May I Have Your Attention, Please

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We’ve had an unseasonably warm few days where I live.  The sun has been shining with temperatures reaching into the high 50s/low 60s; exceptionally nice for early February in Seattle. We couldn’t resist the urge to get the family outside to take advantage of the weather, so we headed to a neighborhood park.

Both of our kids love going to the park; our youngest son always seems to want to spend his time there picking up and dropping small rocks that line the playground floor. I often have to remind him to keep the rocks away from people and off the slide–he loves hearing the sound the rocks make as they crash down it.

Naturally, the park was full of families with children and pets this weekend, a wonderful thing to see. But there was something else in abundance at the park that wasn’t such a welcome sight: Smartphones. One Mom was talking on the phone while pushing her son in the swing, another was texting while standing near her child and yet another parent was sitting on a bench engrossed in whatever app he had running. The parents were there with their children, but not really present.

Smartphones and tablets and all the other impressive technological devices at our disposal these days make connecting with each other easier than ever. But are these connections occurring in a meaningful and authentic way?

There is a push in our society to be busy, or at least appear to be busy at all times—as if we weren’t busy enough without having to fake it.  The question is why?  Is it to impress other people around us? Do we feel like we aren’t good or important enough if we don’t seem to always be occupied? What messages are we sending other people with this constant flurry of meaningless electronic activity?  More importantly, what messages are we sending to our own children?

There will be those who claim that they’re so busy that this constant multi-tasking is the only way to get everything done; besides if their child is otherwise occupied it’s not a big deal and it’s no one’s business what they are doing with or how they spend their time.

I would argue that it does matter to our children how we spend our time. Children pay attention to these things, whether they verbalize it to us or not. By being engrossed in our electronic devices, are we unknowingly telling our children that they aren’t worth our dedicated, uninterrupted time?  That whatever we’re doing on our phone is more important than they are?And by constantly tuning out of what’s going on around us, are we really demonstrating how to make authentic and fulfilling connections with other human beings?

I walked over to a parent who was engrossed in their phone and whose child was playing with mine. I asked the parent how old their child was and it took a minute for the parent to realize I was talking to them. Once we made the connection, I went back to see what my son was up to. Sure enough, he was just about to put a handful of rocks down the slide. I called his name so he could hear me and said, “You’re not going to put those rocks down the slide are you?” He turned around to look for me. He’d seen me talking to the parent a moment earlier, and I suspect he thought I was still engaged with this and not paying attention to what he was up to. He had the biggest smile on his face. Not because he had gotten caught, but because he realized I had been paying attention.

What’s your policy on electronics when it comes to your kids?

Are you ready for some football?

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When you were a kid what did you love?  Was it a pet or a toy? Or did you have a favorite activity you just couldn’t get enough of?

Our oldest son has recently become very interested in football. Any football. College, professional, high school, it doesn’t matter.  He asks his father if they can go outside and play football every day regardless of the weather and regardless of the amount of daylight left—there have been many twilight games.  He loves the game.

It’s always a joy for me to watch them play together and hear their conversations during the game. Our son loves to tackle and be tackled. He loves to wear clothes that make him look like a real football player, and he loves to kick the ball. Above all else, he likes to make up new rules. The rules for any game change with almost every play and almost always lean in our son’s favor.  As I mentioned in my post a couple of weeks ago, winning has become increasingly important to my sons as of late.

While watching my husband and son, a number of questions have crossed my mind:

  • Where did his drive for winning come from?  My husband and I have worked hard to not place a high value on winning.
  • How do you explain rules, what they are and why they’re import?
  • Why must he want to play football?  It’s so dangerous!  While I’ve always loved watching college football, I hoped our children would love watching it with me, not actually want to play it.

It occurred to me that all three of these questions brought to mind a different parenting conundrum.

Where did his drive for winning come from? I don’t think our son is any different than his peers. Winning is going to be important, regardless of our efforts to downplay it. What we are trying to teach our boys is that of course everyone wants to win, and that while winning may feel good, you often learn more from losing. When we win we’ll often attribute it to our hard work, practice or execution of the game on a given day. Those things may be true, but what if the team that lost worked and practiced just as hard? We talk to our boys about how temping it is to become complacent and stop pushing ourselves when winning comes too easily, and that losing can be an opportunity to learn something about ourselves and allow us to improve. Talking about sports is great opportunity to discuss with the boys the merits of learning to win and lose with grace.

