I wish I could tell you how often I have celebrated both pregnancy and birth announcements with couples. As a childbirth instructor, I get front row seat in these matters. What an honor to be allowed to guide (GPS style) expectant couples, while sharing in their precious joys.
My next role as parenting coach opens widely as they continue to grow and birth more children into their home. Yet more celebration ensues when another new child is announced and later birthed into the family. What happy, precious moments! Without notice, however, a day happens when a negating visitor finds its way through the front door, and parks in the midst of that family. It's Cousin “Murphy” who enters (an uninvited guest), bringing unpleasantries and twisted notions to sour the parenting and family pot. Negatives begin to abound from sorrowful personal outcomes to stressful economics. It’s a madness that comes with trying to live peacefully and productively for yourself, while teaching your children to do the same.
Parents who have ever played host to a Murphy visit need special assistance much like is sought when one travels on a long journey. These are times when a good Global Positioning System (GPS) gets you to that preferred destination. For parents embattled by life negatives, a specialized GPS is available and useful to work more positive outcomes. Such a GPS stands for Good Parenting Strategy. I refer to this as Specialty GPS; it involves guidance focusing on:
POSTURE, rePOSITIONING
and
POSTERITY PERSPECTIVE
1. POSTURE
How we quickly negate ourselves when misfortune pounces - especially if we caused some of it to come about. The irony of people is to not focus on giving themselves a second chance, while tending to more quickly extend similar mercies to others. What an unfair defeatist mindset! When we parents are down, those are precisely the times when we must resurrect sustaining self-love. A healthy posture of self-love is necessary as a parent, for that is precisely the person who teaches the same to their child.
If we expect to parent well, we must not wallow in negative circumstances until it becomes all our children see about us. Remember the expression: More is “caught than taught”. Children will grow to mimic a parent’s poor nature, one day similarly brow-beating themselves. Parents do pass down unproductive life postures and pitiful attitudes to their children, setting them up for depressive failure.
Your Speciality GPS for Posture destinies:
Straighten your backbone. Correct your posture.
Find productive ways to untether yourself from being shackled by personal negatives. When your misfortune is due to something you never learned, fix it.
- Read a book , get a mentor, and/or take a course (online, on site) and improve yourself.
- Believe you can grow beyond your limitation and work to improve your circumstances
- Engage in positive self-talk, declaring that you are better than any negating circumstance,
because you really are.
2. rePOSITION
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You then teach your children that when they life knocks them down, there still exists internal power to self-propel.
Did you lose something like a job, or did the car you may have been duct taping together finally choke? Then . . .
- In the case of possessions (to include jobs), go see if there is another one on the planet to replace that which you lost. It might take hard work but realize some of the best blessings require incredible effort.
- In the case of cherished relationships that come to an end, even as unto death,
a) Allow yourself to mourn your loss on a gracious timetable
b) Acknowledge how you were made better by that individual, having grown through the good times shared with them. Take that gift of remembrance and move forward with it, continuing life in positive legacy.
Your Specialty GPS to rePOSITION:
Use setbacks as set-ups for your success.
3. Adopt healthy POSTERITY PERSPECTIVE
Expectant couples often arrive at my classes, vision somewhat obscured as to parenting realities. They typically expect a challenging labor followed by years of mostly blissful living with their new child. Many parents are shocked beyond belief when their sweet babies willfully disregard or disobey them? Many later almost come “unglued” when they witness their children warring against each other? It is easy to forget that children are imperfectly human - just like the parents who birthed them..
Do your children:
- Stubbornly and senselessly argue,
- Knowingly destroy a sibling’s possession (to include feelings),
- Hijack their sibling’s friends or passions,
- Lie, hit or openly mistreat a sibling?
First, remember to well equip them with relationship-empowering tools (i.e. what to say; what to do). They must learn concepts of interpersonal "do's" and "don'ts". As you train them in their youth, continue praying that peace will govern their hearts.
Second, realize you must gradually “release” older siblings to discover their own style of imperfect relating. They must figure the equation of them. That we want our “babies” to always get along is a misconception. Should they, as older teens and adults, decide to disavow one another, their negative decision then is truly theirs, and not ours to own. Pray for them, maintain your peace between them, and let them fight these battles of their own making.
Your Specialty GPS for Posterity Perspective Destinies:
If you guided your child well, owning up to and helping resolve dysfunction you may have caused (i.e. playing favorites),
Their negative interpersonal choices regarding how they treat their siblings do not belong to you.
Survive on your parenthood journey with Specialty GPS. It’s the one sure way to “get there” with love and greater harmony.
#parenting, #siblingrivalry, #MurphysLaw, #raisingpositivechildren, #raisingchildren, #selflove, #expectantcouples, #bondingchildren
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