The Power of Attuned Parenting: To Empower, Not Blame Parents

Parents, mothers especially, internalise so much blame when their children are struggling. I believe there are many sociological and societal reasons for this that have fueled the experience of mum guilt. I have felt the emotional intensity of the maternal blame that can occur externally and internally over the last few years in my parenting, and so many mothers come into sessions with an attitude of “tell me what I am doing wrong” as they subtly and not so subtly perceive personal fault, blame and not good enough for the challenges their children face.

It’s actually quite sad that instead of enjoying the richness and joy of being a parent, we can find ourselves obsessing, looping on negative ruminative thinking patterns, and stifled by guilt and kept in a box with our shame. Shame, as I describe it to adolescents, is that really gross hard-to-tolerate feeling that makes you want to hide forever. Teens, who understand a lot more in therapy than I think many would expect, often gasp and nod back at me as they recognise the uncomfortable feeling that we all experience at times.

As Brene Brown teaches, shame resilience is an integral part of living a bold, brave, courageous and value-aligned life. When it comes to parenting, mothering especially, I think the more that we can recognise our shame and the associated internalisations, emotions and experiences, the more we can find where the door is wide open to unhook from the the self-limiting, self-defeating and unworkable patterns and stories that are keeping us stuck in life-draining cycles. The physical and practical demands and burnout of parenthood, motherhood especially, are real - but we have to ask ourselves how much is emotional burnout.

One of my personal favourite parts of the Attuned Parenting Course is the module that focusses on paying attention to our unique guides and the wisdom of our guides: our triggers, our rage and our resentments. When we feel disempowered, we tend to blame other people for our triggers, anger, rage and resentment, likely because we feel that our needs are not being met or our boundaries are being crossed, if we are aware of it or not. However, the way that I present my perspective in this course is that these experiences, while painful and deeply uncomfortable, can serve as very wise guides to the cry of our authentic self.

It prompts us to consider a deeper root cause and ‘data’ we can learn by being introspective as a parent. This is how we become more attuned to ourself, and actualise the “conscious parenting” work in our real lives. I believe that being a conscious parent is not about performative parenting, to respond in the perfect or textbook way, but more to learn to embrace the unique and authentic person that you are - and to show up in your parenting as the parent that you are. We can pretend to embody the values of other people, those that we admire, or we can perform to be a textbook parent (in attempts of avoidance of emotional pain, rejection or blame), but this is a fast-track to inconsistent parenting, exhaustion and burnout.

I have always believed, based on the revelations of my work over the last decade, that raising humans is in itself an invitation and initiation to grow, evolve, and to challenge and recreate intergenerational cycles. Part of the process outlined in the Attuned Parenting Course includes quietening the mind, unhooking from the stories about yourself, and developing introspective, self-reflective habits and tools that can help you to grow, learn about yourself, and/or move your personal and parenting life in a valued direction of your desire.

As a practical example, here are some tangible self-reflection prompts to consider:

• Triggers: In reflection of your main emotional trigger in your family/parenting life right now, how is your history impacting your current reaction to triggers? What is this pointing to? For example, a parent who is highly triggered when their child doesn’t listen to them, may have a history of feeling unheard in childhood, so they have a disproportionate reaction to their child.

• Anger/rage: Can you identify the source of your anger or rage and is it about a need not being met or boundary violation in the present, or is there unprocessed emotional experiences that still need support and attention? Do you have negative judgments about feeling and (healthily) expressing anger? (e.g. good mothers shouldn’t be angry)

• Resentment: What and who is it that you resent, and can you identify why? So often parents may resent a co-parent because of unjust feelings that have not been communicated healthily with healthy boundaries around meeting both parents needs. Sometimes we resent our partners for having time to go to the gym, for example, but we don’t hold the boundary of our exercise time. Are there steps you could take to work towards a resolution?

• Themes: In consideration of your answers to the above questions, were there any themes that underlies your responses. For examples, feelings of lack of power or control, feelings of a lack of care of emotional intimacy/closeness, boundary violations, feelings of disrespect, feeling unseen or not recognised.

Unfortunately because we still see the lingering effect of toxic positivity in how mainstream psychology, self-help and spiritual bypassing is normalised in society, very few of us have been taught and modeled how to really tune in to our emotional experiences - our “negative” ones especially - and to use them as data to our values that cultivate life enhancement. For example, someone who feels resentful for being ‘stuck’ might value growth, or someone who experiences rage for inequality, may value fairness and opportunity. It is what we learn from these values, and how we learn to embody them and design our life around them that will make the big difference in the long-term.

The premise of Part One (Attuning to Yourself) of my course, Attuned Parenting, is that when parents embrace the internal introspection, exploration and self-reflection to empower their true, real selves (not the self that is bound by rules and expectations of them), this will in turn directly and indirectly impact their parenting for the better. As they attune to their true authentic selves, they will have an experiential awareness of attuning to their child/children’s true authentic selves which is the foundation of real resilience. The part of resilience that no one talks about and is not part of the common rhetoric.

If you have a child aged 5 to 15 years old, I wholeheartedly invite you to explore and join my brand new course Attuned Parenting: Imprint Self-Regulation, Resilience and Psychological Wellbeing. I have been working on it for the last 12 months, and my personal and professional experiences over the last decade of my career has contributed to this piece of work that I am proud to share to make a positive imprint in your family.