Sparkler Parents

Today we are going to take a DEEP DIVE into the sensations of the present moment and begin to cultivate what I have been calling being an "Empathetic Observer Of Our Own Experience". We do too much judging of ourselves and others and this exercise that you are about to do will help gain experience with merely naming the experience/sensation without judgement or evaluation. After you watch or listen to this Podcast episode, spend 3-5 minutes journaling about your experience.What did you notice. Just name it, do not evaluate or judge your present experience.

There were some viewers/listeners who requested a YouTube Format, so this is it.  You can still catch the podcast version too outlets like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.  This episode continues to Chapter 3 of Brain Based Parenting and it discusses Blocked Care.  The question of the week to discuss here in the comments or on FB is:  What are your resources to buffer stress and challenge in your life so that you can stay in the present moment with your child?

Join the Discussion at the FB Group! Sparkler Parents Podcast

Share an example of a time when you did not use your executive brain while parenting?

I used to do this a lot more related to behaviors my children did or if my husband was about to arrive at home and one of the kids just made a big mess, I would yell, where as, if that same mess was made 30-45 minutes earlier I may not have yelled at my child the same way.  What changed? The context changed.  The fact that I just cleaned up and my husband expects a neat home when he returns increased my stress level and then with the new mess of Cheerios all of the floor (insert whatever mishap), I explode my stress out all of my child.  If my executive parenting system was better developed, I would have been able to de-escalate myself.  But even in after the stress explosion, I have some things I can do.  I can take some breaths, I can step outside for a minute.  I can apologize and hug my child. I can text my husband and just let him know what to expect when he gets home. It is not that big of a deal...slowing down helps us (and our kids) get our executive functioning back online.

This is not truly a meditation, but rather a way to develop an awareness of our senses. We have 10! In this game, 7 of the senses could be used including: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, proprioception and vestibular.

Have a few items prepared and start the game off with SIGHT, I spy with my little eye....

Then allow you child to take a turn.  Move on to as many senses as you feel are appropriate.  Get creative with essential oils, noises and things to see in the room. But you can also draw a letter on their back (and allow them to do it to you too) or turn then around with their eyes closed and see if they know which direction they are facing.

Building an awareness of what kinds of sensory information can come in through our senses can help our kids (and ourselves) be more curious and open.  And if we notice that our child is not curious, see what you can change about the envionment to pique their curiosity, this is the alerting and orientating activities that our brains do to learn if something is safe or not safe.  So in this game, we are being very intentional about this, helping our child develop the alerting and orienting skills without having to automatically react to things that really are not dangerous or harmful.

This podcast episodes pulls in a little bit of the discussion from the FB group, Sparkler Parents. Please join us over on FB. Also we round out Chapter 1 with the concept of neuroception.

This is truly time just for you.

You are worthy of love.

You are worthy of self-love.

You are worthy of other people's love.

You are able to give love to others.

As Sparkler Parents we are working toward cultivating present moment awareness with our children.  But there are other parts of our day when we may not be directly interacting with our kids, but they are listening, watching, observing us and our responses to situations.  They feel our stress as much as they feel our joy and excitement.

If we can grow our own ability to recognize and name our own suffering, we can then learn to extend our own selves a hand, just like we would do with a friend.

You are worth that.  I am serious! You are worth it.  Jump on over to Season 3 to find a companion meditation on Self-compassion.

Emotions are very similar to playing in the ocean.  Both Susan David and Joan Rosenberg speak to psychological flexibility in their books (Emotional agility and 90 Second to a Life You Love) and this concept is very important for us as parents as well as for our children.

This meditation is great for adults and kids alike. You will be be invited to move your body during this practice, so you want to make sure that you have enough space.

Lie down so that your feet are flat against the wall or the side of a couch.  If you need to, you can do this lying in your bed or sitting a chair with your feet against the floor.

Begin to notice your breath...

The strive to fit it to a group over leads us to act outside of our values.  The longing to feel recognized, appreciated, valued can drive to to thoughts, behaviors and habits that are really about trying to make other people feel comfortable at the expense of our own well being.  I grew up believing that being perfect was the only way to be. That if I did not do it correctly, or the right way, I would not be accepted.  I went out of my way as a child and even as an adult to do everything for everyone all of the time without much regard if it was something that I truly wanted or even believed it.

This is not sustainable and it is damaging to the self.  The more I felt appreciated then more I wanted that attention and the less I felt worthy of myself if I was not given that positive feedback.  In fact, criticism was the sharpest weapon that could be wielded against me and I intentionally avoided it because it hurt so much.

For me, perfectionism was just a mask for my low self-worth and fear of rejection.

That is not a message I want my children to learn.

I want to be acutely aware of my children's emotions and perceptions of relationships because I want them to intrinsically want to participate in activities because they want to and because they find it enjoyable, not to impress someone else.  And the contrary tis true too, even when my children don't want to do something that they really need to do, i.e. clean their room; eat vegetables,; be kind to their siblings; I want them to reflect back on their values and develop their own self worth, to choose courage over comfort and stand in their values for respect for self and others.

