Parenting advice is often laden with judgment and impossible suggestions for the real households we live in. We as parents are often doing everything we possibly can, and are barely treading water. When we are told what to do as parents, we lose our capacity to use our intuition and build lasting connections with our kids in an authentic way. This is why when I bring awareness to my client’s parenting style, strengths and struggles, it is the only parenting help that actually matters. My clients are all highly capable parents who are going through various life experiences that are impacting their ability to stay fully present with their families. When we build self-awareness, we in turn are able to make choices that we otherwise were not aware of. In this article, I will be reviewing this concept and offering a few opportunities to grow your parenting awareness.

Taking Time to Reflect on Your Time With Your Family

First of all, we can begin building our awareness of parenting by taking a look at the time we actually have available with our families. This time will vary depending on what kind of family system you have, how much time you must spend doing other required activities (such as work, cleaning, making food, caring for yourself, hobbies), and what kind of supports you have available. Take a few minutes now to tally up the hours in a week that you have to spend with your kids either one-on-one or as a group (if you are a parent of more than one).

Chances are that this number will actually be more than you thought! You may only see the kids before and after school, but the amount of time you have on the weekend may make up for this in the total weekly hours. Include time you spend watching your kids in their activities, driving them around, taking them out to events, and running errands. These are all important to our parenting! We are always shuttling our kids around, and this amount of time can often get lost in our brain when it comes to how much quality time we are actually spending with our kids.

Now consider this: the amount of time you have to spend with your kids this week coming up, how much of it is being spent doing things you and your kids actually enjoy? Is there anything that you are doing just for the sake of doing it because someone told you that you should? Do you hold a belief about what good parenting involves that isn’t rooted in your self, but rather rooted in fear? When we become more aware of how we are spending our time, we may be able to find some more wiggle room than we thought by releasing things that no longer serve us and instead coming together with our kids to decide how we want to write our own stories.

What is the Story You Tell When You Spend Time?

What is the story that you tell yourself about this number of hours you have with your kids? I’m guessing it’s something along the lines of “I don’t care enough for them”, or “my kids aren’t very grateful for the stuff I do for them”. We are all creating stories when we live our life, and these stories in turn impact our ability to stay present. If you are thinking that you aren’t ever enough, chances are you will be filling up your time with things to do and activities to please them, yet perhaps not enjoying them with your children. If you are thinking that your kids don’t give enough appreciation or aren’t seeing your hard work, chances are you are becoming resentful for all that you do and have a hard time enjoying time in general. Either way, these stories can make it super hard to enjoy our lives, making parenting seem just as work rather than a container for us to grow and learn from.

Parenting is more than work. When we develop our self-awareness, we can use parenting as a way to become even more at peace with our lived experiences. Every experience that our children have, we witness from a new lens. This witnessing is a beautiful way to grow our self-understanding, looking back on our childhoods and being able to let go of any wounds that we have been carrying. By allowing ourselves to enjoy parenthood, we begin to let go all of the aspects of parenting that we are told we “should” be doing, and instead focus on what we ourselves and our children actually want to be spending our time doing. This self-understanding offers us the ability to just be rather than focused on doing more and more for our kids, which ultimately leads to burn out or even worse, anger and resentment.

This week, try becoming aware of the stories that are being told when you are with your family. Is it never enough? Are you not kind to your kids? Are you trying to be something that you don’t actually resonate with anymore? Do you hate playing Barbie’s or are you not feeling supported by your partner? These are all very important aspects of your life to take note of, and journal about. Journaling can help us become more clear about why exactly we do what we do, which in turn helps us recognize when patterns are showing up that we don’t want to keep.

Creating A Quality Time Ritual With Each of Your Children

Once you recognize how much time you have in a week, it is hopefully easier to find space for the quality one-on-one time that our kids are constantly seeking from us. That is often the primary struggle that parenting causes – we are in this hamster wheel of busyness, always going from one task to the next until we are completely drained and feeling exhausted. Once we stop moving around in our houses, our children notice and flock towards us. They try to take their opportunity to connect, asking us to play with them. But at this point, we are wanting to doom scroll or zone out just for a break from our busy life. We end up minimizing our kid’s requests for connection, feeling bad about it but also knowing that we deserve time to ourselves. The trouble is, eventually when kids are told over and over that their parents are too busy, they separate further from them. This separation can lead to kids feeling unsupported at home, and encourages them to focus on peer relationships. Such as in the book “Hold On To Your Kids” By Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate, we as parents begin to feel out of control of our children’s behaviours and don’t know how to repair the relationship.

Here’s something that can quickly turn parenting around and is fairly simple to introduce: Develop a ritual for one-on-one time every week. I know that it can feel daunting to do this weekly, especially for parenting of multiple children or single parents. I am a mom of four kids myself, and it is not always possible to offer highly memorable one-on-one options at all times. It isn’t about doing things or having us be something that we are not, though. It’s about being ourselves and taking time to get to know our kids better. Whatever that may involve, we only need to take ten minutes a week to begin moving the needle in the parent-child relationship. Does that feel a little bit more doable? A ritual is something that we do on a consistent basis. It can feel extra special to have it planned out at the same time each week, maybe even written on the calendar, and it can also help us to remember. If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to do some alone time with your kids, one option would be to arrange this time to be either before or after an activity that you are already taking your child to. This may be a chance to be alone with your child for a short time. Sometimes alone is not actually possible because of younger siblings and lack of support. If this is the case, minimizing distractions from siblings becomes the goal. Letting your older child know that you still prioritize their needs and that you want to hear what they have to say can have a huge impact on your relationship as they grow older. Either way, creating a quality time ritual can help repair relationships and build our awareness of what we enjoy doing with our kids so that we can continue becoming more and more at ease with these crazy lives we lead.

