26. A Gift for Fathers Day: What To Do When You Parent Differently

The Mindful Healers Podcast with Dr. Jessie Mahoney and Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang

Because we want the best for our children and we have smart brains that are trained specifically to think in certain ways- we often encounter a fair amount of conflict around this topic.

“What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be.”

Mindfulness and coaching tools can help you traverse the journey of co-parenting more easily and show up with peace, calm, groundedness, and intention. Mindfulness makes this much easier. Noticing, awareness, curiosity, non judgement, accepting, non-striving and intention are all key. Noticing what's working rather than what's not, showing up in a way your future self would be proud and being a teammate are key approaches.

Your co parent may be better at certain things than you are. Watch and learn from them. Their way may be different than yours and it may turn out way better than you expect. If it doesn’t, it usually doesn’t matter. If it's not dangerous, let them learn and your children learn from it.

Parenting is a journey. A long one. And there are seasons in it. Enjoy the one you are in and appreciate that your co-parent may be in their element in this one or that they may excel in a different season ahead. They may make a great toddler parent, teen parent, young adult parent, grandparent, driving teacher, sports coach. We are not all great at every part of parenting. As teammates we can do much better than we can do alone.

Learn to show up as the parent, co-parent and partner you want to be through 1:1 mindful coaching with Jessie or by joining Mindful Love, her small group coaching program designed to help you transform challenging relationships into amazing ones. Find out more: https://www.jessiemahoneymd.com/

If you want to develop a mindfulness practice more fully, find out more about working with Dr. Liang at https://awakenbreath.org/

Find out more about the Mindful Healers Podcast and the Mindful Healthcare Collective: https://www.jessiemahoneymd.com/mindful-healers-podcast

*Nothing in this episode should be considered medical advice