The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids

Seeing Your Child's True Self: Breaking Free from Societal Expectations with Harmony Kwiker

• Carrie Lingenfelter, CCC-SLP and Harmony Kwiker • Season 1 • Episode 71

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What if the most loving approach to parenting isn't about molding our children to fit society's expectations, but rather discovering who they truly are? 

Psychotherapist and founder of the Institute for Spiritual Alignment, Harmony Kwiker, joins us to explore how conscious parenting begins with connecting to ourselves. Drawing from her own journey as both a therapist and mother, Harmony shares how she navigated the overwhelming transition to parenthood while grieving the loss of her own mother. Through this challenge, she discovered a profound truth: the quality of our parenting stems not from what we do, but from the place within ourselves that we do it from.

For parents of neurodivergent, gifted, or highly sensitive children, Harmony offers particularly resonant wisdom. She emphasizes that these children's heightened sensitivities carry inherent wisdom—not problems to be fixed. The harm comes when interventions explicitly or implicitly try to change who these children fundamentally are, rather than honoring their unique perspectives and needs.

The conversation flows into practical tools for mindful family dynamics, including how to take space for yourself in a connected way, facilitating healthy sibling communication, and teaching children to own their subjective experiences rather than projecting them as universal truths. Harmony shares two powerful practices: explicitly sharing attention among family members to combat the "not enough love" narrative, and modeling language that maintains relationship clarity.

Whether you're struggling with parental burnout, navigating your child's intense emotions, or simply seeking a more connected way of parenting, this episode offers both compassionate understanding and actionable insights to transform your family relationships. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help other conscious parents discover these transformative perspectives.

Connect with Harmony Kwiker:
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**Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is educational in nature and does not constitute licensed mental health advice. If you need such advice, you should speak with a licensed professional about your unique situation. Thanks so much happy listeners.

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Harmony Kwiker:

And so I really think that much of the work of parenting is discovering who our children are and really seeing them for the actuality of who they are, not the image of who we think they should be, and to me that's the most healing, loving way to be with our children.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Perfect. Yes, there's this box that I think so many people like to put our kids in, and also, I think the energy around parenting right now is a little bit of fear driven, like getting into college learning piano at the age of five so you can be a genius piano genius I'm not sure what the term is when you're 16 years old or there's just this pressure on parents that we can sometimes put onto our kids too to have them fit this mold of what it's supposed to look like. Hi, conscious Parents, it's Keri here, and I am here with a little info about raising our mindful kids. I've got some tips and tricks about breaking free of the box and becoming who you are and teaching your kids how to do that along the way. Join us Hi there and welcome back. It's Keri, your friendly, intuitive mama, here, and I'm so excited.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

I have a wonderful guest, harmony Quiker, and she's a psychotherapist, author and visiting instructor at Naropa, where she teaches mindfulness-based transpersonal counseling. She's also the founder of the Institute for Spiritual Alignment and, harmony, I love the name of your institute. This is beautiful. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Harmony Kwiker:

Thank you so much. Yes, I was so inspired by sitting with my clients and really seeing the way people leave their alignment and watching them come back home to themselves, and I am just so passionate about really supporting people and living in connection with who they really are.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

That's wonderful. I feel like so many parents. We often jump into the parenting role, and sometimes that can be even with a transfer into masculine energy, just getting things done, getting our schedules, and oftentimes we forget to tune in with ourselves tune in with ourselves for parenting, or even losing ourselves along the way. What would you say to this piece?

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, absolutely Becoming a parent can be such a shock to the system. Absolutely Becoming a parent can be such a shock to the system. There's so much to do and there's literally this being who is dependent on us for survival and we still need to take care of ourselves. And I remember when I was a new mom and I was still grieving the loss of my mom, and so I was in this deep emotional process of losing my mom and we were very close, close and having a lot of fear that my child would die, and so transferring my own fear onto my child. And I didn't quite have enough awareness yet at the stage that I was at to see that I was projecting onto my child this like pure, innocent being all of my fear, and it really inhibited my ability to connect with her in her purity, because I wasn't able to be with my own emotional experience to the depth that I needed.

