A few weeks back, I wrote this post about how to be a good parent when life is hard. Let me tell you it sparked quite the reaction with lots of people relating to how I felt at the time, which was just so utterly overwhelmed, exhausted and mentally on the floor. Being a good parent when you are feeling that way is a pretty tall order, and in the post, I shared some of the ways I personally used to try to be the best parent I could be when I felt battered by life and all out of mental and emotional resources.
It also sparked a really interesting conversation with Parenting Coach Dominic Chapman, founder of the parent support group Parent By Design about truly – how DO you be a good parent when life is throwing you curveball after curveball?
So in this post today, which is pretty much a response to the post I wrote, Dominic adds his tips and strategies for being a good parent when everything in life just feels so hard.
Finding connection
One of the strategies I mentioned to help see you through the rough times with your kids is to find connection, so they still have your attention and feel loved.
Dominic builds on this by pointing out that we all like to receive and express our love in 5 different ways:
- Words of affirmation
- Quality time
- Receiving gifts
- Acts of service
- Physical touch
He elaborates, “Knowing your child’s preferred love language means that you can maximise your effort and hit their sweet spot every time. Here is a free test to find out your and your child’s preferred love language to help you work out what love languages each member of the family speaks.”
When life feels hard and you have a lot on your plate, the usual response is that of overwhelm. But how can we function when we feel frozen by a state of overwhelm?
Dominic shares a very sound strategy which I also advocate, “Whenever I’m in a state of overwhelm, I just (try and) do the next thing in front of me and forget about everything else. The key is to commit to doing just that one thing and nothing else. If I’m really struggling with time, energy and motivation, I break that one thing down into its smallest possible component.”
This is a great strategy for getting stuff done when your mind is all over the place.
Have a brain dump
We’ve all been there. We have so much going on in our lives, so many thoughts, feelings, emotions and problems that we think our brains might explode. This is what usually leads to feelings of overwhelm experienced above.
“When I’m in this kind of situation, my mind is a constant whirl of unresolved thoughts. So, I write everything (my thoughts and feelings) down on paper. I pour it ALL out, whatever I’m thinking and feeling: vindictive, petty, victimised, hurt, angry, upset, guilty… I don’t hold back. When I’ve finished, I read back what I wrote and two things happen:
- I feel a bit better. It’s good to get that crap out of you, plus when you see it on paper, it kinda looks funny. This diminishes the power that these thoughts have over you.
- I can see the unwritten rules and beliefs I have about how I think life should be (more on this in a sec). It’s always these that are causing the me the stress, NOT the events of the outside world. And, once I have exposed these, I can begin to work on them (essentially by exposing them for the sham they are).”
I personally love the idea of having a massive brain dump and throwing aside the unwritten rules of life. Something I will next be doing when I’m feeling the overwhelmed for sure!
Additional thoughts
In my previous article, everything I wrote was stuff that I could do, but Dominic suggested I also needed to think about the purpose of the doing, which for me was to engineer a state of inner peace and calm. As he correctly pointed out – instinctively, I knew what I needed but interestingly, it’s not what we need to DO in these situations. It’s who we already are.
The only thing ever getting in the way during these times is our thinking. Why? Because we live inside a thought-generated reality. Literally everything that we experience in our life (people, places, objects, events, feelings) comes to us via thought.
He adds, “Aside from the general running commentary to our lives: must do the washing, clean the bedroom, remembering to get the birthday presents, God I hate Piers Morgan etc… our thoughts are generated by two things:
- Our story: who we think we are, what we think we are capable of, and the way we think the world works. For example, I am a good Mum, I am good at my job, my child needs a good education.
- Our unwritten rules: the way we think that life should be. For example: my business partner shouldn’t leave me in the lurch, my child needs to do well in school, Piers Morgan shouldn’t be on TV.
Our inner world creates our outer world. The crazy thing is, nothing in our inner world is TRUTH, 99.99% of our thoughts are subjective. The problem is, we live our lives as if they were true.
Instead, these thoughts are subjective ideas that you have accepted as true. So, in that sense, they are true for you, and your life is a reflection of these rules and beliefs.”
He continues, “Our rules, and our story do two things:
- Determine how the neutral events in our life show up for us (all events are neutral)
- Give us a limited menu of thoughts, feelings and behavioural options
We think that we have free choice, the ability to fully decide who to be and what to do at any given moment, but we don’t. We are limited by our rules and our story. It just doesn’t feel like it because that’s all we’ve ever known.
Imagine if you had these unwritten rules/ story:
- Life is rosy all the time
- I am a great parent
- I am a great parent regardless of the circumstance
Your life would show up differently. You would show up differently for life. Your life would be completely different.
Now, I know what you are thinking….
- But… life isn’t rosy all the time.
- And… I’m a great parent sometimes, but not all the time.
- It’s not possible to be a great parent all the time.
All these are TRUE, right?
No. They aren’t. They are just beliefs aka mental constructs that you have collected evidence for. They aren’t facts, like gravity or the earth going around the sun. As such, it’s just as easy to believe something else entirely.
This is how you create a different life and life experience. It’s not that any ‘new beliefs’ are TRUTH either. They are not.
It’s just that they give you access to a different way of being and seeing the world that helps you to create the life you want.”
So there you go, everyone. When life is handing you lemons, the key to being a parent is to rewrite the rules, your beliefs and stories. When I wrote my first post about being a good parent during hard times, I realised I was in victim mode, so of course, I would always be acting like one.
But as soon as I changed my beliefs – that even though a lot of things were going wrong, and that I was therefore struggling to be a good parent to: I can actually make a change for the better in my life/things are improving/I am good parent regardless of the chaos arrived me then that’s when everything suddenly looked and felt better.
To find out more about how you can write a story that is more aligned with their potential and the life they want to create why not join Dominic’s free Parent By Design Facebook group here.
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This is such a helpful post. Life can get so difficult for children and parents, especially these days. It’s so hard to make sure we’re there for our children in all the ways that we should be when we’re not at our best.
Awesome tips for when things get tough and they will…Connection and communication, Absolutely.
I do not have my own kids yet but I have nieces that I treated as my own kids. They are my stress-reliever.
Writing things down is very therapeutic. I write mine down and then throw it away when I’m done. 🙂