Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Conscious Parenting: Present but not Perfect
Have you ever felt like walking a tightrope whenever you try to balance between gentleness and firmness in parenting? Do you find it challenging to stay present and intentional in your interactions with your children? If yes, then this episode is for you. Join us as we journey through conscious parenting – not about perfection, but about being engaged, mindful, and aware. We'll discuss how these principles apply to setting boundaries, providing love and respect, and enforcing rules and consequences, all the while nurturing the emotional intelligence of your child.
This episode also shines a spotlight on empathic parenting and the profound importance of understanding and validating your child's emotions. We'll elaborate on the concept of 'emotional bank accounts,' teaching you how to invest in your child's emotional well-being, and enlightening you about loving firmness. By the end, you'll have gained insights that will significantly aid you in your rewarding journey of conscious parenting. Tune in, and let's explore this together.
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Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognisably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Uttar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:When I think about conscious parenting, I see it as a distinct approach, quite different from gentle parenting. Conscious parenting, as the term suggests, involves being fully present and intentional in your interactions with your children. It's about establishing firm rules while delivering your message with love and understanding. It's a balanced blend of gentleness and firmness. Imagine your gardener and your child being a young plant. To let it grow and flourish, you need to provide it with enough sunlight and water and nutrients, but you also need to prune it occasionally to encourage growth. That's what conscious parenting is like. You're offering your child the nourishment of love, empathy and understanding, while also asserting necessary rules and standards for their behavior.
Speaker 1:Most importantly, parenting is about follow through with consequences. If you tell your child that there will be particular consequences for their specific actions, you make sure to enforce it. But it's not done with anger, resentment or frustration. It's handled calmly, firmly, lovingly, without raising your or their stress level or causing any harm. The lack of follow through is possibly the most harmful thing you can do to a child as a parent. If you said this will happen if they don't come back on time, or if they have their location settings turned off, or if they don't get off from their screens on time, whatever you said will happen as a consequence needs to happen. Otherwise they will lose faith in your parenting. Enforcing and following through is the most important aspect of these boundaries, but the most important thing I want to mention is the lack of follow through happens because we, as parents, get uncomfortable with the consequences. What our fear is? What if our consequences end up hurting the child? That's the fear that we carry when we're trying to implement rules but can't be successful. That's when you can't follow through and that's when the child learns that there are no consequences for their actions and, of course, they learn to continue to break the rules. I see parents do this from a place of genuine love for their kids, but in their love, they're actually harming them. It's not easy to implement rules. It certainly requires a good deal of self-awareness and emotional management. In these moments, I encourage you to remind yourself that this is an opportunity to model emotional intelligence for your children by managing your own emotions. In difficult situations, you're teaching your children how to do the same.
Speaker 1:Conscious parenting isn't about being a perfect parent. It's about being a present parent. It's about being aware of both your child's needs and your own. It's about creating strict accountability while also allowing room for growth and understanding. It's about guiding your child with love, respect, consistency, helping them grow into balanced and emotionally intelligent individuals. So, while the path of conscious parenting may have its challenges, the rewards are truly profound.
Speaker 1:So conscious parenting to me has many faces. It's about mindful parenting. I see it as an act of being truly present in the moment with your children, intentionally paying attention to their needs and emotions, without judgment Good or bad. For instance, when your child throws a tantrum because they don't want to go to bed, instead of reacting instantly with annoyance or frustration, mindful parenting will encourage you to pause, understand the emotion of the child that they're experiencing and respond calmly and thoughtfully. Conscious parenting to me is about being aware. Aware parenting is being cognizant of your child's needs, meeting them with love and understanding. It's about being in tune with your child's cues and responding to them effectively. For example, if you notice that your child's been quiet and withdrawn, aware parenting will urge you to reach out, ask them about their day, provide them comfort and assurance. Conscious parenting is about the hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam All of you are shepherds and each of you is responsible for his flock.
Speaker 1:Conscious parenting to me is about intentional parenting. It's about making conscious, deliberate choices in your parenting practices. It means you don't parent on autopilot, but you think through all of your intentions behind your actions. For example, rather than resorting to habitual scolding when your child forgets to do their homework, you might choose to sit with them, discuss, teach responsibility, work out a plan together for better homework management. Conscious parenting to me is about thoughtful parenting, considering the long-term impact of your actions and words on your children. It's about present parenting. It's about giving your children the gift of your full attention, focusing entirely on the moment and hand, even if it's for a short while and if you haven't been fully mentally present for your children in the beginning. It's not going to be about giving them full attention for 24-7. It's just going to be about a few moments of deep, meaningful interaction.