How do you explain the rules, what they are and their importance? Football has a lot of rules. While I’ve always felt I had a good understanding of the game, I didn’t appreciate the complexity of the rules in football until I listened to my husband and my father educating my son on the game.  Most of these rules make a lot of sense. They are needed to keep order and ensure that the game is played fairly by both teams. Rules ensure a level playing field where one team doesn’t have an advantage over the other. However, sometimes the rules don’t make much sense and seem to only create obstacles for playing the game. There is as true in life as it is in football. Some rules make a lot of sense and are clearly in place to protect us and keep us safe. Some rules are not as clear-cut; I’m not sure I’ll ever understand our tax codes, but I’m grateful for accountants who can make sure I comply with them.

Why must he want to play football?  It’s so dangerous! As an avid fan, I suppose I have no one to blame but myself on this one, but I honestly hoped he would just enjoy watching the game with me. I should have known that if he enjoyed watching football, he was likely to want to play.  I have conflicting feelings about  this. On one hand, I want to encourage his passion and football is his passion, at least for now. On the other, I’ve always believed that one of my main jobs as his parent is to keep him safe. In light of all the reports in recent years that show the long-term damage caused by the head traumas so common in sports like football, it’s hard not to want to keep your child away from the game (or any game where the risk of head trauma runs high). My husband and I haven’t had to make a final decision on this yet, as our son hasn’t asked to play on a team. For now he’s okay with just playing in the backyard or on the playground. But we suspect his interest will only increase as his friends get more serious about the sport and at some point, we’ll have a difficult decision to make.

This coming Sunday we will celebrate one of the most watched games in televised sports.  Most of us aren’t as concerned about who wins the game as we are with the ritual of watching the game. We watch because it’s an opportunity to get together with friends, we like to watch the commercials, or we just hope to see a good game. My son will be watching too, but for one reason only—because he loves it.

Emerging Victorious

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I recently had my first book published. Many friends have been very encouraging by telling me how proud they are of me. While I am grateful for their praise and support, the reality hasn’t really sunk in yet.  I keep asking myself the question, why don’t I feel proud?

When I was younger, I swam on our neighborhood swim team. The team practiced every weekday morning throughout the summer. I loved swimming. I loved practicing with kids my own age and learning from the older ones. There was always an opportunity to push myself to be better. I loved competing at the swim meets where I could demonstrate the progress I’d made and bask in the glow of a hard-earned success.  Any time I swam my hardest and won an event I felt deep feeling of accomplishment. It made me feel proud and reinforced the notion that all my hard work would pay off. Like many burgeoning young athlete, my early success in the pool lead to a childhood dream of competing in the Olympics. I could truly visualize myself swimming the vigorous lengths and emerging victorious, making my country proud.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve struggled with feeling such genuine pride in myself. I’m still very good at pushing myself to achieve my goals, but I often don’t allow myself to truly acknowledge my accomplishments. There have been some notable exceptions. Moving cross-country for a job when I was in my 20s made me feel proud.  Traveling alone overseas for a few weeks in my early 30s made me feel proud. Speaking to parenting groups about what I’ve learned along the way made me feel proud. The common thread between these accomplishments was that I took a risk needing to know if I could do it. I knew if I didn’t try I would regret it.  It made taking the risk greater and the reward taken from the accomplishment more satisfying. Yet, though I’ve written and had my first book published, which I never predicted or dreamt I would do, and the risk is quite possibly the greatest I’ve ever taken, the feeling of accomplishment hasn’t come, at least not yet.

Maybe it’s because this is a new beginning for me. It’s the first step toward the life I want to live, one in which I am more creative and able to push myself in more satisfying ways. Not just the life I’m feel I’m supposed to live—the one I accepted as a young adult that may or may not align with my true passion or calling. How many of us truly pursue our dreams as adults? It’s scary and overwhelming to go after what we really want–especially with a family to support–but what do we miss out on if we don’t push ourselves to try? Or perhaps it doesn’t fall into the category of something I needed to do and I wouldn’t have felt regret it if I hadn’t done it.

