Be The Best Parent You Can Be
A theory in parenthood from someone without kids
As children, we look at the world through the best damn pair of rose-colored glasses ever made because if someone tells us something is true, then it is. There isn’t anything for us to compare and contrast this information with; we are just little clumps of clay to be molded and formed by everyone and everything around us. Each year, we get molded a little more until we have been handled enough to be our own selves. And each year, the previous year’s manipulation hardens and sets. The more time passes, the more concrete our molds become and the harder they are to remold. So much of that molding process happens before we even have a say, leaving us to figure out how to continue molding and or correct previous sculpting issues.
Our parents are our first sculptors, and regardless of their abilities or lack thereof, that’s where our form begins.
To avoid the long, grueling process of reaching adulthood only to have to turn around and re-sculpt your childhood, it’s crucial that we, as new parents, make a conscious effort to “set our children up for success.”
No person is perfect, and no parent will ever be perfect. No matter what standard you set for yourself as a parent, you will fail somehow, especially if you want to be the best parent ever.
What a parent truly is.
A Parent is a previous runner in a relay who hands off a baton to their child to run the next leg of the human race.
A parent is a super tool designed to transition new souls into this experience.
A parent is a guide tasked with teaching new souls the tools to navigate and fully experience life.
A parent must show new souls what it is to be human. There is nuance to being human.
We go through seasons of emotions, some of us more often than not. We constantly face obstacles and challenges. We have to learn how to problem-solve and coexist with others. We must learn to communicate our thoughts and listen to the world around us. We need a moral compass to help navigate the world when things are uncertain.
These are all tools. Some parents put a heavy focus on developing the tools of survival for their children—how not to die. This is partly due to our ever-rotting society and fear. We wish our children would not encounter the same obstacles and struggles we had to endure, so we try to fix our obstacles in the next generation. It is a noble gesture, but your children are not you( unless you try to mold them in your image). Each child needs different tools than you did.
And so much of being a parent is being a human. You will fuck up, but now with a child, it is a perfect opportunity to show them that mistakes are human, and the only thing you can do is ask two questions:
Can I learn from this?
How can I move forward positively despite the situation at hand?
Solutions, not problems.
Let’s talk about what a parent isn’t:
A parent isn’t supposed to protect their child from all danger and make sure they never get hurt.
A parent isn’t supposed to control most of their child’s life to ensure they go down the right path.
A parent isn’t a warden, owner, dictator, president, or overseer.
Parents are not supposed to be perfect models for how you should act or behave. It’s more important that you give your kids their own toolbox: ways to navigate the world.
You’ll need to provide this toolbox through your actions. Children identify and mimic action before they give a damn about what you say. So, making an effort to learn and use the tools you hope your child will develop gives them the best shot at developing those tools.
The Tool Box:
Unconditional Love: The prerequisite that primes a child to be able to acquire all the other skills in a healthy way.
Think about unconditional love as the toolbox where all the tools are stored. Without the context of love, a hammer becomes an instrument of destruction instead of a tool of creation. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t had this kind of love, so we’d have to spend time giving love to ourselves before we can properly give love to someone else, be it a child or any other relationship.
Listen
No one wants to be ignored.
Everyone has something to say and a unique experience. Even children have their own perceptions and perspectives, so allowing your child to speak freely helps them develop their voices and know they are worth listening to. When someone listens, we get our thoughts out of our heads and develop them. Listening doesn’t mean you agree; it just means you have enough respect to hold space for another human having a unique experience separate from your own. Through your demonstrations, your child will learn how to do the same for their thoughts and others. (Maybe even you, one day)
Validate
Emotions can never be wrong. Ever. There isn’t a situation in which someone feels something, and that feeling is incorrect. Feelings are internal responses to the world around us. Feelings are our energy getting stirred up in particular ways based on primal instincts and learned behaviors. Allowing your children the space to feel what they feel teaches them to FEEL.
It is so important to feel emotions, even the uncomfortable ones. They are unavoidable. When we feel emotions fully, we learn to go through the “tunnel of emotion,” which we can eventually exit. If someone tells us what we feel is wrong or shouldn’t, we then learn that we shouldn’t ever continue through that tunnel. So, instead, we get stuck because you can’t avoid being in the tunnel (emotions); you can only control how fast you move through it.
Simple things like:
It’s okay to feel “emotion” everyone feels like that sometimes, or I feel like that too sometimes
I see you’re feeling “emotion” and that’s okay to feel like that.
