Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot

visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

At our core we all have heart held values.  As a parent, we love our children and want the best for them.  We want them to do well and grow up to be productive citizens.  Our children love us back and want our love and approval.  They want to do well for themselves and for us.  Somehow our relationships don’t always work this way.  Sometimes our children misbehave as a way of communicating their wants and needs to us.  We react by lecturing them or punishing them.  Sometimes our own behavior resembles the tantrum behavior we abhor in our children.  Rather than resolving conflict, we reinforce tantrums as a way of getting needs met.  In other words, our wounds and our defenses get in the way of resolving conflict.  When we learn to parent with compassion, we learn to go through our wounds and defenses and listen and communicate heart to heart with our children.  When we do this, conflict drops away and problems resolve themselves.

This class will help parents:

•Identify triggers to anger in yourself and your child.

•Identify coping strategies to cool anger.

•Learn to connect with your child’s heart through listening.

Learning to listen with your heart to your child’s anger can resolve tantrums without discipline.  Listening also strengthens the relationship between child and parent.  However, it takes practice and support to replace old habits of lecturing with new habits of listening. This class teaches the spiritual discipline of Compassionate Listening and communicating with the heart and applies them to parenting.

Participants in this class will learn how to resolve and heal conflicts in their family through the following steps:

1.The instructor will invite participants to discuss triggers to anger in themselves and their children.

2.The instructor will invite participants to brainstorm ways of calming anger  in themselves and their children.

3.The instructor will demonstrate listening for facts, feelings, and heart-held values.

4.The instructor will divide the class into groups and invite participants to listen for facts, feelings, and hear-held values in each other’s stories.

Practicing the spiritual discipline of Compassionate Listening will enable parents to incorporate it in their relationships with their children.  With practice a parent will be able to diffuse tantrums and resolve conflicts by listening to their children and reflecting their heart held values underlying the conflict or the tantrum.