Journey to a New Life

I watched two of the little mermaid movies recently with Cesar, and watching it again for the first time in a very looong time opened up a cool dimension for myself.

Watching it and being a parent - well, watching it and being both someone's child and a parent to a child -- I was paying particular attention to the relationship between the little mermaid and her father while watching.

It was mostly the third movie, which was actually made after the first one but tells the story of the little mermaid when she was even more little that gave me some food for thought.

In this movie they show how Ariel's mother died, and how this broke her father, Triton, his heart. Her parents had a "special connection" which revolved around music and after the mother dies Triton bans all music: no one is allowed to make music or even sing. Then the movie fastforwards to ten years later, where Ariel and her sisters are older. Ariel is an expressive girl but the Kingdom is ruled my monotone routines where any form of fun, laughter or enjoyment set her father off in a fit of rage -- telling her to 'behave'. Stuff happends, and Ariel finds out about some underground music/dancing club and then before your know it so does Triton.

He of course blows up and gets freaking angry -- at which point the little mermaid basically has got "enough" of it and tells him 'what's what'.

I was going "Wow, she's brave!"

And then in the movie something happens.

He gets it.

And he changes his behaviour.

Cause while I was watching the movie and the ten years went by, I was think "Woah, ten years went by and nothing changed? No-one went up to him and questioned what he is doing? And now they are still living the same shitty life?"

And then it dawned to me:

"Shit, I did the exact same thing".

Growing up, my dad had a lot of anger issues and as a result I molded myself to be small and invisible to prevent any type of triggers going off to which my dad could blow. It is quite fascinating, because even the face of Ariel's father and how his face looks when he gets angry is quite similar to that of my own father.

And I did the same as in the movie. I did not once question his anger. I accepted and allowed it. I saw it as 'his right' to be angry and to not be questioned for it.

So instead of 10 years, I lived under the same monotone and miserable conditions for 18 years -- assuming that questioning my dad, or making it a point of telling him that this is not cool would result in my total oblitiration. While all the while, someone questioning him and telling him 'what's what' could have been exactly THE THING that would have snapped him out of it, so we could ALL move on and have some fun in life.

So that one decision, as the acceptance and allowance of anger within another, and so within me = determined my whole life.

Because, what is anger?
Fascinatingly enough, around the same time as watching the movie I went through my own little bout of anger and so had a nice opportunity to really look at what it is all about.

So anger -- when I looked at it, being in it -- I saw that the anger and the intensity of my anger was actually a measurement/reflection to the extent that I wasted potential, that I did not take responsibility for something or things that are in my response ability.
And more I do not actively take responsibility for things in my life, the angrier I get.
Then, anger gets used as a safety net. Everyone knows what the presence of anger feels like and how it is sooo very tempting to not 'step into' that net and set it off. And that's exactly what angry people are counting on. They count on you being afraid of this energy they are resonating, so that you would not question them and their actions, so that they can continue not changing, so that they can continue abdicating responsibility.

So while anger is this big WOOOOOOOAAAHHHH energy -- behind it hides a small person who's too afraid to take responsibility and take the steps they need to take to sort out the things in their life that are causing the anger. Meaning -- there's things playing out in their life which are undesirable, BUT which they have the power to change. Anger comes in, when that power is not being used but left to waste and then just goes towards powering their anger.

So what I have been pushing myself to do when I come into contact with someone who is in a state of anger, is to not focus on the energy of anger which is intimidating (and is what I have feared all my life), but to look at what it represents and the underlying point causing it. And what I've realised is that I cannot direct an angry person by focusing and directign the anger, as the anger is not really the point. The point is the responsibility which was abdicated. And if I can put my finger on it and show the person exactly what they abdicated and how -- then the anger simply disappears.

