Before you became a parent, could you have imagined the nature, range, and intensity of feelings you would experience in this role? Family photo collections recall joy, pride, excitement, fascination, love. On the other hand there are unpleasant feelings like frustration, anxiety, guilt, inadequacy, fear, and anger. Such a variety of emotional experience naturally comes with being a parent.
Learning to manage emotions is a lifelong process and is especially important in parenting. Problems occur when feelings overwhelm us or interfere with the role of reason. Consider these examples:
Elise and Joe set what they believed were appropriate rules and consequences for their daughter, Amber. One weekend Joe left town for a business trip. While he was gone Amber asked to do something that was against the rules. Elise held the boundary and Amber began to complain. She told her mom “This is ridiculous”, and “you are so stupid.” Amber didn’t stop there, but continued to push. Elise began to feel anxious and conflicted. She began to question herself on the decision she and her husband had made. Before long she gave in to the pressure and allowed Amber to have her way.
Kim had a great connection with her daughter, Liz, during the early teen years. They would do everything together. But as she grew older, Liz felt smothered by all of the attention that her mom was giving her and began to distance herself. Kim felt so rejected that she began to struggle with depression. After each argument with her daughter, she would shut herself in her room for the rest of the day, just lying on her bed in the dark.
A set of parents and grandparents who had joint custody of a teen were sitting together discussing possible consequences for Crystal who had broken a clearly stated family rule. As they began to talk they became more anxious about what the behavior meant and what future problems might arise. Soon, they began to feed off each other’s anxiety and before long they had identified and laid out a severe consequence for a minor infraction, leaving Crystal feeling powerless to earn their trust back.
Each of these stories has a common theme–the parent’s decisions and behavior were powerfully influenced by their emotions. As a result, their decisions unintentionally contributed to the problems they were having with their teen.
This lesson is an invitation to strengthen your ability to manage emotions, particularly as it relates to parenting. Managing your emotions includes the ability to recognize, respond to, and influence one’s own emotions.
One key is to understand the interplay between our thoughts, emotions, and behavior.
In this process, our thoughts play a pivotal role. These may be thoughts we do not even realize we have. They are often silently rehearsed in our minds, such as “I can’t believe what a lazy kid he is!” We may not even be aware of many of our thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations; yet they powerfully influence what we feel and do.
Self-mastery of our emotions is not easy, but even a small effort can make an important difference. Doing so will help you deal with the ups and downs of parenting, stay calm during difficult moments, and make better decisions.
To enhance your ability to manage your emotions, future lessons will teach how to:
- Strengthen your sense of self
- Learn to self-soothe
- Avoid “catching” contagious negative emotions from others
An important part of learning to manage your emotions is to maintain a clear sense of self. A sense of self could be defined as an awareness and confidence in your values, beliefs, and practices. We focus here on having a clear sense of self as a parent.
When you are confident about your parenting, you are able to make good decisions and stand by them, even when a teen is pressuring you to agree to something that’s against your better judgment.
The story of Elise and her daughter Amber (mentioned in the article “Managing Your Own Emotions”) illustrates a common pattern in families. Amber pushed to get what she wanted and criticized her mom. Elise’s confidence in her parenting began to slip. Because of this, she changed her mind and gave in to her daughter’s pressure. By so doing, Elise allowed her doubts about herself as a parent to guide her behavior. In fact, her doubts were powerful enough to override a decision she and her husband had made previously, a decision that was based on solid parenting principles.
Take a few minutes to think of any instances where you might have backed down or changed your opinion against your better judgment because your teen pressured you to do so. What thoughts and emotions led you to change your mind?
How can you increase your confidence by strengthening your sense of self? Below we will show four ways.
1. Recognize that you are defined by your actions, not your children’s.
“After more than a year of dealing with our son’s issues with drugs, I felt like such a failure as a mother. One day, I was attending a required class for parents whose teens were in legal trouble due to drugs. As I took my seat and looked around the room, I found myself growing more and more uncomfortable. The embarrassment remained with me through the entire session as I wondered what others thought of me.
