Last week I spoke of ego as it relates to scriptures of the mustard seed. Today, my thoughts are about eliminating ego as a parent and come from the excellent The Conscious Parent book by Shefali Tsabary (Chapters 3-4).
First, in chapter 3, she states that “it’s so crucial that, as parents, we free ourselves of the illusion that it’s our place to approve of who our children are. Who are we to judge them? … both disapproval and approval are tentacles of control.”
Then, in chapter 4, she strikes a chord saying, “By the very fact we say, ‘This is my child,’ we enter into ego.” The very state of being a parent presents the opportunity to lose our egos.
She defines ego as “a blind attachment to the image we have of ourselves, the picture of ourselves we carry around in our head. Ego is in operation anytime we find ourselves attached to a thought pattern or belief system. We often don’t even recognize we are attached until we are triggered on an emotional level. When we operate from this rigid place of ‘rightness,’ we bring to our reality an already-formulated assumption, ideal, or judgment. If a situation doesn’t conform to our will, we react to control the situation or the individual, bringing them under our domination.”
She continues, “Sadly, it’s likely you feel the most competent when your children are under your domination, willing to follow your word as gospel.” To many religious types, the desire to “be a good parent” is often erroneously pursued. We need to “cease looking at our children as blank canvases on which we can project our image of who they should be, seeing them instead as fellow travelers on the journey, changing us as much as we are changing them.”
She addresses 5 distinct types of ego parents must eliminate to be truly effective at connecting with and empowering their children:
- The Ego of Image – connecting your self-image to your child’s behavior is wrong. Those that fail here seek to change their child’s behavior merely because they are worried how they will look as a parent.
- The Ego of Perfection – perfection in our mortal lives is an ideal of the foolish. “We do ourselves and our children a favor when we accept our limitations and exude an ‘okayness’ with being okay.”
- The Ego of Status – “when we are attached to ideals, we impose these on our children, insistent that they preserve our carefully constructed persona of competence. We overlook the fact that each of our children is a being with its own calling. Letting go of your attachment to your vision of parenthood and your desire to write your children’s future is the hardest psychic death to endure.”
- The Ego of Conformity – “many of us harbor the fantasy that, of all the people we have to deal with in life, at least our children will bend to our will. To the degree we are able to let go of our need for conformity, we will be able to enter into mutually enhancing and reciprocal relationships with our children. Hierarchical ways of relating that focus on ‘authority’ become a thing of the past.”
So, how can you hold deeply religious conviction and also let go of the desire to dominate your children to those truths? Here are some ideas:
- You can create authentic and loving connection with each child that vastly supercedes any competitive notion of “rightness,” thereby entirely nullifying future opportunity for devastating conflict.
- You can train children when they are young to love good things. Embuing good character into children is an art requiring love, knowledge, time, focus, and spiritual guidance.
- You can respect your children’s agency and decisions. They have their own nature, nuture, and set of conditions that lead them to do the things they do. You can invite and entice them to join your vision, and you can allow yourself to be invited and enticed to join theirs. By so doing, the generations come together and begin to understand one another.
- You can accept that sinful choices have full access to future repentance to become fully clean and restored; and you can focus on those concepts for yourself and allow your children ample space and warmth from which they will be able to find their own path of iterative learning and improvement.
- You can refrain from judging your children.
These are just some ideas. What do you do to eliminate your ego in parenting?
PS: My girlfriend, Kaylynn, shared this parent-child video while I was writing this post, and it is fantastic!
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