You Don’t Have to Know the Answer to Trust Yourself

There is no shortage of parenting advice.

Books. Blogs. Instagram. Schools. Pediatricians. Therapists. Parenting experts. Your mother. Your mother-in-law. And, naturally, some random person in the grocery store who has Very Strong Feelings about your child not wearing socks.

There is a lot of information coming at parents.

And sometimes all that information makes it harder to hear the person who actually has to make the decision:

You.

Because here’s the thing about parenting: if we want our children to trust us, we have to develop some trust in ourselves.

That does not mean knowing exactly what to do all the time.  Don’t make me laugh ha ha.

If that were the requirement, none of us would qualify.

Self-trust means knowing that you can take in information, consider the child who is actually standing in front of you, remember what matters to your family, and make the next decision.

One place to start is with one sneaky little word:

Should.

“My child should be able to do this.”
“I should be more patient.”
“She should sleep through the night.”
“He should be able to sit through dinner.”
“They should have more friends.”
“I should handle this differently.”

Whenever you hear a should, try asking:  Who says?

Sometimes there’s a perfectly reasonable answer. School starts at a particular time. Seatbelts are required. Your family has commitments. We live in communities, and those communities come with expectations and consequences. (And even most of those are fungible when we really get down to it – more on that in another post.)

But mostly? There is no actual “they.” There is just an idea we absorbed somewhere along the way about what children—or good parents—are supposed to look like. And we’ve been trying to live up to it ever since. Painfully at times.

This gets especially interesting when you have to advocate for your child. Maybe the teacher says everything is fine, but your child falls apart every afternoon when they get home. Maybe someone tells you, “All kids do that,” but something in you keeps saying, No. Something isn’t working here.

Walking into a meeting and saying, “I know you’re the professional in this setting, AND I know my kid,” can feel surprisingly difficult.

Because you’re not bringing only Adult You into that room.

You may also be bringing the kid who was terrified of getting in trouble. Or the teenager who desperately wanted teachers to like her. Or the version of yourself who learned that disagreeing with authority was Not Done.

Those old parts of us have opinions. Loud ones. Which is why sometimes our reactions to our kids feel wildly out of proportion to whatever just happened. Five granola bar wrappers on the couch and suddenly your brain has composed a 45-minute lecture about responsibility, gratitude, wastefulness, your childhood, and THE FUTURE OF THIS FAMILY.

Your brain can think whatever it wants. The important part is remembering that a thought is not an action. There is a tiny space between: “Are you KIDDING ME with these wrappers?” and what actually comes out of your mouth.

That space is where choice lives. And if someone telling you to “just pause” makes you want to throw something, try this instead:

Move your body.

Literally.

Walk into the kitchen. Circle the dining room table. Go wash your hands. Change where your body is in space.

That tiny physical interruption can sometimes help you come back as the adult you want to be rather than the seven-year-old inside you who has HAD ENOUGH, THANK YOU.

Here’s another thing to try: before a difficult decision or conversation, ask yourself, “What actually matters here?” Not: What would the perfect parent do? Not: What will everyone else think? What matters to me, to this child, and to our relationship? You may still get it wrong. You will absolutely change your mind sometimes. You may apologize, regroup, learn something new and make a completely different decision next Tuesday. That doesn’t mean you can’t trust yourself. That’s actually part of trusting yourself.

If you’re having trouble sorting your own instincts from all the parenting “shoulds” rattling around in your head, schedule a 1:1 coaching session with me. We can figure out what belongs to you, what belongs to someone else, and what your particular kid might actually need.

And if you’re an employer looking for ways to support working parents, I also speak to organizations and lead workshops that help parents reduce family stress and bring a little more mental bandwidth back to work.

You don’t have to always know the answer.

You just need to trust that you can find your way to the next one.

xo G