The Conscious Parent

(Michael S) #1

equips your children for their adult years, in which a healthy
interdependence is the hallmark of successful intimate relationships.
To accept children requires disengaging from toxic life-scripts and
engaging each child on a cellular level. When you attune yourself to a
child’s uniqueness, you realize it’s futile to try to parent with a
cookiecutter approach. Instead, each child requires something different
from you. Some children need a parent to be soft and gentle, whereas
others need the parent to be more assertive—even “in their face.” Once
you accept your children’s basic nature, you can contour your style to
meet their temperament. To do so means letting go of your fantasies of
yourself as a certain kind of parent and instead evolving into the parent
you need to be for the particular child in front of you.
Before I became a parent, I had a vision of who my child would be.
When I learned I was having a girl, I had countless expectations of her.
Surely, I thought, she would have all my positive attributes. She would
be gentle, soft, and artistically inclined. She would be innocent and
infinitely malleable.
When my daughter’s spirit began to develop, I realized she was
anything but what I had anticipated. She is gentle, yes, but in a vigorous
and assertive way. She has a take-charge approach and can be boisterous
and stubborn. She is also anything but an artist. Her mind isn’t dreamy
like mine, but highly mechanical and logical. In temperament, rather
than being “innocent” or even gullible, she is street smart and clever.
More than anything, she isn’t a “pleaser,” a role I never dared step out of
when I was a child. Instead, she is who she is, unapologetically.
It was a challenge to accept the reality of the daughter who had come

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