Is This Really Possible?!? One Family's Experience of Natural Parenting

By Eliane, founder of Parenting For Wholeness

It can be very challenging to parent in a way that’s different from the mainstream, which I’m guessing you’re probably doing if you’re reading this article. 

My favorite picture ever of my girls and I, December 2007

It’s challenging because most of your friends and relatives likely don’t understand what you’re doing. They may not support your choices and may even be openly critical of them (which can be really painful and distressing!)

It’s challenging because even though you may feel in your gut that you’re doing the right thing, it doesn’t always stop the doubts from cropping up. In the middle of the night, when your child behaves inappropriately, when she doesn’t reach a milestone right on schedule or when you hear dire predictions from people you value, families who seem to ‘have it all together,’ or experts, you can find yourself asking if you’re actually ruining your children instead of doing what’s best for them.

It’s challenging because you’ve likely had no example of how you’re striving to parent and may not always know how to handle situations peacefully.

It can be challenging, sometimes even overwhelming and exhausting, to spend a large part of each day focused on meeting little ones’ needs. 

I want to share my experience with you for three reasons: 

1.  I hope it will give you the reassurance that you are NOT ruining your children by parenting them in an alternative way.

2.  I hope it will give you some inspiration that will fuel you to keep following your instincts and parenting in a natural way that’s attuned to your children.

3. I hope it will show you that the time and energy invested in meeting all your children's needs when they're little and becoming the parent you want to be are worth it beyond what you can even imagine! 

My 3 daughters and I are a living proof of it.

MY EXPERIENCE:

When my first daughter Cassandra was born, I went on a quest to find a parenting approach that would insure she would grow up feeling whole, loved, and knowing that she was intrinsically good.

I was obsessed. 

It just was not an option for me to have her experience even a smidgen of what I lived and still struggle to heal from: growing up feeling unloved and believing I was deeply flawed.

For the first 5 years of my parenting journey, all my attention and energy went into finding and integrating into my family an approach that felt 100% right. If anything felt even a little bit off, I’d keep searching and tweaking until it’d feel totally right. (My two main resources were all the friends I made through La Leche League and my parenting bible, The Continuum Concept.)

Some of the things I focused on doing with my 3 daughters were:

• Having all my interactions with them come from the knowing that they are intrinsically good.
• Treating them as allies, as though we’re on the same team.
• Being a clear benevolent leader they could learn from and in whose guidance they could relax and feel safe.
• Trusting them.
• Supporting them in fully being who they are.
• Not imposing my agenda on them or putting my needs ahead of theirs.
• Being honest with them and seriously taking their perspective into account, changing when I needed to.
• Knowing that they were a lot more capable than what most people would believe.
• Never using punishments or rewards as a way to manipulate their behavior.
• Never deciding for them what they should learn, but supporting them in following their own interests, which lead to unschooling.

• Allowing them to organically become independent at their own pace instead of pushing them to it.

Once I felt solid in my parenting, five years after becoming a mother, I shifted my focus to personal growth and emotional healing, longing to have for myself what I was seeing in my daughters.

I lost interest in studying and talking about parenting, pursuing other interests instead.

I would say that from that point on, I didn’t really feel like I was parenting, but more like I was just living my life with my girls, if that makes any sense.

Until Cassandra turned 18.

January 21st 2011 was a profound day for me, a huge milestone. I found myself reflecting a lot that day. Thinking about what it meant to be the parent of an adult. How our relationship would change. How I felt about sending her out into the world on her own, given that she’d picked a college 1200 miles away from home.

And I realized something: I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO CONCERNS ABOUT HER FUTURE!!! No concerns about her ability to find her way and her happiness in the world. No concerns about her ability to keep herself safe. 

And I was struck by the contrast with what I imagined most of her friends’ parents must be feeling as their children became adults and moved away from home. 

And then further struck to realize I felt equally unconcerned about the future of my two younger daughters!

That day birthed what’s become one of my missions in life: to give as many parents as possible a vision of what’s possible with children. And information and support in achieving it.

Now before moving forward and talking about all the positive things I experienced in my family, I want to stress that I am in NO WAY a perfect parent, nor are my children perfect! I could say a lot more about this, but this isn’t the topic of this article. You can read my full confession to that here.

