Everyday Blessings Quotes

“Too many children live with the feeling that they are not accepted for who they are, that, somehow, they are “disappointing” their parents or not meeting their expectations, that they don’t “measure up.” How many parents spend their time focusing on the ways in which their child is “too this” or “too that,” or “not enough of this or that”? A great deal of unnecessary pain and grief is caused by this withholding, judging behavior on the part of parents. When has parental disapproval, in the form of shaming, humiliating, or withholding, ever been a positive influence on a child’s behavior? It might result in obedience; but at what cost to the child, and to the adult that child becomes?”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. THOREAU, Walden”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“As every parent knows or soon finds out, each child comes into this world with his or her own attributes, temperament, and genius. As parents, we are called to recognize who each of them uniquely is, and to honor them by making room for them as they are, not by trying to change them, hard as that sometimes is for us. Since they are already always changing as part of their own nature, it may be that this kind of awareness on our part is precisely what is called for to make room for them to grow and change in those very ways that are best for them and that we cannot”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Like a relay race with a long overlap in which the baton is passed—lasting at least eighteen years and often longer—our job as parents is to position our children to run their solo laps effectively.”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Discernment includes seeing that even as we attempt to see our children for who they are, we also cannot fully know who they are or where their lives will take them. We can only love them, and accept them, and honor the mystery of their being.”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Meditative moments have come in many forms—sitting up in the middle of the night nursing my newborn, soaking in the peace and quiet, feeding her as I am being fed by the sweetness of her being;”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“If, on occasion, we lapse into an old familiar patter, if we find ourselves critical, or unkind, or judging, or demanding, or withholding, or any of the myriad ways negativity can manifest, we need to take a moment and look at what has happened. We need to acknowledge what we did, learn from it, and apologize for our behavior. And then...we begin again.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Our job is to take care of our own inner business, the business of our own mind, our own body, our own relationships, and our own life, according the same freedom and respect to our children as they make the transition from total dependency as small children to independent and interdependent adults.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“They might expect us to be on time, or they might expect us to always be late; to be reliable or unreliable; to be available for them, or not to be available; to immediately get angry, or to be understanding. Their expectations of us are based on their experience of how we have acted in the past. They can reveal to us our own behavior, to which we may be blind.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Do our expectations enhance our child's self esteem, or do they constrict, limit, or belittle this child?”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“We have to ask ourselves, over and over again, are we attached to their being a certain way? Do our girls have to be nice, thoughtful, sensitive, kind, quiet? Do we expect them to smile a lot?”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“In the moments when we are able to catch ourselves and change course, when we choose to act differently and in a way that is in the best interests of our child, a transformation and a healing take place within ourselves. It becomes a healing moment.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“We can work at keeping our own time urgency from coloring everything we do. We can do this by remembering to tune into our breathing and to see that our fears about the future are just thoughts, while the present, what is happening now, is a precious occasion, not to be trampled. We can remember to make eye contact when saying goodbye, to take a moment now and then to hug mindfully.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“When er bring mindfulness and discernment to our parenting, we come to see how much we tend to judge our own children and well as ourselves as parents. We have opinions about them and who they are and how they should be, and hold them up against some standard that we have created in our minds.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“For, in many ways, the mind does resemble a body of water, a veritable ocean. On the surface, depending on the season, the weather, and the winds, the surface can be anything from completely calm and flat to hugely tumultuous and turbulent, with forty-foot waves or higher. But even at its most stormy, if one goes down deep enough, the water will be very still.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“Children embody what is best in life. They live in the present moment.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“The mentoring of children and adolescents by people who themselves know in some way their own wholeness, and can thus recognize the beauty and wholeness in others, is the sacred responsibility of the adults in any healthy society.”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

“The utterly ordinary is utterly extraordinary. It all depends on how you see things, and whether you are willing to look deeply, and live by what you see and feel and know.”
― Myla Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting