The news of your life’s greatest joy brings forward some excellent advice from your near and dear ones. I’m talking about the amount of advice you get when you share the news of your pregnancy. I got plenty of them as well. But some of that wisdom continues to stay with me and they are what I can call, my greatest learning.

One of them is to become a conscious parent; to be mindful about every single aspect of bringing up my child. I know now, that conscious parenting is a method that encourages parents to ignore their automatic reactions and to be mindful of the NOW. It’s all about bringing yourself consciously into the current present moment.

So am I a conscious parent? I don’t know. But I know there are pockets of moments where I keep everything aside and get into an active listening mode. And those moments have been largely helpful in understanding my responsibility towards my 13-year-old son.

Here are the 3 lessons I’ve learnt in my journey to be a conscious parent.

1. Communication

Dr Shefali Tsabary, a clinical psychologist and the author of “The Conscious Parent — Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children explains that your behaviour is some form of communication. And this I believe is the greatest advice that you can get. As parents, our job is to learn what our children tell us with their behaviours and not necessarily with words

Similarly, what are our children learning from our own behaviour? Remember the term ‘monkey see – monkey do’

So as a parent if you’re worried your child is addicted to his smartphone, you may want to check your own addiction because they are simply emulating what they learn from your behaviour.

I see many parents blatantly jumping red signal with kids in tow, especially early morning during school time. They’re setting an example to their kids that it’s okay to do it. If you think it’s okay to jump the signal in red or violate any traffic rule, be assured your child will also do the same.

2. Curiosity

This one came from my dad. He always told me to never kill the curiosity my son would display. Creativity comes from curiosity. So if I want my son to excel in life, then I must consciously allow him to stay curious. Even if that makes me uncomfortable and puts me in a tough situation.

Being curious leads to asking questions. So if you wish to become a conscious parent then be prepared to answer some tough questions. The questions I had from my son ranged from a simple

3. Self-Care

Parenting is tough. Sure you know that by now if you’re one. But in our bid to take care of our kids, we often tend to ignore ourselves. Having a self-care practice is essential because it ultimately results in payoffs for our children. Use the concept of ‘filling our own cups’, if you are someone who takes care of yourself then you will have more patience, energy, and passion to spread to your family.

Those are my top 3 learnings. What have you learnt by being a parent? Are you conscious to even notice it? Would love to hear from you. Click here to join the conversation in our facebook community

Here’s the video version of this blog.