Parenting Advice
Now that we’re into the home stretch of the holiday season, and with Christmas less than 2 weeks away, I thought I would change themes a bit and pivot toward parenting reminders. I suspect many of you are stressed, closing out your years, following up on orders or reconciling invoices, entertaining out of town guests, going to Christmas performances (On the Very First Christmas Day) or parties, or still procrastinating with your shopping.
And while some of you don’t have kids yet, these are concepts that might also be helpful when dealing with petulant adults:
Key Parenting Reminders:
Never take a child’s limit-pushing behavior personally. Our children love, appreciate and need us more than they can ever say. Remind yourself of these truths every day until you’ve internalized them, because a healthy perspective on limit-pushing is critical.
Respond to your children with love in their worst moments, their broken moments, their angry moments, their selfish moments, their lonely moments, their frustrated moments, their inconvenient moments, because it is in their most unlovable human moments that they most need to feel loved.
When a child can’t calm down, they need connection and comfort, not criticism and control
Yelling always escalates a difficult situation. And really, how can you expect a child to learn to control his/her emotions if you don’t control yours?
Things may seem really crazy and hard with your kids, but someday, you will really miss this chaos.
It is not the child’s responsibility to make life easier for the adult; it is the adult’s responsibility to make the life easier for the child
Children should not be burdened with making us happy, nor blamed for making us sad or angry. Children are not responsible for how we feel. We are.
Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.
It’s never ok to punish a child for exasperating behavior that is due entirely to their underdeveloped brain systems.
Parenting is about progress, not perfection.
Al Chien
