ARE YOU CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR CHILD AND WHAT THEY KNOW?

My son has a dyslexic “tendency”.  It is “tendency” because some say “he has it” and others say “he does not”.  I used to care a lot about the diagnosis but now frankly speaking, I don’t care very much. Being diagnosed is about finding what he is lacking, based on comparisons to the standard, rather than the exploring of their undiscovered talent and uniqueness.

Comparison can never measure children’s uniqueness. On many occasions we try and put children into a box that they can’t fit. I like to see more of the idea of exploring methods and approaches that utilise their unique ability to do what is required of them.

There is nothing wrong with these children.  They function perfectly, in fact, amazingly!

Then what is the issue? It is a lack of self-confidence coming from other people’s judgement about them and eventually their judgement becomes the children’s.  The children’s own thoughts and beliefs of themselves as a defective being, makes themselves defective.  Our thoughts and beliefs become reality.  And they are so vivid in their imagination, so they can make it happen.

Confidence comes from being able to do what others can do, to some extent.  At the same time, confidence is not entirely coming from what they CAN do.  Knowing whatever they are, that they are still loved, cared and valued, and being who they truly are is a contribution to others.  This becomes their confidence.

Therefore, if how they function and see the world are completely ignored and not acknowledged, he/she feels that their entire being has something wrong with it and is being denied, because people around him/her don’t even try to explore what they know and can offer to us and the world.  Instead, what we often do is force our way upon those children, as the absolute only possibility.

For example, my son can remember certain things like cars and airplanes so clearly and vividly and doesn’t seem to forget those once he memorises them.  When he remembers things, there is no “figuring out” time, he just knows them instantly.

So I asked, “how come you can remember all the shapes and names of cars and airplanes?”

He said, “I take pictures of each one of them in 3D in my mind and put them in the box.” “Mum, even if you hide your face, I know it is you because of your body shape!”

Those kids are experts on themselves.  If they can talk about how they function with other people, you don’t need to have other experts to tell you how they function.  The most important thing is that they know themselves and function differently from others, but it is not defective.

Being able to share their world and views is such a contribution to us as it is different to our box way of thinking and doing.

We tend to see children through the idea of what they should be and what they should know.  Those could be useful elements in our life and society, since the children can utilise this knowledge to their advantage in their lives.  However, if we only focus on and force onto them our “common sense” or “what we all should know” as if they are the absolute answers to everything. If we don’t try to explore how they function and their views and their world, they will feel their unique being isn’t valued.  In some cases, they will shut down and not explore their own possibilities because of that.  What is more, we don’t have any resources to let us see possibilities beyond our own limitations.

As we know, when the children are so young, they won’t be able to explain their experience, views and perspectives with words.

However, what we can do is to maintain our attitudes of curiosity about our own child and what they know, and look at them as a person with possibilities who has a great contribution to make.  Always ask a question like “what are you aware of that I am not?” If you maintain this attitude, they will start to share their amazing world confidently when they are ready to through certain means.

Are you curious about your child and what they know?  Are you receiving their great gifts?

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational Parenting and Energetic Parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.

WHAT’S GETTING IN THE WAY OF YOUR PARENTING?

How is your parenting working? Doing well? That’s great! Whatever you are doing, you may want to continue doing it.

If it is not working, you may want to consider that you have been listening to other people’s point of view too much and you may be judging yourself and others based on their values?

We are in the world of massive information, including various points of about food, parenting, education, relationships and spirituality. The information is there to help make greater choices in life with more ease and possibilities. The aim is to make life more enjoyable and NOT to judge yourself and others, isn’t it?

I can tell you this, because I used to be the collector of information, analyse and judge myself and others with it.  Why? I was seriously thinking that I was making my and other peoples life better. I believed “I was not good enough” and “my son or daughter is not good enough” and “they have to catch up with others or be accepted by others.” Ultimately, I was not trusting myself and my own children and my choices.  So the fundamental motivators are fear, distrust, projection, expectation and separation.

It was about comparison and competitiveness with others and being acknowledged and accepted by others. Therefore, any information I came across, became the source of judging myself and others.  This may limit possibilities of your child, yourself and your parenting. You may be multiplying judgments and getting yourself stuck. Information and advice overload with judgement can lead to getting stuck in your way.

