Bringin' it home

When I first found Conscious Discipline, a classroom and parenting approach for building emotional intelligence in children, I knew I'd found a path by which to maintain structure and discipline with integrity at work and home.  I'm just back from my second week-long training in two years and I still see it as a path by which I'll grow as a person. 

I also find that I am sad this week.  It could be a lot of things -- rebuilding my energy reserves, let down after the one big thing I have planned for the summer, awareness of how far there is yet to go toward being able to think inside CD. 

I can see that just being on this path is huge.  All week, Becky would bring up three people to the stage to represent three systems of the brain -- brain stem, limbic system, frontal lobes -- and interact with them to make her points and to give us (awesome) visual reference.  One of the last things she did with the three people was to use them in reference to parenting.  A very long time ago, (standing in front of the brain stem person) infanticide was an option for when a child was totally annoying you.  Discipline was physically aggressive (fight) or abandoning (flight).  That's where the race was as a whole.  Moving to stand in front of the next person, she says that stereotypically, we are now in our limbic system -- unconscious, acting out of emotional states, wounding each other verbally.  And that's how much of the world parents - via guilt, "please me or else," judgment.  Conscious Discipline is about evolving us to the next step - parenting and teaching children from our frontal lobes.  We aren't there yet -- we dance between the frontal lobe and the limbic system all the time -- but it IS a step forward.  And when enough people are there, there will be another step forward into something else. 

Cool.  So we're evolving.  I love it. 

But... man, the old tapes about needing to be special and/or better than are so loud.  I was in awe of how some of the people I met last week are authentically living this.  The tapes don't jive with where I am, still early in the learning process, still changing the way my brain is wired.  The problem with those tapes is that they don't allow me to be ok with where I am right now.  That's too bad, you know?  It's a good place, and it's a stop along the journey, not the destination. 

Anyway. 

One of the a-ha!'s this week was that I can stop complaining about not being able to include all of the CD structures in my MT groups and just bring them home to my son.  Duh.  That, I'm excited about.  Last night we introduced him to the Wish Well board.  Kevin and I each modeled it, picking out three friends we wanted to send happy thoughts to, then let him go at it.  He sent "fun" and "good sleep" to two kids from daycare and one adult friend of ours. 



I've set up a visual schedule board for his bedtime routine that he and Dad can work with tonight, and I've got pictures ready for a "job board" that I'll put together tomorrow.  Today, my job is just to relax into being here.  Right here, right now.