“Expectations Are Planned Disappointments”

My daughters don’t like yoga! It took me a while to accept but it’s a fact.

This photo was taken on one of the few times I managed to get them to a yoga class when they were young. I love it because they are so cute—the older one concentrating hard and the younger one looking to her for reassurance that she is doing ok. It also makes me smile because it reminds me how un-relaxed I was about it all.

Yoga has been a sanity saver for me as a mom and I REALLY wanted to give my daughters the many benefits it had given me. I wanted to teach them, for them to love it and imagined us going off to yoga retreats when they were older. When they were young I signed them up for yoga classes, taught some classes at their elementary school (much to their horror), and even took our eldest to a mother/daughter Mothers Day retreat weekend when she was in middle school. They didn’t like it much but I kept trying.…

When our youngest was about six she was quite highly strung and I decided to try out a meditation practice with her. She wouldn’t sit still and was squirming around, bored, and I felt a strong flash of impatience. So strong that it made me take a step back and wonder what I was doing and why. This moment's pause helped me realize that I was trying to control her reaction which was causing resistance in her as well as frustration in me. Rather than soothing her, it was causing tension between us—the exact opposite of my intention. I also saw the irony in getting impatient while trying to teach calmness and patience!

It’s a natural impulse to want to share the things we love with the people we love, especially our children. We may have strong opinions about why something would be good for them, why they “should” like it or simply want to have a shared experience with them. However, we can’t control their reactions and when we are too attached to a particular outcome we set ourselves up to be disappointed or frustrated. As one of my teachers likes to say ““expectations are planned disappointments!”

Yoga teaches us to put in our best efforts and to be non-attached to the outcome of those efforts. Tension, stress and resistance arise when we try and force things to go a particular way. 

As parents we teach our children and share experiences with them to help them grow and to keep them safe and healthy. The yoga practice is to do this without an expectation that they will react or feel a certain way. This frees us from the strain of forcing and pushing and gives them the freedom to explore with curiosity and without fear of our disapproval. It allows us both to be more open for life to unfold, and for more ease and joy between us.

I’ve learned to loosen my expectations around our girls and yoga, and to encourage them to try different things and to figure out their own likes and dislikes, giving loving guidance where appropriate. I’ve continued to show them yoga practices that I think might be helpful, introducing them to practices like guided relaxations at bedtime and slow, relaxed breathing when they are stressed about a test but I’ve let go of the need for them to like those practices or find them useful. 

Instead I’ve put my focus on my own practice which helps me be more patient, present and kind, and gives me the awareness to notice and apologise when I’m not. I’ve learned to trust that my practice will have a ripple effect on my family even if it’s not something they directly practice themselves, and to believe that that is enough. 

Maybe one day we will make it to that yoga retreat together, and maybe we won’t—either way it is all good 😀