My Journey With Consciousness, the beginning

I have been a teacher for a long time. Officially for 18 years. Unofficially a lot longer. (As a middle schooler every child I babysat got to learn what I was learning in school. Solar system to the Thomas girls for example.) I have been an aunt for a while also. So, when I became a parent 12 and 1/2 years ago I had all the answers and knew exactly how my children would act and how I would respond. Naive.

Most of the time parenting went according to my plan. Add another child. Family dynamics change. I read every parenting book I could get my hands on in every library I had access. I love to read and learn. Changed a few things, but mostly parenting was the same.

Roughly 7 1/2 years ago at my local public library I spotted a book in the new acquisitions section. It caught my eye. Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline by Dr. Becky Bailey. I was immediately turned off and did not check out that book. Over the next 6 months I kept seeing that book.

In April that year I finally checked it out. As I started to read (and take notes) I felt my stomach churning. Many of my foundational beliefs were being challenged. I would read a section. Process. Put it away for a few days. Then pick up the book again.

My three weeks were over, but I had not finished the book. I renewed the book a total of three times. That is just how long it took me to read and process the book. But I loved every page I read. Yes, I felt sick a lot, but embraced the love in the book and the idea that I needed to change me, not my children.

I changed some of the ways I parented and found joy in the conscious way I responded to my kids. But this type of parenting is so time consuming and emotionally draining that I still went back to my former ways.

Fortunately I have a couple of friends who were knowledgable and eagerly shared their Becky Bailey wisdom with me. What a journey the next year was.

I took a Becky Bailey parenting class, acquired two copies of Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline, and continued to mess up more than I got it right.

My biggest obstacle? Clearly it was self-control in the midst of a storm. When days would not go my way I would become frustrated and had difficulty expressing my feelings and what I wanted. After the incidents I would look back and see it clearly, but not in the moment. I also began to see my children handling their upset in the same way I was modeling for them.

The next years brought ups and downs. Read parts of the book again. Talk with my friends a lot. Try ideas out on my kids. I was changing and found many great moments with my family. My beliefs were changing and I was liking it.

More to come...