Two parenting tips my wife lives by: Totally on points from start to finish
Right now I’m going to post an interview result with my wife on parenting. She happens to be a nursing school graduate. So I guess it’s relatable thing to ask her about parenting.
Now my wife often times get asked if she has 1 best parenting tip. Although she’s not a parenting expert but here are 2 tips that she lives by and they keep her from wanting to run away from home on really stressful days.
Number 1: Finding the balance between being a strict parent and a fun parent.
My wife wants to raise self sufficient, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate adults that she actually wants to hang out with someday. And that takes strictness, no empty threats, and following through every single time, even when she really, really, really doesn’t feel like it and that's often.
Follow through is so important because it basically lets our child knows whether they can trust her word or not. She believes that if our child can’t trust our word it will not respect you. If your child doesn’t respect you, that’s not good. That’s really bad, really, really, really bad. She also wants to raise creative, spontaneous, life loving adults with a great sense of humor. Now that takes fun, spontaneity, and letting her inner kid come out to play. Balancing between strict and fun is the key. It is everything. It is air. It is water. It is the warm gooey chocolate brownie. It is something she chooses never to live without. Therefore, find that balance!
Parenting tip number 2: Embrace the chaos
Not as simple and frivolous as it sounds. Now, she is not just talking about the physical chaos of parenting. She’s also talking about the mental and emotional chaos of parenting. Here’s the reality, her reality, my reality, our reality. Parenting is insane. It is exhausting. It is complicated. It is happy. It is sad. It is draining. It is fulfilling. It makes her feel like a superhero one second and a total loser the next. It is a circus. It is every possible emotion bottled up, shaken up like a strong cocktail and living in and possibly destroying the brain cells. And she told me she has 3 choices on how to tackle it.
- Work her butt off to clean up the mess. Make it all picture-perfect like she envisioned it years and years ago when she first fantasized about being a mother. Not going to work! Perfection doesn’t work! Plus it’s boring and overrated.
- Run. Arms up she surrenders, she can’t do this anymore. Also not going to work because I know she’s not a quitter so her only choice left is option number 3.
Which is embrace the chaos. Arm herself with a great sense of humor and a good enough attitude. Stop beating herself up. Stop comparing herself to that mom who seems to have it all together and she doesn't even know her. Embrace it all. Knowing that this chapter of her life is going to fly by really quickly.
And the last thing she wants is to look back and think. She was so busy trying to fix everything and make everything better that she completely missed out on actually enjoying any of them. So that’s it. Those are the 2 biggest parenting tips my wife lives by. Find the balance between strict and fun and embrace the chaos.
Now please go hit the follow button on Steemit because I’ll have a brand new article for you everyday and as my wife always says: Do not forget to end this exhausting day with dessert because everything in life should end with dessert.