You Being Able to Show Up As a Parent Comes Down to This...

Being a modern-day parent is stressful and can feel overwhelming as we try to navigate how to best integrate attachment research into our parenting. Today I want to offer you a quick reminder and tip:

The most important thing we can do for our kids is show up and meet each moment with openness, curiosity, and connection. 

It sounds simple…and it is…and it also isn’t. Your ability to show up is dependent on how YOU are feeling and what your capacity is at the moment. If you are under-resourced, tired, and overwhelmed, you will have a harder time showing up for your kids than when you just got a promotion at work and are excited because it’s Friday and you have fun weekend plans. 

Read this next statement slowly… It's important. 

Your ability to show up for your kids is directly tied to how well taken care of you are and how many of your needs are met. 

Is that relieving or stressful to hear? It’s normal for us parents to believe the story that we “don’t have any time” for self-care. Self-care can feel like an extra job or task to worry about. It can become another “checkmark” on the to-do list of our lives. 

My dear fellow parents, I know it’s hard. And it’s time for a revamp on how we think about self-care. Taking care of ourselves is a daily commitment, and for many of us, it can feel foreign. Maybe we have never been given the privilege or opportunity to think about caring for ourselves. 

Consider this your permission to consider and explore opportunities to get more of what you need. 

Journal & Reflection Exercise

It can be a helpful exercise to pull out a journal or digital notes to reflect on how we're feeling in our parenting practice. Here are some questions to contemplate: 

• How taken care of do you feel right now?
• In what ways do you take care of yourself?
• In what ways do you long to be taken care of more?
• What helps you feel calm and resourced?
• How do you prioritize taking care of yourself?
• What small steps could you take to make yourself feel more taken care of?

It is so easy to be lost in the fast-paced timeline of our world… AND our kids need us to slow down and get honest about where our leadership is coming from. Is our leadership coming from stress and chaos or presence and attunement? To show up, we need to have more of our own needs met. 

And, of course, we won’t get many moments right with ourselves and our kids, and that is okay. We are not going for perfection — we are going for steps towards the goal of showing up more. And it starts with how we show up for ourselves. 

How will you show up for yourself today?