What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families Series- Day 26

Consciously Parenting: What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families — *Book 1 of the Consciously Parenting series*

Changing Behaviors Through Connection

Behaviors can change by inflicting fear (emotional or physical pain, abandonment, separation), which creates disconnection, or by adding loving boundaries (understanding, keeping our child safe, curiosity about what is happening for our child), which creates connection.

But when we inflict pain on them, we are saying that stopping this behavior is more important than the child’s need for connection. We are also saying that their behavior is something that just needs to go away and that it exists only to irritate us.

We all parent from a place of fear when we’re worried or stressed, especially because it is the paradigm in which most of us were raised. It is through connecting with ourselves, becoming compassionate with and for ourselves, that we can learn to parent from a place of love and connection. When we are coming from that place, our actions will naturally reflect our connection.

From the book Consciously Parenting: What it Really Takes to Raise Emotionally Healthy Families

Learning this really turned what I thought I knew about parenting on its head. I didn’t know there was any other way to change behaviors.

And once I really got it in my bones, I knew I could never see things the same way again. But when I understood how important my children’s needs for connection were and started putting my attention there, things started to shift in ways I couldn’t have foreseen.

The best part is that this idea literally grew as my children grew. When our children are little, it’s easier to inflict punishments because they are smaller than we are. But once they’re bigger, the best tool we can have in our parenting tool belt is our connection and understanding that connection is critically important for them. When we can begin doing that when they’re small, it makes the inevitable bumps in the road with our children much easier.

Be gentle with yourself if this is a new idea. It took me at least a year to fully grasp what this meant and be able to apply it in a meaningful way. So if you can’t do it tomorrow, be gentle with yourself. That love and connection with yourself really matters here.

Author

Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Rebecca Thompson Hitt, MS, MFT is the founder and executive director of The Consciously Parenting Project (2007). Rebecca loves supporting individuals and parents to grow themselves up in their current relationship challenges. She delights in empowering people to find peace and connection with their loved ones, supporting the transformation of the way we understand our connections. Her holistic approach, which includes our earliest experiences and nervous system patterns, her gentleness and compassion, and her deep listening without pathologizing, helps us to see ourselves and those we care about with new eyes, supporting the transformation needed in the world starting with our closest relationships. With over 30 years of professional experience working with individuals, couples, and families, in addition to her own personal healing work raising her now young adult sons, Rebecca is dedicated to transforming our relationships stories, one relationship and one family at a time.

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