Trash, Working-Mother Guilt, and Bedtime Crashers—The Work on Parenting: Session 2

"Susan Stiffelman and Byron Katie appear together in the second of three sessions of The Work on Parenting. ‘In these webcasts,’ Susan explains, ‘we discover how we can use The Work to step into a place with our children that is not fueled by our stressful beliefs and stories, the ones that disempower us as parents and keep us from really showing up for our kids.’ ‘As parents,’ Katie adds, ‘we can feel like such failures and experience so much guilt about the things we say and do to our children, and it's always a result of what we're thinking and believing.’ Katie uses the example of asking a child to take out the trash to illustrate how we can better interact with our kids when it comes to these common requests for their help. April, a working mother, joins Katie and Susan to question her upsetting thoughts about being away from her children all day. The most poignant example for her is when she drops her child off at daycare and he cries. She feels guilty that she is choosing work over him. ‘He should know that I care.’ ‘He should understand that I’m doing something important.’ As she questions these thoughts, April begins to be aware of what separates her from her son. Another mother, Cynthia from Hawaii, does a Worksheet on ‘Asher the nighttime crasher.’ She is frustrated with her son because he won’t go to sleep on his own. After doing The Work, she finds, to her embarrassment and laughter, that she won’t go to sleep on her own. There are many gems in this ninety-minute webcast. Don’t miss the opportunity for more freedom. For more information, visit thework.com."