This is #3 of a 12-part series on parenting mistakes. Here are the first two: Mistake #1: Parents Not Letting Their Kids Fail. Mistake #2: Parents Project Their Lives on Their Children. Today, we tackle Mistake #3: Putting Too Much Emphasis on BEING HAPPY Your child’s happiness is important, but being happy should not be the…
12 Huge Parenting Mistakes You Can Avoid…. Mistake #2: Parents Project Their Lives on Their Children
This is #2 of a 12-part serious on parenting mistakes. Last week, we discussed Mistake #1: Parents Not Letting Their Kids Fail. This week: Mistake #2: Parents Project Their Lives on Their Children. Sit through any youth sports event and you are sure to hear a parent or two or three who are obviously trying…
12 Parenting Mistakes You Can Avoid
Although I’ve never met a perfect parent, I have met some who were pretty wise and I’ve learned a lot from watching them parent. And although my kids are grown, I’m always on the lookout for parenting wisdom from other sources. Even as a parenting and family life coach, I certainly don’t know it all!…
3 Ways to Victory Even When The Scoreboard Says it’s a Loss
I love to win, don’t you? Victory is just plain fun. I love it when my teams win (Go Dolphins! Go Hurricanes!) and I love it when my kids’ teams win. But in the world of sports–and life–there is always a winner and a loser and so your child will be facing a lot of…
Raising Leaders Starts HERE
There are two kinds of people in this world, leaders, and followers. As parents, we should want to be all about raising leaders, we should want them to be the ones who are doing the influencing instead of the ones being swayed by others all the time. Unfortunately, some people think that unless you are…
Why Winging-It is an Exhausting Parenting Strategy
What is your parenting strategy? Are you proactive or reactive? One makes life a huge gamble and leaves you scrambling; the other helps you be better prepared to handle the curve balls that life inevitably throws at you. The epidemic of living reactively has infected parenting and as a result has made the job of…
4 Parenting Mistakes that Nearly Tripped Me Up–and Might Make You Stumble Too
It’s way too easy for overloaded and overwhelmed parents to make parenting mistakes with their kids and even miss out on some amazing experiences, and it has nothing to do with how busy you are. It has more to do with how present you are. As I think back over nearly 32 years of parenting,…
Survey Says—These are the Biggest Parenting Struggles
Every parent struggles with something. That’s a no-brainer. Here are some top answers from parents who were asked what their top struggles are: Time. Not Enough of it. Unsure of how to manage it. Struggle with how to divide it with multiple kids. Keeping kids motivated in school and/or sports. The frustrating part of this dilemma is that you simply cannot just make your kids get motivated. You can threaten, bribe, lecture–but the motivation cannot be applied externally like a topical lotion. Knowing when to…
Don’t Raise Finger-Pointers
One of the biggest troubles that we have as humans is believing that our hardest problems in life exist outside of us, not inside of us. It’s much easier to be finger-pointers than problem-solvers. As you’ve probably noticed, your kids are very skilled at explaining away their mistakes or misbehavior by pointing to the situations,…
3 Simple Steps to Helping Your Child Handle Their Anger
As a child, my parents frowned on my anger and I often felt that I had to NOT get angry in order to not get in trouble. As awesome as my parents were, this was one parenting tactic that I do not feel served me well. As a child, I had to hide my anger…