“being fully present to the experience of parenting and caregiving, while bringing resilience to the challenges”
The Centre for Mindfulness is focused on bringing more mindfulness to our work with parents and caregivers.
It’s particularly difficult and stressful when your child is in crisis or suffering. Children look to their parents for answers and sometimes…there aren’t clear answers.
Mindfulness can provide a framework for parents to cope, offering resilience and hopefulness in the face of adversity. Stress is contagious and children tend to co-regulate with their parent, so staying grounded is important, especially when it feels like things are falling apart. Children pick up on what we do, as well as what we say, and mindfulness can be a way to enhance our presence, which a child can experience and be comforted by.
Parents can experience feelings of guilt or helplessness, not wanting to see their child suffer, and wanting to fix things. Parents may worry about what the future holds for their child. Ongoing distress can lead to exhaustion and further sense of helplessness. Developing resilience can help parents and their children survive- and even thrive- through difficult times.
Mindfulness can cultivate positive emotion. Noticing and savoring positive events, as well as acknowledging our own personal strengths, can cultivate joy and energy and help carry us through difficulties and stressful times.
Turning to the work of the heart. The heart is the foundation from which skillful, kind and strong actions can be taken and mindfulness is a practice of love. When we feel burdened and overwhelmed, when we make mistakes or don’t have the answers, the healing work of the heart continues, as it beats moment by moment. We can choose to cultivate our capacity to attend to the present moment and all aspects of our experience, with loving awareness, at any point in our day and this choice can create a space from which understanding and compassion can flow.
We will be offering our first introductory session of MARS-P to parents of youth who are currently participating in our MARS-A program…stay tuned for more!