Maybe down the road, I will look back and feel proud that I was brave enough to take the first step and push myself to accomplish something I didn’t even know was possible.  Maybe in the moment, I’m still feeling to vulnerable and nervous about the huge step I’m taking.

My dream of becoming an Olympic swimmer didn’t become a reality for a variety of reasons that were out of my control. As an adult I returned to my favorite sport when I joined a Masters league (a competitive swimming league for adults). With a lifetime of perspective between myself and my childhood ambition, I realized the reality that I’d never had the necessary leg strength needed to be an elite swimmer. I still love the sport and it comforts me to know that I avoided losing my entire childhood over a goal that wasn’t meant to be.

Writing feels like something that is much more in my control; fortunately there are no age limits or strength requirements. I decide what comes next on this journey for what comes next, another book or something else and determine how hard I need to push myself beyond this. I’m looking forward to what comes next and while I don’t know what the future holds; I do know that pushing myself to live the life I want to live helps me visualize myself emerging victorious.

 

Game on!

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I love receiving holiday cards, especially the ones that contain letters telling me what my friends and their family members have been up to. Reading these helps me feel connected to people I don’t get to see often. We recently received a card from some friends who live overseas; it was wonderful to see the pictures of all the interesting things they had been up to and I enjoyed reading all about their adventures. My husband had read the card before I did and when I was finished reading it he said, “Did you see what their kids can do? They can read and write in a foreign language, and ski!” This chaffed a bit considering that the children in question are a little younger than our own.

I admit that for a brief moment, there was some jealousy on my part. Our oldest is in kindergarten just starting to learn to read and while he’s had some exposure to Spanish, I wouldn’t claim he’s anywhere near fluent. We did take our children for ski lessons last year, but they’re nowhere near as accomplished as our friends’ children in this regard.

I told my husband, “If we lived overseas as our friends do, our children would probably know how to speak, and possibly read and write in a foreign language. And if we skied all the time like our friends do, our kids would probably be pretty good skiers as well.” He agreed and we moved past this fleeting moment of parental envy.

Later as I was reflecting on our discussion, I was reminded of a key point in my book, Ten Simple Tools for No Regrets Parenting, namely that parenting is not a competition.

Our boys are at the age where winning suddenly becomes very important and everything is a competition: who can get make their bed first, who gets their shoes on first, who gets dressed first. What they win in these little contests is arbitrary; the winning itself is what’s important. My husband and I discourage this ceaseless competition and are working hard to change their thinking and help them find healthy outlets for the impulse. We remind our kids that they shouldn’t feel constantly pitted against each other as brothers; that they should be cheering each other on. I think that’s a good lesson for us as parents as well.  So next year when the holiday cards start arriving, I look forward to hearing all of the wonderful things my friends are up to and cheering them on.

Where did my vacation go?

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Last week was the first week of the new year and I am already exhausted! How is that possible? I decided to take the last two weeks of 2011 off from both my day job and my writing work. On the one hand, I felt I had earned a break. On the other hand, I felt incredibly selfish. I’m trying to launch a book and reach my audience, I thought I don’t have time for a break! Never mind that I work a full-time job, am raising two kids, have a spouse and home to take care of. Sounds crazy, right? And yet, I would guess that many of us have struggled with guilt over taking time to rest and rejuvenate.

It became apparent to me that if I was going to enjoy my vacation at all, I was going to have to get over my guilt with taking it in the first place.

My first few days off felt great. I enjoyed guilty pleasures like Kathie Lee and Hoda on the fourth hour of the Today Show, catching The Ellen Show in the afternoon and taking long walks outside by myself–ah, what luxuries! But after a couple of days of this, my sense of I’ve got a lot to do, why am I wasting all this time? started creeping back in. I finally broke on day three when my compulsion to be productive became almost overwhelming. I’m not good at being still, at doing nothing so I let myself do just a little work. I have to admit, I was concerned that I would slip back into full work-mode, but I was able to keep that impulse under control after checking a few things off of my to-do list.

