Parenting is a minefield.
Do this. Don’t do this. Do that. No, don’t do that. Your baby should be doing X. Your child definitely should not be doing Y. Oh wow, is your teenager still doing Z?
There are loads of resources out there to ‘help’ you feel more confused and worse about how you’re doing as a parent.
We don’t need another one.
When you are calm and happy, your child has more chance of being calm and happy and you are more likely to show your child patience when they are not being calm and happy.
Do you know what doesn’t make us calm and happy? Feeling like we’re not doing as good as everyone else. Trying to do things that other people are doing when they don’t feel right to us.
What is this blog about?
This blog aims to help you to work out what feels right for you and what works for your family. It offers you prompts for self-reflection so that you can evaluate how you’re doing by your own standards – not other people’s. And it digs into the feelings your having and guides you to understand and respond to those, rather than react to them.
The questions are aimed at helping you to think about things differently – they are not intended to challenge or undermine you.
Hopefully, you will find more questions than answers. Feeling anxious? Sign up here to receive our free anxiety mini guide.
As well as articles to prompt reflection, you’ll also find pieces discussing my understanding of the theory and research. Therefore, you can feel informed in the decisions you make that feel right to you.
There will also be articles offering ideas for products and activities that I think might be helpful. These will be selected after extensive research, I will only promote things that I really believe in.
What approach do I take?
Experience tells me that, if we focus solely on our own or our children’s behaviour, we will get lost in a maze of high expectations, disappointments, rewards and punishments. Our motivations become external and we lost touch with ourselves and those around us.
As such, I promote compassionate parenting, which I see as being:
- Respectful
- Reflective
- Responsive
It means that we:
- Take responsibility for and respond to our own feelings
- Use boundaries to help everyone to feel safe and contented
- Understand that all behaviour (ours and our children’s) is communication
- Use consequences that respond to that communication, rather than punishing behaviour
My parenting approach is about building relationships that mean that everybody feels safe enough to express whatever is going on for them – even when it’s really difficult stuff.