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July 10, 2021 - February 2, 2022
The goal we’re looking for here is engagement, a back-and-forth between the two of you. It should be open-ended without any pressure to actually produce anything (as in cooking and some art activities). It should be relatively distraction-free for both of you, so the engagement can really blossom without interruptions. You know it when you’re in it because it also fills your cup/bucket/emotional gas tank. You feel like a stellar parent; it lifts you up rather than exhausting you.
I’m asking to you to play with your child and do nothing else but engage with her for that time, twenty or thirty minutes tops.
child who really feels that connection and knows more is coming will be satiated with that small amount. His tank is full and he can cruise on autopilot for a while. The younger the child, the smaller the tank, so be aware that you have to connect a little more frequently.
When our kids can’t articulate their feelings, they act them out. Which then can start a downward spiral because we attempt to address the symptom (crappy behavior) and not the root problem (feeling disconnected).
But the phone can cause a huge disconnection in all our relationships but especially with our kids.
However, when it comes to connection with our kids, dividing our attention between them and our phones can create that nasty cycle of not filling their tanks enough, so then they become even needier.
individual self-care. Is each parent getting enough sleep? Downtime? Exercise? Is each partner eating well? Doing a hobby or activity that each truly enjoys? I’m talking fill-your-soul-cup kind of things.
I had an amazing therapist years ago who said a marriage is really three entities to care for: you, your spouse, and the third entity of the marriage/relationship.
I mean family self-care. Is the family being tended to? As a whole? Does everyone in the family feel connected to one another? Are the things you value being put in the forefront or is everything getting lost in a scheduling shuffle?
The child is part of a family, and you and your spouse are the basis of the family. Therefore, your relationship has to be solid, because it is the foundation on which everything else is built!
If you do not take care of yourself and your relationships and you focus only on your children, you are a parenting martyr. And believe me, you will burn out. Or worse, you will find your marriage crumbling.
As they get older and older, you will find more and more time for yourself, more and more downtime. But in these first six years, you have to be fairly brutal about carving out time for yourself, your relationship with your spouse/partner, and the family as a whole.
When we don’t emphasize the family as a whole over the individuals, then the child will simply learn that his individual needs come first and he will act accordingly, entitled and demanding.
If a child doesn’t understand that he’s part of a bigger entity, the family in this case, that child will attempt to disrupt the family dynamic until he gets the human warmth he is so desperately craving.
Kids act out. Acting out gets a bad rap. It shouldn’t; it literally is them acting out their feelings because they don’t know how to articulate those feelings. The feelings are either too big, too overwhelming, or too complicated for them to be able to talk about them. When you are getting big behavior, there’s a big reason behind it.
In general, we’re seeing more and more of our youth expecting the world at their feet without their having to do too much. If you are completely on all the time for your children and don’t take care of yourself, that’s what they learn.
You count. You matter. Not just as a parent but as a human. If you consistently put your child first, you will crash and burn. Good self-care isn’t just about self-preservation or being the best parent you can be, it’s also about modeling self-care for your child. And doing away with much of the child entitlement that’s so prevalent today.
the bucket is your time. The big stones are what’s important to you. The sand and pebbles are the minutiae of the day that have to get done but aren’t a huge priority.
Your big stones can change. You have life big stones—big values, big things that are a consistent priority in your life overall. But you also have daily or weekly big stones. Yeah? And those may change over time.
It’s super important to figure out your big stones because recognizing them will stop you from being influenced by all the shoulds society is going to throw at you.
What are three life big stones? And what might three weekly big stones be? Three big stones for today? Pick only three of each. The bucket is only so big. If you pick more than three, you will have too many for your bucket. And that’s part of the problem. It’s important to remember that stones may shift. You may feel like, OMG, I have way more than three priorities. That’s why I’ve made daily, weekly, and life categories. Your life big stones may not play out every day but you need to keep an eye on them. Your daily big stones will shift, as in my above example of cleaning the house. It’s not
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go about your day and notice where you are spending huge chunks of time. All of it—the stuff you think is productive, the stuff you judge yourself for, everything in between.
We lose ourselves in fake productivity because a lot of us (myself included) have a trip in our heads about what’s productive and what’s lazy. Midday, sitting down to read a fiction book, while there are dishes in the sink? What a horrible mother you must be! Am I right? And yet dishes will be done. But no one, no one is going to hand you extra time to read a book. Let alone write a book or learn something new.
We can easily get distracted during the day answering FB messages, emails, texts, voice mails. It can be a huge drain on time. The fix: time chunking.
By time chunking your digital life, I promise you will gain at the very least an hour to your day, if not more.
