Overcoming the Challenges of Family Life

I’m going to show my age here, but when I was growing up, “The Brady Bunch” was a popular show on TV. And oh, how I envied those kids in that family which looked nothing like my own. For example,  they lived in a big house, the girls and the boys had their own bathrooms. They always wore “cool” clothes, and hey, they even had a live-in maid. Come on! Those kids had it made in the shade! And yet, even “The Brady’s”, had their fair share of stressful family life issues. 

Well, here we are, at the tail end of October, which means it’s Halloween. Now for me, that has always been the big kickoff to the holiday season, leading to the bigger ones of Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that means family events with brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandma’s and grandpa’s, and of course, the in-laws. Now that’s a lot of different personalities in one spot and the right ingredients for a heaping dose of family tension. So whether you are contending with a Cousin Eddie, a nosy aunt, or a Marie Barone type of mother-in-law, there are ways of dealing with stressful family members.

There’s a good chance that most people can agree on what successful parenting looks like, give or take a few ideas. However, it’s also likely that if you surveyed parents, you would get a wide range of opinions on how to achieve that status. Now, I won’t tell you how to raise your children. But what I can share with you is three ways successful parenting isn’t what you think it is. And here they are:

As adults, we look at kids laughing and playing outside with friends or riding their bike down the road and think, oh, how nice it would be to be a kid again with no worries. We say such things because, over the years, we have forgotten that we as kids did indeed have concerns; they have just faded with time. Of course, our anxieties were different from our parents, but still, the feelings were real. As a well-meaning parent, I’m sure you want to protect your anxious child from their fears. But, you’ll want to be careful not to overprotect them because that can actually make anxiety worse. So here are some things you can do to help your child’s anxiety.  

If I could only give one piece of parenting advice for new parents, it would be this. Take one day at a time. Yes, you will make mistakes. Learn to forgive yourself. And trust your instincts. No one knows your baby as you do.