Making conscious choices – Page 5

June 8, 2011March 19, 2012

Don’t “should” on me!

Language is a powerful thing. I’m constantly amazed at how simple word choices can make such a huge difference in my everyday life. For instance, if I think to myself, “I can’t…” I feel deflated and ineffectual, but when I think, “I choose not to…” I feel inspired and powerful.

We each make choices about which words we’ll use to describe our lives every single day. Don’t we all have a friend who almost constantly whines and complains? Or know someone who uses language that is offensive to us? I do my best to be hyper aware of my language and which words I choose to use. I want to use words that are empowering and inspiring as much as possible, especially around my daughter.

When I first became aware of my word choices and their power, I noticed that I apologized a LOT. I said “I’m sorry” dozens of times a day. I also discovered that I was afraid to speak up, worried about taking up too much space, and I rarely expressed myself very powerfully. In a way, I was apologizing for my very being! But it didn’t feel very good, so I systematically trained myself to stop apologizing habitually, and now I only apologize when I really mean it.

As I continued to explore consciously choosing my words, I realized there was a very specific word that I actually despise. The word is “should.” Every time I heard the word “should” I was reminded of other people’s expectations for me, and all the times I had been externally motivated. I realized that I had been living my life to please other people, but I wasn’t really enjoying it at all! So I began working to develop a strong internal motivation, a clear inner sense of yes and no, and I abolished the word “should” from my vocabulary.

My friends and I worked together to remind one another when “should” crept back into our language by stopping and saying, “Did you just ‘should’ on me?!” Bringing a little bit of humor to our mission to abolish “should” made it a fun game that we could all play together. And it really helped to have the support of people who were all committed to conscious word choices. By the way, if you want an easy and empowering word replacement, try “could” instead of “should.” It works almost all of the time!

Now that I’m a mom, I’m reminded yet again how important it is to be aware of the words we use when we talk to our kids. Of course tone of voice, affect, and energy are often even more important than word choice. But I still think it’s worthwhile to pay attention to the words we use.

After all, our kids will surely parrot those words back to us, and who really wants their 4 year old saying, “Mommy, you should eat your vegetables before your chocolate.” Personally, I would much rather hear someone ask me if I would or could, rather than telling me that I should. Don’t the young people in our lives deserve that same respect from their elders? I sure think so!

I would love to know what you think about the word “should” and it’s impact on young people. Please share your opinion or story below!

Thanks for being here and have a great day, Shelly

May 12, 2011March 19, 2012

Attune to your child…some of the time

Attunement: it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in the world of parenting and psychology, but what does attunement really mean? Attunement is an innate ability that almost all humans have to internally and externally match the experience of another person with whom they’re connecting. When we see someone crying, we easily and naturally feel sadness ourselves. When we are with someone who just found out that they won a big contest, we feel excitement too.

But attunement is not simply empathy for another person’s emotional experience. It’s an energetic matching game. We may feel the sadness, but we’re not really attuning unless we’re matching the physical and non-physical energy of the person we’re with. Attunement is the ultimate connection. It’s a joining and sharing of an experience, an experience of oneness.

I often feel this oneness while nursing my daughter or in playful moments when she’s on the changing table or when we’re rocking in the rocking chair and she relaxes, resting her whole body against mine. Connection through attunement is incredibly important for secure attachment to happen. And, the oneness can’t happen all the time. In fact, it would feel awfully strange to even attempt to experience attunement for an entire day.

We need connection, and we need separation too. In fact, it’s the dance between connection and separation that makes our human experience so rich and dynamic. We may experience a beautiful moment of attunement and later we’ll each go off by ourselves to have some solitude. It’s an ebb and flow like so many other things in life. And each part is just as important as the other.

Right now I’m reading a really interesting novel told from a five-year-old boy’s point of view. The thing I find so fascinating about it is how accurate the author is about the details of the thoughts and emotions the little boy experiences. The boy has a favorite spoon he calls “meltedy spoon” and when I read the words “meltedy spoon” I am instantly transported back into the classroom with 3-5 year olds. What a perfect example of really attuning to the mind of a five year old.

This week, pay special attention to the moments of attunement that you share with your child and then consciously allow your child to separate from you when he’s ready.

Instead of hovering over him at the park, intruding on his playtime, bring a book and let him have his own experience. Then, after an especially fun moment, he might just run over to you and excitedly share what happened. That’s your opportunity to put the book down, make eye contact, feel the excitement in your own body and attune with him. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to jump up and run around with him for a while.

But again, as soon as you notice him going off on his own, resist any urge you might have to follow, and go back to your book instead. By allowing your child to determine the length of the cycle between attunement and separation, you’re reassuring him that you’re available when he needs you, but you’re not going to interrupt his flow.

