“There is no one who can give you wiser advice than you can give yourself; you will never make a slip, if you listen to your own heart.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Parents- particularly parents of pre-teens, teens and young adults- are just chock full of advice. “I just want to make sure that they know/understand/see….” And, I get it, I hear you! We want so badly to impart our wisdom to our children!
The advice being given is coming absolutely from the heart-they are our children after all. Often, almost always I’d venture, our advice is being filtered through the head. When our children’s brains are developing during these transitional years, our parental brains go a bit insane. Just my truth.
Another truth? Much of the genuinely good, solid, loving advice that we parents give our children is actually coming from fear.
The advice comes from honest loving fear, but fear wins. Fear that their child will do something/not do something/be just like their parent/ not be like their parent at all. Seriously, we parents are a fascinating lot! Parents are afraid that their child will: become an addict/drop out of school/ get fat/become anorexic…the list goes on and on and…. They are afraid that their child won’t: graduate, get a job, move out of the house and so on and so on and…. Our fears do not help anyone, parent or child.
Our advice, our wisdom, is based on our experiences. Our kids are sometimes like us, and sometimes nothing like us! We have constructed lives that we feel good and safe in, and we want them to know how we did that, which is great on the one hand. On the other hand, we are not respecting or trusting their ability to learn from their own experiences. Oops.
And, in all that head space? We lose our connection to ourselves, our hearts and our children. Many parents tolerate intolerable behavior again and again. We lie to ourselves and say we are doing X because we love them. We are really making choices based on fear that something tragic will happen to our child and/or that we did something wrong as parents. We let our head run away with our heart. I hear this stated not-clearly from a lot of parents. I hear it clearly because I know it, I’ve been there. I am not there anymore.
So, how do you listen to your own heart, skip giving advice and give love?
Here’s a clue: “Listen” has some great anagrams. My favorite is SILENT, which can create INLETS and often one can ENLIST others by simply listening.
HOW-TO: PRACTICE LISTENING
(Because, I’m not going to lie, it’s hard!!)
Do this for 24 hours: Skip offering “constructive, helpful” suggestions and ideas to your pre-teen, teen or young adult children.
That’s it. That’s all.
When you want to give them some constructive feedback, just full stop. Just for 24 hours. Then try it for another 24. I personally am not an alcoholic or addict but giving this up is definitely a one day at a time job! I’ve gotten much better when talking. Much better. And with my own kids I’m pretty good, I think. This helps with others too. The number or texts that I write…and delete? Yeah. It’s still a practice that connects me to my heart, my truth. And every once in a while I ask “Would you like to hear my thoughts?” Sometimes I get a yes, sometimes a no. It’s an honest question. No harm done.
You have constructed your life, let them build theirs, let them stall out. You will find your heart doesn’t skip a beat as often as it used to.
The more you don’t make all sorts of “helpful suggestions” the more you are demonstrating that you trust them to construct their own life. If they have a question or want advice, who knows, they might even ask! It happens. When we step back.
