By Anitha Nair, Gurdjieff Studies Expert
When my son was seven, he looked up at me during our bedtime routine and asked, “Amma, why do you always tell me to notice when I’m feeling angry instead of just sending me to my room?” That simple question made me realize how deeply George Gurdjieff’s teachings had influenced my parenting approach—often in ways I wasn’t even consciously aware of.
I’ve spent two decades studying Gurdjieff’s work, and I’ve come to understand that his principles offer something truly extraordinary for modern parents struggling with the chaos of raising children in today’s distracted world. Yet sadly, most parents will never encounter these transformative ideas.
Let me share with you seven profound parenting principles from Gurdjieff that have changed not just how I parent, but how I understand the very nature of human development.
Table of Contents
1. The Father’s Four Commandments: The Foundation of Conscious Parenting
Gurdjieff often spoke about how his relationship with his father shaped his entire life philosophy. This Armenian-Greek carpenter, who couldn’t read or write, gave young George four commandments that would become the bedrock of his approach to life:
“If you want to be respected by others, you must first respect yourself.”
“Only help others if they cannot help themselves.”
“Remember that your word is your bond.”
“The greatest sin is to make another suffer because of you.”
What fascinates me is how Gurdjieff’s father delivered these principles. He didn’t lecture or punish. Instead, he engaged his son in deep conversation, often using parables and real-life situations to illustrate these truths. When young George made mistakes, his father would ask, “What do you think you’ve learned from this?” rather than imposing his own interpretation.
As parents, we’re often quick to tell our children what to think rather than teaching them how to think. Gurdjieff’s father understood that wisdom cannot be forced—it must be discovered.
I remember applying this with my daughter when she was struggling with friendship drama in middle school. Instead of giving her solutions, I asked, “What would happen if you approached this situation remembering that ‘the greatest sin is to make another suffer because of you’?” The insight she reached on her own proved far more powerful than any advice I could have offered.
2. Self-Remembering: Parenting with Presence
Gurdjieff believed most humans live in a kind of waking sleep, operating on automatic pilot. His practice of “self-remembering” involves bringing conscious awareness to the present moment—noticing your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations simultaneously.
As parents, how often are we physically present but mentally absent? How frequently do we respond to our children from habit rather than genuine presence?
I once caught myself nodding along to my son’s story about school while mentally planning dinner. When I realized what I was doing, I stopped, took a breath, and consciously brought myself back to the moment. The change in our connection was immediate and profound.
Gurdjieff would say that children can sense when we’re truly present versus when we’re mechanically going through the motions of parenting. They learn not from our words but from our state of being. When we parent from a place of self-remembering, we teach our children the invaluable skill of presence—something many adults struggle with their entire lives.
Try this exercise: The next time your child asks for your attention, pause whatever you’re doing. Feel your feet on the floor, notice your breathing, and then make eye contact. The quality of connection that emerges might surprise you.
3. The Law of Three: Understanding Family Dynamics
Gurdjieff taught that all phenomena result from the interaction of three forces: active, passive, and neutralizing. In parenting terms, this helps us understand why two-person dynamics (parent-child) often get stuck in patterns, while introducing a third element can create movement and resolution.
Consider a situation where you and your child are locked in a power struggle over homework. The active force is your insistence that it be done now. The passive force is your child’s resistance. You push, they push back—a classic stalemate.
The neutralizing force might be introducing a new element: “What if we set a timer for 15 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5-minute break where we do something silly together?” This third force creates movement where there was previously only opposition.
I’ve found this principle extraordinarily helpful in navigating family conflicts. When two family members are at odds, rather than taking sides, I look for the “third force” that might transform the situation—perhaps a change of environment, introducing humor, or finding a shared goal that transcends the conflict.
4. Centers of Intelligence: Honoring Your Child’s Dominant Center
One of Gurdjieff’s most practical teachings concerns the three primary centers of intelligence: the intellectual center (thinking), the emotional center (feeling), and the moving center (doing). Gurdjieff observed that most people have one dominant center through which they primarily engage with the world.
As parents, recognizing your child’s dominant center can revolutionize how you communicate with them and support their development.
My daughter processes life primarily through her emotional center. When facing challenges, she needs to express and process her feelings before she can think clearly or take action. My son, by contrast, operates primarily from his moving center—he needs to physically engage with concepts to fully understand them.
For years, I tried to help my son with math homework by explaining concepts (intellectual center), growing frustrated when he couldn’t sit still and listen. Everything changed when I started creating physical, hands-on ways for him to learn the same concepts. Suddenly, mathematics became accessible to him through his dominant center.
Instead of labeling our children as “difficult” when they don’t respond to our preferred communication style, Gurdjieff would encourage us to identify and honor their dominant center, then adjust our approach accordingly.