Actually start thinking (on a regular basis): What’s the least I can do? What’s the least I have to do? This is really hard in our current culture. See what happens in your own head when you say that. Try wallowing in lazy.
We’re so conditioned to think, What’s the most I can give? that giving the least feels like cheating. It’s not. It’s reclaiming your time. And time is the only commodity in the world that you can’t get back once it’s gone.
Kids know when you’re not fully engaged. And guess what? That makes them needier. This 20 percent you give—if you give it fully—means you can actually back off a large amount of the time.
Plan to connect with your kids at least once a day. Put the devices away and listen. Look them in the eye. They will get full. Their emotional buckets will be full and you can truly parent from this place.
Maintaining connection seriously takes about 20 percent of your time and energy. And then let them go play. Alone (when applicable). Just keep this perspective in your head as you go about your days and weeks and years. As you watch your child blossom before you.
Think about it: if 100 percent of you is going to parenting, holy crap! There’s nothing left to give! Remember the pebbles and sand taking up all the space and leaving no room for the big stones? This is that.
There is an expectation that if we just find the magic code, the magic combination of things, we can turn out perfect humans. But there is no magic code. And thinking there might be a magic code is what’s behind a shit ton of parental anxiety.
There are a few reasons things have gotten so out of whack for us as parents, both in general and particularly with the later toddler years. One I see all the time is this push for early academics doing a lot of damage to our understanding of this age group. In general, we are so focused on those academics that we’re leaving out some vital life skills. Life skills that make our little ones feel loved, like they are part of the family and wider community. And make them feel capable. That kind of learning is what builds strong, resilient kids. Also feeding this particular fire is the
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We focus on making everything special and wonderful and then we’re all shocked when we turn out entitled kids who have no emotional fortitude or resilience.
We actually have too much information available to us. And what’s worse is we have too many outlets for others to share their opinions about all that information. And what’s happened is we’ve lost our gut feelings, our intuition along the way. We have a gut instinct about what to do about a situation with our kids, and then massive doubt creeps in.
Parenting philosophies are the number one killer of good parenting.
When you step out of your ideas about parenting, you can see the child you have. For example, I work with many parents who say something along the lines of “I know she needs routine. I think she really needs a strict routine. But that’s not really my style. I’m way looser and it doesn’t suit me.” Well, you don’t get that option. We all really, really need to parent the child we have.
Many parents ask the question “Why can’t he just be a quiet kid?” That’s a useless question that creates anxiety. He’s not. Be cautious not to step into that gap.
Have you ever felt the scathing look of judgy moms because your kid is the one eating sand in the sandbox? Or your kid is hitting, not sharing, or whatever. You know what I’m talking about. And you feel a rush of shame? We have to disconnect from that shame. Kids do stupid things. Kids act like jerks. Kids make massive mistakes. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed as parents. It’s not always about you. If you can release a little bit of that feeling—that you are responsible for everything your child does—you will have gone a long way toward easing your anxiety.
“There’s no such thing as being a perfect parent. So be a real one.”
When you suddenly set boundaries that you’ve never set before, please expect your child to push up against them. She has to. To see if they’re real, if you are serious, if you do in fact mean business. Children have to push up against you to feel safe! It’s such a strange paradox because it feels like the opposite. It can feel like they are saying, “No! I don’t want this rule. I don’t want this boundary.” But what they are really saying, if we could articulate the emotional response, is, “Thank God you’re telling me where to stop. But I have to make sure. I have to test you. Because if you
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Anything that makes you blow a gasket is usually a trigger point.
our core values tend to be so obvious to us that we often overlook them because they seem to be a universal life rule, one that everyone should be following.
Remember the notion of “minding the gap.” If your child does or says something that triggers you, it’s because his behavior is falling through the gap between what’s happening now and your vision of what you’d like to see happen.
The values exercise is really about you. What’s important to you? What’s driving your particular train? Your answers will help guide you and your partner when you get a little lost in parenting, as we all do.
With very minor exceptions, our little kids’ behavior should not elicit a crazy reaction from us. Without a doubt, it’s our stuff.
The whole crux of my work is that any behavior is the symptom of something going on inside. Too often, we try to put a Band-Aid on the behavior without looking at the why. What is going on inside your child that is bringing about this behavior?
Most “bad behavior” is caused by • acting out of feelings. • testing your boundaries and their limits. • curiosity: your child thinking, “What happens if I do this?” • your child not being appropriately challenged and therefore becoming challenging.
In reality, the first thing I told her was, “He’s not bad. His behavior is not bad. He’s terribly curious! He’s looking for stimulation, which looks like looking for trouble.”
Limit testing is twofold: children test those limits/boundaries you’ve set to make sure you mean it. But they also test their own limits to find out what they are capable of and “what happens if I do this . . .”
