I first discovered the song I Love Myself The Way I Am by Jai Joseph when I was hospitalized with burns to my entire face over five years ago. I listened to it a lot when I was in the hospital; I needed to hear these messages of loving myself as I was, at a time that I didn’t know if I would ever look normal again. (I shared the lyrics of the two stanzas that were especially powerful for me at the end of the post I wrote when I left the hospital.)

However, I didn’t continue to listen to it regularly, and when I recently rediscovered it, it was like finding a familiar wise friend.

The messages in these simple lyrics are so powerful and affirming. In the second stanza he succinctly sums up a concept I speak about a lot with clients and in my workshops.

“I love you the way you are
there’s nothing you need to do
When I feel the love inside myself
it’s easy to love you
Behind your fears, your rage and tears
I see your shining star
And I love you just the way you are.” (Jai Josephs)

In the last five years, I’ve done a lot of inner work focusing on self-love, and have experienced that when we can accept ourselves with all of our imperfections, this naturally filters into our relationships with our children (and everyone else in our lives). In every interaction we are always reflecting to others who we are, and the more forgiving you are to yourself, the more natural it is to be forgiving of your child. Since managing our own emotions are the hardest part of parenting, the more work of this sort a parent does, the easier parenting becomes.

While it’s valuable to do this kind of work, it doesn’t negate the need for something more in the most challenging moments! Often parents ask me how they can possibly be loving to a child who is acting in unloveable ways. How can you get past the frustration of the moment in order to feel your love for him, to communicate from a place of acceptance for who your child is?

The answer is to look beyond the behavior (remember, this is just communication) of the moment and reconnect with your love for him by appreciating the beautiful person he is at his core, to ‘see his shining star‘.

Yes, he has his challenges and unquestionably those are challenging for you to navigate, too. But if you can do this, you will begin to realize that this is the deepest, most powerful and effective thing you can do to positively impact your child’s behavior – even though on the outside it may not look like you’re addressing the behavior at all in the moment.

(It’s hard to shift to this approach because we want to feel like we’re activelydoing something to change the situation. But trying to control or manipulate the child’s behavior is counterproductive.)

We live in a world that is constantly projecting messages that focus on consumerism and competition; this song is a helpful reminder for me of the responses I strive for.

Avivah