Reduce parenting frustrations

Do you continually find yourself frustrated with your little one? Before looking at your child, take a moment to look at yourself. Are you in control? Are you able to pause and regulate your emotions before responding to your child in a stressful situation?

It’s never easy, especially when you throw all of those day-to-day adult struggles on top of trying to respond calmly to your child who’s having their fourth meltdown of the day, if only you knew they wanted their cereal in the yellow bowl and not the red bowl.

If you need help try focusing on two things. Firstly, the expectations you’re setting for your child. As with anything in life, if our expectations are way off, if we set the bar too high, then we’re the ones setting ourselves up for disappointment and this is true when it comes to parenting. Are you expecting your two-year-old to communicate their frustration and anger effectively? Because as stressful as it is, right now, lashing out might be the only way they how to communicate these emotions, but they’ll get there, in time, they just need to learn how to regulate and communicate these big emotions effectively. Are you expecting your one-year-old to know that the freshly painted wall wasn’t for drawing on? Impulse control takes time to develop, if they find a pen and there’s a huge canvas available, then it’s going to be drawn on. But we can avoid this by working with them. Reacting negatively in these situations will only escalate a situation. If we can find our pause and respond calmly, then we put ourselves in a great position to redirect our child’s seemingly “destructive” behaviour and help teach them what appropriate behaviour looks like.

This leads us to the perception of behaviour. How do you see your child? Do you see their challenging behaviour as destructive or naughty? Or do you see them as doing the best they can with the brain they have? Both of these help us with our emotions, and the three work together to put us in a position to respond to our child.

Our expectations, perception and emotions make up the first 3 modules of my course, The Calm Parent. Feel free to check it out and click here to claim your 10% discount.