Parenting Interview

    Parenting is something that is very hard and exhausting. There are always things that you want to improve on, but parenting isn’t always perfect. You are constantly learning new ways to parent while parenting. “I wish I could have relaxed more in certain situations. Some things seem SO big when you’re in it, when they actually aren’t. I also had a lot of little kids needing my attention. I wish I could have spent more quality one-on-one time with my children when they were dealing with certain things. Honestly I was just exhausted, especially when they were little people. Now I can see how some of the things that I stressed about also cause my children stress, like being on time for things. My advice would be to just love your kids and have fun! It is such a short period of life. We have done a lot of fun things with our kids but I will always wish we could do more. Those are the times that we make the most memories. I hope my children look back and have fond memories of those things. Obviously structure and discipline are important and need to be present in a home, but try not to sweat the small stuff. It will all work out! I do think its important to re-evaluate your parenting. I know I definitely would have handled some situations differently. It’s important to grow and learn with our kids, there are a lot of ways to parent and we don’t always know the best ways. Parenting is challenging and I know I don’t always have the right answers. Being willing to change your parenting style shows your children that you can be accountable for your mistakes as well and that you are willing to adapt and change because you love them and want what’s best for them. I’m not sure how well I did…there is always room for improvement, and your view may be different than mine, but I do feel like I do some things better now than I did when I was a newer parent.’’ I agree with what my parents said a ton. Going over these interview questions have helped me a ton in knowing how I want to parent and how to parent. 

After going over some questions with my parents, I think the way they explained how their parents match up pretty well with how I remember them parenting. They learned how to parent along the way of actually parenting. I think together as kids and parents we learned what type of parenting worked for us and what didn’t. There were some things that didn’t match up just because it was a part of their parenting that I never realized or paid much attention to. 

My parents have always done the bad cop good cop parenting method. I enjoy this method a lot. My dad has always been the more strict parent, while my mom is more soft spoken and reasonable with us. My Dad can sometimes over react in some situations to where my mom has to calm him down when punishing us. The punishments they give us are typically very reasonable. I like that my parents have expectations rather than being super strict. They like to have things structured but still fun at the same time. My parents said, “Our parenting style when you were younger was probably structured but fun. We had rules, schedules etc. but I wouldn’t consider us to be strict parents. We had expectations of how you should act in certain situations, like not hitting your friends, sharing etc. but I don’t feel like we had any expectations that were too impossible or ridiculous.”

    There aren’t really things that I would change about how my parents parented me except maybe them not changing their parenting style for my other siblings. I am the oldest so I understand that I am the guinea pig of the family, so they were learning with every kid. They’ve gotten a lot less strict with every kid. Even now I see my siblings being able to do things that I never was able to do when I was growing up. 

    I can learn from the past without being in my own box by having a heart at peace. I can see the ways that my parents parented me from their point of view. I think it can help a ton by trying to see their perspective on things and trying to be better at understanding where they were coming from. I know my parents were both parented in very strict ways growing up. Growing up they always said they didn’t want to be the kind of parents that their parents were to them. Knowing that I’ve had a lot of respect for them on finding a way to parent me and my siblings. If I find myself having a heart of war towards them, I try really hard to have compassion and tell myself that it could be a lot worse. “I feel like we did ok at parenting in a way that we wanted to . I definitely wish I could say I never yelled or lost my temper, but I did. That part did not line up with how I thought I would parent my kids. Dad and I both came from homes that were very fear based/driven. We did not want to parent our kids that way, and I feel like overall we have succeeded in that, of course there are some exceptions. But overall I don’t think my kids would say that we parented them using scare tactics or overly threatening consequences.” Learning that my parents were in a fear based family is something I would never want in my family.