The Parenting Presence

Guilt is a paralyzing and unproductive emotion. Carrying guilt throughout our parenting is something we are used to doing but it takes away from the positive experiences with our children. Tune into this episode to discover what drives parent guilt and how to resolve it.

Here are some take-aways from the episode:

• Accept that parenting is a process. The way we parent in the 21st century is new to humanity and we keep evolving.

• We know the importance of the right care for the child, but sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to know it all.

• It is OK not to be the expert. Live your own experience with the goal of honing your own parenting skills.

• Reconnect with your own values. Feel the depth of those things that really matter. Focus on those to move yourself closer to fulfilling your mission.

• Know your job. Your job is to nurture your child — learn as much about your child's nature and nurture that.

• The way you do that will be different from the way others do that. Every child/parent/family is different.

• No one is perfect, we all make mistakes. Sometimes we need those mistakes so that we see a better way. Be patient and compassionate with yourself.

• When you do need help, decide who participates in the conversation and let other voices not to matter.

Host: Julia Pappas | Psychologist & Parent Coach

theparentingpresence.com

https://juliapappas.co

You may already know from Episode 10 that to nurture the child's emotions means to care for their emotional world. We care by accepting, supporting, and helping the child grow. Nurturing our own emotions is similar in this way, but has a set of its own challenges:

• One challenge to this process is lack of acceptance of our own emotions. Often, it is easier to accept that a child — because of their development will and can have emotions, but that we shouldn't. It is easier to accept that a child may have strong feelings and meltdowns, but that we shouldn't have them and, because of that, we repress or deny our emotions. And this gets in the way of nurturing and attending to our emotions.

• The other challenge of working with our emotions as opposed with the child's emotions —— is that over the years we have developed mechanisms to COPE with our emotions, instead of learning ways to PROCESS them. We may have found a way to deal with an emotion, wait for it to go away or to distract ourselves from it, instead of using specific tools and looking at the emotion directly. And so we don't have an understanding of what message a particular emotion holds and specifically what needs to be done about it. This approach comes with a set of strongly ingrained habits and reactions that also get in the way of nurturing our emotions and require intentional practice to reset and retrain ourselves.

We address the first challenge by understanding the value of our emotions. And we resolve the second challenge by learning specific tools of processing emotions and by developing awareness for when we default to our coping habits.

Host: Julia Pappas | Psychologist & Parent Coach

theparentingpresence.com

Someone spread this idea that since children are born colorblind, and are not likely to show prejudice, and that adults also can become colorblind in their social interactions. Hmmm...

Not only are children very color-aware, but they also do display racial prejudice as young as at two years of age. Everything depends on how they were brought up.

Since color-blindness is not really a thing when it comes to race, how do we address that with our children? What kind of work we do with them? What do we teach them and how?

This and more, in Episode 012.

It's bewildering to witness crimes against Black lives and racial injustice in 2020. The events of the last several days are life-changing and have EVERYTHING to do with parenting. There is a lot we can and need to do. Whether you feel this way or not just yet, I want to underscore that change IS coming. We have to make space for it.

To give you a sense of my context:

• I have a formal training in multiculturalism.
• I work with people of color on a weekly if not daily basis.
• I have Black friends who are near and dear to me.
• I have White friends, who have married Black and who have biracial children.
• And I have a few friends who have adopted and are raising Black children

And even within this context, I am constantly finding that I have a lot of assumptions. I have formed an impression that we as a country were doing better than we actually are. I had an assumption that there was enough power behind the antiracist movement…

That is NOT SO.

As parents, we are in the process of raising the next generation. If we want the world to change, we need to remember that we as parents are always PLANTING SEEDS. Intentionally or not, we transmit our beliefs and biases onto our children.

The environment in which we are raising our children turns those biases into "truths", unless it is specifically designed to question and challenge them (more on that in Episode 012, next week). So if we want the world to change, this is something we have to do proactively. Not waiting for the "world" to change, but by beingTHE ONES that change it. And even taking it a step deeper — to be the ones that change it, we need to be the ones that change ourselves.

In this episode I share my thoughts on how to begin the work we need to do as parents, before we can have a meaningful impact on our children and their understanding of race. It is not enough to say "I am not racist." To raise antiracists we need to examine our values and become antiracists ourselves.

