In my professional life, a couple of years ago, I met a lady that was driving this concept of Empathy in corporate settings. She is successfully raising awareness with CEOs across all industries to the importance of having empathy with your employees, your suppliers, your customers.
Up until today, I hadn’t even noticed that that simple concept was a key ingredient to becoming a better parent.
I finished a course today called Talking Teens. It was a 6-week course, delivered online over zoom, due to Covid-19, hosted brilliantly by the team at Supporting Links. The course was funded by the local council.
It couldn’t have come at a better time. After 10 months at her Dad’s, my eldest agreed to come back home, and it’s been a rollercoaster these last few weeks. The concepts I picked up in the course made a huge difference.
And yesterday, possibly for the first time ever, I realised how crucial the empathy concept really is.
Even though I didn’t handle the situation perfectly, I did manage to ride the wave and keeping my cool at the same time. And today, after talking to the tutors, I understood that it could have been even better if I listened with empathy to my daughter. If I addressed her feelings rather than her behaviour.
This of course is not only a game changer, but also a really big challenge for me. Being someone that was raised by an authoritarian parent, I became exactly the same to my kids.
Having developed anger issues from an early age, only to suppress all emotions by the time I was a teen, I look at my daughter and it’s like looking in the mirror… a mirror of emotions.
So I feel her pain and I want to do and be better. For that, I have to feel my own emotions, I have to train myself in overcoming my triggers rather than being a slave to them, and then I need to train her, and my other two, on how to handle difficult emotions and feelings, in a healthy way.
Gosh, if this isn’t a huge challenge, I don’t know what is. And I’m up for it. Because this is part of developing this art… the art of motherhood. One day at a time.
Wish me luck! 💛