I don’t know who needs to hear this (other than me), but just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you NEED to have control over your household and your children.
Let me dive more into that-
When you feel like you need to control situations and people (small people included), it sets you up for immediate failure and anxiety. You cannot control the actions of your children. They are humans. You can only guide them into thinking through situations before they respond to them. How do you guide them into that? By modeling it yourself and responding to their behavior in a mindful manner. How do you get to the point of being able to respond mindfully to them instead of just reacting (which is human nature)? You let go of the need to control. You allow things to ebb and flow and you respond to those things in the same manner. Diminish expectations for things that you cannot control.
It’s hard to do, especially if you were raised in a controlling household yourself as a child. This is a perfect example of reparenting yourself.
Is your house a mess and you feel like you can’t gain control over it? Are your children’s behaviors triggering and overwhelming to you because you feel like you’ve lost control? Is your laundry pile adding up and you feel like you’ll never have control over it?
Because, same.
When I think too hard into trying to have control over EVERYTHING in my life all at once, the anxiety sets in. The fear of failure, which is inevitable when you’re overwhelmed, sets in. That’s when I react to the negative actions of my children, instead of taking my time in responding to the actions mindfully. That’s when I become the parent I’m trying not to be.
Gentle Parenting, or as I call it, Mindful Parenting, isn’t about allowing your children to walk all over you. It’s also not about saving them from alllll of the trauma. They’re going to have trauma. We all do. Your goal is not to put them in a bubble and save them from the world. Your goal is to give them the tools that they need in order to navigate trauma as it comes. Your goal is to work on your own triggers and unpack your own traumas, so you don’t pass those same things onto your children. That’s where it becomes generational.
Anyways, all of that to say -
It’s okay to lose the need to constantly control. Focus on one thing at a time. It’ll help 💛 And if you need me, I’m here and I get it. I’m in the thick of it, too. We’ll get through this together, as a village.
kristin manfredonia
welcomingwaves.com
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