My Parenting Guidelines: What Are Yours?

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Free Workbook to Figure Out Yours!

I want to shine a light on your parenting guidelines today.

What are those, you wonder?

I believe that we all use a personal set of guidelines for living with our children. What we have established as our place of “rules” is a mix of our own personal experiences (filled with good memories to maybe even hurtful difficult ones), what we’ve researched, what we’ve used that we had success or failure with, what we’ve witness work or fail in other families, past life stuff, and current energetic stuff we got going on.

Being clear on your guidelines gives you a foundation for navigating the good and more challenging days. Some of your included guidelines may be very natural making them very automatic or some may require more awareness, effort and learning. The latter can become more ingrained in us over time making them automatic responses.   

When the guidelines aren’t well developed or aren’t clear, mothering is tougher. You find yourself responding or leading in an inconsistent manner, without a strategy or long-term goal, or even feeling unqualified.

When your guidelines are well developed or clear, you are able to be very in-the-moment with your little one tending to their emotional needs with more ease instead of worrying about the mechanics or philosophies of things. You have your go-to and then you connect with them faster (and maybe it enables you to begin to do that). More connection means a better and richer relationship.

So what are your parenting guidelines?

Here are mine:
    To see my child as an evolving person
    To give my child the benefit of the doubt 
    To give the chance to try again
    To see and acknowledge his feelings
    To offer a hug when he’s having a hard time
    To let him help when he wants (even at times when it’s not super convenient for me)
    To slow life down 
    To use my heart in all minutes of the day to determine what he needs, what’s ok for him to have, and to help him learn what’s ok/what’s not

Ready to consider yours? Attached you'll find my workbook that guides you through figuring it out. Here are some deep question to chew on:

1.    What guides you now? What is currently in place as your default?

  • What is your emotional approach when you are care giving?

  • How do you generally respond to situations?

  • What is your approach to teaching/guiding?

  • What do you believe childhood should be or look like?

  • What are you committed to making sure your child knows when they are “grown up”?

2.    What do you want to be, do, or have in your guidelines that is currently not included in the above?

  • What is missing?

  • What specific problem(s) do you want to research more in order to create a more desirable parenting foundation?

  • What do you personally need to work on in order to make this a reality for your parenting? (Healing? Education? Support? Etc.)

3. What do you want to change or remove from your current guidelines?

  • What does not align with your heart? (feels wrong, inappropriate, insufficient, etc.)

  • What hurts you to realize that it IS included? (Follow-up is what can you do to heal it? Counseling? Therapy? Energy Work? Parenting Consultations? Etc.)

  • What is included without intention? What is simply a pattern from your own upbringing or previous lives that you are mindlessly living?

>>DOWNLOAD THE FREE WORKBOOK<<

I know this is big stuff to really think through. And maybe your wheels are already turning but you stop because you don’t have enough time to really complete the activity. If that’s the case, schedule this on your calendar—make 30-45 min. just for this important self-reflection. It will illuminate what is working so well for you and also those things that need to be healed and evolved. 

If you need some help getting through this exercise, comment below and I’ll help you out!

And if you just want to share your guidelines with someone, post those too. I’d love to celebrate with you!

Lots of love! xo

P.S. If you would love to learn my signature clearing out process that I teach, come download my free step-by-step instruction guide!