“I’m growing? Like a flower?”
-my daughter (when I told her she was getting too big for the pair of shoes I was putting on her)
There are so many parenting books out there, it’s crazy. I’ve found a few that seem to make sense and I’ve tried some of things suggested. Some have worked, some haven’t. Some of these things I haven’t really been able to try because in the moment, when stress or emotions are high, my frustration comes out before I can recall which parenting approach to use. It’s hard enough being mindful in every moment, but add in the unique fatigue that comes with taking care of a small child every day, all day. In that context, changing any behavior or habit becomes a little bit harder.
And it’s not that having a little person around is only stressful and tiring; that’s only one side of the coin. There are plenty of moments of fun and delight that come with taking care of your own child. The hard part is taking the difficult times as opportunities for practicing the most profound kind of yoga: to “Perform work...without selfish attachments...alike in success and defeat. For yoga is perfect evenness of mind.” (The Bhagavad Gita as translated by Eknath Easwaran). It sounds lofty...okay, it sounds impossible. We’re all humans, right? And human beings are emotional as well as intellectual and physical beings. But life is so much better if we can roll with the punches, a.k.a. maintain relative calm even in tough situations, and yoga makes that more possible.
Almost a decade ago, I spent some time at Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville as a participant in the LYT program and one of the things the swamis would talk with us about is pratipaksha bhavana. It’s somewhat like positive thinking or cognitive reframing (Daniel Siegel presents a kid-friendly version of this in his book, The Whole Brain Child). Anyways, pratipaksha bhavana is just noticing negative thinking and replacing it with more positive thoughts.
But just as with parenting, the key here is to notice the negativity in the first place without just sweeping it away or denying it completely. In a moment when my daughter throws herself on the ground, screaming about how she wants something I told her she can’t have, how do I stop and say that the problem doesn’t necessarily lie in her tantrum, and that there isn’t even a problem unless I also flip out. There is only an opportunity for me to hear her and respond with calm.
And that, yoga mamas, is so, so hard to do sometimes.
I know in my mind that raising my voice or scolding my daughter tends to shame her or shut her down, but after negotiating with her 10 or 20 times a day to go through the day with adult speed and efficiency, I get tired and impatient.
The solution? Devote myself to practicing stillness, often enough to make it a habit, so that even in moments of fatigue and impatience, I can stop and realize this is a time to remember that my daughter is a 2-year-old, moving through her day at toddler speed, captivated by the world with her distractable toddler mind, without the adult perspective of ‘behaving politely,’ or ‘getting things done.’
Of course I still have to get to my to-do list, but with the knowledge that motherhood calls for slowing down. That might mean I accomplish fewer things on the list, but who wants a mom that is frantically pushing herself and her kids through every little moment? That’s that same mindset that says there is no time to practice yoga, meditate, or relax around the house with the kids.
A few weeks ago I made the commitment to meditate in the morning and evening for 2 minutes each time. The idea was to make meditation a habit by starting with an attainable amount of time. You might not go as deep into a meditative state in one sitting, but over time you go deep in a slow, gradual way. Imagine a floor that gets cleaned for an hour once a month, versus one that gets cleaned a few minutes every day. Which one is better to live with?
Let’s devote ourselves to the little things, knowing that over time, it’s the little things that shape the big ones. Let’s be like my little toddler, who realized that, like a flower, she is growing: slowly but surely, always changing, and on the way to blooming.