Parenting Instructions

Thoughts & Reflections

We put together a few of our top tips to make parenting a bit easier.

What to do when…

… your child won’t get dressed.
Breathe.
…yesterday’s favorite meal is today’s arch enemy.
Breathe.
… those first words finally, suddenly, joyfully emerge.
Breathe.

What to do when…
…the fever won’t break. The teeth won’t come in. You just can’t figure out what’s wrong.
Breathe.
…this is absolutely the perfect day. The joy is palatable. The giggling doesn’t stop.
Breathe.

What to do when…
…siblings are best friends. There’s only happy noises coming from the back seat. Spontaneous sharing, affection, and care emerge naturally.
…pride covers her face. A tough task is accomplished. You can see the growth and change happening in your child before your eyes.
…the frustration is clear. The shoelaces are impossible. Walking is almost but not quite there.

Breathe.

This too shall pass. The perfect and the hair pulling. It is all universal. This moment, endless in frustration and endless in bliss, will go, and will soon be a memory.

Thankfully, it is human nature to remember with a spotlight the beautiful moments, the highlights reel, and to casually forget the pain, the struggle.

It is all important. It is all temporary. It is all fleeting.

As Maria Montessori writes, “The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul.”

All the experiences are internalized. When you were fully present and the perfect afternoon lasted for days. When you’re called “mean” for enforcing bedtime, and you continue to enforce it, including reading a book. When you were human and there was just one too many things going sideways and you, too, had real, human emotions in front of your child. When you allowed yourself to be vulnerable. When you held your head above the fray. When you treated others with kindness and compassion even when it wasn’t reflected back. When you said yes to one more treat, one more book, one more hug. When you said no.

This is all happening. All these experiences, the tens, the zeroes, and everything in between, the perfect vacations that went exactly as planned, the serendipitous moments that left you awestruck, the days that left you in a daze, the thoughts you reflect back on and cringe; a child is learning how to be compassionate, how to make mistakes, how to be in relationship, how to move forward, how to appreciate, how to remember fondly, just as the adult is learning how to be a parent, how to dig deep, how to feel overflowing joy and love, how to not have things go their way.

It is all ephemeral, and all we can do is breathe.