Conscious parenting is a philosophy where a parent focuses first and foremost on their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in order to make more thoughtful and emotionally-centered decisions when responding to their children. The idea behind this practice is that parents can prevent creating negative patterns in their children’s upbringing from their own childhoods.
What Is Conscious Parenting?
The premise behind conscious parenting is that our own childhoods shape how we view the world, ourselves, and our understanding of acceptable and unacceptable childhood behaviors. This parenting practice is based on the book The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children by Dr. Shefali Tsabary. The theory is that by tuning into childhood triggers and traumas, a parent is better able to respond to a child’s behaviors instead of reacting to them.
To start, parents become more mindful of their own internal reactions, internalized messages, and beliefs. Parents will remain curious about their own inner experiences, question their beliefs and ideas, and learn to understand what is healthy for their child, both in current and future situations.
Key Foundations of Conscious Parenting
Conscious parenting is more of an approach to parenting instead of a method with specific steps to follow. However, there are a few elements of conscious parenting to keep in mind.
Here are key elements of conscious parenting:
- View parenting as a relationship with a separate individual: Your child is not your “mini-me” or someone who you can live your life through. They have their own interests and desires that have nothing to do with you.
- Be aware of your own emotional state with a child: Conflict is inevitable, but a conscious parent strives to respond to a child’s behaviors instead of react to them. This way, they are able to show a child how to maturely respond during anger and frustration.
- Recognize there are big feelings behind behaviors: Most people were raised to address and correct behaviors, instead of helping a child to understand the feelings behind the behaviors. Without understanding what leads to behaviors, children can grow up believing that they are “bad” or “not enough”.
- See parenting as a relationship, not a transaction: Every interaction contributes to an overall relationship with your child, and builds trust and affection for each other. Just because a child will not remember every interaction with you, does not mean that interactions will not contribute to their overall understanding of your relational dynamic.
- Get curious about your own triggers: Children have a way of inherently heightening a parent’s emotions. Take note of the things that make it hard for you to keep calm, so that you can continue working on these triggers. This way, you can be sure they don’t continue to blindside you in the future.
- Take care of your own emotional needs and regulation: Oftentimes parents end up placing their emotional needs on their children (“Your behavior is making me sad”) without realizing it, which doesn’t allow space for the child to process their own emotions.
Conscious Parenting vs. Other Parenting Styles
While there are many elements of conscious parenting that overlap with other parenting styles and approaches, the key factors that it encompasses set it apart. These elements include the combination of mindfulness; openness to emotions; honest communication between parent and child; unconditional positive regard; and flexibility. Other forms of parenting share similarities such as authoritative parenting and permissive parenting, while others differ in almost every way.
Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative parenting style can often be confused for conscious parenting. Authoritative parenting refers to a parental model that is nurturing, supportive, and responsive. However, they often set strict limitations with their children. The main component that makes this different from other parenting styles is the presence of rigidity around rules, high expectations, and discipline.
Authoritative parenting has been heavily shown to improve a child’s academic performance and engagement.1
But, it can encourage black-and-white thinking patterns in a child, making it difficult to account for the nuances and “grey” areas in life. With high expectations, supervision, and parent-determined rigid rules, it can also be challenging for a child to later identify their own needs, desires, and personality.
Conscious parenting aims to make the relationship between the parent and child a working one, where both parties are contributing thoughts and ideas. While certain ideas may need to be overridden by the parent for safety and practicality, a conscious parent would help explain these limitations without dismissing or invalidating their child. Conscious parenting also gives a child room to try, with parents there to support them–whether a child is successful or not (this is the opposite of snowplow parenting).
Authoritarian Parenting
Authoritarian parenting is when a parent sets strict rules, is rigid about enforcing them, and generally tends to be cold and distant with emotional connection. While these parents tend to be very involved in their children’s lives, it’s usually in a more controlling manner. Authoritarian parenting has been shown to increase conduct issues in children, which can include not following rules, general disregard for others, and sometimes hostility and physical violence.2
While conscious parents are involved in their child’s life, they do not seek to be controlling of their child’s behavior. Unlike authoritarian parenting, it also includes attunement between both the parent’s and the child’s emotional states.
Permissive Parenting
Permissive parenting essentially describes an indulgent parent(s) that avoids telling their children “no,” setting limitations for their children, doesn’t give children clear rules, and struggles to discipline. While saying “no” has been shown to stifle a child’s desire to explore the world, studies have shown that the lack of limits stunts a child’s emotional intelligence and personal growth3
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The goal of conscious parenting is to encourage a parent to be more mindful of their own internal experience, and respond externally to their children in a thoughtful and regulated manner. In doing so, there will be times when a parent has to set limitations for safety and structure. Conscious parenting is not about saying “yes” to a child all the time–it’s about helping your child learn to tolerate the distress they might feel when they encounter a “no” in the real world by first practicing with their safest person: you.
Uninvolved Parenting
Uninvolved parenting can also be labeled as neglectful parenting. This is when a parent isn’t very involved in a child’s life. They don’t set any expectations for their child, either. Without structure or rules for their children, this kind of parent will not help their child understand and move through different emotional states. This is the direct opposite of conscious parenting in almost every way.