As January 3rd (the official end of my vacation) approached, an impending sense of dread set in about how fast-paced my life was going to once again become. My life had just started to feel like it was slowing down momentarily and now I was going to pick right back up where I left off? Not fair! Sure enough, I jumped right back into the chaos once Tuesday came. When I shut the computer off late that night, it felt like my vacation was a distant memory. On Wednesday morning, while I was at the gym, I reflected on my time off and the enormous amount of work ahead of me and thought, something’s gotta give. I made a quick inventory of my competing priorities: family, day job, writing/book, house upkeep, exercise, sleep. I tried to figure out where I could invest less time. I immediately eliminated family from the chopping block; I’m all about living a life without regrets, and I’d have some MAJOR regrets if I wasn’t giving my full self and attention to my relationship with my husband and children. Next I eliminated Day Job since I obviously need to make a living and I enjoy what I do. I also eliminated Writing/Book; writing is the way I express my creativity and my passion for helping others, it’s something that gives me energy and helps me feel fulfilled. Next on the list was House Upkeep– I can’t lie, I already don’t keep house the way I was brought up or would like to, so doing less in this area is not really an option. Following that on my list was exercise.  While some may jump at the chance for an excuse not to work out, exercise is something I can’t do without. It’s my ‘me’ time–a chance to be by myself, read on the elliptical trainer and burn off some steam. This all leads us to the last item on the list: Sleep. For a split second I almost convinced myself that sleeping less was the answer. As you may have guessed, I ended up having to cross that one off too. No one does well without a good night’s sleep. I need a solid 7-8 hours; I know some people can do well on much less, but not me.

Rest is something we all so desperately need each and every day. Not just restful sleep at night, but the ability to recharge and reenergize ourselves throughout the week during daylight hours.

I came to the conclusion that I have to redo my something’s gotta give list. I’m trying to figure out what areas exist that may give me more room to breath, and rest. My husband and I could be better at balancing all of the kid’s activities and household responsibilities we are juggling. Investing more in pre-prepared meals and a cleaning service is sounding more and more attractive. I’m aware that I need to find time for myself, accept that that’s best for me and my family and lose the guilt–just like I had to do to enjoy my vacation.

A fascinating read on re-energizing that I came across a few years ago is The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. I’m going to start rereading it soon. When? On the elliptical of course. That’s the only time I’ve got. For now.

The Truth About Santa

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When I was seven years old, I found out the truth about Santa. My Mom sat me down at the dinner table and read an article to me that revealed that Santa–the one I had believed in, got so excited for, and couldn’t wait until Christmas Eve to see–wasn’t real. I can remember crying at the table for a long time afterwards. At first, I was very disappointed to learn the truth. Santa had been a magical part of the holiday; I believed that he loved all children and delivered presents to everyone. Santa made me feel special: he knew who I was, he made sure I behaved and rewarded me with toys picked out or made especially for me. After realizing that Santa and several other mythical characters I’d grown to love (the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy) didn’t exist, I started to get mad! My parents had lied to me. And though they’d done it with good intentions–perhaps to let me believe in magic or something special–I felt like a fool. Who else knew that Santa wasn’t real? My older sister must have known the truth. I felt like everyone in the world must have thought that I was a stupid kid for walking around getting all excited about Santa and believing he was real. I felt very betrayed. The kicker came when my parents asked me to keep the secret from my younger sister so that she could enjoy the magic of Santa for another year or two before learning the truth. My first reaction was ‘you’ve got to be kidding me, I’ve just discovered the truth and you want me to keep it a secret–it’s a BIG secret!’ It was a pretty tall order for a seven year old, especially one that was still sad, disappointed and angry with her parents.

I think about this childhood revelation each year as we get closer to Christmas, and I’ve come to better understand the struggle my parents faced. While you want your child to experience the magic of Santa when they’re young, you know there will be the great disappointment of learning the truth down the road. I know we have precious few years left before my children start to question the existence of Santa so my husband and I try not to make too big a deal about the whole thing. When our kids ask questions like ‘Where does Santa get all the toys?’ or ‘How does Santa know where we live?’ We simply turn the question back to them: ‘Where do you think Santa gets all his toys?’, ‘How do you think he knows where we live?’ They come up with some pretty clever answers: ‘He probably get his toys from the store’, ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ we reply. ‘He must have a phone book so he knows where we live’, ‘That could be,’ we answer. I feel like I’m constantly walking a very thin line by trying to maintain a thread of truth in how I respond. It is so important for my husband and me to be truthful with our kids, and sometimes the line between lying and storytelling is a precarious one. I want the foundation we are building with our children to be one of trust and sometimes I feel the Santa story could put that in jeopardy if they discover the truth in the wrong way.

