After coaching parents for ten years and working in the field of parenting for close to twenty-five years, I’ve decided to move my focus from parenting to relationships.  I’m particularly interested in married people (or people living common-law) who have children.  More and more I’ve come to realize that parenting is far more than just knowing how to discipline.  Of course that’s part of it but it’s not everything.  Parenting is also what’s going on in our lives because the way we live our lives, is what we teach our kids.  When they grow up they will copy what they lived.  It’s not the things we told them that will have the biggest impact, it’s what they witnessed. We are their role models for everything.

I’ve worked with several parents privately who initially came to me with parenting challenge but in the end. more than half of our time together was spent addressing what was going on in their personal life.  Often it was their marriage that was in trouble.  If things are not going well between the parents, the whole family feels it.  Often anger and frustration is taken out on the kids or parents are fighting a lot in front of them.  No one intends to fight in front of the kids, it just happens and often things escalate.

Our kids want and deserve to live in a home that feels safe, comfortable, loving and secure.  When parents are fighting all the time it feels far from safe and loving.  It makes kids feel insecure and it threatens their foundation.  It can be very frightening and confusing.  Why is everyone so angry?  They don’t understand but what they do know is that it doesn’t feel very good.

Parenting starts with us.  We can read all the books and have all the latest gadgets that promise to make our lives easier but if our most important relationships are in trouble, none of that matters.  The relationship parents have with each other is a huge contributing factor to the climate of the household.  How we relate to each other is what we teach our kids.  How we resolve our differences is what we teach our kids.  How loving and respectful we are to each other is what we teach our kids.

I  have been married for nearly twenty-eight years which feels like a big accomplishment in a society where there is a fifty percent divorce rate.  We don’t have a perfect marriage and it hasn’t always been easy.  We’ve  had our share of challenges but we’ve weathered them.  Through some outside help and a lot of reflection, dialogue, reading, self-evaluation and trying new ways of doing things, we got through the worst of it.  We both had to make some big changes. I will say with certainty, that it’s all been worth it.

I’m looking forward to working with parents who are experiencing some challenges in their marriage or relationship and want to consider coaching rather than therapy to help them work through some of their issues.  Parenting starts with us. It’s our responsibility to create the home environment our kids deserve.

When you have children they should always come first.  Is that what you were taught?  Is that what you believe?  What happens when the kids always come first and you come last? Do your kids get to see the best of you?

I’ve worked with many, many parents (mostly mothers) who tell me when they take time out for themselves they feel guilty.  They feel guilty even when they’ve left their kids in the care of someone they know and trust; often the other parent.  They admit though that a night out with girlfriends, or taking a class, or participating in a sport makes them feel refreshed and renewed.  They have a better perspective on life and more patience.

When we put everyone’s needs ahead of our own, we start to feel something is missing in our lives and resentment takes over.  A lot of moms tell me they’ve lost their sense of humor, they don’t have the patience they thought they would have and they’re yelling a lot.  I’ve heard:  ” I never thought I’d be this way.”  When I hear that I know right away, they’ve completely bought into the notion that kids have to always come first.  The truth is, in order to be the parent we want to be, and present the best of ourselves to the people we love the most, we have to put ourselves first.  This does not mean at the expense of our kids, it means FOR our kids.

Am I telling you to neglect your kids so you can go out and have fun?  Of course not.  Taking time out for you, now requires planning.  You can no longer be spontaneous in the way you could be, before.  It requires prioritizing.  It means giving up some things in favor of nurturing your mind, body and spirit.

I’ve given many, many workshops on this very topic and when I ask my audience how many people feel they have no life, about ninety percent raise their hand.  My next question is “How does it feel to have no life?”  The answers I get are:  resentful, jealous of those who have a life, angry, frustrated….”  I tell my audience that when you walk around with those feelings, that’s what you project on to your children.  My next question is always: “What would it feel like if you had a life?” The answers I get are:  I’d be more fun, more loving, more patient, less irritable….”.  Don’t your kids deserve to experience you that way?  How do you want them to remember you as a parent?

Guest Post by Brianna Kelly

Proper nutrition is important as kids grow, and snack time should be just as healthy and delicious as breakfast, lunch and dinner. Instead of reaching for something packaged and processed, parents can make the best of this opportunity by creating healthy and delicious snacks that will keep kids (and their bellies) happy and full until dinner.

