Dealing with Parental Stress

Dealing with parental stress

Dear parent, what you are about to read is for you and you alone. Your role as the maker of America’s future citizens is no easy task. It is harder now than in earlier times because now economic factors have made our wage earning even more difficult. What we could earn in forty hours in the seventies, now takes us a hundred and sixty hours to accomplish today. It is true that the commonly skilled family wage earner has to work much harder and spend much more for the same quality of life than in previous times. If you happen to be a single parent, then the workload just tripled. It is perfectly understandable that you or a loved one would be dealing with parental stress in this type of setting, anywhere in the country. We will discuss some new ideas that will change all this for the better. Dealing with parental stresses means understanding them and overcoming them, and nothing less.

Welcome to our website. Thanks for visiting us. To begin with, let us look at a few areas from where our stress is coming. Stress can come from external sources like our employment because of unfriendly, negative, or too demanding employers or co-workers. Stress can arise out of our wages being inadequate. Stress can also come from internal sources such as household demands, and parenting obligations. This stress from the internal sources from parenting we will discuss here. The reason we also mention the other areas where your stress may come from is that stress is cumulative, and just like debt or exposure to x-rays, it all matters. The sum total of the stress, from all areas you must consider and minimize as much as possible. When it comes to stress, we always consider the whole picture, and so should you.

The thankless task of parenting

Okay, now let us look at the area of most concern, and that is dealing with parental stress specifically. In case you have not figured it out yet, you cannot necessarily count on any support from your children. Children are the needful ones, and it seems the older they get, the more needful they become. Nature however has given them some surpluses though to make up for it, such as a surplus of criticism of you, mom, or dad, in how badly you do your job. There is no scarcity of that! In dealing with parental stress, the first rule in parenting is that you cannot depend on your children for emotional support. If your dealing with parental stress involves your listening to what your kids are complaining about, you will have to develop some thick skin in addressing it. One of the aspects of parenting, even great parenting, is that your children will complain no matter what. Parenting is a thankless job, and parents are alone in the discharge of their duties. If you the parent have some emotional needs, and you are seeking solace and encouragement from your children, that is not going to happen. What your child may say in anger and disappointment to you may hurt your deeply, if the child sees it will have a damaging effect. You need to know that you are a great parent and that you are doing a fantastic job in your circumstances, just as you are. There are other sources for emotional support, if you recognize that as one area of need you have. Just like pastors in a church, or a captain of a ship, you the parent will have no one to talk to within the home, and that is how it should be, and this is actually a good thing. God has chosen you to be a leader of a family, and leaders are always alone in their responsibility.

Dealing from parental stress from lack of emotional support

Socializing with other parents is the first step in dealing with parental stress. The place to get emotional support if you need some assurance that you are doing a good job at being a parent is logically from another parent in your situation. We cannot face life’s challenges alone, without at some point becoming overwhelmed and feeling that we may be a failure. In this case, we need some deep comforting. The cumulative effect of parental stress is depression. If you are like many parents, and to meet the demands of your family, you have cut off your ties to other parents because there simply is no time to socialize, there is an answer. This misunderstood choice is a mistake many parents make. As life becomes more hectic, we give up our ties to our community, through church or other social activities to use that time for our families. Gradually, the workload of parenting leaves no avenue for the parent to interact with others to get their selfish nurturement needs met, and they gradually become overwhelmed. In psychotherapy, we call this the Lone Wolf Tendency. In nature, we all know that a lone wolf is easy prey. If you have no other parent friends, or other peers to interact with frequently, that will greatly magnify the effects of your stress. Dealing with parental stress means first finding as many available parent friends in your work, school, and children’s activities as you can. Where your children go, others go, their parents bring them, and coaches teach them. These are the parents and the coaches that can best help you as your friend and support, if you can meet them.

This is easier when your kids are small, for adults supervise young ones closely. It is much harder as teens, because teens avoid adults like the plague, and there may not be visible access to other adults to meet them. When you cannot meet them directly, meet them indirectly. Use you kids to help you meet their friend’s parents. Make your kids work for you and have them invite their friends’ families over for dinner and meet them that way. Usually the kids will be cooperative because it gives them more time to be with their friends as they visit with their families in your home. In many cases, you will find as we have, that the other parents are glad to meet the other families in their children’s lives.

