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How to Cope with the Stress of Parenting

Parenting is the hardest job in the world. When you become a parent, you have the responsibility of forming another human and it can be overwhelming if you start overthinking it. There is no school that can teach you how to be the perfect parent and everyone rediscovers how to do it with each individual child. But if you’re a parent struggling to cope with having children, here are some ways to get out of your own head and cope with those overwhelming moments of parenting.

Bring the Fun Back

stress of parenting

If you look at your parenting like a job, something that you have to do perfectly or you have failed at, you are much more likely to feel pressure. This becomes an even bigger problem when you start to see your child not as your family and someone you love, but as someone you have to teach and shape because that’s what’s expected. The best way to get out of this mindset is to forget about parenting for a while and to just be your child’s friend and have some fun together. Go have a day out in the park, make a pillow fort and watch some movies at home, bake cookies and eat until you burst or just sit and play some games together. This will help you reconnect on an emotional level and strengthen your bond, relieving the pressure of perfect parenting.

Get Some Outside Help

stress and children

All kids have some sort of special needs, which the parents can’t always meet by themselves. There are always some things that you can do to help your child, but sometimes you need some additional help – and it’s perfectly fine to ask for it. If your child has speech issues, you will take them to a speech therapist and they will recommend some exercises. You should do them at home with your child, but if it feels overwhelming, it’s fine to have a different family member or close friend be the one to do it with them. Similarly, if they are having issues in school that you don’t feel like you can help with (because who remembers everything we learned in school anyway?), you can look into individual online tutoring and hire a tutor who can help your child overcome any difficulties in school.

Practice Self-Care

When you become a parent, you forget about yourself. It’s normal: you put all of your care and attention into your child, but how good of a parent can you be if you take no care of yourself? You need to be there for yourself and take care of yourself on any scale you can. For starters, make sure you have your own daily rituals that don’t involve your child, whether it’s morning pampering or night reading. You can take it up a notch by having a spa day or weekend getaway every once in a while to restore you.

Know Your Mantra

stress family mantra guide

In the toughest moments, you just need something that will help you recollect yourself right there and then and help you push through. Here are some helpful mantras: “I am the right parent for my child”, “It will pass” or “My child is loved”. You can look up more mantras or just make up your own that speak to you and help remind you of what’s most important. Make sure they are something that has an impact on you and that you can relate to on an emotional level, because empty words don’t mean anything in stressful situations.

Surround Yourself With Good Things

stressof parenting

Remove bad news from your social media fees, stay away from the serious news channels and overall limit all content which makes you feel stressed or bad. Because when things start to pile up that don’t have anything to do with your child, you might still feel overwhelmed as a parent. But if you’re curating your surroundings to be dominated by positive news, you won’t have an issue with parenting.

So when the hard moments hit and you feel like everything is starting to be a bit much, just remember to take a step back, remember that you are a good parent and employ a coping mechanism that will help you deal with the situation in a healthy way for both you and your child.


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