Mindful Childcare: A summary
Mindful Childcare is a parenting philosophy I devised which works to increase social-emotional development in adults, and to manage children’s behavior through their social-emotional development; resulting in healthier, easier, more joyful adult-child relationships. This approach to childcare is assembled from wisdom which I’ve collected (and will forever be collecting) from countless respected authorities throughout the relevant fields. Fields within modern neurosciences such as cognitive psychology, interpersonal neurobiology, and attachment science heavily inform Mindful Childcare’s strategies. Its intentionally-built foundation of wisdom and science allows adults to correct children’s behavior in ways that are best processed, internalized, and sustained by their children’s brains.
But – and this may surprise you— Mindful Childcare is actually more about the adults.
Mindful Childcare teaches “to change the things around me, I must first make changes in myself.” Through caring mindfully, we come to understand that when we show up differently, the situation goes differently.
When caring for our children, we often want to show up differently, but we don’t know how! Between work, news, relationships, and just life, we are often running on ‘low’ before we even begin to address our children… and at that point, the idea of dealing with their bad behavior threatens to overwhelm us completely.
That’s what Mindful Childcare is for.
Caring for our children mindfully is knowing that we can’t pour into our children from our empty cup. It’s prioritizing ourselves enough to make sure our own needs are met, so we can care from a place of fullness as often as possible.
It’s learning to love ourselves unconditionally. (It’s a lot of that.)
Because you can only give to others what you already have. When you learn how to love yourself more unconditionally, you learn how to love your children more unconditionally. When you love yourself unconditionally, everything else seems more manageable.
Mindful Childcare is also about turning “traditional” parenting on its head. It’s about learning to be the parents and teachers we wish we’d had as kids. It’s about doing things differently than they did because we know how to do things differently.
It’s recognizing that children are whole people —from birth— with real and valid experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
It’s realizing that children are trying to learn how to thrive in this world, and we are here to guide and support them.
It’s knowing that punishments distance us from our kids and limit our chances to influence them in the ways we want to. It’s learning that connection and relationship are the only discipline strategies that inspire real change in our children’s behavior.
Because the word “discipline” comes from a Latin word that means “to teach.” And we teach best through connection and relationships, and through leading by example.
Mindful Childcare is learning to walk our own talk; learning to be the responsible, kind, caring, capable people we ask our kids to be. Our children learn best by watching us do it first. We can only guide them toward responsibility and kindness when we’ve already travelled the road ourselves.
Mindful Childcare is being intentional about how we show up for ourselves and for our kids.
It’s raising our children on purpose.
IN DAILY PRACTICE—
Adults caring mindfully meet all the expectations they hold for the children. Just like children, adults are not permitted to yell, throw, speak disrespectfully to others, leave messes, touch or take without asking, etc. The adult teaches the child by example that those things are mistakes humans naturally make, even adults! Mistakes are made, appropriate restitution is sought, and plans are made to better avoid that mistake in the future.
In this system of caring, it is understood that behavior is communication. When a child “misbehaves,” the adult understands the child is doing so because they are lacking the personal skills to change their behavior (skills of self-control, coping with big feelings, time management, etc.). The adult’s job then is to identify which skills are missing or lacking, and to guide the child in learning or strengthening that skill. This is done with love and support.
Mindful Childcare preserves childhood while raising children to be successful in the real world. They are not taught things which will only serve them in childhood and will have to be unlearned as they grow (such as sharing, banning “potty talk” and “talking back,” to name very few.) Instead, we teach them skills healthy adults use in similar situations.
The system of Mindful Childcare employs strategies to instill broad skills like emotional development and conflict resolution. But those same strategies are equally applied to address the daily, mundane things like teaching children to be respectful, clean their rooms, be nice to their siblings, follow the rules… and all those everyday things which are the source of so much conflict. Addressing those things with mindful strategies just teaches them in ways that are more effective and sustainable, create less drama, and in ways that just feel better—for you, and for your kids.
