Parenting With Soul

New Book

In Buddha Never Raised Kids, Vickie Falcone brings the wisdom of the ages to the parents of today. This book belongs on every family's bookshelf.

-Gay Hendricks, Ph.D. Co-author, with Kathlyn Hendricks, of Conscious Loving and The Conscious Heart

This month's featured except from Buddha Never Raised Kids and Jesus Didn't Drive Carpool: Seven Principles for Parenting With Soul

Introduction:
My Path to Parenting with Soul

I was a really great parent before I had kids. I believe the last time I had all the answers I was pregnant with my first child. In the grocery store I would observe a harried mother saying, "Here, Trevor, I'll buy you the candy if you'll promise to stop running in the aisles." Ha! I'll never cave in like that mother, I'd think as I flashed Trevor's mom a smile laced with self-righteous pity. In the next aisle I'd hear, "Brittany, you get over here this instant! Do you want a spanking, young lady?" I'd say to myself, No way will I ever be that harsh with my precious child! as I smugly stroked my swelling belly.

The one thing I promised myself I would never do was yell at my child. No way. I wasn't going to yell at my children the way my parents yelled at me. Never.

How old do you think she was when I first broke that promise?
Ten months.

She was sitting on the living room floor, not even walking yet, and I was screaming in her face. I will never forget the fear in her eyes or how she was still trying to catch a breath between her sobs an hour later, sitting in her high chair at lunch.
I had broken my promise to myself in a big way. How could you yell at a baby? I wondered, nearly distraught. I might have been able to rationalize losing it if she were two. Yes, the terrible twos. That would almost be understandable, but not a crawling baby. I suddenly wished I had Trevor and Brittany's moms' phone numbers. Perhaps they'd have something to teach me. Or at least I could apologize for my smugness a year earlier.

Without a major intervention like therapy, a personal growth course, or a recovery program, most of us will parent the way we were parented. We do what feels familiar. Like family. It's no accident that these words have the same Latin root-a word that meant, the members of a household, including the servants. Many of us are slaves to our past.

I felt particularly troubled that day because I had embarked on a path of personal and spiritual growth, and parenting seemed to bring out the exact opposite in me. I would read self-help books by night, commit to being a more peaceful person, then fall back into the same disturbing patterns each day.

Things changed quickly after my yelling episode. I realized I could not will myself to parent differently from the way I'd been parented. I needed help, and for someone used to being successful in my career and the "hero" of the family, that realization came hard.

The Journey Begins

I called a psychotherapist friend and he recommended a book called Redirecting Children's Behavior by Kathryn Kvols. I devoured it and began to make meaningful changes. A year later I trained to become a parenting instructor and started offering five-week parenting courses in the Aspen area based on Kathryn Kvols' work.

The principles I learned and taught rocked my world. I nearly fried all my synapses as I systematically deconstructed everything I thought I knew about parenting. At times it was not pretty. As I fully realized the shortcomings of the parenting practices I had inherited and was about to pass along to my own children, I felt as if I should turn in my parenting permit, but there seems to be a no-return policy on kids. I had thought I could take the express elevator to enlightenment. Instead, I found it in everyday practices like telling bedtime stories, soothing crying babies, and practicing mindfulness while listening to six-year-olds tell the same knock-knock joke over and over.

I gradually began to incorporate the messages I was teaching into my daily life and over time I became a better parent. Every week before I taught the evening course, I immersed myself in the material, eventually trying out all the ideas on my family before asking the parents in my class to do the same. I worked on the material and it worked on me. I fell on my face a lot, but I was determined to "walk my talk" as much as I could. On more than one occasion, I'd vault into the kitchen and tell my husband, Joe, "I'm teaching conflict resolution tonight, so we need to try it out right now!"

The changes happened slowly. I usually taught classes on Thursday nights and I noticed that I was a really great parent on Fridays! At some point the positive parenting practices spilled over to Saturday. Eventually, I was even a good parent on the preceding Wednesday in anticipation of the class! I often wondered if my husband or children noticed this pattern. I imagined them all huddling together saying, "It's Thursday, let's ask her to make chicken tacos tonight . . . or for more allowance today!"

As the years went by, I learned and grew right along with my students, and each course brought a deeper appreciation of the key practices. We found out how to offer our children choices, acknowledge their feelings, and minimize internecine power struggles. We developed skills to deal with sibling rivalry, family meetings, and conflict resolution. In the process, I began to experience in my life philosopher Joseph Joubert's maxim, to teach is to learn twice. I just hadn't realized it sometimes meant doing massive amounts of homework as well.

After several years teaching these parenting programs, I began a search to learn even more about how human consciousness works. I wanted to understand the why behind all the how to's I'd been teaching. I wanted to know not only steps 1, 2, and 3 of effective parenting, but the attitude required to become a truly great parent. I hungered not only for the words, but the state of mind required to develop meaningful relationships with my children.

I got my answers as I read the works of some of the masters of consciousness, including Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I studied A Course in Miracles. I dove into various ancient teachings, including Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, Islam, and Jewish mysticism for more clues to effective parenting. Contemporary masters like Byron Katie, Gay Hendricks, and Wayne Dyer added practical elements to the mix as did the great pioneers of positive parenting: Rudolf Dreikurs, Haim Ginott, and others. Friends and relatives involved in various twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous shared slogans and ideas that echoed the spiritual principles I was discovering.

