Conscious Parenting: 6 Lessons Learnt

Straddling two cultural identities, as an American of Indian origin, I have raised two lovely kids to adulthood. Along the way, I have learnt many lessons & here I share some important ones with you with the hope that they will aid you in your parenting!

1. VIPs: Parents are the most important people in a child’s life until adolescence. If during this crucial time, we as moms and dads are checked out, off balance and stressed, we will not be able to give our best to our kids and may find it difficult to raise healthy kids. So first and foremost, we need to address our own mental and physical well being.
2. VALUES & PRIORITIES: In the rat race of life, we may forget our priorities and outsource parenting to our child’s school, college, nannies, peers and media. In doing so, we give away our power, our rights and influence in our child’s life. If we do not actively instill in our kids our own value system, their school, college, peers and media will fill in the void and likely instill in them a belief system that may or may not resonate with our own.
3. RESPECT & HUMILITY: As their elders, we are the experienced ones hence it is important that we share with them our life’s experiences: what worked and what did not work for us. To encourage our children to listen to those with more experience than them, we would need them to be respectful, humble and receptive to words of advice from their seniors. Therefore, humility and respect for elders is a very important trait to encourage in children.
4. WALK THE TALK: As their most influential role models, we must ‘walk the talk’. If we tell them to be truthful, we must be truthful. If we tell them to eat healthy, we must eat healthy; if we ask them to respect elders, we must respect elders. We are in a great position to demonstrate and teach kids how to get along with another, how to be a good life partner to another, how to be a good parent, how to be a successful and contributing member of society. The way we deal with our own life’s difficult situations sets a precedent for them to deal with difficult situations in their own lives.
5. SOFT SKILLS: As their well wishers, we must recognize that parenting requires awareness of all dimensions of the child’s life. Focus on good food, sleep, grades, sports, music is necessary but also equally (if not more) important, are soft skills like the ability to handle negative emotions, overcome failure, overcome disagreement, how to face criticism, rejection and peer pressure. If we were to focus most attention on getting good grades, we may be helping ensure a good job and perhaps a good salary, but will such a narrow focus make the child capable of dealing with his or her own negative emotions? Will it help the child be happy? We may tell our kids not to be sad or angry, not to feel bad and not to be stressed, but do we tell them and show them how not to be all those things? Do we ourselves know how to deal with our own mind, our own stress and our own negative emotions? I know that many of us parents struggle with these skills. This program from the Art of Living Foundation helped me significantly, and has worked wonderfully for many I know. I highly recommend it for anyone looking manage stress and negative emotions!
6. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE: We can all agree that positive change and learning happen only when knowing what is good is followed up with a doing it. Practice is what drives knowledge home and makes it real, alive and fruitful. As guardians of the future generation, we need to give them BOTH life supporting knowledge and life supporting habits. Life supporting habits make a strong foundation for a well lived life. They become the default mode of operation and produce beneficial results without conscious effort. Indeed it is our everyday habits that make our life what it is. A good start is to come up with a daily routine of good habits. For inspiration you can look here, here and here.

My suggestions and recommendations are based on personal experience of practices from the sciences of Yoga and Ayurveda which I have found to be the most profound, multidimensional and complete in their understanding of human mind, body and nature and the impact of environment on them.

Thank you for reading! I hope these lessons help you as much as they continue to help me in my precious journey as a mother!