And if people judge you for making different choices and being a “unique” parent, then be that! If it is required for your parenting to work for you and your child, then go for it.

You know what? We usually don’t know why they are doing what they are doing and don’t know much at personal level. What you don’t know always looks “weird” anyways. Be daring to be “weird” one, because being weird become alternative choice for other people. You are unique and so is your child. What works for you and your child may not be the same as other people. What works today may not apply tomorrow.

If you are stuck in a situation, then you may want to go to the people or friends who don’t judge you even for “the worst” situation you think you have created. You may not want to ask someone who add more judgement to your situation to help you, even though you and they think they are trying to help you. Because there is no wrong situation to begin with. There is no right or wrong choice in parenting. Just choice. Choice that works and doesn’t. That is all.

Remember that information are there to help your choice, not checking or judging yourself or others due to the belief that you are not good enough. So don’t get other people’s judgement (points of view, values and belief) get in the way in your parenting.

Trust yourself, your child and trust your choice for possibilities for both of you.

 

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational Parenting and Energetic Parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.

DRAMAS OF CHILDREN ARE THEIR GIFT TO YOU

Do you have a lot of “dramas” which are acted out by your own children at home?  Those behaviors look like hurting parents and themselves verbally, emotionally and in extreme cases physically (could even be considered abuse). Sometimes it is so painful to experience and be in it and they look like nothing could be of benefit to anyone at all.

What is really happening underneath the “dramas”? What are they really trying to do?

Children come to their parents with a full willingness to change them. Children aspire to be the change in their immediate relationships and in doing so, allow the parents to be truly who we are.

Children fully take up a most challenging “job”…changing their parents. Their commitment to the “job” is sometimes well beyond our imagination and understanding. They can create all sorts of scenes to push their parents into a “no choice” state where we have enough of our own reactions (getting angry, anxious, panic, stressed, forceful, controlling, self-blame, guilty and so on) to everything and eventually ourselves. Ultimately sometimes even at the risk of children’s health and lives, their “unusual” behaviors get us be more aware of our own behavioral patterns and what we actually desire to have in and for our lives and this could lead us to drastically change.

Children truly believe they can change us. Some are not aware of what they are doing at a cognitive level. Some are very much aware of what they signed up for and what they are doing. This depends on the child.

I do not know why they have that willingness to take on this burden, but what is clear is changing their parents’ lives is not your children’s job. The change could happen if their parents are willing to choose to do so. You cannot change people, as we can change only ourselves.

When children are trying to “sacrifice” themselves to change parents lives, please let them know that that is not their job and tell them to choose happiness for themselves despite their parents however the parents are. In the end this might be easier for the parents to choose something different for their lives with ease, because the parents do not need to be stubborn about their points of view any more. You know we resist whatever is persistently against us.

We can be grateful there is someone who has such willingness to let us know what you are doing is not caring for you at the cost of their happiness and lives. If you want your children to care for themselves, do care for yourself, because that is what they are urgently asking you to do by creating “dramas”. Sometimes “dramas” are the gift from your child for you to grasp possibility in/for our lives.

This may be a perspective that you have not considered. This might not apply to all the parent-child relationships.

The questions are:

What are you not aware of in the midst of “dramas”?  Is there any possibility beyond the “dramas” that you are facing?

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.

PARENTS AS THE SPACE FOR YOUR CHILDREN TO BE VULNERABLE

Vulnerability – is like an open wound, with no cover it is the ability to “allow yourself to be seen, really seen” by Brené Brown (a speaker at TEDx Houston talks June 2010) and it is about the courage to show who you are.

Being vulnerable is to allow ourselves to feel pain and even though we feel it, we don’t judge ourselves doing it and allow ourselves to receive love from ourselves.  It is about being kind and totally allowing ourselves to be.

It is the origin of liberation from judgement and the beginning of loving ourselves and the origin of the joy of being us.  Being “vulnerable” is the first pass point toward the joy of living.  Being “vulnerable” is contributing to ourselves and our child.