And man, have I really been wondering what my life could have looked like if I had realised this one simple thing.... Aaah the regret

In my previous blog I ended off with how one can become reactive and resentful within wanting to hold on to one’s ‘off time’ when a child needs your sudden attention. This point also links in with a previous blog I wrote, Day 51: Why Babies throw Tantrums | Parenting & Fairness, where one can become ‘unhappy’ and throw inner tantrums when you compare the moment/situation you are in vs. the situation/moment you would rather be in as what would make you happy (eg. Current moment ‘changing frantic screaming baby’s dirty diaper’ vs. desired moment ‘sitting down, reading newspaper with cup of coffee’).

Within this blog, I want to investigate a different dimension that is connected to this point of being unhappy when faced with parenting responsibilities and wishing that you could be doing something else that would make you ‘happy’ – specifically looking at: what determines our happiness?

If we go back to the scenario of the previous blog where we have the two parents relaxing / enjoying some off time and both not wanting to give this up when being faced with a needy child; we can already see/identify a first ‘clue’. Here, I am looking at how one labels/compartmentalizes one’s time in ‘work-time/child-time’ and ‘off-time/relax-time’.
When we create labels for what we are doing, because they refer to distinctly different experiences of ourselves during these different time-periods = something’s up.

In terms of the scenario, self had created a polarized experience, whereby tending to the child was distinctively ‘negative’ while ‘not tending to the child’ as ‘off-time’ was a distinctively positive experience. So in this case ‘not tending to the child’ makes self happy because then you can do ‘whatever you want’ without being limited by a child who needs your attention.

So, why does this make you happy? And why does tending to one’s child make you unhappy?
If we have a look at what determines our happiness, we need to look at the things we find valuable in life, what we find meaningful. When we identify the variables of value and meaning, we can determine what makes us happy, where if x (value) and y (meaning) is in place = I am happy.

If we look at what society promotes as being of value and meaning in life, we come up with factors such as:

- freedom (of choice)
- money
- beauty
- career/status
- individual identity
- partying/events
- consumerism
= ego, freedom and selfishness

So when we take these ‘values’ and translate them into parenthood then...yes – life is hell.

Because parenthood means:
- absolute responsibility for another life
- being practical with money
- dealing with body changes / minimal time towards looking presentable
- spending time home / with kids
- personal sacrifice
- being on a schedule / getting all the sleep you can get
- cleaning up after another / managing a household
= humbleness, responsibility and selflessness

So if we look at what society promotes and values, we find these things to be completely absent within the world of motherhood/parenting. Being a housewife / stay-at-home-mother has become stigmatized and looked down up – why would anyone ‘give up’ doing something meaningful with their life to look after children and staying at home?! You could be having a career, be productive, going out and do things whenever you want!!

So then looking after a child, changing diapers, wiping butts, making food, cleaning up, feeding and whatever else is involved in taking care of a child becomes an experience of being ‘degraded’ and ‘suffering’ because it doesn’t fall within the category of value and meaning that has been fed to us through and by society. The worst part is that one actually believes self to be ‘unhappy’ and ‘not doing anything of value/meaning’ and not seeing/realising that self was not the directive principle within deciding for oneself what you find valuable and meaningful in life, but instead went with the ideas, pictures and imaginations sold by our consumerist and capitalistic society. Society’s values are all about accumulating, while that of parenting is that of giving away.

This schizophrenia of values reminds me of an article I read a while ago, where a person went into a hospital for a hip surgery but ended up dying from dehydration. Why? Because everyone thought that getting the patient water was ‘beneath’ them, after all they are a surgeon/doctor/this or that and surely it’s not their job to do something ‘ordinary’ like bringing someone water? Surely someone with less important things to do can take care of this?

And then the man died.

This nicely illustrates how within our obsession with career/status/prestige, our individual identity and self-importance – leads us to neglect important, life-enabling factors such as providing someone water because it’s ‘too ordinary’. We look at things in terms of specialness and ordinariness, and make our decisions according to what we believe will add to our own splendour.

Similarly within parenting/motherhood, we have forgotten the value and importance of tending to a child, performing ‘ordinary tasks’ – because they create no grandeur, they don’t add to your amazing personality and no-one’s there to pat your back and say how amazingly productive you are.

