Justifying Your Parenting Style

Are you striving to be a more conscious parent, one that doesn’t punish, consequence or blame your child for their behaviors? Do you have a partner with more traditional views, or are your relatives and friends saying you are spoiling your child and ruining their chances for a successful life?

As a child, if you were parented in a more traditional way and are now moving out of that lane and finding yourself swimming upstream, insecurity about your choices may arise. Not knowing how this grand experiment will turn out is terrifying to the conditioned mind.

What if you are wrong? What if your partner, family or others are right?

When the “world” is telling you they are right and you are wrong, the urge to defend and justify yourself is strong. To reverse what is coming at you, desperately you cast others in the wrong and yourself in the right.

If you are feeling this way, try this: going deeply inside ask yourself what is my BIG “Why”? – why do I feel compelled to parent this way? Release the outside voices, tapping into your wisdom to deeply find your “Why”.

At the beginning of this parenting journey I defended and justified my parenting, because there was a part of me clinging to the familiar traditional norms, and stepping into the unknown was scary and uncertain.

Not knowing how my daughter would turn out I eventually chose to stop parenting for outcome and instead followed my HEART. I parented in the moment showing up for this innocent precious being discovering herself in the world. 

I discovered my big “why” was to create an opportunity to exercise my clarity and wisdom, laying the ground for my daughter. Living into my brilliance I stopped subordinating to the culture around me.

I recognized as I followed my heart a good feeling arose and I offered this to my daughter instead of my conditioned fear. Folks, especially my family, thought I was crazy, and yes it was challenging not to defend and justify myself and become as righteous as I perceived they were. 

Truth is, I didn’t know if I was right. I don’t know to this day if I did it right or wrong. In my deepest being, I only know that opening my heart to love my daughter and trusting her attunement to my open heart opened the door to her sharing her open heart right back at me. Ahhhhh! This is Purejoy.