Ep. 65 – Bringing More Mindfulness to your Parenting

Ep. 65 - mindfulness ideas

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[00:00:00] You're listening to The Apparently Parent Podcast. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about the one thing you can do in order to stop losing your mind. Stay tuned.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode number 65 of The Apparently Parent Podcast. I am so happy that you have joined me in this episode today. I'm very grateful for every time that you're joining me on The Apparently Parent Podcast. It means to me that you're trying to do your best as a parent, we all are.

We are on this journey together. And today we're going to talk about something really important and it's the one thing that can help you stop losing your mind. Now, don't get me wrong. Every parent loses their mind sometimes. You do. I do. We all do. But the thing is, that if we want to become the best selves of ourselves as parents and what I call 21st century parents, we want to move from this place of being conflicted and confused as parents not knowing how to react.

and feeling like we are all over the place and all that. We need to start looking at our minds because it all begins and ends with how we choose, or maybe not choose to act and [00:02:00] react. This is why I think we have to talk about our minds and especially about what it means to be a more mindful parent.

So, as I said, it's the one thing to help you not lose your mind. Can I promise that being a more mindful parent will help you never lose your mind? No. You will. But with the power of your mind, with the power of mindfulness, you will lose your mind less frequently. And you will have more tools up your belt in order to go back to a calmer state. More present and open state. This is why I think mindfulness is one of the most important things that we as human beings can nurture and develop whether it's about our parenting or not. But because parenting is such

an important thing for me, and I think that being better parents, being the 21st century parents, is a way to make the world better,

I think we have to focus on being more mindful parents for the sake of ourselves, for our children, for their children after that.

Et cetera.

This is also why in my parenting MAP, the framework of becoming a 21st century parent, the way I work with parents, the way I work with myself, the Mind pillar is so fundamental. All right. So in this episode, we're going to have a brief talk about why mindfulness matters in parenting. What mindfulness is and what it is not. And I'm going to give you a couple of ideas of how you can incorporate more mindfulness into your parenting. And no, I'm not going to ask you to go out on retreats. I'm not going to ask you to spend 45 to 60 minutes every day on a cushion, focusing on your breath. So let's put that to the side. If you're able to do that.

Kudos for you, really. So let's start with why [00:04:00] mindfulness matters.

I want you to understand that. The fact of the matter is that. You don't leave. In the world. You live in the world your mind creates. You see, your brain is, I don't know, two, three pounds of flesh and matter that is stuck inside your skull. Which is basically a box with a couple of holes in it.

And everything you are experiencing, how your mind, or your brain is making sense of everything that's coming in from your senses, not only your five senses of smell, touch, hearing, tastes, and sight. All right. We also have different other senses. For example, our mind, our brain always senses how much oxygen as opposed to carbon dioxide, the CO2 we have in our bloodstream. And by sensing that we regulate the way we breathe.

Or another example, we always are aware of where our limbs and organs are arranged in the space. It's called interoception. So we have different senses, and our brains receive tons of information every second, makes sense of it, and this is what creates our experiences. So the things you see when you look out into the world, they are most probably there, right? But it's a projection of your brain constructing an image from photons of light, hitting your retinas and all of that. All right. This is why we are sometimes affected by filters and biases. A famous example of that is known as the cocktail party effect. So have you ever had that experience where you were maybe in a party.

You know, when [00:06:00] people used to gather together, back way then. And, and somebody said your name. Maybe they didn't call you, but someone else with your name, but you instantly heard your name out of all the other buzzing of conversations around. This is how your mind is pre-wired to look for you name. And of course my brain is wired to look for my name, Eran and your brain is wired to look for your name, enter your name here.

So we all have different filters and those filters or biases, are shaped by our previous experiences. And this is why the way our minds work is not always accurate. And it's prone to manipulation, or just, you know, being biased.

I'll give you another example, another famous example. I want you to now, do your best and really give it your biggest effort, to not think of a pink panda.

Did you do it? Did you not think of pink panda? You know, a cute cuddly panda bear that is pink instead of in like black and white, pink and white, or maybe if you want black and pink. Don't think of a pink panda. I bet that you couldn't not think of a pink panda.

The instant. I said pink panda it flashed into your mind when I said don't think of a pink panda. Another example of that is if I ask you to think about your favorite ice cream taste, maybe it's vanilla, maybe chocolate may meets a nice cone of strawberry sorbet. Most likely when you hear about that, your saliva glands are starting to work. Even though, there is no ice cream around you. Maybe you are not even that much of an ice cream fan. But your saliva glands [00:08:00] are starting to work. That's because our brains work on prediction, they predict that something's going to happen and they act accordingly.

