From time to time we will put up posts that we hope may be of interest to you. Currently, they are about parenting. They have been written by Jan Dugan and Jan Gudkovs, authors of The Focused Child and Helping Children Relax.

I was seeing someone the other day and we were talking about observing her thinking. She told me she avoided this because she was frightened - imagine what it would be like to be scared of your own mind. However, I don’t think she is the only one - many people dislike introspection, or looking at what their minds are doing, but this I think is largely their thoughts often seem to be out of control.  Many personal and relationships problem arise because of lack of control – alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence – but these are just the big, and obvious ones. If we looked more closely we would find that many of our issues arise from lack of self-control or self-discipline.

It struck me the other day that we talk about influential politicians, business people, and others who are trend setters but I was thinking how this word applies to parents! Children are not a direct expression of us – of our particular child-rearing philosophy, our strengths or weaknesses, what we think we have done right or wrong along the way of raising our children. The closest thing I think we can get to really is having an influence on them.