 | What if I told you that one day, very soon, your child would stop having meltdowns all together. Not only that, but they would also stop making a mess in the house, stop teasing their brother, stop whining for sweets in the supermarket, stop treading muddy footprints through the house, stop back-chatting you, stop refusing to go to school, stop waking you up when they have nightmares in the early hours of the morning and stop feeding their veggies to the dog under the table. Sounds like bliss, right?! |
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Mona Naidoo (aka Princess Mona) is a life and abundance coach, helping women to transform their lives and finances and to step into their power in the world. For more of Mona's tips and insights, join her community on Facebook.
 I’ve had enough of the self-help movement. And I say this with full acknowledgement of my role in it. This movement is not there to help you. It is there to make money. It is an industry and a very fast growing one at that. Why? Why is it one of the fastest growing industries worldwide? Because we all think we’re messed up. We all think we’re not good enough. We all think we need to improve, get better, do more, sort ourselves out. Enough!
 It is a fundamentally human thing to desire. We all have things that we want. Maybe we want to be healthier, or happier, or we’d like another job or a new car or a break for a week, or a chance to pee in peace, or something delicious for dinner, or for our train to run on time, or our boss to give us a Christmas bonus, or our partner to pack the dishwasher without being asked. It is also fundamentally human to feel intense disappointment, anger and resentment when our desires go unfulfilled; as most of them will.
Our children are human (I think we forget this sometimes) and so have both desires and the ensuing frustration when the things they want are not readily forthcoming.  “The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.” – Carlos Castaneda
Life is terrifying. There are so many things that can go wrong with us and our kids... and often do. It's a small wonder we aren't all on drugs. Oh wait, maybe we are! The explosion of anti-depressants and tranquilisers didn't come out of nowhere. If we have any measure of intelligence we'll see how fragile we are and that ultimately we have to die. And our children have to die. Maybe the only people seeing things clearly are the ones with what we call ‘mental health problems’. We all have a mental health problem called ‘extreme denial to cope with the truth’. We're all going to die. The questions we ask ourselves are very important in terms of what we focus on in our lives, which in turn determines the quality of the life we end up living. In parenting, however, we often ask the wrong questions, questions that lead us down the rabbit hole of guilt, fear, inadequacy, and overwhelm. We tend to ask what we can do to be a better parent (implying that we’re not good enough). We ponder over what discipline practices we need to change or improve or which routines to implement or abandon (creating doubt in our minds about what we’re doing that our children inevitably pick up on). We may want to know which parenting approach to follow (suggesting that there is, in fact, one way that is better than all the others). There is no right or wrong way. In fact, in this case, the whole question needs to be thrown out...   We take it for granted that although we often feel like hitting someone else (or biting scratching or throwing a tantrum) that we are able to override this primitive drive and behave like an at least semi-civilized human being (well, most of the time anyway). We assume that this is a normal ability that everyone of all ages shares, and we therefore expect everyone else to make good use of it. Including our kids. But the physiological truth of the matter runs a little bit deeper…
 Imagine that one day you wake up and get dressed and your partner takes you by the hand pops you in the car and, instead of dropping you at work, the car takes off and flies to Mars. You're already confused, right, as you were expecting to go somewhere familiar.
When you get there he helps you out if the car leads you to a group of Martians and other women and turns around and leaves. You look around and everyone seems to know everyone else and they're all busying themselves about. You don't know why you're there, where to go if you need the toilet, how long you'll be there, what there is to eat, what behaviour is appropriate or not. How do you think you would feel? Scared? Angry? Confused? Tearful? Panicked? All of the above? |
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