Vulnerable

          Brene Brown's The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto posted on Huff Post Parents this past Sunday moved me and kept me thinking for days. I posted the Toni Morrison quote that Brown uses to put her parenting philosophy in a nutshell on Free World Parent's facebook page, "Let your face speak what's in your heart. When they walk in the room, my face says I'm glad to see them. It's just as small as that, you see?" It's just as small as that. It does sound so simple, so basic, so natural, but in actuality it's so hard for so many parents to do. We want “to light up” when our kids walk into the room, but instead, we become annoyed, overwhelmed, even angry. Is it because our children are messier, louder, more demanding than those of the parents with the naturally beneficent expression? Experience tells me no. Some of the messiest, loudest, most demanding children I know have parents who look upon them with a calm smile before taking care of the issue at hand in a good natured way and vice versa.

          I don't think it's the training. We can learn positive parenting strategies that can help reduce the chaos, but that loving glance must be authentic if we want our children to feel the full acceptance it is meant to imply. The Wholehearted-Parenting-Manifesto tells us that what we want our children to believe about themselves, we must believe about ourselves. We should love and have compassion for ourselves and accept our imperfections,. Again, easier said than done. How do we become such an evolved being? The key to that kingdom seems to be in the middle of the manifesto in the statements about vulnerability. We need to “learn how to be vulnerable” and “to honor our vulnerability.” But haven't we spent a lifetime putting guards up to keep our vulnerability at bay. Being vulnerable is scarey and emotionally painful, that's why we work so hard to avoid it. Maybe it's because our kids scratch at our vulnerabilities that we grimace rather than smile when they greet us with all of their imperfections.

          Even those parents who do light up when their mud covered 5 year old tramps into the living room, find themselves looking with disdain when their moody, hormonal, pimply, awkward 14 year old slumps into his chair at the dinner table. Yet doesn’t this complete manifestation of vulnerability scream out for compassion and acceptance. All the self-doubt that comes with adolescence is reinforced by that critical look given by the person they look to for warmth and shelter from the vagaries of the outside world. Perhaps if we can acknowledge that our adolescent children remind us of ourselves when we were excruciatingly self conscious, deeply fearful of rejection, mortified by burgeoning sexuality and changing bodies, we can let go of that critical inner voice that keeps us from fulling embracing ourselves and in turn, our children.