Parenting Blog

"Gratitude is noticing the extraordinary in the ordinary. And then taking the nanosecond to feel it." -- Karen Krakower Kaplan

Happy Tuesday!  Want to rock your life?  Do these 3 simple things every day this week:

1. Do something from your Joy list to nurture yourself, so your cup is full enough to overflow with joy toward your child. Don't have a list of the things you can do to help you feel joyful?  Make one, right now! Put it up and keep adding to it every day.

2. Spend fifteen minutes in private, unstructured, loving interaction with each child, preferably including lots of listening and snuggling. Can't get your kid to engage? Try physical games, the kind you would play with a baby -- kiss each toe, give a massage. Resist the urge to tickle, teach or engage with any kind of technology.  Just be -- and let love rush in.

3. Find something to be grateful for every minute.  Gratitude transforms our mood, attitude, actions, how we perceive our world.  If all you do is offer appreciation all day long -- to your child, your spouse, yourself, Life -- you'll find your whole day transformed.

May your week be filled with miracles, large and small.

"If the only prayer you said in your life was 'THANK YOU', that would suffice." -- Meister Eckhart

"When we experience a sense of gratitude, we give ourselves a dose of mental sunshine.  Suddenly the world seems brighter, and we have more options.  And the greatest thing is that as we experience the mental sunshine of gratitude, we begin to glow with sunshine ourselves.  Suddenly not only is the world brighter, but we are too.  Soon we notice that our lives are full of people who want to be around us because we exude peacefulness, happiness, and joy." -- M.J. Ryan

"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have" -- Frederick Keonig

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  The original Thanksgiving spirit was gratitude, celebrated by the pilgrims together with the original owners of this land -- despite the conflicts that later dishonored that spirit. What other celebration is all about gratitude?

Today, I am grateful to you. By taking the time to read these emails, you're expressing your commitment to grow, both as a human being and as a parent. That's hard, even heroic, work. I'm honored to be part of your journey.

Why does parenting matter? Because transforming parenting from control to loving relationships will help more children grow up to be compassionate, responsible, well-adjusted human beings.  Ultimately, whether things change for the better in our world will depend on the quality of the human beings we are creating, every day, in our families. Everything – even, perhaps, whether our planet survives – depends on how we shape the next generation or two of human beings. In a very real way, the future of the world rests on the shoulders of parents.

Thank you for the blessing of your parenting.

This Thanksgiving may you be blessed with radical gratitude
Gratitude for that first moment when you held your child in your arms
Gratitude for exactly who your child is today
Gratitude for the life force pushing him or her to blossom
even if we can't always see that's what's happening.
Gratitude for the help that is always there if you ask, helping you to be the best possible parent for your child
even during difficult moments.
Gratitude even for those difficult moments, that help us to grow
and blossom ourselves, to find new reservoirs of love
inside our own hearts.
Gratitude that your unique child was placed in your arms
To nurture and guide and love.

May your Thanksgiving week be filled with radical gratitude -- and a cornucopia of miracles, large and small.

"It's especially important during the holidays to remember that aiming for a PERFECT holiday ritual is actually a bad goal. Not only is perfection impossible and striving for it adds stress, but honestly, the holidays families remember most fondly are those when the dog ate the cake, or everybody got the flu on Christmas Eve. Play it loose, have a sense of humor..." -- Meg Cox

Are you trying to figure out how to get everything done this week?  How to add some meaning and gratitude in between courses?  I'm the first to trumpet the benefit to our kids -- and ourselves -- of rituals, and of learning the habit of gratitude.  And you'll find plenty of rituals on my website to add meaning to your family's Thanksgiving.

But my plea to you today is to remember that perfection is not attainable, but something better is.  Yes, you guessed it, Love.  (Been reading these posts, huh? I'm honored.)

You know those moments when pandemonium reigns, and your kids are spinning out of control, and your difficult relative is acting, well, difficult, and you have to choose between those visions of a storybook Thanksgiving versus grabbing your kids and getting them outside for some old fashioned fresh air before everyone loses their mind? There's not really a choice.  Give up on perfection and go for love.

Storybook holidays are limited to storybooks. Real parents get reality parenting, complete with cranky kids, messy kitchens, and store-bought pie.  But extraordinary moments often masquerade as ordinary life. So look around the pandemonium and remind yourself to be grateful for every minute you get to spend with your children as they grow.  For me, there's no gratitude deeper than that.