Speaker 1:I always say 3 minutes of present parenting is a lot more than absent parenting of a whole day, where you are physically there but mentally checked out, like when your child might be sharing their day's experience with you and you aren't just physically there but also mentally and emotionally present, actively listening and responding with your body cues and your verbal cues. This nurturing presence creates a safe, loving environment for children to express themselves freely. This is about more attentiveness for a short period of time than it is about less attentiveness over longer periods, and this type is not tolling on you as a human being, compared to trying to be present 24-7 and beating yourself up for not being able to do it or completely calling it quits altogether and not being present at all. If you feel distant from your kids, just allow your 3 minutes of genuine and heartfelt connection to be the cause of celebration. The brain will make it mean that it's not enough time. You can just tell the brain that's all I can do today and that's fine.
Speaker 1:Conscious parenting to me is empathic parenting. It's about feeling and understanding your child's emotions, like if your child is upset because they didn't make it to the school's soccer team. You validate their feelings of disappointment rather than dismissing or minimizing these feelings. Children learn to dismiss themselves through our language towards them. If it's a hot day and you turn the AC in your car on full blast and your kid says, not so high, I'm really cold. You'll have a tendency to say Are you crazy? It's so hot, you're not cold. The child will learn that the cold air from the AC hitting their face and them feeling cold is an invalid experience and they will learn self-doubt. They will learn to second-guess themselves. It's one thing to be empathic with the kids and understanding their emotions. It's another thing entirely to validate them and let them know what they feel is true.
Speaker 1:Conscious parenting, to me, is about reflective parenting. It involves thoughtful introspection about your actions and reactions as a parent. If you find yourself losing patience with your children, instead of continuing down that path, take a step back, reflect on your feelings and move to respond more calmly and constructively. So when I talk about conscious parenting, a whole bunch of terms come to mind Balanced, wise, respectful, considerate, attentive, affectionate, guided. Above all, conscious parenting to me means loving, firmness and mindfully disciplining. So with all of these definitions, I want to give you a practical tool to implement in your conscious parenting, and this comes from a book I read a long time ago and I don't even recall what this book is, but the concept sticks with me, and that has to do with you putting currency in your bank account as a parent to your child, and this is an emotional bank account with invisible made-up energy, and this energy is the money that you're investing in their bank account. There are going to be times where you're going to need to withdraw money from this bank account when it's time to do not-so-gentle parenting, because it's not always going to feel gentle and harmonious or respectful, because there will be plenty of times where the rules would need to be implemented and the kids would need to be redirected firmly and it will not feel gentle and harmonious. It will feel quite the opposite. This does not mean that you're doing something wrong. It just means that it's time to make a withdrawal from an emotional bank account that you've already invested a lot of positive energy into.
Speaker 1:What comes to my mind when I think about gentle, harmonious parenting is passive parenting, letting the kids run the show. Yes, you let them decide their outcomes, to an extent even let them learn through their negative natural consequences, but you decide what is the limit of that If you, as a parent, determine that there is imminent or future moral or physical harm and that the child can inflict serious self-harm because of their actions and decisions. You need to engage in active, conscious parenting. There needs to be loving firmness, mindful disciplining not reactivity, but reflective, conscious parenting. Not perfect parenting, but present parenting.
Speaker 1:So let's say you have a teenage girl and you spend time with her, empathically present, fully engaged, mindful, actively listening when she shares, passively attuned when she's withdrawn. All of this is going to contribute to the emotional bank account that your child is accumulating. What you're doing to put deposits in this bank account is that you're showing unconditional love. Your interactions with her are not just transactional. They're more than just demands. You're accepting her in your implicit, non-verbal language and explicitly in your spoken language. You tell her you love her just because she is her. You love her just the way she is, not because she cleaned up after herself, not because she's protective of her little brother and advises him to do the right thing. You love her despite of her good and bad qualities. This is you putting money in the emotional bank account that you can later make withdrawals from.
Speaker 1:So let's say you've created this nurturing environment, but one day she wants to go out dressed up as something you don't consider modest. Your rules will immediately come into play. You will tell her this is not acceptable. You don't go out looking like this. This is where you will need to withdraw from your emotional bank account. She will possibly throw a fit. She will give you evidence about how all her friends are doing it. She will tell you how she is still dressed way more modestly compared to any of her other friends. She has the right to her life. You are backwards. She will push your buttons that you didn't know existed.
Speaker 1:But if you have decided on your own rules consciously, not out of your own insecurities it's going to be about loving firmness. For you as a parent, it's going to be about consequences that she will face if she doesn't listen to you. What ends up happening is that in our traditional parental training we are not taught how to enforce boundaries with love. That's why I never really got behind the concept of gentle parenting. To me, gentle parenting knows nothing about loving firmness, because in this case, if you are not firm, your daughter will harm herself, at least in your own rules that you've set.
