By Sally Saint
When I started to walk the path of parenting from the heart I was blessed to have so many books and links to support my journey. One of which helped me in my search to not be a parent with the blanket “no” response.
It is something I learned along with countless others, the million and one words you can use instead of no. Social media recently flagged up another quote for this and it seriously got me thinking.
The thing is, I became very zealous to eradicate it from my system. In my inventiveness in all the other ways I could get my message across to my child, I lost something VERY valid. “No” is so important and so very powerful.
My history and what I absorbed from my life path has accumulated in my tendency to be a “people pleaser”. I actually dislike labels – so limiting – and I also have no wish to disrespect where I have come from; we all have pasts and we all learn from them. My tools for being a sensitive child who could feel everything go on around her was to become this very restrictive label.
Only recently, when I actually exhausted myself by running around after others and developing a three-week virus, did the illusion lift and the truth seep in. No is such an important part of our vocabulary and I have shown little role modelling for my son in the use of this tool. The “ability to say no” tool.
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