Every parent wants their child to be happy. It is one of the driving desires that affects the choices parents make regarding their child. Yet, how much do you know about what makes your child deeply happy and content?

Summer is the time that reveals the authentic aspects of your relationship with your child. Are you excited about the opportunity to spend more time with your child without the pressures and interruption of school activities and homework? Or are you a parent who dreads the long summer months, anticipating challenges and frustration?

Is summer a time to enroll your child in camps and activities she enjoys or needs? If so, how much free connective time are you sharing with her?

Sometimes parents simply feel ambivalent, both looking forward to a slower pace and less school pressures and activities, but wondering what the uninterrupted summer with their child will be like. Do you have a roller-coaster experience as a parent, sharing times of fun with your child with occasional or frequent times of conflict and difficulty?

Stop for a moment right now and explore how you feel as you think about the summer months ahead. What are your true thoughts and feelings about this time with your child?

Parents often act as if the secret to their child’s happiness lies in material possessions for both their children and themselves. They buy toys and designer clothes, only to find them tossed aside tomorrow or strung out over their bedroom floor.

Other times parents act as if saying nice, encouraging things paves the road to happiness for children. Parents often put a lot of energy and effort into saying the "right" things to keep their child happy.

Other times they act as if they believe activity is the key to happiness and joy for their children. They drive them to classes and play dates, without really noticing if their child is happy or not, and sometimes in spite of their child’s resistance.

You may think your child is happy even when she is struggling inside emotionally. What I've found is in our society we don't know a lot about Emotional Wholeness. Consequently, you may miss the cues your child gives you about how she really feels inside. Children pretend to be happy and smile even when that is not what they are feeling. They’ve learned to act as much of us do, putting on a smile, even when we’re hurting inside.

Your child's happiness doesn't depend on material possessions, kind words from your or others, or specific activities. His happiness comes from feeling certain and clear in who he is and making choices that reflect his personal integrity.

Happiness comes from knowing that she belongs, that she is deeply loved by the important people in her life. It comes from knowing she is respected and valued for who she is. In other words, your child's happiness depends on her Emotional Wholeness.

Children need love and respect from  within themselves more than they need love and respect from us. Happiness comes from inner love and respect.

So what's a parent to do?

1. Make your child's Emotional Wholeness one of your highest priorities. Emotional Wholeness is more important than managing her behavior and making sure she's doing the right things. It's emotional well-being that lays the foundation for wise choices and joyous, loving interactions.
When you nurture your child's Emotional Wholeness, he glows with joy and a feeling of certainty that is unmistakable to people around him. When you nurture your child's Emotional Wholeness, power struggles, tantrums, defiance, depression, anxiety, and a host of other behavioral challenges become things of the past.

When your child lives in a place of loving himself, he flourishes and shines brightly. He radiates enthusiasm, positive power, clarity, joy, and love from the inside out. This is where it counts!

2. Share authentic, loving, times with your child this summer. You matter so much to your child. This matters more than all the possessions you can buy. Slow down and make your actions consistent with your highest values.

3. With your child, plan fun special times together that you will both enjoy. Stretch your boundaries of what you believe you might enjoy and try something new your child suggests.

4. Reflect for a moment. Are your thoughts, words and actions consistent with the feelings you want to create?

Do you ever feel locked in a power struggle with your child? Do you feel you have a lot of power as a parent or do you feel confused and powerless more frequently than you’d like?

Whenever I talk with parents about their relationship with their child, the discussion about power always comes up. Parents don’t like being in power struggles with their child and yet often find themselves engaged in a battle where both sides are trying to win and have their way. Sound familiar?

When you think about using your parenting power wisely, what does this mean to you? Does it mean to be more authoritarian and in control? This perspective believes a parent’s role is to maintain control over her child’s behavior and to insist her child do what his parents tell him.

Other times parents struggle with feeling powerless in conflicts with their child. They want to nurture their child’s joyous inner creativity and positive self-expression and don’t know how to set a limit without stifling this joyous creativity, innocence, and specialness.

Parents often tell me they feel intimidated by the intensity of their child’s power. Their child is so clear about what he wants, and parents feel insecure about confronting their child’s clarity and certainty about what she wants. Parents also dread the emotional meltdown when she doesn’t get her way.

It’s hard to know which way to choose in times of conflict with your child—give in to your child’s wishes and demands or use whatever strategy possible to alter your child’s behavior and attitudes to conform to what you want.

Parents usually fall into one of these two categories. In most couples, one parent is the disciplinarian and the other is the easy-going one who sets few or no boundaries. In your relationship, which one are you? Neither approach is beneficial to your child in the long run so it’s important to find a third approach that provides a more balanced approach.

Repeated power struggles are stressful and frustrating to you and your child. Even if you find a way to get through today’s conflicts relatively unbruised, you’re going to deal with them again tomorrow and next week.

So what can you do to reduce the number of power struggles you experience with your child and how can you get through them more easily? Here are four valuable insights to guide you on your parenting adventure.

