conscious parenting

when i was pregnant with my now nine year old daughter, i had the incredibly good fortune of running into the article parenting by intention, by barry neil kaufman.  before my daughter even entered the world, this article made me start thinking about parenting in an entirely different way than everything i had seen or experienced before.  the thing that i've taken the most from the article is a sense that we are teaching our children in such subtle but powerful ways in everything we do.  by consciously choosing how to interact with our children, we can hopefully ensure that the greatest lessons of childhood are the ones that we most wanted to communicate, instead of ones that came from the unintended consequences of following many mainstream parenting techniques.


this week i found a second profoundly inspiring writing on parenting: raising children compassionately: parenting the nonviolent communication way, by marshall rosenberg.  in this tiny book, dr. rosenberg shares many stories about his experiences raising his own three children, and he powerfully demonstrates how we can raise wonderful children without the tools of punishment and reward.  his philosophy centers on giving our children the utmost respect and resisting the pressure to control their behavior.  so many things that he communicates in the book resonated for me, but i've found that these sorts of ideas are pretty radical in the world of modern parenting.


in the last decade when raising a daughter has been on the forefront of my mind, i've only come across these two writings that have inspired me about parenting, and it's left me wondering if there isn't a dominant parenting paradigm based on control, punishment, and reward that isn't questioned as often as it should be. 


the ways we serve our children are as varied as the parents in the world, and although there is no right way and no perfect parent, i love exploring these different perspectives on the fringe.  it helps me affirm my own unique way of parenting, and it helps me continue moving into a role of greater harmony with my daughter, my self, and the way my parenting expresses my highest hopes for the future of humanity.