Do you ever look at a parent who seems to be juggling a millon things and think “how do they do it?”.

stress free parentingAccording to Dr Markham, these parents have a secret. They are calm and connected with their children. They take care of themselves so they don’t feel the need to take their frustrations out on their kids.

 

So when faced with a difficult situation, take a deep breath, step back and behave how you would like your children to display back to you. In order to parent well, we must first work on ourselves.

Top tips for stress free parenting:

  • Be calm and peaceful
  • Connected –show empathy to the child
  • Be patient –step back before stepping in
  • Be present

So today, when the kids start acting up and squabbling and you feel the furstartion starting to bubble. I want you try something new. Take a deep breath before doing anything else and regulate yourself. Shouting is a losers game and just makes the situation worse. How can you expect them to control themselves, when you cannot control yourself? Your ability to stay calm and your ability to interact respectfully means that your child responds calmly and respectfully back to you. They mirror back to you, what you have mirrored out to them. When we learn to regulate our emotion, they learn to regulate theirs, so notice the emotion and let it go. Then help the child with their emotion.

If you want to parent well, you have to work on yourself. Much of our fears and doubts come from our own childhood experiences and early trauma. Virtually all of us were wounded as children, by a parent who was also wounded.

However, we can overcome this to become a better parent to our children and see this improvement mirrored back in their behaviour. We can do so by paying attention to when we get triggered, by doing so, you have stumbled on something that needs healing. Tty a different apprpach when you feel this trigger. Take a breath, hit your pause button and self-calm. Rewrite your story and do something that will work better than going in to overprotect or over control.

Why would you do this – Be calm, connect with the child, be patient and be present to what is happening within you and within the child? Because it produces better behaved kids!