It's not easy being a parent.

By Carol Dores

I remember bringing our first born home from the hospital. While they taught us how to bathe and feed him, they didn’t teach us much else. I was petrified. What if I couldn’t comfort him? What if we were both too exhausted to get in the middle of the night to feed him? What if we made a mistake? As he got older, the worries got bigger. How could we help him make friends? What if he didn’t make the team, or get a good grade? When his brother was born, we worried about whether they would get along. And the worries got even bigger as they got older. What if they had a car accident? What if they didn’t get in to “the right” school? They are now adults.

This is what comes to mind as I reflect on all of those years.

· Parents do the best that they know how to do. We often parent our children how we were raised, because it is what we know. We all have our own “private logic”, which is how we see the world, based on our first five years of life.

· We can change how we parent if we choose to. We can decide what we would like to do differently. We can read books, or take classes. Positive Discipline has helped me change many things about how I parent, and the result is significantly better relationships with our sons.

· Mistakes are opportunities to learn. Unless a child’s safety is at risk, so what if we make a mistake? We can apologize. We can let our children know that mistakes are okay, and model learning from them for our children. Forgiving ourselves for making mistakes is also important. We cannot undo the past. We can only learn from it and move forward

· Being present and enjoying our children is really important. Our children remember times together, not the stuff we buy them.

· Helping our children find their joy is a key to their happiness. Focusing on status is only going to have our children striving for more, rather than being happy with what they have. Helping them find and focus on their passions will help them ultimately find things in life that will keep them happy and well balanced.

· There is no such thing as a perfect parent. We may look at others and think they have a perfect life, family, or are a perfect parent. There is no such thing as perfection. We all have baggage. Some just are better at hiding it than others.

Positive Discipline was developed by Dr. Jane Nelsen, based on the work of Dr. Alfred Adler and Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs. Want to learn more about Positive Discipline? Visit www.positivedisciplinect.org.

Want to be added to our email list to receive tips & tools, class updates, and more? Click here http://eepurl.com/8eOZj

#positivediscipline #bethebestyoucanbe #relationship #talk #laugh #strengths #familydinner #mistakesareopportunitiestolearn #parenting