So the thing is without going too deep into the brain. And which is not the scope of this particular episode, but if you're interested in that, let me know, you know, find me on the Instagrams at Apparently Parent, let me know that you want to learn more about the brain because it's freaking fascinating. And it has a lot to do with our day to day parenting and in lives at large.

But anyway, in this episode, I want to have you see how mindfulness can help you get to know, how you think better. And once you have a better grasp on the ways you think, it's not especially about the content of what you think, although that's important as well, but when we focus on how we think.

The noticing or thinking patterns. Fleshing a spotlight into our internal thinking mechanisms. We are much more able to step back from those mechanisms. And then we have a better choice. We are more flexible. So this is why mindfulness matters. It's not about being calmer or it's not about being like this type of nihilist who doesn't care about what happens. Like I accept everything and everything goes by me. None at all. You know, when a parent tells me that he doesn't care about anything or accepts everything, I will raise my eyebrows about that because can you really accept everything? All right now.

Yeah. There is a place for radical acceptance, but that's not what we mean when we talk about being a more mindful parent. Like you should accept everything and not try to change anything and all that, but I digress. So to sum up, mindfulness matters because it's a practical and quite easy to use way to flesh some light into the ways we think. And understand better the patterns of our thoughts. And the patterns of [00:10:00] our thoughts will have a lot of effect on the patterns of our emotions. And when we act with our children, as parents, our emotions are very important. Because if your child is doing something that is triggering for you and makes you very angry. Maybe you will not respond as, you know, the sensitive, caring, positive parent that you want to be. Maybe out of anger or maybe even rage, you're going to scream your lungs out.

And in a previous episode, I think it was episode 62. I did talk about how screaming is not the worst thing that you can do. As long as you take responsibility and all of that, and you save it for when it meant there was most like emergencies. Anyway. When you react out of being dysregulated, being out of your mind, losing your mind,

so when we act out of rage or out of fear, out of all loose places where our minds are maybe biased. We, we do not act, you know, we, we don't parent effectively. We go to places we don't want to go as parents. We hurt ourselves. We hurt our children and mindfulness is a way to step back from those places.

And be cooler with ourselves. Yeah, we do get mad. We do get afraid. We do get stressed, but we are more able to get back, onto horse, or take the wheel of your ship quicker, and navigating to where you really want to go instead of where you don't want to go.

So let's talk a little bit about what mindfulness is and what mindfulness is not. So, first of all, mindfulness is not a religion. I just have to put it out there quickly. It does come basically from Buddhism, but this is not the scope of what I'm talking about. Yeah. I love the Buddhist teachings. I don't practice them very much not so diligently, although I do appreciate the [00:12:00] philosophy and the psychology around that. And I think the beauty of it is that it's not dogmatic in a religious kind of way. So what we are doing and some people maybe don't like that, but we were taking what we can into a practice, in a psychological kind of practice. This is how, why you psychology today goes a lot into teaching mindfulness skills without going into all the cultural references around that. It's not it's about being not rigid. Okay. So as I've said, I'm not going to ask you to sit down on a cushion and meditate for 45 minutes a day. I know you don't have time for that. Most probably. I don't have time for that.

And. It's unnecessary. Is it helpful? Yeah. I believe it is, research show that it is. But it's not a must in order to achieve the effect that I'm talking about it's not a must. All right. So what mindfulness is, is a daily practice. So I will ask you, or at least, you know, encourage you. To devote yourself to a daily practice of mindfulness. Five minutes a day. To start with will suffice.

And in the next section of this episode, I'm going to show you some ways to do so. All right, I'm going to offer you some advice on on how to do so. But you will have to try and practice mindfulness on a daily basis.

Now, please take what you want out of it and do what works for you. It happens a lot. It happens a lot with two people that I talk with that they tell me "yeah, I've tried mindfulness before it didn't work". Now I get that. When you tried one way of doing that and it didn't work for you. Maybe you didn't understand what you were doing or why you were in doing that.

Maybe you chose, or you were giving an instruction that didn't work for you. Not all exercises [00:14:00] and practices work for everybody. We are complex human beings and we work in different ways. Some of us are working study co-learners some of us are more auditorial learners and all that. I'm a very visual learner. And every time when I meditate, I go into visual places. Some of them abstract some of them not.

