Mindful Parenting

It’s a bit scary how fast my son is growing up. He is due to start school in a few months and to be honest I’m dreading that day; my wife feels the same but she more easily accepts that this is the next stage in his life. I sometimes fantasize about the ability to freeze time so that we can just stay like we are now. This is not possible and the best I can do is to make the most of the time we now have.

Sun, Son and Dad, courtesy of lovelypetal/flickr

Two steps away, but a million miles apart

One of the nice things about my work is that I get to stay at home. This should mean that I’m there to watch my son grow up; it doesn’t always work like that though. A lot of the time I’m either pounding on my computer keyboard or lost in thought. My son can be sitting right beside me, and mentally I’m not even in the same room. In some ways I’m missing out on much of my son’s life even though I’m physically only a few meters away. It’s not like the ideas that pull me inside my head are that important; not when you compare it to what is happening in the real world. I fear that one day I’ll regret all these moments that were wasted.

Bringing mindfulness into parenting

Mindfulness meditation techniques are something that most Thais will be familiar with; for some folk it is so much part of their life that they wouldn’t even consider it a technique. It is an important idea in Buddhism and involves being fully present in this moment – right now. The nature of our mind is to pull us to the past or future, but when we are mindful we gently combat this tendency by just focusing on now. You don’t have to be Buddhist in order to gain from this type of meditation and we can use it as a means to improve the time we spend with our kids.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do for other people is really be there for them. This is something I picked up as a nurse; in fact it was one of the most important skills I developed during my training. Just listening can be therapeutic, but for it to work we have to be fully focused on the person doing the talking. If our minds are busy thinking about something else, or planning what we are going to say, we are not there for the other person, and they can often tell when we are not really listening. It is the same with our children; if we are only half listening to them or half playing with them it does make a difference. We may be giving our kids the idea that what they think and feel is not as important as our other stuff.

The practice of mindful parenting

Mindful parenting is not something we do for twenty minutes a day, and we don’t need to sit in a half-lotus position to practice it. All we have to do is fully focus on our kids and not allow our thoughts be pulled elsewhere. Of course, it would be difficult to do this type of practice all the time, but we can start small and build from this. We can also improve our ability to be a mindful parent by supplementing this with a more formal meditation practice. Even 20 minutes of sitting meditation a day can make a huge difference to our concentration levels and ability to be mindful the rest of the time. Scientific studies have provided plenty of evidence for the health benefits of meditation and mindfulness; this is something that will improve other aspects of our life as well.

You may be surprised at what a difference it makes to be actually fully present with your kids – I was. One of the strange outcomes of any mindfulness practice is that it can slow down time; this means that we are extending the amount of this precious commodity we have with our children. The world is a different place when we are fully present, and we get to see a lot that we otherwise would have missed.One example of this working in action is that I now try to pay a lot more attention to where my son is looking when we go out places. The result of this is quite startling; we can be in the same physical location but we are observing a completely different scene. The fun thing is that what my son is staring at will be generally be more interesting than what draws my attention.

I’ve discovered that mindful parenting is a relentless mental battle; one which I frequently lose. When I manage to get it right, though, the rewards are easy to appreciate.  My son deserves to have my full attention so it is worth putting my effort into improving this skill. I’ve found that having a regular formal meditation practice does improve my ability to be more mindful with my son, and elsewhere in my life.

A mindful life means being actually present for our life; it involves living in this second and not spending all the time in the future or the past. John Lennon said it well with his song lyric, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. If we are mindless not only can we miss out on much of our own life but also on the few years we have with our children.