I feel so lucky that my mom modeled mindful parenting for me throughout my own childhood. I know that having that frame of reference, those scripts embedded within my own inner narrative, makes my work of parenting SO much easier than it is for those who are breaking cycles in their own families. Cycle breaking is truly a form of intergenerational wealth and if you are the one breaking generational curses in your family, please know how impactful that work will be in ways you cannot even imagine.
My mom was not perfect, of course, but she did many things right. One of the most powerful lessons that I've carried throughout my life is a phrase she repeated all the time:
Stop is the magic power word.
When someone says stop, WE ALWAYS LISTEN.
It was one of only a few hard and fast rules in our household. For the most part she was flexible and adaptable, but when someone said stop, that was it. Whatever was happening was over. And what a powerful lesson in boundaries and consent that was!
It gave me the embodied understanding that my boundaries were important, that I deserved to be around people who respected them, that I could make the rules for what behavior I would accept.
(Now of course it was only one lesson amidst a whole landscape of messaging that encouraged me to develop self-abandoning people-pleasing tendencies so I'm not trying to pretend that it was some kind of panacea, BUT it is a phrase that has run through the back of my mind throughout my life and for that I am forever grateful.)
Now that I'm raising twin 3 year old boys, it's a lesson that's incredibly important to me to impart to them. NGL: it's a whole lot harder to get them to honor it than I expected! In the golden haze of my memory it feels like it was a magic button that caused everyone to pause whatever they were doing as soon as it was uttered. I'm sure it wasn't actually like that in practice, but oh how I wish that's how parenting worked :)
Instead, I'm just repeating it over and over to my own kids and then reinforcing boundaries in the hopes that over time it will stick. And as I so often do when I find myself repeating a phrase, I had to turn it into a song! "Stop is the Magic Power Word" is one of my favorite songs on my new album "Rhymes Reimagined" not only because it gave me the perfect excuse to dust off my fiddle, but because I hope it helps others start a conversation about why it's so important to honor what people tell us they need. It goes like this:
Stop is the magic power word
It makes us freeze so still
And when you say stop to me
I promise that I will
Because stop is the magic power word
We always listen to it
And when someone says stop to you
You promise that you'll do it
How I'm Teaching My Boys to Listen When Someone Tells Them to Stop
As with most of my favorite mindful parenting strategies, teaching starts with modeling. When they say stop to me, I ALWAYS listen. If we are going into a situation where they'll have to do something they don't want to do (get shots at the doctor, for instance), we have a conversation beforehand about how I won't be able to listen if they say stop because there are some situations where we have to get something done in order to stay safe or healthy. So far we haven't had any situations where they seemed confused about this line.
We've also turned this song into a game: we play it like Red Light, Green Light, except I start singing the song and when they shout STOP I immediately stop singing. Wait a few beats, start singing again, and the cycle repeats! They LOVE being in control of the game and it always gets lots of giggles!
I hope this song is a helpful tool for starting conversations about boundaries & consent in your family!