Your don't-do list is as important as your to-do list ❤️
How to be strategic with your parenting time and energy
Hello! I hope you and your family are doing well!
When our kids struggle, it’s natural to jump to the question “What more can I do?” If you’re anything like me, you make lists full of ideas for how to do more, be more, and help your child more. Have more family meals, be more present, and have meaningful conversations. These lists are important, especially when our kids are struggling and stressed.
But the hard fact is that none of us, no matter how much we love our kids, can do more without simultaneously doing less somewhere else in our lives.
You can be more present for your child, but it may mean you’re less present for someone or something else. As much as we’d like to have infinite time and energy, we don’t.
The key is to acknowledge this fact and get intentional about our choices. Because if we’re not intentional, we’ll find ourselves dropping the ball not because we don’t care but because we’re juggling too much.
When a child is struggling with a mental health issue like anxiety, depression, or an eating disorder, wonderful parents jump to attention, ready to apply their intellect, passion, and deep love to the problem.
This instinct is a strength with many benefits. But if you want to do more for your child, first you probably need to put down some of the balls you’re already juggling. We must be intentional about how we spend our limited resources. Your goal is not to never drop a ball (that’s impossible!) but to evaluate your capacity as realistically as possible so that it’s predictable and manageable when it happens.
Sometimes your “don’t do” list is just as important as your “to do” list.
The good news is that it’s possible to take things off your plate responsibly. In fact, doing too much for our children has its own consequences. The most responsible among us can fall into patterns of over-functioning, believing that we alone are responsible for our kids’ well-being. We think that if we stop pushing or take our eyes off the ball for a second everything will fall apart.
This is where it can get tricky. Yes, your child’s mental health is important, and your engagement is necessary. You can learn and grow as a parent and create a healing environment. You can provide expectations, support, encouragement, finances, and transportation.
But when we over-function for our kids and do things for them that they could reasonably do for themselves, it decreases their motivation and reduces their engagement in their own healing. That’s why figuring out what we need to stop doing is as important as what we need to start doing. Finding the balance is essential. Let me know if you’d like some help with this!
Ginny Jones Parent Coach / More-Love.org
Coaching notes
Here are some stories from the last few weeks of my coaching sessions with parents who have kids with eating and body image issues:
A parent and I evaluated the risks and rewards of her son’s wish to go to summer camp while he’s in recovery from an eating disorder and came up for a plan for making the decision next week.
My client said she had “the best talk I’ve had with my daughter in years” based on the conversational skills we worked on and her expanded understanding of how to talk about food and weight.
I helped my client understand why nutrition education and making judgments about food isn’t helping her kids develop a healthy relationship with food and we practiced what she can do instead when her kids’ eating behavior upsets her.
Mental Health Checklist
You want your child to be mentally well. To grow into a person who thrives, flourishes, has grit and stamina, and feels pretty good about themselves most of the time. Unlike physical ailments, which can be measured with blood tests, x-rays, and analysis, mental health distress can be hard to recognize. However, you can learn to spot the signs of mental wellness and have more confidence about your child’s health and their progress towards their goals.
If your child has an eating disorder, recovery means more than managing disordered behaviors, it means taking good care of their body and having the mental resilience to face inevitable change and disruption with agility and grace. Eating disorders are fully recoverable, but mental healthcare is an ongoing practice.
You want to raise a child who takes good care of their physical and mental health and can reach out for help and support when things are hard, confusing, and overwhelming. You want to know that your child is on the path to well-being, which is not a life free from struggle, but a life in which your child doesn’t need disordered behavior to cope with the things they struggle with.
I’ve put together a mental health checklist to help you recognize mental health and the warning signs that your child needs more support.
Click the button below to get your printable and start parenting with more confidence today.