Don’t we all want to be the perfect mom or dad? The one who is not only perfectly groomed every day, but can also whip up a healthy dinner while consoling a screaming child with one hand and driving the other to [insert sport here] practice with the other?
But let’s be honest: Parenting is not that easy for anyone. And in the midst of the pressure and stress, it’s easy to lose our temper with our children. Still, the consequences are worse than you think. The American Psychological Association reports that our stress deeply affects our kids, whether we know it or not. So what’s a frazzled parent to do?
Thankfully, we have a parenting etiquette tip that will do wonders for your relationship with your little ones—and give you extra mommy brownie points.
To do it, you can skip the expensive parenting books and online chat rooms. Instead, try this brilliant parenting hack developed by parenting blogger Kelly at The (Reformed) Idealist Mom. According to Kelly, she realized that she needed a fresh approach to parenting when she snapped at her preschooler for the umpteenth time.
“Unfortunately for me, I’d developed a bad habit of talking sharply to my preschooler,” Kelly wrote. “My brain was on autopilot headed in the wrong direction towards being an angry mother.”
To control her temper (and save her relationship with her daughter), she decided to keep track of every time she snapped, yelled, or lashed out with hair ties on her wrist.
True story! Every time she lost her cool at her children, she had to move one hairband to the other arm. Then to “earn it back,” she created a positive moment with them by doing things like reading a book, hugging, or playing a game together. Her ultimate goal was to have as many hairbands as possible on the original wrist by the end of the day.
Believe it or not, what started out as a conscious effort to control her temper became a habit for Kelly. And this trick has quickly taken the Internet by storm; parents swear by it! So although it may seem cheesy, developing a positive attitude towards parenting could start with just a bit of elastic.
from Reader's Digest http://ift.tt/2tija7Y
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