On power and control.
Power and control is a complex part of all relationships, so it’s an inevitable part of life if we have relationships in our lives. In parenting, power and control comes up often. When parenting strong willed children with high needs for autonomy and justice it becomes something we either address or battle with daily.
It’s something, as adults raising these children, we need to learn about and understand well enough to be able to know how and when to let it go and hand it over mindfully and purposefully. Something we can learn to use mindfully to turn moments of conflict into moments of connection with our children.
Not to be powered over or controlled by them but to be the ones to teach them how to navigate conflict, collaboratively and compassionately. To give it over sometimes and to hold it sometimes but always with love and empathy.
Through us knowing our will but also hearing theirs in front of them, they learn to know their will, ways to communicate the importance of their will to them and to also hear the will of the person they are in conflict with, who has a will that may not or can not align with theirs.
It felt like a baptism of fire to be facing these concepts, experiencing and learning how to embody them, while trying to survive life with two boys under three, 3500km from home, with no more than two hours of sleep in a row at any time.
They were the hardest experiences I’d ever been through but since those days many more have come and thanks to that baptism of fire I have been a little more ready and steady each time.
As I have advocated for myself and my son on our health journey, for all of my children in school and sport, in various roles in different communities we have lived in and in my work in women’s health and safety. Power and control is always there. Being taken, being asserted, being questioned, being navigated and so often not being acknowledged.
While it still makes me uncomfortable to be in the energy of unacknowledged power and control dynamics- it doesn’t feel like fire anymore and it doesn’t make me crumble. Because I have practiced so much in the context of being the parent who cannot crumble and must learn in order to teach. Because my boundaries are firm and flexible but I move them only when I feel respect and compassion in a request. Because whether someone on the other side of my boundary has said or done anything outwardly to take my power or assert theirs or not, when I feel it I trust it.
Because I am not scared anymore to say- this does not feel right, I don’t like how this feels and unless there can be a conversation and open acknowledgement of what is where and who’s is what here, I cannot be in this space with an open heart and willingness to give over my power anymore.
Boundary Setting & Resilience is one of the Modules available to book now, following an Initial Call.
Focussing on this topic, in the context of your life, with support for a month will help you to understand your child better, improve your relationship with them and begin to build your own sense of steadiness and resilience in the face of conflict and power dynamics both inside and outside your home.
