What is Awareness?

And why does understanding it matter, in getting our children to ‘listen’?

When our 4 year old pushes our 11 month old…

When our 7 year old forgets something for the 10th time….

When our 5 year old lies about how much screen time she’s used… 

When our 6 year old hoards her toys…

When our 8 year old doesn’t play fair…

When our 3 year old has a meltdown…

We find ourselves helpless in an emotional reaction of anger, frustration, irritation, sadness, victimhood, or shame.  So we turn to control and discipline.

“Stop it, or you’re going into a time out.”

“Why are you so forgetful?

“Lying is disrespectful.  Speak the truth.”

“Share, or I’m taking it away.”

“If you can’t play fair, then you can’t play at all.”

“Last time I took you, you screamed the whole time.  So this time, you’re staying home.”

We point fingers at our children and sometimes at our spouse, mother-in-law, culture, or teachers as to why our children are acting out in the way they are.  We blame, control, and discipline.

But none of it works. 

We continue to find ourselves in similar situations at least every few hours, if not every other day; only with escalated emotions.

We wonder why our children act out in the same way, over and over again. 

Surely it’s not our intention, because it feels exhausting and we want SO badly for our children to behave so we can find peace after a long day’s work. 

We physically witness their flailing arms and legs or hysterical cries, and quickly make assumptions on why we think they’re acting that way.

He’s aggressive, he needs to be taught it’s not okay to hit…

She’s so lazy …

He is a typical toddler, he lies…

She doesn’t know how to share…

Let her cry it out, she’s so stubborn…

He needs to learn his lesson…

What if I told you, our children are expressing their inability to communicate their needs?

 And we are experiencing a loss of awareness of their needs.

Or, said another way; a loss of presence and understanding. 

We’re unable to clearly understand the whole picture of why we are in the position we’ve found ourselves in.  We’re unable to understand that there is more to the situation than the flailing arms and legs and the assumptions we are making. 

But, you ask, what more is there to see? 

The answer, lies in gaining a new awareness through curiosity. 

After all, the opposite of projection IS curiosity. 

So what does this curiosity look like, in the midst of feeling angry or ashamed? 

What should we be asking ourselves or being curious about?

First, it looks like acknowledging every emotion we experience.

@drdansiegel talks about naming our emotions to tame them.  The idea behind it is to help integrate our right brain, which is responsible for the emotional reactions and our fight or flight response, and our left-brain, which is responsible for logic and reasoning. 

When we name our emotions and let ourselves feel them, we acknowledge them in order to help us find calm.  We can then use logic to become curious about our emotional reactions. 

Mindfulness and breathwork exercises also help us find calm.

How does my belly feel?

How has my breathing changed?

Is my jaw tight?

Is my heart racing?

What are my facial expressions? 

When we turn towards such practices, we’re able to move our outward projections to inner inquiry, to calm our nervous system from a fight or flight response to a curious and creative one. 

It’s an important and necessary practice to gain new awareness. 

(It takes time.  It took me a few years to understand the importance of why meditation and breathwork are an integral part of gaining a new awareness.  It’s an area I thought I could bypass, by intellectually understanding the concepts but, sure enough, I found I was unable to progress without it.  It was only when I began to incorporate it into my routine that I was able to successfully shift into curiosity around why I ended up in similar situations with Jian.) 

With a new awareness, we begin to create space for curiosity to flow.

A conversation between a group of people who are seeking more meaning to life, and who want to live a more empowered life of connection and communication in their relationships, is a community experience.

  I’ve put together a Group Coaching Intensive, that creates this community experience for moms of children between the ages of 3-8. Is this something that would interest you?

If so, click here and schedule an Exploration Call.