Harmony Kwiker:

And in the newness of parenting I started this practice and it really influenced the way that I became a psychotherapistist, because I was navigating both at the same time a new therapist and a new mom, and I would sit in meditation and I would be with my urgency, like all of that urgency to get everything done, to take care of everyone and to do everything. Instead of following that impulse, I would sit in meditation and turn towards my urgency, turn towards my fear and allow it to move through me until it was complete. And what I learned in that process was that it matters less about what I do and more about the place within myself that I do it from. So if I'm really connected to myself, taking care of my children and my house really does feel like an act of love and warmth and nurturing.

Harmony Kwiker:

But if I am in that task oriented masculine energy like you were talking about, I feel more like a dictator. In that task oriented masculine energy like you were talking about, I feel more like a dictator trying to control everybody, and I really believe that nervous system regulation with my anxiety and my fear and also like with my children, is more about being connected than it is about being regulated. Disregulation isn't bad right, having emotional experiences isn't a bad thing, but when we disconnect from ourselves and we start following our narratives and our stories or try to control the people around us, that's when we're so off balance from ourselves, that we're so disconnected from the people in our lives, and so learning tools to stay connected with ourselves is really what allows us to stay connected with our children.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that piece of what it was like for you. I always think all of the psychotherapists, all of the counselors, they all have it together when they become parents. And man, wouldn't life be easier as a parent if I had this background. But it sounds like you have a human piece too, which makes my heart feel seen a little bit.

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, I had that high standard for myself too. I had graduated. I thought I was going to be so great at all of this and I was surprised to discover that there was still so much for me to learn. And I really do think that giving birth to another human being it opens us up to everything within us that we have unresolved. So we can think that we have done a lot of healing and we've arrived at a certain place. And then there's this pure being in our care and we get to see every single place inside of us that needs to heal and transform.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yes, and then you're also fumbling with diapers at the same time. So it's like this no sleep. It's just this little wicked combination that just really deep dives into this opening and this opportunity. I've been realizing that some of these struggles with parenting my highly sensitive, gifted, spirited, very spirited children is more opportunity for self-healing and spiritual awakening in a sense.

Harmony Kwiker:

Absolutely. I believe we heal into life together with our children. That it's not. It's common in psychotherapy we talk about the identified patient and it's so common that if somebody is having a hard time we look at them as the problem. And this can happen with children. But really they're just expressing what is off in the system. Those sensitive children, they're so wise and if we really listen to them and listen to what they're moving through, we can really deepen into ourselves with them.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yeah, that's so wonderful, I agree, I think, taking a moment to pause instead of wanting to offer them more guidance, instead of wanting to direct them in where they should go. I just had something come up recently with my daughter with friendships and she's six and in first grade and trying to play with everyone, but somebody just wanted her to play with them and she sat down and wrote this letter to her friend from her heart and said I love you and I will still play with you, but sometimes I also want to play with my other friends too, with us, and you can play, we can play together, and it was so sweet to just see how they can manage it themselves if we give them a little bit of space.

Harmony Kwiker:

Such a pure heart, so sweet, yeah, yeah. And for her really to learn that honoring herself doesn't mean losing connection with somebody that she cares about, and I think that's gorgeous.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yeah, it was beautiful. And I look back I'm like, oh man, she is so much more advanced in this version than I was.

Harmony Kwiker:

I think that all the time with my kids, my daughter, when she was eight years old. She said to me Mom, I understand all this therapy stuff and I see more than you do. And I said to her you are absolutely right and you have surpassed me beyond years, and it's still true, she's 15. And she's so wise, I admire her so much.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

That's really cool. I love when we can honor their growth and that maybe they've hit where we would be ourselves and gone past. That and learning from our kids is so important.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Taking that other role is so wonderful. Learning from our kids is so important. Taking that other role is so wonderful. I've really had it on my mind lately. These kids coming in. Sometimes they're labeled as neurodiverse, sometimes they're labeled as gifted. I like to call them gifted, spirited and highly sensitive. For my own two kids, I love to keep it in a positive mindset for us, even though it can have challenging pieces. A positive mindset for us, even though it can have challenging pieces. I feel like these kids can oftentimes experience the world more intensely. They have a lot of heart in everything they do. I see that they take criticism or things more intensely than other people may, or maybe past generations may have. So do you have any ideas about how we could help our kids maybe suffer less trauma or conditioning or ideas? I'm thinking with your book that you have as well bringing in any ideas for our kids.

