Praise for Parenting with Presence “This is exactly the advice and support you need as a parent! Seasoned, wise, and practical, Parenting with Presence helps parents take a deep breath and tend to themselves and their kids with compassion, love, and mindfulness.” — Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart, and Trudy Goodman, PhD, founder of InsightLA “I’ve led a community of hundreds of thousands of parents for six years, and during that time I’ve recommended only one parenting book: Parenting Without Power Struggles. Now I finally have one more to insist they read: Parenting with Presence. I trust Susan Stiffelman with my heart, my family, and my community because she understands that parenting is not just a job but a spiritual practice — a path to healing, to truth, to God. She knows that what goes on in my home every day is brutal and beautiful and hard and holy. She understands that while we are raising our children, we are still raising ourselves. In Parenting with Presence, Susan comes alongside parents not only as an expert but as a guide, a counselor, a friend, a healer. This book will help adults heal so they can raise children who need a little less healing.” — Glennon Doyle Melton, author of the New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior, president of the nonprofit Together Rising, and founder of the online community at Momastery.com “Parenting with Presence is a gentle but powerful reminder that our own awareness, our own calmness, and our ability to respond and not react to stressful situations are fundamental to raising healthy kids. It’s more about us as parents than it is about them as children. And if we do the work on ourselves, then we can be circuit breakers for the flow of negative energy that escalates stressful situations. This is an important work.” — Tim Ryan, US Representative from Ohio and author of A Mindful Nation “With her clear, wise, soulful, and poetic writing, Susan Stiffelman shows us how both the blessings and challenges of the delicate child-parent relationship can be a hotbed for mutual growth, healing, and connection. With children determining the future of our planet, Susan lays the groundwork for us to usher this new generation toward a more healed, humane, and connected world, starting with our very own selves. I am so grateful to Susan for having written this powerful book.” — Alanis Morissette, singer/songwriter and activist — Alanis Morissette, singer/songwriter and activist “Who knew that the child or teen crying in the next room is actually our spiritual teacher? Who would have thought that annoying outbursts and provocative behavior could lead to more conscious, spiritually tuned-in, effective, even enjoyable parenting? Susan Stiffelman’s groundbreaking, immensely readable guide teaches all we need to know about how to nurture our children — and ourselves — to become more conscious, compassionate, and, believe it or not, calmer human beings.” — Kathy Eldon, founder and chairman of the Creative Visions Foundation “I stole it from my mother and devoured it! A fantastic read that should be mandatory for all parents. I cannot wait for it to come out so I can hand it out to everyone I know.” — Amy Eldon Turteltaub, cofounder of the Creative Visions Foundation and vice president of Creative Visions Productions “An empathic tenderness runs through this wise and down-to-earth guide to parenting with greater awareness. You can feel the love that Susan Stiffelman has for the families she works with in her therapy practice and her confidence in all of us to grow into the challenges and gifts of being a parent. This book offers a beautiful, multifaceted articulation of what our children most need from us, and practices for both developing these competencies and drawing upon them for our children and for ourselves.” — Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, authors of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting “One of the best parenting books I’ve seen in a long while. With clarity, warmth, and wisdom, Susan Stiffelman bridges the world of spiritual transformation with the down-to-earth realities of parenting. Parenting with Presence is full of insights that will set parents on a path of healing and joy. I highly recommend it!” — Elisha Goldstein, PhD, author of Uncovering Happiness: Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness and Self-Compassion “As a mother, I found myself powerfully moved by the insights and exercises in Parenting with Presence. Susan Stiffelman delicately explores what many parenting experts avoid — the deeper layers of fear, guilt, and shame that thwart our ability to be fully present for those aspects of parenting we find most challenging. A beautiful offering to us all. I will forever be giving out this book as a gift to new and seasoned parents alike.” — Katherine Woodward Thomas, author of Conscious Uncoupling “An enlightened guide to parenting for anyone wanting to raise caring, happy, resilient children while healing their own unfinished childhood issues, Parenting with Presence is filled with parental wisdom intelligently presented and richly woven with examples from real life. A gem of a book!” — Marci Shimoff, author