If, on the other hand, your tendency is to encourage your child to play on her own more often so that you can do your adult activities, then your challenge this week is to really stop, drop what you’re doing, and attune to your child when she reaches out for connection. Remember, that means matching her energy. So, if she’s slow and methodical, you’ll practice slowing down too. And if she’s giggling and gasping for breath, see how much you can feel what that must feel like. Pay attention to any sensations in your body as you practice attuning with your children. Often, we can find new levels of empathy when we’re willing to try to step into our children’s shoes more fully.

I would love to hear about your own experiences of attunement and separation. Is the natural ebb and flow easy or difficult for you? Does your timing match up with your child’s? And how do you feel when you notice your child coming toward you or moving away from you?

I hope you’ll all have a fantastic week, Shelly

May 5, 2011March 26, 2012

Financial consciousness

It’s spring-cleaning time! Hooray! Out with the old and in with the new. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding and leafing out, and my husband and I are taking a good hard look at our finances. Ouch.

I don’t know about you, but becoming aware of exactly what is happening in my financial life is challenging for me. Recording my spending and then analyzing it is frightening. Creating and sticking to a budget feels foreign, and planning our financial future feels like sitting at the bottom of a very deep well and inching my way up brick by brick. And then there’s the issue of increasing our income and decreasing our bottom line. So now I’m hyperventilating. Well, not really, but you get my point.

But the thing is, if we don’t pay attention to our finances, we will continue to live paycheck to paycheck, never really saving for our future, and as retirement approaches we’ll be up a creek without a paddle. On the other hand, if we take a good look at our finances and bring the light of awareness to our earning, spending, saving and such, we actually have the ability to set goals and strive for them.

And if there’s one thing I know from years and years of personal development, it’s that setting a goal is the quickest way to make a change. When we strive for things, we can often achieve much more than we would otherwise.

Now here’s the kicker, if we turn away from the responsibility of our financial future, we’re not just hurting ourselves anymore, we’re hurting our children too. And not just because we can’t provide the things we want to give them. I mean sure, it’ll be nice to know that we can actually afford to buy our kids healthy food and fun toys, or maybe we plan to save up for their college education. But the real disservice comes in our children’s dysfunctional relationship to money.

We are always teaching our kids. No matter how much we’d like to pretend they’re not learning things unless we intend to teach them, the truth is, they’re absorbing our relationship to money. They will use our financial health as a template on which to build their own beliefs about money.

That’s not to say that they’ll be the same as we are. Some kids grow up in poverty, don’t like it, and go on to become millionaires. Others grow up in decadence, never learning the value of hard work or the need to earn money, and end up in poverty. Still others consciously choose one road or the other, or something in between.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that we have a unique opportunity to help our children develop a healthy relationship to money. But first, we have to start by healing our own relationships to it. After we’ve examined our thoughts, beliefs, and actions around money and taken responsibility for our finances, we can teach our children to do the same.

I’m guessing we’ve all had the experience of telling our children no when they ask for something in line at the grocery store. But I’m curious how we will tell them no and what message about money they will get from that. Is it because “we can’t afford it” or because “we don’t choose to spend our hard earned money on candy” or will we remind them of that great vacation we’re saving up for? I wonder how we can make our conversations about money inspiring, informative, and age appropriate for our children.

This week, take a good hard look at your financial wellbeing. Are there areas that need your attention? If all that’s already handled (is it ever really all handled?), then set some financial goals. Finally, ask yourself, how will I teach my children about the beauty, wonder, and challenges of money this week?

Love to you all, Shelly

April 21, 2011April 14, 2012

Storytelling, it’s more important than you think

Whenever the same idea comes up again and again in my life, I try my best to pay attention. For me, the fact that I’ve heard the same thing said in different ways a bunch of times, especially over a short period of time, means that there’s something special I need to pay attention to. This belief has served me well over the years and brought some interesting insights.

This week the concept that keeps popping up is that the ability to tell a cohesive narrative about our lives makes all the difference in attachment and parenting. I first read the idea in “Parenting from the Inside Out” by Siegel and Hartzell and then just moments ago, I saw a video on facebook about the exact same concept. Coincidence? I think not.

OK, so the idea is that our own ability to tell a cohesive narrative about our childhood events and experiences positively impacts our ability to connect with our children. I’m not exactly sure why this is the case, but apparently researchers at UC Berkeley are actually able to predict the attachment styles of children who aren’t even born yet based on their parents narratives. Whoa!

I have always thought that personal growth and the ability to make sense of our lives through self reflection were important, but now I have hard evidence that this ability directly impacts how safe and secure my child will feel in her connection to me.

So I guess that means it’s time to take a hard look at anyplace where my personal narrative is incoherent. Well, that sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Just kidding. A better way to find out if your narrative is complete and coherent is to start telling it. Ask your spouse, friends, or family members if they’d be willing to listen to the story of your childhood. And, as you share, pay attention to the times when the story flows naturally and the times when it doesn’t. Are there long silences in which you’re frantically trying to come up with the next part? Are their pieces that don’t make logical or chronological sense?

