The Key to Truly Happy Children and Lasting Harmony in Your Family

​I realize I’m making a really bold statement here, but I believe it very well might be true. And to continue on that bold track, I’ll also state that I'm starting to believe that teaching (or more accurately guiding people to connect with) this specific piece might be one of my purposes in life.

I've recently narrowed my coaching practice to conscious parents and I've been loving it!!! I love being able to share about my parenting approach which is so dear to my heart and from which my family has so benefited, ALONG WITH facilitating the emotional healing  and releasing inner blocks work which is what I’m most passionate about.   

As a result of this new focus, I've been talking with and working with a lot more parents.

And I’m realizing that there’s something that I've mastered and am able to share and help parents with which most people are either not familiar with or struggle to put into practice. Something which I believe might very well be THE key in having TRULY HAPPY CHILDREN AND HARMONY IN FAMILIES. And the absence of which is the root problem of the majority of questions that mothers ask me. 

It’s about positioning ourselves as being in charge with our children, but in a completely respectful, attuned and non-manipulative way. 

What Jean Liedloff in The Continuum Concept talked about in terms of being a leader with our children. (Click here for a description of The Continuum Concept, and here for a discussion on being a leader.)

What we almost exclusively see in our society is either authoritarian or child centered and permissive parenting. 

Most people unfortunately aren't even aware that there’s another option.

So they waver between the two approaches. They spend a lot of time in the permissive and child centered realm, out of a deep desire to:

… not harm their children

… not do to their children what was done to them

… honor their wholeness and their spirits

But then chaos sometimes (or often!) reigns in their families. Out of exasperation and powerlessness, parents end up shouting and punishing (or using time-outs, removal of privileges, or other positive sounding forms of punishment.) They feel damned if they do and damned if they don’t. That they have to choose between (possibly) well-behaved children and order in their home OR being nurturing.

They don’t know that… 

THERE IS A THIRD OPTION!!!

I've yet to come up with words which succinctly and accurately represent what that option is (I would LOVE some suggestions if you have some) but here’s what it is:

• It’s a way of being with our children where we are clear, loving and grounded in ourselves. 
• We know that our children are innately caring, compassionate, responsible, eager to contribute and wanting to learn from us, so that we don’t have to coerce them into any way. (Click here for an article I wrote on that topic.)
• We know that though all the above qualities are already in them, they need and desire guidance to learn how to function in our society.
• Because we always respect them and take their needs into account, they in turn completely trust us and want to please us.
• Because we’re attuned to them, we know when they need guidance. We’re not afraid to tell them what to do in areas where it’s needed, in order for them to learn the appropriate social behavior. Because of the level of trust that’s present, only one word or look from a parent can be enough for a child to correct his behavior. This isn’t in any way done from a judgmental or punitive perspective, but from a very deep mutual understanding that the parent is here to teach the child how to function in our world.

I was blessed to succeed in parenting from that place with my children, which lead to a very easy, harmonious, happy and peaceful family. 

Click the image to purchase the book to which I attribute the happiness and harmony of my family.

I personally did so by re-reading The Continuum Concept many times, creating lots of community for myself which supported me in making the change from all my negative conditioning, by having endless conversations with bright, aware and trusted friends with whom we would try to figure out how to handle every situation from that perspective, how to re-train or more accurately un-train ourselves.

Though my path to parenting this way was through  sheer willpower and behavior modification, I’ve since found a much more efficient way to transform our parenting from what we’ve learned and experienced, been conditioned to, and arises out of

our unmet needs to a way that’s in harmony with human nature.

We are biologically wired to parent that way. If we weren’t and children had always been either running wild or rebelling against authority, mankind would not have survived. Therefore all that’s needed is to clear what’s in our way of organically parenting instinctually, lovingly and effectively.

I’ll be writing about this topic in my next blog post, but right now I want to leave you with some hope around this. Though the deep healing work of our own unmet needs can take time, I’ve found that unhooking it from our parenting can be remarkably fast.

Here’s an experience I had with a mom recently, which illustrates it: 

She was experiencing an ongoing struggle with her son which was deeply affecting her family life. During a session, we identified how that struggle was connected to what she experienced as a child. I lead her to connect with it emotionally, and we did some healing work on it. Though that session did not complete the healing of the childhood experience (this will be an ongoing process,) it did disconnect it from how she was playing it out with her son. And the intense struggles that she was having with him DID disappear overnight and have remained cleared for a few months now.

Do you resonate with this article? 

Then I encourage you to strongly consider participating in my Clean Parenting™ Program! 

A large focus of it is on clarifying, clearing your obstacles to and building your leadership attitude so that you can also have ease in your family! You can read of parents' experience of it on the program page. 

Click here for information on it and to register! 

Did you get value from this article? Would you like to give back? If so I would be incredibly grateful if you could share this article on your Facebook wall with a comment about one thing you found valuable in it. Or email it to a friend. 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:

• Does your child feel that you're on his team?
• Could your struggle just be caused by an unrealistic expectation?
• What Loving and Effective Parenting Looks Like - An Example from the Huxtable's (video) - It perfectly illustrates what I describe in this post
• The Continuum Concept - It Works!!!