of Happy for No Reason “Parenting with Presence is an invaluable guide for any parent wanting to raise children who understand what it truly means to live a successful life. With her mix of practical tools and personal stories, Susan Stiffelman shows how to create close, loving family relationships and captures just how transformational and fulfilling parenthood can be.” — Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive “In Parenting with Presence, renowned expert Susan Stiffelman offers a unique way to bring up our children that combines both wisdom and compassion. Thoroughly practical, the approaches she shares in this remarkable book could help us parents create a strong basis for a truly loving and compassionate connection with our children, while also bringing out the best from us — our presence, joy, understanding, and kindness.” — Thupten Jinpa, principal English translator to the Dalai Lama and author of A Fearless Heart “While reading Parenting with Presence, I kept saying to myself, ‘I wish my parents had read this book!’ Finally a book on parenting that speaks to all aspects of our ‘inner child’ and gives each of us the kind of guidance that not only educates but transforms, uplifts, and nurtures both child and parent. Bravo!” — Janet Bray Attwood, New York Times bestselling author of The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose “The core secret revealed in Parenting with Presence is that presence is the only effective way to interact with children. Presence includes support and structure — with that, children thrive; without that, children experience chaos, and parenting can be a nightmare. The second secret is that parenting is a growth process, and your child is your best teacher. Understanding both secrets prevents parenting that nurtures without structure and parenting that shapes without nurture. This book brings new awareness about a parenting process that increases the health of our culture itself. Recommended to all parents and parents-to-be.” — Harville Hendrix, PhD, and Helen LaKelly Hunt, PhD, authors of Giving the Love That Heals: A Guide for Parents An Eckhart Tolle Edition www.eckharttolle.com New World Library 14 Pamaron Way Novato, California 94949 Copyright © 2015 by Susan Stiffelman All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken. Text design by Tona Pearce Myers Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. First printing, April 2015 ISBN 978-1-60868-326-0 Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the children we are raising, and the ones who live within our hearts, may you discover that it is safe to come out to play, to dance, and to shine. Contents Foreword by Eckhart Tolle Introduction Chapter 1: You’re Living with Your Best Teacher Chapter 2: Growing Up While Raising Kids Chapter 3: Throw Away the Snapshot Chapter 4: We Aren’t Raising Children, We’re Raising Adults Chapter 5: Modeling Self-Love and Awareness Chapter 6: Healthy Communication Strengthens Connection Chapter 7: Walking the Talk Chapter 8: Cultivating Empathy, Vulnerability, and Compassion Chapter 9: Helping Our Kids Cope with Stress Chapter 10: Happiness Is an Inside Job Chapter 11: Tools, Tips, and Strategies Epilogue Author’s Note Acknowledgments Notes Additional Resources Index About the Author Foreword T o be allowed to drive a car, you need to pass both theoretical and practical tests so that you don’t become a danger to yourself and others. For all except the most rudimentary jobs, certain qualifications are required, and for the more complex jobs, years of training. Yet for one of the most challenging and vitally important occupations — parenting — no training or qualifications are required. “Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur,” wrote author Alvin Toffler. This lack of knowledge or education is one of the reasons (although not the main one, as we shall see) why so many parents struggle. Those parents don’t necessarily fail to meet the child’s physical and material needs. They may in fact love their child and want what is best for them. Yet they are clueless as to how to deal with the challenges their child presents them with on an almost daily basis, nor do they know how to respond appropriately to the growing child’s emotional, psychological, and spiritual needs. Whereas in past ages parenting was excessively authoritarian, in our contemporary society many parents fail to provide the clear guidance the child desperately needs and longs for. There is often a complete lack of structure in the home environment, which resembles a rudderless ship that has been abandoned by the captain, adrift in the ocean. The parents don’t realize that the child needs them to be, as Susan Stiffelman so aptly calls it, “the Captain of the ship,” a term that by no means implies reverting back to the authoritarian mode of education of past ages. Rather, it is about finding a balance, a middle way, between having an excess of structure and no structure at all. Ultimately, though, the deeper cause of family dysfunction is not the parents’ lack of knowledge or education but their lack of awareness. Without a conscious parent there can be no conscious parenting! A conscious parent is able to