Minnow’s Five Things

There’s a lot of pressure on parents these days. Social media isn’t making it any easier either with Pinterest and Facebook leading the charge of ‘look at my perfect life’ type pictures. Our standards are being raised every day but apparently there is still much room for improvement.
1. For example, spanking is out. That’s good. I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal which said that yelling at and insulting your kids increases the risk of depression and aggressive behaviour. That makes sense to me. Nobody likes to be yelled at and put down by the people who you are looking to for approval from in the first place. A culture of respect should be enforced in any environment—be it the home, school, teams or the workplace. Still, if anyone has any tips on how NOT to raise your voice while living with teenagers, do tell.

2. While we’re on the topic of bad stuff people do, I saw another Jimmy Kimmel video last week that caught my attention. Maybe swearing isn’t as bad as yelling? These kids seemed to have turned out OK.

3. If you’re worried about not being able to control your language and volume, perhaps a nanny is the best option. Choose someone who is close to the family, perhaps even someone who changed your own nappies. That’s what Kate and William did for baby George. His new nanny is the very same one his daddy and Uncle Harry had. How lovely for him and his parents. I’m sure she never raised her voice.

4. If all of this stress is stressing you out too much, you have a choice. Apparently we can control our bodies response to stress and make it work for us rather than being harmful. How liberating is that? Instead of adding more stress to our lives by worrying if we have too much of it and how we should be reducing it, we can just accept that it is part of life and make it work for us. Here’s more from a TED Talks seminar on how to change our bodies’ response to stress.

5. Finally, from a parent who lives with more stress than any of us can even imagine, comes a letter about her daughter—one of the Sandyhook victims.

So don’t stress out too much about parenting. Just stop yelling, channel your energy and embrace your other stresses. Or just hire a royal nanny. That works too.