Snack time accounts for about 10-15% of kids’ daily calories, so why not take the opportunity to include fruits and veggies? Adding a (healthy!) dip is a great way to get kids more excited about eating fruits and vegetables. Hummus is delicious for dipping vegetables like carrots, celery and peppers. Made from chickpeas, hummus is high in fiber and protein. When kids are craving something sweet, use yogurt for dipping grapes, apple slices and strawberries. Make sure the yogurt contains live active cultures, and try to avoid anything with too much added sugar. Greek yogurt is best for a protein-packed snack, but the tangy flavor may deter kids from eating it. Add a little honey for added sweetness without adding sugar or artificial sweeteners.

Healthy snacks are an important part of helping children develop healthy eating habits and a regular eating schedule. Many nutritionists recommend eating five small meals a day rather than three large ones. Well-portioned snacks between meals can help children make a habit of grazing throughout the day, and encouraging nutritious snacks will allow them to develop a healthy relationship with food. They will also learn that healthy food can be tasty food at an early age, building a foundation for healthy eating habits as adults.

Healthy snacking also provides a great opportunity for kids and parents to spend time together. Allowing kids to help choose and make their own food is a great learning experience, and parents can make it a lot of fun! Funky utensils (like colorful plates and crazy straws) are a great place to start, but there are lots of options for parents to get kids involved in making fun and delicious snacks. Baking is a fun activity for parents to share with kids, and it’s easy to make healthy varieties of classics. Zucchini bread and sweet potato muffins make a sweet treat filled with vegetable nutrition and plenty of fiber. Kids will love the taste – and helping out in the kitchen. Sweet potatoes can also be sliced up and baked in the oven for a healthy alternative to potato chips that your kids will be proud of making. Investing in a few cookie cutters can also make snack time fun as parents and children cut out playful shapes for healthy snacks.

Portion control is also a vital component of healthy snacking. Younger children require less calories, with toddlers only needing about 1,200 calories per day. Once children reach the double digits, gender plays a role in calorie requirements, and girls require less calories than boys. A child’s activity level also greatly affects how many calories he or she needs. Although it can be fun to make snacks together, having pre-portioned snacks on hand can be perfect for times when parents and children are on the go.

Remember that while healthy snacking is great, everyone needs an indulgence – especially kids. Don’t make treats entirely off limits – it will only make children crave them more. It’s OK to go out for ice cream or have a cookie after dinner, and by making these foods accessible (in limited quantities,) children will be more willing to eat healthy snacks. With a little creativity, healthy snacks can become a main ingredient in every child’s daily meal plan.

About the Author: Brianna Kelly has over 5 years experience publishing articles on childcare education and parenting. She writes on a regular basis for Giraffe Childcare, who has 18 locations based in Dublin, Ireland.

I was leading a workshop the other day and we got into a discussion about the importance of letting our kids fail.  You might be saying to yourself:  “What?!!  Aren’t we supposed to be guiding them towards success?”.  Yes, a big part of our job is to guide them towards success but all successful people have experienced failure; some much more than others.  What made them successful is that they weren’t afraid to fail and if they did, they just learned from their mistakes and moved on.  They didn’t allow themselves to be defeated by rejection, hurt or disappointment.

I often tell groups the story of my daughter’s Grade 8 year in High School when she refused to apply herself in Math.  Her marks were poor and she didn’t seem to care.  We offered to hire a tutor for her but she would have no part of it and my husband who is excellent in Math, promised to sit with her and help with all her homework assignments.  She would have no part of that either.  We had done our part in offering help so the rest was up to her.  We decided that we were just going to have to let her fail.  When looking at the big picture, I knew it would not have a big impact on her ability to meet all her requirements for graduation and at this stage she could easily catch up.  When her marks came at the end of the school year, she did indeed fail Math and had to go to summer school in order to take  Math 9 in the fall.  Getting yourself to school for 9am every morning for a month during the summer when all your friends are still in bed is not fun.  My daughter was determined to pass this time and decided to apply herself so she could be with her friends for Math 9 in the fall.   We allowed her to experience the consequence of not trying and refusing help which turned out to be the best thing.  Her marks from then on stayed well above average.

I asked my group:  “How many of you have never been rejected or disappointed? “  Of course no one raised their hand.  We’ve all experienced rejection, heart ache, disappointment and failure.  It’s part of living.  What’s important is that we know how to effectively handle the disappointments and rejections and not feel completely defeated by them.  We can’t see ourselves as failures and then lose the motivation to keep going.  If we don’t let our kids experience failure or disappointment, they don’t learn how to handle it when it eventually comes their way.    Our kids need to hear things like:  “I know it was tough, but you got through it” or “Kids can be mean sometimes but you really handled that well” or “Think of what you learned from making that mistake” or “I know you’ll get through this.”