But I know from other people that we all work in different ways. So I'm going to offer you a couple of ideas of how to practice some more mindfulness into your lives. Take what you want. Try them on like you try a jacket at the store. See how it feels. Does it fit you? Does it not fit you? If it does.

Continue. If it's not move to something else, there is no one way to enter your mind, to look at your mind.

Now having said that I do have, aside from this episode, I do have a guide that you can download with some ideas of how you can yourself practice mindfulness in your lives. You can go to the show notes of this episode at www.apparentlyparent.com/65 and there's going to be a button there and you can download this guide for free. There are a couple of ideas for meditations and some informal mindfulness practices that you can use. And I encourage you to check that out now.

Let's talk about some ideas of how you can practice mindfulness without sitting on a pillow and meditating, and maybe a little bit with sitting on a pillow or a chair or whatever, and meditate. But I want to start with saying that mindfulness, in my opinion, exists in the spaces. Between things. So we need to find some spaces. Now, what do you mean by that? We all have thoughts constantly rushing up in our minds. Most of the thoughts [00:16:00] we think we don't even realize. And I'm talking about all the mental activity that is happening in your brains constantly as you listen to my words, there are thoughts running up your mind. So maybe you're listening to me and you feel wow, it does all make sense. That's one thought. Maybe, on the back of your mind, this is why we call it the back of your mind, because sometimes we don't notice those back places. Maybe you're thinking about what you need to get at the market today. All right. Maybe your brain remembers that there's milk that you have to buy. So we have all these thoughts coming up all the time and appraisals, and when you walk down the street and you see faces of people, your mind is always appraising them and trying to figure out if they're dangerous or not, because it's, it's the job to take care of you.

So we all have those thoughts and mental activity going up all the time.

And as I teach in, in the Mind pillar of the parenting MAP, when we look at the STAR model, I talked about it, a couple of episodes back. The star model is a very simple explanation of how every situation brings thoughts and affect which is emotions. And leads to how we react. This is why it's called the star stands for

situation, thoughts, affect and reaction.

And usually it happens very fast. Okay. Like in a snap of your finger. So there, there was a thought and an affect a thought and an affect that thought in affect there was a thought about something good, and we feel happy with it. A thought about something enraging and we feel angry and all that.

But in the mindfulness practice, this is one of the first things that I have learned when I started to go into mindful practice. You open up a space between a stimulus and your reaction. Because there's stimulus and you react to that. A stimulus stimulus can be your child smiling at you, when he or she wakes up. And your reaction is to smile back at her. [00:18:00] Another stimulus may be your child, 30 minutes later, spilled milk on the floor and your reaction is to scream at her. But we want to open up a space between the stimulus and the reaction and in-between the stimulus and the reaction, there are thoughts and how we feel. And mindfulness helps us, open this space. So we need to find the spaces. And that means that we need to slow down.

So first and foremost, you have to practice slowing down. Mindfulness doesn't work in fast paces. And parenting that is fast-paced is usually parenting that goes badly.

Because then you don't listen to your children and you don't take the time to listen to yourself and you act like that snapping your fingers. And even if you're not screaming and all that, there's no time for real conversations and taking meaningful decisions. So we have to slow down.

Here are a couple of places or ways that you can slow down and start to notice what's going on in your mind.

One of my favorite places, and that's totally subjective, but I like doing the dishes at home. It relaxes me and it helps me get more mindful in those moments. So, whenever there are many dishes in the sink, first it bothers me. And then I want to clear that up and that's an opportunity for me to stop trying to think and evaluate everything, but just notice what is happening right now as I'm doing it in dishes. How do the water feel like against my skin?

You know, when, when you put your hand under water, do the water have one temperature? Or does it change constantly? So there's an average temperature, maybe they're cold or hot, but the feeling is constantly changing. So just [00:20:00] notice that. Notice how your hands or the dishes feel when they're soapy. And when they're not.

Well, just focus on, you know, just the motions going through the motions of doing the dishes. And try not to think about everything, anything in particular, because that's the basic principal of mindful meditation. Don't try to not think because as I showed you before, you can stop thinking, remember the pink panda?

But then again also, don't try to think about anything in particular. This is not the time to think about, what your kids did and how you have to solve that situation. Try to just focus on a neutral stimulus like doing the dishes, like the water and whenever you mind wanders, go back to focus on that. That's one example. Another example is when you shower. Parents always feel like they don't have any privacy, but I hope you do have time to shower at least daily. And I hope you have some privacy when you do.