Parenting is the business of life. And life is not about all the imaginary concepts we’ve promoted and elevated to godliness. Life isn’t about personal grandeur, beauty, freedom and self-interest. It’s about eating, shitting, sleeping and looking after each other. It’s about guiding one another and creating responsible human beings who in the future will ensure responsibility towards themselves, others and their environment.

With the values we are currently upholding, the only thing we are ensuring is for life to go down the drain. Everyone’s so busy going ‘me! Me! Me!’ and ‘Money! Money! Money!’ – that we forget to look around ourselves and spend our (oh so precious time that we could be spending doing whatever the f*ck we want) time towards life-enabling and life-supporting goals such as ensuring proper housing, proper food security, proper education, etc. – all these ‘ordinary’ things, all these things which are absolutely vital to life.

So we are not just dealing with a value crisis in parenting, but a value crisis over all – which becomes reflective within parenting.

To be continued

 In some of my previous blogs (Day 60 , Day 61) I wrote about how comparing yourself and your responsibilities to that of another, specifically the father of your child – can be a source of inner conflict within self.

Because being a mother is a very specific role, you cannot compare it to being a father – and even more so if you as the mother are the primary caretaker of the child while the father is primarily the breadwinner. You’re both looking after your child(ren), but in different ways. The mother through a one-on-one direct approach, the father through creating financial stability to ensure a proper environment for the children/family to live and grow up in.

Another point which I identified within this framework of ‘fairness’ and ‘comparison’ (well, they’re really one framework, comparison always precedes fairness) is that of ‘fear of missing out’.

Having children/a family can be a stressful situation. Especially if not so long ago it was just you and your partner, there were fewer responsibilities and fewer financial pressure. When a child enters reality, both these aspects grow exponentially. Suddenly you are overrun with things to do in relation to your child, and your spending pattern suddenly takes a surge. What I found here is that in essence your ‘survival mode’ knob gets switched up a bit higher, and both mother and father are more tensed.

Then, when there is a moment during the day where both parents can relax / take some time off from one’s responsibilities and ‘switch out’ from survival mode; both parents will tend to want to ‘hold on’ to that time/moment. If then your child suddenly needs attention, obviously one of the parents needs to attend to the child and step away from one’s relax/fun time. And here something interesting happens, where neither of the parents want to go and stand as the point of support for the child, because both parents believe/perceive that they are entitled to their own ‘time off’ and that it is ‘the other’ who should go and stand as the point. This is even more so, if you are still holding on to comparisons between yourself and your partner, where you’ve still been comparing your responsibilities to that of your partner and believe that you got the short end of the stick and that within you ‘suffering more’, your partner should now go and you should be allowed to stay in your ‘off time’. Within this fairness point playing out, there is also a fear that if one goes and tend to the child, that there is a chance your partner was more rested/more up to it than you are and so ‘more suitable’ to go tend to the child than you are, where you fear that your partner is now enjoying himself ‘unduly’ – time that *you* could have been spending enjoying yourself in some time off. So with this added dimension, where you fear you are being taken advantage of – you will resist tending to your child not because you’re not physically up for it, but because you don’t want your partner to ‘cash in’ on your actions; where there’s now this whole mental competition game playing out between the two parties involved, where each one will be reluctant to do what needs to be done because each one is suspicious of one another and fear missing out.

This then opens the door for strange behaviour such as insisting that ‘both go’ so that ‘both miss out’, believing that this creates a more ‘equal scenario’, whilst this only satisfies one’s fairness construct. Or the opposite where one insist on making plans where both can have ‘off time’, not because you necessarily want to spend time together, but because you don’t want to experience yourself as ‘missing out’.

To be continued…

This is a continuation to: Day 60: Being a Mother is not like Being a Father | Parenting & Fairness
In my previous blog I explained how I initially would become quite reactive towards my partner, within comparing my situation with his – where I would stay at home and take care of the baby while he would spend most of the day and evening at work, leaving little space and time for him to help out with the baby.

This reactive state and inner-conflict I would experience was very unpleasant, and not something I wanted to keep up with. So I gave myself a moment to look at my experience, the reactions that I was having and the nature of my thoughts.

