Are you a stressed out parent? Here are tips to keep you sane and your kids resilient
Ever feel like being a parent is a thankless job that you don’t get paid for? Or do you worry that you’re not getting it right? With the constant juggling of responsibilities, concerns about finances, their future, or kids who just don’t listen or appreciate your efforts, the challenges of raising children can seem stressful and overwhelming.
What makes it even harder to handle are some invisible thought traps that not only steal your peace of mind but also impede your children’s resilience and personal growth. These thought traps are rooted in a well-intentioned desire to ensure our children’s happiness and well-being, but they create mental noise and lead to stress and overwhelm for everyone involved. Here’s an overview of what they are, and some tips for how to recognise them.
The Responsibility Trap
We often fall into the trap of believing it’s our responsibility to ensure our children’s constant happiness. This manifests in things like over-scheduling activities to avoid boredom, trying to shield them from every potential disappointment, or intervening in every conflict. While stemming from a place of love, this mindset leads to parents feeling upset or guilty whenever their child experiences the slightest unhappiness, or frustrated when your efforts are ignored.
Reality check:
• We are not responsible for our children’s moment to moment emotions, and they are not responsible for ours. As much as it might look and feel that way, all emotions arise through thought in the moment. That’s why the same behaviour can drive you nuts one day and seem cute or funny on another. And why your kids appreciate your kind interference on Monday and have a meltdown about the same ‘help’ on Thursday.
• Our children have wisdom at their core, waiting to be realised and acknowledged.
The ‘Think Like Me’ Trap
Another common thought trap is attempting to shape a child’s thinking to match your own expectations or beliefs, whether it’s about career paths, hobbies, or values. This gets amplified by the ‘responsibility trap’. Examples of this are “If they just understood why this is important, they’d be better off”, pushing for their child to adopt a particular viewpoint or direction. This approach often leads to conflict, as it overlooks the child’s individuality and inherent wisdom to forge their own path, but freedom and flexibility of thought is part of the mind’s design.
Reality check:
• Your child cannot think your thoughts or feel your feelings. And you cannot think their thoughts or feel their feelings.
• We can only experience what goes through our own minds, moment to moment.
• Think with your kids, not for them. Get curious and listen for how and why they think and behave the way they do. Not only will your children feel heard, but it will also take unnecessary thinking from your mind.
The Comparison Trap
Comparing your child to siblings, peers, or societal benchmarks is a trap that can lead parents to impose unrealistic expectations on their children. Thoughts like, “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” or “At your age, I was already doing...” can create a sense of inadequacy and
artificial pressure on children, stifling their natural inclination to explore and grow at their own pace and with their own wisdom.
Reality check:
• Are you celebrating your child’s unique thoughts, feelings, journeys and accomplishments on their own merits, or in comparison to something or someone else?
The best thing we can do to reduce stress and make parenting easier is to recognise the ideas and beliefs we’re holding onto as if they’re facts. Just like adults, our kids have innate resilience in the form of insight, wisdom, compassion and creativity that will guide them through difficulties when we allow space for them.