Krissy Pozatek - Brave Parenting: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Raising Emotionally Resilient Children

HOW DO WE BUILD CHILDREN WHO CAN HANDLE LIFES CHALLENGES?

Writing from her own extensive experience and psychological wisdom, Krissy shows us how children can develop the resilience, confidence, and creativity that enables them to find true joy in living.

Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance

As parents today, we often feel that our role is to protect our childrenno matter how old they arefrom the world. But controlling a childs entire environment and keeping all pain at bay isnt feasible; we cant prepare the world for our children, so instead we should focus on preparing our children for the world. The solution is not removing impediments from our childrens lives, writes Krissy Pozatek, it is compassionately encouraging them to be brave.

Brave Parenting gently but firmly guides parents away from living their childrens lives and toward enabling their childrens independence.

ForeWord Reviews

Krissy draws lessons from her experience guiding children in wilderness therapy and from her Buddhist practiceshowing us that all life is as unpredictable as mountain weather, that impermanence is the only constant, and that the most loving act a parent can do is fearlessly ready their child to face the wild.

KRISSY POZATEK has had fifteen years of experience in the wilderness therapy and adolescent treatment fields. She currently works as a parent coach with parents of struggling adolescents and young adults through her coaching practice, Parallel Process, established in 2006. Krissy was educated at Middlebury College, Smith College, and New Mexico Highlands University and is the author of The Parallel Process: Growing Alongside Your Adolescent or Young Adult Child in Treatment. She lives in Kirby, Vermont, with her husband and two daughters.

Brave Parenting

Wisdom Publications

199 Elm Street

Somerville, MA 02144 USA

www.wisdompubs.org

2014 Krissy Pozatek

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pozatek, Kristine.

Brave parenting : a Buddhist-inspired guide to raising emotionally resilient children / by Krissy Pozatek.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61429-089-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 1-61429-089-X (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-61429-109-1 (eBook)

1. Child rearing. I. Title.

HQ769.P8285 2014

306.874dc23

2013029845

18 17 16 15 14

5 4 3 2 1

Author photo by Kelly McCracken. Cover design by Phil Pascuzzo.

Interior design by Gopa&Ted2, Inc.

For my parents

For my daughters

To cover all the earth with sheets of leather

Where could such amounts of skin be found?

But with the leather soles of just my shoes

It is as though I cover all the earth!

And thus the outer course of things

I myself cannot restrain.

But let me just retrain my mind,

And what is left to be restrained?

SHANTIDEVA, The Way of the Bodhisattva

Table of Contents

Part I: The River
The Course of Emotions

Part II: Nature
The Cause and Effect of Behaviors

Part III: Boulders
Obstacles on the Trail

In this book, I will refer to lifes journey as a trail, a rocky path symbolizing all of the challenges we face in everyday lifestruggles with family, with friends, with school, or with pursuits outside the home, or simply the difficulties of managing our daily fluctuation of thoughts and emotions. Sometimes, however, when walking a trail, we encounter even bigger obstacles: a loss, a trauma, a diagnosis, or other setback. These jagged boulders and sharp rocks at first seem insurmountable but actually offer profound gratification when successfully navigated. In order to travel our paths gracefully, we need a way to work with the obstacles that we will all inevitably encounter, as well as the emotions that run through us like a river.

In The Way of the Bodhisattva, eighth-century Buddhist sage Shantideva tells us that we can either lay down leather wherever we step so we dont cut our feet, or we can make our own moccasins to protect us on our path. In this book, I adapt this metaphor to parenting in order to illustrate the widespread hovering and overinvolvement parents engage in today, as many parents are busy cushioning their children from any discomfort. Unfortunately, this leather laying makes our children more dependent and less resourceful and impedes their emotional maturation process. Instead, we can create a home environment that fosters moccasin building so our children have the internal resources and emotional resilience necessary to navigate their life-trail and get where they need to go.

After working for many years in adolescent wilderness-therapy programs, I have seen many struggling young people find gratitude, self-esteem, and mastery when successfully navigating their life obstacles. The solution is not removing or softening difficulties and discomforts from our childrens lives, it is compassionately encouraging them to be braveteaching our children to work with their own rocks and boulders and seeing their bruises and scrapes as fodder for maturation. In every obstacle we face there is a corresponding lesson, insight, awareness, or opportunity for growth if we allow our struggles to teach us, rather than fight and resist them. This is the maturation and moccasin-building process.

In wilderness therapy, I have observed that kids find relief when they stop looking for an exit, an escape, or a rescue from a parent and instead face their problems and struggles head-on. They begin to feel capable and resourceful. Deep down we all want to solve our own problems, because that is how we grow wiser and more confident in life. Yet most of us wont if we know there is still some cushion, some way out, someone to blame, or someone to rescue us. Although adversity has merit, no one really pursues it voluntarily.

Living with the grit of Mother Nature provides indelible lessons. Because the only safety net (aside from the satellite phone) is the groups ingenuity, each individual is challenged to problem-solve, be resilient, and work together. Though not always comfortable, living within the natural world actually returns a light to young peoples eyes and brightens their spirits. Individuals have to face nature head-on, submit to its terrain, and endure the weather patterns, whether pure sunshine or vicious storm. Ultimately kids learn that life is simple in the wildernessthey readily see that they are not in control and learn that they get out of the experience what they put in to it.