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, I've seen with my clients, my adult clients, that some of the most harmful interventions for neurodivergence have implied or been overt in trying to change the person. And I really believe that all of us want to be seen for who we really are, seen and loved for who we really are, and divergence has a wisdom to it. There's such a beauty and a genius and a brilliance to the design, even though it might be inconvenient for parents sometimes, or beyond understanding which is normal too, because it is. It's hard to understand what it's like to be somebody else when the way a person's inner map is so different from our own. And so I really think that much of the work of parenting is discovering who our children are and really seeing them for the actuality of who they are, not the image of who we think they should be, and to me that's the most healing, loving way to be with our children.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Perfect. Yes, there's this box that I think so many people like to put our kids in, and also I think the energy around parenting right now is a little bit of fear driven, like getting into college learning piano at the age of five so you can be a genius piano genius I'm not sure what the term is when you're 16 years old, or there's just this pressure on parents that we can sometimes put onto our kids to to have them fit this mold of what it's supposed to look like.

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, and if you consider the world that we live in today just a post COVID world my children at the age that they're at their whole elementary and middle school experience was uprooted and shifted right in this really tender time of transitioning into adolescence and I'll never know what that's like for them because I didn't experience that, but I do believe that it's unique to this generation and really requires a lot of patience and trust in their wisdom. I think that when I was a child I was raised by two healers who were hippies and lovely people, and both of my parents, my mom and my dad, really affirmed my intuition from a young age. They affirmed my wisdom when I offered them a reflection for their blind spot as a child. They listened to me. They didn't gaslight me, try to assert their ideas over me, which I hear parents do all the time to their children, and I just.

Harmony Kwiker:

It was such a gift for me because in this world where we see so much like we, there's materialistic chasing and like trying to have financial stability and security, which to some degree is really important and to balance that with a trust in the unseen, in the intuitive, beyond logic, insight and information and transmissions, and to know that our children actually have greater access to that because they're so newly embodied, and to really trust them and affirm that for them, I think is a huge part of raising children.

Harmony Kwiker:

And to your question before about neurodivergence like that heightened sensitivity has a wisdom to it, like that information that they're receiving. If they learn how to honor it and use it and not fight it or try to change it or really even just letting it take over, like really listening to the consciousness that's being expressed through them, I just I think that our children learn to trust themselves more and that's how I want my children leaving the house learning how to knowing how to trust themselves and stay connected to themselves how to knowing how to trust themselves and stay connected to themselves yes, wouldn't that be a beautiful place.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

I can only imagine it sounds like in in your past. It sounds like you grew up with a little bit of, or a lot of, that. Did you find that you felt like you stayed in a conscious place, or did you? I was raised spiritually as well, and I feel like when I was in my 20s and my grandma was putting a cartole and Edgar Cayce books on my nightstand, I was like I don't need this, I don't have time for this. Right now I'm in college. I know what I'm doing, and it wasn't until I became a parent where I went back to it when I really needed it.

Harmony Kwiker:

Did you?

Carrie Lingenfelter:

have that era as well.

Harmony Kwiker:

I think the thing that my parents did is they didn't try to teach me spiritual ideology or give me other people's what they did.

Harmony Kwiker:

When I was six years old, my mom had me initiated into transcendental meditation, and so I started a practice of listening to my own innate spirituality, as opposed to spiritual ideas that other people offer, and so that connection and that, like intuitive honoring, is something that I've carried through me throughout my life.

Harmony Kwiker:

There was a time where I fell asleep to that many times over and over my life, where I've fallen asleep to myself and I've forgotten and I've started to identify more with the narratives of my mind and my personality. However, having that awareness of where to come back to like already knowing that's there even when I've forgotten, has been really helpful, and so when I became a mom, I reconnected to. My second child was born. I was sitting here in my office, I shut my door and I sat down to meditate by myself, because in my mind it was a solitary practice, and then, slowly, they opened the door, they quietly snuck in, they grabbed a meditation cushion and they sat with me and I kept my eyes closed as I heard them come in and it was the sweetest memory to sit in that space together.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yeah, that's really cool. My kids, they love to do guided meditations with me. My daughter loves to ask for them and I'll give her like a little personal one geared towards something that she really enjoys at the moment, and last night I had a moment where I wasn't feeling well for a second and she was like let me give you reiki, mom, I'm gonna give you reiki so emotionally and energetically attuned.

