Wisdom Parenting: Toward Expansive Spirituality and Timeless Values
Think of a list of the best parenting advice you’ve ever received. It could consist of phrases, strategies, or frameworks from experts, parents, grandparents, or even strangers. It could include insights such as “show love,” “set boundaries,” “be curious,” “practice patience,” “take care of yourself too,” etc.
As you think it over, you’ll likely discover that no matter who you are, you already have plenty of insights about how to parent well. You already know much of the right information.
But information is not enough. How do you know when to set boundaries? How do you know when to be curious? Parenting is not about becoming an encyclopedia, where you learn lists of parenting facts that work in every instance. To parent wisely, we must embody wisdom in the moment — being able to discern when a piece of advice is or is not appropriate and then weave that advice into life.
Discerning what’s most appropriate and acting on it in a given moment is the heart of wisdom parenting.
As we explore below, wisdom parenting requires presence, attunement, and balance. It’s a lifelong practice.
The Wisdom of Presence and Attunement
At the simplest level, wisdom parenting is about being present to your particular context.
One example of presence is attunement. As psychologist Dan Siegel says, we’re attuned to our kids whenever we help them “feel felt.” Siegel writes, “When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another.” In other words, we’re aware of and responsive to our own internal state while also being aware of and responsive to our child’s emotional needs and internal states.
Attunement forms the foundation of secure attachment and healthy emotional development, and attuned interactions shape neural development and emotional regulation capabilities.
Tuning the Dial
We might imagine attunement as a practice of adjusting the dial of a radio station to get a clear and crisp signal without any static.
If we turn the dial down too low, we are closed off and unavailable. Maybe we are distracted, or maybe we are not regulated and aren’t approaching the moment with any curiosity. In either case, we can’t sense or feel the emotional experience of our kids.
If we turn the dial too high, we’re so involved in our child’s emotional or psychological experience, we’ve lost track of ourselves and our own body. We become fused or enmeshed and we can’t feel ourselves anymore.
The sweet spot, the still point, is when we are calm and regulated within ourselves, but also fully available to the experience of the other.
As Dan Siegel writes, “Different from bonding, attunement is dynamic and responsive, not just physical proximity. Attunement is seeing the unseen inner world of the child.” It’s a dance of nonverbal cues (eye contact, tone) and verbal cues (words) that builds trust and connection.
If you ever feel disoriented as a parent, try returning to the embodied practice of attunement. You don’t have to have all the answers. You often can just help your kid “feel felt” and seen.
The Wisdom of Balance
In addition to presence and attunement, wisdom parenting requires balance — the capacity for finding the right blend of opposites.
The truth is that life thrives in the middle way. “It is the middle path that brings freedom,” writes Jack Kornfield, meditation teacher. “In the middle way, we come to rest in the reality of the present, where all the opposites exist.”
For example, courage held too tightly becomes recklessness. Confidence held too tightly becomes arrogance. Justice held too tightly becomes cruelty.
Every virtue must be balanced by a complementary opposite.
For young kids, it’s a principle best first taught by exploring the concept of basic opposites. Night and day, light and dark, hot and cold. Note that each side of an opposite isn’t always good or always bad!
For older kids, teaching the concept of polarities can open up introspective questions about ethics, such as, “Which virtues am I holding too tightly?” After all, any virtue held too tightly becomes a vice.
You can look at a wide range of complementary opposites — or polarities — in our polarities lesson.
Here are just a few polarities to keep in mind:
Parenting Approaches
- Warmth and structure
- Delight and discipline
- Gentle and firm
Virtues
- Courage and caution
- Kindness and honesty
- Humor and hard work
Functions
- Agency and communion
- Open and focus
- Listen and speak
In each case, wisdom emerges when we find the right balance in a given moment. To do this, we can name which pole we naturally lean toward, as well as which pole your kids are leaning toward. Then ask, “What would it feel like to embody the opposite pole?” For example, if you tend to be blunt in the name of honesty, what would it look like to err on the side of kindness? If you tend to be so nice that you’re not always honest with people, what would it look like to err on the side of honesty?
The truth is that we don’t need uniformity at home. We need harmony — which is about maintaining difference together. When we find the right balance of complementary opposites, we find wisdom.
Wisdom Transcends Old Divides
One of the primary benefits of wisdom parenting is that it transcends religious, political, and cultural divides. It rejects the notion that every person and every family is expected to fall on one side of a cultural line. Instead, wisdom sees that all of these choices depend on our collective history, our personalities, where we live, and much more. It depends on our specific context.
Because wisdom depends on context, it isn’t easy. To be wise, you cannot coast through life. You can’t outsource all your decisions to a particular religious or political “team.” You have to be alive and sensitive to what’s appropriate in each situation — balancing loyalty and independence.
At first glance, living this way might seem like it might lead to feeling overwhelmed and neurotic. But analysis paralysis isn’t wise.
Wisdom is attentive and relaxed, communal and spiritual, structured and warm, disciplined and forgiving, serious and light-hearted (even goofy). It senses when things start to feel overwhelming and neurotic and then pivots toward enjoyment — toward silliness, forgiveness, and whimsy.
If there is a single word that represents what it means to be wise, the word is and. As the philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.” Wisdom sees harmony in opposites.
When we parent from this place — we parent with harmony rather than anxiety — parenting feels more easeful, flowing, and full of love.