Host: Julia Pappas | Psychologist & Parent Coach

theparentingpresence.com

When we get closer to our child's emotions and learn to be with them, we give priceless lessons to our children about their own inner world.

It is not something to run away from, to be mad at, or feel hopeless about. It is a rich environment full of information, because emotions are very telling.

Besides serving as clues to the quality of our experience, emotions have social value as well. For children, in particular, emotions is the way they communicate with us, and so dismissing the child's emotions would be equivalent to ignoring what the child is communicating. But when we try to understand the message behind their emotions, the children are being seen and heard.

• What does nurturing emotions mean?
• How do we nurture emotions?
• What happens when we nurture our child's emotions?
• When do we need to nurture most?

Why Is Parenting So Hard?

No really… Why?

We may give different explanations… Some of them are part of stories we recycle among ourselves — like the one that says "it's because kids are kids" (whatever that means) and that "dealing with kids is hard" (ok, but why?)….

These reasons may sound appealing and completely justified, but they are secondary to the true reasons, which lie much deeper.

The true reasons have to do with ourselves.

Even though this may not sound very uplifting, I promise you, that getting in touch with true reasons and knowing that all of them are in our control — is truly empowering. They may require some work, but this work is not harder than the parenting itself and is truly worth it.

This week, I only have time to review each of the four ways in which we — unknowingly — make our own parenting difficult. But in the future episodes, we will explore each one of them separately and talk about specific tools to help you work through them.

So dive into Episode 009, as we discuss how the following things make the parenting experience difficult:- our expectations about parenting and children

- lack of confidence in ourselves

- not understanding our own emotional life

- misunderstanding the parenting role

Host: Julia Pappas, Psychologist & Parent Coach

What do children need most from their parents? We often hear that love is all that children need.

The words "love" and "need" are used every day, and because of that, they have come to mean many things. And yet the way we understand them is very influential in how we raise our children. So it is true that love is all our children need?

Yes, it is. Love is all they need.

And no, it isn't. Love is not all they need.

Which answer is the right one depends on what we mean by "love." So if we think of love as something that looks like display of affection and delight with the child (smiles, hugs, kisses, etc.) then — no, love is not all our children need.

They need more than our affection.

If we think of love as something that goes beyond what is easily visible and has to do with care and attention, then — yes, perhaps that kind of love is all that's needed.

These two different interpretations of love towards children have significantly different developmental outcomes for them. We also have to remember that children need from us that which is in alignment of the ultimate goal:

...to raise a healthy independent adult.

How we interpret love can either lead to poor boundaries or can support the child's development, self-regulation, and self-esteem.

How does losing at a game or getting a poor grade impact the child's self-esteem? If they are really upset about it, what implications will that have on their future sense of self-esteem? Although these are valid and potentially unpleasant life scenarios, the answer to a healthy self-esteem is not in figuring out how to respond to each of these situations. It is what happens on a daily basis outside of these scenarios, that helps the child process life events like these when they do come up.

The role of a parent is huge when it comes to that general context of life and they play an important role in shaping a healthy self-esteem for their child. What is it and what can we do to help children process failures? Find out in this episode.

Host: Julia Pappas, Psychologist & Parent Coach

Find out more at theparentingpresence.com

What are BOUNDARIES and what do they have to do with parenting?

In this episode we explore the last of the three Essential Elements to a solid parenting foundation - the BOUNDARIES.

Why are boundaries such an essential element to parenting? It is critical for our child's personality development and is a promise for our own well-being.

We explore the concept of BOUNDARIES from the perspective of:

a) something that defines an individual and talk about why that is important, and

b) as a process of interacting with others - including our children - as a way to maintain a healthy dynamic between what we need and what other people need.

In this episode, we will look at values from the standpoint of an internal system of beliefs and attitudes that guide our behavior in parenting. Whether we are aware of it or not, we parent from a place of beliefs and expectations, and every choice we make as parents is guided by our values.

We explore how VALUES apply to parenting in two ways. One, as our own guide and how it impacts our actions, what we decide to do, who we listen to, what we consider important, and so on. And another, as a guide we want our children to have – how we want our children to act and what we want to teach them.