Why re-parenting yourself is sometimes necessary

I was reading a post in a moms group where a mother is having trouble giving her child a bath. Her child will scream and freak out whenever it is bath time. It has gotten so bad that it has been a few months since her son had an actual bath. She has been giving her son a sponge bath but even that is a big struggle for her. This mom was reaching out in this community for help.

Many of the moms chimed in and gave great suggestions on how to get around this and make bath time more interesting. This mom said her family members are saying at this point you need to force the bath time. Her dilemma is she feels it’s wrong because of his reaction to the bath time. Some moms brought up good points that we as the parents have to make some hard decisions on behalf of our children.

At this point it is becoming a health issue because the child can get sick from not bathing. I know from my experience both my children go through phases, they both at some point hated bath time. Fortunately it’s not an issue anymore, but I had to step in and make the hard decision to give baths with reassurance that this needs to be done for their well being, screams and all. I think all parents with younger children can relate.

I truly feel for this mother, she is clearly struggling with the shouting and screaming from her child. I can only imagine how challenging that is but at what point should she step in and do the hard thing? As the adults we are responsible to keep our children safe and healthy to the best of our ability. A child does not have the awareness to make the right decisions. With this being said I do believe in working as a team with your child, they should have autonomy over their bodies and have the right to share how they feel about something. I believe when our children are struggling we need to approach the situation with love and compassion always.

However children also like to push the limits as they grow, they might want to only eat sweet stuff or have unlimited screen time and have a fit when we try to stop it. They might want to stay up late, the list can go on and on. However we set boundaries and perimetries for our children to keep them well.

What this got me thinking about is how we need to also parent ourselves when our inner child is throwing a fit. For example, we don’t want to eat our vegetables even though we know it will support our body. We want to stay up later than we should even though we know that we are going to be totally exhausted the next day. Perhaps we know we should get off our device because we have been scrolling online for way to long and it’s keeping us distracted from doing the things we need to do.

When we become adults there is no one really holding us accountable anymore and we have to be there for ourselves. Most of us know when we are doing something that is not good for us, for example indulging in gossip, watching too much tv and not taking care of ourselves in general. This is when re parenting yourself becomes necessary. We need to have a pep talk with ourselves and remind ourselves of what needs to change here. Is it always easy? No, of course not but it is necessary.

For me the greatest changes I have made in my life have been due to hiring a coach or having some sort of accountability in place. It is so easy to just say, I will do it tomorrow, I will get to it later and fall back into my old patterns. In conjunction with working with a professional, I have to often parent myself to get myself back on track. At the end of the day only you are responsible for yourself and your results! How do you feel about re parenting yourself?

Peace & Love