With children, spousal duties, household chores and some of us working, it can be stressful for parents, sometimes the stress caused us to be easily triggered by day to day annoyance such as your child asking you for breakfast, your spouse asking you about his/her car keys and one unwashed cup could trigger anxiety and make situations a lot worst than it is.
I had my third focus group session with five members of K Mummies. It is a focus group for like-minded mummies to gather every week to discuss matters regarding self-mastery and parenting. In this session, I invited Jenny Ng, a certified Conscious Parenting Coach to share for thirty minutes on conscious parenting.
I asked them the following questions and at the end of the discussion, they have had insights as to why self-awareness is important especially when we are raising children.
Q1 What are the common triggers at home?
The following are the triggers that were shared:
a) When the children quarrel, cry or scream.
b) When children asked for different types of food instead of what’s readily available.
c) Negative energy felt from other family members and feeling unappreciated by them.
d) Feeling tired especially when a spouse is being conscious about parenting style.
e) Spouse does not communicate their whereabouts.
Q2 How do you think, mummies can learn to be more aware of what is going on with her mind so that they can respond to situations consciously?
Here are the collective insights I’ve gathered from the mummies, on point (a) when children are quarrelling, crying or screaming and we feel triggered by it, it could mean that we do not take the time to understand the need of the child at that age. It can get frustrating when the child cannot communicate their wants and needs and parents are struggling to decipher what each cry would mean. If this is a trigger, it would help if the mummy learns about each stage of their development and expect that cries and quarrels are normal for younger children. One mummy shared that she would rest and ignore if she gets tired and would spend time with her husband instead of her child because sometimes we need to balance our attention and not spend too much of our attention on our children when we are feeling depleted. We would not want our spouse to feel neglected too or that we neglect our own needs.
Once we have addressed our needs, we could then address the need of our children in a calm way.
With point (b) sometimes when we have already taken time and energy to prepare a meal for our children, and they requested a different menu, it could make us feel angry. One mummy thoughtfully shared that it was because of time constraints, she said that if there were enough time to prepare another meal, that would not be a triggering issue. In this case, she’s identified that the trigger is not the child but instead, time management.
On negative energy and not feeling appreciated, point (c) the mummy shared that the root cause of the matter stems from her feeling tired. With this, we can see how our internal states do play a part in how we perceived situations or people around us.
As parents, sometimes, we tend to have conflicting views about parenting with our spouse or other adult family members, referring to point (d). I face that throughout raising all four children, differences at home is expected because naturally, we are all unique individuals with different ways of thinking, experiences and education. How do we navigate differences in parenting styles? Would we confuse our children? I shared that home is a perfect training ground for children to deal with the reality of the world outside of the home. If we can teach our children to be accepting and compassionate towards those of different behaviours and lead by example anyway, it will allow our children to be independent thinkers and resilient when faced with different people in our society, at school or at work.
I also shared that, I’ve learnt and attested to the notion, tried and tested through raising my children too, that one conscious parent is good enough for the child and we need not be worried about our spouse parenting a different way as long as we do not condone and that we speak up against emotional and physical harm at home.
As for the last point, sometimes we find that communication is lacking between us and our spouse and it could be because of a myriad of reasons. Coach Jenny kindly suggested that we could invite our child to investigate together the whereabouts of the husband, especially if the child yearns to know, through creating a WhatsApp group as a family and that everyone should agree on being transparent about their whereabouts through the group chat. Jenny also suggested that as a family, they could sit together to have a group meeting at home and framing it to the child that we are investigating together as a family and as a team.
Q3 What kind of support do you think you at that mummy would need in your/their situation and what actions can you/they take to get that support?
We must not be afraid to ask for support and where possible, create our village even if it means reaching out to a stranger. K Mummy’s Focus group is a perfect example of the support that mothers can reach out to. Some of us are strangers and we got together to focus on common interests: Self-Mastery and Parenting.
Sometimes mummies tend to busy themselves at home and have no time to meet friends what more get connected with new people, so reaching out to common interests groups like K Mummy can support with loneliness and widening our perspectives and not be confined to our own home and circle.
Another way is to have respectful communication with our spouse because they are also in this together with us and being able to communicate with our spouse can also help in making things a lot easier at home with our children.
If there are members in your family that could offer you a listening ear and you trust them, it is also great to give them a call or meet them to find that support.
Afterwards, the mummies learnt a lot about conscious parenting through coach Jenny and they immediately applied the practical tips suggested and saw instant results with their children. Join K Mummies to discuss meaningful topics to support us in our self-mastery and journey as a parent.
Join our weekly K Mummy’s Focus Group Session.
