5 Things to Stop Doing IMMEDIATELY If You Are Struggling as a Parent

Posted on July 07, 2022 by Michael McDonald, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.

Let’s face it, parenting is hard work. Despite all the advances and achievements of modern society, parenting can still be extremely draining.

After speaking with many parents about their greatest parenting challenges, I was able to narrow down their varied responses into a few overarching categories.

If you feel exhausted from treading water as a parent then read on to see if your parenting challenges fall into one or more of these categories:

1. Disregarding Your Health

Your health is one of the most critical aspects of your life. We never truly appreciate something of value until it’s gone. If you have ever known someone who has faced a debilitating illness, there is little in the world they would not trade to have their health restored.

As parents, we spend so much time and attention looking after our little ones, that we neglect to take care of ourselves. Over time, this self-neglect can lead to compounding issues related to our health. Without your health, you will only become more ineffective as time goes on.

Even worse, the more we let ourselves go, the harder it is to enforce healthy habits with our children. They are like sponges and absorb everything we do or do not do.

But here is the good news. Your health is one of the easiest things for you take control of again. Unlike other areas of your life that may be outside of your control, there are small steps you can take today to put yourself on a trajectory for improved health.

While it might take some time before you see significant results, by taking small, consistent steps regarding your nutrition, fitness, sleep, and mental outlook, you WILL achieve positive results!

Losing weight is not the only metric of increased health – it can be an increase in energy, increased mental clarity, and an overall brighter outlook on life. Start by defining what improvement or success means for you.

Our bodies are amazing in their resiliency. As you make progress on your health, you will also find other challenges in your life become easier to tackle from the discipline you gained.

2. Comparing Yourself to Other Parents

Social media plays a huge role in modern parents’ life. And while there are many good aspects to this such as life hacks on Pinterest or support groups on Facebook, it is all too easy to look at the carefully filtered life of other parents.

That perfect birthday party at the waterpark… That perfect family trip to the zoo… The matching colors all their kids are wearing… Hint: their lives are not always like that, and those parents have many of the same struggles you do.

Don’t let the picture-perfect snippets of friends, relatives, and coworkers’ lives dictate your confidence to parent your children. Run your own race and only concern yourself with being better than yesterday.

As with your health, start by defining what success and improvements look like for you and pursue that goal instead.

On that same note, there is nothing wrong with finding a few solid role models and mentors as inspiration to motivate you in becoming better. I have several parents that I look up to as mentors and I greatly value their content! We all need positive encouragement and inspiration to improve our lives. But keep this list limited and aligned with your values.

3. Allowing Your Finances to Control You

Who controls who? If most parents are honest, it is finances that control much of their lives.

This is in part because our society does not teach or practice financial wellness. Nowhere in school is there a curriculum for successfully handling finances (unless you are homeschooled). Instead, the school teaches our youth how to be good employees who will forever be dependent on the system for their wealth and wellbeing.

Like your health, taking back control of your finances starts with small steps. It may take a little while, but remaining consistent with good financial habits of budgeting, avoiding debt, investing, and keeping the right mindset about money will lead to your financial success and living the life you always wanted.

4. Poor Time Management Habits

You probably don’t realize how much time you are wasting in any given day. There are exactly 1440 minutes in each day. Of those, how many are spent in reaction mode as opposed to executing a properly planned out day/week?

One of the most critical steps you can take to implement proper time management is to plan out your week and month on a calendar. If this step seems too simple, it’s because it is! Yet, so many parents find themselves living day to day one step away from total burnout.

Try this: start by listing out 5-6 tasks you would like to accomplish each week. Then, prioritize them beginning with the toughest project on Monday, and ending with the easiest project on Friday or Saturday. Work on these tasks one at a time and don’t begin the next project until you have completed the first one.

You will be amazed at how much more productive you will find your days and weeks allowing for meaningful rest on the weekend.

5. Lack of Preparedness

When someone mentions preparedness, most people tend to think of the over-the-top preppers on TV. This is a sad misconception of what having a preparedness mindset looks like in reality. Moreover, our forefathers would be ashamed to see how this mindset has been lost in modern society.

There are many recent examples that point to why parents more than any other group in society should have a preparedness mindset: the supply chain delays and collapses “just in time” delivery services, baby formula shortages, rampant inflation and the coming recession, and on and on.

A lack of preparedness sets you up for living as an emotional wreck! So, to start enjoying life and parenthood, you need to get off this emotional roller coaster and take charge of your future.

By preparing today with what you know you will need tomorrow, you empower your family’s security and wellbeing.

By embracing the preparedness mindset, you shift yourself and your family from living reactively, to living proactively and thus, improving your quality of life.

Conclusion

Parenting is hard. But is harder for those who fall into any of the above categories.

To take back control of your life, start implementing small steps in the right direction. Stay tuned for more tips on how to overcome these challenges so you can become the super-parent of your family!