Life in Motion

The Wheels of Life

We have the saying “no need to reinvent the wheel” because there are some things we do that have such clearly good outcomes that we always do them that way. There are hacks that apply to most of us no matter where we find ourselves. There are ideas that are so helpful to humans that they stay with us and we pass them on and on through the generations.

Gentle parenting is one wheel that I believe is here to stay. This is the kind of parenting that sets clear boundaries and expectations using affirmative language and positive discipline. While there are a ton of other approaches out there, I see the Millennial/X-ennial parents of today really coming together on some basics of raising young kids, the fundamental commandments so to speak. 

✅ Thou shalt give love unconditionally not transactionally (letting them know that they are always already enough, that they don’t have to perform to be loved).

✅ Thou shalt provide all basic human needs (and make sure those are met before interpreting a tantrum as bad behavior or getting worked up about their unhelpful actions).

✅ Thou shalt model the behavior you want from them (use your words not your hands, think with your eyes and listen with your whole body).

✅ Thou shalt articulate clear expectations and model the path to reach goals (do as I do and you will naturally do as I say).

Spinning New Habits

But even with the growing consciousness around and ubiquity of the importance of gentle parenting, we parents of the young slip up all the time. Our own habits formed through our own childhood traumas get in the way.

I reflected on this as I rewatched a TED talk from Dr. Nadine Burke Harris on childhood development, epigenetics, and life outcomes this week. She talked about a toxic exposure that is so harmful that it could damage a child’s brain and genome and set it on a path of destruction for life. That exposure is early childhood adversity in the form of abuse and harm from mentally ill and/or addicted caregivers. All of our research in biomedicine, sociology, and epidemiology has amounted to a “wheel” that says to protect children from harm at all costs so that they can live a healthy life and transmit that to their kids and the future of our world. Thou shalt shield from trauma (no matter how bad you had it). But what do you do if you were a child of this very trauma? Even for me, a researcher of the brain-gene-environment triad, it is hard to unlearn the patterns I have formed from my own parents’ failure to comprehend this commandment.

While there is a lot of wonderful research on reworking habits that I promise to post about soon, I want to share one thing that I find helpful in a kind of universal way. It works no matter where I am or what I am doing. That is giving myself a mindfulness ping. I remind myself that this is one moment, one turn of the wheel, in the course of my life. There is nothing more valuable than being here for myself, my kid (or kids as it most often goes), or whoever is in that very moment with me. It’s getting to take a step outside of my raging thoughts to bring myself back into it more peacefully that keeps me turning the wiser wheels forward, allowing me to replace old habits with more nurturing ones for myself and for others.