Would you like a hug
Encourage
As a parent, you are your child’s first line of defense when it comes to confidence. They get their self-esteem from your relationship. They are children learning how to be human for the first time. No matter how well they do or not at learning that tough skill(being human), they are doing a great job. It’s all about little steps (literally). Praise is important. And what’s even more important is teaching them how to give it to themselves.
Are you proud of yourself?
You should be proud of yourself.
You did it!
Provide safe spaces
This is a place without judgment, persecution, violence, abuse, and fear. This goes back to validation. A child should feel safe enough to cry or be upset without consequences. This is separate from bad behavior. Emotions aren’t bad behavior. Allowing your child to speak their grievances, ask questions, and be vulnerable is necessary. Children deserve to feel safe with you for the sake of your relationship and their relationships with themselves and others.
Hold them accountable
Children will make mistakes. You make mistakes. Everyone does.
The issue isn’t the mistake. People can learn from mistakes, and we do so all the time. Taking accountability to acknowledge when you’ve done something wrong/haven’t acted in a way you are proud of is what your child needs to see. Instead of telling your child to “say sorry” when they do something wrong, you must SHOW them what people do when they do something wrong.
When you inevitably make a mistake with or in front of your child, accept what happened, acknowledge it, take responsibility for your actions, and then state how you can do better. When your child makes a mistake, they will have already seen this practice in action, so all you have to do is gently remind them of the steps and move forward from there. Taking ownership of mistakes and making changes to improve should be a normal response. Shaming children does NOT teach them to be responsible.
Make time for Play
If you prepare your child with the expectation that adulthood is almost exclusively sacrifice and work, you’re taking away their opportunity to enjoy life to the fullest. We only get one life; everything we experience is just an experience. Life must include plenty of moments of joy and play. Make the world a game because the hard parts of life will inevitably come, but learning to play continuously is important for your child and you. Play rejuvenates us and reminds us of how beautiful life can be.
Normalize Problem-solving
Being a human is being a problem solver.
From the moment we are born, we are faced with problems, and our job is to learn how to overcome those problems. Our gift, as humans, is the ability to solve problems, see an obstacle, and use our experiences to develop a new solution. Through problem-solving, we acquire new experiences and confidence to be better humans. We can remove the word problem from our vocabulary and replace it with; Challenge. We can teach our kids how to tackle challenges and overcome obstacles as if life were a game, and the challenges you overcome increase your experience points.
Communicate Feelings
Learning how to communicate your feelings is an important skill for children and us. Using statements like I feel, helps articulate our internal responses to the world around us. It also teaches us how to organize and identify feeling patterns, helping us better process emotions as they come. Allowing your child to tell you how they feel is one way of helping your child learn to communicate their feelings. Another way to help your child communicate their feelings is by articulating your feelings in the same way that you would like them to. We tend to feel like we should be the best versions of ourselves with our children. However, showing our vulnerabilities and shortcomings is the best way to normalize being human instead of trying to be a perfect model. People Are Not Perfect.
Set Boundaries
I think most people understand the idea of saying no to a child, but your child should have the freedom and confidence to tell you or anyone else NO. Of course, your child refusing to take a bath for the third night in a row may not be a “NO” that you’re willing to honor.
When you’re In Situations with a little more wiggle room, you can practice asking for permission and allowing your child to decide what outfit to wear or not to hug a random family member. Allowing your children to set boundaries with you and the people around them teaches them how to set boundaries and protect themselves as they grow up. It’s important that your child respects your No, but you must also learn to respect your child’s NO.
Ask better questions
Children learn through observation, imitation, and asking questions. If you have ever been around a child, you know that once they get to age, all they do is ask questions, and although this can be frustrating at times, it is something that we should seek to adopt from children. We shouldn’t turn down our children’s questions. Instead, we should pose our questions and ask what they think about what’s in front of them or how something made them feel. This teaches them to ask even better questions, although we probably can’t question things just as well as a child.
I don’t have kids and never had, but these are the tools we need to love ourselves and others fully. These tools are essential for all humans, and if your parents didn’t teach you these things, that sucks! I know I wasn’t taught all of them.
But there isn’t a wrong time to learn these tools. We always have the opportunity to work on the skills we missed out on in our youth. And by healing our inner child, we can better prime ourselves to be parents and, of course, a better version of ourselves.
We are now adults with the ability to carve our own path.