We do our kids no justice by protecting them from hurt and disappointment.  It’s hard to see them upset.  No one likes it and it hurts us.  We must though give them the tools to rise above their failures.  It’s through adversity that we grow the most.  There is no highly successful person on the planet who didn’t experience a lot of hurt and rejection before they got to where they are now.  Avoiding any kind of pain and always playing it safe, prevents us from becoming the person we’re meant to be.

I’ve been working with a couple of the past few weeks to try and determine the source of their three year old’s temper tantrums. In order to effectively eliminate  the tantrums or decrease the frequency, we have to first of all discover the source.

We know one of the most common reasons children act out is to get attention. That’s always the first thing we look at. Are we physically there but not emotionally? Are we paying too much attention to an infant sibling and forgetting to acknowledge the first born? Are we spending too much time in front of a screen and spending very little time fully engaging with our child?

Another thing I always like to look at is the child’s routine. Especially with very young children, are they being fed small amounts of food, frequently? Are they getting enough sleep and down time? Are too many activities being crammed into the day and at the end of the day you’re dealing with a child who is over-stimulated?

Another very common reason for a tantrum is when a child kicks and screams to get what she/he wants and out of pure exhaustion, we give in. In that case we’re likely to get more because they’ve learned this is a way to get what they want.

We have a very different approach to parenting than a generation ago when parents were much less involved and things were very black and white. Also, we didn’t have a situation where in most households both parents worked outside the home. Today, we’re much more involved and many parents who are away from their children for long periods try and make up for their absence by being fully present every minute they’re with them. This can create a “As long as I’m with Mom and Dad I can get what I want, when I want and I’m in charge”. Exhausted parents can easily give in to demands because it’s easier. By doing so, in the long run, we send a message of entitlement. Children learn they have a right to demand anything they want. Of course that isn’t our intention when we allow ourselves to respond to every beck and call. However, when we choose to respond a certain way to our children, we always want to ask ourselves “What am I teaching? What message am I sending?” Make sure the message you’re sending is going to serve them in the long run. It is not in a child’s best interest when they’re in charge, and not the parents.

For those of you who follow my blog, I apologize for the big gap from my last post to now. Thank you for sticking with me!

Valentine’s Day is upon us which is a time we’re reminded to acknowledge the people we love. Many will argue it’s become far too commercialized and maybe it has. We can though, with some imagination, express love to someone without spending a lot of money. You don’t have to step foot in a card or flower shop to acknowledge your love in a meaningful way.

Valentine’s Day also gives us an opportunity to think about the whole topic of love; how it’s expressed and what it means to really love someone. As parents, apart from providing food and shelter, our biggest responsiblity to our children is to love them; and to love them unconditionally. We are asked to love them even when they’re not so loveable. There are times when we might say: “I love you very much, but today I don’t really like you.” Even if we’ve been up and down all night long with them, we still love them.

All parents will say they love their children and would do anything for them. Some children though will say they don’t feel loved. It may be because they perceive their sibling gets more positive attention than they do, or there is a lot of focus on the things they’re doing wrong. Notice that I’ve used the word “perceive”. It’s not because they really are not loved, it’s because they don’t receive it in the way it was intended.

In order to truly love another, we have to first love ourselves. We simply can’t give what we don’t have. If we have poor boundaries, don’t take proper care of ourselves, put ourselves down constantly for things we do or say, we’re not expressing love to the most important person in our lives. In order to freely express love to another person, we have first of all know how to love ourselves. By doing so, we also teach our kids to do the same. The more we love and honor who we are, the more we can love and honor who are kids are.

When asked what we ultimately want for our kids, most of will say “We just want them to be happy”. It seems like an obvious goal but how many of us really understand how to get there? I decided to ask another parenting expert and someone who specializes in teaching parents how to raise happy adults.  I am delighted to introduce Patrick McMillan owner of KidsCanDoAnything.com who agreed to be interviewed on the topic of happiness and kids.

Q.  Most parents say they just want their kids to be happy.  How do you define happiness?

A.  Happiness I believe does not have a “one-size-fits-all” definition because joy, love, excitement, accomplishment, contentment, optimism or any emotion for that matter can only be felt by the individual and come from within, so what causes one person to feel positive emotion may not necessarily be the same for others.

I believe the word “happy” is used as an overall positive assessment of who we are.  Saying “I am happy” is saying that at the very core of our spiritual being, which is where happiness resides, (the “self”) we feel more positive and satisfied than negative and dissatisfied.  We are content and pleased with our present selves, our past experiences and we look with anticipation to our future.