5. The Work on Negative Emotions: Breaking Intergenerational Patterns
Gurdjieff placed special emphasis on what he called “the work on negative emotions.” He taught that negative emotions—anger, irritation, anxiety, self-pity—are not inevitable responses but habits we can gradually transform through conscious attention.
As parents, our unexamined negative emotions become the emotional inheritance we pass to our children. When we react from unconscious patterns—perhaps yelling when we feel threatened as our parents did—we perpetuate emotional habits across generations.
I remember clearly the day I caught myself using the exact same threatening tone with my daughter that my mother had used with me—a tone I had promised myself I would never use. That moment of recognition was painful but transformative. It allowed me to begin the work of consciously transforming this pattern rather than automatically transmitting it.
Gurdjieff offers a revolutionary approach: neither suppressing negative emotions (which teaches children to fear their feelings) nor indulging them (which teaches emotional reactivity), but observing them with awareness and gradually transforming their energy.
When you feel irritation rising while parenting, try this Gurdjieffian approach: Notice the sensation in your body. Where is the irritation physically located? Observe it without judgment, as if studying an interesting natural phenomenon. This small act of conscious attention can create space between stimulus and response—space in which new parenting possibilities can emerge.
6. Conscious Labor and Intentional Suffering: The Hidden Gift of Parenting Challenges
Perhaps Gurdjieff’s most counterintuitive teaching involves what he called “conscious labor” and “intentional suffering”—the willingness to embrace necessary difficulties for the sake of growth.
Modern parenting culture often suggests that good parenting means creating constant comfort and happiness for our children. Gurdjieff would strongly disagree. He believed that certain difficulties are essential for development and that our growth depends on our willingness to engage consciously with necessary challenges.
This doesn’t mean artificially creating hardship. Rather, it means recognizing that the difficulties inherent in family life—conflicts, disappointments, limits—contain precious opportunities for development when approached consciously.
When my son faced rejection from a sports team he desperately wanted to join, my instinct was to shield him from pain by immediately suggesting alternatives. Instead, remembering Gurdjieff’s teaching, I sat with him in the disappointment, neither minimizing it nor dramatizing it. Together, we discovered what this particular form of suffering had to teach.
The principle of conscious labor also applies to us as parents. The sleepless nights, the repetitive tasks, the constant vigilance—all can be approached either as burdensome chores or as opportunities for conscious development. The difference lies not in the tasks themselves but in our relationship to them.
7. Harmonious Development: Raising Whole Human Beings
Finally, Gurdjieff emphasized what he called “harmonious development”—the balanced growth of all human faculties rather than excessive specialization in one area at the expense of others.
In today’s achievement-oriented culture, we often encourage our children to excel in one area—academics, sports, music—without equal attention to their emotional, physical, social, and spiritual development. Gurdjieff would suggest this creates fragmented human beings rather than integrated ones.
I’ve tried to apply this principle by ensuring my children have regular experiences that engage all their centers of intelligence. We make time for physical movement and embodiment practices, emotional expression through art and music, intellectual challenge through reading and discussion, and spiritual connection through nature and community.
What’s remarkable is how this balanced approach seems to enhance performance even in specialized areas. When my daughter started integrating regular movement practices into her routine, her academic performance actually improved—a phenomenon Gurdjieff would have predicted based on his understanding of the interconnectedness of all human faculties.
Bringing Gurdjieff’s Wisdom into Everyday Parenting
As I reflect on two decades of integrating Gurdjieff’s teachings into my parenting approach, I’m struck by how practical his seemingly esoteric ideas prove in the laboratory of family life. These aren’t abstract philosophical concepts but lived principles that transform ordinary parenting moments into opportunities for mutual development.
The beauty of Gurdjieff’s approach is that it doesn’t require adding more to your already-full parenting plate. It’s about bringing a different quality of attention to what you’re already doing. It’s about recognizing that the greatest gift you can offer your children is not protection from life’s challenges but the tools to engage with those challenges consciously and purposefully.
I invite you to experiment with just one of these principles this week. Perhaps practice five minutes of self-remembering while interacting with your child, or observe a recurring family conflict through the lens of the Law of Three. The shift may be subtle at first, but over time, these practices can fundamentally transform your family dynamics and your children’s developmental trajectory.
Remember Gurdjieff’s wisdom: “The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider externally always, internally never.” In parenting terms, this means developing the capacity to observe our own reactions without being completely identified with them—creating space for conscious choice where previously there was only automatic reaction.
In that space lies the possibility of a new kind of parenting—one that nurtures not just well-behaved children but fully conscious human beings.
Anitha Nair is a leading expert on Gurdjieff studies and practical applications of his teachings in contemporary life. Through her workshops and writings, she has helped thousands of parents apply timeless wisdom to modern parenting challenges. She lives in Kerala with her husband and two children.