Parenting with Beginner’s Mind

The Chattering Mind

On an average day, most of us speak around 16,000 words, but our chatterbox minds produce tens of thousands more – most of which are re-runs! When this happens, much of our day is spent thinking about something other than what we are actually doing. Although we may be  present in our bodies, we become absent in our minds.

When we are not present, we can easily get stuck in ruminating, reliving, and regretting the past, or fast-forwarding, catastrophizing, and worrying about the future. This unintentional, negative mind-wandering leads us to feel distracted and unhappy. Especially in our roles as parents.

The Mind of Parents

Parenting is one of those endeavors that comes with all the extra baggage and strings attached, tied to our own upbringing and the stories we learned as children. Raising our own children brings up much of the history and residue from our own pasts. We parent in light of how our parents raised us, however good or broken these experiences were. When we look at our children, we often see them through our own filters, influenced by our own stories, hopes, fears, and desires for them, and the expectations we set for them and ourselves.

Oh, the joy that parenting brings! Except when we get caught up in our own biases, judgments, and interpretations about what we see, how we think this parenting journey should go, and then face the harsh reality that it doesn’t always go the way we plan.

We start by placing expectations on our babies to sleep through the night by 6 months, or to walk by 12 months, and when they don’t, we assume failure. Or when they’re not talking by 2 and those meltdowns turn into vicious tantrums. Or when the doctor gives our child a new diagnosis we didn’t see coming and can’t seem to face.

As parents, we want our children to grow up and thrive. And when unexpected challenges arise, like health crises or new diagnoses arise that threaten their wellbeing, we panic. We wonder what we could have done differently, or if the hardship was something we could have prevented. Or worse, if we caused it somehow ourselves. This can create a cycle of worry and shame and keep us in our heads.

The Drawbacks of Diagnosing

When we diagnose a child with a disorder, such as autism, ADHD, or a behavior disorder, our attention is drawn to ways in which he is struggling and the qualities which may make life difficult for him. This can be useful for treatment approaches, and to help us understand the why’s behind certain behaviors.

 But if we become too focused on the problems, or if we lose sight of how these very same qualities can actually be strengths in certain contexts, we don’t see the whole child before us. We narrow our view, seeing only the problems and what needs to be fixed. Our minds stay in the doing, and we may never feel like we’re doing enough to make things right.

But what happens when we let go of having to change something, letting go of our judgments about good or bad qualities? What happens when we can step back from all the thinking, planning, problem solving, and analyzing, and just be with our children?

Beginner’s Mind

Beginner’s Mind can help with this. Beginner’s Mind Is the practice of trying to see each new experience as exactly that- a new experience, completely and utterly different from any other, and the same way that this next breath coming in is completely and utterly different from the breath before. 

We can practice Beginner’s Mind by learning to look at our children as if they were a creature from Mars – completely different from anything we’ve ever seen before. Independent of stereotypes, expectations, or ideals from society or our own expectations. Here, we learn to observe their expressions and behaviors with a deep sense of curiosity and interest. We peel back all the layers and see them for who they really are. And by doing this, we release expectations we put on ourselves for trying to make things look a certain way.

When we practice Beginner’s Mind, we learn to take a step back from all doing, fixing, and interpreting, even if just for a few moments, and notice our children just as they are. We learn to appreciate our children’s beauty, creativity, and unique qualities that may go unnoticed because we’re so consumed with everything that needs to be fixed.

This doesn’t mean we have to like everything we see, nor does it mean we can’t work to change things or to help our children. Acceptance, however, is often the first step towards meaningful change.

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This post was originally published on The Flourishing Family, with Psychology Today.