I want my children to know they can trust me and that I won’t ever deliberately cause them any pain or deceive them. But at the same time, I think there is great benefit in children believing that someone completely outside of their family believes in them and loves them for exactly who they are, be it Santa or some other higher power. I am bracing myself for the day they ask me to come clean about Santa, but I’m also preparing myself for it too. I’ll tell them the truth, share what we struggled with in deciding whether or not to tell them and let them feel whatever they need to feel, be it understanding, anger, disappointment, sadness or anything else.

I never did tell my younger sister about Santa. If I remember correctly, she learned the truth from some neighborhood kids not too long after the Christmas I found out. She was spared the ‘story at the table’ and while she might not appreciate that, knowing that she didn’t connect the experience with the let down of the news coming from my parents, I do. While the experience that I had in being read the story was painful, my mom had told me the truth and believed I was at an age where I could handle it–she thought she was doing me a favor by telling me before the neighborhood kids had a chance to. Upon reflection, I wish she had just acknowledged why she allowed me to believe in Santa in the first place, what she hoped I would gain from believing and why she told me the truth when she did; I wish she had acknowledged that this was hard news to accept and that it was okay to be upset.

How do you talk to your child about Santa? Have you discussed a plan to reveal the truth when you feel they’re ready to hear it? While I still haven’t figured out all of the details of this yet, I know that I want to make sure my children understand that while there might not be a Santa, the love and magic of Christmas still exists in the friends and family who love them just the way they are.

 

Pictures with Santa

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The holiday season brings with it the annual tradition of taking the kids to get pictures with Santa. This activity can elicit a range of emotions for you and your child, from joy and excitement to fear and dread.

When my boys reached their toddler years, I couldn’t wait for them to get their pictures taken with Santa. In advance of the outing each year, I would envision my desired end result: a festive picture of them smiling from ear-to-ear. But it became clear in the early years that achieving my vision wouldn’t be as easy as I’d hoped. Instead of my children cheerfully embracing the stranger in red and white, they were terrified (in retrospect, perhaps understandably) and didn’t want to be anywhere near Santa. This happened multiple years in a row. One year, one of my children didn’t want to sit with Santa and could only be comforted by being held. I was so committed to getting a picture of the kids with Santa that my husband and I ended up in the picture with him. After the photographer took the picture, I thought ‘what am I doing? This is not what I wanted!’ While my husband had tolerated my quest to get the picture over the years, he gently reminded me of something valuable that day by asking me why I needed a picture of the kids with Santa so badly. Was it for me or for the kids? No one wants to be forced to do something, let alone fake enjoying it, if it’s not really what they want to do.

Upon reflection, I realized that I really just wanted them to have the experience of meeting Santa and thought the photo would be a good memento of it. I decided going forward that I wouldn’t subject my husband or children to pictures with Santa again, unless everyone involved was excited about it.

The Santa debacle prompted me to examine whether or not there are other areas in which I might be trying to force my hopes and desires on my children. I’ve sometimes wondered if putting them in various activities, soccer, swimming, gym, etc, is more for their benefit or mine. I want our children to have experiences that allow them to reach their full potential, but I need to not to let my desire to see them succeed get the best of me. What if my child excels at soccer, but doesn’t enjoy it or want to play on the team anymore? Then who is he doing it for? I believe that following my husband’s advice and asking who an activity really benefits is a good way to keep myself in check.

This year, we took the children to see Santa again. Our youngest wasn’t so sure about the whole thing and kept his distance. Our oldest, however, was eager to talk to and sit with Santa. We got the picture we wanted, albeit only with the one child. And even though our youngest didn’t want to be in the picture, he did warm up at the end of our time there and gave Santa a high five on the way out. It was a good experience and a memory we’ll all be able to cherish.

