Q: When you talk about the consciousness that speaks from a new born baby’s eyes, we all know that, and as a mother of a new baby you can respond with an openness of heart and a softness. You can respond with love when it’s chaos and exhaustion. I now find myself parenting an older child who seems to be miserable with wanting, and when I respond to her with that openness and softness there seems to be a difficulty and her response seems to be very controlling of me. When I contract and tighten and respond to her in that way, the problem persists. What I really was hoping you could talk about is parenting a small child as consciously as possible in that openness you talk about.

John: Regardless of what she is being like, keep seeing her. Not seeing what she is doing, but seeing her. That touches what she knows. When she is being seen, then she is reminded of what she really is.

You are better off being a so-called bad parent but regularly seeing her than being a so- called good parent and not seeing her. Your child doesn’t value your good parenting. She only values being seen. Live enjoying seeing her and do what honestly seems best, knowing that what honestly seems best to you doesn’t ultimately matter at all.

Seeing her is ultimate, and remembering that any not-okayness in her will always grab a hold of everything that you have never gotten past your self, and her not-okayness will always be that, back to you. Her not-okayness will always want to grab a hold of those things that you are trying to avoid or hide. And it is not a little child that’s doing that.
It is a brilliant consciousness that sees.

Instead of being a parent, be what you honestly know … with her. As soon as you are being a parent, you won’t be able to see her. When you are being a parent, you are making your child all about you, and when your child is not being okay then she’ll rebel against what she knows is not real in you.

You can use your strength with a child, but only inasmuch as you can be in your weakness with a child. If you’re more in your strength than in your weakness with your child, then you have made being with your child, about you.

Q: And if you are more in your weakness, which I feel I am with her, is it still more about me?

John: If your weakness is in any way about self-defeat, or if your weakness is for you deflating, then it is all about you. But if being in your weakness with her is like sunshine, then that is not about you. That is about what you know is real. And if there is more of being in your weakness than using your strength, then very delicately use a little bit more strength. Then it’s sunshine that’s using strength.

When it is sunshine that uses strength, that makes your child smile within because they will then more easily really like what you are doing, even though it goes against what they want. When softness is being absolutely unbending, that makes a child smile because they know that you being unbendable has nothing to do with you, that it has nothing to do with you needing something, you holding on to something. That kind of unbendability is for them delightfully safe.

Let your no be no, without it in any way, being about you. Then that is a soft no that doesn’t bend, and in the unbendability there is no hardness. Such a space enables a young child to reason with you. That draws them out to talk instead of to act out. But if you are acting out, they won’t talk.

Softness that says no invites being talked to. Then a child begins to use its intellect instead of its feelings. A soft no invites the child to come out and to meet you because a soft no is meeting her. That soft no is able to see her. That provokes a child to use their minds in a playful way instead of just being stuck in something that they feel.

When they’re stuck in their feelings, they get frustrated. It is you being in your weakness, that gives them space to feel, and you in softness being in your strength that relieves them from being stuck in what they feel.

Q: Thank you so much.