One point which I’ve gotten pretty used to in my process, is that whenever I have experiences, reactions and thoughts which keep moving away from myself towards another – where my focus and fixation is on another person being ‘the problem’, being ‘at issue’ – I know that I am dealing with a very serious case of denial lol.

So here what I did for myself, was to first remove my partner from the whole equation. Who would I be and how would I experience myself if my partner was not here at all – so I would have nothing to compare to, no-one to point fingers at. I realised, that I would still be unhappy and would find something or someone else to complain about. I also realised that, within removing the element of ‘hope’, where I would ‘hope’ my partner to help out / help out more – I saw that I would move myself to run things more efficient, and that if I put my will behind it – I would make the situation work for myself = because I would have to.

So this gave me my first clue. That I could be doing things differently, that there was room for change, for improvement coming from my side only - but that I had created a relationship of dependency to/towards my partner within the ‘hope’ that he would help out to make things easier for me – instead of me stepping things up for myself, and pushing beyond some of my own limitations to come to a satisfactory outcome.

Then, I also imagined the opposite – where I would place myself in the ‘ideal situation’ which I had been whining and complaining about inside myself, as the ideal I was hoping for / expecting. And again I realised = I would still be unhappy. It may not be about practical helping out points that would make life with a baby more manageable / less intensive – but would emerge under a different picture, a different play-out – but I could sense inside myself that the dissatisfaction would still remain.

In a way this makes sense, because when looking at the worst-case-scenario: I am forced to move myself, I am forced to step it up – to level my living to what I know I can potentially live and be.

Within the worst-case-scenario my dependency and so postponement of me fully taking charge of myself and my life was revealed and it was clear that the only way to have things be different, is if I do things / live things differently – there was no space to seek for someone else to fix things for me.
In the best-case-scenario – I ‘get what I want’ as having an easier life and my point of weakness is covered/compensated for with someone else standing as a point of support for me that ‘I can count on’, and that I am actually holding back, postponing and not living to my full potential is being obscured / not as easy to see and identify, because I am now ‘contained’ and ‘in my comfort zone’ where I do not get wrought up and where nothing’s prodding me, nothing’s stimulating to question my experience/my situation and so I settle for this limited version of myself and compromised living.

Yet, this experience of comfort would only last for so long, and some new outlet, some new point that one could be unhappy about would soon emerge – until that one gets satisfied, and then a new point of dissatisfaction would pop up – where the ‘problem’ jumps from being one point to another – and another. And because the ‘problem’ keeps being out there, keeps being something else, one will remain convinced that the problem is real, that each problem is a ‘different problem on its own’ – while they are merely different outlets for the same problem, a problem which resides within self that that self does not want to look at / tackle.

So – after looking at all of these dimensions, all of these points inside myself I decided to take on that which I was postponing, that which I was resisting inside myself. To be okay with the challenging situation that I was finding myself in and to find ways to make it work, within and without myself.

I communicated with my partner, to make sure that we are on the same page – that we help each other out according to our own ability, which we realise is variable. We realised that we can’t always know 100% if we are helping out as much as we can, if we couldn’t really do more and that we would never be able to know 100% if the other is helping out as much as they could – and that this would not matter. What mattered was that each of us individually was doing the best we can. Then, comparison falls away because you are your own reference point to judge whether or not something could improve. What another can or can’t do becomes irrelevant – even if it so happens that they are ‘doing less than’ what they actually could be doing, you can never know for sure; and this would be their own process point to walk and one can only stand as example. Within this, you then also ensure that you direct your own self-movement, and that your movement is not dependent on what another is or isn’t doing.

So we decided that we each work with our own self-honesty, assess our own individual situations and take into consideration the other – and accordingly make a decision to help out or not help out. So that, we first and foremost respond to our own individual needs of our respective lives, and know that the other is okay walking/responding to their own individual situation, so that we are not dependent on one another. This doesn’t mean that we don’t assist and support one another and that we live ‘completely separate lives’ – but that this assistance and support comes and goes. It is welcomed, it is appreciated but when it is no longer there, it is also not an issue. So that we each are stable within our own realities, and when we can through assistance and support: enhance each other’s’ lives.

