What you are prioritising is what you will become.
What is your priority in life right now?
You will probably know what it is or at least have an idea about it.
Mine was not so clear for a long time.
You have everything planned from when you decide to have children.
Then everything comes different to how you thought it would.
What I mean is the expectations you had of what it means to be a parent.
What I discovered when I became a parent was that life is more draining when you are not looking after yourself well.
You have more to give after you looked after your own needs first.
You may disagree because you say there is no time left in the day of a busy parent.
When I learned that everything I do impacts my children, I understood that they will suffer if I don’t take care of myself.
The beauty of self-care is not to zone out with anything that could be considered addictive behaviour but to recharge in a way that you feel more relaxed afterwards.
In my case that’s transcendental mediation, yoga, going for a walk or a swim.
What is it for you that brings more calm into your life?
The trick is to not talk over the inner voice that says: You need a break.
The trick is to do exactly what the inner voice recommends.
So now you might say that the inner voice also says:
Go and hang up clothes
Do the disches
Play with your children
Clean the windows
Hoover the house
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera …
And here is what I learned.
My inner voice is different to my inner critic.
My inner critic feels demanding, restless, controlling, workhorse mentality and never stops.
My inner voice is gentle and loving.
It means well and makes life simpler for me.
It knows how hard I work as a parent holding it all together.
You have often wondered about the saying and had enough: A mother’s job is never done.
This of course includes all father too.
I was asked during the week: Why is it that mothers feel so much guilt all the time?
I understand that fathers carry guilt too.
So I reflected on it a bit and came to the conclusion that a lot of women were raised to be good girls.
When you need to be good - you cannot live out your other feelings or live in the moment.
Other expressions like feistiness, passion, loneliness, worries, excitement or sadness need to be suppressed and that brings a lot of shame and guilt with it.
What men have to develop is their capacity for showing weakness and pain.
You can probably imagine why we don’t allow young boys to feel more than anger and rage.
It is considered a men’s world for a reason.
We are here as mothers and fathers to break down this old men’s world and replace it with something new that we have never seen before.
What I am referring to is a parenting paradigm shift that unites the patriarchal and matriarchal themes and gives birth to a revolutionary new way of parenting.
We are the generation of parents who are being asked to come together and create a new parenting world.
How do we achieve this?
We live kind and firm principles at the same time.*
So examples would be:
You can have a sweet and go and play after.
You can have your screen time and it needs to be turned off when the timer goes.
You can have the keys to my car and I need it back by the morning.
You are really tired and it’s time for bed now.
You are the parent who sets limits and what is new is that it is said in a gentle tone of voice.
This has not happened in traditional parenting before.
You will most likely have done either that you were too kind or too firm.
Neither works well with our children.
What I have to offer is a parenting course that educates parents how to apply these principals in real life scenarios.
Have you always wondered what the best approach is?
Your question will be answered during this new learning experience.
You are going to really enjoy what you learn because it empowers you to become a calmer parent.
Would you like a calmer home?
Click the "My services" tab and sign up to my upcoming 8-week evening course.
What all this means in regard to “You are who you believe you are” is that we are creating this new approach together.
We choose the parenting style for our children and are determining their futures.
You find a new way of living and you are fascinated with how effective it is.
The challenge comes when we fall back into our old patterns.
A support group where all information is kept confidential is often an easier path to keep up the new way of living.
Taking the plunge and signing up to a parenting course is not the most desired experience for a lot of parents.
We fear judgment that others’ children are so much better behaved than ours.
I can reassure you that the most popular feedback I have received from participants is that it is so refreshing to hear that other parents and their children are not perfect either.
Working with me will put you in a good place to reflect and redirect what no longer makes you happy as a parent.
We all have things we would like to change about ourselves and yet we often talk more than we act.
One of my mantras in this parenting course from Jane Nelsen* is: "Talk less - act more.”
*Jane Nelsen is one of the Adlerian psychologists who coined this term of "Kind AND Firm"
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