One of the most important parenting skills required today is the ability to set boundaries and hold the limits. In order to do this well, it is vitally important that you understand the relationship between boundaries and respect. Stay with me here, all will become clear. Boundaries and respect. Respect and boundaries. Chicken or the egg? Why are we talking about respect, I want to create killer boundaries around screen time and other things! I bet you’ve never really thought about respect and boundaries in the same breath. Believe me, neither had I! However, it is only when you understand the close relationship between these two things, that you will be able to shift from being so-so at setting boundaries and crap at holding the limits to being good at setting boundaries and kickass good at holding the limits. Boundaries alone are not enough. I’m going to generalize here, but, most of us moms are not bad at setting “the boundary” ie. saying what needs to be done. But sadly that’s often where it ends! It’s the next piece that gets us: we are not so great at holding the limits. You know the story, as soon as you …Read more →
Top Strategies For Discussing Report Cards
Report cards can be the cause of much stress between parents and teenagers and I have spoken about this on the podcast many times. It can be a stressful time for parents but also for children. Kids today are under so much pressure to achieve that I believe it is almost at breaking point. In this Episode 26: Exams, Tests, End Of The Year Pressure…Help! I discuss ways in which you can deal with this, specifically in helping you shift your focus from the grade or result to the process, to help your children develop courage and self-motivation. It’s such an important thing to think about and I was fortunate to have been given the opportunity to understand this early on in my life as a parent. As such I wanted to share some of the things that I have learned so that you can adopt some of my strategies around discussing report cards to help you build courage and self-esteem and motivation in your child. I invite you to really think about what report cards and grades really mean for you. Perhaps you can take some time to reflect on these questions: How are report cards viewed in your family? …Read more →
How Do I Get My Kid To Eat?
Age 22 months, my son went from eating everything to eating nothing. I read everything I could find on How To Get Your Kid To Eat and found nothing much. It literally happened overnight. I remember it well. And I remember thinking – how on earth will I get my kid to eat? How was this badass MOM going to get her son to eat? At the time I had just had my second child so was caught up and somewhat pre-occupied in all things newborn. I had to dig deep into my badass-ness to cope with this one. Dig I did. And I found a way out of it and as such, want to share it with you. I found a way to get my kid to eat. As I was to discover, my son decided that all he was going to eat was Heinz spaghetti from a can, toast, and Shreddies! At the time, I just played to it because it was all I could do. I didn’t fight it, probably because I didn’t have the time for it. I had to let it go and took the attitude that he was at least eating something and …Read more →
How To Stop Your Kids Interrupting You
To change anything you need to first need to see your life AS IT IS to identify the parts of it that actually need changing. In other words, to stop your kids interrupting you, you have to see your child’s patterns of interrupting as it is, big picture. Very often, many of our struggles and challenges, come from us being over-whelmed and having just too much on our plates. As such, we have to learn to prioritize what’s most important, find ways to reduce the chaos and stress to allow ourselves to show up as we know we can and “should”, to allow us to meet our child’s needs. I wrote about just this in a post called: How To Upgrade Your Parenting. If you are interested in more on this and finding a way to upgrade your parenting, this blog HERE is just for you. It’s called THE ULTIMATE PARENTING UPGRADE. It is easy to see that when we are operating from a place of general over-whelm, dealing with the routine things that kids do, like interrupting, being disrespectful, not listening, leaving their sh*t all over the house, can cause us to snap. It becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s …Read more →
How To Be A Badass MOM
You might be reading this thinking “How To Be A Badass MOM” – what’s that? You might not able to visualize yourself as being badass enough or badass at all? I can assure you that if you are a mom, you can be badass. And there are times when it definitely helps to be badass! Are you tired of feeling frustrated and overwhelmed? Negotiating, arguing, nagging and cajoling? Kids being on their devices All.The.Time? Kiddos not listening? Going to bed too late? Rushing around All.The.Time? Tired. Tired. YES? If you want to do something about it, you are in the right place. I can help you. Stay with me here. As you will see, by the end of this post, it will come full circle, I promise!! My three favourite words are: Badass. Un-aba-shed. Serendipity. And I’m going to share with you where they all fit in: If you are tired of feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, only you can change it, and change it you can but you are going to have to be UN-ABA-SHED-LY BADASS in your commitment to doing so. If I did, you can too. However, before I go any further, I need to make sure we …Read more →
