Firstly I encourage you to read or re read my article‘Minding your mental health so you can mind your child’s’ You have some hope of facilitating your child toward wellness when you are actively and concurrently supporting your own wellness. If you are supporting yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually you could have more of a capacity to feel open, have energy, interest, intuition and enthusiasm for your child’s needs. You could ‘fake it until you make it’ in relation to your own self-care! You may not feel like going to your dance class, your yoga class or choir practice. However before you know it once you are there you could find yourself having an enjoyable and rewarding evening. So let’s say that your own oxygen mask is on, you are breathing in healthy air, you are feeling well and balanced in yourself– you now could have enough energy to tend to you child’s needs……. Supporting wellness in your child is different and ironically tends to be the same during all stages of his childhood.
Your child always needs connection (even when he says he doesn’t!!)
He needs to feel that he is (mostly) unconditionally loved by you.
What you will learn more as a mother is that the time you give and spend with your child in a mindful way seems to support him in his ability to blossom and feel fairly safe and interested in the world.
Also you need to be reminded. Your life is not perfect, your children are not perfect and you are certainly not perfect. Interestingly your journey toward self compassion for all your imperfections could give all your family space to accept how perfectly imperfect you ALL are!! As long as you are human you are going to fall, make mistakes and mindful parenting is about becoming aware of how you could live consciously as perfectly imperfect people in our perfectly imperfect world.
There are many different ways to support your child in feeling comfortable in his skin. In these next few blogs I will write about the importance of hugging, using ‘time-in’ as a supportive parenting intervention, massage, implementing floor time and carrying out mindful holistic nutrition.