Good Parenting

There is a lot pressure put on us as parents – both from ourselves and from others.

We want to be great parents.

We want to have great kids.

But, we don’t want to need help in order to do it.

Logically, we recognize this doesn’t make sense. If we want to be a great tennis player, gardener, or writer, most of us would readily sign up to take some lessons… or at the very least do some research. If we decide to just try it without any outside support, we would go in knowing we might not have all the answers and, at some point, might have to go to others for some help.

We recognize it is unlikely we will naturally know how to do these things and getting help in order to excel makes perfect sense. It also means we will not beat ourselves up for not knowing how to do these things on our own and we’ll cut ourselves some slack while we are learning the ropes.

Parenting is a job like no other because it is constantly changing as our children grow and move into new phases in life. We can expect to be learning the ropes for a long period of time. Between this, the fact that it changes with each child, and how demanding or emotionally taxing it can be (especially when sleep deprived), it’s not surprising we will never have all the answers.

So is it fair to think we should be able to be a great parent and raise great kids without any help or outside information? I think naught.

Interestingly, even when we recognize we need help as parents, or seek it out willingly to deal with a problem…we often do so from a rather defensive stance.

We don’t want to hear we’ve been doing things wrong, especially if it means we have to change how we’re doing things now. Changing a habit is always uncomfortable and if we aren’t even sure it will work, why do it?

This is like taking lessons from a golf-pro but deciding not to do what he says because it takes too much effort. While it’s perfectly fair to make this decision, it doesn’t help us get any further ahead in life.

Other times the advice we are being given feels wrong. Intuitively we know it’s not the right way for us to proceed, yet we do it anyway because that’s what our “teacher” is telling us to do. This is especially true when our kids are infants and we are making emotionally charged decisions like when or what to feed them, whether or not to pick them up when they cry and so on. We don’t trust ourselves to know how to do things right, so we decide what others tell us must be correct, despite our “bad” feelings.

Both of these ways of thinking are not helping us. Blocking new information or blindly following what we are told when it feels wrong, do not allow us to build confidence or grow as a parent.

Any time we learn something new it needs to be integrated into our own knowing in order to be useful. In other words we don’t have to do exactly what someone else says, but we do need to hear it and perhaps try it, before we can adapt it to fit what feels right and natural for us. We also need to cut ourselves some slack and recognize we truly are learning on the job.

When parents understand this idea and realize that they really do have what it takes to be the perfect parent for their child (which doesn’t mean they have to be perfect!), they can begin to be the confident parent they were always meant to be.

So step number one of being a confident parent… is to notice the pressure you are putting on yourself and start taking strides to release it.

Debbie Pokornik is the Chief Empowerment Officer for Empowering NRG. She is the author of the award winning Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance and believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience. Pick up a complimentary copy on Why We Yell here: http://www.debbiepokornik.com/parenting/nrg-boost-sign-up/.