I learn about sovereignty at the park.
There is no coach on earth who can reveal to us our true degree of internal freedom, like our kids can.
There is no coach on earth who can reveal to us our true degree of internal freedom, like our kids can.
The other day, my four year old had a melt down at the park… not the first, not the last. Her range of emotional expression is astounding. Also, it’s triggering to the parts of me that still wrong the edges of my own expression.
In this instance, she wanted to get a gingerbread man. I told her *insert conscious mum strategy of validating her desire and then calmly stating the decision*, that I know how yummy they are, but that we don’t eat them everyday.
She took the pram, stormed off with it and yelled ‘I’m going to get a gingerbread man and I’m going now. Pax, come on.’
There was a group of mums nearby, who I’d been observing the whole time (because that’s me in a nutshell. Champion Eavesdropper). “Are you sharing? Are you being a good boy? Do you want a snack? Have some water. Here you need some sunscreen.”
You know the parents who parent loudly at the park to ensure all the other strangers there know that they’re all over it with snacks, hydration and ensuring their untamed little two year old ‘behaves himself.’
I cringe at the term good boy, good girl. And, funnily enough, ‘good girl’ was my first word. But, also funnily enough, it was followed by an f bomb in perfect context at age 3 (my mum washed my mouth out with soap right after. I vomited up the scrambled eggs i’d eaten. To this day, I can’t eat eggs, and I still drop a perfect f bomb. Shit punishment by mum.)
Anyway, as Sol stormed off, Pax got in the pram. It’s a single pram that they like to huddle into like families in Bali do on a scooter. I went over to them, calmly, like the incredibly cough conscious mum that I am, and as I did, the pram tipped. Pax fell out and hit his head on the pavement. I got triggered, and spoke between my teeth something that blamed Sol. I then walked to the bench to give Pax the boob. He was doing that kind of hysterical crying where he doesn’t take a breath out for about a minute and his face is purple. Sol, then obviously feeling awful (my fault), and wanting soothing from me, ramps up her defiance. She storms over to the road.
One of the mums yells ‘your little girl is on the road!’ I am totally observing the whole time, the degree to which I care what these mums think, of me and of my child. I’m watching it, super aware of the fact that these moments in the park are what shape our idea of how free we are to express ourselves, whether social comfort or authentic expression is more important, and also whether our parents value our expression more than they do social approval. I was thinking the whole time, how wild can I let my child be? How would I feel if Pax dropped his ‘fucking hell’ that he’s been practicing lately?
There have been moments (many) in the past, where I have said things I did not want to say like ‘These people are trying to enjoy their breakfast’ and ‘do you want to do that here?’ In those times I’ve felt instantly awful.
That is not how I want my child to feel about her truthful most honest expression. In my value system, honesty reigns supreme. When I say things like this, that come from a part of my own childhood, I can feel the program begin to install in her. I can see her little eyes look up as if to actually think “Is what other people think and feel more important than how I think and feel?” I correct myself in these moments. I rewind. I make sure I explain that, no. Your expression matters more than others ability to swallow it. Triggering, isn’t it? Respect and consideration are another conversation, but right now we are talking about not fucking with our child’s freedom of expression, and replacing it with “Yes but only if others are cool with it.” Sometimes, freedom is deeply uncomfortable. A lot of the time, what is most honest, is the most uncomfortable.
So in this moment, this other day at the park, I had a moment where it hit me, just how critical these moments in the park are, for how liberated and fully expressed our kids feel safe to be, in adulthood. I have spoken about this before, but right now we are choosing whether we are raising lions, or sheep.
But more so, it’s whether we are choosing to preserve our child’s innate sense of worthiness to be who they are, in full. We are choosing to preserve their innate sense of sovereignty that many of us are paying the big bucks in coaching fees, to learn how to return to.
Right now it’s no secret that a lot of people are feeling voiceless and completely afraid of doing anything other than obeying orders. There is a collective fear of no longer being dictated to. There is a fear of trusting ourselves, our voice, our truth and our inner integrity and taking full ownership of our choices. There is a collective fear of social embarrassment, social disownership. People are choosing to do things that don’t sit well with them, because the alternative is too much to bear.
Is the Government entirely to blame for this? Or is Parenting, also?
Right now, so many of us who are firmly affixed on the side of freedom, truth, sovereignty, choice, may be experiencing their children behaving in ways that ask “Do you really believe in sovereignty mum? Do you really believe in mine? Are you really comfortable if my behaviour challenges those strangers at the park?”
So in the moment after the meltdown, I parked our overloaded pram on the curb. We spoke about it. I validated the shit out of her. I apologised for yielding more in the moment to social comfort than to her big, beautiful and valid expression (in her words, obvi). This ‘rewind’ is so big for us. I find myself doing it a lot, and she appreciates it every time. Slowly, I notice I don’t need to rewind on the same things, because I’m actually healing the part of me that reacts in those ways in the first place.
After we left, we were still chatting about how we were going to get a smoothie instead of a gingerbread man. I was explaining that I know she loooooooves gingerbread men and that’s why we get them sometimes, for that sheer enjoyment and pleasure…. But that as her Mum, It’s my job to also ensure i’m surrounding her with vibrant foods for her growing body. From the front of the pram, she said to me “Mum, that would mean YOU’RE the boss of me, not me.” Feeling totally check-mated, I had to pause for a minute. Shit, I thought.
I said what I always say “No Sol, YOU are the boss of your body, and YOU choose for you, but while you’re little, I am a guide.”
She said “No Mum, if you choose what I can and can’t eat then that means YOU’RE the boss of me, not me.” She was saying it, because this situation genuinely challenged her firm internal knowing that she is sovereign.
So, for me it was about acknowledging her sovereignty while also respecting my role as the parent. We can get into this more in the transmission i’ll deliver next week titled “My four year old sovereign master.”
We’ll also get into today’s park experience, where Sol did not want to share in the moment (many times she does, obviously), and how the mother next to me was behaving, in extreme discomfort that someone was asserting their boundaries in a way that upset her child.
So, the plot thickens. Not only can we look at how we teach our children to assert their boundaries, but to also respect when others assert theirs.
Next Wednesday, 1pm AEDT I’ll be speaking on this in a live gathering for 90 minutes or so. It will be firey and full of love, insight and much to contemplate. It will invite you to explore the parts of you wanting to be noticed, loved and liberated for a deeper and richer sense of sovereignty in your own life… Also, it will show you where you project your own discomfort with your personal power/sovereignty, onto your children…. So we can evolve on from doing that. How we parent right now is so incredibly important to creating the free, sovereign, peaceful world we believe in for our children.
Our parenting is more important than any government policy will ever be.
We will only ever respect our children’s freedom, to the degree we are free ourselves.
We will only be able to hold our children’s fullest expression, to the degree we can allow our own.
I’ve shared this on socials many a time. Now let’s dive in together live. XX