Whether our actions, gestures and speech are conscious or unconscious, our children learn how to live by our example. Children imitate what we do and say and how we move in and through the world.
Whether we take risks, handle our mistakes with grace, blow up and yell with frustration or remain calm in a difficult moment, our children are taking it in and learning how to be human, based on what we do.
They also learn what it means to be human by how we respond after we look silly, make a mistake, blow up and yell or stay calm by taking deep breaths. They get to see us learning to do better. They learn that life is a process of learning.
You know the saying of how we become our parents? Have you had the experience of saying something and then realizing, "I sound just like my mother."
I remember when my first born picked up his beautiful hand cut and sanded wooden block and put it to his ear to imitate me talking on the telephone. Hmm, I wondered, "Is this how he experiences me?" That wasn't how I imagined him using those blocks.
That was one little wake up call to pay attention to what I do.
We can uplift our actions and deeds in reminding ourselves that living life is an art, it's ways unique to each human being, with unlimited creative capacities.
The art of living is what we teach our children.
With this, we have a choice to become conscious of who and how we are in the world, and to work on that, to be the best we can be.
We grow as human beings in our quest to be good parents. This is the best example we can give our children, of life as a process of learning and growing, of showing up, being vulnerable, taking risks and failing. And doing it all again, learning as we go. A process.
In this way, the path of parenting, as well as homeschooling and caring for other people's children becomes our own journey, into understanding ourselves and how we show up in the world, and in daily life.
We have this opportunity to uplift ourselves and how we live into an art that we practice each day.
Thanks to the children.
