Recognizing What is Happening Rather Than What “Should Be”
This year feels like collective mourning for all of us. Vacations lost, lives lost, jobs lost, homes lost – to the pandemic, the fires, the protesting, the hurricanes.
Comparing where we are now to where we think we
should be or
would have been if not for all this pesky apocalypse-feeling stuff is so easy.
But when we succumb to comparison misery, we’re not only being much harder on ourselves than is productive, but we’re missing out on
where we actually are.
And where we actually are might be spending much more time together than we ever thought possible, getting to watch our children socialize and learn right before our very eyes, and being available to support them in a way we hadn’t been before.
That is
historic. It’s immense. And if we’re not careful, we might miss it
Remaining the Adult in the Room
You’re suffering, too.
You’re confused, out of your depth, and frustrated, too.
When your child is acting irrationally, refusing to cooperate, or melting down, it can be tempting to join them in the muck and unravel.
But you’re the adult in the room. Stressfully reacting to your children will only reinforce the senselessness your children are already feeling.
That might mean enforcing self-care time for you so that you’ve got the internal resources to keep your head on straight, training yourself to interpret misbehavior as a request for extra love and attention, or counting to 10 before you have any reaction at all.
The most important thing for your children while they navigate online schooling and a different world than they’ve ever known is that
you don’t stop being the port in the storm.
They need to know that you’ll love them through this frustration, and that together, you’ll stay whole.
Fall semester 2020 is certainly no walk in the park…
And everyone has different ideas about how to handle it. What we all have in common, however, is that we want to
raise healthy kids.
That was already a challenge before the pandemic shut the world down and forced us to reevaluate our parenting. Now?
It can feel like Sisyphus pushing his eternal boulder up a hill.
If you feel like you could use some extra support navigating our new normal as a parent, Pedram and his wife designed a course to help parents struggling to do the right thing for their kids – just like they are.
Click here to find out more about it.