Then something happened that changed me. As I was walking out of the class, I had the following thought, “If I make this about me, I’ll never be able to help him (my son).” From that moment on, I started to see things differently. Instead of focusing on my feelings of being a failure as a mother, I began to have a sincere desire to support and love him. The less I thought about myself, the more my feelings of being a failure slipped away. This change of perception allowed me to see my son differently. I no longer blamed him for my feelings of failure. Not only did I see him differently, but I treated him differently because I didn’t need to change him in order to feel good about myself.
I became more patient, more understanding, and more loving toward him. Our relationship changed and as a result, he began to change as well. It is now one year later and he is free of drugs, for which I am extremely grateful. But I am equally grateful for my own discovery which freed me from my own bondage.”
As you move forward, choosing to follow solid parenting principles, you can trust that you are doing your best to invite your children to make good choices. Someone once said, “The outcome of parenting isn’t children, it’s parents.” In other words, your actions as a parent determine only one thing, the type of parent you are. What your children become is ultimately a function of their own choices and is only influenced (not determined) by your parenting. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your children will choose to act in ways that are contrary to what you have taught them. Though frustrating, this is a part of normal adolescent development.
Unfortunately, in their efforts to sidestep this reality, some parents go beyond teaching, setting expectations and holding their children accountable. They use pressure to try to control their teen’s decisions, an approach that may have some initial success but almost always backfires in the end. This style of parenting is often driven by the following belief: “If my teen makes mistakes or poor choices it makes me a bad parent.” To such parents we extend the following invitation: Remove the ‘happiness thermometer’ out of your teen and put it in yourself.
As one parent cleverly put it, “I don’t get credit for their good choices, I’m sure as heck not going to take credit for their bad ones!”
We acknowledge that parents of a struggling teen often feel looked down upon by some in their extended families and social circles. They worry about gossip and loss of esteem in the eyes of others. These hurts can be real. One way to help heal them is to increasingly learn to derive our self-esteem and sense of worth from how congruent our actions are with our own values and beliefs, not from what others think of us. This is easier said than done, but it can be one of our ongoing goals through adulthood.
“Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you, but on what happens inside of you. It is measured by the spirit with which you meet the problems of life.” – Harold B. Lee
One parent of a difficult teen said the most helpful thing she learned was to focus on herself. As she did things to make herself a better person/parent, she felt she was able to let go and allow her son to make choices for himself. Even when her son was making poor decisions she realized that they were his decisions and he had to be accountable to himself and not blame his mother. She commented that learning how to do that brought her a deep sense of relief.
2. Recognize that it’s not necessary for your children to be happy with you all the time.
When it comes to decision-making, there tends to be two types of people. The first group tends to make decisions primarily based on what seems logical, trying to look at things from an objective perspective. The second group focuses more on what they feel is important to them and others involved; they will often try to understand how the other person would feel about the decision and how it would impact them.
Both groups have their strengths and challenges. Those that tend to place value in how their decisions will affect others can easily become overly concerned with what others think and feel about them. For parents, this can create emotional stress.
In the story of Elise and her daughter mentioned above, Elise and her husband had made a decision they felt good about. However, when her daughter began to complain about the decision, Elise began to feel conflicted and question the decision they had made. As pressure from her daughter increased, she likely began to experience some of the following thoughts: “If my daughter is so upset, maybe we didn’t make the right decision.” “What kind of mom am I if my daughter hates me?” “I just want her to be happy with me.” As you can see, these thoughts undermined Elise’s confidence and eventually led her to retract the joint decision that she and Amber’s father had made.
Will Elise’s decision to give in to her daughter increase or decrease the odds that her daughter will be happy with her in the future?
How will Elise’s decision affect her relationship with her husband?
What other thoughts could Elise have had that would have made it easier for her not to give in to her daughter?
