What's your job as a mom?

If I asked you to write a mother's job description, what would it be?

This is another of my favorite questions to ask when I teach classes, because it gets right to the heart of so many of our parenting woes. Of course the answers vary, but here's a hybrid of the most common response I get:

"It's my job to raise a successful, kind, healthy and happy person."

This seems like the most sacred and important purpose someone could ever strive for, right? But so much goes into that noble job: getting kids to do homework, have good manners, be nice, help around the house, be responsible, listen to us, get enough rest, eat healthily, not yell or hurt others...the list goes on and on. Do we even know HOW to get them to do any of that? Sometimes I can't even get MYSELF to do those things!

Setting ourselves an impossible task, feeling like we don't have the skills to do it, and believing that failure is not an option, is a great recipe for disaster. And this disaster looks like a frazzled, overwhelmed mom at a loss for how to get her kids' behavior on track, feeling miserable, and up to her eyeballs in confusion and frustration.

 

But what if our task wasn't impossible? What if it was totally doable? Not because raising a successful, kind, healthy and happy person is actually super easy, but because that was never our job in the first place.

A huge cornerstone of my parenting work is the inarguable fact that the only person we have the ability (or right!) to control is ourselves. If you accept this to be true, it becomes clear that anything in our mommy job description about getting kids to do certain things or be a certain way is total BS.

And parenting from that flawed job description plays out that recipe for disaster over and over, and guarantees our kids' behavior will either stay the same or worsen.

On some level, we know this. We come up against it every time we get trapped in a power struggle, say totally unenforceable things like, "Go to sleep," or watch helplessly as our kids deal with (or create!) friend drama. We run into the fact that we can't control our kids over and over and over...and then come right back at ourselves with, "But I HAVE to. It's my job as their mom."

Reframing your role as a mom is a practically magical formula for finally seeing change in all the things you've been trying so hard to fix for so long.

I want to invite you into accepting that motherhood is not about arguing with reality and coming up short. I want to help you create a new, ACCURATE job description; one that will bring you and your family so much joy and (ironically) create 10 times more change in your child's behavior than your current job description can.

Tomorrow and Wednesday, I am leading a FREE online training that will rewrite your job description and transform your child's behavior, immediately.

We will cover natural consequences, delivering them effectively, staying calm, and all the things that can trip us up. And you'll have a chance to get your specific discipline challenges and questions answered live by me on the spot!

Register so you can redefine your role, master discipline, and feel like you're nailing it at this mommy job once and for all!

Breaking The Cycle of Frustrated Parenting

I'm teaching this class 2 times this week, so you can pick whatever works best for you,

Tomorrow morning or Wednesday at noon! I hope to see you there :)