Introduction
Welcome! This was our inaugural session and was mostly an opportunity for me to let you know what my aims are for the membership.
The first 15 minutes of each session will be for arriving, briefly catching up, and any feedback from the previous session.
What did you try?
What worked, and what didn’t?
What new questions or topics have come up for you?
From 8pm, we’ll get stuck in and I’ll talk about the week’s focus before opening things up for discussion and questions. As this was the first session, I read something I’d prepared and asked for feedback. (There’s a recording of my written piece on the Resources page.)
These are the topics that came up straight away:
1 - Being in the moment. How difficult it is to be present when there are so many things on our minds.
I talked a little about how this relates to being mindful - present to what you’re doing in the moment. If we can focus on what is right in front of us - be that our child, the washing up, or relaxing for sleep - we do that one thing well and end up achieving as much if not more.
It sounds simple and yet it’s very tricky to change the habits of a lifetime. Practise helps as do little experiments in mindfulness which we’ll explore in another session.
2 - Reactions and responses. Why do we end up saying and doing things we don’t mean and how do we get away from these habitual behaviours?
The basic, prehistoric part of the human brain holds our instinctive reactions and behaviours. In evolutionary terms, this kept us safe from danger, including predators and unnecessary risk. Behaviours learned from our elders and peers were vital for survival. In the modern day this still applies but as we’re not under the same level of threat from day to day, the most common ways in which this ‘lizard’ brain gets to influence us is by falling back on what we’ve learned from our upbringing, including the reactions and responses that our parents taught us by their behaviours.
My own example was promising myself I’d never say to my children, “Because I said so!” I hated being told this as a child, so when it came out of my own mouth one day, I was shocked and felt like a complete failure. Understanding that my brain was only trying to keep me safe and help me out of a tight spot really helped me to shift my thinking.
In discussion, a group member talked about repairing and reframing. We’ll definitely talk about this some more.
3 - Self-identity. Speaking up for ourselves and setting this as an example for our children.
For me, this relates to self-care. As parents, we sometimes fall into the trap of feeling like we have to sacrifice our own lives for those of our children. That was the starting point for this topic. And this is what I want Balanced Parents to be all about! Of course we want to meet our children’s needs and go far beyond that to offer them as many opportunities as we can, but does that really need to be at the expense of losing what makes us who we are?
I believe the answer is a resounding NO! and I aim to look at the different aspects of parenting and how, by keeping our own needs in the equation, we can ALL thrive - not just the children.
I asked two questions:
What’s one activity that you used to enjoy before becoming a parent that you’ve forgotten about or feels impossible now?
When it feels like there’s no quality time in the day for ourselves, can we learn to treat the brief, small moments that we do have as self-care moments - stepping outside, letting our eyes rest on an object of beauty or interest, lying down and closing our eyes for a moment?
Taking care of ourselves is not only an essential element of speaking up for ourselves, it’s also a great example to set to our children at every stage of their development.