How to be The Parent you Want to Be with the Practice of Reflection

This post is part of a series on Essential Skills for New Parents: How yoga practices can help you parent with peace and presence.

A mirror shows me my reflection: the physical image of my body that I am portraying to the world. Do I ever hold up a mirror to look at my actions, my words, my thoughts to see what they are expressing and creating in the world?

Reflection is the yogic practice keeping a diary to review the events of you day. The events of your day act as a mirror to show you the impact of your thoughts, words, and actions. It allows you to grow, evolve, solve problems, make wise actions, and refine your priorities.

Why is Reflection Important for Parents?

It is easy to get caught up in everyday tasks. A child’s development is such a precious time and rich with opportunities for your own growth and development. You don’t want to look back when eighteen years passes in a blink of an eye and see that you got lost in the details. Reflection can help you evaluate your day-to-day actions to see their impact and determine if they are taking you towards your ideals.

Children are very intuitive and emotionally sensitive. They will react to your emotions if not your words. Their behaviour can often be in response to your own emotional state. The more frustrated and angrier you get, the more the child may feel that discomfort and act in unskillful ways. A baby easily absorbs emotion from people around them. You can always look at the actions of your child as a way to discern what is happening within you.

Is the baby upset? Your young child dumped all the clothes from his drawers. What is going on within you? How did you react? Was it actually about what your child did? Or some other concern that was on your mind?

How to practice Reflection

· Keep a diary

· Write down your goals or ideals

· Write down your experiences, especially when there is a challenging situation

· Evaluate your actions and reactions in relation to a goal or ideal.

· Record bits of wisdom and precious moments

Some prompting questions can be:

1. What happened today?

2. What didn’t happen?

3. Where did I do well? Why? What can I learn?

4. When did not go so well? Why? What can I learn?

5. What am I creating?

I have used my reflection practice to untwist myself from being tied up in emotional reactions so that I can see root causes or what is really needed from a situation. I have also used it to solve conflicts and problems. Reflection practice is such a rich practice in taking day to day events including successes triumphs and challenges and using them towards your own growth and evolution, so you can grow from your experiences rather than just survive them.

In the next post, I will share How to Harness the Power of Speech Through the Sacred Practice of Mantra.

This post is part of a Series:

Essential Skills for New Parents: How yoga practices can help you parent with peace and presence.

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I am working on a book on the same topic to compile all the practices with further information and make it available as an easy reference for new and expecting parents. Please subscribe to my newsletter in the blue box below if you want to be sure to get the book.

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