parallel capacity building
what am I doing with the capacity building opportunities which are available to me as a parent?
Recently, I’ve been pondering my relationship to parallel capacity building as it relates to me as a parent.
What is parallel capacity building?
It’s a phrase I’ve started to use when I want to describe the skills and abilities which I have opportunities to cultivate in parallel with Uni cultivating her own skills and abilities.
Here’s a super simple example…
Uni’s cultivating her abilities to spread cream cheese onto a bagel. There are so many different skills that go into this act:
honing her hand-eye coordination & fine motor skills
learning where to hold the knife to control it how she wants to
feeling into the amount of pressure she applies to the knife while spreading
practicing the motion she uses to spread
noticing how much cream cheese to take
and more.
And guess what I’m up to alongside her?
I’m cultivating my abilities to:
stay regulated while she gets cream cheese all over her hands, the counter, her sweater, her hair, and more
relax into trusting in her ability to learn how to do it her way and not be jumping in with my unsolicited help the whole time
remain patient as it takes her the amount of time it takes her to complete the task (which is often longer than I would take to do it myself)
Parallel capacity building 👆🏽. It’s about each of us having opportunities to build our completely different capacities alongside each other.
I now see that this is what a lot of my experience of being a parent has been about.
Yet, I have often ignored or skipped over or not even clocked opportunities for me to build my own capacities in the face of her being exactly who she is, and I’ve therefore leaned more to the side of trying to control her behaviors in order to meet my preferences.
👉🏽 Trying to stop her from making a mess keeps me feeling comfortable because I don’t like messes.
👉🏽 Trying to stop her from getting hurt keeps me feeling comfortable because I feel dysregulated in the face of her experiencing pain.
👉🏽 Trying to stop her from eating too much sugar and getting sick keeps me feeling comfortable because I feel sad when she gets sick.
Now that I’m aware of this, I can clearly see that it doesn’t get me what I want in my relationship with my Self OR in my relationship with her… avoiding parallel capacity building gets in the way of growth & development for both of us, and lays the foundation for some unsupportive habits in its place.
I appreciate having this new awareness, and also, I’ve heard my mind trying to blow the roof off of all of my controlling habits at once, and that’s also not going to get me what I want.
I’m literally building my capacity to build my capacity. 😂