Are you the space for your children to be vulnerable?  Are you allowing them to be that?  Or are you somehow scared or worried that they could become a weak person who cannot cope with their reality and could fail in their lives if you allow them to be vulnerable, so do you say to your children, “Don’t cry” “That is nothing” “Be strong” “Suck it up and keep walking” “I don’t know why you are crying.”?

My mother used to say with an angry tone, “Do you think you are the only one who feels that way?  Everybody feels the same way in the end, so suck it up!”  She feels the same way as everybody, but she cannot accept it, so I was not allowed to express it, so that meant, “I don’t allow myself to be vulnerable, so you should do the same.”  In the end what she was saying was “don’t love yourself, because everybody doesn’t.” as if the message was “Don’t let them feel uncomfortable to know that they don’t love themselves by saying something true”  It was very unspoken common sense.

Vulnerability is not being weak.  It is about being honest with yourself and being who you are.

Allowing our children to be vulnerable is not simply being sympathetic and letting them be “weak”, or buying into their story.  Actually we don’t even have to know why they are feeling in that way.  It is just allowing them to be without judgment in the moment.

Feeling the pain can be valuable information for them to be aware of what is really going on and what they can choose differently for their situations and greater possibility.

If as a parent we are not giving space for our children to be aware of the information coming from their vulnerability, how can they be aware of what is going on in them and the availability of different choices to create the life they desire?

What if what we can do for our children is to make sure they are making choices to create what they desire to create?  They are the only ones who know what works for them even at a very young age.

We are like censoring beings, through our emotions and feelings we are getting information.  Please let them maintain this capacity of receiving the information and trust how and what they use no matter what it looks like to you.  Trust their ability to know what they know.  This is empowerment for our children.  They have so much awareness by being who they are, being vulnerable.

Their awareness helps their parents who tend to have more difficulties with being who they are.  Please listen to their awareness which could help your life to be greater too, so not forcing upon our strong point of views on the children.  We tend to do so, because we believe that is the way to be accepted by others and society and the way to succeed in their lives.  Those are just our points of view.

When we deny, ignore pain and numb ourselves, then we avoid greater awareness about ourselves, other people and also other possibilities.

How do you allow your children to be vulnerable?

It is only possible when you choose to allow yourself to be vulnerable.  Then you are able to be the space of vulnerability to your children.

Our children know if you are honest to yourself whether they tell you or not.  If you are always how you SHOULD be, not who you are, they cannot be vulnerable and start to judge their vulnerability and start to separate themselves and you, and it keeps you away from real communication.

Can we just trust us as who we are and they are? Whomever we are, we are here to receive love.

Vulnerability is receiving love and total kindness from ourselves.  Please trust children’s capacity to love themselves?  In fact, children can do it without learning it.  They learn how to judge themselves from us, school and society.  If you do not know how to do it, we can learn from our children.  They can help your greater possibility only if you are willing to see them as a person who is fully aware of everything around him/her and has infinite possibility in a little body.  Surely, there are times that children become more judgmental about themselves.  Then it is the time to let them remember how it is like to be who they were.

Would you like your family to be the limitations of individual or support for possibilities for all.  This totally depends on your choice.

 

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.

FAMILY AS EXPERIENCE…BEYOND “HAPPY” FAMILY

Many people want to have better relationships with their parents, children, partner and siblings, dreaming of their ideal “happy” family figures.  So they view their current situation as “problematic” and they want to improve it, because they believe that those relationships are not ideal.

What expectations do you have about your family members?

Expectations such as a sweet and kind mum, strong and protective dad, obedient children, helpful brother or sister and caring, loving spouse and… also expectations about yourself.

If they could only be like “this”, if I could only be like “that” then we could make our family “happy”, right?

You are constantly comparing your real family with your idealised “happy” family and while working hard to make your family “happy”, you are focused on what you do not have. The question is, does that really help?

Have you ever thought that you may be imposing your idea of what you want them to be and do, in order to fit into your own version of a “happy” family? Or have you ever thought that you might be trying to make your family members “happy” at your own expense? Or maybe you are all acting according to expectations to maintain your family culture which is supposed to feel “happy” even though each individual may not be content?

When you judge the interactions between yourself and others as either good or bad, you do not have room to choose another way of viewing the relationships.  Instead you react every moment of your life.  In reaction we are limited to only two choices: either align with or resist the interactions even though you actually have more choices to create something different between you and them.

