Looking for Lack
Sep 24, 2024
Looking for Lack - What is missing?
I had a session with a mom the other day who really wanted to get to the bottom of her son’s anger and defiance. “I keep wondering what’s missing that would make him calm down and listen. Is it a developmental piece? Is there a parenting thing he needs from me?”
I asked her to consider that perhaps nothing was missing, that there was nothing missing in her son or in herself.
Looking for Lack
When we’re not careful, motherhood becomes a lifelong exercise of LOOKING FOR LACK—where our parenting is lacking, our children are lacking, their environment is lacking, and WE as mothers are lacking. Do you know what this leads to?
What if nothing is missing?
Blindness to our children. We are so fixated on what they are NOT that we don’t see who they ARE, which means we are not responding to their actual needs. What if there is nothing missing in this boy? Instead of Mom trying to make him into the calm, peace-loving person he is not, what if he just needs someone to teach him how to navigate the world as the fiery, righteous person he is?
What happens when we really see our child? A dad I’ve been working with for three months summed it up in our session today when he said: “Before we worked with you, it was like our son was ruled by some other dominant jerk personality that really wasn’t him. Now he’s the kid we knew he had inside.”
This is what is possible when we stop reacting to all the ways we and our children are falling short of the mark and instead tune into WHO we and our children really are. This dad gets to enjoy the truth about his son because he first decides to SEE and respond to his son's truth. This is the profound joy of my work, my joy in seeing families heal themselves, and my joy for these families who reconnect with the truth of themselves: love, safety, trust, and connection.
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