Harmony Kwiker:

I love that so much.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yeah, so there's definitely pieces. I love the idea of the transcendental meditation. I haven't heard of that before, but I think that's really a really neat tool to teach them. It's not imprinting an idea or philosophy on them, right, it's helping them to tune into their own selves. That's really powerful on them right.

Harmony Kwiker:

It's helping them to tune into their own selves. That's really powerful. Yeah, there's a lot of research that's come out recently around the spiritual brain and innate spirituality, and what researchers have found is that from a state of dysregulation, when our nervous system is dysregulated, the parietal lobe which is called the spiritual brain shuts down and we lose access to higher consciousness and we really mobilize for safety. It's the design of our nervous system to ensure our survival, and so, through regulation practices which, again, I just want to reiterate that regulation isn't about absence of activation, it's about staying connected to ourselves in the midst of activation that through that practice of regulation, we can open up to our higher consciousness and feel connected to our innate spirituality.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Wow, that makes so much sense. I was reading a or I was watching a presentation on gifted and talented kids and they were also talking about the 2e. So when they have another disorder or delay going on, with it and she was discussing how, the higher the IQ, the more often that it can be hard for them to stay in a optimistic mindset, that the brain wants to go to the pessimistic side, and teaching them the skills of how to come back to that side is so important for our kids that are gifted and talented, so what you're saying is right.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

I think the research is showing in that area as well.

Harmony Kwiker:

It's really cool, absolutely yeah yeah, it's.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

it's been an interesting process trying to teach my kids how to regulate. We've been working on that a lot. But also reconnecting with themselves is such a powerful tool and such a powerful mindset. When we're in that fight or flight freeze, you definitely cannot hear yourself. And then also as a parent, understanding that we do need our own time, we need our own space to recharge, because how often are we running in that fight, flight or freeze without understanding it? Or having things cycle in our minds without realizing it.

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, it's completely possible to take space from our children in a connected way. I think that what happens is parents reach their limit and they sever connection to try to then go fill themselves up, as opposed to sharing with our children. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and so I'm going to go take care of myself, like I'm moving away from you but I'm not leaving you. Essentially is what we're saying to them in that movement, and it teaches our children that we're not an object, that we too have an internal experience and an internal landscape, and it actually builds a lot of trust so that our children know that we're taking care of ourselves and we have a sense of awareness that something's off inside of us, and it models for them how to do that too, and I think it's a beautiful practice as a family.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yes, yes, we love to model those pieces. It's so wonderful when we can do that and also modeling if we're having a challenging mindset part, if we're jumping into our problems and how we work through them or how we keep going, if we're having a challenging mindset part, if we're jumping into our problems and how we work through them or how we keep going if we're having a challenge.

Harmony Kwiker:

Yes, oh my. Do you have multiple children?

Carrie Lingenfelter:

So I have a six-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son.

Harmony Kwiker:

And a nine-year-old son. Yes, sometimes I feel like I'm doing marriage counseling, like getting them yeah, getting them to hear each other and reflect and and then share without fighting over each other. It's so sweet. They really have learned how to communicate based on their relationship together.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Oh my goodness, I that's hilarious to think of it as marriage counseling. I really wish I had a background in that because I was an only child. So now when these things come up, I'm like, oh my gosh, they are not hearing each other, they're not seeing what the other person is going through, and so trying to teach the compassion piece has been a challenge for me or understanding how somebody else is feeling empathy me, or understanding how somebody else is feeling empathy.

Harmony Kwiker:

They're very empathic kids, but teaching empathy for your brother or sister is very different. Yeah yeah, and the reason I call it marriage counseling, too, is because I really facilitate giving each person space to speak and letting them know that both perspectives are important, that one isn't right or wrong, and that all feelings are valid. And it's okay to feel upset, but it's not okay to be mean. And so they start to learn how to stay connected to each other in the midst of their own experience. That's a great reminder.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

I think oftentimes one kid will come up and tell you and it's okay, I need to sit down with both. This is very helpful tools, thank you. I need to sit down with both. This is very helpful tools, thank you. I was going to ask you if you could go back and tell yourself anything, maybe when the kids were first born or when they were similar to my kids' ages elementary ages. What would you tell a younger version of you or somebody that's in a different era of parenting? What would you share?