I also realised that ‘being a mother’ is a very specific role; and even in terms of your relationship with your child, it will be different than the relationship between the child and the father. It does not have ‘more’ or ‘less’ value – it is just different by design/through the circumstances each one finds oneself in and having to partake in different responsibilities. And unless we find a way to swap bodies – we will always have ‘incomplete information’ about another’s circumstances; which is why it’s a bad idea to make decisions / base your own movement on your interpretation of another person’s reality.

As I was looking at my previous blog about ‘being a mother’ and ‘redefining mother’ – I remember a point I faced here, which also links back into the Fairness point I have been walking in some of my other blogs.

And the point which opened up/that I am looking at is how being a mother is a very specific point, a very specific role. And in the beginning when I just started out walking this role – I had a lot of reactions towards my husband/father of the baby.

This was because I was comparing my role and what I was doing compared to what he was doing. The first 2-3 weeks he was at home and would help out but soon after that he was gone working for prolonged times and I would not see much of him. At times that he was home, I would react if he wasn’t helping out or resting because he was tired of work – and so by implication not being available to help with the baby.

I created a lot of inner conflict and friction about how much he would or would not help out and how he was living his life vs how I was living my life. My life was very restricted to moving from my bed to Cesar’s cot to the rocking chair where I would feed him – with occasional trips to the bathroom. His life on the other hand hadn’t changed much and when the nights were too rough he’d sleep somewhere else so he could still be functional the next day for work.

So there the thoughts started creeping in about ‘how it’s not fair that I am stuck here and can’t go anywhere/do anything’ and ‘he can just go sleep somewhere else, I don’t have that luxury’ and ‘he can go rest when he is tired, and I have to be on constant stand by for the baby no matter how tired I am’, ‘I am sure his work/job is not as intensive as what I am doing with the baby – it’s not fair that he wants to rest and doesn’t help me’ and so on and so on…

This made me be in a snidely mood whenever my husband was around where I was constantly, chronically comparing my situation with his – and we’d easily fall into stupid little arguments/reactions because of this, as my entire attitude was becoming hostile towards him within following the thoughts and energies.

Taking care of a new-born being strenuous on my body, I quickly had enough of the added strain I was creating for myself within myself and in my body within participating in this mind-job so I had a sit down with myself to see what is going on and what I was missing that left me playing out this mind pattern.

To be continued

In my previous blog I explained how a parent’s responsibility starts with self first.

This seems paradoxical, how can my responsibility towards my child start with a responsibility towards myself?

I came across a piece of Osho writing which I find pertinent to this point:

“Nobody has been exploited so much as children -- neither the proletariat nor women, nobody has been exploited so much and so deeply and so destructively as the innocent children. Because they are helpless and dependent they have to learn whatsoever you teach them. They have to imbibe all the falsehoods that you go on forcing upon them. It is a question of survival for them -- they cannot survive without you. It is a question of life and death! They have to be Christians, Hindus, they have to be Mohammedans, they have to be Jainas, they have to be Buddhists, they have to be communists. Whatsoever you are interested in putting into their minds, you go on putting it in. Instead of making them more alert, more aware, more alive, more reflective, instead of making them more mirrorlike, pure, you make them full of ideas...layers and layers of dust. And then it becomes impossible for them to see that which is. They start seeing that which is not and they stop seeing that which is.“

We cannot know, see or assess what is best for a child, if we are coming from a box of ideas. These ideas come from memories of our life, based on experiences we’ve collected. When we want to direct or guide a child, we can only do so from within the limited bounds of the box – as if the ideas in the box are the only options available, and whether they are actually best or not for the child becomes irrelevant – what is relevant is that the ideas and opinions we’ve gathered through life are put to good use.

This is obviously not the best way to go about raising a child.


Why?

