Disclaimer: I am in no way shape or form a parenting expert and/or a child psychologist.

In the pursuit of living authentically, I wanted to share my experiences with parenting both consciously and authentically. Sometimes I’m successful and other times, I’m not. Either way, my goal is to demonstrate that the “parenting rules” of yesterday may not always work today, especially when your kids are “square pegs” (like mine).

For someone who prides herself on being in integrity, I believe in practicing what I preach. When it comes to parenting, I couldn’t just raise my kids the way my parents took care of me. Now for the second disclaimer of this blog – my parents raised me the best they knew how, and I am very grateful for all of their sacrifices, love and support.

Going back to motherhood – I didn’t exactly come to an intentional decision to raise my kids consciously. It kind of just happened and I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say my kids challenge me to seek solutions that don’t fit into the box. Textbook, old school parenting advice didn’t work for my kids. For example, my son is extremely smart. He is bored at school and doesn’t apply himself. When he brings home grades that aren’t aligned with his skillset, it’s extremely frustrating for me as a parent. So, to push him to try harder, I’ve punished him by taking away his electronics. Didn’t work. I’ve yelled at him. Didn’t work. Then, to try the positive approach, I tried to incentive him by offering him money for each 100 he brings home. Didn’t work. Nothing seemed to work until we started asking him what he wants. We asked him if he could do better and if he was happy with his grades (which, to my discontent, he wasn’t unhappy with his less than perfect scores). By asking him these questions, he felt heard and seen. He felt as if his voice matters, and more importantly, he gets to decide if the grade was “good” or “bad”. Luckily (for me), my son likes to earn good grades so it kept him working to continuously improve instead of worrying about how his parents would respond.

Now, conscious parenting isn’t easy. It’s uncomfortable and it’s scary, especially since you’re taking the path less traveled. You have to trust that it will all work out for your child and release the beliefs that you know what’s best for them. Yes, it’s true in some way but it’s not true in others.

That said, after sifting through 40+ years of beliefs that didn’t always align with me, it was important to me to show my children how to find their own voices in each situation. While I can’t take away their lessons, I support them to trust themselves because I won’t always be here to give them the answers. I want to show them that there’s nothing to fear and that it’s okay to “be different”.

I don’t want to be the voice in their head when they’re making a decision. I want them to listen to their own voice. My stories are not perfect. Who am I to ask them to believe in them? They must believe in themselves and their ability to create a different story so that they can create a difference in this world, if that is what they choose to do.

So what are the challenges?

Quite frankly, as a mom looking to instill authenticity in her children, I feel as if I’m fighting the world sometimes. People don’t understand yet, and it’s okay, but in a society that values tangible evidence of someone’s worth, it’s a constant battle that I fight (with myself and others) that my kids are more than their grades, their income, the school they’ll end up going to when they get older. They are worth more than all of that… they just have to believe it too. For impressionable minds whose mom isn’t perfect, they struggle with this knowing their worth too. All of the affirmations in the world won’t help until they begin to believe them so we remind them each day that they are perfect as is and we work to make them even better each day.

Yet, I’m still human. It’s easy to fall back into what I know…and that is to judge them by their grades, their achievements, and their tangibles.

What’s the solution?

Do your best. That’s all we can do. We can’t save our kids from their life lessons. We aren’t meant to keep them safe. We’re meant to push them off the nest and watch them fly. It’s scary but it’s the only way.

We’ll make mistakes. We’re human. Judge less and accept more…when we teach our kids that then we’ll never have to worry that they won’t do the same for us.