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, there's a few things that occur to me with that question. I love that question. I think the first thing is I would want myself to know that taking space for myself isn't selfish. There was so much of this impulse to be self-sacrificing, to give my kids everything, to not want them to hurt or to miss me, and to really realize that taking care of myself is actually a gift to them. Yeah, let's see the other thing I just have more fun. Like it's so special, like it really the younger years of parenting can feel like they're endless and then all of a sudden they're gone. I can get a little teary just thinking about it, because now I live with teenagers and the sweetness, the imagination, the fantasy, the just playing in dirt for hours, like really just I would tell myself have more fun. I'm a Capricorn and so I tend to like make everything work.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

I just I wish I would have let loose a little bit more. Yeah, I definitely that resonates so much because I was a speech therapist before being a mom and I would go in and work with kids who weren't speaking birth to three. So in my mind I'm like diagnosing, like where are we at?

Harmony Kwiker:

What can we?

Carrie Lingenfelter:

work, work on. Let's make this into a therapy session. So, yes, having play I there are so many times where I think my kiddo comes up and wants to play and I'm like put everything down, live in this moment. Maybe it's only five or ten minutes and then you go back to what you have to do, because there's always housework or whatever that has to get done. But really being present when you're there with them, absolutely yeah.

Harmony Kwiker:

Absolutely.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

That's a great one. I was going to ask you do you have a favorite tip or tool that you may have taught your kids, or anything to help them stay mindful in their teenage journey, in their elementary journey, any journey?

Harmony Kwiker:

Yeah, I taught this tool. There's a few of them. I'll share two if I can. Is that okay? Great, yeah, I realized early on that children make up the story, that there's not enough love to go around, that if one person is getting attention, that means that I'm lacking something.

Harmony Kwiker:

And there's actually been research recently around the oldest child and the diminishing resources that happen when the second child is born and how that has a negative effect on the eldest.

Harmony Kwiker:

And one thing that I did with my children is when we would sit down at the dinner table, we would go around and I would make it very explicit Right now we're giving our love and attention to Tobin that's my son, and so we'd all be listening to Tobin as he shared a high and a low of his day.

Harmony Kwiker:

And then now we're all giving our love and attention to Myla and we shift attention and to make it really explicit, when they were receiving everybody's love and attention, I just I feel like that's important to name, as opposed to just assume that they're aware and actually soaking it in. The other thing and this happened more organically based on my communication style, and that is my children are really skilled at owning their experience, meaning that when they speak, they know that, for example, if they don't like dinner to them, it doesn't taste good To me, I don't like this and they can own that's true for them, as opposed to just disowning their experience and saying this is gross and making their subjective experience truth about reality and for me, this is very important when I'm teaching therapists or when I'm engaging with my husband. To own our experience means that we're speaking in a way that's inarguable and honors all people who are present.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Wow, that sounds very magical for the mom's heart. If you've spent a couple of hours making something, going to work on that with my six-year-old, who's going through a sensitive period, for sure, I think that would save both my husband and my hearts when we worked on something from scratch. Yeah, learning that early on seems like it would help when they're teenagers too.

Harmony Kwiker:

I find it really helps keep relationships clean. Our words hold an energy and a vibration that impact the relational field, that have an impact on other people, and to have language that keeps the clarity of relationship alive is an important part of connection.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Yes, that sounds like it comes out of the marriage counseling a little bit as well.

Harmony Kwiker:

Exactly.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

So helpful for people that are teachers or speech therapists and raising kids and don't have the counseling background. I think that's so helpful for all our listeners and thank you so much for being here today with us. It's been so wonderful to connect with you and I love seeing people that were raised by changemakers and now it sounds like you were raised by changemakers. Now you're doing your changemaker things and raising changemakers too, sounds really great.

Harmony Kwiker:

Thank you, yeah, thank you so much. I love what you're doing here, empowering parents to really honor their children and honor their experience, and so, thank you, it's such a gift.

Carrie Lingenfelter:

Thank you. Well, that's a wrap. Thanks so much for tuning in. Changemakers. This is Keri, and if you haven't done a review for us, five stars and a little few words about what you've enjoyed in our podcast episodes, we would really appreciate it. If you guys would like to ever message me, I would love any questions you have or any feedback at info at hearttoheartlifecom, we also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share. It's hearttoheartlifecom. Thanks so much for tuning in and happy life, happy times. Changemaker families.