Hello everyone and welcome to my talk today.
I am Alice,
I am a transformational life coach for parents with dreams.
I am a mom of two,
I have dreams and I intend to pursue them all.
And today I want to share with you five things that I've learned about raising young kids that made me a better person.
The first thing that I've learned is that they copy everything you do.
A child's job in the early years is to figure out how to be a basic human.
And seeing as they can't read a book on the subject,
The way they do this is to copy the behaviours that the clauses want to them.
Good behaviours or bad.
Unfortunately toddlers don't know the difference.
It's great when they copy you vacuuming the house,
Settling the tables or washing up.
However,
If you're the kind of person who gets hot and bother waiting in a queue,
Checks your phone every five minutes,
Likes to throw in the odd profanity or leaves dirty laundry on the bedroom floor,
Guess what?
They will repeat what you say,
What you do and they will mimic how you react.
Realising that my child was mimicking my actions made my own self-awareness a priority.
Was I the calm,
Confident,
Responsible and tidy person I thought I was?
Suddenly I saw the importance of self-awareness and seeing where improvements could be made.
So my conclusion for this first thing is having a baby is more effective than any self-development programme or book on the planet.
My second learning is that children are born with their own personality.
A child is creating from the DNA of the parents.
So how is it that they can turn out so different from either of them?
We are born free from logic reasoning of inhibitory processes.
But we are born with personality traits that come from,
Well,
Who knows where.
I don't know.
At first it was a shock that my child was not a mini-me.
I mean,
Wasn't he the point of having them?
But then I realised what a wonderful thing it is to be a unique human with a unique personality.
I could celebrate my uniqueness and the wonderful uniqueness of my child.
I shifted my mindset from a loss to a gain.
The third tip or the third learning.
Showing being at your child makes you bitter.
Projecting your desires onto your children is a bad habit that starts early on.
You think they should be more outdoorsy,
Should be less quiet or should have better taste in toys.
And before you know it,
It's you shouldn't be an artist,
You should be a doctor or vice versa.
Success or accomplishment are very arbitrary concepts.
What you think your kid's success should be is very personal and won't necessarily mean success for them.
They have their own personality,
Remember?
As a new parent,
We do want what is best for them,
But by wanting it too much,
We don't realise our biases and hurtful actions.
Don't assume that what you should have done,
What you wanted in life,
Is what your child wants.
I get it,
We have lived and learned and wishes we had done x,
Y and z,
But every human has their own path through life,
Including your daughter or your son.
I realised that controlling the outcomes of another person's life is not possible,
And not only for the kids I'm talking here,
And that if you carried on as it was,
There was only one certainty that I would end up resentful,
Frustrated and bitter.
So letting go of expectations made me so much a happier person,
Which I am sure my kids appreciate,
And it's teaching them also a valuable lesson.
My fourth learning is,
Your fears are not their fears.
As a child,
I experienced rejection by other kids,
And because of this,
I felt lonely and disappointed.
So when my three year old asked to join a group of older children that he never met before,
My heart started to pound and my stomach was churning.
I feared he would be rejected,
Not accepted,
And I tried to dissuade him from going.
But I realised that I was projecting my fears and I let him go,
Albeit of a heavy heart.
As it turned out,
He is really good at mingling with new people and it went really well.
He was thrilled and I was wrong.
Know that before the age of seven,
The mind is extremely malleable.
Many of our beliefs are formed in early years from what we see,
Hear or experience.
This includes fear.
Think about what you are fearful of.
This is why it is so important as parents that we become more mindful of how we show up for our children in the early years.
Imagine if I had stopped him.
Even on a basic level,
I would have prevented him from having an enjoyable interaction with other children just because of an experience that I had which was nothing to do with him.
This episode made me more aware of how fears can hold you back in life.
As a consequence,
I am a bit braver than I used to be.
My last lesson for today is self-flagellation gets you nowhere.
Parenting is probably the toughest thing you'll ever do.
So why are we all being such perfectionists about the whole thing?
I wonder.
Imagine you were asked to fly a plane having had sheer experience of flying planes.
You wouldn't know where to put the ignition key but would you beat yourself up for it?
With parenting,
Not only is there a huge learning curve,
There's simply too many new things to take on board at once.
So balls will inevitably be dropped.
The things I learned was that comparing myself with the ideal parent who doesn't exist is a waste of time.
Because they don't exist.
Better to compare myself to the person I was a week ago or yesterday.
Self-compassion is the key.
Feeling guilty for what you did or didn't do takes up a lot of mental energy which,
As a parent,
You cannot afford to waste.
So remember,
Whatever happened in the past is gone but you can change the present and the future.
You can show your child that everybody is able to change for the better and this is also a beautiful life lesson.
I hope this has brought some light and positivity to you.
Parenting is super hard so please be compassionate and be more curious and open.
If you have any questions,
I'm always happy for a chat so reach out.
Till next time,
Bye bye.
