Editing Openai/6952b908-4a44-8000-bea0-80636cd51778 (section)

=== User: I just saw this post on Facebook which I shall attach below. ===
I just saw this post on Facebook which I shall attach below. But my question that comes to mind is, do we raise our voices when we don't feel heard because that's what we have learned from our parents? And are parents possibly setting a bad example by raising their voices when they don't feel heard? Like, do we have the right to demand that other people hear us in general?

I’m trying to be a good, conscious, nonviolent, communicating parent. I think most of us are and still, it happens…

There are moments when my 4.5 year-old daughter provokes me to the point where I raise my voice. I don’t enjoy those moments. I don’t feel proud of them. And I’m always trying to find my way around them, through them, beyond them. 

At the same time, I’m aware that losing myself in shame about it doesn’t actually help either.

Earlier this year, there was one of those quintessential parenting moments. I had asked Lilith to do something multiple times. She wasn’t listening. I repeated myself. Nothing. Eventually my voice got louder, and louder, not because I wanted to be harsh, but because I wanted to be heard.

After I raised my voice, she looked at me and said, “Mommy, I don’t like it when you get angry with me.”

I told her, honestly, “I don’t like it either. It happens when you’re not listening. I really want you to listen. If you would listen, I wouldn’t have to raise my voice.”

There is truth in that. And there is also something in that response that I can feel isn’t quite the position I want to stand in. Allowing my behavior to be a reflection of my daughter’s ability to listen doesn’t feel fully empowered. I know, at least conceptually, that I should be able to stay calm even when she isn’t listening.

And also, crunchy moments happen, life happens. I get stressed, my capacity narrows and I totally make mistakes.

The moment that actually changed everything happened a few days later when I was picking Lilith up from school. I was strapping her into her seat on my bike and feeling really focused on what I was doing. She was asking me for something, repeatedly, while I was busy getting us ready to leave.

At one point, she yelled at me.

I stopped and said, “Hey Lilith, why are you yelling?”

She looked at me and said, very plainly, “Mom, it’s because you’re not listening.” 😳

That moment landed like a slap in the face. A clean one, a loving one and one of the most powerful moments I’ve had so far in my mothering.

I saw myself reflected back to me with this wild clarity. Even in a moment that had felt responsible, where I named my behavior and tried to repair, there was still a ripple. She had learned something about what we do when we don’t feel heard. We raise our voices.

Children are not primarily learning from what we explain. They are learning from how we live. From how our nervous systems respond when they meet resistance. From how we react when connection breaks down.

I’ve been wanting to share this moment for a while because of how deeply it affected me. And I’ve also hesitated, because sharing parenting moments like this can open a whole field of shame, judgement or worse, advice. 

There are so many parenting philosophies. So many ways of doing it. I’m not interested in lecturing anyone, or positioning myself as someone who knows how to do this right.

I truly don’t. I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m learning as I go, moment by moment, relationship by relationship. Literally feeling my way through each new phase. 

More and more, I’m sensing that motherhood is teaching me just as much as I am teaching my daughter. 

Lilith is not only learning how to be in the world through me. I am learning how to be a woman, in relationship, through her. 

And that mutual becoming feels like the most honest ground I know how to stand on after a moment like this.