Love, That Magic Wand In Parenting
Being a parent is challenging. Being a mother is a challenge. It is today and has always been. The formula for getting it right doesn’t exist. But there is an ingredient that should be in all recipes to educate children: love. In reality, when love is part of any cocktail, things are much more likely to turn out well. And the more the merrier.
But, what is the difference between a good parenting and a bad parenting? What scale do we use to judge whether things are going well or badly? Academic success? Obedience and good behavior? Knowing how to be? If there is love, you will have no doubts, because when you put love into relationships, they give you back joy, peace and calm. And if we are talking about your children, even more so.
Many may have been offended by this. We all love our children, of course, but loving a child is not the same as raising one with love. In addition, raising children with love takes something that today’s parents don’t always have: time to connect with them. Keep in mind that connecting is not the same as being.
Connect with your children for parenting based on love
When you connect with your children, you see them differently. Somehow they become more human. They stop being a project to become people with present abilities. They stop being a task to become part of you. Their problems become your problems, their concerns your concerns, their world your world.
Did you never feel as a child or as a teenager that you were a stranger in a place where you did not fit in, where you were not taken into account, where only the opinions and expectations of your parents were valid? That is disconnection. Your parents loved you, of course they did, but they weren’t connected to you. If you don’t know what this is, congratulations. Surely now you have no problems connecting with your children.
At certain times it seems difficult to connect with children, but there is nothing that cannot be achieved if you put love, a lot of love. Love without conditions, without restrictions, without expectations.
Overcome your insecurities by loving yourself
Parenthood tends to expose many of our insecurities. It is not fair that we project our frustrations on them, that we try to direct their future so that they are able to go where we could not go. They are different people from us and they are probably going to have different aspirations. In this way, helping them get theirs and not ours is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.
Think that if you love yourself as you are, you will renew your faith in yourself and also in your children, since you will give them the best version of yourself, what you really are. The relationship will grow in sincerity, pride and hope. Your children do not need a superhero as a father or mother, they only need parents who love them as they are and for what they are.
Love brings security, trust, and hope. If you give them to others, you offer them everything else. If you give it to yourself, the effects on yourself and what you offer to others multiply. Only by loving yourself can you love others, including your children.
How to connect with children through love
Love transforms everything as it is the main difference between happy parenting and stressful parenting. You can get out of any difficult situation with love. And there are many situations of this type that can occur throughout the day.
To start applying love to raising your children, the first step is to imagine that you connect with them. Close your eyes and feel that deep and intense love grow within you. Feel the warmth and warmth that emanates from love. Hold that image for a minute. If you do this often, you will be able to program yourself for love and you will integrate it within yourself as the way of seeing the relationship with your children.
Talking about the real relationship with your children, observe the situation every time a situation of tension begins with them. Acknowledge the situation and acknowledge yourself. Identify how you feel and analyze how you react. Do you think that love and affection guide that way of acting? If not, try to recall the image we talked about in the previous paragraph. Look at the situation from this new perspective. There is always more than one way to interpret and deal with a situation.
If you are angry, if you feel irritated, do not try to guide your child in that situation. Do not intervene when you find yourself in the middle of a storm of negative feelings. You cannot control a situation if you yourself are not able to control yourself. Think that if you want to connect with your child, you will first have to connect with yourself. Give yourself love and then give that love.
On the other hand, keep in mind that human beings connect better from physical contact. Hug your children, caress them, fill them with kisses. You don’t need a reason or a reason. On the other hand, as they get older it is easy for the contact to diminish: either then do you give up, do not forget to connect skin to skin.
Remember also that the game is a powerful weapon to connect that promotes not only contact, but also dialogue, complicity and interaction. Play with your children whenever you can. You don’t need to organize anything special. A simple pillow fight or any kind of impromptu run can go a long way.
