Post-election Mindful Parenting

Posted on November 17, 2016

We’ve now had a few days to digest the outcome of the presidential election, but there is still hate and confusion on social media, pitting friends against friends, family against family. The fact that half of our country doesn’t agree with the other half is a cause of concern. However, we are blessed to live in a society where we are allowed to disagree with each other.

This was a difficult election from the start, but it’s up to us adults to set an example going forward. Our children are looking to us for guidance, and we have the perfect opportunity to teach our kids about life and politics. How we shape the conversation will determine how our kids grow up and learn to lead this country.

The day after the election, I spotted a friend’s post on social media. Her son had been watching the election results with his father and asked, “If Trump is such a bad guy, why is everyone voting for him?” Another friend told me that her child was crying and worried that he would have to move to India, a country he had never even been to. Caucasian children are afraid their friends are leaving the country. Our Latino and Muslim kids are afraid they will be deported.

Adults are using bad language to describe our country and its citizens. Our children are not immune to any of this. They hear the curse words and the hate speech. They hear when people call a candidate evil and dangerous. For children, this affects their safe, secure, loving world. They wonder if someone will uproot it.

Take a moment to reflect on that. What kind of example are we setting for our children? Do we want them living in fear, or do we want them to learn and grow from this situation? We talk about the importance of Emotional Intelligence and financial intelligence, it’s time to introduce children to the basics of “political intelligence.”

Here are some examples of how we can help our kids process the events of the election.

1. Address their fears. Ask children what they are feeling. Help them put words to their emotions. If your children are young, this will help them build their emotional vocabulary, and if they are older, it will invite them to discuss their fears and feelings, which is often hard for children to do. Be sure to validate their feelings instead of shoving them under the rug or undermining them. Dealing with Feelings is a necessary first step that helps turn down the volume of children’s emotions so that you can engage their intellect to help make sense of things. Next…

2. Share our country’s voting process in age-appropriate ways. Explain that we have an electoral college and how we all have a responsibility to vote for the candidate we think will do the best job for our entire country.

Teach our kids that we don’t live in a dictatorship. Our government has a system of checks and balances to make sure no one branch of government has too much power.

3. Partner with your school. If you are a parent or an educator, please step up and set an example of empathy and compassion. Kids might be hearing things at school that are different than what they hear at home. So come together to help relieve your children of the worries that this election has aroused. Reassure them that the classroom is a safe place.

4. Practice verbal hygiene. Children are great imitators, so give them something positive to mirror. Don’t use foul language and talk about leaving the country. Think deeply about how this affects our children and causes fear and anxiety. Children need to know they have security in their own home; their security is provided by us—parents, educators, and other adults in their life.

5. Accept and respect. This is perhaps the biggest life lesson we need to model for our children. When difficult events confront us, we can collectively grow and evolve, whether we like them or not. Draw parallels with other challenges that you or they have grown from. Point out that when we accept and respect life’s challenges, we build resilience and self-reliance—inner-core values that we want our children to have.

6. Let go and march onward. Resistance only causes angst and sends negative issues deeper instead of uprooting them. Only when we let go can we march forward. As Sonia Ricotti, Bounce Back Expert and president of Lead Out Loud, says, “Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.”

In the end, we need to teach our children how to handle the unexpected in life and reassure them that despite the chaos everything is going to be okay. While we should stand up for what we believe, we also keep moving forward. You do your best and stand proud of what you’ve accomplished. Let’s see what good can come out of this election if we all stay committed and involved in our communities.

It’s very easy for us to declare ourselves conscious or mindful parents, but the true test of this rests in how we manage ourselves amid confusion and how we guide our children through it. The magic lies in moving our kids away from fear, disconnection, and division and reconnecting them with love and a sense of oneness. Our children are our future leaders. It is our responsibility to set them an example of excellent leadership.