Transformation

Transformation.

Sounds good, right? Or magical, or powerful, or liberating.

I generally think so too.

Except…

Except (apparently) when I am called upon to help my son work through a few assignments for the asynchronous aspects of his virtual school year.

In those moments, I transform… Into the very opposite of how I want to be as a parent.

I roll my eyes.

I huff.

I mutter curses under my breath.

I leave the room many times to gather myself.

I use a shaming tone.

And I watch as, also like magic, my 6 year old crumples before me.

And I descend a little deeper into this moment of self-loathing.

Is this most of our time, even these days? No.

But the fact that it happens at all feeds my shame and worsens my overall parenting and self-concept.

What a fraud I am! I teach parents, for goodness’ sake! And here I am, lecturing my own child about something he “should know how to do”?? That’s rich.

At some point, a sort of truce is reached:

My son realizes it’s a quicker path through this muck when he finally just agrees to try to write the sentence or draw the thing, or whatever sparked our standoff.

And I realize I need to give us both some space to work on resetting.

I shift my focus to what a blessing the reset is.

(And by “reset,” I am referring to a component of Howard Glasser’s Nurtured Heart Approach®, where instead of trying to find the perfect consequence to correspond to a given behavior...

...we can choose instead to embrace a “reset” as a tool for stepping together into a fresh moment— nothing to live down, nothing to wait out, nothing to give up over.)

Almost like hitting the rumble strip on a highway. When that happens, it’s just a matter of “Oops, let’s refocus and get back on track.”

We don’t have to surrender our driver’s license, or sell our car, or abandon our journey, or pull over and yell apologies to all the other folks on the road.

We get a new moment to try again, no shame needed. (Because if shaming helped me be a better mom, I’d be the world's greatest mom after what I inflicted on myself today.)

Does this mean there’s no place for repair? Of course not.

But it gets to come from my deep sense of my values and personhood, not driven by self-flagellation or trying to get the other person to help me feel better.

Another thing I noticed:

The deep self-knowing (which in the Nurtured Heart Approach world is known as Inner Wealth®) that my son has been cultivating through his own years of growing up in a (mostly) Nurtured Heart-practicing household is still very much alive and well, even after I groused all over it today.

Here is a sample of his commentary while he completed one of his assignments:

“I’m really working hard at this and focusing right now, Mama.

Because I remembered that this class has my favorite teacher, and I miss her.

I’m being respectful, and showing self-control…

And I could have just, like… thrown my glasses, and run off, and just start playing my Switch even though it’s not time yet…

but I didn’t!

I’m so proud of myself!”

What if we spoke to or about ourselves that way?

What if doing that could dismantle the ways we’ve internalized society’s oppressive structures?

What if we could all be that bold of heart?

To take a painful afternoon and still resolve to turn that lens toward how we handled it well, and what qualities we’re embodying, and how we’re not making it worse… and speak it?

Bring on *that* kind of transformation.

[Originally posted HERE]