Parenting Is Hard AF!

All Relationships are hard. 

But one of the most challenging and ever-changing relationships to manage is the relationship between a mother and child, or father and child. 

Parenting is hard AF - and each stage has its own unique challenges.

The early days are all about the basics - trying to get them to eat and sleep. What should we be feeding them? How often should we feed them? Is their poop the right colour & consistency? How do we get them to sleep? Will I ever sleep again? Is sleep training a form of baby torture?🤷‍♀️ 

As soon as they are toddlers, we start to stress about what type of human they will become. He just threw a snowball at that kid's head, is he a budding sociopath? I just fought with my child for 30 minutes about the color of her sippy cup and eventually gave in, am I creating a self-entitled diva?

And then they become tweens and teens and it’s a whole new ball game and an entirely new set of skills that we need in order to navigate our relationship with them. Skills that are largely focused on communication, and conflict resolution. 

As we enter this era with our kids, we are going in with an intentional goal of keeping our eyes wide open!  In a lot of ways, we believe this stage will be the toughest (but maybe we thought that at every stage 🤪). 

Over the last year, we have taken on numerous parent and child clients who came to us because they were really struggling in their relationships. They were experiencing massive breakdowns in communication and no one felt like they were being heard. Interestingly, most of these clients were in their teenage years.

What we offer these parent and child relationships, is a safe, non-judgmental place for them to show up and be themselves. To speak freely and openly about the struggles they are facing, and then together we come up with new communication strategies and conflict resolution skills that they get to choose & commit to together. 

In the case of one father and daughter that we worked with, the daughter felt that every time they had an argument, the father would raise his voice and she would completely shut down and then ignore him for days. This dysfunctional cycle was frustrating for both of them and through our work together, they made new rules and boundaries that were unique to their relationship. If they keep working this hard on their relationship, imagine what will be possible for all the years to come! 

We often say it’s never too late to work on your relationships, in this case (she is 13 years old) it’s never too early to start!

Happy #globaldayofparents!