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Lotus Parenting

“Water surrounds the lotus flower, but does not wet its petals.” – The Buddha.

Lotus flowers bloom in the most unlikely conditions, arising out of muddy waters, and yet remain untarnished themselves. Many of us wish for our children to inhabit this kind of emotional and physical resilience, amidst the chaos and unpredictability of the world we face today. Mindful parenting can help us make that wish a reality. Most parents (including myself) are simply trying to do the best we can, given the broader constraints we may face. And while we surely have the best intentions for our children, we might not always have the tools to supersede our own stress in order to stay connected with them. This is especially true in tough moments or when we feel exhausted and overtaxed ourselves. Here’s the thing about stress though: it’s contagious. 

Stress is indeed contagious at any age, but phenomenally more so for young children whose brain-body stress response systems are rapidly developing. Babies’ brains build a colossal 1 million neuronal connections per second, practically at the speed of light! Parenting is far and away the single most powerful instrument we have to set our children up for lifelong success by every conceivable measure – mental and physical health, attachment security and personal relationships, educational attainment, professional achievement, financial well-being, and existential contentment. You might be wondering: okay, that sounds great, but what can parents do when their own stress is at an all-time high? Here’s where mindful parenting can help. 

Dr. Porchet conceptualizes mindful parenting as cultivating a deliberate awareness of three ever-changing states at the same time: that of yourself, your children, and your relationship with your children, with curiosity, compassion, and grace. It is, in essence, a great balancing act. Parents may as well be trapeze artists, given the mental acrobatics we must do to continually cultivate this tripartite insight. And, it is truly possible for every parent – with the right tools and support. Lotus Parenting is a structured step-by-step approach (see STARR steps below) that helps parents leverage the neuroscience of early childhood development and harness the power of mindfulness. Lotuses, after all, are considered the seat of meditation. And what a strong foundation this provides for our parenting journeys!

Our guiding STARR

Lotus Parenting uses the following steps to guide the mindful parenting process.

The first step of Lotus Parenting is to survey your unique brain-body development. It will help you appraise and appreciate your own childhood in an objective way: What went right? What would you have liked to be different? What would you like to bring to your children, and what would you like to spare them from? We learn from our families of origin how to cope with stress and also how we relate to the people we love under duress. These coping strategies bear great relevance for our individual strengths and vulnerabilities as a parent. Read more here.

The second step of Lotus Parenting is tuning into ourselves. Oftentimes, conflict is driven by communication breakdown, and this invariably happens because of disconnection. It is necessary to first be connected to ourselves and our own experiences, sensations, and reactions before we can fully connect with our children. Somatic intelligence allows us to tune into what’s happening in our own brains and bodies throughout the day and understand how this affects our behavior in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Tuning into ourselves allows us to stay in the present moment, be more aware of our automatic, knee-jerk reactions, and keep open the path for being fully connected with our children. Read more here. 

Just as we are able to tune into our own brains and bodies, we can learn how to be more perceptive and attuned to our children by sensing their reactions to stress and being curious about them. Attunement necessitates a couple of points of action: we need to perceive what our child is experiencing in the moment; we need to try to understand why our child is experiencing what they are; and we need to show our child that we respect how they feel, with our words and our actions. Attunement does not mean unrestricted permissiveness, but rather, respecting your children’s feelings, while also providing the appropriate guidance, boundaries, and rules to keep them safe and healthy. Read more here.

One of our overarchingly valuable jobs as parents is to be continually aware of our relationship dynamic with our children. That is, how are we impacting them? Do they feel safe, relaxed, and free around us? Or are they tense and stressed? It is of paramount importance that we learn to respond to our children, rather than react, especially when we are under duress. When we pay attention to ourselves (tune), to our children (attune), and to how our children are relating with us, we are better positioned to respond rather than allow our automatic, reflexive reactions to drain the oxygen in the room. Read more here.  

The fifth and most important step is reattunement, or repair when things go wrong. No matter how hard we may try to avoid them, all parents make some empathic failures (or misattunements). We will have thousands of such moments before our children become adults, and each of these are excellent opportunities for micro-repairs, if we welcome them. Reattunement is one of the greatest gifts we can offer our children: it allows them to feel immersed in unconditional love and embody the sentiment that they, too, can make mistakes and that they, too, can acknowledge them without ever running the risk of being unworthy or unlovable. Read more here.

The science behind the Lotus Parenting Approach

Evolutionary neuropsychiatry: 

We are all hard-wired to love and attach, and in fact, it is our evolutionary birthright as mammals. The study of evolution can offer us insights into the specific pressures that gave rise to the structures and functions of the human brain responsible for attachment. Simply put, the field is an attempt to understand why we have evolved to sense, think, feel, and act the way that we do in relation to ourselves and the people we love, especially under stress. By learning about the evolution of attachment, we can appreciate how our early life relationships are not a luxury, but rather a matter of survival.

Attachment theory: 

We can gain a practical appreciation of attachment security by diving into the work of pioneering child psychologists over the past century. DW Winnicott, a British child psychologist in the mid-1900s, developed the concept of the “Good Enough Mother” as a caregiver who is not perfect, but who constantly endeavors to be responsive to their child’s emotions and needs. Importantly, the Good Enough Mother does the hard work of repair with their child whenever needed. This is much more valuable than the illusion of a perfect mother (or any parent, for that matter).

Science of early childhood brain development: 

Recognizing that attachment is a matter of survival for children, we can look to neuroscience to understand how early life adversity (and specifically, attachment challenges) can impact a child’s brain and their stress physiology, which in turn can influence all aspects of their health. Overall, children are remarkably resilient and can withstand numerous pressures, but it is crucial that they have a nurturing parent supporting them in doing so. In other words, parenting is a child’s first line of defense against chronic stress.

Science and practice of mindfulness: 

Mind-body practices (e.g. meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, Reiki, Christian contemplative prayer, Kabbalah, and Islamic mysticism, amongst others) have flourished in many ancient cultures across the globe for hundreds if not thousands of years. Cutting edge science helps us understand the impacts of many of these practices on our brains and stress responses, giving us experimental validation of what has long-been understood in the experiential realm – that mindfulness helps humans navigate the peaks and valleys of life. As parents, mind-body practices can help us develop somatic intelligence, buffer our own stress, co-regulate the rest of our family, and provide attachment security for our growing children.

Intergenerational healing: 

We are all the protagonists of our own life story, and yet, none of us arrive in a vacuum; we are born at the confluence of the many stories that came before us. Intergenerational can be thought of as the grand sum of our heritage: for example, our genetic and epigenetic endowment, our microbiome, material objects that may hold meaning for us, and also psychological, social, cultural, ideological, and spiritual/existential beliefs and ideas. Understanding what we’ve received and all the ways in which we’ve received them can add valuable context as we try to understand our unique strengths and vulnerabilities as a parent.

  • Read more about the science behind the Lotus Parenting Approach here.