Benefits of Conscious Parenting
One of the biggest benefits of conscious parenting is that it allows you to give your child a different experience than you had during your childhood. Because you’re being mindful about how you’re contributing to your child’s understanding of themselves and the world, you can ensure that they’re getting the strong foundation they need for the rest of their life.
Possible benefits of conscious parenting include:
- A strong parent-child bond: This is the foundation of all the benefits that follow. Approaching parenting in this way provides a child a safe base from which to explore and learn about the world. This approach communicates to your child that they can count on you to support them in both the good times and the messy ones.
- A more emotionally resilient child: Because you have helped your child understand and regulate their emotions in real-time, your child will go into adulthood feeling confident to regulate and survive emotional storms.4
- Healthy communication: When you check in with yourself to regulate your own emotions, and you then make space to talk through and problem-solve your child’s emotions with them, they will see you as someone who they can trust. This open communication makes all aspects of parenting easier.
- Reduced stress: Being mindful of your own internal experience teaches you to treat yourself and your child with compassion. Therefore, you no longer carry the stress of reacting negatively and feeling guilty about it afterward. When we get to the root of our stress, then label and regulate it effectively, stressors feel less intense when they come up again in the future. Your brain will better understand what you’re dealing with.
- Mindfulness: When you’re attuned to what is happening in the current moment, you aren’t getting frustrated about your child’s past behavior. Moreover, you’re not thinking about the implications of this behavior continuing in the future. Addressing only the behavior in the current moment will actually reduce the likelihood of it becoming a pattern.
- Your child has a model for healthy emotional regulation: Children learn how to act in the world by watching how their parents do so. By giving them an example of what it looks like to notice and regulate your own emotions, you are setting the stage for how your child will do so in all of their relationships and situations in their life.
- Decrease in “misbehaviors”: Because the bond developed between a child and their parent is so strong, a child is less likely to act out to get the parent’s attention and get other needs met.5
Drawbacks of Conscious Parenting
While this approach to parenting may sound like a dream, it doesn’t come without its difficulties. Parenting is inherently hard–it’s one of the hardest things any person will ever do–and no approach or style of parenting is going to be perfect. Like with all parenting approaches, there are some specific difficulties to keep in mind.
Possible drawbacks of conscious parenting include:
- Requires a high-level of self-awareness: It’s uncomfortable to highlight and challenge the ways that our own parents did not meet our needs when we were children. It also takes a lot of work to shift our beliefs to be more accommodating to a child after the decades have passed since our childhood.
- Challenging with younger children: Young children–particularly toddlers–are not always the most reasonable people to deal with. It can feel frustrating as an adult to be patient with a toddler that hasn’t developed full rational thought processing yet. While this can be challenging, healthy communication sets the foundation for your child to believe that you love and support them, despite any emotional state they may be in.
- Being okay with seeing your children fail: Conscious parenting is about supporting a child through everything, without feeling tied to specific expectations. This can be a difficult shift for many, because this is not how we’re used to seeing parenting be done.
- It’s difficult to relinquish control: It’s easy for parents to see the hierarchy in authority, and believe parents are 100% in control. While setting parameters for safety is crucial, allowing your child to have a little more authority is part of what demonstrates that they can have emotions and make decisions. These are foundationally critical in conscious parenting.
- There is no black-and-white: Since this is more of an approach to parenting, there is no straightforward and manualized way to do things. That can feel freeing for some, and scary for others. You will have to approach each situation with what you believe to inherently be the most all-around supportive response for your child, instead of being guided with directions for how to do things.
Tips for Practicing Conscious Parenting
Practicing conscious parenting is an overall lifestyle switch that can take time to implement. While it can be hugely beneficial for both you and your child, it’s important to remember that any implementation is good, and it isn’t important for you to get it “right” all the time.
Here are some tips for practicing conscious parenting:
- Get comfortable with your emotions: Whether you work on this solo, or see a therapist to help you, it’s incredibly important for you to approach your own emotions and experience with curiosity, rather than from a place of judgment.
- Set boundaries: Being attuned and having dialogue with your child does not mean that there cannot be structure and limitations. Be kind but firm when setting boundaries, and help your child understand the reasoning behind them when you can.
- Practice acceptance: By offering space for emotional expression, we have to make space for all the emotions—especially the messy and uncomfortable ones. Accept that both you and your child will experience these.
- Revisit your own childhood: Identifying the different ways you were and were not emotionally supported as a child will help you figure out what your own emotional triggers are. Then, you are less likely to react to them in the future.
- Remind yourself that your child is a separate individual from you: Your child is not a direct extension of you–they will have their own interests, strengths, beliefs, and desires that may or may not align with your own. Embrace their individuality, cherish the things you have in common, and support the different experiences they introduce to your life.
Final Thoughts
There is no one-size fits all approach to parenting. Conscious parenting can help build your child’s emotional resilience and self-esteem, as well as strengthen your bond. Along the way, you will also grow as an individual. While these elements can be beneficial, it’s important to take into consideration the overall specific needs of your children and family before committing to any one approach to parenting.
For Further Reading
Books:
- “The Conscious Parent” by Dr. Shefali Tsabary
- “The Whole Brain Child” by Dan Siegel
- “Happy child, happy home: Conscious parenting and creative discipline” by Lou Harvey-Zahra.
Websites:
Conscious Parenting Infographics
