Finding the joy…
Parenting is hard, and there is joy and hope to be found in the middle of it!
A letter to parents
Dear Parents,
Have you heard that the Surgeon general of the United States has been talking about us?
Dr Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general of the United States, has called for an intervention on behalf of parents. He has observed that over the last decade, parents have been reporting higher levels of stress in comparison to the levels of stress carried by other adults.
He has called for better supports to be put in place for parents to help ease the stress of continued financial difficulty, fears for children’s safety and health, the growing isolation in our world as technology and social media take center stage in the lives of parents and children, and the need for better access to medical and mental health care for parents and kids.
None of this is a surprise to me. Every week in my counseling office, I interact with both children and parents who are discouraged and despairing about how they feel and show up in the world, especially following the pandemic and its aftermath. Many shifts have occurred in our society and some of those changes have harmed the developmental trajectory of our children. I see families truly struggling with despair and fear for the future of their children and their family.
How about you? Are you noticing your child…
*Exploding into tantrums at home and at school, falling into a “blind rage” or destroying things, especially in response to screen limits.
*Expressing anxiety, showing up as overly compliant or conversely, overly resistant in their behaviors.
*Demonstrating depression - frequently saying things like, “I hate myself,”or “I wish I were dead.”
*Fighting and picking fights with siblings, friends, and with you.
*Unable to sleep, afraid of being without you at night.
Or are you noticing other signs that things just aren’t going well for your developing and growing child?
And how about your experience? Are you seeing yourself…
* Struggling to know how to handle the calls from school.
*Extremely tired of the stress and fight in everyday tasks.
*Yelling, or slamming doors, or losing your patience.
*Getting drawn in to power struggles.
*Or giving in to your child’s demands.
*And most of all, feeling so alone and like you are the only one with this struggle.
These “stresses” often lead us to wonder why we decided to have a family in the first place. They cause us to believe that we just weren’t cut out for this after all.
But I have good news for us. Believe it or not, you are the one your child has been waiting for and the quality of your connection with your child has more power in all of these struggles than any discipline technique. The problem is, that most of us, including myself when I started out, don’t know how to access that connection. Most of us don’t even know how to connect to ourselves in the middle of all this stress.
Parents were never meant to walk through this alone in a house with only a spouse or significant other, or even no one, for support. We are built for connection to see us through the storms of life and to help our developing children to walk through this up and down world with resilience.