Zen-ing your zone, Mama!

I know, it's international mother's day.And I have been a mother for about 18 months, and I say 'what a ride'!

We just got back from a weekend getaway with the family of my husband. We went to Revel in the South of France and rented some chalets with 7 toddlers and 2 adolescents. It is situated in a nice green space with a swimming pool facilities. We had a real fun together as a big family in the southern France compound where the children get to catch up with cousins and play. It is one of rare occasion that the family can be together as some of us live miles away from each other.

Did I mention surrounded by 'children'? Oohh, children!! How life could be fun on your side but it is a lot of work for the adults to raise you? I have been spending quite a bit of time with some young parents with younger kids. Of course, in our background there are must be shoutings, cries, laughs, accidents, bleeds, breaking furnitures, runs, and lotsa other 'fun' things. As time to time, I heard the parents who want to keep control of their children says, "Eat properly", "Play gently", "Don't run", "Eat with spoon and fork", "Be nice", "Don't eat this", "Get out", "Eat your lunch", "Don't cry" etc.

I do feel sorry for the children who can't contain themselves to be curious and make mistakes for their development. We think sometimes they push our buttons real hard. We may become depressed and emotional at work or elsewhere if we have relatively bad incidence with our childen. I have seen it everywhere and even our mom and dad did the same thing during our childhood. We've been told not to do this or that, if not something bad would happened.

I am looking carefully for other solutions more than screaming off our children all the time.

I am reading "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle and I thought it is probably relevant to the subject I have been searching all this time. Haha, Yes...I am getting ready to face a toddler's life soon! Those once cherub angels' faces may turn upside down our life. It is part of our growing up too, yes we are! Any form of activity to calm our mind such as yoga, meditation, or pilates and so on may not be effective if we do not change our ways of parenting.
.......

"Many children harbor hidden anger and resentment towards their parents and often the cause is in-authenticity in the relationship, the child has a deep longing for the parent to be there as a human being not as a role, no matter how conscientiously that role is being played. You may be doing all the right things and the best you can for your child but even doing the best you can is not enough. In fact doing is never enough if you neglect being.How can you bring being into a busy family, into the relationship you have with your child? The key is to give your child attention.

There are two kinds of attention, one we may call form-based attention, the other is formless attention. Form-based attention is always connected in some way with doing or evaluating, “Have you done your homework? Eat your dinner, tidy up your room…….do this, do that, hurry up, get ready.”

Form-based attention is necessary and of course has its place, but if that is all there is in the relationship with your child then the most vital dimension is missing and being becomes directly obscured by doing. Formless attention is inseparable with the dimension of being.

How does it work?

As you look at, listen to, touch or help your child with this or that you are alert, still, completely present, not wanting anything other than that moment as it is. In this way you make room for being. In that moment, if you are present, you are not a mother or father, you are the alertness, the stillness, the presence that is looking, listening, touching, even speaking. You are the being behind the doing.

In the human dimension, you are unquestionably superior to your child; you are bigger, stronger, know more, can do more – if that dimension is all you know, you will feel superior to your child, if only unconsciously and you will make your child feel inferior, if only unconsciously. There is no equality between you and your child because there is only form in your relationship and in form you are not equal. You may love your child but your love will be human only, that is to say conditional, possessive, intermittent. Only beyond form and in being are you equal and only when you find the formless dimension in yourself can there be true love in that relationship. The presence that you are recognises itself in another and the other, the child in this case, feels loved, that is to say recognised.

The longing for love that is in every child is the longing to be recognised, not on the level of form, but on the level of being. If parents honor only the human dimension of the child but neglect being, the child will sense that the relationship is unfulfilled, that something absolutely vital is missing and there will be a build up of pain in the child and sometimes unconscious resentment towards the parents. “Why don’t you recognise me?” This what the pain or resentment seems to be saying....." Eckhart Tolle.


Happy Mother's Day! Hope we have a Zen day ....