What Is Mindful Parenting?

Mindful parenting calls us to wake up to the possibilities, the benefits, and the challenges of parenting with a new awareness and intentionality, not only as if what we did mattered, but also as if our conscious engagement in parenting were virtually the most important thing we could be doing, both for our children and for ourselves.

This book is a series of meditations on various aspects of parenting. It is about recognizing and meeting our children’s needs as wisely as possible by cultivating greater familiarity and intimacy with a capacity we already have and therefore don’t have to acquire, namely awareness itself. All that is required is to bring this capacity to our moment-to-moment lives. Mindfulness is a synonym for awareness. It also includes different ways to systematically cultivate greater access to our own awareness. When we bring awareness to our parenting through the cultivation of mindfulness as a practice, it can lead to deeper insight into and understanding of our children and ourselves. Mindfulness has the potential to penetrate past surface appearances and behaviors and allow us to see our children more clearly, to look both inwardly and outwardly and act with some degree of wisdom and compassion on the basis of what we see.

As we shall see in Part 4, from the perspective of mindfulness, parenting can be viewed as a kind of extended and, at times, arduous meditation retreat spanning a large part of our lives. And our children, from infancy to adulthood and beyond, can be seen as perpetually challenging live-in teachers who provide us with ceaseless opportunities to do the interior work of understanding who we are and who they are so that we can best stay in touch with what is important and give them what they most need in order to grow and flourish. In the process, we may find that this ongoing moment-to-moment awareness can liberate us from some of our most confining habits of perception and relating, the straitjackets and prisons of the mind that have been passed down to us or that we have somehow constructed for ourselves. Through their very being, often without any words or discussion, our children can inspire us to do this inner work. The more we are able to keep in mind the intrinsic wholeness and beauty of our children, especially in those moments when those qualities are particularly difficult for us to see, the more our ability to be fully present and compassionate deepens. In seeing more clearly, we can respond to them more effectively with greater generosity of heart and a degree of wisdom.

As we devote ourselves to caring for our children, nurturing them, and trying to understand who they are, these live-in teachers of ours, especially in the first ten to twenty years of our “training,” will provide endless moments of wonder and bliss and opportunities for the deepest feelings of connectedness and love. They will also, in all likelihood, push all our buttons, evoke all our insecurities, teach us things we never could have imagined, test all our limits and boundaries, and touch all the places in us where we fear to tread and feel inadequate or worse. In the process, if we are willing to attend carefully to the full spectrum of what we are experiencing, they will remind us over and over again what is most important in life, including its mystery, as we share in their lives and shelter and nourish and love them and give them what guidance we can.

Being a parent is particularly intense and demanding, in part because our children can ask things of us no one else could or would, in ways that no one else could or would. They see us up close as no one else does, and constantly hold mirrors up for us to look into. In doing so, they give us over and over again the chance to see ourselves in new ways, and to work at consciously asking what we can learn from any and every situation that comes up with them. We can then make choices out of this awareness that will nurture both our children’s inner growth and our own. Our interconnectedness and our interdependence enable us to learn and grow together.

To bring mindfulness into our parenting, it is helpful to know something about what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally. It is cultivated by gently reminding ourselves over and over again to pay attention in that way. As best we can, we then intentionally sustain that attention over time. When our attention gets carried away, as it invariably will, we bring it back to the present moment over and over again. In the process, we become much more in touch with our lives as they are unfolding. You might say that we learn to “inhabit” our own awareness.

Ordinarily, we live much of our lives on automatic pilot, paying attention only selectively and haphazardly, taking many important things completely for granted or not noticing them at all, and judging everything we do experience by forming rapid and often unexamined opinions based on what we like or dislike, what we want or don’t want. Mindfulness brings to parenting a powerful method and framework for paying attention to whatever we are experiencing in each moment, and seeing past the veil of our automatic thoughts and feelings to a deeper actuality. By the way, cultivating mindfulness doesn’t mean that we won’t have plenty of judgments. It does mean that we will work at recognizing them as such, be willing to suspend them as best we can, at least momentarily, and not judge our judging. As you will see, we also differentiate between judging, which tends to be reactive and very black or white, and discerning, which is much more nuanced, seeing many gradations between any two extremes.

