In today's Morning Cup, we look at the common friction between parent and child that accompanies being told "no," and explore how mindfulness offers us the opportunity to find greater clarity of mind and an openness of heart during these moments of challenge.

In today's podcast we explore one of the great ironies of parenting – the very object of a parent’s affection and among the greatest of their joys can be the source of so much agitation. Doing so, we consider how this frustrating aspect of parenting can come to serve a reminder to breathe and a mindfulness cue to see more clearly what is actually taking place.

In today's Morning Cup podcast, you are reminded of the ways you can see your child, moment by moment.  Of course, if gifted with sight you see them.  But to really see -- to really know -- your child, it can be helpful to practice mindful awareness and see them with eyes that are open to the mystery of the moment, of their changing nature, and of who they are.  Doing so, you may come to a deeper knowing of yourself. 

In this Mindful Parenting podcast of the Morning Cup, Scott Rogers shares a powerful exercise intended to e practiced during moments of challenge.  While helpful for achieving connection, compassion, and empathy when embroiled in conflict with one's child, it can be helpful at anytime and anywhere.

In today's podcast, your child's smile serves as reminder to wake up and enjoy the present moment, mindful of life's forever changing nature.

In the Three Mindful R's, we learn how the moments we spend with our child -- both the easy and challenging -- offer an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to share this growth with our child.

Today's Morning Cup podcast reminds that we can get lost in expectation and judgment when we stop seeing what is before us as it truly is. Today's Mindful Parenting verse embraces the technique of looking for something new when we see our child.

In this Morning Cup podcast, you are offered the opportunity to expand awareness by viewing the world through your child's eyes. As you deepen your connection to your child, what arises may surprise you -- may teach you -- may awaken you to an aspect of your child -- and yourself -- that speaks to your aliveness.

Today's Morning Cup offers a verse to help us be present with are child when we are with our child.  We often wait for things to "calm down" in order to get into a mindful or present state.  But things will never calm down.  That's for us to do.

Mindfulness and Mindful Parenting Practice bring our perception of the passage of time into proper perspective.  Time stops flying and we learn to savor the moment. Today's exercise involve the recitation of a simple phrase, both when we are with separated from our child, to help clear out some of our mental clutter and bring greater awareness to the moment. 

Today's Podcast uses the breathe as a cue to connect us to our child and the cosmos.  Designed to be used especially when we are away fromour child, today's exercise can also be used when with our child.

Today's Morning Cup offers a classic mindful parenting verse through which you connect more deeply to your child and through that connection, ground yourself more deeply in the here and now. It can be done anytime and anywhere and takes but a few moments.

Just because we get out of bed doesn't mean we've woken up.  This podcast provides a helpful reminder that habitual events, like breakfast, can become mindless routine, and offers a two minute tool so that breakfast can become a wonderful opportunity to Wake Up! 

Today's Morning Cup looks to each morning as a new day -- one we can approach like a flower blooming for the first time.  The mindful parenting verse helps to ground ourselves in the beauty of the moment at those times when the ritual of getting ready for school can become challenging for ourselves and out children.

Our words can be a source of happiness as well as suffering, for ourselves and others.  Today's Morning Cup technique suggests how we might respond to our child in a way that allows us a moment to meditate or turn inward while offering our child the space with which to explore and realize their potential.   

Our eyes and our child's eyes are windows into a deep place of aliveness.  Today's podcast invites you to meditate on your child's eyes, soaking in their color.  During the day, similar hues cue awareness of your child's presence and, ultimately, of your own.  You awaken to the moment and see the world with fresh eyes.

Today's Morning Cup column offers a mindful parenting verse to bring awareness out of the egoic mind and more fully into the body.

Today's podcast reminds us how we each hold the key to resolving conflict. We can't always expect another to let go of "stuff," but we can look inward and, with developing awareness of what is really taking place, more naturally let go of our some of own stuff.  Imagery of tying and untying our children's shoelaces places the key within our grasp.   

Signing your name likely has become an automatic process.  Today's podcast opens awareness to your aliveness during this routine act.  With imagery of your child learning to write his or her name for the first time, you expand awareness by making the subtlest of changes to one of the letters in your name.  As you expand spaciousness within a letter, you open awareness within yourself.

A verse and its rich imagery offer a short visualization of your child stepping into the magic of the unknown, helping you expand awareness of your own ambivalence and do the same.  The verse and imagery can be easily remembered and recited during the day when we become aware that we are stuck in hesitation. From this we act! and touch our aliveness.

We can often become so caught up in our heads, and our eyes, that we forget our true nature.   Today's column and verse helps us to reclaim our true nature by looking deeply into who we are -- through our child's eyes.

Today's Morning Cup offers a verse that directs our attention to another being's eyes, and from those eyes to our child's eyes and to our own.  Breathing deeply, we see more clearly what it taking place in the present moment. 

Today's Morning Cup examines the diversity of emotions our child experiences and how, as we have matured, we may have lost touch with some of these feeling states.  Today we attend to our child's feelings with an open heart, to see if we can touch (relate to) those emotions, thereby gaining greater insight into ourselves and our child.

So often we find ourselves seemingly always in motion.  Even when we're home and have the opportunity to take it easy, we keep going -- eating, talking, moving about. Today's podcast offers a beautiful technique to slow down with your child and dwell together in stillness.