So here’s what I HAVE experienced in my family:

• I truly felt like I was done parenting with each of them somewhere between the age of 12 and 14. By that age they were fully able to make their own decisions and take responsibility for their lives. I would still have conversations with them, offer my opinion, or reminders, but they were fully in charge of their lives.

• There was very little conflict in my home. Though my daughters are full of life, very talkative, and at times pretty rambunctious, people often commented on how peaceful our home was because of the ease and harmony between us all.

• No sibling rivalry. Yes, we did occasionally get arguments over who would get the green cup, the biggest piece of cake or eventually the car, but they were never a big deal, and could usually easily get resolved with a bit of problem solving, distraction (when they were little) and empathy. Now that they’re adults, they’re very close and great friends, even though they’re incredibly different.

• They were very well behaved. From a very young age, except for a few brief periods, we could take them anywhere and know that not only would they behave appropriately but that we could as adults have a good time without having to closely monitor them.
• I experienced no teenage rebellion or ‘acting out.’ I may not have slept through the night when they were babies and toddlers, but I had no issues getting a good night's rest in the years when 

Cassandra's college graduation, 2014

         some parents struggle to sleep out of fear of the trouble their children might be getting into.
  

• They weren’t susceptible to peer pressure. Because they felt good about who they were and their needs were met, they weren’t tempted to do things that felt wrong to them I order to fit in. How cool is that?!?

• They easily and assertively stand up for themselves, even to people in positions of authority.

• Academic success in school: They each chose to start public school at ages 10 and 9. I never made them do homework, expected that they attend every day, or pushed them to have ‘good’ grades. Yet their report cards showed a large majority of A’s, Audrey graduated high school as valedictorian of her class and is attending NYU, a top US college, and Cassandra graduated college with honors, in 3 years instead of the usual 4.
• No fear of public speaking: Compared to the other results I listed, this feels like such a small one, yet it’s so telling to me! I was shocked to hear that when Cassandra had to speak in front of the whole school, in high school, she wasn’t nervous at all (considering I was so petrified of it that I remember almost passing out in school when doing an oral presentation in French!) She didn’t even understand why she would be. I was further amazed to hear that neither of her sisters had any nervousness about it either.
  

• But most importantly I’ve fully achieved my goal! What I most wanted for them was for them to have an unshakable sense of self, to be self-confident, inner motivated, self-sufficient and have the ability to find their own happiness in the world. I can say with a resounding ‘YES’ that I’ve achieved it, in spades, with all 3 of them. The thing that most touches me now, looking at them, is a sense of them that I can best describe as unencumbered.

I hope you get that my motivation for sharing all this is in no way to make you feel bad if you’re not living the same thing I did nor to make myself seem better than you in any way.
 
I JUST DESPERATELY WANT PARENTS TO KNOW THAT THIS IS POSSIBLE!!!

I SO want to encourage you to pursue this parenting approach if it resonates with you!  

Yes, in many ways it’s a lot of work in the early years. And it takes incredible DETERMINATION to unlearn our conditioning and fully transition to a loving, instinctual and natural way of parenting!

I am eternally grateful to the young mom I was 24 years ago, who fully committed herself to it!!! Because it’s paid off for me, my daughters, and all whom they’ll touch a million fold!

If you believe in this approach with all your heart and want help so you can also experience with your children what I described with mine, click here to see if my Clean Parenting™ Program is right for you.

I offer this program 3 times a year and each group is limited to 10 participants. Check the program page for the date of the next group, a lot of testimonials, program information and to reserve your spot.

NOTE: A shorter version of this article was originally published on Love Parenting’s website
 in January of 2014. If you’re a new mom or new to attachment and Continuum Concept parenting, 
you’ll find lots of helpful and practical information through the wonderful Sam Vickery’s work.

WANNA GIVE BACK? Did you get value from this article? If so I would be incredibly grateful if you could share this article with your friends on Facebook (below) or Pinterest. I would LOVE help spreading the word about my work to people who could be positively impacted by it! 

SUGGESTIONS: If you liked this article, you may also enjoy:

• The Key to Well-Behaved Children Who Listen to You, While Fully Respecting Them
• Why It's Critical That You Trust Your Children 
• Parenting Can Be Easy?!?
• The Magic of Win-Win's 
• Could Your Struggle Just Be Caused By An Unrealistic Expectation?