Thoughtful Thursday & Redefined Parenting
ON THE BLOG
REDEFINED PARENTING
Hello friends!
Do you find yourself looking back and harshly judging your past self as a parent with what you know now?
It is so easy to do, especially when the expectations you have for your life are very different from your current reality.
But the truth is, you literally didn’t even know the things that you know now when your children were younger.
What if instead, you decided that you won’t ever judge your past self with your present knowledge?
Judging yourself doesn't serve you.
You weren’t supposed to do it differently than you did.
How do I know that?
Because you didn’t.
For whatever reason, your children were meant to have the parent that they had in that moment.
This opportunity has allowed them to learn how to navigate the messiness of life which was always part of God’s plan.
Can you let that belief settle in?
Many times we tend to go to one of two ways when life is different than our expectations.
We want to fix everything and make sure certain things happen.
All this does is makes us controlling and this doesn’t feel good to anyone.
It may feel really good to us in the short term until we realize how little control we actually do have.
Then we just get super frustrated and we throw our hands in the air.
We give up, believing nothing is working anyway.
This leads us to do to the exact opposite.
We emotionally, maybe even physically, separate ourselves from our children.
Neither of these, trying to control others or separating ourselves, are healthy places to be.
They are signals of emotional immaturity.
When we learn to deal with our own emotions, we don't push them off onto our children.
From this place, we are better able to acknowledge the story going on in our brain of things we thought were supposed to happen.
It was just a story.
It was never supposed to happen that way.
We can loosen the grip on the ‘what if’ and ‘should of’ – allowing our own imperfections to be there as well as our child's imperfections.
This requires a redefining of our life as a parent of adult children.
Our role and position have changed and it is now one of walking alongside them in their journey.
Creating a place of love, holding space, authenticity, honesty, boundaries, and room to grow.
