Designing tomorrow with your child

We all have bad moments with our children, even a whole bad day and then sit stewing wondering how it got so bad and how you could have turned things around. You are the adult after all. But you can’t quite get out of that rut. You and your children have come to expect each others behaviours and it’s hard to break the habit.

Perhaps you struggle in the morning with getting them ready for nursery or school. They want you to read them a story at breakfast and you say ‘no, we don’t have the time’. You raise your voice for them to hurry up and put their shoes on. They refuse to wash their mucky faces and want to play instead or they have a complete tantrum when you pick them up from nursery because they are in the middle of a game with their friends and don’t want to go home. I could go on…

Instead of beating yourself up over your parenting, ask yourself, how do I want to be around my children? what does that look like? how do I want my day with them to be like? When we focus on what we want, step into it, we most certainly are going to receive it.

Now for the really fun part. Take your idea, the idea of your ideal day to your children and design how tomorrow will be with them. If they want a story at breakfast, say you will tell them a story on the way to nursery. If they want to play with their toys when it’s time to wash their face, let them know they can have five minutes of play afterwards or when they come back home. To avoid another tantrum at picking up time, let them know the time you are coming to collect them and to be ready for you, let them know how you will like it to be when you arrive.

Designing tomorrow with your children can be lots of fun. It sets the intention and gets your children involved and creating with you.