Building New Pathways As A Parent Who is Aware of Themselves

Building new pathways doesn’t need to be hard. When we focus on creating habits that are already in tune with our regular life experiences, they don’t feel as hard to maintain. What do I mean by this? Say you are noticing that you and your preteen are disconnected because he is spending significant amounts of time upstairs in their room. You aren’t sure whether or not there is an issue to be concerned about or whether this is a developmentally appropriate separation and need for independence. In order to get some connection time in, you ask your preteen if he would be okay if you spent some time a few evenings a week to read in bed with him in his room. You get some quality time in, allowing him to open up if there is anything to be shared, and you also get to enjoy your evening reading a book rather than scrolling on your phone. Since this is already a goal of yours and you like reading sci-fi novels, your brain will easily build new pathways to connect with your son in this way. When we think outside the box and take into consideration your own interests, parenting doesn’t need to feel so difficult.

The great thing about connecting with our kids more often, is that we realize that we actually enjoy their company. Kids are extremely goofy and playful, allowing us to feel the same way. I always end up sitting at the kids table when we are at a family dinner or big event because the conversations are so much more interesting than at the adult table. Kids live in the present moment, and they help us to do the same whether we like it or not. The more we create time to spend connecting with our kids, the more at ease we feel just being with them rather than trying to be everything for them. We also can begin noticing the conversations that keep spiraling around with our older kids. We may be hyper-focused on their hygiene, having them behave in a certain way, sleeping in all the time, being bored all the time, etc. When we notice how we are talking to our kids, we may actually begin to understand why they are holed up in their rooms all the time. Becoming aware of how we speak to our kids and choosing to spend a little more time being playful and positive with them can quickly shift the dynamics at play with our kids.

As we build our awareness as parents, we also begin to offer ourselves more compassion. Parenting is a marathon, and it is not necessary to fill all of our days with memorable moments for our children. It’s okay to have down days and days that are filled with chores or monotonous tasks that help the household as a whole. Awareness also allows us to notice when we ourselves are feeling tired or bored or in need of some self-care. When our kids receive quality time on the regular without asking for it, they tend to settle down their neediness. This leaves us with more time and energy to take care of our own needs as individuals. We also won’t feel as guilty telling our kids to wait while we finish up a yoga video or have a nice shower. Caring for kids is intensive, requiring us to focus on ourselves even more than we would before becoming a parent. Letting go of martyrdom is something I have had to work on all the way through parenting, because I had a belief that giving to others was more important than taking care of my own needs. Now that I focus on my needs more, my kids are slowly learning to do the same for themselves, which is so nice to witness. Awareness gives us the ability to choose whether or not we continue following the same pathway we have set upon, or if we need to course correct. And if we ever are in need of our own self-reflection, we can connect with a therapist that is trained in trauma therapy approaches.

Letting Go Of Perfection in Parenting

There is no such thing as a perfect parent, but we are trying our best to figure out how to crack the code, right? It doesn’t matter how many times we hear that we don’t need to be at our kids beck-and-call, we still want to make sure that they are getting everything that they need and then some. So how do we disconnect from the never-good-enough’s while also trying to become more aware of our parenting? Isn’t the point of becoming aware to become a better parent?

Not at all, actually. Awareness is not about fixing what’s broken or changing how we parent. Instead, it’s about noticing how it feels to parent, how your child is responding to parenting approaches, and what we all want more of in life. Awareness is the stepping stone to authenticity. We often find that as we increase our awareness, we can more easily create simple ways to enjoy spending time with our kids. We also feel better about letting things go that just cause more upset and stress in the household. The greatest thing about learning this is that it helps our kids learn too. I often find myself having discussions with my kids about things I learned or mistakes I made. I like to always share with them that I am still human and that I am growing just like they are. We are all on a journey of self-discovery, and the sooner our kids realize that growth doesn’t end when they pass their school courses, the sooner they begin to enjoy being a life-long learner and imperfectionist.

Our kids have varying levels of interest in spending time with us as well, and this can be dependent upon their connectedness. If you are struggling to have your kids spend time, it may need to be assessed fully by a therapist to determine the cause. It can be helpful to have a set of eyes outside the family system as it can be hard to fully understand the dynamics at play and what may be contributing to a rupture in the relationship. Sometimes, this rupture can be easily solved through increasing time together. Other families may be struggling with complex situations that make it hard to solve it without some parenting help.

Getting Parenting Help When You Need It

Are you reading this article and nodding, but having a hard time figuring out how to make it happen in your specific situation? Our team of therapists offer parenting help in a way that feels open and free of judgment so that families can building connections and feel more at peace at home. Interested in booking a session to support you or your child? Click HERE to check out our online booking portal.