Avoiding Parenting Burnout By Choosing How To Wisely Spend Your Energy

How is your energy level right now? Are you feeling depleted or do you feel like you have plenty of energy? Do you live most days full speed ahead or do you have room to breathe?

Many parents live their days feeling crazy busy. While some days are certainly going to be packed full, being that busy all the time is a recipe for problems.

Hitting The Energy Wall

Brenda was working full time teaching at a college plus raising her two young children with her husband. Her office walls were filled with various awards documenting her many achievements. She strove to be an excellent teacher, mother and wife. She was too busy to question how she was spending her time. There was just so much to do!

One day she ended up in the emergency room because of heart attack symptoms.

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What Are Your Family's Top 5 Moral Values?

Parenting Effects Young Children's Brain Development

Experiencing and Processing Difficult Emotions

What are you teaching your kids to do when they experience difficult emotions? How do you respond when they are scared, anxious or overwhelmed?

Your response teaches them how to handle their difficult emotions. Some kids learn that certain emotions like fear, anger or jealousy are unacceptable. Instead of expressing these emotions and letting them go, they learn to push these emotions down and put on a happy mask.

Unfortunately, emotions that aren’t expressed don’t magically disappear. These suppressed emotions hang out in the recesses of your mind waiting for an opportunity to be released.

Disregarding Difficult Emotions

Emotions arise from thoughts about situations. The thoughts may happen so quickly or unconsciously that they aren’t easy to notice.

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Resources for Tackling Cyberbullying

This "parenting around technology" page has more helpful information for parents.

Guiding Kids Through Experiences of Loss

Part of growing up is experiencing loss. As much as you love your kids and hate seeing them in pain, you cannot protect them from all harm. The good news is that being human means they are equipped for resilience. They will fall down and they will pick themselves back up.

Your job is to be there for them through their pain … not to prevent the experiences from ever happening. They can and will survive many painful situations. Their losses will fuel some of their most powerful growth and learning.

Experiencing Little and Big Losses

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Improving Your Family Through New Parenting Intentions

Have you made new year’s resolutions? Do you remember one of your resolutions and how it went? People often start out a new year by making resolutions for how they are going to behave differently.

Some people decide to get in better shape. Gym memberships spike in January and participation declines by February. How does it feel if you do not stick to your resolution? Resolutions have judgement built into them. You either pass or fail.

The title of this article specifically uses the word intentions instead of resolutions. Intentions come from your heart. Resolutions come from your head. Setting an intention does not mean you will never fail. It means that when you fail, you will cut yourself some slack for being human. You won’t abandon your intention because you didn’t do it perfectly.

Setting Your New Parenting Intention

What is one thing you’d like to change to improve your family? Any intention that improves your physical, mental, emotional or spiritual wellbeing will benefit your family. Focusing on one priority will increase the likelihood of achieving it.

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