Mindfulness lies at the heart of Buddhist meditation, which itself is all about cultivating attention, openhearted presence or “wakefulness,” and compassion. The practice of mindfulness has been kept alive and developed within various meditative traditions across Asia for over twenty-six hundred years. In the past thirty-five years, it has found its way into mainstream society in many different contexts, including medicine, neuroscience, psychology, health care, education, the law, sports, social programs, and even government. In the past fifteen years, scientific research on mindfulness has grown exponentially. As a consequence, there is now widespread interest in cultivating mindfulness in many different domains of our lives.

Mindfulness is a meditative discipline. There are many different meditative disciplines. We might think of them all as various doors into the same room. Each doorway gives a unique and different view into the room. Once inside, however, it is the same room, whichever door we come through. Meditation, whatever the method or tradition, is tapping into the order and stillness embedded in and behind all activity, however chaotic it may appear, using our faculty of attention and our ability to comprehend what we are perceiving, or to know it when we don’t. And what could be more chaotic at times than parenting?

While it received its most elaborate articulation in the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness is an important part of all cultures and is truly universal, since it is simply about cultivating the capacity we all have as human beings for awareness, clarity, and compassion. There are many different ways to engage in this work of cultivation. There is no one right way, just as there is no one right way to parent.

Mindful parenting involves keeping in mind what is truly important as we go about the activities of daily living with our children. Much of the time, we may find we need to remind ourselves of what that is, or even admit that we may have no idea at the moment, for the thread of meaning and direction in our lives is easily lost. But even in our most trying, sometimes horrible moments as parents, we can deliberately step back and begin afresh, asking ourselves as if for the first time, and with fresh eyes, “What is truly important here?”

In fact, mindful parenting means seeing if we can remember to bring this kind of attention and openness and wisdom to our moments with our children. It is a true practice, its own inner discipline, its own form of meditation. And it carries with it profound benefits for both children and parents, to be discovered in the practice itself.

For us to learn from our children requires that we pay attention and learn to be still within ourselves. In stillness, we are better able to see past the endemic turmoil and cloudiness and reactivity of our own minds, in which we are so frequently caught up, and in this way, cultivate greater clarity, calmness, and insight, which we can bring directly to our parenting.

Like everybody else, parents have their own needs and desires and lives, just as children do. Our needs as parents in any given moment may be very different from those of our child. Rather than pitting our needs against our children’s, parenting mindfully involves cultivating an awareness, right in such moments, of how our needs are interdependent. Our lives are undeniably deeply connected. Our children’s well-being affects ours, and ours affects theirs. If they are not doing well, we suffer, and if we are not doing well, they suffer.

This means that everyone benefits when we are aware of our children’s needs as well as our own, emotional as well as physical, and, depending on their ages, work at finding ways for everybody to get some of what they most need. Just bringing this kind of sensitivity to our parenting will enhance our sense of connectedness with our children. Through the quality of our presence, our commitment to them is felt, even in difficult times. We may find that our choices in moments of conflicting and competing needs will come more out of this heartfelt connection, and as a result, will have greater kindness and wisdom in them.

We see parenting as a sacred responsibility. Parents are nothing less than protectors, nurturers, comforters, teachers, guides, companions, models, and sources of unconditional love and acceptance. If we are able to keep this sense of parenting as a sacred responsibility in mind, and we bring a degree of mindfulness to the process as it unfolds moment by moment, our choices as parents are much more likely to come out of an awareness of what this moment, this child—at this stage of his or her life—is asking from us right now, through his or her very being and behavior. In rising to this challenge, we may not only come to do what is best for our children, but we may also uncover and come to know, perhaps for the first time, what is deepest and best in ourselves.

Mindful parenting calls us to acknowledge and name the challenges we face daily in trying to parent with awareness. For awareness has to be inclusive. It has to include recognizing our own frustrations, insecurities, and shortcomings, our limits and limitations, even our darkest and most destructive feelings, and the ways we may feel overwhelmed or pulled apart. It challenges us to “work with” these very energies consciously and systematically.

Taking on such a task is asking a great deal of ourselves. For in many ways, we ourselves are products, and sometimes, to one degree or another, prisoners of the events and circumstances of our own childhoods. Since childhood significantly shapes how we see ourselves and the world, our histories will inevitably shape our views of who our children are and “what they deserve,” and of how they should be cared for, taught, and “socialized.” As parents, we all tend to hold our views, whatever they are, very strongly and often unconsciously, as if in the grip of powerful spells. It is only when we become aware of this shaping that we can draw on what was helpful and positive and nurturing from the way we were parented, and grow beyond those aspects that may have been destructive and limiting.

