Genevieve Von Lob - Five Deep Breaths: The Power of Mindful Parenting

A simple, supportive, down-to-earth guide for real-life parenting

Every parent is doing the best they can, but there are times when it feels like nothing you do is ever good enough. Everyone seems to have an opinion and theres no shortage of advice on how to be a better parent. Raising happy, confident, and resilient children is the most important job in the world but in our fast-paced twenty-first-century society, the challenges can feel overwhelming and exhausting:

Do you feel like youre constantly being judged for the decisions you make?
Are you forever fretting about whether youre doing enough to help your child through their problems?
Are you struggling to navigate your childs school pressures or the pitfalls of social media?
Has your home become a combat zone?

If you recognise any of these stress points, give yourself a break: this book really can help you.

In Five Deep Breaths, clinical psychologist Dr Genevieve von Lob draws on her extensive experience with hundreds of families from all walks of life to provide simple, practical support for parents. Based on mindfulness, psychology and neuroscience, this reassuring guide will show you how to be kinder to yourself and trust your own judgement when dealing with dilemmas faced by every parent. With examples based on real mums and dads showing how to defuse tension, drama and anxiety in the home, stressed-out parents will discover a sense of confidence, calm and balance both for themselves and for their children.

To all parents: past, present and future

Welcome to Five Deep Breaths. I wrote this book to share the work I do with families with a wider audience, and I hope you will find it a valuable and inspiring companion on your journey as a parent.

For the sake of simplicity, I have tended to refer to parents as mums and dads though the word parent can of course mean different things to different people. For some, a parent could be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, friend or stepparent, adoptive parent, foster carer or guardian. Some parents are in same-sex or transgender couples, and all come from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Throughout Five Deep Breaths, the term parent is intended to include all this diversity.

I am a chartered member of the British Psychological Society and the Health and Care Professions Council, and abide by their codes of ethics. I have not used any confidential material from my therapeutic work with clients in this book. All the case studies featured in these pages are made-up composites designed to illustrate different themes I encounter in my work. All names are fictional, and any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. I have also drawn on extensive interviews with parents who kindly agreed to discuss their experiences with me for the purposes of my research and gave me their consent to use the material anonymously in this book. Where reported speech appears in quote marks, it should be read as a paraphrasing to illustrate a general point, rather than a direct quotation.

It should be noted that the word mindfulness can have different meanings in different contexts. In Five Deep Breaths I define mindfulness in its broadest sense to mean the ability to step back and observe our thoughts and feelings. The mindfulness exercises I have outlined are not drawn from any particular religious or contemplative tradition, but are based on the work I do in sessions with parents. There are various excellent books by psychologists and researchers who provide their own versions of mindfulness exercises, and I have listed a number of them in the References (). I have also provided references for the research from psychology or neuroscience I quote in the text.

Five Deep Breaths is not a substitute for professional support. I have included a list of helpful resources including organizations, websites and books on specific topics (). Although I discuss mental health problems including anxiety, panic attacks, depression, ADHD and others, a detailed exploration of these and other medical conditions is beyond the scope of this book.

Some of the exercises I describe could potentially cause you to experience strong emotions. If at any time you feel you need more support, I would recommend you seek professional advice. Above all, I hope Five Deep Breaths will be a source of encouragement and reassurance that will endure long after youve turned the final page.

Dr Genevieve von Lob
London, April 2017
www.drvonlob.com/@drvonLob

On the face of it, I might seem like the worlds least qualified person to write a book for parents, having no children of my own and having grown up in a less than conventional family setting. Id therefore like to take a moment to explain how I became a clinical psychologist working with hundreds of parents, teenagers and children from every conceivable type of background. Having spent years in both private practice and front-line NHS and local government mental health services, Ive had the privilege of helping many mums and dads find their own answers to the dilemmas of modern parenting. Every day Im awed and inspired by the courage and creativity of the parents and young people I meet, and I wrote this book to share something of the lessons weve learned together along the way.

My mother, Amanda, was a seventies wild child who in her late teens moved into a hippy commune in Norwich, where she scraped by singing in pubs and clubs. By the time I was born, she had grown into a headstrong twenty-two-year-old and I suspect my arrival was not entirely planned I never knew the identity of my biological father. My mother later told me that having me spurred her to seek a clearer direction and on a whim she started singing lessons. To everyones amazement, she beat intense competition to win a scholarship to train as an opera singer at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Determined to fulfil her ambition of becoming an international mezzo-soprano, she bundled me up along with a suitcase and moved us to a council flat in a tower block in Stepney Green. I had just turned two.

Though I could always sense my mothers love, our life together was a confusing juxtaposition of the grind of surviving in an almost penniless single-parent household on an East End estate and the glamorous world of opera, where I served as her shy sidekick to the amusement, delight and sometimes consternation of her colleagues. Constantly dashing between rehearsals and classes, she would plonk me backstage, where a flamboyant cast of actors, singers and musicians arrayed in ball gowns or period costume would extravagantly fuss over me an incongruous presence in the decidedly adult world of Mozart and Verdi. To my childs eyes, the immaculately made-up women looked like angels. Tiring of the attention, I would embark on lone expeditions deep into the hallowed corridors of the Academy charting my path via the trill of a piano scale or the flourish of a clarinet. I dreaded returning to our tiny flat, where my mother was forced to accept a procession of lodgers to pay the bills. These strangers as a child I called them the creatures would turn up unannounced, doss down on the sofa and help themselves to the meagre contents of our fridge.