de Manila University and Assumption Antipolo. She is the first Filipino coach here in the Philippines practicing with Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s Coaching Institute’s Conscious Parenting Method. She is a Gallup certified Strengths Coach, People Acuity coach and facilitator, and certified facilitator of Dr. Covey’s program “7 Habits for Highly Effective People”.
Kit Malvar-Llamas and her family.
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