For those of us who had to shut down, to “not see,” to suppress our feelings in order to survive our own childhoods, becoming more mindful can be especially painful and difficult. In those moments when we are ruled by old demons, when old beliefs, destructive patterns, and nightmares visit us and we are plagued by dark feelings and black-or-white thinking, it is particularly difficult to stop and see freshly.

By no means are we suggesting that to parent mindfully, there is some ideal standard we have to measure ourselves against or strive to achieve. Mindful parenting is a continual process of deepening and refining our awareness and our ability to be present and act wisely. It is not an attempt to attain a fixed goal or outcome, however worthy. An important part of the process is seeing ourselves with some degree of kindness and compassion. This includes seeing and accepting our limitations, our blindnesses, our attachments, our humanness, our fallibility, and working with them mindfully as best we can. The one thing we know we can always do, even in moments of darkness and despair that show us we don’t know anything, is to begin again, fresh, right in that moment. Every moment is a new beginning, another opportunity for tuning in, for opening, and perhaps in that very moment, seeing, feeling, and knowing ourselves and our children in a new and deeper way.

For our love for our children is expressed and experienced in the quality of the moment-to-moment relationships we have with them. It deepens in everyday moments when we hold those moments in awareness and dwell within them. Love is expressed in how we pass the bread, or how we say good morning, and not just in the big trip to Disney World. It is in the everyday kindnesses we show, in the understanding we bring, and in our openness. Our love is also in the boundaries, limits, and frameworks we establish and then stand by with clarity, firmness, and kindness. Love is expressed by embodying love in our actions. So whether we are facing good times or hard times on any given day or in any moment, the quality of our presence is a deep measure of our caring and of our love for our children.

This book is for people who care about the quality of family life and the well-being of their children, born and unborn, young or grown. We hope it will support parents in their efforts to show their love through their being and their actions in their everyday lives. It is not likely that we can do this unless we can be authentic in our own lives and in touch with the full range of feelings we experience—in a word, awake.

Parenting is a mirror in which we get to see the best of ourselves and the worst, the richest moments of living and the most frightening. The challenge to write about it sensibly is daunting. During the years when our children were growing up, there were plenty of times when we felt that things were basically sound in our family. The children seemed happy, strong, and balanced. However, the very next day, or moment, all hell could break loose. Our world filled with confusion, despair, anger, frustration. What we thought we understood was of no use. All the rules seemed to have changed overnight, or in an instant. We had no idea what was going on or why. We felt like the biggest of failures. We felt as if we didn’t know or understand anything.

In such moments, we tried to remind ourselves as best we could to hold on to the thread of some kind of awareness of what was happening, no matter how unpleasant or painful things were. Hard as it was, we tried to acknowledge what was actually taking place and what might have been needed from us. The alternative was to get caught up in our own reactivity and automatic behaviors, and surrender whatever compassion and clarity we had to our fear or fury or denial. And even when this happened, as it inevitably does at times, we tried to reexamine it later, with greater calmness, in the hope of learning something from it.

This book comes out of our own experience as parents. It was originally written when our children were in middle school, high school, and college. Now, at the time of this revised edition, our children are grown and we are grandparents. Our experience will undoubtedly differ in many ways from your experience as a person and as a parent. You may find some of the specific ways we chose to parent to be very different from how you were parented or how you have parented your children. You may find yourself reacting with strong feelings to some of the things we say or to some of the choices we have made. The whole topic of parenting can arouse deep emotions in all of us, because it is so intimately connected with how we think of ourselves and with how we have chosen to live our lives.

We are not suggesting that you should do everything as we have done it, or if you didn’t, that you were lacking in any way. As we all know, there are few easy answers and consistently simple solutions in parenting. Nor are we saying that mindfulness is the answer to all life’s problems, or to all questions regarding parenting. We are simply trying to point to a way of seeing and a way of being that can be integrated in many different fashions into your way of parenting and into your life. Ultimately, we all have to make our own individual decisions about what is best for our children and for ourselves, drawing most of all on our creativity and our capacity to be awake and aware in our lives.

We share with you our experiences and this orientation we call mindful parenting in the hope that some of its transformative potential will resonate with your values and your intentions, and be of some use as you chart your own path in your parenting.

Ultimately, mindful parenting is about the possibility of seeing our children with greater clarity and of listening to and trusting our own hearts. It gives form and support to the daily challenges of parenting. It can also help us find ways to act with greater wisdom and be sources of unconditional love for our children, moment by moment, and day by day.