So, you know, instead of thinking of whatever you think about in the shower. Try not to think about anything in particular and just listen to your breath, focus on your breath, focus on the feelings of the water against your skin. Again, notice the different temperatures, how it feels when you're soaped up and when you're not. And all of that, that's just a quick and easy way to practice mindfulness in your lives.

Another option is the couple of minutes before you go to bed. In that moment I hope your kids are already asleep so you have some time for yourself. And what do you do usually do when you step up to the bed and prepare yourself to go to sleep. Most likely you here, you have your phone with you and you're scrolling or you're watching something, or maybe you're reading. And even if it's not your phone, maybe you're reading a book. [00:22:00] So, what if you put your phone away just for five minutes. You step into that meditative zone. Close your eyes, take a couple of nice long breaths, and focus on your breath. See how your breath is changing. How it feels when you know, flows out of your mouth or nose. And how it feels when it flows in. How it fills your belly and now your belly empties, when you breathe out. And just move through the motions of focusing on your breath. And when you do that, you can put a timer for five minutes, but when you do that practice, you will notice eventually that your mind has wandered. And now you're thinking about something else. And then you can non-judgmentally and calmly, say to yourself, oh, my mind has wandered. And step back to notice your breath. That's the simplest of meditations. And you do have those couple of minutes before you to go to bed. Maybe you will even sleep a little bit better and more relaxed.

So those were a couple of ways to just practice mindful noticing during the day. And I'm sure you can find the couple of minutes every day for that. Either by doing the dishes like me either. When you shower, Hey. When you go to the bathroom instead of scrolling your phone. Maybe you try that next time and before you go to bed, if you, you know, you go to the office, take a couple of minutes before you go out to the world and back home, for example. If you have a commute and you're not driving, that's a nice, and challenging way. Yeah, on the bus, on the train to do meditate just for a couple of minutes.

But you can see that in all those ideas, the main principle is slowing down.

Now another wonderful way to incorporate [00:24:00] more mindfulness into your lives. More noticing into your lives is journaling. Journaling is something that many self-help books encourage and it may seem like something that everybody talks about, but there is

probably a reason for that, because it actually helps. Maybe it's not for everybody. And maybe you need to find the way you journal. Because again, there's no one way. If you type journaling in Google, you will find many ideas and journaling prompts like there's the five minute journaling method, and all that. Do whatever works for you. Most people suggest that you do it as you wake up, but if you're a parent and you're anything like me, you don't really have the time to freely journal as you wake up because usually my kids wake up with me.

And the moments I have for myself before they really need me are very rare. So I don't really have time to sit down and start to journal. So maybe you can do so before you go to bed, or after you kids went to school, and before you go to work or maybe you are at your office and then take a notebook and journal for five minutes. .

Now, what should you journal about? Whatever comes to your mind. I think the most beautiful, simple and practical way of journaling is to start by not trying to journal about anything in particular.

Just let your hand move by itself and write whatever comes to mind for a couple of minutes. Okay. Put a timer for three to five minutes or decide that you're going to journal for two to three pages. And just fill this time or those pages with whatever comes to mind, even if the thing that is coming up is "I don't have anything to write about".

See where that takes you. Sometimes it won't take you to any meaningful place in particular. Sometimes it will. But the thing is, is not where you're going to. Sometimes there is going to be some insight. And those are beautiful moments. [00:26:00] Sometimes you won't have any particular insight, but the practice itself is important.

Journey before destination. We are on a journey of getting to know ourselves better. And there is no noble literature prize for journaling. And you, you don't have to show it to anybody. You don't even have to keep it in, reread it. If you don't want to.

But it's an opportunity to practice this muscle of stepping a little bit to the side from the way we think. In looking in. Okay. I'm on the outside looking in. And then you see what's coming up. Now, some people do like to have some prompts when they journal. And I'm going to offer you two of those which are more specific. And one of them is just write about three things that you have noticed today about yourself or your child. So this is something you will naturally do in the evening. And just think about the day you had and think about three things that happened today that you've noticed about yourself or your child. See where it takes you. Another option is to use some gratitude journaling exercises. Expressing gratitude and feeling gratitude has been shown to have very good effects on our mental and physical wellbeing. Because they have to protect us and helps us and keep us alive, our minds are very biased towards negative things. This is why we don't remember the good stuff as well as the bad stuff.

So practicing gratitude really helps. So. At the end of the day. Right? Three to five things that happened today that you are grateful for and doesn't have to be anything grand. Okay. You can be grateful for the fact that you have a bed to sleep in.

