Without some prior planning and learning from experience, the mornings can feel like "Groundhog Day". In the movie, Bill Murray keeps living the same day, day after day. It’s easy to see how this could occur with reactive parenting: "You have to get out of bed! You’re going to miss the bus!" "You’re not dressed yet?" "Where is your homework?"
As a parent coach, one of my primary objectives is to help parents to make proactive choices. Making proactive choices means learning from your child, yourself, and day-to-day situations. Then take that knowledge to make changes and choices to strengthen your parenting. This is at the heart of intentional strength-based parenting.
The opposite of proactive is reactive. Reactive parenting is simply reacting-- according to Webster-- responding to a stimulus. Implied is the absence of thought before action. Reactive parenting does feel like Groundhog Day.
A proactive approach includes looking at the situation and thinking about what improvements could be made. The next step is to implement improvements. The thought process looks like this: The mornings have been a little rough, what is the problem? One problem is that Jane is sleeping in too late. What could be done to make this better? Solutions: An earlier bedtime, an earlier wake-up time, look at her schedule and reprioritize if she is doing too much. Implement a checklist. Have her set her own alarm clock. Is she watching TV? Solution: "You can watch TV when your checklist is completed."
Is Your Stress Making You React?
Making proactive choices as a parent means looking at your own stress too and what triggers it. If morning is a hard time that brings out the reactive instead of proactive in you, you can think of ways to make it flow more smoothly. Are you getting enough sleep? An earlier bedtime can be a solution for an adult too. Would it help to wake up earlier to get yourself ready so you can better work with your kids? How about more evening preparation?
Here are some principles and ideas to help you make more proactive choices:
Learn from your mistakes. Instead of beating yourself up over them, use them as learning opportunities. Perhaps you had a blow-up with your son. You were in a rush, and he was tired. You both had triggers working against you. Think about how to prevent that same situation from escalating in the future. Apologize and talk with your son about what happened and what you plan to do.
Journal. Keep a daily journal. Write about situations that have occurred. Write about what you would keep and what you would change. Keep a list of your values in your journal too.
Always be looking for ways to strengthen your parenting. Recognize that parenting is a process. Be open to new ideas from friends, parenting experts, literature, and whatever comes across your path. Screen the ideas to make sure they fall within your values. Implement those that you feel may work for you and your family.
Communicate with Your Parenting Partner. Groundhog Day: "He has to wear a coat today." "Let him go without one, he’ll learn when he gets cold." Work to talk this out and to find some parameters you both agree upon. When you can do this effectively, it strengthens your partnership as well as your ability to be consistent with your children.
In the end, somehow, Bill Murray managed to snap out of it, right? You can too!
