Best Mom Tips + Parenting Grateful Challenge
The beginning of my parenting story
I will never forget the day I became a mom. After weeks of bed rest, hours of labor, and an emergency c-section, I still remember how in love I felt when my eyes first locked with his. Feelings of gratitude rushed over my body as I saw a healthy, baby boy.
I had no idea all the emotions that would flood my heart over the next eighteen years: feelings of inadequacy and the need to do it all right. Feelings of disappointment and exhaustion as well as joy, gratitude, and deep pride in who he was becoming.
Parenting is the most rewarding job and the hardest job all at the same time.
Best tips for the hard parenting days
There are days when parenting is wonderful, and it is easy to be grateful for my sweet sons. But, if I am honest, there are also days when parenting is hard, and gratitude is far from my mind. Setting boundaries, following through on discipline, and teaching them responsibility can fall under the harder days.
I can still remember one of those hard days. To help calm my frustrations and slow down my reactions, I had walked downstairs to get some perspective and reflect over the last week.
It is easy as parents to only focus on the negative times with our kids. The times that they talked back with disrespect or said unloving words to their sibling. But if we truly stop and reflect, there is so much to be grateful for.
As I sat at my kitchen table on that hard parenting day, I decided to flip the script in my head and shift my focus, so I wrote 5 grateful statements for each of my boys.
Writing words of gratitude changed my entire attitude.
In fact, it changed the entire atmosphere of my home that day because I decided to share these encouraging words with my boys. As they heard these positive statements spoken over them, their entire attitude changed too.
Friend, focusing on what we are grateful for is powerful! Sharing these uplifting words with our kids is even more powerful. Today, I want to encourage you to take the Parenting Grateful Challenge.
The parenting grateful challenge
1. Reflect on your week and write out 5 grateful moments you had with your child.
It could be a special time together or something you observed that made you proud. The purpose is to focus on your child’s strengths, gifts, and positive moments instead of all the frustrating times.
2. Share these joyful moments and thankful words with your child.
There is something powerful about reminding them of their God-given gifts, places where you see them using their strengths, and moments where you were proud of them. You can do it at dinner so everyone can hear or in a special one-on-one time. The important part is to speak this truth over them.
3. Refer back to this list when you encounter one of the harder parenting days.
On those harder days, pull out your list and remind yourself of all their God given gifts. Remember that we are all works in progress and have setbacks. Use their poor choices as a growing tool and tackle the growth steps that need to be addressed.
Gratitude is important! Focusing on the positive, not the negative is powerful. I believe where you put your focus will determine your level of joy in parenting. Let’s remember to reflect and be grateful for all that God is doing in our children’s lives.
I encourage you to take the Parenting Grateful Challenge!
Meet Jodi Rosser
Jodi Rosser is a writer, podcaster, and speaker who serves a steadily growing audience through her podcast, Depth, and her blog, Heartbreak to Strength. Having walked through multiple heartbreaks (divorce, miscarriage, and cancer), Jodi now inspires women to find hope, joy, and purpose through their unexpected storms. She lights up the most when she shares her testimony using her cracked clay pot, a visual reminder that God shines brightest through our broken places. She lives with her two teenage sons in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
My vision for this gratitude series is to help others embrace a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only their own life, but the lives of their neighbors as well.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
Creating Ripples
If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.
