When our first is born from our womb or through our hearts, when we meet our grandchild for the first time or stand in front of a classroom full of young children, looking up to us, hoping with open hearts, most of us expand, little children, babies, hold a promise. They carry a promise of LOVE and opportunity, and with this promise, they also push our buttons, reminding us we, too, held this promise once.
Modern parenting approaches offer many alternative viewpoints and methodologies. Those of us who are parenting with intention or contributing to raising significant young ones in our family or community weave many of these viewpoints together, sometimes in awareness and at other times with just our hearts.
All child-rearing approaches based on intention and awareness first stress the importance of care, nourishment, empowerment, sensitivity to the child’s needs, nonviolence, unconditional love, and supporting the child’s best interest.
Let’s explore six intentional and aware approaches to parenting and what is unique to each.
Intentional Parenting
Intentional parenting aligns with intentional living, a lifestyle of consciously attempting to live by one’s values, beliefs, and truth. Intentional parenting invites making intentional choices while adjusting our parenting style to our individual child. It is a mindset that invites us to observe each of our children as a whole. A continuous practice of learning and adjusting, asking within what it is that we want for our children, our family, and ourselves. It is about bringing intention to our questions, actions, and thoughts and our relationship with our children. Potentially remembering that intention sits both in our minds and in our hearts and energy.
Positive Parenting
The positive parenting approach stems from positive psychology, which focuses on the strengths and gifts that allow individuals to build a life of meaning and purpose. Positive parenting invites nurturing the positive behaviors and qualities of children, parents, and other caregivers, which then enhance the positive development of children themselves, encouraging personal development, self-growth, positive self-esteem, creativity, and their growth to be fully capable individuals. Positive parenting is an umbrella concept for many parenting styles.
Mindful Parenting
Mindfulness is a way of living that invites us to be present and aware. As a practice, it is about cultivating our awareness of the now using various practices. It has been found to reduce stress, increase self-control, enhance flexibility, improve concentration, and awaken kindness, acceptance, and compassion. Weaving mindfulness into parenting invites us to be present in our everyday interactions with our children. Becoming mindful nourishes our ability to parent with calmness, become less reactive, react in positive and nourishing ways, and create a significantly better relationship with our children.
Gentle Parenting
Gentle parenting involves intentionally inviting lots of empathy, kindness, compassion, respect, and trust into one’s relationship with their children. In general, gentle parenting aims to create a strong bond between parent and child. Parents collaborate and are less of an authority. They invite children to learn how to participate in social situations by modeling emphatic, compassionate, and respectful behavior.
Conscious Parenting
Conscious parenting is based on self-awareness. First, at the level of each specific moment, such as asking: “Why is my child…?” before reacting, or “Am I reacting because of what happened or because I am tired (or any other reason)?” and so forth. Second, at the level of ourselves as parents, our history, challenges, and limiting parenting beliefs. It invites parents to a journey of self-reflection and self-healing so that they can then show up for their children fully present at the moment, out of sensitivity to their child’s thoughts, feelings, and needs, and able to communicate effectively, acknowledging mistakes and being respectful of one another.
Spiritually Aware Parenting
Spiritually aware parenting is a fairly new concept that, to my knowledge, is mostly used by Christina Fletcher and myself. In my book The Promise We Made, I offer the following definition for Spiritually Aware Parenting: “the act of guidance and care for souls arriving on Mother Earth, creating the conditions for each soul to grow its physical vessel and spiritual conduit so that it can walk the path it asked for, manifesting its soul’s journey.”
Spiritually aware parenting builds on the above parenting styles. It, too, invites intention and awareness of our walk, self-healing, conscious and intentional living, and parenting. It adds our knowing of the journey. Our spiritual journey and the deep meaning held by the understanding that we are each, and thus, so are our children, on a spiritual journey for this lifetime and beyond. When we internalize this simple, yet sometimes challenging understanding, our view of our children – little ones, often still dependent on us, yet also huge, evolved souls, changes, and so does our understanding of our role in their lives. We are to be their guides upon their arrival on Earth. We are both teachers and students, walking a shared journey, and among our promises to them, is the promise to create the conditions they need to become a whole human – living their physical three-dimensional experience, while at the same time, staying true to their beautiful luminous spiritual essence, walking this lifetime whole and in joy.
