Learning How to Respond Appropriately Instead of Reacting With Mindful Parenting

Parenting is hard work. Most people don’t want to be those parents who quickly lose their calm, enter into screaming matches with their children, and end each day more frustrated than the last.

Being patient, mindful, and understanding isn’t a problem when you’re enjoying a nice quiet evening reading bedtime stories to your bundle of joy.

However, when your child throws their first real temper tantrum, the house is a mess, and you’re operating on half an hour of sleep, keeping your calm is much more complicated than it may appear. It’s in this instance that you truly need mindful parenting to get through the day.

Mindful parenting can help you keep your peace of mind, assist your child’s development, and strengthen the relationship between the two of you.

Learn how to manage your reactions in stressful situations and respond appropriately with mindfulness parenting.

You’ve heard the saying – it takes a village to raise a child, and that’s as true today as it was centuries ago. And yet, with today’s focus on nuclear families, most parents are left to their own devices. As a natural result of it, many feel overwhelmed.

Many internal and external factors are putting pressure on modern parents. You have high academic expectations that you and your child have to meet, for instance.

Many parents are forced to plan out their children’s academic careers long before they’ve even signed them up for preschool. Once school actually starts, most parents try to stay as involved as possible, and even those that don’t have time to be involved are all but forced to.

People take children for extracurriculars, tutoring classes, after-school activities, plays, and sports games while keeping their full-time jobs and handling household chores.

There are also societal pressures, with everyone from close friends and family members to random internet strangers telling you to do things one way or another, then criticizing your actions whatever you do.

Then, speaking of random strangers on the internet, there’s also the pressure to introduce children to technology as they’ll heavily depend on it in the future while still ensuring that they stay safe online.

With millions of things to do, little help from anyone outside the small family units, and still just 24 hours in a day, it’s no surprise that modern parents are exceptionally overwhelmed. It’s not surprising that more and more parents find it difficult to be gentle and supportive with their young ones, especially in high-stress situations.

With all the stresses, criticism, and high expectations that modern parents have to meet, focusing on mindful parenting is the only way to come out on top of it all. But what precisely is mindfulness in parenting?

Mindfulness in itself is the utmost awareness of your surroundings, your emotions, and your inner state. It’s the act of being fully present and observing your thoughts, emotions, and even habits without judgment or impulsive reactions.

Mindfulness in parenting is highly similar. It’s the conscious effort to stay in the moment and stay involved. It’s the effort to manage your emotions, behaviors, and responses, thus helping your child do the same. After all, regardless of what you say or try to teach, your child learns best by observing what you do.

If you tend to be impatient, constantly angry, and judgmental, your child will likely be the same. They’ll mimic your behaviors and shape their world based on your reactions. If you try to think through your reactions before lashing out and give your best to stay grounded and open-minded, your child will try and do the same – just don’t expect them to be perfect at it.

Mindful parenting aims to stop emotionally reacting to your child’s behaviors and actions and start thinking through your responses, taking a moment to understand what your child is doing and why.

Of course, you should remember that mindful parenting isn’t about being permissive and spoiling your child or trying to stay perfect all the time. Parenting is difficult. You’ll encounter stressful situations one way or another, and your emotions will get the better of you at times.

Instead of trying to be all rainbows and butterflies every second of the day, use mindful parenting to understand your emotional responses and where they’re coming from and to learn when to give yourself a break.

Mindfulness is as beneficial to the parents as it is to the children. It helps you and your child create a much more peaceful, productive environment where you both can thrive. The main benefits you can enjoy include:

• Better awareness of your thoughts and feelings;
• Easier emotion regulation;
• Improved communication with children;
• Improved life satisfaction;
• Heightened involvement in the child’s life;
• Lower stress and anxiety;
• Improvement with child’s behavioral issues;
• Better emotional development;
• Better social development.

Mindful parenting can start even before your child is born. Negative emotions, heightened stress, and frustration during pregnancy can make childbirth riskier and even impact the bond between mothers and infants.

However, according to a study, pregnant women who’ve partaken in mindfulness exercises have reported less anxiety and negative effects in their third trimester and for the three months postpartum.