Dealing with parental stress from the feared loss of relationship with your child

It is a common mistake for parents to gauge their success as a parent based on how much their kids like them. Parental stress can come from not understanding your true relationship with your children. Dealing with parental stress from the fear of loss of relationship as your child matures can be the hardest of all, unless you understand it. Children do not stay innocent little bundles of love and joy forever, and just grow larger; they also morph into an alien life form known as a teenager. When they take on this non human life form everything changes. They may not like you nor will they even know you. Teenagers, by instinct, do not understand anything about logic, reason, patience, scarcity, practicality, and in some cases, even reality. That is as it should be, but it is an emotionally taxing time for the parents, especially loving moms. If you are under the assumption that your teenager’s change in perspective is somehow your fault, and that you have lost the love and trust of your teenager due to your failure, you can relax. You are excellent parents, and your older child is branching out on their own, shedding the ways of their parents, which is a good sign. There is no reason to have stress if you have arguments with them regarding, money, boundaries, and freedoms they have to earn, rather than having them by right. Rarely will you be your teenager’s best friend, nor should you be. You are the boss and the leader, and they are seeking to have everything right now. Thusly both they and you have conflicting and different objectives, and confrontations and misunderstandings will occur often.

These misunderstandings and confrontations are part of their learning process, and their soul’s curriculum. Do not give ground and give into them just to get their favor. If you do that, they will soon learn that their approval is a weapon they can use to get what they want, and they will lose respect for you. Be encouraged though; because over time, just as they morphed into the non-human life form of a teenager, they will remorph back into a human form again we all know as a twenty-something. They will not be fully human yet, but they will be enough so that you will know you have your kid back. When they return to reality, they will again recognize you as the parent and have newfound respect for you as a strong parent as well, and then your relationship will be much stronger than before. This is a great time as they herd together with their own kind, you mom and dad herd together with your own kind. Take a time out for several years and reconnect with adult friends at your work, and in your neighborhood. Just like a baker does a lot of work, and then commits his masterpiece into the oven, so too can you let your child have free reign for a while. They do not need a lot of daily attention at this point, just be available if they seek your company. You do not have to focus a lot of attention on them anymore, and you can revisit some of the things you like to do, and invest a little attention on yourself and your spouse. Now it is time to look at the bright future of your life without your children again. If you find this to cause you to be dealing with parental stress in a different way, this is the next area on which we will talk.

Dealing with parental stress from getting your sense of value from your children

Some parents may feel stress about losing their relationship with their children, and not know how to balance their need for approval, with the responsibilities of saying no at times. Other parents may take this emotional need too far. These parents may see their only definition, and thusly their only value as a person in that of being a parent. This is a tragic condition, as my mother was to me. They fear the loss of their identity and their source of love in their children when they leave. These parents see their children as their only source of nurturement. As a result, they starve them and try to cut them off from the outside world with fear, to keep their children needing them. The truth is you are first an individual and secondly you are a parent, and you cannot ever reverse that order of priority. The reason for that is your identity as an individual is always permanent, and your identity as a parent is temporary. The best way to deal with parental stress if it comes from this area is to work on your self-value as a person outside of that of being a parent. When you do that it will not only make you a more autonomous person, it will make you a better parent as a result. Your children will notice your self-centeredness, will become more comfortable around you, and will respect you much more. The more you learn to see your value as a self-centered person, the more you will raise the self-centered tendencies in your children, therefore the better parent you will become. If you feel you are dealing from parental stress from loss of affection either from your children, or in losing your children when they grow up, you need help now. Your children will learn from you, and if you deal with parental stress by chasing love from others to get your sense of value, so too will they learn that same poisoning trait. Be yourself, and let those that love you come to you, and the settings you are to experience will come to you as a result. Your life is nothing more than a result of you being ‘you.’

Dealing with parental stress from too high an expectations from yourself

For some strange reason, we parents can easily get the false impression that we are to be perfect and infallible. We also can get the impression we are to solve all of life’s problems for our children, a misconception that our kids will encourage, if we fall into that trap! Parents are not perfect and you should not try to live up to a model of perfection. You can make mistakes and when you do, you owe yourself forgiveness afterwards. When you make a mistake, change, and move on. Changing you owe to your children and to life, moving on you owe to yourself, which is not a privilege it is a right. In our workday world, there are limitations of time, money, and of available choices, and sometimes we have to make the best of what we have. We do not live in a perfect world and we must compromise often. Children sometimes will try to use your mistakes against you, saying if you can do it, so can they. Be fair in this sticky situation, and apply the same rules to yourself as you do to them. Once you have made a decision and taken a stand, do not stress on it further and let it go. Children will try to use their approval of you against you if you are weak emotionally. You must stand your ground and let them know that will not work. Another weapon they will use is the doctrine of stare decisis to get their way. They will say, “Lisa’s parents said yes when she asked to go so why cannot we go?” You must remind them that they are not Lisa and you are not her parents. Reminding them that you cannot afford it is as perfectly all right, if it is the truth. If you are dealing with parental stress from your children constantly comparing you to Dr. Jameson’s family who live in the gated community in the rich section of The Colony, do not fall for it. There is one little difference, and that is your station in life. You do the best that you can do for your family and that is all that God or Life expects. Be proud of that, and do not look at the attitudes of your children as an indicator of how good a parent you are, for that is the least reliable indicator of anything!

