It is always hard to write a blog where I have to reflect on my mistakes as a parent. My ego screams to keep it silent but my spirit yearns to share and offer it of service to others.\u00a0 A mighty battle within.<\/p>\n
My parenting philosophy is deeply embedded with the principle of empathy; of feeling and understanding my children’s perspective, in order that I can help guide them and support them through their journey.<\/p>\n
I still think this is deeply important.<\/p>\n
Yet I have discovered a trap in this idealised path… something that harms rather than helps my children on their journeys. It has been particularly highlighted by one child whom has a fight reaction tendency when misunderstood. When they have lashed out I have nearly always seen and understood the route to that explosion. I have watched and witnessed the unfolding of communication crashes and mix ups. And so I have helped explain that to others. I have spoken their feelings and shown how and why they have reached melt down. I did this to model to them how to verbalise their frustrations and recognise their own triggers.<\/p>\n
And it has worked. They can verbalise and can recognise but they can also excuse themselves. ‘I hit because they annoyed me.’<\/p>\n
And I have explained that excuses are not ok, there is no justification for violence unless in defence of life and soul. But they keep coming. These excuses. By fully empathising I have taught that there is some implicit permission in their reaction, I have fed this attitude of vindication.<\/p>\n
So I have reflected. I have looked out into the world at the excuses and demands for empathy being thrown out constantly in society; I have looked within at the balance of compassion and discipline triggers from my past and I realise that on this honourable path of affinity I have let resilience slide.<\/p>\n
Because resilience is a key tool for life. Resilience is the ability to carry on in the face of all adversity, including that of being misunderstood.<\/p>\n
When I look out into the world and see the screams and cries of so many begging to be understood, to be re-labelled, re-defined and then crumbling and collapsing when others don’t want to, don’t have to, don’t like to; there I see a dearth of resilience. It is not for us to demand someone’s understanding, it is for us to know that we are still enough without it.<\/p>\n
So now I have some work to do. My children are thankfully young and resilient enough to flow with my mistakes; we learn together. I hope the rest of the world can too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is always hard to write a blog where I have to reflect on my mistakes as a parent. My ego screams to keep it silent but my spirit yearns to share and offer it of service to others.\u00a0 A mighty battle within. My parenting philosophy is deeply embedded with the principle of empathy; of … Continue reading “The Empathy Trap”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[313,23,71,36,117,60,311,58,43,116,15,314,312,129,144],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-moments","tag-adversity","tag-balance","tag-childhood","tag-communication","tag-compassion","tag-connection","tag-empathy","tag-family","tag-guidance","tag-kindness","tag-parenting","tag-philosophy","tag-resilience","tag-understanding","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":921,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}