Here we come to the dimension of responsibility towards your child that is not directly related to you and where it comes to being all about the child. The child is a person on his own. He or she is a life-form, which came through you, but is not owned by you. Every child has his or her own unique expression, and that expression will differ from your own and other members of the family. Your child as a life-form happened to have come through within your family-setting, but could have sprouted up anywhere else just the same. There should be no entitlement involved in raising children; where you believe you have the right to raise your child ‘this and that way’ because ‘he/she is MY child and I can do with MY children whatever I want’. Children are not supposed to be possessions, they are gifts. They are gifts with an immense amount of responsibility attached to them. Because here we have a life-form, that like Osho says – is completely helpless and dependent – and here we have you, the parent, as an able-bodied individual – that can stand in as a point of support where the child cannot for itself. And everything you do, everything you say will impact the child. Better still, the child counts on it that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re looking after its best interest. It gives you its trust completely.

Most of us have our own experiences with our parents where we are less than happy with the way they treated us, with ways in which they imposed their ideas, their way of doing things, their opinions and their values. Some we rejected forcefully, others we are not even aware we are living. We’ve all seen and realised the extent to which our own parents influenced us and influenced our life’s path. Some we are grateful for, others we’d like to erase from our minds.

So: Who Am I in relationship to my Child? – is that of Self-Support to ensure that one is working on breaking down the walls of self-limitation to open up the way to self’s utmost potential.
Who Is My Child in relationship to Me? – is that of a life-form here to express itself, to develop itself and grow into its utmost potential.

Which then brings us back to the role of the Parent, where Who I Am in relationship to my Child is that of support, direction and guidance – as self has walked and is busy walking the path to utmost potential and is aware of the stumbling blocks, the temptations, the falls, the consequences and what it takes to correct ones misalignments.

Within this, an interesting thing takes place, because as you commit yourself to the development of another to its utmost potential, new dimensions and aspects of yourself and your own self-expression open, where the limits of your potential will shift in the most surprising moments and ways.

So realising that having and raising a child within this principle, the principle of Life, is a task of utmost responsibility – it is best to develop and work on one’s own potential as much as one is able to before taking on this task; as it will make it easier to develop your child’s potential rather than its limitation.

Currently when we look at family and having children, we go by sheer ‘feeling’ to decide when we want to have children. We get a feeling that we want a baby, we get oozie at the idea of having a family, pictures and imaginations start popping in our heads, they seem so nice – and then one day you say the words: I want to have a baby! If you’re lucky, the adults looking at starting a family will first consider their financial stability before entertaining the reality of having a family – but many will allow the feeling and desire for a family/baby to overpower common sense practicality and bring into this world a child that is necessarily compromised.

Raising a child being the responsibility of holding Life in your hand, to grow it, to develop op it without rigidly moulding it, without breaking it – is a massive task in itself. To lay this responsibility unto yourself whilst not being in a financially stable position makes it that much more massive, if not impossible. It is easy to get carried away by feelings, pictures and imaginations of what it would be like to have a child. But realise that there, you are looking at your own ambitions, your own interest of how you want things to be – and are not actually taking into consideration the life of the future child, who will suffer the consequences.

I really want to stress this point because, parenting is the most important job in the world and it’s an all-or-nothing situation. Once you are a parent, that’s is: no take backs – and it’s a responsibility you will have to live with for the rest of your life. It can be fun and rewarding and it can also send you straight down to hell – if you have the choice, prepare yourself in the best way you can to make sure that you are up to the task.

So really, a parent’s responsibility towards the child doesn’t start with self, but starts with self before there is even an actual child.

To be continued

In my previous blog, I laid out how it can be easy to experience yourself being/going into extreme levels of emotions/thoughts/reactions within being faced with the rigors of taking care of a baby, and how this then shapes ‘who you are’ in every moment, whether you are conscious of it or not.

It starts off with being limited to moments only, where you’re attending to one of those tasks that require you to ‘put in some extra’ and where you’re really not ‘into’ doing whatever it is that requires to be done, and a negative energetic charge develops within yourself as you carry out whatever it is you have to do.

