The Consciously Parenting Project

Podcast Episode #20 – The Old Story and The New Story of Consciously Parenting

Love, Respect, and Boundaries

When I became a parent, I had an idea of how I wanted to be in relationship to my son. But I didn’t understand just how much I was carrying around from my own experiences growing up in my own family and in this culture. The Old Story of human development and family life is all about “power over” instead of “working with.” It’s about discipline that really means punishment, and boundaries that really mean to inflict pain on someone else to get them to do what we want.

I wanted a different story. This isn’t about blaming previous generations. They would have wanted to be treated with unconditional love, with respect that didn’t mean fear and boundaries that didn’t inflict pain. Their parents didn’t know how to do this because they’re not the values of our culture.

So those of us who are on this journey to parent consciously have a difficult task at hand. What does it look like? How do we parent from a place of love? How do we respect ourselves and teach our children to respect us without becoming punitive? What do boundaries even look like if we’re not adding arbitrary punishments? These are big questions and this is really the heart of Consciously Parenting.

In this episode, I share some real-life examples from my own family as I’ve discovered what this means and what it can look like. It’s taken me 18 years to get to this place and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned so that it doesn’t take you that long. And it won’t. One of the most important parts of the New Story is that we don’t have to do it all alone.

Today’s conversation is about recognizing the Old Story that you’re still carrying with you about love, respect, and boundaries and begin to open up to new ways of being in the New Story in your family. Let me know your thoughts as you listen and if you have any aha’s you’d like to share. Feel free to email me, comment on the podcast, or write something on Facebook. And if you liked this episode, please share it and help us continue the conversation about the New Story of human development and family life.

Here’s the link to the first episode of this series – Love, Respect, and Boundaries: Connecting Our Past and Future

Related post: Love Language and Hurt Language

Author

  • 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.

    View all posts Holistic Family Therapist

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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