Awake Parent - with Shelly Birger Phillips

September 22, 2010June 20, 2018

Guest Blog: Top 10 tips to deal with me now that I’m a grandparent

This week’s blog is from my stepdad Jim:

I realize I’m working against my own interests here but, as someone who’s been a parent, I’ve got some advice for you on how to deal with grandparents now that you’ve just made me one.

1. You’re in charge: You think I’ve been overbearing in the past and maybe a little too free with unsolicited “advice?” Just wait! So remember, it’s your kid and until he starts making decisions for himself you – not me – get to make the decisions for him. That means you should feel free to tell me, “That’s not how we do things,” and to donate inappropriate (or extremely loud) gifts to Goodwill. read more

September 15, 2010July 30, 2010

Guest Blog: Family mediation- the power of the “third side”

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This week’s guest blog is from Jill:

Sometimes we think fighting is just “what kids (or adults) do,” rather than a way we engage when our needs aren’t getting met. I prefer to think of engaging peacefully as “what we do,” and that when we get off track, we can use a hand to get back to a place of connection.

I remember when my son was about three, his dad was in a bread-making phase. Sometimes I liked the results, and sometimes I didn’t. While at the local farmer’s market, my son and I found a particularly yummy loaf of walnut bread, and brought it home discreetly. When his dad saw it, he became incredulous. read more

September 8, 2010June 20, 2018

Guest Blog: Conscious parenting: A stepparent’s perspective

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This week’s guest blog is from my stepdad Jim:

As a person “of a certain age,” I have to admit to an occasional bit of amusement at Shelly’s parenting tips. Some seem a little odd (as I suppose my ideas about parenting seemed to my parents) and some just seem like old ideas dressed up in new words. But the basic theme of this blog, Conscious Parenting, isn’t a concept I ‘d encountered before and it’s one that has a lot of meaning for me as both a stepparent and a biological one. read more

September 1, 2010July 29, 2010

Guest Blog: When we hate our kids

frustrated-parent This week’s guest blog is by Kheyala:

“Who, me?”

Right. Whoever would have the nerve to admit such a thing? Yet, if we deny our own experience of inner rage or hatred, if we repress it… then guess what? It comes out anyway. And it comes out as the unmistakable (especially to our children), hateful undercurrent of whatever we say or do in that moment. It’s as if we’d told them that we hated them directly, only it’s far more confusing.

Thankfully, there is another way. It’s called compassion. For them? No, not yet. For us. You see, the truth is that we don’t ever really hate our kids. What we are hating is what it’s like to be us in that moment when our children inadvertently step on the inner landmines of our own unfinished business. What I’m referring to by “unfinished business” is all that subconscious material: the old wounds, traumas, and other “little lovelies” that our body/minds never forgot but that hadn’t yet had such a magnificent opportunity to reveal and, with enough consciousness, to free. read more

August 25, 2010July 29, 2010

Guest Blog: Parenting is my mindfulness practice

mindfulness This week’s guest blog is by Kendra:

My 14-month old son, Trent, has recently developed a new scream so incredibly grating that it defies description. It’s times like these that I am glad I have a mindfulness practice.

When I was in my early 20’s I lived in a Zen monastery for several years. Back then, mindfulness meant hours & hours of seated meditation and spending most of my time in silence & contemplation. Mindfulness meant bowing silently to my fellow monks instead of mindlessly asking, “hey, how you doing?” & raking the courtyard with such precision that every rake mark was parallel. read more