Being a parent can make you extremely happy and extremely miserable if you let it. I vote for happy, don't you? Of course you are going to have challenges along the way as a parent, but you don't have to make it harder on yourself. You need to be your greatest supporter, not your greatest critic. I can't give you a recipe to happiness as a parent, but I can tell you what ingredients to leave out.
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Here are four things guaranteed to make you miserable as a parent:
1. You try to be the perfect parent. It is impossible and a recipe for disaster. You will never be perfect so if you are always trying to be the perfect parent you are going to be constantly failing. There is even evidence that trying to be the perfect parent puts you at a higher risk for depression. No, thank you! Be the best parent that you can be.
2. Trying to get your kid to be who you want them to be. Your child is not a piece of clay that you get to mold. Your child is a person that you get to help develop and guide. They don't have to be who you want them to be. You may really want your daughter to be a ballerina, but if she loves her some soccer let her play soccer and be there to cheer her on.
3. Being worried about el qué dirán. Oh boy, was my mother guilty of this. I can't count how many times she said things like, "qué dirá la gente" in regards to something I was wearing. Who cares?! People are always going to talk. Let them and let your kid be your kid. My eldest likes to wear mismatched socks, the first time she tried to do this I almost said something and then realized the only reason I cared was because I was worried that people would think I didn't care enough to have her wear matching socks. Me vale! I love her and mismatched socks ain't no thing.
4. Treating parenting like it is a competition. If you were growing an onion and your neighbor was growing an onion too, would you get upset if their onion grew faster. Would you keep going on and on about all the wonderful things your onion is capable of? No! Your kid is not an onion, but I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to make. Don't compare your child to someone else's child. Don't compare your parenting to someone else's parenting. It's okay to be inspired by others, inspiration is good, self-doubt and one-upmanship is not.
Now go on and be the best parent you can be and let yourself be happy.
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