How to make Parenting Easy in just 5 Steps
Parenting introduction
A child’s development is heavily influenced by behaviour of their parents.
Acts of reading to infants, talking and enunciating values shape a child’s personality. However, they are not the singular influences, especially at the stage of schooling. It’s important for parents to recognize that their kids come into the world with their own temperaments while they aim to give children a good start. The parents should provide an interface with the world that will eventually prepare a child for complete independence. In this fast pace world, parenting in some ways has become a competitive sport with the art of parenting subject to changing styles and fads.
Parents go overboard which leads to a thing called as overparenting. Overparenting is aiming for perfection while parenting and this might be a mission of the fool’s. Excessive parenting can harm them and render them not able to cope with the smallest setbacks as they slide into adulthood. There is also such a thing as too-little parenting on the contrary, and it is established that poor parental engagement often can lead to bad behavioural outcomes in children. This happens as it forces the children to be excessively reliant on peer culture. Ironically, other styles such as harsh or authoritarian parenting can have a similar effect.
Why it is difficult?
- The cost of Living is very high and keeps rising
From the cost of college tuition rates, gas and to the price of owning a home, expenses are rising at a fast pace.
In this era, while it’s true that wages have increased too, everything costs more and they haven’t increased at a similar rate as living expenses. Life is very expensive these days. Therefore, many people are struggling with respect to finance, and especially those with families to feed, clothe and take care of.
The cost of childcare is high
Likewise, finding affordable childcare is not an easy task. Today’s parents spend over practically their complete salary just to be able to get to work, while once you could pay a babysitter a few dollars an hour. While the need for childcare is ever-present and more parents are working outside the home, affordable childcare is still hard to come by.
The pressure of ‘Doing It All’
We hear a lot about “doing it all,” that is doing a job and having kids and doing both of them perfectly without error. Women especially particular still do most of the home maintenance and childcare and despite them working outside the home at higher rates than ever, it’s not easy. It is extremely tough to manage all of it.
The Pressure to be perfect due to social media
To post, critique and compare is practically in our generation’s DNA. Through the lens of social media, we look at the meticulously filtered lives of others. We can’t help but feel the pressure to be perfect parents.
We think that perhaps we are doing something wrong if our reality feels different when we see others beautiful and happy, smiling families. We think that they don’t share in our day-to-day struggles. Obviously, the truth is we all have marriage, parenting, and life struggles that we don’t share and keep private.
However, it can be challenging to not compare ourselves to others’ picture-perfect lives, and studies have shown that it’s not good for our mental health too.
Today’s Schools are Demanding to parents
The frequency of school functions that take time, energy and organization is a common parental complaint. While occasionally you could get away with a monthly PTA meeting, these days it feels like a school obligation to attend or prepare for is upcoming very frequently.
Similarly, the amount of homework and other school projects that parents need to support have increased. It’s not that we don’t want to be involved parents. The truth is especially for working parents or parents who are home with other children to take care of at home, so many constant commitments become overwhelming.
- We Feel Judged About Our Choices
From bottle feeding, co-sleeping to crib sleeping to breastfeeding, parents these days often complain of feeling more ridiculed and judged about their choices than ever.
We’re more privy to the ways in which other people parent their children with the invention of social media. We are aware about choices others make and what goes on. Often, this leads to parents feeling more shamed because of those choices and judged.
Your kids need to be monitored constantly
Letting your kids run down to the park, hang out in the backyard, or to the house nearby used to be considered normal parenting. However, now we call giving our children any amount of freedom as “free-range parenting.” This is a special term now because most parents these days are still fearful of letting their kids go far away due to the fear of the “unknown”.
How to make it easy in 5 steps.
- When you need your child to do something for you and you expect resistance, try to make it feel like he /she has a say in the matter and their point of view is considered.
- Don’t compare your kids to other kids.
- Remember that most strong-willed kids usually end up being confident and powerful adults.
- Give lots of unsolicited praise and love.
- Keep your own frustration as a parent in check.