There is not a good parent on this planet who has not experienced a child who is unhappy with them. Ironically, the first time your toddler says, “I hate you,” it’s most likely because you have simply told them they can’t do something they want to do. In that moment, it would be good if every parent would say in their head, “That means I must be doing something right.”
Although an unhappy toddler is not pleasant, an unhappy teenager can be even more unpleasant. And though a toddler may say, “I hate you,” one moment and then ten minutes later be giving you hugs, a teenager tends to hold onto their emotions for longer. So if you are in the unfortunate circumstances of having a teenager who did not learn as a toddler to accept “no” for an answer or to handle their frustrations, you will need to help them learn this lesson now. The good news is that it’s still a lesson they can learn; the bad news is that it comes at a higher price.
3. Realize that mistakes don’t make you a bad parent.
Some parents can easily find themselves feeling guilty for something that they may have done wrong or failed to do in the past. Teens who have guilt-prone parents tend to see this tendency and try to use it to their advantage in an unhealthy way.
One teen and her mother had developed this pattern in their relationship. There were many factors that led to this dynamic, including the teen having experienced some abuse early in her life. Her mother felt guilty for not protecting her, and as her daughter grew her mother often attempted to help her by rescuing her from any challenges she might have to face and by purchasing elaborate gifts when her daughter seemed to be down. She generally tried to make up for her daughter’s past by becoming lenient and overindulgent.
By the time the teen was in high school she exhibited behaviors that were dangerous, and began to actively demand things of her mother (a car, no curfew, etc.) putting her demands in the context that if she didn’t have everything she wanted, her mother would be guilty of not making life good for her. She said things like “None of my friends have curfews. If you make me come home by midnight it will ruin my social life.” Or, after a difficult event at school, or the right boy not asking the teen out, the teen would turn to her mother with statements like, “If you’d bought me the right outfit, he would have asked me to go with him!” or, “If you’d just bought me a car, I wouldn’t have to ever be late to school.” For the most part, this tactic worked for the teen and built a culture between them of expensive things being purchased to “make up” for what the girl felt were injustices.
The parents made the difficult decision to send their daughter to treatment. While at treatment, this interpersonal dynamic continued. The mother, missing her daughter and feeling guilty for having had to send her to treatment, would send elaborate packages.
When the teen completed her program and returned home, her parents were pleased to have her back, pleased with the changes she’d made. Yet, since there is almost a gravitational pull to fall into old coping mechanisms, very quickly their teen began once again to try to use her guilt-prone mother to her advantage. She began by telling her mother how much she’d missed her while in treatment, and began to bemoan all she’d missed because her mother had “sent her away.” She began to demand things again and blame her mother for difficulties in her life. It was a struggle for her mother. Initially she wanted to fall into the old pattern of wanting to rescue her daughter from challenges, and try to make up for all the things she’d supposedly deprived her daughter of by sending her to treatment. The teen saw this, and used it well, being direct enough to say the phrase, “You owe me for having sent me away.”
With the help of their coach, the mother began to overcome this deeply ingrained pattern. Awareness of this dynamic was the first step. The second was learning to recognize that her daughter needed to confront these challenges on her own to learn and grow. It was difficult and surprising for the daughter when her parents began to hold her accountable, began to build a different relationship with her that was based on their love and caring and hopes for her future instead of rescuing her and buying her “things.” There was a process for the mother of letting go of guilt, acknowledging the mistakes she might have made, apologizing when necessary (including an apology to her daughter for having indulged her so much), and then moving forward with direction and purpose.
Most parents experience some feelings of guilt as they realize mistakes they have made. When guilt inspires us to do better, it can be healthy. When it leaves us feeling undeserving of respect, it can significantly interfere with our ability to parent.
One mother realized that she had spent most of her time and energy on her youngest son, not giving much attention to her oldest son who seemed to be doing well. To her dismay, she found some marijuana with a pipe in her older son’s truck. The more she thought about it, the more guilty she felt believing that it was her lack of attention towards him that led to the drug use. As she talked to her coach, she was able to work through the guilt she was feeling. As a result, she felt better prepared to talk with her oldest son in a confident manner. Had she not managed her emotions first, she may have sent messages allowing him to think she was responsible for the drug use.