I felt motivated and inspired as I began to realize that, in many ways, all the great teachers, in their different languages and traditions, were speaking about the same core metaphysical concepts. In the words of Cesar Chavez, "It was all done by Christ and Gandhi and Dr. King. They did it all. We don't have to think about new ideas; we just have to implement what they said, just get the work done."

In the beginning, I struggled as I attempted to apply my newfound knowledge to the real world problems of parenting. How exactly do you, as A Course in Miracles states, "see the peace instead of this," when the kids are ripping each other's hair out in the back of the car? How do you practice Zen Buddhism's "mindfulness" when it's midnight and you still face three loads of unfolded laundry and a sink full of dirty dishes? And how do you follow Gandhi's exhortation to "be the change you wish to see in the world," when you're running on two hours of sleep and your hubby would like some, uh, attention?

I was clumsy at first, but eventually life got easier as I learned to apply age-old wisdom-along with a dash of humor and lightheartedness-to everyday parenting challenges. Out of my struggles and successes emerged my own parenting class called Parenting with Soul. This course combined the practical wisdom I'd gathered over the previous ten years with spiritual principles that helped parents who:

Feel discouraged

Have disconnected from Source or inner being

Feel frustrated about how hard it is to parent these days

Automatically parent from old patterns

Understand spiritual principles but don't know how to apply them to parenting

Feel they are on a generally good path, yet want to parent with a higher consciousness

A Book Is Born

About four years after I started teaching parenting courses, I began to receive invitations to speak to conferences and groups around the country. One day while preparing a Parenting with Soul keynote speech, I was reviewing quotes from the Dalai Lama, Buddha, and Jesus, when I suddenly said out loud, "Hey, none of these guys raised kids! No wonder it's so easy for them to spew messages about peace and centeredness. They've never had to drive a carpool of screaming children through a traffic jam or get their two-year-old to eat her veggies!"

Buddha Never Raised Kids and Jesus Didn't Drive Carpool-was it too irreverent a title for my talk? As I tested it on friends and students of different faiths, it seemed to strike a happy chord, and no lightning struck me, so I figured it was okay. I felt deep respect for the work of these and other masters, and now I felt even more committed to synthesize the wisdom from their teachings and apply it to my everyday parenting challenges.

The Seven Principles

While distilling these lofty spiritual teachings down to their simplest terms, seven principles emerged, along with practical applications parents can use to deal with everything from bedtime battles to fussy eaters.

Connect: With your source, yourself, and your child. This is the heart of parenting with soul.

Awaken Your Intuition: Learn to hear your soul's messages so you're guided to the right action.

Become a Conscious Creator: Master the Law of Attraction to manifest the parenting results you want.

Live in Integrity: Parent on higher ground when you live in impeccable honesty and keep your commitments.

Transform Your Life with Gratitude: Make gratitude second nature and transform your life.

Create Abundance: Model for our children that life is rich and there is enough.

Infuse Your Life with Peace: Joyfully accept life on life's terms to create more peace at home and in the world.

The Far-Reaching Effects of Parenting with Soul

I've wondered for years why there's no Complete Idiot's Guide to Parenting. Perhaps because most of us might feel embarrassed to purchase a book with that title. And yet most parents I've met (including myself) often feel bewildered and overwhelmed by the challenge of parenting. In many ways, this book will take the pressure off by showing you how to grow and change while being gentle with yourself. In these pages you will be reminded of the importance of nurturing yourself and given permission to do so. In addition, instead of bombarding you with yet another set of "expert advice" that you must strictly follow, you will learn how to grow your confidence by awakening and listening to your inner guidance.

Like many other parenting books, you will find "to do's." But they are designed to challenge you to move into a higher level of "being." The rewards will be both immediate and long-term. The book is not a quick fix and it contains some quick fixes that will have a dramatic and immediate impact on your family. This is a practice. Not everything has a 1-2-3 solution, even though much of the information is presented in 1-2-3 format. Ultimately, you'll measure your success by only one gauge: the increasing level of joy in your home.

My quest for world peace led me right back to my living room and ultimately to my soul-my deepest and most authentic self-and the place where I have the greatest impact. I've stumbled and fallen many times, as I wholeheartedly lived the Japanese proverb, "Fall seven times, stand up eight." But over time I've incorporated the messages of the masters into the very fiber of my family. You can, too. If you will supply the desire to grow, I'll provide the exceedingly practical steps and we can begin together today to create more harmony in our homes. You will be rewarded for your effort by seeing your highest vision of yourself as a parent begins to unfold. As Dr. Haim Ginott has said, "It's hard to learn a new language. For one thing, you will always speak with an accent, but for your children, it will be their native tongue."

I give thanks to all the spiritual masters who brought these principles into the world and inspired this book, and invite them to walk with us on this journey.

The ideas Vickie shares work not only for parent/child relationships, but for all relationships. Vickie writes from experience with wit, humor and vivid practicality to help parents realize it's never too late to parent with soul. A must read for dynamic parenting in the new millennia.

-Rev. Merle Means, Minister, Church of Religious Science and motivational speaker