This momentary reaction, which is like a form of resistance, basically states that ‘I wish that I was doing something else’ or ‘I wish I didn’t have to do this’. These momentary experiences, come and go as you move around your day/night taking care of your baby, where the moment the ‘task’ is done, the experience is gone (or so it seems). However, with this coming and going of this experience and you allowing this experience to keep coming and going and not directing it – it starts to accumulate to an experience where one day you realise that you’re actually not having much fun at all with your new baby and actually are kind of…unhappy.

It’s kind of interesting, because at that stage – you’re not yet actually chronically unhappy. I noticed this myself after working on the point, that I wasn’t actually unhappy, but within allowing such fleeting reactions to accumulate, in that moment that you become more aware of your self-experience - your perception of reality is so skewed/screwed that you think and believe that you’re unhappy *all the time*, and from that moment on you actually start to actively project this experience of unhappiness unto every moment/every task and then in essence bring it to life/make it a reality for yourself which you then start to resonate throughout your day.

Now, within being an adult and having been successfully raised within morality – you know that you shouldn’t be acting on these type of feelings/experiences. Meaning, just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean that you’re not going to carry out your responsibilities towards your baby because that would be ‘wrong’. Yet, even though we know we won’t be acting upon our experience, we will still stubbornly hold on to it, believing that we are right to experience this way and that what we experience is an accurate reflection of ‘how things are in reality’. Though for children, your baby – it doesn’t matter that you are not acting upon it (well, of course they do benefit from you still carrying out your responsibilities)– they still know how you actually feel, and what it is that you are actually holding within yourself while you interact with them. They can see, and feel that you’re unhappy/not doing what you’d like to be doing – and can in essence, see your ‘inner tantrum’ as the energy you experience within yourself while you carry out that which you do not want to do.

So what your baby learns then and there, is that it’s okay and acceptable to have this energetic experience of being ‘unhappy’ when ‘things are not the way you like’. And even though you may not be acting upon it in those moments, you are still keeping the energy alive which means that you agree with it; and that’s all that a baby needs to know to start copying this pattern and live it out.

One thing that has to be taken into consideration though, is that a baby/child is not ‘innocent’ in that it in its very nature as the result of the acceptances and allowances of the generations who came before – have a tendency to ‘react’ when things don’t go their way. Yet, this behaviour and tendency can very easily be addressed when you’re ‘on it’, and when you do not accept and allow such behaviour within yourself. The tendency then doesn’t have space to develop/grow and the child/baby then learns whatever other example they have been given. It however does mean that the ease with which they will develop and grow this tendency into an actual behavioural pattern = is greater.

I was reading another article the other day in one of the baby / parenting magazines that we got. The article was about disciplining your child through teaching it self-discipline. I thought “Ok, let’s check this out”.

So then the article starts talking about how important it is to inform your child when your child is faced with particular decisions in life. With this they meant that you should always explain to your child what their choices consist of and explain the consequences of each one of those decisions. Like that, your child is able to make an informed decision and is empowered to take self-responsibility for the outflow of their actions. I was like “Oh my god, someone’s actually making sense in this magazine, let me continue reading”.
So now that they explained kind of the ‘background’ behind their ‘method’, they go on giving an example of how you should practically implement this point, where you as the parent explain the consequences of the choices your child makes. The event they are using to demonstrate their example is that of your child about to draw on the wall. So here it goes, this is how you can teach your child, common sense reasoning, self-responsibility and empower them – ready? :”If you draw on the wall” (=choice) –> “You will not get cake” (= consequence).

SERIOUSLY???

How is the existence and presence of a piece of cake – physically, intrinsically linked to the physical existence of a wall and the action of drawing on it – that makes it so that the moment you draw on the wall, you can be assured that there won’t be any cake around for you. How the hell does that work? How is that consequence? That’s not consequence, that’s you blackmailing your child and you don’t even have the guts to do it straight out – no, you do it in a way where the child will think that HE is responsible for setting into motion these events by drawing on the wall. That’s so absolutely mean!!!
I mean, explaining consequence to child in terms of the choices they make, should be explaining how if they do A, then B will happen as a direct consequence (and not one you’ve just conjured up to suit yourself), where this consequence is absolute in every way. Because obviously by the time your 20 and you draw on your wall and you put out a piece of cake on the table for yourself, and you draw on that wall and keep your eyes on the cake – you will see that it does not disappear or ‘go away’ in any way whatsoever. That’s because ‘there’s not going to be cake if you draw on the wall’ is not real consequence, it’s just your parents threatening you while upholding the illusion that you ‘have a choice’. Sure, VERY empowering.