Remember, don’t let a past parenting mistake leave you feeling like you can’t change how you do things today. For example, if you over-indulged your oldest child with money and gifts, don’t feel you have to make the same mistake with your second child just to keep things even. Although your second child won’t see it this way at first, he will be the one getting more. In short, your children will not be well served if you abandon good parenting principles because you feel guilty.
Knowing that you have made a mistake as a parent can also create fear that your actions have set in motion significant problems, for example fear that your teen won’t graduate and go to college, fear that he will do something reckless and get hurt, or fear that he will never learn to be responsible. This fear can lead you to go to the other extreme to become too permissive if you have previously been controlling, too rigid if you have been overly flexible in the past, etc. Think how dangerous it is to overcorrect in order to rectify your course while driving a car. Similarly, this type of overcorrecting in parenting is usually reactive and can be even more problematic than the first mistake. The best way to correct a mistake is to learn a better way and then apply it with consistency. Over time, this will create the best chance that your teen will respond favorably to your changes in parenting.
Yes, all parents make mistakes and these mistakes do influence our children. But, as with most endeavors, true failure as a parent is only possible if you give up. Each moment presents new opportunities for doing things differently. If you have identified past mistakes, begin today to do things differently. Choosing to forgive yourself for past mistakes is essential to being able to look forward. Those who grow up on the farm quickly learn that it is impossible to plow a straight line if you are always looking back.
4. Learn and apply solid parenting principles.
Confidence comes from living by tried and true parenting principles that have been shown to contribute to positive outcomes in children. When parents don’t have a clear sense of values and beliefs to guide them, their teens are more easily able to pressure them into decisions that aren’t really wise. As a result, teens gain more power in the family than what is good for them to have.
The Parenting Principles offered in this library are a great way to begin building confidence as a parent. Remember that as you work to apply these principles, you will inevitably make mistakes. When this happens, correct your mistakes and move forward. In addition, your teen will likely push back in hopes that you will give up. In such moments, put your trust in the principles, move forward, and give them time to work.
One family had developed a pattern where the parents would give in to their son when he complained after not getting his way. For example, the family had planned a trip to the beach but the teen wanted to go snow skiing instead. After the teen sulked and threw a fit, the parents gave in to their son’s demands and went skiing. As they learned the parenting principles they came to a better understanding of the importance of clear expectations and rules, parental unity, and the power that they had as agents of change in their son’s life. Initially, the son’s behavior worsened as they learned to hold to their boundaries, but with time things improved. They developed a better sense of what type of parents they wanted to be and as a result were able to parent with confidence.
Ask Yourself:
In the past, what criteria have you used to evaluate yourself as a parent? What criteria would you like to use in the future?
Are there mistakes in your past you could let go of?
What parenting principles can you grab hold of in your efforts to move forward instead of looking back?
Sources: 1) The information on decision-making and personalities comes from the authors of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. For more information, visit www.myersbriggs.org.
“Where’s my (fill in the blank),” “I totally forgot (fill in the blank),” and “(fill in the blank) is stressing me out!”
Do these phrases sound uncomfortably familiar? Productivity and time management is an important part of everyday life, but we often don’t prioritize it as we should. Organization plays a huge role in success inside and outside the home—it affects every aspect of life and should be taken seriously.
Our founder Dr. Thayne interviewed a productivity and time management expert, Dawnie Williams, who shares tips on how to live an overall better, more productive life. Get a jump start on the new school year ahead and start implementing these insights and ideas today.
To understand the importance of productivity and time management, we must first understand where it came from. Individuals and groups throughout history have always strived for productivity, but it really started picking up when the manufacturing era started. Business owners wanted to find ways to cut down on time and production costs, which resulted in an increase in time management and productivity.
Although not everyone runs a business, families and individuals can benefit from implementing productivity and time management strategies in their daily lives. In this post, we’ll share the tips and strategies Dawnie and her family use for staying on top of household tasks, work, and family life. She believes that because time is limited, we want to do the best we can with the time we have.
