For those of you with young kids, Spiritual Bootcamp, aka Quarantine, continues. Your kids are in your face all day every day and you are being triggered left and right.

I’d like to help you turn these moments into opportunities for conscious growth.

Today, when your child has her 3rd meltdown before noon, I want you to remember one of the key assumptions of conscious parenting: children are inherently good.

What this means is that any negative behavior comes from an unconscious place of fear or self- protection. In other words, for children, it is not a choice. When our patience is completely tapped we forget this.

Our ego takes over and comes out to fiercely protect us from this monster with a diaper.

We imagine them plotting:

“You know what would be awesome? I’m going to scratch my sister so hard that she has solid evidence and gets a lot of extra attention for days. And then I’ll throw myself on the floor for 40 minutes yelling “it’s not fair” even though I know I’m making no sense. I might hit my head a couple of times for extra effect. My mom will be so upset, I love exhausting her and making her feel helpless. First, she’ll try to be nice and practice all the stuff she read in her latest parenting book, but eventually, she’ll pick me up and take me to my room. I will definitely give her a good kick and hopefully sneak in a bite as she puts me in time out, and if I remember, I’ll tell her I want a new mommy. I love being a planner- I know that by the end of it all, I’ll get exactly what I need, even though I don’t really even know what that is because I’m four and really just feel like crap right now.”

But the reality is, they do not choose to be mean, violent or hurtful, they only do this when they lack the resources to meet their needs. Think about how hard it is for us to drop into empathy in a heated moment when our blood is boiling, our heart is racing? Unless you’ve done a lot of work on yourself, it’s likely that you too tend to rely on the resources you were born with: fight, flight or freeze. When violated, threatened and even exhausted, we often drop down to the most primitive of survival skills, which maladaptively have become coping skills for many.

Empathy, compassion, planning, and reasoning are all higher brain skills that need to be experienced to access regularly. Especially in a moment of stress or frustration. While it’s challenging for us, for children it is just not a skill that they have available. They literally do not have the capacity.

The next time you find yourself thinking that this little three-year-old was put on this earth to destroy you, pour yourself a glass of water, take a few breaths and remember that you are not on an episode of Boss Baby.

 In these moments, you and your child both feel threatened.

The difference is, You’re the Grownup.