Things have changed since you were a child - it's time to think about new ways of bringing up your own children, writes Sheila Wayman
AS MY SIX year old walks out of school, his first words to me at the gate are: "Mum, you look hideous." I am taken aback and mildly embarrassed. Do I reprimand him, defend my choice of clothes or just joke about his frankness?
I laugh to myself. I have just spent the morning with an advocate of "conscious and reflective" parenting, which is not about negative reprimands, rather about helping children to learn from the consequences of their actions. This is the first chance to put it to the test, albeit on a trivial matter.
My instinct, because it is a public place, is to retort sharply that he should not talk to his mother like that. I wouldn't like anybody who has overheard, especially the two friends who are with him, to think such a comment is acceptable.
I mumble ineffectively about that not being a very nice thing to say - and what's wrong with my pink coat anyway? And then wonder for the rest of the day how I should have handled it.
At least the morning's discussion did make me stop and think.
That's what Clare Healy Walls wants all parents to do. The world is changing so fast, she argues, that we have to change the way we parent to equip future generations to manage their lives and the planet. We can't just raise our children the way we were brought up.
"The values that we had a few generations back will not suit this world we live in," she tells us in her book, The Conscious Parent: Becoming a Reflective and Creative Parent. "We have to change how we rear our children. It is the only way to change our society fast."
And if we want to alter the way we parent, we have to alter ourselves.
"If you had published a book called Conscious Parenting 20 years ago, people would have just laughed," she says. "It is more accepted now that we have to become self-aware and take emotional responsibility for ourselves."
The eldest of 12 children, a mother of five ranging in age from 37 to 18, and a grandmother of eight, she has a wealth of practical experience. Added to that is a career in Montessori education. She now runs an online Montessori training business in Norway from her homes in Murroe, Co Limerick and in Portugal, as well as spending two months a year in Norway and Sweden.
"My life has been surrounded by children," she says, on a recent visit to Dublin.
The nomadic pattern of her life began soon after her birth in Clontarf, Co Dublin, as her father, Des Walls, moved from job to job around Ireland. He was a manager of fertiliser factories and then went to work at an oil refinery in Southampton. "I had been to 10 schools by the time I started secondary."
Oil brought the family back to Ireland when he got a job in the new Whitegate refinery in Cork in the late 1950s. But 10 years later he was killed, along with 60 others, when an Aer Lingus flight from Cork to London crashed off Tuskar Rock, Co Wexford on March 24th, 1968. His widow, Clare, was left with the 12 children, aged from 20 down to 11 months.
Clare junior stayed in Cork when her mother moved the rest of the family back to Dublin. Working as a secretary in the Sunbeam factory, she had already met her future husband there, Donal Healy. They married when she was 22 and the first three children arrived in quick succession: Ken in 1971, Sandra the following year and Fergus in 1973.
They were still young when she set up a Montessori pre-school in Carrigaline, having done a correspondence course. She then studied to use these teaching methods on older children, by attending evening courses and intensive weekends at a college in Dublin.
The Montessori method "became a passion, an addictive philosophy". Italian doctor Maria Montessori (1870-1952) believed that children love learning if it is freely chosen. She said a child must have the freedom to experiment, to make mistakes, to repeat and to discover solutions alone and uninterrupted.
Healy Walls was unusual in offering this kind of education to children aged five to 12. About 20 pupils attended her Carrigaline school from 1985, including her fourth child, Deirdre, who was born in 1979. "It was a very difficult financial venture and lasted about six or seven years. There was no State support. I went to Norway then and there's a lot of state support there."
The offer of a job in Norway came after the break-up of her marriage and the start of a relationship with Paul Ryan, the father of her youngest child, Jack, who was born in 1990. Healy Walls spent three years in Oslo working as an adviser and trainer of teachers in a Montessori school.
She then felt she had to return to Ireland for the sake of Deirdre, who had to travel to and fro between her parents.
Giving children the respect and freedom to learn from their own experiences, as well as teaching by example rather than by lecturing, are at the heart of conscious parenting.
Adults act as "containers", providing a structured, safe environment for children as they discover who they are and, as "mirrors", reflecting their lives back to them.
You let them learn by trial and error, where they can cope with the consequences of a wrong decision. While you can't let a three year old cross the road by herself, you can let a 10 year old decide how to spend his pocket money.
Avoid negative criticism, which Healy Walls says is "a rampant disease in our society". Children reared with negative criticism will in turn become critical adults.
The theory is all very well, but the relentless demands of juggling work, commuting and children can make it hard to find time to even think, never mind the energy to implement creative solutions to parenting dilemmas.
"You need to give time. If you are both working full time and you have two children and you are trying to run a home without any help, you will run out of energy," she says. But don't make it worse by feeling guilty too.
"One of the most draining things for working parents is guilt. If you work with your own awareness, you realise you are doing your best in the circumstances. When the guilt goes away, you won't feel so tired."
Sacrificing everything to care for your children is not the answer either. When a parent feels they have not had time to live their own life, then the children lose more than they gain. "One hundred per cent stay-at-home mothers have another set of problems," she remarks.
The way working parents use their limited time is important. Resist the temptation of over-involvement with your children to compensate. Declaring "I'm free now" and expecting them to drop everything to give you their full attention takes all the control away from the child. Learn patience, the value of sitting down with them, just observing and keeping your mouth shut.
Healy Walls fell into that trap with her first children. "I can see myself, organising everything in their lives, wanting to expand their minds and leaving no space for them."
She enthusiastically built towers with her eldest, but when she did not have so much time, the second child wandered around, found the bricks and happily learned to build the towers on her own.
Much of what Healy Walls advises coincides with the current backlash against "hyper parenting". In his new book, Under Pressure, journalist and father of two Carl Honoré looks at how parents today micromanage their children. As US academic Marilee Jones puts it: "We are raising a whole generation of kids to please us, to make us happy and proud, to be what we want them to be."
Honoré had hoped to come up with a step-by-step recipe for raising children in the 21st century, a complete antidote to the frenzy of keeping up with the Joneses.
"What I discovered instead is that there is no single formula for child rearing," he writes. There are, instead, some basic principles.
"Children need to feel safe and loved; they need our time and attention, with no conditions attached; they need boundaries and limits; they need space to take risks and make mistakes; they need to spend time outdoors; they need to be ranked and measured less; they need healthy food; they need to aspire to something bigger than owning the next brand-name gizmo; they need room to be themselves.
"But after that the details - how many extracurricular activities, how many hours on the computer, how much homework, how much pocket money, how much freedom - vary. Because every child and every parent is different, every family must find the formula that works best for them."
Healy Walls concludes her book by saying, "please don't get stressed about parenting". It's the most satisfying job in the world for many. "Don't spoil it by worrying about whether you are doing it right or wrong. Instead of worrying, just start to be conscious!"
It turns out my "conscious" moment at the school gate led to at least half the right answer. When I recount the incident in a follow-up phone call to this interview, Healy Walls says the appropriate response is not to say "you're bold", rather "that's not a nice way to speak and you hurt my feelings". Whether I wear that pink coat again is another matter.
The Conscious Parent: Becoming a Reflective and Creative Parent by Clare Healy Walls is published by Original Writing Ltd and is available online at www.originalwriting.ie/bookshop, €15
"You let children learn by trial and error, where they can cope with the consequences of a wrong decision. While you can't let a three year old cross the road by herself, you can let a 10 year old decide how to spend his pocket money