Imagine a scenario.
I’m preparing dinner in the kitchen. From another room, I hear sounds of conflict. The volume and temperature are rising, with no sign the kids will step away to cool down.
I feel immediately uncomfortable. I feel sad when I hear my kids struggle with each other, as if each were an obstacle to the other rather than a loved one. I’m unsure how to balance responding to the kids with tending to the dinner on the cooktop, and in this moment of role confusion, I feel rushed and anything but graceful. I feel an energetic urge to take control of the situation and end these unpleasant feelings quickly.
These feelings and energies are part of my experience. They are vital signals pointing toward lost equilibrium and flow, toward unmet needs. But, paraphrasing Lama Rod Owens, I don’t want to live in a “compulsory relationship” with these feelings and energies.1 I don’t want to react in their terms.
To help my children recover their freedom to respond kindly and creatively, I must first recover my own freedom.
I take a few deep breaths, as I wrote about here. With the expansion and release of each breath—of the very air that carries the sounds of conflict—I discern an inner spaciousness. My body is no longer working to control circumstance. I can be in this moment as it is. I have agency.
Having steadied myself, I check in with my intention: what kind of parent do I want to be in this situation?
Eight years ago, that intentional clarity came through words, like those I’d written on the worksheet I’d tucked into my copy of Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids,2 which I described in an earlier essay. In moments of stress, I would bring those words to consciousness and step into the light they cast before me.
These days, intentional clarity comes in form of a simple, concrete image. I see myself moving calmly into the situation of conflict, sitting down between my children, and facilitating a conversation. In this image, I am a translator who helps each child see the other’s needs more clearly, so they might come back together.
The dad in this image is not one who simply reacts and tries to shut down conflict and push away discomfort, wishing the moment were different than it is. He is a dad who wants to understand the conflict and draw meaning from it, modeling good faith and mercy in the process.
When I take a moment to evoke this image internally, something wondrous happens: whatever muscle tension still remains in my body begins to release, and my perception of time eases and expands.
Instead of feeling as if I’m straining against too little time and too many responsibilities, and instead of feeling driven to banish my own discomfort, I perceive a clearing into which I may step and make a choice about what to do next. I remember that, sometimes, the kids need my help in navigating their shared life. If they could resolve this conflict on their own, they would, but in this particular moment, they cannot. I’m here to help, to facilitate, to translate.
As with anything else, this all takes practice, and it comes more easily on some days than others. Sometimes it’s really difficult. But regardless of the ease with which I’m able to settle into these practices on any given day, one thing is almost always the case: the image of sitting between my children, once brought fully to mind, is so powerful that my body immediately begins to soften in emulation. The image grounds me in an ethic of kindness and curiosity instead of control and compliance.
Now, I can decide what to do.
In some cases, I temporarily put aside whatever I’d been doing, and I try to embody the image of sitting between. I move into the situation of conflict calmly, gather the kids on either side of me, and ask questions to help them understand each other’s needs a little more clearly, so they can find a way to move forward as a team.
My kids’ particular conflicts are their own stories. But they have all the same needs for fun, play, competence, and autonomy that any other kid has, and their strategies for meeting those needs don’t always align neatly. It’s not always easy to sort through it all, and I rarely have all the answers, but I don’t need to: the kids have their own ideas about how to move forward. The more practice they get in trusting themselves and each other to navigate these uncomfortable moments together, the better.
In other cases, when I feel I cannot set aside whatever I’d been doing for long, I might move toward the situation and calmly set some boundaries, until we can return to the matter later. I might tell the kids they need to take some time to cool down, or I might offer them a handful of options for what to do next. This is not a punishment: conflicts happen. Rather, I tell them, we need to use this time as a resource to bring our bodies into a less agitated state, until we have the uninterrupted time to explore the conflict with intention.
There are other ways I can respond, too. For example, I might invite the kids to join me in making dinner, after they cool down. With our side-by-side attention directed to chopping carrots, sautéing onions, or whatever needs doing, I can also help guide them in sorting out their conflict.
The point is this: I have vastly more flexibility and creativity in adapting to circumstance than my body presumes in the earliest moments of discomfort, and taking the time to breathe deeply and reconnect with my deeper intention as a parent unlocks that capacity. I need not be yanked around by the discomfort of a situation. Instead, I can choose to become a point of calm within the situation.
Next time, I’ll reflect on the importance of mutual accountability in navigating conflict with calm and grace.
Lama Rod Owens, Love and Rage: The Path Of Liberation Through Anger, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2020, pg. 26.
Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson, Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids, Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press, 2006.