How To See ADHD As A Gift
In this blog post, I hope to help you shift your perspective and begin to see ADHD as a gift. The very label Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has such negative connotations doesn’t it? When you think about it, it’s terrible… imagine having this label slapped onto you and feeling good about it! It’s neither wonder that many kids labeled as ADHD have a fragile self-esteem. Author Lara Honos-Webb Ph.D. immediately draws the reader’s attention to this in her wonderful book, The Gift Of ADHD. When there is an associated notion that there is a disorder or deficit, that something is lacking, it can seriously undermine a child’s self-esteem. In all reality, I do not see ADHD as a deficit of attention but more of a challenge with the ability to prioritize attention. In fact, the kids I have met with ADHD often have a form of hyper-focus, albeit, usually when inspired and motivated by something they love doing! The prime focus of this book is to help you parent in such a way as to help your child and prevent any associated negativity from undermining their sense of self and self-esteem. This is a critical part of parenting kids …Read more →
How To Support Yourself With A Child With ADHD
Parenting is hard enough at the best of times. But, with the additional challenges that come with diagnoses such as ADHD, anxiety and learning challenges, it can be overwhelming. In this blog post, I share with you 7 steps you can take to support yourself on your journey. When you support yourself and meet your needs, you are better able to meet your child’s needs. As a result, despite the very best of intentions, you can very quickly and easily run yourself into the ground. It is all too easy to lose sight of yourself in it all and forget about what you might need. Take it from Helen, whose story I share here. When was the last time you thought about what you need and given it to yourself? The truth is this: as much as you think it might be selfish to take care of yourself and support yourself, you need to recognize it for what it is: it is selfish not to take care of yourself. It will help you so much to start viewing it through this lens. It is selfish for children to have a mom who doesn’t honour her needs and do what she …Read more →
How To Parent A Child With ADHD?
The Vital Piece Over-Looked By Parents When Parenting A Child With ADHD Do you have a child with ADHD? In this rich, brave and courageous story, Helen shares with us the things she experienced, the lessons she learned and the vital piece she had over-looked when parenting her son with ADHD. This is key in knowing how to parent a child with ADHD. From Helen: Our ADHD Roller Coaster Ride Looking back, it was when our son moved into Grade 6 that we started seeing a change in him. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly but over the course of the year, it became clear to us that he was struggling. His marks started dropping but it was his changing attitude that bothered us more. Granted there were now tweeny / teenage hormones rearing their ugly heads but it was more than this. We saw a bit of anxiety but he was very dismissive of it and any help or conversations around it. His attitude was just so out of character. He was certainly not the same boy that we had raised in the earlier years. At times my husband and I would just look at each other …Read more →
Could Our Child Have ADHD?
Could our child have ADHD? Might our son actually have ADHD? “Why is my son’s lunch sitting beside the tooth paste in the bathroom and he has already left for school?” “I told him to meet me outside the school at 3pm, why has he taken the bus home?” “Why is the homework on the dining table? He told me that it was due yesterday?” “What do you mean you can’t find your cleats, we just got them back from the lost and found…” “Why is the fridge door open?” Sound familiar? Welcome to the world of living with a boy with ADHD. Whilst I understand that many of these things are just normal things for boys (and some girls, sure!), the frequency and intensity at which these types of things occur when a child has ADHD, is at times unbelievable. Read this great article on A Day In The Life Of a Boy With ADHD. Here’s another tough thing: often if you talk about this with your friends, they will invariably tell you that it’s all normal. That their boys are just the same. Take a chill pill. Someone even said this to me: “You grew up with girls, …Read more →
Busy, Over-Whelmed and Exhausted?
Aren’t you tired of being busy, over-whelmed and exhausted? There are times when I feel this way, but when I do, I now know exactly what I can do to shift me out of it and I want to share it with you. It’s so simple… Speaking to my friends, it would seem that many of us are in the same boat. I think that there used to be a time in my life where I was nicely busy, just busy enough! At certain times of the year, particularly the end of the school year or the run up to Christmas I knew I would get really busy, it was a given and I just accepted it as being the way it was. I don’t know about you, but for me it now seems that every day feels more like that time of the year. It’s a bit like the VISA bills. There used to be a time where the big ones were anticipated at certain times of the year but now every month is a big one! It seems like it’s almost become to norm to be busy, over-whelmed and exhausted. Moms wear the “busy badge” like it’s a …Read more →