When you discover areas of your personal narrative that still need work, just think of yourself as a master storyteller ironing out the details of the story to make it as flowing, interesting, and clearly resolved as possible. If telling your story is quite difficult for you, you may want to start by typing it out or journaling about it.

If you have no experience writing stories, that’s OK, just take a lesson from one of your child’s favorite storybooks. Every coherent story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. And there’s usually some sort of obstacle or challenge to overcome that gives the story some interest and propels the storyline forward. My favorite stories also have a lesson or moral to be gleaned.

Luckily for all of us, we can edit our narrative at any time and we then become more available for secure attachment! So let’s all work to create those cohesive narratives so that we’re even more available to connect with the young people in our lives.

If you want to take things a step further, then help your children to create a narrative of their own childhood. Ask them to tell you stories from their lives. And don’t stop asking. Often, it isn’t until they are college aged that they can fully process some of the experiences of their childhood and go on to construct a narrative about it. But one thing seems clear from the current research. Helping your children to have a cohesive narrative of their childhood experiences will make them better able to connect with their own children.

But if grandkids seem a very long way off, remember that storytelling and the ability to construct a narrative will help you and your children in more ways than one. Storytelling can help the two hemispheres of the brain work together and helps us make sense of our lives.

In “Parenting from the Inside Out” there’s a sweet story of a young girl who moves to the US from abroad and begins preschool in an English speaking preschool. The little girl only knew a few words of English and one day when she fell and hurt her knee she quickly became very upset and didn’t seem to understand where her mother was.

Luckily, the preschool teacher was aware of the power of narratives to help children understand new concepts and so she got a doll and acted out the injury. Then she acted out calling the doll’s mommy on the telephone, and finally she brought a “mommy” doll to pick up the injured doll from school. The little girl relaxed and wanted to act out the story with her teacher again and again. And when her mom arrived to pick her up, she acted out the story once again, showing her mother what had happened.

So, whether you’re introducing a new concept to your child, or just want to connect more deeply, storytelling is a magical way to help create a secure attachment. I would love to hear all about it! Please share your stories in the comment box below.

Have a great week, Shelly

April 6, 2011April 28, 2011

The truth about separation anxiety

OK, I’ll admit it, when I was a preschool teacher I used to shake my head at the moms who had such a hard time leaving their child. It seemed obvious to me that by prolonging their goodbyes and furrowing their brows they were only escalating their child’s separation anxiety. If they would just leave swiftly, their child would settle in and enjoy the day much sooner!

Now that I have my own child, I definitely have more compassion for those moms. It’s so hard to leave sometimes! And when your little one is clinging to you and asking you to stay, I imagine it’s almost impossible to walk away.

But as my daughter and I have our first experiences of separation anxiety, I’m realizing that right now, I’m actually more upset than she is! And after seeing lots of young kids freak out when their moms leave them at preschool, I know that I had better get a handle on my own separation anxiety now, so that I don’t transfer my upset to my beloved child.

So, I picked up Elizabeth Pantley’s “No-Cry Separation Anxiety Solution” and I am really enjoying it. Pantley says that separation anxiety for both parent and child is completely normal and natural and that it’s actually an indication of a strong and healthy attachment. Whew! What a relief!

OK, so now that I know that my upset is caused by my deep love for my child, I can relax a little bit and give myself some compassion. I dearly, deeply love my daughter and want what’s best for her. And intellectually I know that what’s best for her is to form and maintain ongoing relationships with several trusted adults and some peers.

But emotionally, sometimes I just want her all to myself. There, I’ve said it. So now it’s time to take stock. And actually, I’m already making great progress in sharing her with other adults. Her Grammy comes over twice a week, she has a Daddy day every week, and she spends several hours each week with our good friend who is a childcare professional. She is starting to go on outings without me and so far it’s going well.

So in the moments when she needs me, I think it’s OK to go to her. I’ve also been giving her more time by herself while I’m home and if she calls out for me I simply call back, “Hey sweetie, I’m in here folding some laundry. I’ll see you in a minute.” If she gets upset, I go to her immediately, but often, just knowing that I’m nearby is enough to calm her.

Now that I think about it, I bet some of my separation anxiety comes from my own early childhood experience of going from my mom’s house to my dad’s house and back again every week. No matter how happy I was to reunite with the parent I missed, I also had to say goodbye to a parent I loved dearly. Hmmm, isn’t it amazing how our own experiences can color our experiences with our children?

I’m so curious, what have your experiences been with separation anxiety? What helped you the most? In Pantley’s book she shares a great idea about a magic bracelet that you fill with your love and send with your child to school or daycare. I love that idea! I also remember a children’s book about a mother raccoon (I think) giving her child a kiss on the palm that he got to take with him. I think it’s so important to help children understand that our love stays with them even when they’re far from us. And I guess I need to reassure myself that my daughter’s love stays too, even when she’s at her Grammy’s for the afternoon.

I hope you’re having a fantastic week. Love, Shelly