I read a parable about an elephant and blindfolded men, each touching a different part of the animal.
“It’s a rope,” says one, pulling its tail.
“It’s a wall,” says another, feeling its side.
“It’s a hose,” says another, groping its trunk.
Nobody could “see” the elephant itself.
When we look at our children, who do we see? Our perception of who they are is influenced by who we are and how we see ourselves. There is always a reason for every behavior, every action and every emotion. But, beyond this reasoning, the signs our children hold up for us have a deeper purpose. Instead of narrowing our vision to see only cause and affect of behavior, we can look at our relationship as a mirror. A two-way mirror. Our children reflect a message to us—behaviorally, emotionally, subtly or overtly—which we can in turn reflect upon internally with curiosity and awareness, in order to then reflect back to them.
The science, art and heart of learning to see through our two-way mirror cultivates trust.The more we cultivate, the more we accumulate. Think of it as a trust fund. We add to it every time we consciously practice this mutual reflection (and our own self-reflection). Don’t worry if the process is full of missed signals, ups and downs, and flaws. That’s how we forge relationship. If we nod excitedly about the mirror metaphor, ready to trust in the process, we can still unwittingly get caught in the intellectual process of deciphering, and miss the unspoken emotional messages and lessons.
Wisdom is not a cognitive exercise, but a psychobiological and spiritual one. The two-way mirror asks us to check in with our own bodies, where we’re carrying anger, fear, doubt, sorrow, shame, and notice, with the strength of our vulnerability and courage, what our children are expressing through their own bodies. What do their ears hear when ours can’t detect anything out of the ordinary? What do our children’s eyes see when our focus on the obvious? Nothing is clean cut. Being a parent detective means getting to the bottom of our children’s apparent mysteries, even if it feels like we’re searching for a pearl in a landfill.
There is a deep wisdom in our relationships that shows up—and pipes up—when we are not looking for it. If we stay curious and open, we notice the signs. When we’re exhausted and filled with doubt and anxiety, our body’s nervous system is primed for reactivity and vigilance, and we can easily miss the a-ha moments that would have otherwise shone a light on our parenting path and kept us connected to our joy regardless of the bumps on the journey.
The path of doubt and anxiety has low visibility. For years on that path, I felt like there was no map, no rest stop in my mind. Parenting through the mysteries and trying to decipher the hieroglyphics of one son’s struggles while making equal room for validating and connecting with the present needs of another son’s longing often seemed like more than I could bear. But, you don’t quit. You whimper under your breath or bawl out loud; you lose it sometimes; and then, you find it again.
On those days when your children laugh and hug you and tell you that they “love you at the end of space and end of time times 500 million,” you think that’s got to be a sign that something good is unfolding here. We tend to narrow our perspective to see only the tail, the trunk, the tusk-tusks. We feel our failures, the betrayal of our expectations under the crushing weight of this beast we conjure in our own minds.
Whole elephant parenting is a tender beast, strong, secure, holding its weight, knowing its place and making way for the earthly delicacies of all that grows near it.
Wake Up! With Lu Hanessian
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WAKE UP! from Lu Hanessian on Vimeo.