Are you experiencing a season of conflict with your child? You are not alone. This gentle practice can help you reconnect with stability so you can keep the parenting going with love.
In our concern for our children, sometimes we react from a state of fear and anxiety. From time to time, we may even lose touch with the love that lies beneath all that worry.
Reconnecting with the ground of your love and your desire for your children to be happy and well can be incredibly rewarding, especially in moments of difficulty.
This exercise from Wendy O’Leary offers a pause of support and encouragement that can bring you back to the core of compassionate wisdom—and that you can return to whenever you need help with loving parenting.
A meditation on working with our fears and parenting with love
Read the guided meditation script below and practice, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio exercises.
- Get into a comfortable sitting position. You can close your eyes or look down slowly and soften your gaze, whatever works best for you.
- As we settle here, bring your attention to your breath or feel the sensations of your body as it connects to the earth. Feet on the floor, backs of feet on a chair or mattress. Invite the meditation to calm down a bit. Come into the moment by descending into the body with the sensations of the breath and body contact points. Settle in gently.
- Now, I invite you to turn your attention to thinking about your child, Perhaps even picture them in your imagination, remembering a time when you felt warm and loving feelings toward them. Pay attention to what they were doing and remember how you felt at that moment. You can also imagine that someone has asked you, What do you like about your child? What words, phrases, images or descriptions come to mind?
- Gently check in and notice how you feel in your body, mind, and heart when you remember what you love about your child. You can also invite the feeling of love and connection in your body to grow and expand, resting gently into this feeling of love for your baby. Let yourself immerse yourself in this feeling of love, warmth and care.
- Now, think about a time when your child was struggling. You don’t have to think about the hardest struggle—instead, pick something that’s a three or four on a scale of one to 10.
- As soon as you allow the situation to fully enter your awareness, check in with your body again. Often, when we focus on a difficulty, especially as it relates to our child, there can be a habitual tendency to shrink and lean forward. Check it out and see if it’s true for you. To counteract this tendency, gently lean back slightly. This can be a physically inclined back or even an energetically stable back. Come back to stillness and now invite the body to soften, even widen, to make space to hold all that is there. We’re not forcing anything here, it’s just a very gentle invitation to settle back and soften. Slowly softening the edges of any emotions we are experiencing.
- Now intentionally invite that feeling of love back in, placing the challenge into a vast field of loving care and awareness. To help you do this, you can once again remind yourself of all the things you love about your child. You can also wish them some wishes of well-being and happiness as you envision in your mind. May you be happy. Good luck to you. You stay safe. Or any wish that feels true to you in this moment.
- If the situation you are considering requires some kind of response from you, you can ask yourself, What will be the answer to this love? You can also take some care of yourself, because if your child is struggling, you are struggling too. So perhaps place a gentle hand on the heart, or take a moment to remind yourself of our common humanity. You can say to yourself something like, Every parent struggles with their children sometimes. Every parent worries about their child sometimes. Or any other phrase that may fit your situation. You can also say to yourself, It’s hard, and I’m here for you, darling.
- As soon as you are ready, you can open your eyes for our ceremonial closing ceremony. This practice can be a powerful way to reconnect with feelings of love and relieve the anxiety and fear we often experience as parents. It may be helpful to remember the first part as a brief daily practice of loving and caring for a while, so that you can more easily express those feelings of love and connection in the midst of a challenging moment when you need the most help in loving parenting. We want to acknowledge the hard things and not lose sight of the goodness and love that lies beneath our worries and sometimes even our difficulties with our children. With my best wishes, may you remain happy and peaceful and move forward in life with ease and equanimity. Thanks for practicing with me.