Q.   Do you think some kids are just happier than others, by nature?

A.    I do believe in the “set point” theory of happiness in that we possess a genetic set point for happiness and emotional wellbeing.  However given more recent studies we can in fact rise above and sustain higher levels of happiness regardless of our “genetic set point” for happiness, which also is thought to alter the genetics of our children and future generations. I believe nature and the entire Universe is always in a state of growth and change.  However I also believe the rub here is that for our children to benefit from lasting happiness it is up to us, their parents to take the lead role in modeling happiness for our children.

Q.  If a parent comes to you whose child is generally miserable, what would be the first thing you would look at if they asked for your advice?

A.  The first thing I would look at in the case of the miserable child is the parent’s level of happiness, or in this case the likely unhappiness in their life and how they explain their own life events (i.e. optimistically or pessimistically)   I believe that a child’s lack of emotional control can usually attributed to their parent’s level of emotional literacy and their ability, or inability to model emotional literacy and to “emotion coach” their child to help foster emotional intelligence.

Q.  Do you consider yourself happy?

A.   Yes I do consider myself very happy, but I also believe the unhappiness I have experienced in my life has allowed me to understand what happiness really means to me and to embrace it more every single day.

Q.  Has it been a process for you?

A.   Oh yes! It has been so much more than a process.  It has been and still is a daily ongoing journey of learning, growing and forming new habits of thought and actions.  But I must point out that though it has not always been easy and I, like everyone else, have faced huge life changing challenges along the way, putting forth the emotional effort to make a conscious choice to see things in a different and positive way has benefitted myself and my children in remarkable ways.

Q.   How are your own kids influenced by your happiness?

A.   Modeling happiness by making a conscious choice to BE happier is teaching my kids that we have a choice to react to situations in our lives in ways that empower and motivate us.  They have also learned that our own happiness is enhanced when we help others be happy.  In fact my eldest son who is in 8^th grade has become the “go to” guy in his circle of friends when they need advice or cheering up.  He was actually credited by a friend for saving her life when she was contemplating suicide.  I honestly couldn’t be a more proud father.

Q.  We want our kids to feel good about who they are.  How can parents contribute to that feeling of worth we want them to have?

A.  There are several ways to help our kids feel great about “who” they are and have stable, positive self-esteem and I believe one of the most important is based on the concept of developing a “growth mindset” which is to help our children recognize that it is with effort and commitment and we can achieve what we really want and who we want to be.  By recognizing it is with the effort and commitment to achieve a goal or aspiration we learn our destiny is not “fixed” or based on innate ability or talent but rather our desire and commitment to do what it takes for success.  But another equally as important thing we can do for our children is to help them understand that mistakes and failures must happen and they truly do contain  all the opportunity for growth and learning to become who we truly want to be.  By sharing how I have learned from my own mistakes and failures and how I cope with adversity is how I continue to model for my kids to do the same for themselves.

Q.  When you hear about kids being depressed, what factors do you think contribute to their depression?

A.  There are many factors that will contribute to child’s sadness, anxiety and even full blown depression but these negative emotional states are all based upon negative and pessimistic thinking and reacting, and this way of thinking is learned from parents, teachers and other important grown-ups in a child’s life.

I also believe that what makes a child unhappy is to see his mom or dad unhappy.  With my children I know this is true so therefore I believe one of the best things I can do to see happy kids is to be happy myself.  This way of thinking has helped my children tremendously as my wife and I went through our divorce.

Q.  How much of an impact does our environment have on our happiness?

A.  Happiness researcher and Professor of Psychology Sonja Lyubomirski from the University of California at Riverside explains in her book, The How of Happiness, the three factors that research has  determined how happy we are in a three piece “pie chart”.  According to studies using identical and fraternal twins raised separately, among many other studies, research has determined that 50% of how happy or unhappy we are is determined by our genetic blueprint and is, for the most part, unchangeable. Only 10% (just a sliver) is a result of our environment and life circumstances like our health, wealth, marriage, kids, possessions, etc., and changing our life‘s circumstances is not the key to happiness because these things are not completely in our control. We do however get to choose to react to the situations and circumstances in our life, which is the next piece of the pie. The remaining 40% (nearly half of the pie) of your happiness and I believe the most important part, depends on your own choice and voluntary actions toward doing what it takes to think and feel happier. However, it must be stressed that to become happier does take effort.  Nothing good comes without effort and becoming happier takes focus and commitment but will eventually become “who we are”, and one of the most wonderful side effects of our effort is to see our kids follow in our happy footsteps.

