If you are not happy because you feel your own needs are unfulfilled, then your child will not be happy either. To a large extent, his mood state reflects your own mood, and therefore if you are frustrated and sad for much of the time, he will begin to feel the same way too.
Meeting your needs as a parent is as important to your child’s contentment as it is to your own. With the non-stop demands of parenting, with the constant requirement to attend to your child’s need, the chances are that consideration about what you need to thrive is given low priority. In the long term, however, that approach will not have a positive outcome. You have a range of psychological needs, including the need to feel competent as a parent as to know that you are doing a good job in raising your child and that partly derives from receiving positive feedback from your child or from others commenting on your parenting skills.
Then there is your need to be loved by your child; the emotional attachment between you and your child is two-way. The most effective way to ensure that you are happy and fulfilled as a parent is to take a positive approach to parenting. This means having on optimistic attitude, developing purposeful strategies for raising your child and managing your role as o parent in an effective way so that you feel good about yourself. A positive approach to parenting also involves taking the initiative, planning ahead and regaining control of your life. This is easier said than done, of course, because living with a demanding child can reduce the confidence of even the most robust parent. But you can change your techniques as parent in order to make life better for you. If you feel good about yourself, this has a positive knock-on effect for everyone else in your family.
There are various ways in which you can take positive action to ensure that you feel happy and fulfilled, both as a parent and an individual in your own right:
1. Resolve conflicts, not prolong them.
2. Fights between you and your child can last from one day to the next, or even longer, without ever being resolved. You’ll both feel much better when you have put the dispute behind you.
3. When your child frequently misbehaves, it is easy to assume that you are doing something wrong and that it is all your fault. But that approach only leads you into a downward spiral. Focus on the parts of patenting that you ate managing effectively.
4. The pressures of living with a growing child who challenges and provokes at regular intervals can bad you into blaming him for your dissatisfaction. It is more helpful to move on by looking positively for ways to improve the situation.
5. Accept offers of help from your partner, your close friends or relatives. And listen to advice; you don’t have to do what others suggest, but there is no harm in listening.
6. You end up spending all your waking hours worrying, and you may feel that there is nothing more you can do. Don’t be passive, but take control and make positive choices about the way you manage your child.
7. Do your best to arrange time for yourself. Occasional short periods on your own mean that you can return refreshed to be with your child and don’t feel guilty about that.