NdukuOutLoud

We all walk around with an image, an idea about who we are, based mostly on other people’s opinions of us. We hold this dear and react to anything and everything that threatens it or dares to go against it, which is okay really. It only becomes a problem when we become too full of ourselves or live only to fulfill that which we want at any cost. Story for another day. But for now, we’ll call this ‘ego’.

Traditional parenting was/is hierarchical. We are the all-knowing  parent and they are the nothing-knowing little children. They are also our child, and that becomes a whole other thing because ownership leaves no room for the child to just be themselves. With the hierarchy means, we are in charge, and they are small people that should wait to be lead. And we can bend and mold as we please and of all the people we have to deal with, and we have to deal with many, at least our child should bend to our will. And I can see how this can feel like an ideal child-parent relationship. But it really is not. Children are not blank canvases for us to imprint and fill with our unfulfilled desires. Neither are they mere extensions of ourselves. They are their own beings. Partners in this journey to consciousness. Travel buds, if you may and we need to embrace that, allow them to be and let them evolve into the best versions of themselves as they, too help us uncover our own unconsciousness and attain consciousness.

With the knowledge that they are people all by themselves comes the task to accept them as they are. Pretty simple, right? I mean, why wouldn’t we? And acceptance does not mean only when they do things that we agree with. Acceptance means we may not approve of their decisions, or the hair color they choose, or the grades they get, or the fact they don’t like the same stuff we do. Acceptance is of who they are as the separate beings we mentioned earlier. And it sounds easy, but just like that trip to Dubai ad that seems too good to be true, there’s a catch. We have to accept ourselves too. We have to accept that we are not perfect, we are flailing from the pressure to be perfect, that more often than not, we are acting and dealing with our children from an egoic state. A narrow and limited idea of who we are.

With the ego comes a shadow. The ego we acknowledge, the shadow we suppress. And sometimes we don’t even know we’re suppressing it until we’re triggered and then it gets nasty. And that’s what children do. They expose the shadow.They become a mirror, behaving like a former ally that already knows where the skeletons are hidden. Except they don’t know, and they are not trying to damage our ego—they are being our child. Instead of just reacting, all we need to do is look at the mirror. See what it is they are triggering, why they ‘make’ us feel that way. And I say ‘make’ because nobody can make us feel that way; they merely awaken our unresolved emotional issues. No one can evoke such emotions if they were not already part of our shadow. With this in mind, as one of the first steps to conscious parenting, we then learn to respond to each other creatively and not react destructively.

…to be continued…