Their recent research reported that 73% of parents are concerned about being a ‘good parent’ and 37% felt pressure to be a ‘perfect parent’.
Life coaching can help parents and families feeling under pressure.
In what can be a rollercoaster of emotions, experiences and expectations it is important to find the right solutions for you as a family unit, with the emphasis on you finding the solutions for you rather than being told what to do. To enable you to do this you need to feel empowered and confident in the decisions you are making (not always an easy task, when parents are often given conflicting messages by friends, family and professionals).
Three steps to enable confident decision making are to:
- make sure that you are clear on what a ‘perfect parent’, or ‘good parent’ or maybe a happy, healthy, family unit means to you (and your family, involving all members of the family if age appropriate). Create your own definition, based on the things that are important to you
- identify all the strengths you have as a family, both as individuals and a ‘team’
- identify your family values – the things that are important to you as a family and that make you ‘tick'
Two fun, crafty ways of doing this and involving children in the process are:
- a family tree with a difference – the trunk has the family values on it, and the branches/leaves can represent the strengths (one suggestion is to have a branch per family member and then the leaves for the strengths).
- a family shield, which depicts the strengths and your values
These can then be displayed somewhere for you all to see and use.
When you are faced with having to make decisions, use these to check your options against. How does the decision
- fit with our vision of a happy, healthy family
- use our strengths and
- fit with our values – or is it in conflict with them?
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