The greatest factor in dealing with stress of any kind is the options we have, in other words, the choices we can make in addressing it. Stress causes us to narrow our vision and draw back our perimeters, and circle the wagons. What that tends to do is narrow our vision. When we cannot see many choices, we get a bleak view of life and our situation seems hopeless. We also lose trust in life and we become mistrustful and emotionally distant, and when we do that we cut off our resources from coming into our lives, as they should. We do that two ways; first, they will cease to enter our world by our mistrust, as they would normally. Second, we would not see them if they did enter.

Dealing with parental stress usually comes from an unmet self-esteem need in the parent. If the parent has an unmet emotional need, and a certain situation presently in the home reminds the parent of something missing in their childhood, that will cause extreme stress in the parent, even simple events normally of no great magnitude otherwise. The way to deal with this situation is to ask you, “What is my emotional need, or what do I need?” Do not ask yourself, “What does my family need?’ or “What do my kids need?” but ‘What do I personally need?” We normally see selfishness as a negative trait, especially in parenting, but in this case, it is a necessary ingredient to our sense of wellbeing, and to our functionality as a good parent. The point we are getting at here is to put you first, and start thinking ‘me, me, me.’ To get rid of stress, we must begin by putting ourselves first. If you will notice, all of the above causes of parental stress originate when we start compromising who we are to make others, in this case our kids, like us. When we start putting ourselves first, we will then be prepared with the correct mindset to move to the next level, and that is to find the resources within our relationships to meet our needs. The fact is, if you cannot meet your own needs, you cannot teach your children how to meet their needs. By learning this life-skill of dealing with parental stress, you will be a better parent and qualified to teach your family the same skill, by example. Children and even teenagers learn by imitation, and by virtue of that which you practice, you will teach also.

The truth is God, Life, or The Loving Mother Universe, or whatever godhead you wish to worship, has already put into your life-path all the resources you will ever need to live a positive full life while you are here on earth. Where are these resources for your needs, and answers for your stress? The answer is right within your reach at this very moment. Precisely define the cause of your dealing with parental stress with your children. Stress comes from a lack, or a fear of one. Once you have defined that scarcity, and then trust God to lead it to you. The next step is to reach out to others around you in friendship. Cultivate your inventory of friends as much as time will allow. Learn to reach out to others and to need them as well. There are people in your surroundings right now that have the thing you desperately need. Open up to others whom you feel drawn to for friendship and comfort. Start to trust life and humanity to help you get your needs met. God works through what is already present in your social arena. Look less through your eyes of reason and logic, and learn to navigate with the intuition within your heart. If your need is for extra money to help make ends meet as the family breadwinner, there is a second job open out there somewhere you could do easily. If your parental stress arises out of conflicts with your children, as they grow older, there is support out there somewhere from friends at work or in your neighborhood. If your role as a parent has made you face a deficiency within yourself that you cannot understand, there is insight out there in the counsel of a friend or coworker. The first step always in dealing with any problem is to share it with others.

How can we attract these resources to us that we need? We can do it by turning on the switches within our heart. These are our Sincerity Switch, our Spontaneity Switch, and our Feelings and Dreams Switch. When we choose to be sincere and honest, we turn on our Sincerity Switch that will attract others to us who have their Sincerity Switches on as well, and attract our good to us. When we trust life with our future, we turn on our Spontaneity Switch, which arranges our life for us and brings our good to us, leaving us free to enjoy the present day, and the joys within it. When we return to our dreams of our childhood, we turn on our Feelings and Dreams Switch, and that guides us to our destiny and to our fulfillment. When you return to the magic within your heart, then you will do more than deal with parental stress, you will have learned a life skill far greater, which will allow you to deal with any obstacle life could throw at you, ever!

Please consider our book first in series book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind. In this book, we talk about the whole overview of our soul’s journey as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about boundaries, selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dreams Switch.

Thank you for visiting us today and please keep in touch, sharing your trials and your victories with us. We promise to answer personally every Email that we receive.

Shayne and Lori North in Aurora, Colorado

Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book

Leave Dealing with Parental Stress and Return to Family Depression