Q.  How important are friendships for our kids to feel happy?

A.  Friendships and social connection play an extremely influential part in happiness for all human beings and giving our children opportunities to develop friendships will benefit them throughout life.  But I have found that we need to be there for our children to help them understand how important it is to feel positive and happy about ourselves and “who we are” first which will inevitably attract more meaningful and long lasting friendships into our life.

Q.  I often tell parents it’s not our job to ensure our kids are happy all the time.  How do you feel about that?

A.  I completely agree!  In fact we would be doing our children a great disservice if we were to imply that one is even capable of being happy all the time.  There are very important reasons human beings were endowed with the ability to feel the wide range of emotions we feel and our survival is a core reason.  This in fact was one the main reasons I wrote An Exercise in Happiness© (An Emotional Fitness Program for Kids) which I originally wrote to teach my children about how their emotional system works in order to develop more control over it.

As I mentioned above I also believe the unhappiness I have experienced in my life has allowed me to understand what happiness really means to me and to embrace it every single day.  It would be impossible to really understand what brings out happiness from within us if we don’t know or understand what unhappiness feels like.

Also knowing and understanding “cause and effect” allows us to see that happiness and unhappiness are the “effects” of some “cause” and that cause can be boiled down to only one thing…How we think!

Q.  What else can you tell us about happiness as it relates to our kids?

A.   Happiness I believe really comes down to experiencing more positive emotions throughout life than negative.  How we react and respond through thought to the experiences and circumstances in our life will ultimately determine how we can asses our lives as either happy or unhappy, satisfied or unsatisfied and whether we can look back on our lives more joy and happiness than regret or sadness.

With that being said we can look at our choice to raising happy kids like putting our oxygen mask on first when flying in a plane and the cabin looses air pressure.  We would be unable to help our kids if we become disoriented from lack of oxygen ourselves.  So I look at my own happiness like “emotional oxygen” and by providing more to myself allows me to provide it to my children and they learn to create more for themselves.  It’s like a “happiness feedback loop” in that when I become happier, so do my kids, which in turn makes me happier, and so on…

Links:

My free ebook for kids:  The Ultimate Kids Guide to Happiness

http://www.happierkidsnow.com

An Exercise in Happiness:

https://backbone.infusionsoft.com/go/kcda3-5/Patrick/

Happier Kids Blog:

http://www.happierkidsnow.com/blog

Recently I’ve spoken to a few parents who started their parenting journey later in life.  They’re in their forties and have preschoolers.  In the simpliest terms, they’re exhausted and frustrated.   Do they regret their decision to become parents ?  No.  They’re doing their best  working at full-time  jobs outside the home and meeting the many demands of parenting young children.

There are times in life when the best decision we can make is just to embrace what is, rather than what we’d like.  If you’re forty-five, you probably don’t have the same kind of energy you had at twenty-five.  That’s just the way it is and comparing yourself to a parent twenty years your junior isn’t fair.  You do though offer things a younger parent can’t, simply because they don’t have the life experience.  We learn the most about life by living life.  The longer we’ve lived, the more we’ve learned.  We’ve made a lot of mistakes and learned some valuable lessons.  Older parents pass all of that on to their children.

Our children deserve to experience the best of us.  Often our co-workers and friends see our best side but the people who matter the most get a watered down version of who we really are.  We therefore owe it to the people we love to conciously nurture our mind, body and spirit, and we’re all nurtured in different ways.  If you’re an older parent who feels pressured to get down on the floor and play with your three year old or plan a designer birthday party but the whole idea leaves you drained and feeling resentful, no one benefits.  When we push ourselves to do things that other people do, but it’s not really who we are, we’re more likely to get easily irritated and bothered by small things that in difference circumstances may not phase us. Those are the times we yell and nag and at the end of the day feel guilty for how we acted.

What our kids want from us is our presence.  They want to feel loved and nurtured.  We don’t have to be keeping up with what other people are doing to be a good parent.  If someone has told you they don’t allow their children to watch TV, it doesn’t mean that’s right and you should do the same.  If you’ve read a book that suggests activities to do with your preschooler and most of them feel uncomfortable to you, don’t do them.  Go with what feels right for you.  A parent who is calm and relaxed is much nicer to be around than one who is stressed and feeling resentful.  If you simply don’t have the energy to do the things you feel you “should” be doing,  give yourself permission to do what you can.  This is not a competition.  If some evenings sitting on the couch with your four year old and watching a TV show together is all you can manage, do just that. Your child will love the closeness and just feeling your love and warmth will be enough.