My son is nearly 3 years old, and I have been through quite a few ups and downs of parenting. One of the greatest blessings of being a parent though, has been to see how my son helps me grow in ways I would have never imagined. I am highly committed to both self development as well as parenting, and only recently have I started to realize how these two interests of mine support one another. When my son was born, my first reaction was, ‘there go my meditation sessions, my yoga practice, and my self-development group meetings and so forth.’ I resigned myself to being with him 24/7, and putting off self development in favour of being a devoted mother. I am grateful however, for a wonderful experience I had recently which reassured me that self development and parenting are not two separate roads to travel but that experiences in one can serve as wonderful triggers for learning in the other.
One morning my son started to throw a tantrum, and grew increasingly stubborn and unreasonable, demanding that I sit down and build a car with him. I did not want to give in to his request since I had explained to him how this was an activity that we could only do in the evening together. He threw himself on the floor, face red, and started crying very loudly. My mother, who also happened to be there with us at this point suggested that I just let him lie on the floor and cry for sometime, and that he would get over the tantrum by himself. I did not have the heart to do that and yet I did not want to give in to his request either, because this would re-enforce a belief that crying could get him whatever he wanted. So instead, I just cuddled him into my lap, let him keep crying and played a ho-oponopona song (a Hawaiian meditation song) to listen to. Then I tapped along on my EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) points, and just stayed present to all the flux in our energies that was shifting around. I mentally called out to my divine source and asked source energy to come and bring light into this current situation, and simultaneously I worded out aloud to my son how I was really sorry I could not build the car with him now, but how I still loved him lots anyway. The ho oponopona lyrics (which consist of four repeating phrases, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘please forgive me’, ‘I thank you’ and ‘I love you’) and the wonderful tune and music of the song helped me to say I’m sorry and genuinely mean it simultaneously maintaining a loving intention in a strong but pleasant way. I realized that from my sons perspective he could not understand why it was not possible for Mama to build the car with him now, and how he might have found that I was being stubborn and not giving in. So I genuinely apologized to him for having hurt his feelings. Slowly he calmed down, and then I started massaging his legs and feet, helping his body move some energy around and then he calmed down further and dropped off to sleep.
I loved this experience, because I knew that a potentially distraughtful moment was turned into one of learning, by just being present and consciously calling the divine source energy into the situation. When source energy comes in, there is usually more than enough to go around for everyone involved in the situation. I also felt a huge release of pent-up emotions from myself, and I realized that as much as this experience was about my son's tantrum, it was equally about my own breaking of some old energy patterns and habits. I was reclaiming power back from an energy pattern where I had locked away some of my inner power by labelling it, 'as being under the control of something outside of me'. This was a wonderful reminder to me to remember that I attract into my experiences situations and events that I can learn something from, and that parenting is a wonderful and colourful setting for spiritual learnings to unfold. Because of the purity and innocence of children and their emotions, interactions with children are ideal settings for our own limiting beliefs and energy patterns to come into light. I also realized that although some very strong emotions come into play in many parent-child interactions, the dominant emotion remains that of Love, and this makes it a particularly great and safe classroom to take on some of our own emotional baggage and deal with it effectively.
Links to some terms used:
EFT- Emotional Freedom Technique
“EFT is an emotional version of acupuncture wherein we stimulate certain meridian points by tapping on them with our fingertips. This addresses a new cause for emotional issues (unbalanced energy meridians).” - http://www.emofree.com/newcomer.htm#Newcomers
Ho oponopona – Hoʻoponopono (ho-o-pono-pono) is an ancient Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. A simple way of practicing it is to say silently, “I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you”
http://www.hooponoponohelp.com/
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