Be A Potted Plant...

The Best Parenting Advice I Ever Received

I will never forget the day I got my best parenting advice, especially because it took me over a decade to understand or use it fully.

I was in the middle of the mayhem of three children with only four and a half years between them, and one of them with special needs. I was as they say, “in the thick of it.”

And my friend was nurturing a tween and teenager. She was trying to figure out how to balance her daughters’ needs for loving guidance with their complexly evolving emotional and mental health struggles to navigate peer and societal groups and pressures.

At the surface, our parenting lives had nothing in common. Me trying to figure out if I can change a messy diaper in a bathroom with no changing tables and two young ones outside in the park. And she wondering if her child’s self-deprecating words and experimentation with substances were signs of a larger mental health challenge.

Yet, there we were on a walk, sharing our respective mothering challenges. And then she said something to me that made absolutely no sense to me at the time. But my intuition was strong to store it away for a later day when I would understand its intricate simplicity.

“Tanmeet, I have learned that you just need to be a potted plant.”

And maybe it was the way she said it. She stopped, mid-pace, her elbows bent, forearms outstretched, palms facing each other, as if she was holding the potted plant herself and rooting into the ground.

”That’s what teenagers need. For you to be a potted plant.”

I’ll be honest with you. I can’t remember at all what she said after that. I can’t even remember if she explained it more or if I chuckled politely as if I understood. I can’t remember anything other than thinking, “What IS she talking about?”

But in that moment, my wiser intuitive self knew there was some gold there in that advice and I stored it away for a rainy day when I would need it again.

Those rainier days have not only come since then, but I have NEVER forgotten that advice and I am not even sure if she meant it the way I think about it now. But I will tell you, it runs through my mind and heart often and for good reason.

For all of us humans, whether adult or child, parent or not, we want to feel safe and held. Period. And when we don’t feel that, we feel the exact opposite, lost and less human.

If you’ve been with me for a while or read my book, you know that I say this often.

“Every moment of suffering or oppression strips us of our humanity.”

It makes us feel less safe, less belonging, less human. And our task is to reclaim this full continuum of being human, to feel Joy and alive again. It’s no different for our children. They want the same, to feel safe, to feel supported and held.

This is where the “Potted Plant” metaphor comes in so beautifully…

🪴 A Potted plant is rooted firmly in its soil, in its container.

As a parent, I have the instinct to want to fix things for my children. This includes not only ask them yet again to pick up their things. It also means when they are struggling with sadness, anxiety, all of it. And it comes from a human instinct of enveloping them so they feel safe. It all makes sense. But this loving instinct misses the mark of also allowing them to have their process and unfortunately, needing to feel discomfort. Feeling the hard, mucky stuff is not only so they will grow but moreover, so they learn the process of feeling it and not running from it or having it ‘taken care of’ quickly all of the time.

There have been so many times I have wanted to get through the muck for my children more quickly because I have the advantage of experience to help them navigate their struggles. But I am not here to fix everything quickly. I am here to support them while they or we navigate the struggles together.

There is wisdom in the muck and when I remember to firmly stand in my soil, it is much easier to support and hold them while not trying to overpower their own process.

🪴 A Potted plant releases oxygen, creating more capacity to breathe.

When I remember this image, I remember that I am here to support their breathing, not to take up space with mine. As a parent, you want to help, solve, and love. But even love can be suffocating.

At times, my children have been so wrought with their emotions that the energy in the house is thick and heavy. I have called upon this image to take deep breaths of my own so that I can support them better. When you cultivate a bit more ease in your body for a moment, you think more clearly and can support their process to breathe more fully as well.

I think about this image🪴so many times. It gives me a gentle reminder to ground myself, tend to my own soil so I can better tend to others, and take deep breaths for myself and others. Maybe it’s not just parenting advice, but life advice. Gratitude for that walk, that friend, and all the ways that we all try to human with a bit more ease each day.

We all want to feel more safety and ease in this life, parents, children, all humans. And maybe, just maybe, we need more potted plants around us to do so. 😉

As always, let me know in your comments how this idea lands with you and for fun, I would LOVE to even hear your best parenting/life advice so that the community grows together. Until next week….