Of course, if you didn’t start with mindful parenting during pregnancy, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start now. It’s never too late to start being more aware of your emotions and how you respond to them.

The theory of mindfulness is easy enough to understand – you simply need to try and be present in the moment and think about your emotional reactions. What does that mean in practice?

There are three critical aspects of mindful parenting you’ll need to master if you’re to enjoy the benefits – listening to your child, keeping calm, and understanding your feelings. Take a look.

Listening (not only hearing!) to your child is the first, primary aspect of mindful parenting.

It’s easy to get upset the moment your child breaks a rule, such as using an app they shouldn’t, for example. The easiest thing to do is completely restrict their access to the WiFi, delete the app, and take away your child’s phone.

However, what you should do instead is take a moment to see what your child is doing, understand why they’re doing it, and allow them to talk to you about it. Maybe they’re playing a game you’ve forbidden but are using to communicate with a friend who lives far away. Perhaps it’s a game that enables them to relax, or they have another reason altogether.

You can always install a parental control app like FamiSafe to keep your child safe online and filter out harmful content. However, you should still take a moment to listen to your child and fully understand them before enforcing rules that may seem nonsensical to them.

Anger is a completely natural emotion you shouldn’t suppress, but that doesn’t mean you should take it out on your child.

Children do childish things – it’s all just a part of growing up. They’ll break the rules, test your boundaries, annoy you on purpose, miss their curfew, and more. They’ll be disrespectful, outright rude at times, and emotional.

If your first reaction is to get angry, what do you think they’ll learn from it? How to control their emotions? How to behave better? No, they’ll learn that letting your anger out uncontrollably and entering a screamfest is a seemingly acceptable behavior.

Instead, try to keep calm and respond without anger and without judgment. Take a breather, then talk to your child calmly. You can peacefully express that you’re angry with them and explain your reasons why without letting your emotions get the better of you.

Finding a peaceful resolution with your child will be much easier if you’re responding without anger.

Finally, if you want to truly master the art of mindful parenting, you need to learn to understand your feelings in all situations – whether you’re feeling happy or stressed, whether you’re reading bedtime stories or arguing with your child.

What’s your response when your child starts throwing a tantrum in the middle of a shopping mall? Many parents immediately start feeling embarrassed about all the looks they’re getting from strangers. They start feeling ashamed, anxious, and angry, but they don’t stop to consider where these emotions are coming from and how to handle them.

If you’re like these parents, you’re likely worried about what others think of you. You’re angry with your child for misbehaving.

Accept these emotions, understand them, and try to understand why your child is behaving the way they are. Perhaps they’re overstimulated. Perhaps they’re tired or hungry. Whatever the case is, take a moment to understand your and your child’s feelings, compose yourself, and deal with the situation calmly and sensically.

There’s no one true path to mindful parenting. It takes practice, and you’ll likely go through a lot of trial and error before you get it right. Then, even when you get it right, you’ll still make a mistake on occasion – that’s simply how parenting works.

To introduce mindful parenting, you’ll have to start with yourself. Learning how to meditate, for instance, can work wonders for teaching you about yourself and your emotions. If you’re not much for meditating, try keeping a journal or talking your feelings out with those you trust.

Once you’ve learned to handle your emotions, you and your child can start enjoying the benefits of mindful parenting.

There are three critical steps you’ll want to remember when mindful parenting becomes difficult:

• Stop – don’t react immediately to negative situations; stop and take a breather;
• Think – without judgment and anxieties, think about the situation at hand;
• Listen – listen to your emotions and your child, and try to understand them.

Whenever you’re feeling angry, stressed, overwhelmed, or frustrated, stop, think, and listen. Only after performing these three steps should you respond to the situation as calmly as possible.

Mindful parenting isn’t a “hack” that will make your life easier immediately. It’s not a one-stop solution or an easy fix to all your problems – it’s an active effort to manage your emotions and respond to negative situations as best you can.

You need time, patience, and understanding to master the art of mindful parenting, and it’s worth every second you invest in it.