5 Tips to Help You Worry Less About Your Kids

As a parent, you want what is best for your children. You want them to be smarter, better looking and more well-rounded than you are. You want them to be liked by their peers and to succeed in school. As such, you worry. And, with worrying comes anxiety which can turn into depression. Here are five ways to help you stop worrying so much:

1. Trust the facts. When you look at the facts and evidence of what has actually been occurring, you will find that the worried feeling you have is irrational. Examine what's actually occurring in your life and consider how you feel after that.

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2. Stop over-identifying with your kids. If your child gets into an argument with another child, do you think, 'I must be a bad mother?' If so, you are personalizing events that aren't your fault. Tell yourself 'the only person's behavior that I can control is my own.' It's important to remember that you are not your child and your child isn't you.

3. Think positively. Just because something negative happened once before doesn't mean it will happen again. Negative events allow people to learn from their mistakes, which allows us to grow intellectually. When you think more positive about how the day will turn out, it usually will.

4. Stop blowing things out of proportion. This commonly occurs when you look at your errors or your child's errors and exaggerate their importance. Try to focus more on your child's strengths. This will allow you to feel better about your parenting and allow your child's self esteem to grow.

5. Keep an open mind. Seeing things in black and white is totally unrealistic because life is rarely completely one way or the other. Look at the room your sitting in now, is it perfectly clean? Is every space piled high with dust or dirt? Or is it partially clean? Absolutes do not exist in this universe.

Written By Shelley Skas for YourTango.com


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