Weekly Recaps

1.12.25 Recap:

Sairam everyone! We had a great discussion on the importance of “listening with patience” (Harmonious Homes, Guide 10, HH Guide 10 – Feb 2024 final.pdf).
We addressed two key questions-

  1. Who most understood your feelings, needs, and desires as you were growing up? How did you feel about this person?
  2. How did attention and your ‘feeling understood’ by others impact your motivation and behavior?

Summary of parent responses-

  • Many parents highlighted the significance of feeling listened to by their parents (mostly mothers at a younger age, dads at a later age) or other significant adults like a neighbor or uncle in their childhood. This made them feel important and heard. Some parents also felt that by giving family responsibilities (like handling budget, investing money and seeking their advice), their parents recognized the desire to contribute to the family. These parents wish to connect with their own kids in a similar fashion.
  • Some parents felt most understood by their loving and non-judgmental grandparents. This provided them a safe space for expression and often helped validate their feelings of fears.
  • Growing up in India, communities played crucial roles in providing emotional support for some parents. These experiences influenced their parenting styles and their understanding of the importance of a supportive network.
  • Some parents brought up the value of self-reflection through journaling or other means, which helped them understand their own emotions and encouraged them to foster similar practices in their children.
  • One parent finds it very useful to write a letter to Swami and keep it in her alter. She feels it is a way to surrender her problems to a higher force and encourages her son to do the same.

While open discussions about listening, feeling, and verbalizing emotions weren’t common when we were growing up it is important to recognize their crucial role in personal development.

What are some barriers to Patient Listening that we as parents face today?

  • Time Constraints: The demands of busy life often leave parents with limited time for in-depth conversations with their children.
  • Personal Inhibitions: Discomfort with vulnerability and ingrained parenting styles can hinder parents from truly listening and empathizing with their children.
  • Perfectionism: Parents may feel pressure to provide “perfect” solutions or guidance, preventing them from truly understanding their child’s unique perspective.
  • Desire to fix the problem: Sometimes the problem that the child brings up just needs to be heard, they may not be seeking our advice, but we feel the need to jump and fix it.

Strategies for Active Listening

The 1-2-3-4 Tool: This framework helps you respond to your child in the way they desire. If they come to you with a complaint/issue, ask them if it is a 1,2,3 or 4 BEFORE you respond.

1 – Listen: Simply listen and acknowledge the child’s feelings.
2 – Listen and Offer Guidance: Provide gentle insights, support, and perspective from your life experience
3 – Work Together: Collaboratively brainstorm solutions.
4 – You (parent) take over: Acknowledge that your child needs you to step in, and is seeking your full support.

Align-Elevate-Shift Technique
Align: Express empathy and understanding (“I’m sorry this happened”).
Elevate: Help them elevate their emotional state (either working with them if they desire or leaving them alone)
Shift: Provide your insights, guidance, and perspective from your life experience. At this stage, they will be much more likely to truly listen and hear what you are saying!

1.19.25 Recap:

We revisited our parent mission statement. We took 5 minutes to spontaneously jot down words/phrases that describe the parent we want to be and the parent we want our kids to see us as. Then we circled the top 5 words/phrases that represent our ideal and discussed how to make those a reality in our lives over the next 6 months. We’ll revisit these ideas at the end of the semester.

1.26.25 Recap:

Anjana offered a wonderful tool to help us be aware of our mental emotional state through the day, our triggers, pre plan how we’ll get above 50% once we have fallen below, and how different the outcomes are if we first get ourselves above 50%. Please see the Anger Management slideshow (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Scg-sq6opvT6XIavmH0YE6DoKCiLZFd2aWhLPh_2GL8/edit) for details if you were not in group.

Homework: Practice, practice, practice. Really be aware of your mental emotional state through the day and where you are on that 100% scale. If you are below 50% what are five ways that you can get above 50%? In situations with your children, in the moment, how will you get yourself above 50%? In challenges with your partner, in the moment, how will you get yourself above 50%? Pre-plan these and try them out this week. In our next class we’ll dive deeper into these ideas and brainstorm more ways to improve.

2.2.25 Recap:

Ways parents stay above 50%:

  • Breath work, being aware of heart rate, see/feel subtle signs and catch it ahead of time, use BEAR method, Phyllis Krystal Maypole and Golden Circle meditation, Jyoti meditation, and recognize personal triggers. From this place we can communicate better with our partner and children.
  • 3 Seconds pause in the middle of a conflict really helped to have a different outcome
  • Prevention is easier than repair once you’ve dropped below 50%.

Other discussion topics and helpful ideas:

  • 10 Minute special time with our children. It’s a fail-safe way to stay connected and maintain repour with our children. One parent said that even when she asks her teenage clients if they would like to regularly have 10 minutes of one-on-one time with a parent, 100% of the time they say ‘yes’.
  • Take a scenario and explore your fear, or what’s the worst that can happen. Keep going deeper until you get to a root fear. Then ask yourself what you would do. You’ll find your own resourcefulness and release much of your root fear.
  • Many kids are comparing their family to other families, particularly in regards to wealth and privileges. Helpful ideas: give examples of how hard you have worked to provide, how much more opportunity you have compared to what your parents could provide to you, and let the child know that they too can work hard to create the wealth they want.
    See issues from the kids’ perspective too.
  • Take time to explain our fears to our kids, show our vulnerabilities and uncertainty.
  • Often we need to not be a friend, not be a parent, but be a leader to our kids/teenagers. When challenged by a child, one parent uses the phrase, “I’m sorry, and this is my dharma”. This indicates to her kids something like, ‘you don’t have to understand, but this is the way I/your leader is saying that it needs to be right now’.
  • Neurology: certain brain centers fire when kids are with mothers. Often this means that kids need to dump stuff on us because we are their safety. It’s nothing personal, it’s literally built into their development.