Our own judgement of ourselves and others can be what we perceive to be good, right or valuable. It is, however, still judgment.  It creates a way of thinking that things are supposed to be a certain way.  We judge automatically without thinking about the source of the judgment such as our cultures, roles, identities and labels such as child, sibling, wife, husband or parent.

When you make the judgement of parents, children and spouse so real and become the only way to view yourself and the others, you are actually buying into that judgement and creating a judgement of yourself based on their judgement.  It becomes a cycle of someone else’s judgment becoming yours. The question is “Whose judgement was that in the first place?”

The key is  to be aware of what is going on and what they truly are right now, and that if you do not judge them, then you retain the ability to make a choice.  An automatic reaction will never get you out of the loop.

You bravely thought you could change them, if you love them enough, based on your judgement that they need to change. When others do not change according to your wishes, you may feel guilt, despair and disappointment.  However that was not your job in the first place.  You cannot change people if they do not want to change, even though sometimes they may know that they need to do something.

When you try to change them, they will resist you like an immoveable rock.

Due to your judgement, how much pain are you unnecessarily carrying around in your life?

What if life is not about what you experience, it is about the experience itself?  The less judgements you make about yourself, others and your interactions, the more you can appreciate your family members for the experience you have both with and through them.  Don’t forget they are also experiencing you too.

What if you do not need to keep telling yourself the story imposed  by your judgement? What if you no longer need to work hard towards your “happy” family,  imagining that what you have now is not what you think it should be?

A lot of times, being with your family members, you might be experiencing unknown worlds.  The world of sensitivity, world of need to “succeed”, world of helplessness, world of perfection, world of stubbornness, world of openness, world of ambition, world of boredom, world of sadness, world of need to “fix problems” and so on.

If you do not judge their worlds, you can experience all those with ease.  This can only happen when you don’t judge the worlds of your own and then you can experience your and their worlds with ease.  You actually have the same worlds in you.  You are just not aware of them or you judge them so harshly, so you do not want to look at them.  After all, there is no separation between them and you.

Without judgment…..you can be just who you are and they can be just who they are.  Family is experience of everything about them and YOU at the same time.

This could be much more expansive and colourful than striving for your ideal “happy” family where everything is determined by your judgement.

This could be the greatest gift to you…

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.

THE MOST CHALLENGING RELATIONSHIP AS A KEY FOR THE JOY OF BEING YOU

What if the relationship with someone you totally cannot stand having in your life is a key for the joy of being you?

Do you have anyone whom you just cannot stand being with and living with in your family even though you love them?

They could be really unbearable to live with, because they are just harsh, hurtful or even nasty to you and it just seems nothing is contributing to you in the relationship.

Wait, wait….sometimes, just sometimes, you are missing something which could be a key which lies in the relationship with the persons for ultimate joy of a whole of you.

The only way for this comes from changing your perception about yourself.  How much of you you are willing to receive.

A lot of times we don’t like the way they are or their behavior.  Those are the parts that you don’t like about yourself. You even want to put them inside a box and bury them deep underground and end up abandoning those parts of you by saying ‘you are “a piece of useless crap!”’ This is the beginning of your separation.

You see this “piece of crap” in those people and cannot stand them, because you did not want to see those parts of you.  Constantly, you encounter the parts of you that you thought you hid and abandoned are there in those people that you are living with.

When you bring the parts of you that you hid back to you, you become finally one and you are able to allow yourself to be whole. This in turn allows them to be whoever they are free of your perception.

When you stop judging you and bring yourself back, others do not have to fight with your judgement.  It can also allow the others to choose what works for them and could also allow them to change themselves.

What you do to yourself is exactly what you do for others

How interesting!!!

When you want to see differences in your relationship with loved ones, all you can start doing is to look for the parts of you you separated and stop judging yourself as “not good enough” first.  You are everything.  In the end nothing is lacking in you and them.  It is just your judgement of yourself and others as “lacking”.

What if there was never separation in you and between you and those people in the first place.

Sometimes, the most challenging relationship is holding a key for you to become all of you, who you are.

Contact me for any questions about my blog or Intergenerational parenting.

Please visit my website to know more about True Colours Parenting.