Every parent is unique; every child is unique. All parents love their children, and all children love their parents—no matter how imperfectly.
But do we truly take stock as parents of how we are imprinting our children through our daily interactions? Are we deliberately teaching them emotional intelligence skills to be resilient when life knocks them around? Or are we too overwhelmed with our lives and families?
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
A child's identity is woven largely by the parental messages and responses (or imprints) that they receive throughout their childhood.
As parents, we constantly imprint our emotions, attitudes, biases, values and principles, habits, and preferences through every interaction—consciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively.
Conscious parenting requires us to respond in ways that build emotional intelligence in our children.
Heartprints© are imprints that we make whether we know it or not.
Being aware and more conscious of the impressions we are imparting is very helpful in raising children to become healthy, happy, loving, freethinking, and responsible young adults.
Related reading: "What You Need to Know in Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child."
After coaching parents and teaching parenting classes for over 2 decades, I don’t think I've ever met a parent who hasn’t experienced the weight of this enormous responsibility. Even though they may not have defined their influence as heartprints, all parents want what is best for their children.
We as parents have a huge impact on our children—for better or for worse.
We even mold our child’s developing brain and their cognition. In fact, 90 percent of the growth of the human brain occurs in the first five years of a child’s life. The largest influence is through the child’s emotional life impacted directly by his or her caregivers.
By creating a safe, secure, and loving home, you maximize your child’s brain growth and emotional development while helping develop confident self-esteem through loving imprints.
So how can we create more safety and an optimal environment for growth?
Here are key elements to both.
Take a few moments to ponder your values and your short- and long-term goals for your children and family.
Visionary parenting that targets conscious actions for long-term goals helps to keep us on track as parents.
Get in touch with what is most important to you, your children, and your unpredictable teen.
Look honestly at your interactions with your spouse and children.
Do your heartprints need an upgrade?
Are there areas where a little more patience as a parent or respect would go a long way to creating more peace?
Is there a trouble spot that needs to be worked through to allow for more heart connection and stability?
With awareness, we can choose the quality of our imprints. You, as a parent, get to imprint your child with the love from your heart! These are your own personal heartprints.
For parenting support or information about Heartmanity parenting classes and coaching programs, please email us at support@heartmanity.com.