Two Questions Can Transform Your Parent Experience

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is “What kind of parent do I want to be?” This question is especially important if your child is developing differently than their peers or has a diagnosis.

Why is this question important?

First, the question forces you to self-reflect. This type of introspective process is a game changer on your parenting journey.

Second, it takes the lens off your child. Parents are so absorbed in their child’s life that we become overly involved by living through them instead of guiding them.

It’s easy to do because kids with special needs have a lot of problems to negotiate. As parents we love our children and want their success, so we get busy finding perfect solutions.

Finding the right doctors, therapists, and support are important for our kids, but the search doesn’t necessarily help the parent.

We feel better knowing we found the perfect solution for the child’s problem, just to start all over again the next week with a different issue.

Many suggestions and information we receive from the outside world are helpful until we lose ourselves in them.

Too much information can be overwhelming, confusing, and make us feel more anxious, but we keep going because our kids NEED us.

Society has come a long way with treatments and assistance for children with special needs. Although there is a ton of support to help children, the main ingredient that’s been lost is help for the parent.

Professionals have been so busy helping kids; they’ve lost the key ingredient that children need most. Helping parents make educated, important, and complex decisions by way of self-reflection. The ability to self-reflect as a parent is the key factor in parenting. This is the missing piece on the journey of parenthood.

So, what do parents do if they aren’t’ skilled in self-reflection? We tend to want to control and fix our child’s problems. Fixing your child is not the goal of parenting.

After you scrape away the fancy internet research bling, all that’s meaningful is your child and family.

Asking yourself – “What kind of parent do I want to be?” places ownership on your life and separates you from your child- despite their challenges and diagnosis.

Knowing what kind of parent you want to be, starts your brain down a path of questioning verses the victim’s thought process.

Answering this question reveals more clarity and creativity in your parenting decisions because you have a starting point. Understanding yourself brings levity to difficult times and gives you grace when facing challenging problems.

If you don’t know yourself as a parent, your decisions will most likely be answered from a place of emotion. Decisions based on emotions aren’t usually the best decisions a parent can make. Emotional decisions lack facts and reflection to decipher between what a parent wants and what a child needs.

A second question to ask yourself is “How do I want my life to look?” 

Parents who have children with special needs already understand their children better than most doctors or specialists who work with them, and that’s important.

The tricky part about life is it’s uncontrollable and as parents we feel it’s our job to lessen the challenges for our children.

The real job of parenting isn’t to control or fix every step of the way, it’s to help our kids live the best life they were meant to live. It’s our job to make sure our kids are as independent as possible even with a challenge or diagnosis.

Asking yourself “How do I want my life to look?” helps you see beyond your child’s challenges and diagnosis. It separates the emotional heart strings a little bit so you can understand if you are making an emotional or factual decision.

During my son’s recovery from his cardiac arrest, I didn’t want him to do anything without another family member by his side. Totally understandable with what we went through, but completely unrealistic. I let emotions make my parenting decisions and my son was held back because of it.

When I asked myself- “How do I want my life to look?” my vision didn’t have my son living with me until old age. I started to let him do more little things by himself which helped ease my anxiety about his recovery. I kept asking myself questions and reflecting on the answers.

Understanding and reflecting on the needs of your child and knowing how those needs fit into the life you want is an important first step to getting kids on an independent path.

There will be many challenges and problems you’ll have to solve along the parenting journey. Take a minute and ask yourself two questions.

“What kind of parent do I want to be?”

“How do I want my life to look?”

Quiet your mind and reflect on your answers, so you can parent with less emotion and more clarity.

Big Hugs,

Americ