The Parenting Coach

I love to cook and I’m pretty good at it. I’m not a gourmet cook but I know how to put together a meal that is both visually pleasing and good to eat. When my kids were small there were a lot of “kid things” I didn’t feel comfortable doing such as wrestling on the floor and going down water slides. I decided to engage them in things I enjoyed doing when choosing something we could do together; like cooking. They both loved to be involved in the kitchen to stir, pour, add ingredients and taste in the process. I realized so much learning took place everytime we baked something . We had to measure, talk about the ingredients, read the recipes, watch how our cakes and muffins grew after we put them in the oven and they had to learn to co-operate with the process. Today my sixteen year old son does very well for himself in the kitchen and has become famous in our family for his perfect sunny-side up eggs with bacon, not to mention his BLT’s. My daughter and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen together. She often helps me prepare dinner and we frequently look through cookbooks together and chat about what looks good.

Today I learned about a really fun thing do with your kids around cooking. If you live in the San Francisco area check out “Kids Culinary Adventures”. Their website is: www.kidsculinaryadventures.com. Their aim is to teach all the academic principles through adventures in cooking. If you don’t live in the area check out the site anyway because they have great plans for expansion.

I recently had a parent ask me if I thought she would be able to provide all that her young son needed if she was on her own. She felt he would be better off if she and her husband separated because right now they are subjecting him to their constant fighting.

Should parents stay together for the sake of the kids? I think the answer to that is both yes and no. Yes because I think our kids need both a male and a female role model and they deserve to have a relationship with each of us. Also, being able to provide a strong family unit contributes to a child’s sense of worth and feeling of security.

As we all know conflict is part of any relationship and very often separating only creates more conflict and our kids are caught in the middle. If all avenues have been explored to resolve our problems and we’re still subjecting them to an atmoshphere that is dominated by hostility and tension, I think everyone is better off if Mom and Dad go their separate way.

All marriages have conflict; some more so than others. Our kids give us a very good reason to work hard at creating a better marriage, to pay attention to our primary relationship and to remember why we came together in the first place. They didn’t ask to be born so once we’ve brought them into the world we owe it to them to provide a loving and safe home environment. Fighting infront of our kids shakes their sense of security. They feel ignored and frightened. It doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything but it means we have a responsibility to show respect to each other while our kids are present and remain sensative to the impact our actions have on them.

I’ve met people who growing up never witnessed their parents arguing. That’s not necessarily healthy either. We need to be able to demonstrate to our kids that parents can disagree on things, work out their differences and still love and respect each other. Arguments that regularly escalate into screaming matches don’t ever get resolved by running away. We all know that fighting over who left the wet towels on the floor is never about wet towels. We have to learn to find out what the real issues are and then move forward. Relationships, I’ve learned are about us. The issues that trigger an emotional response in us provide a valuable teaching tool. They call attention to our broken parts; the parts that need strengthening or healing.

An important part of becoming a life coach is creating a great life for yourself. We can’t coach our clients on having having the life they want if we don’t have one ourselves. I also can’t coach parents on how to be the parents they want to be if I’m not mother I want to be. I’ve made mistakes along the way but I know I’ve done an excellent job. It’s the job I feel the most proud of.

What has been one of the main factors in making me the parent I want to be? I learned very early on that if I was happy, so was my family. I remember soon after I had my first child a friend told me about aerobic classes that were being offered at our local community centre and they had a new childcare facility. I loved the idea of being able to work out, meet new people and have my baby cared for all under the same roof. I ended up going three times a week for thirteen years! I met lots of moms who all had babies the same age. A group of us became friends and had coffee together after the class before picking up our babies. Our babies grew to toddlers, then became preschoolers and soon they were all off to school but we continued . The exercise relieved stress, kept me in shape, helped me sleep better and the friendships kept me connected to the adult world. Our kids also made friends with each other. Because I’ve always taken the time to take care of myself, I’m more patient, less irritable, more fun to be around and better able to let go of things that aren’t important. My excercise program now is regular walking with one of my good friends, yoga and three times a week at “Curves.”

While my kids were small, I read lots of parenting books and other self-help books but seldom read novels. I decided to start a book club as a way to motivate myself to read more novels and create social time with friends that were important to me. That was five years ago and our book club is still going strong. There are six of us who meet monthly taking turns hosting. We all love it and have read some fabulous books that have stimulted some great discussion. It also provides an opportunity to share the ups and downs of our lives.

Purposely creating a life of my own, I know has made me a better mom. I have more to give my family; the most important people in my life. My kids deserve a mother who is at peace with herself and pleasant and fun to be around. My husband deserves a wife who has a life of her own and isn’t carrying around resentments.

I’m getting ready to put my workshop “How to Have a Life and Still Be a Great Parent” into an audio seminar. Watch for it coming out soon.

My husband and I are dealing with some challenging behavior from our sixteen year old son. Generally speaking we both have a very good relationship with him and he’s never caused us any major problems. However since he was a toddler he has always been one to “push the envelope.” It’s like he constantly needs to test his boundaries.

The choices my son has been making over the past several months has lead us to impose restrictions on him that he didn’t have before. He’s not happy. He’s communicating with us with the objective of making us feel guilty and him appear innocent. We can see through him. Fortunately we are completely united in our approach which I know creates more impact and is better for him.

While raising my two children and two step-sons, I have relied heavily on my intuition and it has always served me well. Many say our intuition is our higher power speaking to us. These are the guidelines I’ve been given to follow:

Do not allow yourself to be manipulated.
Teenagers need guidance from their parents.
Teenagers want and need boundaries even though they challenge them.
Believe in yourself.
Teenagers don’t have to always like you.
Do not be afraid to say “NO”.
Although they don’t express it, teenagers like us to be present in their lives.
Challenging authority is normal at this age.
Don’t give in even when you feel like it because it’s just easier to do so.
Remember to acknowledge their strengths.

This stage of my son’s life reminds me so much of when he was a toddler and we had to keep a vigilant watch on him all the time.

No one said parenting was easy!