Whether we want to admit it or not, our kids have become the greatest source of our joys as well as our most trying despair. They had been ever since the first moment we met. We thrilled at the sight of their little heads popping out for the first time. We sighed with concern and then relief as their tiny little lungs screamed their first sounds of life. We knew then and there that they were going to be healthy, and in turn, so were we. All we had to do now was get back on our feet and return to life's other major battles. From our work to our love life to our relationships with friends, neighbors, and family, we returned to the passions and letdowns that made up our days.



As we grew older, our children provided us with even greater highs and deeper lows, but we somehow managed to keep moving forward. For some of us, however, our dreams did not turn out as we might have imagined. Our kids did not turn out to be the angels we'd raised them to be. They got into trouble. And we got angry. Communication broke down, and we became estranged from the joys we had experienced when they were younger and life was so much simpler. In many instances, unrealized by us, our kids had become someone we did not recognize or approve of. Our relationship had soured and tilted on the precipice of death. We fretted, became depressed, and feared we had lost everything that we had worked so hard for and invested so much time and energy and money into. We felt hopeless.

But with a little time and a lot of soul-searching we came to the conclusion that we had created this whole mess to start with, so we were the ones who needed to clean it up. Something in our life needed to change, and that something was most probably us. We vowed to become someone new, someone who we could live with, someone our children could prosper through. We learned that change for our children and us began by integrating the three C's into our relationship. Communication. Compassion. Consciousness.

We learned to communicate better by speaking with our children through our hearts as well as our minds. We stopped intellectualizing everything they did and began to witness life through their eyes. We provided compassion and the recognition that life is different for them now than it was for us then. Their pressures to grow up were greater, and we understood that our kids were trying their very best; they just sometimes didn't know how to do it the right way. It was up to us to figure out how to make that happen.

Our consciousness rose as we learned to better tap into our children's feelings and emotions. We recognized that their moods were low because they were down on themselves and we were the grownups who needed to help them change that. But first we needed to witness more change within ourselves. We stopped scolding them for not being what we felt they should be, and we began to appreciate them for what they were. Each morning we counted our blessings, and felt thanks for the fact our children were healthy and so were we. We communicated this newfound appreciation for life to them, and eventually they began to feel it too. Their days progressed accordingly.

Every success and failure our children experience in life begins with us. If we are having a bad day, invariably, so will they. If we show faith in the universe to provide for us everything that we need, so will our kids. It's up to us to make sure they recognize this connection. We need to first experience the change that we want to see them experience. We need to become what we want to see in the world around us. And we can do that right now. Yesterday is gone forever. Tomorrow may never reach us. But today is our chance to begin afresh. Today we can reopen our jar of consciousness and renew all the hope and joy and pleasures that await each one of us. And if it doesn't happen right this very moment because we just can't seem to get it together ? then tomorrow, when the sun rises, so shall our ability to begin life anew with our kids.