Living with Heart: From Birth to Death 89 - Parenting with Heart: The Power of Remembering
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The "Living with Heart" Podcast is brought to you by Chip Dodd Resources (www.chipdodd.com) and The Voice of the Heart Center (vothcenter.com). You can connect with Dr. Chip Dodd at chip@chipdodd.com. Contact Bryan Barley for coaching at bryan@vothcenter.com.
What is the meaning of remember?
- We tend to think that remember only means to recall facts, a place, an occurrence, or a time period. It is that and much more.
- Remember also means to take into account the emotional impact of what we recall. It is the need to integrate all the experiences of living.
- “Re-member” can mean to keep your thinking, feeling, and behaving congruent with your environment and the people who live in it.
- For a parent, the definition of remember that also includes “re-member” is a need for the parent to recall and integrate what it was like to be a child, regardless of what age.
- The parent who does not “re-member” will forget the difficulties, and even the joys of growing up. They will not parent the way a child needs to be parented, or the way the parent actually wishes to do.
- Many parents run from “re-membering” because it requires that we feel and integrate “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of our own lives.
- To remember requires that we face, feel, and deal with the pain of failure and the sweet memories of success. If we don’t have the courage or willingness to remember, our children have to miss richer connections that they were made to have.
- Parents who are not willing to grow, have difficulty tolerating their own feelings, and their own inherent neediness; the effect is that they will have lower tolerance for the feelings and needs of the child.
Three helpful attitudes to develop to help parents “re-member”
- Acknowledging distance
- Doing the work of daily remembrance
- Facing the impossible
What is distance?
Distance is to remember that the parent lives in another “time-zone,” called the future in relation to a child.
A child struggles in a place that the parent has gone beyond. Either the parent can recall the heart ache or the heart delight, and can relate to the child, or the parent’s need to ignore or suppress their experience will block emotional and spiritual connection to the child.