What values do you hold? And how are your modeling those to your children in small ways every day, because these are the moments when connection is made with our children.  These are the Sparkler Moments!

What is your sense of humor and how to you help foster a healthy sense of humor within your child? Looking for signs of engagement and signs within your child's body that the joke is perceived as funny is important.  Plus thinking about our child's developmental age and whether or not the child is even able to understand the difference between reality and a joke, or an even higher level of humor sense as sarcasm.  But just as tickling isn't always funny for the child, sometimes, sarcasm crossing the line.  And even though it was not intended to be mean or ill-spirited, the child perceives it as such.

So notice within you child the reaction to a joke and understand that their perception of reality is real.  And in order to better teach about humor, we as parents must keep safety for the child in mind first.  You would not keep tickling the child if the child started crying or screaming, but since laughter is also a release of buffer to stress and stressful situations, watching for other signs, like turning away, guarding with a hand, closing into a ball can help us know when we have gone too far or when the joke is not perceived well by the child.

Observing and respecting the child's perception will help grow the child's ability to learn about humor in a positive healthy way and not actually begin to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism themselves.

This is the second part in a series of 2 episodes looking at ways to create more space to allow joy into your life.  Again another self-care and buffering activity to be able to be ok right now in this moment, but also realize that we have other options.  We as parents have a lot of stress. And these stressors may or may not be able to be changed, but we can (and must) build in buffers and resources for ourselves in order to maintain a balance.

This is another experiential episode.  Please return to episode 11 to learn how to make your JOY vs. Annoy List and then use this episode to figure out what to do with it.

Much love and peace to you all.  Thank you for being a part of this Sparkler Parent Community.

Moving through the Love Languages, we come to a pretty obvious one of "quality time".  10 minutes, 1-2x per day per child is what I strive for with my own three children.  Some days I do better than others.

We have also implemented alternating dates with either parent once per month.  So this month my sons will each have a date with me and my daughter will have a date with dad and then next month we switch kids.

On the flip side of quality time is quality space for our kids to process emotions (usually negative ones) without us interfering with solutions to fix, corrections or criticism.

There needs to be a space that is held open for our children to just feel the emotion.

As parents, we should not want the feeling to hurry up (in the case of negative emotions) nor slow down (with positive ones).  Be in it for what it is right now.

Your job is to create this space for your child to feel your love and empathy.

Empathy is the human connection we can share relating to an EMOTION underlying any EXPERIENCE, even if it is an experience you have not had (or can remember).  This requires us as adults to be o.k. with the full spectrum of emotions, the good and the bad....the happy and the sad...the excited and the frustrated.  And to work to be present with our child with that feeling, even when we would rather just move on.

A word of caution about moving on when your child is still in the middle of it....the child can sense that their emotion is not wanted or should not be displayed.  Over time, this leads to an inability to acknowledge emotions and it leads to surprising feelings or reacting to them.  I know, because this is how I spent my youth.  I feel like I started to feel emotions outside of happy or crying, sometime in my thirties.  I am now 43 and I am working hard to stay present with all of my emotions as well as recognize those in my children.  Over the years, I have been guilty of pushing my child through an emotion to get back to happy, merely because I was uncomfortable.  I am working on this and I invite you to notice if this is hidden intention of yours, and to be present with your child both with quality time and space.

Brené Brown speaks a lot of empathy and compassion.  Tara Brach speaks about loving kindness.  These are big concepts that connect all of us as human beings. These tools will also help strengthen the love and connection between our children, but it is HARD to do.  What makes hard things easier?.....PRACTICE

As parents we may feel like we have to have the answers now.  We may fear what will happen if we don't do this right or if we let. our "child get away with that."

Practicing empathy within the boundaries of your own family's values will always be the right thing to do.

Step 1 - It starts with awareness.  Let the next 6 minutes help draw your attention to the times you do practice empathy and the times (because it happens to all of us) when you did not.

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Sparkler Parents are right there in the moment with our children.  This is whether the situation is fun, sad, happy, angry, silly.  Not everything is going to work out the way we want it to.  We know this is true, but do we always create the space for our children to feel the sadness or do we sometimes try to rush them back to happy? Being aware of what we as parents have as levels of tolerance for different emotions will help use create space for our own children to grow their tolerance too.

Podcast Update - This Podcast is changing.  As of 2/7/2021, it will now be made up fo 3-5 minute episodes on creating Sparkler Moments with your child.  This podcast will often tips, strategies and solutions to help parents stay in the present moment and become Sparkler Parents.  The moments with our children are fleeting.  There is a start and a stop and we will miss the connection when we are always focusing on gaining control. When we, as parents are focused on what needs to get done next or what happened 2 hours ago.  Let's learn together how to grow our present moment awareness to grow our relationship to our child and truly enjoy our role as parent.

Mona and Christine field a couple of questions from the Peds Therapy Collective FB Group.  We also discuss a great resource for feeding challenges with children from My Munch Bug LLC and Melanie Potock.

https://mymunchbug.com/