Weekly Planning & Organization
When it comes to productivity, the best way to find success in your daily life is to start bigger by planning your weeks. Dawnie suggests sitting down with the family once a week to fill in the calendar to ensure that everyone is on the same page and no one misses important events during the week. It can be helpful to schedule work, family time, and downtime into the calendar as well.
She also mentions that you can stay busy all day without actually being productive. This is why it’s important for each member of the family to have a task list, categorize it, and prioritize it. Then when doing the tasks, make sure whatever you are doing gets 100% of your attention.
Daily Planning & Organization
Starting the week off right with organization and productivity sets you up for success when it comes to daily tasks and to-do lists. Dawnie’s personal rule while reading emails or prioritizing tasks is that if she can get the action item done in two minutes or less, she will take care of it immediately. If not, it goes onto the task list and is prioritized based on urgency and importance.
Once she makes it through her emails, Dawnie will move onto her task list that is prioritized by urgent, high, medium, and low. Urgent and high-priority tasks are completed that day, while medium and low-priority tasks are saved for later in the week. This method can be helpful at work as well as in the home – no matter what you need to get done, prioritizing your tasks can keep you from feeling overwhelmed and increase productivity.
Here are a few other tips Dawnie mentions for the entire family to stay organized and productive throughout the day:
- Go to bed early
- Wake up early
- Exercise
- Meal prep
- Write lists (this can be done on your phone, in a notebook, on Monday.com – whatever works best for you)
- Be present in whatever you are doing
Keeping Your Kids Productive & Organized
If you don’t have any of these things implemented into your daily and weekly routines yet, it’s going to take some time. Try not to get too frustrated with yourself or with your kids! The path to growth and change isn’t always linear, and some weeks will be better than others. Just know that by putting in the effort, you are setting an example for your kids and giving them a clearer path to success in adulthood.
Your kids will look to you as an example, so with this in mind, start making those small daily changes and the big changes will follow. Your kids will see how much more productive you are and they’ll want to implement the changes in their own lives. It will take some time and maybe some persuasion, but it will be so worth it in the end.
Dawnie also emphasizes how important it is to realize your kids are different from you. They’re still learning about themselves, their sleep schedules are different, and they can be more productive at different times. Productivity varies from person to person and there isn’t a formula that works for everyone. However, having a template your kids can go off of will be helpful as they are finding what works best for them.
Conclusion
If you haven’t previously focused on organization and productivity in your home, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable at first. But don’t give up! As you start to implement productivity into your life, your kids will follow suit and it will benefit them throughout their entire lives.
If you would like to hear Dawnie and Tim’s in-depth conversation on this topic, listen to the Not By Chance podcast episode on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Everyone deals with stress from time to time—it’s perfectly normal. In fact, it helps us progress in life. If you don’t experience at least a little bit of stress, you should probably check your pulse because you might be dead. However, stress and overwhelm start to get unhealthy when there’s too much of it and you are unable to cope.
When things get too overwhelming, it’s important to know how to recognize those feelings, how to keep a healthy level of stress in your daily life and do what you need to do to overcome them. Here are a few things you can do to better your life and stop feeling overwhelmed.
1. Know What’s Triggering Your Stress
When you’re feeling stressed to the point of overwhelm, the first thing you need to do is figure out exactly what is causing it. It’s really important that you know where your stress is coming from. Feeling stressed without knowing why is a major cause of overwhelm, and it’s harder to overcome it if you can’t pinpoint why it’s happening. People tend to get stuck in that place.
2. Learn to Manage Your Emotions in the Midst of Change
Change can be a huge trigger of stress and anxiety. For example, when teens first enter the treatment setting, they may be pulled out of their homes and forced to adapt to a new “normal.” They don’t have the ability to fall back on their escapes, like Netflix, movies, gaming addictions, or other things. When these escapes are taken away, they can really learn to manage their emotions and address the issue the right way.