"You are a great wizard. You can use your powers to practice white magic on yourself instead of the other kind. The most basic way to do that is to concentrate on naming, savoring, and feeling gratitude for the blessings you do have -- your love for your kid, the pleasures of eating the food you like, the sight of the sky at dusk, the entertaining drama of your unique fate. Don't ignore the bad stuff, but make a point of celebrating the beautiful stuff with all the exuberant devotion you can muster."  -- Rob Brezsny

We've almost completed the ten steps of Heal Our Ability to Love Unconditionally.  Step Nine is:

Cultivate gratitude, all day, every day.  Gratitude is the easiest path to love.

Every spiritual tradition includes a practice of gratitude.  Why? Because it works.  Research shows that the more often we feel grateful, the happier we are.  The heartfelt expression of gratitude lifts us out of the mind’s usual restless feeling of “not enough” into the joy of sufficiency.  We open ourselves to take in the blessings that surround us.

Certainly, when we're happier we're better parents.  More able to relax and enjoy our kids, be patient, set an upbeat tone, let stress roll off our back.

But something more happens when we practice gratitude. Dwelling on the positive moves us very quickly into a state of grace, of taking in goodness.  Quite simply, feeling grateful makes us feel loved.  It fills us. It even heals us.  And the more we're filled with love, the more we can give it. 

How can you use this in your life?

1. Find something to be grateful for every minute and soak in every blessing: Your child’s exuberance, a hot cup of coffee, the opportunity to be kind to someone, the changing leaves of autumn. Gratitude transforms our mood, attitude, actions, how we perceive our world.  If all you do is offer appreciation -- to your child, your spouse, yourself, Life -- you'll find your whole day transformed.

2. Feeling too bad to find gratitude?  Remember that “We're not grateful because we're happy.  We're happy because we're grateful.”  Shift your bad mood with an avalanche of appreciation. No matter how difficult the day, there is always something for which to be grateful.  You can even do this with your kids -- they love it! Just start naming things you're grateful for. Keep it up for five minutes, and your whole mood will have shifted.

3. At bedtime, list five positive things that happened, large and small. Notice why they happened. You'll be programming your subconscious to create more of those things.  Don’t go to sleep without going through this simple ritual. Researchers claim this is a concrete way to raise your happiness set point so that you end up happier on a daily basis. Why not try it?  You might change your life.

4. Want to be happier with your kids in three minutes?  Find three things you're grateful for about your child.  Really appreciate those things.  Better yet, express them. Watch your child blossom.

Grandma knew what she was talking about when she told you to "Count your blessings." Unconditional gratitude is the easiest path to healing your ability to love unconditionally. 

“You can complain because roses have thorns; or you can rejoice because thorns have roses”—Ziggy

"The opposite of complaining is gratitude. We should talk about things we are thankful for rather than things we are unhappy about. Our minds are like steering wheels, they take us in the direction we point them. If we focus on negative things, we will notice and attract more negative things in our life. If we focus on positive things, we will move in the direction of greater happiness and more success." - AComplaintFreeWorld.org

Research shows that when we listen to complaints of any kind, we get demoralized.  Whether we're making the complaints or listening to them, our minds start on a cycle of negative thinking.

So why do we complain?

Sometimes to get attention or connect with others by commiserating.  Sometimes to avoid taking responsibility for something: It's not OUR fault!  Sometimes simply because it's the story we tell about our lives.  "You won't believe how awful my day (week, year, life) was."

Parents and kids often complain as a way to lobby each other to behave differently.  With parents, it could be called nagging.  "I can't believe you left your jacket on the floor again!"  With kids, it's an attempt to elicit parental intervention of some sort:  "He's picking on me!" or "All the other kids' parents let them!"

Challenge your family to live this week complaint-free.  Put a jar on your counter.  Every time anyone complains, that person has to put a quarter in the jar, and express gratitude in place of the complaint. 

"Not chicken again!" might become "I am so grateful we get to have a healthy, hearty dinner and that Mom cooked it for us!" 

"I hate picking up the clothes you kids leave on the floor" might become "Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.  I'm so glad that you kids will have all these clothes picked up first so I can serve everyone dessert after dinner, right?  I love that everyone in this family is learning to clean up his own messes."

"Can't you ever brush your hair?" might become "I love having such a beautiful daughter!"

"My boss did it again!" might become "I am grateful to have a job and a paycheck to feed my family."

 At the end of the week, donate your quarters to charity.  You'll be amazed how much money you raise for your favorite charity as you re-train yourself.

May your week be filled with the miracle of gratitude.