Caveat – if you have really well behaved children, family mealtimes where you all sit together warmly discussing all the wonderful things you have all been up to each day, supporting, encouraging each other, with laughter and lightheartedness present, there’s no need for you to read this post.

Motherhood has proved to be the most dark and mysterious art.

If you like rules and structure, there are plenty of them available. But the thing about children (and especially toddlers and teenagers) is that they simply refuse to be trained to follow the rules and structures.

They don’t sleep when they’re supposed to (up all night, sleep all day), they don’t eat what they’re supposed to (nothing or certainly nothing green), they don’t engage with others in the manner that they’re supposed to (abruptly cutting off friendships, saying please or thank you), they don’t have the respect for social etiquette in shops (screaming in them or stealing from them), the list goes endlessly on.

We can go into battle. Get solid, get firmer, show them who’s the leader of the pack around here.

And they either acquiesce, seething silently in resentment, saving it all up to tell you how much they hate you later or rebel, with an age appropriate ‘fuck you’.

But we never had our children to go into war with them.

We wanted to have our hearts so full they might burst. They might be our most important thing (they are mine). Something in us knows deep and profound love is available here yet being currently denied.

So where are we going wrong?

There’s a quote from the dog trainer, Cesar Milan: “You don’t always get the dog you want, but you always get the dog you need.”

I heard something new.

What if you don’t always get the child you want (because, if you were truly honest, you would have chosen one just a little bit nicer than the one you got), but you always get the child you need.

You see, they’re not here to be ‘told to’.

They’re here to be listened to.

But we’re unable to listen to them because all we can hear are our own agendas.

Day after day they are in your face the most profound spiritual teachers.

They show us our darkest corners. That spike of resentment when they ask for (yet another) lift just when you’ve set aside time to do something. That flare up of temper when they ask a question and the answer is no. The contraction of the heart when you can hear others in the household start to argue. The worry in the deepest hours of the night about what will become of them. The admin. Our relationship with money. What we really know to be true abut love. They break our hearts.

Motherhood. Remind me why we signed up for this?

In truth though, they are not them. They are a mirror of ourselves and motherhood turns out to be our spiritual path.

It looks like they are confused and resentful. But when we set pen to paper and start to write, we see our own confusion and resentfulness spill out all over the page.

They say they feel like they have no friends and spend hours in front of the mirror before going to school in order to create the right impression. We look back in our journals and see our own insecure and approval-seeking behaviours all over the place 

They argue and rage against us. We see how unkind and violent we are being to ourselves and others with our world, behaviours and thoughts.

They engage in unhealthy behaviours, neglect their bodies and even self-harm. We notice our own relationship with wine and exercise.

No need to hire life coaches or read personal development books – you have your own living breathing spiritual teacher living in your house. You might even have two or three if you’re lucky.

At the top of this post I gave a caveat to those who find parenting naturally simple and straightforward. This is because they are dealing with the reality of the child in front of them.

These parents are like simple, clear channels. Show up. Listen. Respond. Behave. Learn. Repeat. Easy. No brainer. Simple. Unconditional love can only ever show up here because there is no agenda.

When I go up to your room to check you’re OK when you’ve been under the duvet for days, I say it is because I care for you. In truth it is my own neediness wanting to be soothed, not your upset. My agenda. Not yours.

I will write more on this but here’s a way to start exploring this.

Open your journal.

Make a list of five ways your children can show up that make you feel resistance, resentment, contraction, anger, sadness.

Now write: “That’s not them, that’s me that is.”

And next to each one, let the words that come to show you how what you’re seeing in them are patterns that play out inside of you.

Noticing, that’s all we’re doing.

No need for guilt, self-blame or New Year Resolution-style lists to be made.

This openness to the turnaround is enough.

And now, change will happen over on THIS side of the equation.

And then we get to see what happens out there with them.

Let me know your thoughts,

Nicola x