I get a lot of questions about parenting and believe me, I’ve read my fair share of books, listened to 897 podcasts, and if I could pay the therapists from DayStar Counseling to just move into my home and give me a play by play, I would. But here’s what I’m learning which just really sucks. The more I work on my own stuff, my own patterns, my own story…. the more it helps my kids.
Even though I still think if they learned how to just listen to me the first time and not have any desire for pushing boundaries- everything will be easier. (kidding).
I always say that curiosity is my greatest parenting hack. But it’s not just curiosity about our kids’ stories and thoughts and feelings. It’s actually when we get curious about our own stories that can unlock a connection between our kids and ourselves. When we start exploring the “why” behind our reactions or expectations by digging into our own stories, we are able to break our side of the unhealthy patterns.
We are able to experience deeper compassion for them because we are experiencing compassion for ourselves. We are releasing the white knuckles of our agenda for them based on our own stories so that we start to see them for how they are uniquely made.
If their behaviors or actions are triggering us in a way that feels overwhelming, we can get curious about two different things.
Get curious to their “why”. Ask them lots of questions about why they feel the way they do, why they like the friends they do, what they love about the thing they’re spending their time on (I could win an Oscar for the acting I do in not rolling my eyes when they talk about video games with passion), what their goals and hopes are, and what matters to them. We don’t have to agree on everything our kids feel, think or do in order to make space for them to know they are seen, heard, known, and loved just as they are with us. When we make space for curiosity without judgment, they feel like they can be themselves with us and that is a gift that is a win-win.
Get curious about our reactions. When we see something in them that immediately triggers fear in us, get curious as to why. Spoiler alert: if you are overreacting with control, remember that control is a fear response. So when I find myself wanting to control something in my kids, I have learned to get curious as to what I may be fearing so that I can resolve that and actually respond with some intentionality instead of fear. When we get curious, we start to heal from our own wounds or false narratives that skew our perspective on our kids’ story because we may be looking at it through our own lense of our own experience. And truth of the matter is, their experience is their own, not ours. Their story is their’s, not our’s. So when we get curious about why we may be reacting in the way that we are, it allows us to experience self-compassion and healing over our own struggles that will bless us and inevitably bless our kids. When we do react instead of respond, repair where needed. I can’t tell you how many times I have apologized to my boys THIS WEEK. Like…. so many. Want an example from this morning? Sure.
“Sorry pal that I reacted like a looney toon but when I saw you not studying for your driver’s ed test, I immediately projected my fear of failure onto you. Will you forgive me? I’d love to try that interaction again without sounding like an unhinged middle school PE teacher with unresolved anger issues .”
Getting curious about my kids and myself has allowed me to not only get to know myself more and get back in touch with my intuition but it has also allowed me to get to know parts of my boys that I didn’t know were in there. It has breathed new life into our relationships because we are more authentic, definitely messier but in a joyful way, and it has paved the way for vulnerable conversations where my boys, especially the precious teen, come to us when he has taken some missteps because he knows we are curious instead of condescending… and believe me, we learned the hard way and are still learning and repairing when we react in the wrong ways.
So get curious. You’re worth knowing more. Everyone is.
