What To Do When Your Parenting Views Are Different From Your Friends’
By: Lisa Cavallaro – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
I mean no disrespect, but most of the people in my world are muggles when it comes to deliberate creation. Muggle is a term I first heard about in deliberate creation circles, but I’ve since learned it can apply in other areas as well.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines muggle as a person who does not have a particular knowledge or skill. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary considers the word slang. In Harry Potter world, muggle is a term used to describe someone who lacks any magical ability. For purposes of this article, I’m using the term as I first learned it… to describe someone with little or no knowledge of deliberate creation.
Please note, not long ago I was a muggle myself when it came to deliberation creation. Now that I do know about and study it, my views on most topics have changed… parenting included.
Don’t get me wrong… I love my muggle friends and family members. It’s just that we see certain things very differently… for example, our views on kids.
Like I said, I love these people that I’m related to, hang out with and have every day conversations with. It’s not my goal to try to convince anyone to see things the way I see them, so I don’t preach about why I make some of the parenting choices I make.
I used to just listen when someone complained about their kids, their kids’ lives or their kids’ choices. If I spoke up, I would either say something I didn’t really believe just to agree with them. Or I would go out on a limb and say something that felt right to me, even though they might think it sounded totally insane.
Lately, I’ve been doing less of the former and more of the latter because I think I’ve gotten better at saying things in ways that don’t sound so wacky. Sure, speaking up is a risk… they might not like the fact I’m disagreeing with them and they might also think I’ve totally lost my marbles.
Mostly, when I’m in conversation with people who don’t believe what I believe about kids, my goal is just to maintain my focus and not slip back into re-believing things I no longer want to believe.
What I want to believe is that kids:
- are absolutely limitless,
- can figure things out for themselves,
- have an abundance of love inside them,
- are bursting with potential,
- are worthy of feeling great about themselves,
- deserve to hear how awesome they are,
- don’t require our approval,
- are here to teach us more than we can ever teach them,
- can have an amazing future regardless of where they are today,
- and more.
But adhering to these beliefs isn’t always easy when we’re told about things like rules, limits, grades, friends, enemies and behavior diagnoses, to name a few. There’s nothing like a good story about the “reality” of things that presents a convincing case to get us to change our minds about any or all of the above.
So, the best way to maintain focus around muggles is to pay more attention to what we want to believe about kids than to what reality or other people tell us. It can be as simple as asking ourselves if what we’re being told is what we want to believe. If it’s not, we can choose not to believe it.
As we know, reality can change. What we believe today is what influences our future reality and what we encourage kids to believe today will influence their future reality.
Reminding ourselves every day what we want to believe about kids and then looking for reasons to believe it is the best way I know of to maintain focus when the chatter around us gets loud.
Look at it this way… even if the adults don’t agree, it’s really the kids whose buy-in matters most anyway.
More by Lisa:
Lisa Cavallaro, The Confidence Coach, is an LOA Coach with a solution-focused spin on bullying. She helps parents leverage Law of Attraction to raise kids who are self-confident and have a positive outlook toward peers, school and life. Lisa is the author of No More Drama and ADHD The Natural Way.
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