Do Your Kids Drive You Crazy?

I hear from my clients all the time that their relationships, especially with their kids and significant other can create the most stress for the busy women with a business.

It's terribly difficult to be focused in your business and make effective decisions when you're worrying about the fight that you had with your partner last night. Worrying about family and relationship comes in high on the stress creator list.

As you may know, I am not only a Coach, but also a practicing marrriage and family therapist, and if family or partner stress tops your list, then I have some recommendations for you.

Don't feel bad if you struggle with your family relationships and need some advice or assistance. Mostly we learn how to be in relationship from our own family role models. So, look at your parents - likely how they acted with each other and with you provided a model for how you do it now.

Destressing With Your Kids
I interviewed a great parenting coach, Barb Desmarais, who gave some wonderful strategies on managing your kids' behavior. I recommend listening to that audio to hear some great strategies on basic discipline.

Have you seen Super Nanny, Nanny 911, or more recently, Shalom in the Home. All these new reality shows are about kids gone wild. The common denonminator are parents who are not providing appropriate boundaries and discipline. Every human needs to know what the boundaries are - kids especially. You know they will push and push until the reach the boundary. Remember, you have taught them their behavior, so with some new skills and some steely resolve you can unteach them. I recommend watching the shows above to get some great ideas.

Choices, consistency, and managing your own emotion are the 3 basics that I teach parents when they come to me with a parenting crisis.

Give your child choices that are appropriate for their age - and ensure that all choices are acceptable to you. Younger kids can have 2 choices, teens can have 3-4.

Consistency is crucial when dealing with your kids. If you say one thing and then cave under pressure, then you have just taught your child how to manipulate you. Don't say anything you can't uphold - mean what you say and your child will come to accept that.

When you have a bad day, do you come home angry and stressed out, taking it out on your family? Many do - but how is it that we have become better at being nicer to those outside our home, than those in it that we love the most. If you have trouble managing your own emotions, then I suggest you get some help from a therapist, coach, friend or mentor.

One of my favorite parenting resources is a Redirecting Children's Behavior trainer. With a motto of 'Peace Begins at Home' these trained parenting professionals can give you practical and effective techniques and tools to help you with all your parenting questions.

If you're feeling stressed about your kids, or your life as a parent, use one of these resources to get some help.

And, those of you out there who have some other great resources, click on the comment link and let us know what your favorites are.