Parenting is exhausting! Fighting toddlers who have amazing resilience, keeping up with schoolwork, teaching manners, interacting, softball, music lessons, a gazillion birthday parties, and having an adult life somewhere in between…whew! Now multiply that with two, three, or four kids, a job, limited income, personal demons, and only 24 hours in a day!
I’ve only scratched the surface of challenges facing a parent, especially a single parent. So it’s not too difficult to imagine that we can miss some things. In my book, The Power of Dadhood, I talk about challenges faced by fathers, kids, and the family unit. One of the challenges all three encounter is time. Not just having time for one’s self, but having time available for everyone in the family at the same time.
This introduction above is intended to give you some pause to reflect on the more time-intensive, less tangible tasks of motherhood and fatherhood, i.e. shaping and preparing an individual - an individual very important to you - for life and success. It is essential for a parent to know their child’s strengths and weaknesses. Parents are on the front line in this endeavor and are usually the most concerned and hopeful for their children.
While teaching kids to clean up after themselves, eat their peas, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, you can’t just stop there. But many parents do often stop there for the reasons of being so busy. Like the tourist attraction in your town that you never go to because you can go tomorrow, the similar is true for teaching your children life lessons. Somehow the opportunity (tomorrow) rarely comes.
I’ve only scratched the surface of challenges facing a parent, especially a single parent. So it’s not too difficult to imagine that we can miss some things. In my book, The Power of Dadhood, I talk about challenges faced by fathers, kids, and the family unit. One of the challenges all three encounter is time. Not just having time for one’s self, but having time available for everyone in the family at the same time.
This introduction above is intended to give you some pause to reflect on the more time-intensive, less tangible tasks of motherhood and fatherhood, i.e. shaping and preparing an individual - an individual very important to you - for life and success. It is essential for a parent to know their child’s strengths and weaknesses. Parents are on the front line in this endeavor and are usually the most concerned and hopeful for their children.
While teaching kids to clean up after themselves, eat their peas, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, you can’t just stop there. But many parents do often stop there for the reasons of being so busy. Like the tourist attraction in your town that you never go to because you can go tomorrow, the similar is true for teaching your children life lessons. Somehow the opportunity (tomorrow) rarely comes.
An article I wrote “Confidence or Determination”, is an example of giving thought to helping a child, your child, who lacks something you can hopefully correct. In my article, the weaknesses are ‘confidence’ or ‘determination’. What happens if your child has one and not the other, or lack both! Other areas to watch for are fear, peer pressure, and attitude. All people, let alone kids, are impacted by these human qualities.
This article will not give you more time. There is only so much to go around. A 24 hour day will not grow to 25 hours nor will 12 months in a year become 13 months. What you can do is evaluate and prioritize! Stop and smell the cautions that you may be ignoring. I hope you can take three to four minutes to read “Confidence or Determination” with gratitude to Dr. James Sutton, a Child Psychologist and founder of “The Changing Behavior Network”, who allowed me to publish on his forum and giving professional credibility to my thoughts.
This article will not give you more time. There is only so much to go around. A 24 hour day will not grow to 25 hours nor will 12 months in a year become 13 months. What you can do is evaluate and prioritize! Stop and smell the cautions that you may be ignoring. I hope you can take three to four minutes to read “Confidence or Determination” with gratitude to Dr. James Sutton, a Child Psychologist and founder of “The Changing Behavior Network”, who allowed me to publish on his forum and giving professional credibility to my thoughts.