Speaker 1:Gentle parenting to me is not about causing any disruption of their peace. It's not about causing any ripples in their life through your rules, because the fear is that you will cause trauma. But the point is that some disruption needs to happen, because she will learn the importance of your rules through lessons in her life or she can learn them through you. Who do you think will be more loving to her the world or you? I was discussing this dynamic with my cousin once and she said, yeah, your kids need to learn a lesson. They can learn it through mother nature or they can learn it through mother kawal. The same applies to you. Your kids can learn their lessons from mother nature or you as a mother and I couldn't have put it better. I laughed at that so hard for like five minutes straight. She's just so funny.
Speaker 1:Okay, but now also take time out to remember that you do not cause somebody else's trauma. If the proponents of gentle parenting tell you that you're causing your child harm, then again, your children are bound to see some difficulty in life, regardless of if you give them rules or not. Also, remembering that you do not cause somebody else's trauma their trauma is caused by their nervous system. Depending on how dead set your daughter is about dressing like she is, you will have to enforce rules that will take that much effort on your part and the more she wants her way, the more quote unquote traumatic this experience can be for her. This level of rule setting needs a very careful follow through with love, respect, acceptance of her as an individual and you telling your daughter all of that from an open space that she is loved and cared for despite of her choices, good or bad, but the rules still stand. When she is facing thoughts like how unfair you are, how cruel, how mean, how rude, your job is to remain in a peaceful, tranquil energy. Your job is to be the parent. Your job is to remain untriggered and it's to love her through her traumatic experience and provide support for her. Remain a conscious parent, no matter how rebellious your brain says your daughter has become. If you fall into that energy of she is a brat, she is disrespectful, she is disobedient, then you will have no room to hold her trauma that her nervous system is causing because you are enforcing your rules. Our kids need us to be their parents. When we start judging them for being kids, we turn into children ourselves Again.
Speaker 1:It takes a lot of emotional intelligence skills on your part. Or let's say, for example, you see your son study for an exam and he doesn't do well. You see this pattern unfold. You support, you love, you encourage, you help him, try not to internalize these failures. But he decides he is not smart enough to go to college. That might be the time for loving firmness, withdrawal from the emotional bank account. You tell him I will not allow you to talk yourself like that in front of me. I will not stand for it. He will fight you for his limiting belief. He will say but I'm dumb, I barely pass my classes. I'm not cut out for this.
Speaker 1:If you've decided as a rule you will not allow him to have self-hate, you will have to engage in active, conscious parenting. You will allow for his discomfort, but you will also direct him out of it Lovingly and firmly. Conscious parenting, present but not perfect. And the same with video games or screen times or eating a lot of sugar. All of these are the biggest addictions for our kids these days. If you set restrictions on device use, they will throw ultimate tantrum to try and get you to bend your rules, because dopamine from these devices is extremely addicting. Their brains will find a way to get the next hit.
Speaker 1:But it's your job as a conscious, loving, imperfect parent to let them go through their discomfort of withdrawal While you hold them in love that a device or sugar can never give them. Maybe you don't physically hold them, or maybe you do, but if they don't want to be held, especially if they're actively throwing things around, you can just accept them for their discomfort from a distance, keeping them safe. Dopamine withdrawal is no joke. Imagine the last time you had to give up soda or caffeine or binge watching TV or your favorite drink. The cravings, the irritability, the mind that is overloaded with attention to just your object of desire that's what the kids go through when you remove them from their devices. You can create loving firmness from empathy. They will be angry, irritable, they will not feel hunger, they will go hours without sleep, only to crash from exhaustion afterwards. But you will stay strong in your loving firmness of your conscious parenting, knowing what is good for them and what is not.
Speaker 1:I myself have many protocols around how much time I spend putting money in the emotional bank account for my children, and I have even more clear protocols about when disciplining needs to happen, that I keep my triggers in check and I love them through their pain. When you see them in pain, your brain will say you will cause this pain. If you weren't this strict, they wouldn't be in pain. But that's not actually true, because if you didn't have roles, they would create pain from the false pleasures of this world and they would find roles somewhere else and in that case, life would teach them the hard way what you can otherwise teach them today in your loving, firm way. I love the whole idea of conscious parenting and I love the idea of doing it imperfectly. I love the idea of loving my kids.
Speaker 1:Alhamdulillah, and for all of these blessings that children give us in our lives. Alhamdulillah for this design. As a parent, you have all the brain power you will ever need to become an emotionally intelligent and conscious parent, because you are in this position and Allah swt does not give you any situation that you can't handle. With that, I pray to Allah. May Allah protect our kids, our loved ones, and give us the ability to be the best parents and guide our children to the Divine Message. O Allah, keep us and our kids on the straight path, as the ultimate guidance comes only from you. Please keep me in your doors. I will talk to you guys next time.