Ok Truth time. I have been ragingly mad at my own child.
I still remember the moment, we were in one of our epic struggles around naps, and I was trying to get him to quiet down, all the while thinking about how I was going to be late for my Mommy Meditation group- Oh the irony!
And that was when he chose to poke his fingers into my shirt and grab my breast. (He was 3 BTW, and we were still breastfeeding so this wasn't completely out of left field...)
I felt my whole body recoil as my anger surged, and suddenly I was caught in a fight or flight moment combined with an internal monologue about how my son was going to grow up to be one of those teenagers who didn't respect women's bodies. My thoughts were buzzing, and before I knew it I had struck his little hand away- and not gently.
And then in the midst of it all, I remember everything stopping, and I could see myself, and imagine how he saw me, and something softened and we looked at one another. And I said "I'm sorry, but that's not OK to do to mommy. But Mommy shouldn’t have responded that way. Let's pause a moment" And we both cried for a bit before he fell asleep.
We think of mindfulness as being a practice of being calm, and "quieting the mind". Something that will stop us from lashing out, or make us eternally peaceful, but the truth is that life keeps happening. The mindfulness simply lets us pause, sometimes after the fact, and see clearly what we're doing. And give compassion for those times when we wish we had done something differently.
And in fact the research shows that having those moments of recognition and making the effort to repair is ultimately THE thing that helps us not only have a better long term relationship with our children, but also helps us eventually remember to pause before we lash out. Maybe.
Dr Becky Kennedy in her book Good Inside, talks about how our children are fundamentally good at their core, as are we. And that when we can hold this basic goodness in our minds even durng the tough times, we are more able to adapt and shift our reactivity when we encounter bad behavior. This is because we can recognize that the behavior doesn’t make our child a bad person, and that we are not a bad parent if we say, just flew off the handle.
This idea of us all being fundamentally good is also inherent when we practice mindfulness. As Chogyam Trumgpa, reknowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher says, we are all basically good at our core. No baby is born evil, and no toddler is pushing your buttons because they are trying to make your life hell (though it does sometimes seem that way.) They are simply discovering, and in discovering they bump up against our boundaries. As numerous child psychologists have noted. what allows a child to feel safe is that we are able to hold those boundaries, But when we practice mindfulness, we are able to see where we might be able to hold them softly but firmly. So we are the embodiment of compassion, not just for them, but also for ourselves.
This is key to remember. We are all basically good. We are all actually enlightened begins at our core- yes even when we don’t feel it. And even when we feel angry, or shameful, or are beating ourselves up for having done the very thing we swore we would never do. And the people around us are basically good. Your child- who is screaming on the floor- is still fundamentally good inside.
A simple practice which can help us remember this inherent goodness inside us, is called Maitri (or sometimes Metta) and roughly translates to loving kindness practice.
Simply put, it goes like this:
Sit quietly and visualize yourself having each of these qualities in your life. You can even imagine saying them to yourself:
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be safe
May I live at ease
This isn’t just saying them mindlessly (that wouldn’t be very mindful now would it?) The practice is about actually feeling what it feels like to wish and envision these things for yourself. I actually find it has more juice if I visualize what the scene would look like if I were happy. Then I get a more direct experience of the feeling. And then from there we notice how we might be resonding to this image. Does it feel out of reach? Despairing? Does it bring up questions of what it means to want things for oursevles? And then let the thoughts go, and come back to the direct experience of wishing this for you.
Then from yourself, bring up a person you love. For me this is almost always my kiddo (yes the one I got ragingly mad with at the beginning of this story), but for some it’s easier to imagine their partner, or maybe a pet. See what it feels like to imagine wishing those 4 qualities for this person. And just notice what arises in you- and have compassion for yourself as you do.
From here the practice goes into the more compassion muscle strengthening places, imagining someone with whom we are struggling, or even angry with (And if you can’t think of anyone right now- try envisioning someone from the other side of the political aisle…that usually brings up the resistance these days). Then we might envision someone who we don’t really know; the bus driver, or the barista, and wish these qualities for them as well. These people too are basically good inside (Yes even that politician!). They have loves, and fears. They are trying to find happiness as they can best imagine it. And they are worthy of respect.
Finally, you might extend these wishes out to all beings in the world (universe?) Those you know, Those you don’t, and even those you will never meet. And wish that all beings might be happy, healthy, safe, and at ease. And how does it feel to wish for this? Does it feel like a verse from John Lennon’s “Imagine”? (Call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one)
What these practices encourage us to do is to pause our usual train of thought about how someone is out to get us, or how someone doesn’t deserve something (or how we don’t deserve this), and see that we are all basically good human beings who are also struggling at times. We have all had moments when we poked someone we shouldn’t have, or where we said the wrong thing inadvertently. That didn’t make us bad at heart, it just meant we were confused outselves.
So in that moment that I lost my temper with my 3 yr old, and had to pause and repair after the fact, I am grateful that I had a meditation practice to fall back on, because it let me see myself and him as humans beings who were struggling, and make the needed adjustment. I would like to think that having exercised that muscle of awareness and compassion beforehand helped me drop my own storyline faster than I would have otherwise. But I do at least know that my practice was part of what brought me back.
Key Takeaways:
Even the most seemingly serene teachers have had moments where they lashed out or were angry.
Practicing awareness can help cut through both the anger and the self blame that can follow intense moments- in parenting and in life.
All human beings are at their core basically good and worthy of love and respect
Maitri or compassion practice can be helpful in remembering to pause during intense moments of parenting.