Parenting Firsts

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When I first became a parent, I was struck by how many firsts I encountered during the first few years of my child’s life. There was the first time I changed a diaper, gave my child a bath, took him for a haircut, dropped him off at school and so on. Some of the first times were a little bit upsetting for me: I didn’t like seeing my child cry when I gave them his first bath or his first haircut and then I was the one crying when I first dropped him off at school. Other firsts were more exciting for me–things we’d planned for and couldn’t wait for our children to experience. Seeing our children take their first steps, learning new things (numbers, letters, reading and math), and participating in an activity that didn’t require my husband or I to be in the pool or on the field with them.

How many of us have had a first event or outing planned for our child that didn’t go quite as we’d hoped?

We recently came back from our first true family vacation. Though we’ve been on trips to visit family before, this was the first time we were going to have a family vacation with just the four of us. I have been carefully preparing this trip since my oldest, now six, was about two years old. I grew up in Florida and knew we had to get the kids to Disney World in Orlando at some point. We wanted to take them when they were old enough to enjoy it and more importantly would be able to remember it: for $75 a kid, you need them to remember it!

While we’ve been planning the details of our trip for some time, we decided we wouldn’t tell the kids we were taking them to Disney World until we were closer to our vacation date. Their birthdays are close together and landed a few weeks in advance of our departure date, so we figured that would be the perfect time to tell them. The morning we decided to finally spill the beans was carefully planned. We put a pair of mouse ears at each of their places at the breakfast table, and we had the computer cued up to play a Disney video that would show them all the fun and magical things kids can experience there.

I woke the kids up with much anticipation. While I wasn’t sure what their initial reaction would be, I was expecting something along the lines of exhilaration, shrieks of joy, or at least big smiles on their faces. I got none of the above. They were mildly interested in the mouse ears, but their response to hearing the news that we were going to Disney World ranged from ”I don’t want to go!” to “That sounds boring!” This was not what I was prepared for. Years of planning down the drain! I was distraught but my husband was actually chuckling when the kids expressed their dismay at having to go.

Thankfully, once the kids started telling their friends about the trip and everyone told them how much fun they would have, they started to warm up to the idea. By the time we arrived at our hotel, Wilderness Lodge, (a great family spot) the kids were pretty excited.

In addition to this being our first family trip and our first time to Disney World, this was also our first time sleeping all four of us in one hotel room. My husband and I weren’t sure what to expect. Would the kids get any sleep? Would my husband and I? It reminded me of when the boys were infants and we were on pins and needles waiting for them to wake us up in the middle of the night. I also reflected with a great deal of gratitude on what my parents dealt with when they took my sisters and I on trips growing up. The trip and sleeping arrangements ended up going about as well as we could have hoped–we slept through the night for the most part and figured out how to share a room as a family for the first time together.

Our days at the park and in Orlando were pretty magical. There were many highlights including It’s a Small World, the Electrical Light Parade on the water, and all the fun things the kids could do at our hotel, and many firsts for my children, but also for my husband and I. We not only survived our first family trip and lived to tell the tale, but have a memory we’ll treasure forever!

What parenting firsts have been most special for you?

Grateful parent giving thanks!

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I sometimes catch myself still not believing that I have two children–how in the world did that happen?  And they are grow so quickly!

When I first became a parent grateful is not a word that came into my thoughts very often. Thoughts about how difficult raising a child was and all the things I had to learn did.  I knew that I should be overjoyed, celebrating and being thankful, but I wasn’t.  I felt selfish and wondered if there was something deficit in me.

As I started to get the hang of parenting and my parenting abilities, I noticed that the word grateful did start to come into my thoughts and became something I actually felt.  We recently celebrated our boys birthdays and I told my husband after the party “Raising the kids has been so hard, but so awesome.” Parenting is hard, but it has also been so rewarding raising them–watching them grown and learn, and becoming their own person.  I feel like my husband and I have only scratched the surface in all the things we want to teach them. I’m thankful for what we’ve been able to accomplish so far and am looking forward to what comes next.

I am so very grateful.  For the opportunity to have and raise children, for my family and friends who supported and encouraged us along the way, and for my children–for them allowing me to be on this journey with them.

As we enter the holiday season and begin to reflect, when asked “What are you most grateful for as a parent?” what would you say?