Can you bring more mindfulness to your actual day-to-day date today activities with your children? I argue that you [00:28:00] can, and maybe you should. I don't mean that you have to meditate with your children althoughthat's something you can actually do.

All right. Just a quick example. If you have toddlers, this is a wonderful way to, to, to practice some, some mindful meditation with them and teach them about it. Lie on your back with them next to them. And each one of you takes a Teddy bear, some kind of Teddy bear that they like. And put it on their stomach and, you know, put one on yours. And just watch the Teddy bear rise and fall with the breath. See how, how it feels like we need to do that with your child. And you can encourage them to, you know, whenever you notice that your mind is not looking at your Teddy bear and thinking about something else, try to notice the Teddy bear. All right. So focus on that. That's just one simple way you can practice mindfulness with children. I think it works better with toddlers and not all the children.

With other children you can do something that is known as the raisin meditation, it's a mindful eating practice. I don't want to go into explaining how to do it because we don't have a lot of time in the episode and I don't want to stretch your time, you can download the midnfulness guide that I have for you. You can find it as I said on apparentlyparent.com/65. And also if you Google or search on YouTube for raisin meditation. You will find it. It's basically a meditation when, where you take a little racing and you examine it thoroughly. Noticing noticing everything about that before you even put it in your mouth, it's a wonderful way to practice and, and exemplify what it means to be my mindful and what it means to really notice what's going on.

So, how do you practice more mindfulness when you are with your children? The thing is [00:30:00] you need just to be more observant, take some time to really be present with your child, observing everything that is happening between you two. So for example, a lot of times, and even if you're the most connected and present parent, there is sometimes you're not really there with your mind. You have your phone next to you. And you're preoccupied and all of that. So, try to take some time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes to just be with one of your children. And do whatever they want to do, let them lead, put the phone away and try to put thoughts away. And again, as you notice yourself, thinking about something else, like remembering an email that you have to get back to, for example, or starting to think about what you have, you're going to make for dinner.

Try to non-judgmentally, put those thoughts to the side. Tell yourself I'm now present with my children. And go back to noticing what is happening between you and your children. Notice how, how they look like, how they speak, how it makes you feel to see them play when they want to play with you and just notice without judging what is happening.

Another tip for you here is that you can sometimes record your conversation with your child. You know, just simply recording over the phone and then listen back a couple of days later. And just try to notice, how quickly you answer how quickly or maybe not so quickly, you step into their words. You finish the sentence. says Or maybe you notice that you can be very impatient with them sometimes. And notice how your tone voice sounds like. Okay. It's another way to practice, noticing how you are. So it's not really a mindful practice, but it's a way to notice how you react with your children. And it can [00:32:00] open a little window of how you think.

And again, Mindfulness is about opening a space between a stimulus and a reaction. And in that space, when we have that space, when we are able to open this space between what is happening and how we react by noticing our thoughts and our emotions. We are more flexible because we have a choice. When you have more space, we can choose.

Sometimes better, sometimes not better, but we can choose. We react less automatically. And we have more choice in this is the power of mindfulness and this is why the Mind pillar of the parenting MAP, my framework for working with parents and helping them move from being a conflicted and confused parent to a 21st century parent who is more sensitive and caring in knows how to react to their children, even when they fuck up, is very important and takes time to develop those skills. So why not start, today?

Let's close this episode for today because it's getting too long already. And as parents, you don't have so much time and I really appreciate it that you have listened thus far. And it really speaks a lot about you.

You take the time to take care of yourself as a parent, to better yourself as a parent. And you, you know, It only means that you have time to practice one of the methods that I offered today, Okay. So I encourage you to, you know, just re-listen to some of my suggestions today, you can listen on double speed to get through the episode quicker and you can download my mindfulness guide on www.apparentlyparent.com/65. And choose one, choose one practice to start today. Try it for a couple of days. Try it on. If it works for you, keep on doing that. If it doesn't work for you, try something else. You didn't like any of my suggestions here,

the [00:34:00] world is open for you. The internet is open for you. Google mindful parenting practices go to YouTube. There are tons of ideas and things that you can try. Okay. You deserve feeling better and knowing how you think. Your children deserve a more present parent. So why not start today?

And with that, let's finish this episode for today.

I am very, very grateful. That you have joined me in this episode and you have listened to my ramblings about mindful parenting and mindfulness. It means a lot to me that you take the time to make yourself a better parent, to make your children's experiences better. And it speaks a lot about you.

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