Friday, July 12, 2013

The two faced Mom in search of Peace

 Welcome to the Peaceful Parenting Challenge Blog Carnival: Week #1 Creating Awareness.
This post was written for inclusion in the 10 Week Peaceful Parenting Challenge Blog Carnival hosted by Prenatal to Parenting. This week our participants have written about creating awareness. We hope you enjoy this week’s posts and consider joining us next week when we share about a week of Mindful Breathing.

Like most people, I wear many hats and have many faces.  I have to change my outward emotions and expressions for each situation even if the inward emotions and expressions don't match.  I often do this at work, with friends and acquaintances but how often do we change ourselves for our family, the people closest to us often take the brunt of our real emotions.  How come we are able to mask what we are really feeling in certain situations and able to handle things much better than we can with the people we love the most??  Mostly because we are comfortable with them and we need to have someone in our lives that we can be real with and not have to worry about holding things in, right?  Well, if you are going to care about controlling your emotions better with anyone... it should be the ones that you love and hold close to your heart... like my partner and children.  The ones who will be near and dear to me for the rest of my life, I would like to think that the rest of my life is going to be happy and peaceful and I am going to teach my children to be happy and peaceful in the process.

Parenting two children that are 15 years apart can be a challenge!  I have decided that I need to alter my expectations of parenting, I have parented my teenager for 15 years and the parenting style I have with him is quite different than the one needed for the baby.  The movement of my curious little mind has decreased many things I have come to love in life.  My independence is no longer, relaxation and reflection, what's that?  Even the time I took to chat with people has been minimized.  I don't want to see these as losses, but they are going to be different now and I have to learn to embrace the difference.  I often have to switch back and forth from parenting a teenager to parenting a baby, this is where I often have difficulty because sometimes my frustration with my teenager can overshadow parenting my baby and vice versa... I need to find a balance.  I need to learn how to be more mindful and aware of my own emotions before I can create an environment that everyone can be happy to be in.  I strive to be happy and whole, to be a good role model for my kids but there are times that I catch myself in an intense emotional state in certain situations which I would like to change not only for myself, but for my children and the rest of the people within my environment. 

Thus, I joined a "Peaceful Parenting Challenge" on facebook that I am hoping will help me to become... well... a more peaceful parent for both my children.  This week was the first week, and the first challenge is Creating Awareness where we identify our triggers by writing down situations where we had an intense emotional reaction to something.  I have to say, this was not easy for me this week as I was home for a couple days in the beginning and then flew to the East Coast for the remainder of the week.  I didn't have any intense emotional reactions to anything other than the printer not working the way it should when I was trying to print off my boarding passes at home, this created great frustration for me as I have the expectation that when I want my technology to work, it will.  I tried thinking of situations in the last couple weeks where I had intense emotional reactions and though there hasn't been many because I truly try to live a peaceful life already... the common trigger is my EXPECTATIONS.  If I allow myself to have expectations, when they do not get fulfilled, it creates an emotional reaction within my brain and this transfers into my behavior.  I already knew this, and know that having expectations of any day, any situation, any thing can end in disappointment creating sad, angry, resentment or frustrated emotions.  The solution then is to not have any expectations!  Easy!  Right?  Not as easy as you think, because having expectations can also induce happiness, excitedness and fulfillment, and who doesn't want those emotions!?  Though if I can remember that we can also get these emotions when we don't have expectations, resulting in being delightfully amused by day to day surprises that we don't expect.  It just seems to easy when you say it but I know it is not and I still have alot of work to do to. 

So my goal for the next week is to be more aware of my emotions, hold back the reactions that the emotions create (especially for the ones I love) and to try not to carry too much expectations into my days.  Thanks for joining me on this journey of becoming a more peaceful person, thus a more peaceful parent which will create peaceful children.  Below you can find links to other blogs from parents who are also challenging themselves to become more peaceful.  Enjoy!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:
Balancing being a stay-at-home-mom & working from home – Sarah from Prenatal to Parenting realizes her home base business and mommy duties don’t mix well.
My Top Card - Amber from Strocel.com shares her experience attending the Peaceful Parenting Mini Retreat.
Peaceful Parenting Challenge Week 1 - Katrina from Kalem Photography explores her expectations on herself and asking for help.
Peaceful Parenting Challenge Week 1: Awareness – Jennifer from The Children’s Directory talks about her frustrations over getting out the door and dinner time.
Emotional Highs and Lows of Parenting  – Verena from Memory Maker Events talks about the emotional highs and lows of parenting.
Peaceful Parenting Challenge Week 1 - Kathryn from Curiosity and the Kat is reminded about checking her “stuff” at the door before dealing with her twins.
The Two Faced Mom in search of peace - Loly from My Journey Home chats about expectations.
Week #1 Suddenly aware of all this anger… - Michelle from My Peaceful Parenting becomes aware of her anger.
Week 1 Triggers and Emotions -Amanda from Family and Baby Sign Language describes her physical response to intense emotions.
Ricky at Daddy Blogger reflects on how peaceful the first year of his daughter’s life was and wonders where all that peace has gone.

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