I was exhausted from not knowing how to meet my children’s conflicts with care, kindness, and love, I was tired of searching for the answer as it kept me further away from the parent I wanted to be. I knew I had to do something different.
I heard about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and found a 1/2 day parenting workshop. There was something about the facilitator and the group. It was warm, inviting, and grounding. I wanted to learn more.
I took a leap of faith and signed up for a nine month practitioner’s program. During this time, I found myself repeating an old pattern of applying the one skill I had just learned to the situation at hand. Sometimes, this actually backfired. At the end of this nine month program, I realized I needed more consistency and support in practicing the NVC skills. I also needed time to integrate and embody the NVC consciousness.
Unless there was a family emergency, I committed to attending a weekly practice group for six months. Here, I was held without judgment and total acceptance. I began to loosen the hold on my assumptions about each child; and began to see what they could be going through. As I shifted and changed, the way my children related to each other and to me also began to shift and change. The conflicts became fewer and fewer.
I went from a parent that was always searching and searching for a technique that would work to a parent who knew what was needed in the moment to support my children in a loving way.
It wasn’t until my children became much older that I learned about Kristin Neff & Chris Germer’s Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). I wished I had the tools of MSC when they were little as it would have made my journey so much easier.
Self-compassion would have been there for me when I was going through the hard times of applying NVC. It would have been there as an antidote to my inner critic. It would also have helped me recognize I did not need to keep searching for techniques and solutions. The answer to the parent I wanted to be lay within.