5 parenting mantras

I love mantras, memes, quotes. When I was 14, I started collecting quotes and poetry in a notebook. I stopped writing in the notebook as life became busy, but the notebook is on my shelf. But when I came to gentle parenting, I started collecting them again.

This is not an emergency

Whining, crying, meltdowns are all designed to get us to feel what our kids are feeling. It guarantees those behaviours to turn on the red alert in my brain. My biggest trigger is fear of being late when I’m due to work or an appointment.

When your red alert is going off in your mind, invoke “This is not an emergency” because it’s not. Reminding yourself that you are not in a crisis will slow down your brain and allow you to come out of the fear of needing to fix it and respond with empathy.

Everyone is doing the best they can

My favorite Brene Brown story is the one where she learned everyone is doing their best. This is three times more true for our kids. Our kids are so young, still in development, still learning how to communicate. (SO AM I! Including the young bit!!)

“Everyone is doing the best they can” is my favorite bit of optimism. We don’t know what other people are going through, what skills they learned.

It’s also a reminder that all behaviour is communication of a need. Most of us never learned how to ask for what we need straight out. We start out communicating through behaviour; we cry and we get fed or changed or picked up. Overtime, we are told to ask or what we need but then we also often get the message our needs don’t get met even if we ask. So, we have to use our behaviour to get them met.

Everyone is doing the best they can.

They are not giving you a hard time; they are having a hard time

Emotions are overwhelming. Even for adults. Ever broke down crying after a bad day, ever ranted at someone who upset you? Those are adult tantrums. And it’s okay to have them, as long as we aren’t attacking other people, even if they were mean.

It’s also okay for our kids to have a hard time with emotions and express them.

Empathy is fixing. — Vivek Patel

Often parents and caregivers want to know how to fix their child’s upset. Crying, whining, hitting are all very triggering behaviours for many and we just want it to stop so we can stop feeling their feelings. And we like to fix things, I LOVE fixing problems. I’m a great advice giver, even if people don’t want it.

Empathy is the fix. Empathy for them and empathy for yourself. Validation doesn’t stop those behaviours, because we don’t want to erase hard feelings. Empathy sends the message that big emotions are part of life, and we can handle them together.

Is your thought true?

This comes from Byron Katie. We have a lot of thoughts during our day, and many thoughts are automatic negative thoughts. We rarely take time to examine if they are true or not.

The first question in Katie’s Big 4 is “is this true?”

I often find myself thinking, “my kid is being a brat” or “I’ve told them this 100 times, they should know it by now.” These thoughts come to mind more often than they should.

My kid is doing the best they can (see the second and third quote), and I have told them many times, but humans are impulsive, especially little ones, and it’s my job to guide them.

A couple of bonus quotes that I love

'The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.' ~ Peggy O'Mara

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” - L.R. Knost

What are your favorite quotes?