I'M OVERWHELMED BY PARENTING BOOKS AND I'M NOT EVEN A PARENT pt. 2

I resist stillness. Having a super active mind, I reach meditative states after yoga, or when I do Sufi meditations that combine movement and chanting. I find activities like embroidery and coloring to be meditative. I like to walk and sync my steps mindfully to my breath. Recently, I found excuses not to join a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class (MBSR), although I understand that part of becoming an effective human being is having a clear, focused mind.

Mai Miles Frandsen, a professional nurse and certified MBSR teacher in Kuwait made a great point about teaching mindfulness to kids: You can’t teach mindfulness to kids if their parents haven’t studied it themselves.

At younger ages, we are so much more vulnerable to the energies that surround us. If you notice, babies often mirror the moods of those who hold them. An overwhelmed parent often translates to a fussy baby. In the spirit of not being overwhelmed by parenting books (or anything, really), here’s a mindful parenting exercise from Philippa Perry’s The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad You Did).

The following exercise is what is called a guided visualization. You will be asked to visualize a scenario in your mind’s eye and the idea is to really explore it to try and find out what’s going on in your hidden depths.

Imagine three rooms. The first one is a reception room, then two doors lead off the reception room into the second room and the third room. Think of this three-roomed house as a metaphor for you as a parent. In your mind’s eye, go to the reception room.

This is where you receive visitors. Here, you have your public face on.

The second room is where you feel most unsure, and perhaps most angry, regretful, ashamed, frustrated, sad or dissatisfied. This is the room of difficulty and vulnerability when it comes to being a parent. Walk into that room and dare to feel what feels like in here.

Have a look around and note what you see without judging yourself. As you spend time in this room and feel what it is like to be in here, notice your breathing. If you are holding your breath or breathing shallowly, breathe normally again. Talk one last look around the room of difficulty and then come back into the reception room, back into the public space. Notice what it feels like to shut the door on the room of difficulty, but know that the difficulty is still there.

Now it’s time to open the door to the third room. This is the room where you feel most positive. In this room everything is going right, you feel a sense of pride in who you are as a parent and you feel the joy you can feel with your child or children, and possibly more pride than you could show in the reception room. Have a look around the positive room and see what it is that is there. Keep looking and notice what you feel in this room. Good.

Now come back into the reception room. As you stand in the reception room, have a good sense what is behind both closed doors.

Remember: we all have these rooms as well as the public face of parenting when other people can see us with our children.

And we all have how we feel about ourselves as parents, things we feel great about and things we feel less than great about. What is so important is not to compare our own private room of difficult feelings to other people’s public face of parenting. Remember: we all need someone accepting to talk to about those two rooms off the reception room. Someone who can hear us with we feel flooded with love and someone who can accept us in the more ambiguous feelings that parenting can bring up.

This exercise can be modified to address all sorts of anxiety, with the second room housing your greatest fears and the third room holding your proudest moments. Hope you find it fruitful!