- Jun 4, 2018

Freeschoolin': Re-Parenting For Peace

What is Re-Parenting?

A fancy term for re-writing negative, obsolete coping skills and patterns learned through childhood that prevent us from being the Parents we aspire to be. How do we do this? First step is recognizing our patterns. What invokes negative ones. And loving ourselves the whole way through as you see them and call them out. Why? Because punitive parenting got us into these negative habits and we have to love ourselves free. We have to tell our little child selves the truth; we were always worthy of love, mistakes included. Once we are able to see and accept our negative habits and programming we can move to change them. One at a time we can choose a healthy, successful alternative over our obsolete programming.

An example would be what Hope and I went through this week. I was overwhelmed. It's planting season, energy was high this week, we're energy sensitives, we were preparing for overnight guests and I was unable to get things done in a timely manner, nor felt I could get help to do so. So when Hope got up early one morning and I had to then juggle everything and be Mom, I was not fully equipped to do so. Especially emotionally. I snapped at Hope that I had to do everything. I made her breakfast "taste like stress" but she happily ate it. I stormed outside to plant (hope the seeds forgive me) the front garden. The garden did it's work on me as I did my work on it. By the time I came inside an hour later, I was shocked at how I had handled myself towards my sweet girl. I didn't spend time scolding myself, I moved straight to apologizing, giving opportunity for full discussion of the incident. I made new boundaries and limitations for my self and my relationships to keep from becoming overwhelmed and to keep from reacting with stress to others.

Re-Parenting is about re-writing our negative childhood lessons with the conflicts we come upon with our own children. It's about being kind to ourselves through our healing and encouraging a healthy, forward movement. Part of my healing is writing this all down to share with you. Thank you for traveling this journey with our family. For support or more information please contact us through our website or comment below.