1.    Remember that you are one of the very most important people in your child’s life. Parents forget this so often. It’s easy to take yourself for granted and to not realize the deep love your child feels for you and the importance you play in her life.
Because of your importance in your child’s life, everything you do and say or don’t do and say makes an impact. This can feel like a daunting and overwhelming responsibility. Yet to ignore your natural influence means you unconsciously make choices that powerfully impact your child in ways you never imagined possible.

2.    Wield the power you have with as much awareness as possible. Unconscious mis-steps are inevitable. When these mis-steps are repeated over and over again, your impact is magnified and becomes part of your child’s personality, her beliefs about life, and her feelings about herself.

3.    Welcome your child’s unique power. His power is essential to his joy, creativity and success in life. When you resist it or try to suppress it, you limit his capability and positive self-expression in life.

4.    Create a structure that gives her a solid emotional foundation from which to grow and become the person she yearns to be. Without an empowering structure, all children struggle with how to wield their power positively.

As a parent, you possess tremendous power to influence your child’s life and emotional wholeness. He needs for you to be aware of your impact in his life and to make choices that nurture his Emotional Wholeness.  Then your power struggles will dramatically diminish and your loving joy and ease will soar.

We took a long, winding bus ride to Luang Prabang yesterday. 9.5 hours. Only 357 km but through beautiful mountains so the going was slow.

I started feeling "something" seriously attacking my immune system last evening so I supported my body with everything I have from my pharmacy of natural healing remedies, including lots of water with Vitamin C. We've taken it easy today and I'm feeling much better. It's 5 pm Tuesday.

The reputed best place to eat in LP is at the night market, which hosts a huge assortment of Laos food. As you can image, we didn't recognize much of it, but with a few questions, we had a great meal. The night market is like a giant outdoor Lao buffet. Such a delicious dinner we had.

This morning I was up at 6 am to watch the monks walk through town to gather alms, their daily food from the local people.

We're staying in a beautiful, comfortable guest house with warm, English speaking Laos. It's a family business. Will write more tomorrow afternoon with more stories of the day.

So much to share and time to get some sleep. It's now 9:30 pm here in Luang Prabang on Wednesday evening. We just finished eating a Lao-style BBQ with lots of veggies and chicken and a coconut shake for me. Beerlao for Doug.

Today we visited Kuang Si waterfall about 25 minutes away. Amazing! The whole mountainside was alive with rushing water, splashing down over layer after layer of limestone. Some were very low falls. Others higher. When we got to what may have been the end, we looked up and there was a huge series of falls above us, the closest one at least 120 feet, maybe more. The entire experience was breath-taking and beautiful,

plus there is an Asian Bear rescue center there so we got to see several. They are also called moon bears and are the ones with a white crescent on their chest.

I've been enjoying the fresh fruit shakes here. My faves so far are the lime and the coconut ones.

Today we also visited Big Brother Mouse, a non-profit where they make Lao books for children to promote literacy. The artwork is child-friendly and the message of the stories insightful. We bought some to take to the villages where we are going during the next few days.

Tomorrow we travel by mini-van and slow boat to Muang Ngoi Neua, a small, rural town north of here about 4 hours. There's lots of hiking, visiting ethnic tribal villages and caving in the limestone karsts. And internet access that is probably there in case of emergency. This means no internet for the next four days. What a novel concept! I'll write when we return.

We arrived Friday evening in Vientiane after flying 13 + hours Wednesday night to Hong Kong, on which we slept pretty well. Like Cathay Pacific as an Asian airline.  Friday, we had an 8-hour layover in Bangkok so we took a bus downtown and just walked around exploring and had a VERY SPICY chicken curry at a street vendor. People are so friendly for a mega-cosmopolitan city.

Flew Lao Aviation to Vientiane–a two propeller with 30 seats.

Flew fine and was fun to hear the sound of propellers. Arrived about 8pm, got our visas, our guesthouse met us at the airport, we quickly took showers, and passed out. Exhausted. Slept about 10 hours.

The Lani Guesthouse is a lovely colonial mansion with a beautiful garden. They served breakfast with delicious Laos coffee each morning on the veranda.

Have had a fun day yesterday getting to know our way around Vientiane. Happened on to a funeral where we watched the entire ceremony, including the pyre to cremate the body. Wow!

Then in the late afternoon, we went down to the Mekong River to watch the sunset. Doug had his iced Beerlao and me a fresh pineapple shake. Delicious and relaxing!

Dinner last night was fun as we ate at a restaurant frequented by US expats and had three of them sit down next to us. We loved hearing their stories about their time in Laos during the 60's when the US was heavily bombing Laos in its war against the North Vietnamese. These men were involved in civilian community service projects and were helping the Laos village people to build wells, roads, medical dispensaries of basic needs. They strongly felt their story during this time period had not be told by the media. Fascinating men and great conversation!

Today we continue our exploration of Vientiane, including a few wats

 and getting a Laos massage for $7 for an hour. What an opportunity! We're going to Luang Prabang tomorrow–Monday–morning.

Will again from there.

Happy Trails!

To your Joy with Children,
Connie

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.