What if every child who came into the world was born with a personalized manual attached to her little toe? What if all the people who cared for children, whether parents, grandparents, teachers or friends, were issued a special device which enabled them to insure against misinterpreting or mistreating a child for any reason? What if every child who was born grew up healthy, happy, peaceful, and free? What kind of world would this be?

Well, there are no personalized toe tag manuals or magic devices to help us parent. There are no guarantees that any of us are even emotionally ready to become parents when we do. For the most part, we simply step into parenthood, hoping for the best. And to our credit, let me say that in my opinion, most of us strive to do our very best at all times and often against tremendous odds. It’s just that too often, our unconscious best simply cannot prevent the unhealthy patterns we have inherited from being passed on to our children. Conscious Parenting can help!

As parents, it may well be our duty to pay attention not just to our children but also, and perhaps primarily, to ourselves—to our own needs and our own hurts. In fact, it is most likely every person who reads this has at least one painful memory of a time when her parents completely misunderstood her or did exactly the opposite of what he needed in order to grow into a balanced person with solid self-esteem. Some of us have many more than one memory. And for others, the painful memories far outweigh the sweet ones.

Yet, when most of us become parents, we assume that we will just know what to do or that doing what our parents have done will be enough for our children. But we do not “just know” how to parent. We often end up repeating what our parents have done to raise us, passing on a healthy dose of fear to our children, rather than nurturing their authentic wholeness, empowerment, and sense of connection.

What you can do about it is to become more aware of yourself and more aware of the effects your parenting will have on your children. Conscious Parenting offers several resources to help you do just that. We have several products and services  aimed at helping adults develop the insight and skills necessary to parent from a clean slate and pass on only love to their children. Loving adults, make loving children, make a loving planet.