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Be an Explorer to Nurture Your Child's Potential

When you define your role as a parent or educator, most would say,"Guide, teacher, caregiver, disciplinarian, soother, arbitrator, helper.""Explorer" is probably not a word you would include in your list. What I've found is to be an extraordinary parent who empowers your child to express her full potential you must be an explorer.

When I coach parents individually or in my classes, a question that frequently comes up is, "How do I get my child to ___?" You can fill in the blank with get ready for bed, get out the door in the morning, do his homework, listen to what I say, put her things away, brush his teeth. This puts you in the role of trying to manage your child's behavior and the one who maintains the status quo. In fact, most parents believe their job is the developer and the enforcer of the status quo for their child.

When I say "status quo", I mean the current situation, present state of affairs, the usual way things are without change. Parents and teachers often see their role as the one who defines and decides the usual way things are to be done in their family and by their child, and these seldom change.

Developing, maintaining, and enforcing the status quo for their child becomes a parent's primary challenge as they struggle with how to do this effectively and efficiently while still being loving and trying to bring out the best in their child. This is a big job and a lot of work and effort.

Parents and teachers unconsciously become more rigid, confused, and arbitrary over time and stop listening to their child from their heart. The status quo becomes more important than their child's emotional wholeness and having fun as a parent.

When you perceive your role as explorer, however, your effectiveness, ease, fun and fulfillment increase dramatically. Two definitions of "explorer" I found online are 1) a person who investigates unknown regions; 2) one who searches or travels a terrain for the purpose of discovery. These meanings imply actively looking with openness, desire, a focused intention, passion, curiosity, interest and fascination with something important and valuable. Now it starts to sound more like parenting and teaching.

Being an explorer is the essence of being an extraordinary parent or teacher. Parents frequently complain and wish their child came with the manual. Many of you have heard me say, "Children do come with a manual. You just need to be able to read it." You must be an explorer to discover how to read your child's manual.

When you are an explorer, you are curious and open to discover something new about your child, yourself, your communication and your relationship with one another. You are fascinated and interested in the choices your child makes and in the feelings between you. You seek to discover new understandings in order to experience the joy of a loving, fun relationship with your child.

As an explorer, you are open every moment to its delightful experience, even with its complexity and lack of clarity. You are passionate about being a parent, and you desire to experience being the parent that deeply nurtures your child's potential both now and for the future.

Being an explorer means being with the unknown, allowing it to show you new insights and understandings. It means staying open to the next amazing experience along your path. It means traveling the road of being a parent or teacher for the purpose of discovery.

I've found that to parent (or teach) with joy, you must be willing to live on the joyous edge, the place where moment-to-moment you don't know what's going to happen next. You are open to experience both the thrilling and the frightening experience of feeling slightly out of control and not knowing exactly what the future brings.

If you're willing to tell the truth to yourself, you'll probably find that you feel slightly out of control much of the time as a parent. Instead of resisting this, embrace being an explorer and enjoy living on the joyous edge of relating with the wonderful child in your life.

Copyright 2009, Connie Allen

Seed Newsvine

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