One great way to learn how to manage emotions is to start noticing the intrusive thoughts and worries that come to your mind. Awareness is the first step, and being intentional when quieting your mind can make a huge difference as you learn to cope with stress. When you have a clear mind, it is easier to complete your tasks and tackle your issues one by one, which reduces stress and overwhelm.
3. Create a Plan to Overcome
One misconception surrounding stress and overwhelm is that you have to overcome it all at once. Start to turn the tide and better your life by doing a number of small things every day. Small but impactful things you can do to overcome stress are: become aware of your triggers, learn how to manage your emotions, and find someone you love and trust to talk with.
Just like we all have stress in our lives, we have the strength to overcome it and stop feeling overwhelmed. When you figure out what’s important in your life and learn how to manage your emotions, you can have the power to let go of what doesn’t matter to you and prioritize what does. Hold onto hope and your life will continually get better.
To learn more, listen to our Not by Chance Podcast episode “Overcoming Overwhelm” on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Giving feedback is a necessary form of communication and can be applied in many different facets of life—parenting, work, school, religious responsibilities, and more. For some, receiving feedback can be difficult, especially when the person is firm in their habits and opinions. On the other hand, when feedback is given too late, the consequences of one’s actions are already inevitable. Regardless, feedback is an important part of life and should be welcomed when the situation permits.
But what about those times when feedback isn’t helpful? In the aftermath of an unfortunate situation, the last thing your teen wants to hear is what they should have done differently. They most likely know what they should have done differently, but that advice would have been very helpful before the unfortunate situation occurred in the first place. At Not By Chance, we like to call this feedforward. It’s similar to feedback, but it’s almost always more beneficial because it can help someone avoid doing something they regret. In a nutshell, feedforward can keep someone from making a preventable mistake.
Knowing the difference between feedback and feedforward can help your teenager find more success and joy in their journey by minimizing the pain they feel along the way. Some pain is of course necessary and inevitable for growth, but giving them feedforward can help set them up for a great life ahead.
The Blind Man Metaphor
If there is a blind man approaching a set of stairs, it is unhelpful to tell him to watch out for the staircase after he has fallen down. He now knows the staircase is there and he’s facing the consequences of his actions—whether it’s a few bruises or even a broken bone. Feedforward would have been given as someone saw the blind man at the top of the stairs, stopped him, and let him know there was a staircase ahead. They might also have led him to the handrail so he could make it down safely. This would have saved him from injury.
It sounds like a simple principle, but when you are working with teens, it’s hard to know how your feedforward will be received. There are a few things that factor into their reaction that you should consider. First, if you’re not careful, feedforward can come off as judgmental, controlling, or lecturing. Your teen might not be in the right headspace to receive what you have to say. If this is a roadblock you experience, try assessing your delivery and see how it can be improved. If you come from a place of sincere love and concern, your kids will be more likely to accept what you have to say.
Another Real Example of Feedforward
Another example that might help as a parent to navigate the feedforward process is an experience I had. I injured my neck as a result of chipping ice off the driveway with a pickaxe one winter. I had to cut my family vacation short and spent Christmas alone because I was in such severe pain. I spent the next few months recovering, and it was a long, painful road.
A few years later I was using the same pickaxe in my yard, and my son (knowing what happened last time), offered to take over for me because he was concerned about my neck injury. My son knew what could happen if I continued working with the pickaxe, so he stepped in to help. This could have saved me from another few months of painful recovery.
In Conclusion
Sometimes your teens will receive your feedforward well, but sometimes they won’t. The best thing you can do is lead with love. Don’t deliver it in a judgmental or degrading way—let your child know you love them and want the best for them, which is why you are offering your advice.
It’s important to remember that even if they don’t listen to what you have to say, they will still learn a valuable lesson out of the experience and you can have peace of mind knowing you have done everything you can to set them up for success.
To learn more about this topic listen to the Not by Chance Podcast Episode: “Give Feedforward Not Feedback” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
