Grow Happy

WE are the answer our child seeks! 🧡

It’s a question we’ve probably all asked ourselves after a particularly rough day: “Am I a bad parent?”

It’s easy to feel like your parenting skills are below par in a moment when nothing seems to be going your way, and you’ve exhausted your patience completely.

But the fact that you’re concerned about whether you’re making the right parenting choices is a good sign that you’re not, in fact, a bad parent.

Beyond child abuse and neglect, there are also things that parents may do or say that can, even unintentionally, lead to adverse outcomes for a child. Recognising whether you’re doing those things can help you to feel better about your parenting.

Taking an honest assessment of your parenting style isn’t always an easy task. That’s why it’s important to first separate the behaviour from the person.

Although some people disagree on what is “good” or “bad” parenting, most parents have both positive and negative parenting traits.

This Connection over Control series will look deep into undesirable parenting patterns and the affects they have on children.

Mental Healty Awareness Week NZ!

Personal growth is vital for breaking generational trauma in families! Connection is a key principle for parenting positively, but we must learn how to connect with ourselves first!

Connecting with yourself is a skill. To start the week, begin by taking a moment to check in with yourself, acknowledge how you’re feeling and how the last few years of turbulence affected you and your connection with others and the world around you.

Go to your special places you haven’t visited in a while, and set some whāinga/goals for the week ahead.

A few ideas for reconnecting with yourself:

💙Take a moment to ask yourself, ‘how am I feeling today?’ Try speaking out loud to yourself. Hearing your thoughts out loud can help you to clarify what’s going on inside.
💙Grab a pen and paper and write down three things you are grateful for. Taking time to notice and reflect on the things we are thankful for helps us to experience more positive emotions.
💙Get out for a walk, do some yoga or another a physical activity that you enjoy. Moving your body can help calm your mind.
💙Grab a cuppa, sit outside and listen to the sounds around you. Notice how taking a quiet moment for yourself makes you feel.
💙Take a moment for your wairua by trying mindful breathing.

Me too! Growing happy kids means growing as a parent!

❤️❤️ Shelly Robinson - Raising Yourself
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The easy route in parenting in response to our yelling is to blame the child, which is the perfect recipe for creating children who grow up to think they're personally responsible for other people's emotions.

The harder, but more worthwhile route, is to take a deep look at ourselves and become compassionate detectives about why we yell. It's not about criticizing and judging ourselves...no, no, no. Not at all. It's about curiosity and care - and then taking the necessary action to make the internal changes we need to make to reduce our yelling, threatening, and coercing (all things our parents may have done to get us to comply).

♡ If you would like to be kept in the loop on everything Synergetic Play Therapy or get resources to support you on your therapist journey, submit your details here: https://linktr.ee/synergeticplaytherapy ♡

Are you looking for a way to help your child communicate? One of the best ways to help children communicate is to MODEL what to say and HOW to say it.

Have you been in a situation where your child was crying and not telling you what’s the matter? Or is in conflict with another child? Have you used the phrase “use your words”?

When you use the phrase, “use your words” this implies that your child knows what to say and the exact words to use. Your child may or may not know what to say. They might know what to say but when they are upset, they struggle to formulate a sentence in that moment. Your child may not have these words in their vocabulary yet.

I am guilty as a parent and teacher who has said “use your words” all the time. It is another one of those automatic replies in parenting and teaching that just kind of sticks. There is no harm in the phrase but it also has no solution or opportunity to coach children or feed children the language we want to hear.

TRY THIS:

Let’s take the demands off your child when they struggle to communicate they are upset or in conflict.
We can make this moment easier by GUIDING them and COACHING them through it.

The best way to help children communicate is to MODEL what to say and HOW to say it. When you show your child what to say , this builds their skills for the future.

Gift children the language of emotions 😊

Choose CALM over control!

The choice is not an easy one if you as an adult have trouble self-regulating.

Controlling Parents Cannot Regulate Their Emotions

This means they are always on edge and their emotions are always close to erupting. Even minor mishaps and injuries can overwhelm them and, when that occurs, they can break into a unregulated state, which includes yelling.

Underneath this hard shell is often a vulnerable human, who fails to provide nurturing because they never received it themselves. Majority of the time there is a lot of guilt when we erupt in front of or directly towards our children.

Fortunately, with awareness and practice, all of this can be reversed. You may not be able to alter the past or change your parents’ behaviour, but you can manage what you do when you encounter being triggered to yell and reclaim freedom for yourself.

Check out our managing emotions guide, articles and resources on the website 🧡

Risky Play Encourages Resilience and provides great practice for children on how to regulate their emotions.

Children need opportunities to take risks and try things that they have never tried before. To run, climb, jump and to fall, make a mess and to even get the occasional scratch or experience a “learning injury” from time to time.

The decisions that children make and the responsibility that they take for their actions during risky play supports children in developing their autonomy, resilience and sense of agency.

When we support children to take risks we reinforce that we trust them, and will support them with gentle guidance to achieve their goals.

🧡

Your child may not always listen to you, but they are always watching and learning from your actions.

Ohhh ya. Screaming. It's that thing where like, before you had kids you most DEF passed a playground of shrieking kids or a cart full of kids at Target screaming their heads off but you smiled in a, "aww bless your heart" kinda way and moved on with your day.

But now? As parents? For some reason, once that kid becomes OUR kid, the screaming is next.level.triggering.😅

And you know what? This is actually rooted in neuroscience. Loud noises can send off an alarm in us that says "Danger!" and we kick into survival mode: Fight or flight, baby!🤬🏃‍♀️

Yep, if you're totally triggered/bothered/your blood pressure rises when your kid screams, you're not alone, you're not a bad parent, and it's LITERALLY human nature.

So what can we do? First, can we just let you in on a little something that you're not going to love hearing? Screaming is totally, completely, developmentally normal and on track. Kids scream. They scream of sheer joy, they scream when they're upset, they scream to experiment with screaming. Sorry friends, I know this was NOT what you want to hear. Toddlers are literally wired to scream and shout.

BUT, as parents, we can TOTALLY teach our kids certain skills so that your little one has better volume control! How? You have to PRACTICE volume control!

Practicing during the calm times builds up those skills! Why? Each time you practice in a calm time, you strengthen that area of the brain. It’s like brain weight lifting🏋️‍♀️🧠 which means that little muscle will be even stronger and more easily accessible over time for those hard moments!

Here’s how:
✨Turn the volume up!✨ Practice getting loud on purpose!

Then:
✨Turn the volume down✨ Get so quiet that it’s just a whisper🤫

You can do this with a song (making it loud then quiet), with animal noises (lion roar🦁then a mouse squeak🐭), or just with your natural voices (shouting then whispering).

You're building self-awareness + impulse control each time you practice! Have FUN with it!

✨Repost by Big Little Feelings