How many parents do you know who use the word “enjoy” when describing their relationship with their kid (s)? Many parents see their role with their children as work. When is work fun or enjoyable? Rarely. It takes energy, patience, knowledge and effort to effectively parent. And kids are not the only thing in our lives requiring those things. You have work, bills, other personal relationships, and more pulling at you constantly. How are you expected to be at your best when the energy in your tank is often close to empty. Running on fumes does not lend itself to great parenting.

If you need help finding ways to boost your energy, I recommend taking a look at my Body Health article here.

There is also a sneaky detriment to us all: advice you receive from friends and family. Have you ever gotten together with friends and started discussing the most recent drama in your household? You really just want to vent, feel heard and know you are not alone in one of the most publicly unrewarding jobs around (parenting). The advice friends or family give is well intended, but most of us operate in circles of misinformed people. Listening to that advice causes people to abandon their good instincts or to feel needlessly guilty when they follow their own decisions.

Parenting Aims

Parenting Aims are your “intentions to respond to your child’s developmental needs. When you act on your parenting aims, you give your child the special happiness that comes from knowing she has inspired you to respond in a consistent and caring manner to her needs for love and attention. As she grows to adulthood, this sustaining inner happiness will allow your child to become a good caregiver to herself, to be caring in relationships, and generally to be accomplished at living her life. Your love for your child and your parenting aims enable you to awaken in the middle of the night in response to your baby’s cries or your child’s request for a drink of water and retain a feeling of satisfaction at having responded even though before your child’s birth, at times you could barely be awakened by an alarm clock.”

Personal Desires

Personal Desires are “intentions that are not in the service of responding to your child’s developmental needs. Certainly you continue to have personal needs after you become a parent – these do not wither away when children arrive. Parents must keep the house clean, shop, talk on the phone and generally manage the tasks of daily life. They also have romantic desires toward each other.

Parents who are not overpowered by their own inner happiness by external pleasures will be struck by the strength of love they feel for their child and their general willingness to subordinate their personal desires to the goal of helping her become happy and functional.

The daily life of parents is filled with such choices. When parents realize that the need to rearrange their schedules to accommodate their child will last only a few years, even if they previously enjoyed the freedom to act on spontaneous desires to work out, dine out, or pursue hobbies, they will become more willing to try to reschedule these activities to times when their baby is sleeping or to purse their interests at home so they can be available to their child. By making these adjustments you sustain your child’s inborn belief that she can cause your responsive caring, and you help her develop inner happiness. Your time and positive attention are the most important gifts you can give a child. This vital commitment will lay the foundation for a positive and loving lifetime relationship with your child and save you lots of time worrying about your child as she grows older.”

There Is No Shortcut

This is a really important point. There is no shortcut or quick fix to caring for the emotional needs of children. As parents, we need to be mindful of how our interactions and choices of care (parenting aims vs personal desires) impact our children. It is really easy to brush off and or ignore the requests of our kids when we are in the middle of something we deem important or urgent. There are urgent things that need to be handled, but in my experience, many of the things I have thought were important could be handled after paying a little more attention to my child. When we take that time to pay attention, we validate the voice of our child and show them they matter and belong.

Smart Love believes “children whose needs are not adequately met can develop trouble sleeping, eating, learning, navigating the temptations of adolescence, and growing into autonomous, functional, happy adults. In the long run, any problems that children suffer if their emotional needs are not met are certain to soak up the time not only of parents but also of teachers and helping professionals. The time you spend adequately satisfying your child’s developmental needs will be filled with love and the joy of parenting successfully, but interactions with unhappy and difficult children, though no less time consuming, are rarely relaxed and are often upsetting and perplexing.”

Caring for your child’s developmental needs doesn’t mean you can’t take time for yourself. We all have to take personal time to have meals together, get work done, do household chores or go out for fun. You don’t need to think about Parenting Aims and Personal Desires as a zero sum game; meaning you can only do one or the other. You can find ways of satisfying your own personal desires and giving our child the care they need. Hiring a babysitter can be an option. If you are fortunate to have friends, families or babysitters who can help you, this allows you to still meet our child’s needs while taking care of your personal things.

If you are anything like me and were used to a lot of spontaneity before having kids, then learning how to plan more proactively will also help manage parenting. I talk a lot about 7 Habits of Highly Effective People primarily because it is such a great tool for prioritizing your time. When your children are young and need more of your time and attention, you may have to plan to do certain things (like reading or exercising) when they are sleeping. As your child gets older, they will be able to find more time for your personal desires.

The biggest takeaway from Smart Love is “let your child’s developmental needs strike the balance between your personal desires and your parenting aims.”