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You’re not alone. Every parent has moments that we look back on and wonder why we lost our cool like that. Maybe it's an afternoon where you’re feeling extra irritable or “ triggered” by your kids' normal behaviors. Maybe it's a single episode of exploding at your kid when they make a mistake and then regretting it. Sometimes we find ourselves in a longer season of coming across as the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”.
I personally have an ongoing frustration with my oldest child who is now technically an adult, as he just celebrated his 18th birthday. For as long as he has been going to school, he has struggled with being ready to leave on time. I know he's capable of getting up and leaving on time because this fall when his football coach made it clear that arriving on time for school was a requirement for being eligible to play in the Friday night game, he did whatever it took to hot-foot it out of the house in time. But now, the football season is done and that external motivator isn't there. We are back to frustrating mornings of poor time management. I've tried many approaches to help him succeed. The most recent approach has been letting him choose to be late for school and explain it to the teachers himself. The end result was that he was late for school everyday for a week! I'm not seeing him learning from his mistakes quite yet 🫤 Today he was late again, and I became a “mad mom.” Can you think of your last angry parent moment? What led up to it? Usually it's a combination of factors. Something in our kids' behaviors, what they do or don't do, what they say or don't say, gets under our skin. But how resilient we are to these frustrations and our ability, in the moment, to pause and think of the response we want to have rather than reacting on our first impulse has a lot to do with how well our own basic needs are being met. When we have unmet needs we are going to feel more irritable, frustrated, impatient and inflexible, just like our kids feel when they have unmet needs. So the next time you find yourself feeling like the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”, consider these possible unmet needs and how you can meet them to help you stay more balanced and regulated.
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 How do you feel when you think about the fact that summer is at least half way done? It's ok to have mixed feelings about it. Summer can hold so many fun things, swimming, picnics, parks, fireworks, fairs! At the same time, for my family and lots of families that I work with, there is some summer burnout that happens around this point.
Summer burnout can happen for kids and for parents. It might be kids feeling a bit bored and starting to feel that all this time off is getting old. It might be parents feeling tired of all the driving to activities, or juggling their work while kids are at home, or navigating siblings fighting or whining. Here are a few ideas to help you enjoy this second half of summer, block burnout and build some more fun memories:
One of my parenting goals for 2023 is to be mindful of changing my job title from "Mom the Manager" to "Mom the Consultant" for my oldest child. At 17 years old and a junior in high-school, the reality that my son is almost legally an adult is hitting me.
My son deals with ADHD (and is very open with sharing that with others). As a result of weaknesses in certain executive functioning skills, over the years I've become accustomed to operating sort of like his "manager". He struggled with time management, so I helped keep him on track. He forgot things, so I doubled checked on them and reminded him. He got distracted easily, so I adjusted things to help with attention. He procrastinated on big projects, so I helped him break them down. and so on, and so on... All of these things had their time and place. But now, his skills are improving. His time management, active memory, attention and task initiation are getting better. I need to adjust my role from being his "manager", the one who makes sure it all gets done right, and on time... to being there as a "consultant". As a consultant I can still be present for him, but I also need to step back and allow him to take full ownership. Maybe that sounds easy to you, but it's taking lots of mindfulness for me to change roles. Of course, it's easy when I think things are going well, and he's "managing" effectively. It's much much harder when I feel like his use (or misuse) of time is leading towards unpleasant results for him. If you have an older child, and feel like you might want to move into the role of "consultant", rather than "manager" here are a few things that are helping me. I want to invite you to join me in the "Phone Down Challenge" for two weeks. Phone away for one hour a day Here's what it looks like: *Put your phone down for one hour in the afternoon when you're with your child/ children Sounds simple, but we know it is likely to be hard. Stick with me. When: an ideal time to do the phone down challenge is when you reconnect with your kids after school or after your work day. If your kids are home with you all day, choose an hour, maybe after quiet time. Practical tips: *turn the phone to silent if possible or use a "focus" setting, allowing calls from only your key contacts *put the phone out of sight so you're not distracted by it Benefits: *create new patterns *increased connection with your kids *a chance for your mind to focus on just one thing, rather than multi-tasking *increased peace and decreased frazzled feelings *modeling for your kids You've probably heard many times that we are more "connected" to others now than at any other time in history, YET people are feeling more alone. This isn't just a cute saying, "more connected, yet more alone", it's real. It's happening in our homes, as we repeatedly pick up and stare at our phones, rather than give our loved ones our full attention, our loving eye contact, our time and connection. What might we be missing, as we check our social media on the side as our child is telling us about their day, or when we skip sitting down together for a meal or snack so we can get one more thing done on our device? Our kids are learning by our example. It's sort of sad to see a row of parents staring at their phones at a park, rather than interacting with their kids, or a mom feeding her baby while scrolling her phone. Those moments of loving eye contact and connection matter. Our kids will be better equipped to have successful future relationships if we take the time now to show them what healthy connection looks like. Honestly, our phones distract us from doing this. Of course there are lots of great things our phones can do, I'm not suggesting we throw them away. But this challenge is about being more mindful. The benefits of putting the phone down for one hour a day will far out weight the inconvenience. This challenge is for me as well. I can get sucked into the trap of trying to get one more thing done on my phone, and somehow prioritize that, over connecting with my child. I need to be mindful. I hope you will join me. My expectation is that you'll start to see the benefits in these two weeks, and I hope you will want to continue with the Phone Down Challenge. But for now...can you commit to the challenge for two weeks? Click the button and say "I'm in" Here's a quick link to a video about the phone down challenge:
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AuthorDana Parisi Archives
November 2023
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