What do I want my parenting journey to look like?

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When I was a new parent there were three sentences that were constantly running through my head:

  1. How am I going to do this?
  2. What comes next?
  3. Is there anything else I should be doing that I’m not?

While I wasn’t always 100% confident in my abilities initially, I knew I could figure out the answers to #1 and #2.  #3 felt like a question I’d never be able to correctly answer. With each question, it helped me to inspect each one a little more carefully and try to figure out what the anxiety was behind each.

How am I going to do this? This took me mustering up the courage and using common sense for the most part. The question tended to pop-up when I hadn’t done something before, like taking the baby to the store for the first time–how am I going to get them in and out of the car, how am I going to get through the store–will the baby be in the cart or stroller, etc.?  After attempting a task and starting to realize I could do each of these things, it made it much easier when I confronted a new task. The most anxiety I’ve had in recent years is taking my son to kindergarten–physically very easy to do, mentally very hard–letting him go be in a school with “big” kids, realizing I can no longer protect him like I was previously able to–scary!  But I did it, and I know I can do whatever new is coming next.

What should I do next? This question started when I first realized there were phases to parenting and that I had little to no control over them and never knew when one phase would be starting or stopping and when I was actually in the middle of transitioning to another. Examples included when will my child sleep through the night to when will they be able to feed themselves to will my child ever not have a cold for longer than 2 weeks, etc. What I figured out was while each phase it out of my control, they are all indeed temporary.  This really helps me when my children are going through a phase I’m not crazy about–the saying “no-to-everything” phase (which was accompanied by tantrums, hitting and throwing), because I know eventually grow out of it. Some of the temporary phases, I’m not looking forward to growing past–the cuddling, hugs in public and the “I love you’s”. I’m trying to treasure every second of every phase good or bad.

Is there anything else I should be doing that I’m not?  This was the question that made me most anxious. I want my children to have every opportunity to thrive which caused a constant list of thoughts to run through my mind–should I be reading to them more? are they getting enough time outside? are they enrolled in enough activities?  are they the right activities? are they signed up for to many activities? am I doing everything needed to make sure my child gets into Harvard (okay, any college!)? You can see why I might feel anxious, any parent would.

When my children were young, products that promoted helping raise a baby’s intelligence were very popular.  I struggled with whether or not I should be committing my money to purchase these products and spending time exposing them to my children.  One example that comes to mind was a set of DVDs that promoted the learning of the alphabet and numbers, which sounded like a good thing, but they were DVDs, and everything I’d read said to limit TV time.  Now, I’m not a parent who was or is gung-ho on no TV, but the fact that the products were being marketed to me and my parenting peers as educational–good for our small children–was puzzling.  Would my child be behind if they didn’t watch the videos? Would I be doing them harm by letting them watch the videos (everything I’d heard and read had mentioned minimal TV time for kids)? It was very confusing, until I reflected on my own upbringing.  We didn’t have DVD players–a show came on once a week at a certain time, and if you weren’t there to see it live, you weren’t going to see it period.  I started to relax when I realized that and the fact that I, along with pretty much everyone else who grew up prior to VCRs and DVD players, all turned out okay.

Questioning your parenting skills is common. I have yet to meet a parent that feels they have 100% confidence in their abililites or even in what they are doing–be it how they are teaching their children, what they are or aren’t exposing them to, how they are disciplining them, or what else they should be doing.

In regards to the question, “Is there anything I should be doing that I’m not?”, have you applied this to yourself in how you parent?  Have you ever stopped to think what you want your parenting journey to look or be like?  When you first became a parent did you know what you things you want to teach your child–morals, values and beliefs?  Anything you know you don’t want to pass on from your own upbringing?  Do you have time to sit and think about how things are going–what’s going well that you want to continue? Or what you think needs to be added, changed or stopped altogether (like to have your child watching those educational videos or not)?

Give yourself permission to take control of your parenting journey.  Your opportunity to make you parenting journey your own is finite–your kids will be leaving the house before you know it.  Make time to reflect, be proactive and in control–start to figure out what else you should  be doing that you’re not–and no longer fear it.

When and how do you make time to think about your parenting journey?  What changes will you make to get your parenting journey where you want it to be?