And then we get surprised that our children to bad in school and have a hard time developing critical reasoning skills. Well obviously – I mean, if you teach them that ‘1 + 1 = banana’ (yes, that’s right ‘banana’, not even a NUMBER), how do you expect them to get stuff that is actually supposed to make sense? Did you really ‘inform’ your child when you said that ‘he will not get cake if he draws on the wall’? Did the child just learn anything about the consequences of drawing on a wall and what such decision entails within its implications? No! Because all your child knows, is that somehow, by some godly divine power that does not have to make sense – he will not get cake. He doesn’t get to learn for instance, that if you draw on a wall,that that drawing will stay on it , until you clean it up.  So you either have to be okay with the drawing being on the wall forever or you got to clean it up. Then of course you also have to consider the other people living in the house with that particular wall and if they are okay with the drawing staying on their forever, so you gotta check that as well before you decide to draw on the wall, unless you know you’re going to clean it up afterwards.

Consequence would be, where if you don’t feed your pet bunny and give him clean water, that his physical body is going to deteriorate as it cannot support itself and the bunny will die.  That is consequence, that is if A then B and there’s no way around it.

If you tell your child ‘no cake’ if you draw on the wall, you are in NO WAY informing your child or putting them in a ‘power position’. Your child has no freaking clue as to why he for instance should or shouldn’t draw on the wall, and he’s got no freaking clue as to how the cake magically disappears if he would draw on the wall. All you are “informing” your child about – is that it’s in the child’s best interest to ‘not do things my mommy and daddy don’t want me to do', because if I do, they will do something to me that I don’t want them to do’. But did he learn anything about drawing on walls? Nope – nothing.

So now obviously if you’re going to practice this little method over and over again, you get a child that has no common sense reasoning skills because he has been taught to accept absurd claims by his parents, and will thus be ineffective in physical reality because he has never been taught to only stick to principles that make sense like 1 + 1 = 2 and the laws of physics (which does not include cakes disappearing if you draw on a wall). On top of that, you get an obedient future citizen who will not question those in power as your mom and dad have clearly shown you that those in power positions do not have to make sense, all you gotta do is listen and do as is expected of you.

Here’s another good one, in terms of ‘how to grab your child’s attention’ when you want to explain him something: use big words. Use words, that sound big and intelligent and that they don’t understand: works every to get their attention!!!

What the hell, seriously? Play the big smarty ass adult who knows big words that you don’t? Do you know what you’re doing to your child? Do you understand that you’re trying to make them feel like dumb little shits that are inferior to you in every way just to ‘grab their attention’ and ‘make them listen’? Do you understand how this affects how they view themselves and all their future relationships in this world and how this will affect their information processing skills just because you think it’s okay to use BIG WORDS as a fear tactic – where they will forevermore feel inadequate and inferior towards words they don’t understand just because you were actually inadequate as a parent? Where in your inadequacy you resorted to manipulation as threats, black mailing your child and bullying them with big words to get them to behave how you want them to?

These type of articles should NOT be appearing in parenting magazines. This type of manipulative BS under the name of ‘good advice’ should simply be ILLEGAL as this is dangerous shit. I mean, you’re busy creating the future, busy creating the future generations of this world – and what they will know is what you teach them. And if you teach them deception, lies and abusive behaviour – then that is what you will get in return. No wonder that the world is in such a mess today – if after so many centuries of ‘evolution’ this is the parenting advice we come up with.

To get some real perspective, I suggest you rather invest in the Parenting: Perfecting the Human Race Series on EQAFE to get an understanding of how you can best assist and support yourself and your child to become the best possible version of themselves.