A New Beginning? Yes!

One of the things I love about teaching is the fact that I get to have a lot of new beginnings.  If I have a difficult class, I start a new class the next year.  If I teach a unit poorly, I get to teach it better next year.  One year officially ends, and another begins.  I have "closure."

In parenting, we don't have that luxury...we have to live forever with our mistakes.  We learn from them; we build on them; we even repeat them, but we carry the same child through our learning years.  We don't have "closure," but we do have "relationship."  Even though I have to face my failures as I celebrate my successes, I would never give up relationship!  And most of my parenting failures turned out okay.  My son and I learned and grew together.  He is a better parent because of that.

Working through my failures both in class and in parenting, I had to learn my own "triggers."  I discovered I had two triggers that owned me as a parent.  When something triggered my grief over losing a child or my anger over the fact that Dad was not around to co-parent, I took it out on my son...until I learned the sources of my poor reactions and quit giving them power over me.

You don't need closure to have a new beginning.  Every year we have a new beginning.  We begin it together with our children.  Let's dismantle our active triggers this year and, instead, empower our children to become who they want to be.

One key to doing that is to "Pet the Dream."  See the video below to learn the process.

Pet The Dream