At the moment I am progressing through a phase of physiotherapy after a fall earlier this year where I broke my ankle and seriously dislocated my knee.
This is the first time I’ve dislocated this knee, not bad since my other knee was operated on twice for dislocation before I was sixteen.
As an aside, I’m now in the running for a pair of knee replacements, and my orthopaedic surgeon on reviewing my X-rays said, due to my structural design (aka nature) I was always destined for here.
This is something that is important when we are looking at any anomaly with our kids, or even in ourselves, how much of this problem is due to behaviour (the deed aka choices), and how much of this problem is to the temperament (the doer – intrinsic design).
It’s the opportunity for all of us is to beware of getting caught by the frustration with the temperament, when the intention is to support them with learning more functional ways of responding to difficult circumstances. Difficult being any situation where their response is not one that you want.
What often happens.
When we are caught in one of those difficult situations, if you’re anything like me, you want if “fixed” fast, like right now. What that can do is drive us to over respond. What I mean is we want the problem stopped now, so we lose patience which what is really required.
Depending on our individual temperaments, some of us will adapt and adjust quickly, but others of us will be overwhelmed and react poorly or ruminate (meaning staying in thinking over and over and over). Which leaves us all in a survival state.
As we are learning, no great choices are made in survival, which is a fear-based system. It has its place but only in emergencies.
The Lesson.
Start gentle. Acknowledge what the situation is. For me, it was accepting I have become a couch potato. That means my physical condition is less than optimised. Meaning I’m going to need to cycle up to the level of best quality.
What that doesn’t mean is doing nothing. Nor does it mean expecting perfection from the word go.
So we are starting by focusing on “little wins”.
In Raising Human Beings by Dr Ross Greene, he talks about focusing on ONE thing.
The Trap
It’s rare that any behaviour challenge happens in isolation. It’s usually a combination of factors that have built up over time. Or is a combination of circumstances that creates a particular reaction.
Complex Equivalence (when we make one thing equal another, when it’s not true).
Sometimes our kids, or partner will trigger a certain reaction in us. It’s looking at the whole thing, and then breaking down what are the pieces and who is actually responsible. NOT for the purpose of blaming, because that’s the most wasted energy of all.
What I mean by who is responsible is who actually has power to change that response, action, activity. Often we misattribute, especially those of us who might be inclined to want to be controlling all the moving parts (surely that’s not just me).
Example. When a child is having a tantrum, being resistant, melting down. We are NOT responsible for their behaviour. Our responsibility is to give support, so that they can process their emotions.
Accepting What IS
In fact, this is amongst the biggest and most important lessons that is needed for making the transition from old world command and control parenting to new world connected conscious parenting.
As parents the majority of us were conditioned/programmed as children that we had to be told what to do. That we couldn’t possibly be allowed to feel or inconvenience the “magical big people”. AKA our primary carers and others.
We have brought that programming forward.
For some people it is difficult to accept that there might be a different way of approaching things. For those of us who are more enlightened, it’s important to avoid judging those who may not have made the leap yet.
It’s also important to be compassionate with ourselves when we react in ways that were not part of our intentions. This is because we too received the same programming. It’s that we already created an intention to do differently. That doesn’t automatically mean that the programming was over written.
That’s why we can be caught reacting poorly at times. It because intention to do differently is only the FIRST step.
Transition and Transformation.
Begins with intention.
What do you really want? Not only today in the moment, what is the big VISION.
Getting clarity is to get the North Star or Touch Stone. That place to return to when things go off track.
Here is a tool to support you determine that.
Come share you discoveries in
Conscious Wholehearted Parents Facebook Community.
I look forward to hearing your Visions. Let’s build the plan to achieve it.
Together we ARE Stronger.