Messy Yet Lovely - Page 2 of 5 - Embracing the mess of motherhood, one day at a time

Being a mom

15 bad mom habits that kill your happiness

I will start with a disclaimer. This list of bad mom habits is not to make any mom feel bad about themselves. Because no matter how much we try, we will still make mistakes and experience setbacks in our parenting journey. The purpose of this article is to help moms see where they can improve and end suffering for the sake of our own physical and mental health. Because let’s face it. Parenting is always going to be a tough journey and we don’t want to make it tougher by clinging on to these bad habits. And as we grow, as a parent and as a human, we need to know where we lack and improve upon it. So let’s see what the most common bad mom habits are. 1. NOT TAKING CARE OF YOUR HEALTH The reason most moms do not prioritize their health is that they either don’t…

Being a mom

20 habits all good moms have in common

I believe it is important to thrive as a mom and not just survive. When I became a mom, and still today with older kids, I have moments when I am not in love with motherhood. But I think that happens in all kinds of relationships when you face challenges. And then there are moments when I reflect on how motherhood made me a better person. I learned better habits after becoming a mom. I stopped procrastinating. Because if I do, I won’t have time for it later. And I learned to become more organized and learned healthy habits so that I can stay fit, and also model better habits to kids. And also conquered much of my laziness that was huge in my pre-motherhood days. All these changes happened because I started prioritizing what’s important for me and decided to improve my habits. So, if you are finding it hard…

Positive Parenting

10 positive parenting skills every parent must have

Positive parenting is a parenting method that is based on respect and connection. In positive parenting, unlike in authoritarian parenting children are not threatened or punished, and instead, they are heard and loved. When there is respect, children naturally learn to respect the parents and as a result, there is better behavior. Anyone who follows the traditional parenting methods based on fear, physical punishment, and manipulation can validate the fact that these methods are not effective in the long run. After a while, kids learn to find their ways to evade punishments or may even start to resent the parent, which no parent ever wants to happen. So if you are expecting to build a great relationship with your child where better behavior is due to love and respect rather than fear, positive parenting is the way to go. If you are a complete beginner to positive parenting, here is…

Parenting advice

11 easy ways to get kids to listen without yelling or nagging

We want our children to listen to us the first time we ask them to do something. But they seem to have their own mind and hundreds of reasons to do it their way. Of course, they are humans too but parents need children’s co-operation to become a smooth functioning family. Here are some ways to get cooperation from kids easily. 1. ASK RESPECTFULLY No one likes to take orders. Be it, small kids, or adults. Giving orders like “Do it!” creates resistance. Just like us, kids like their independence and don’t take it well when someone tells them what they should do all the time. Authoritarian way of parenting can only help make kids more defiant and uncooperative. Young kids may comply with your requests when you threaten or give physical punishment, but you lose the chance of developing a good relationship with them. This causes them to become a…

Parenting advice

Is spanking an effective way to discipline kids?

Should I spank my child or not? I see varying responses to this question in different parenting forums. While psychologists talk about the ill-effects of spanking, some people say they were spanked as a child and they believe they turned out to be okay. I think that belief leads many people to continue with spanking. I have kids aged 8 and 5 and I do not resort to spanking for disciplining them, thanks to the parenting articles and books I read early on in my parenthood journey. If you want to know whether it’s okay to spank your child, I would like you to take some time to self-evaluate. Let’s try to answer some questions here. Why does a parent want to spank their child? What makes them do it? What do parents believe will be the effect of spanking if they think spanking is effective? How does a child…

Parenting advice

How to speak positive words to kids (70 encouraging words for kids)

Guilt is one of the biggest emotions that can weigh us down. But it also gives us feedback on our behavior so that we can work on what needs to be corrected. Wait, why am I talking about guilt here? It is because I see it a lot in parents. The guilty feeling stems from the beliefs that “I am not a good mother”, or, “I am not doing as much as other mothers do for their kids”, etc. I experience it myself too. At the end of the day, when I look at my sleeping kids, I feel guilty about so many things and I take the resolution to work on them. As parents, the words we speak to kids are of utmost importance. The words we speak to them have a role in determining their confidence, abilities, happiness, and well-being. What I have found is, talking positively and…

Parenting advice

7 practical ways to build resilience in children

Resilience means the ability to cope with misfortunes and other unplanned events in life and adapt to them. If a person has good resilience, he will be able to adjust to the events quickly, wheres a person with less resilience becomes overwhelmed by such experiences and resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms. And due to this reason, it’s important that children be taught resilience. Because, if their resilience is not developed, they become less ready to face the hardships in life. As a result of poor resilience, they can develop diseases – physical and mental – and also, develop addictions to unhealthy substances as a coping mechanism. Resilience is what helps us face unfortunate events in a positive way and rebuild our lives from the experiences we have learned. Kids can face a lot of hardships in life like a divorce between parents, moving schools or cities, physical disabilities/illnesses, bullying, abuse,…

Parenting advice

How to teach growth mindset to kids

I don’t like math. It’s hard. When my second grader told me this, I remembered my own childhood. For me, math was not a hard subject in the second grade, but it was hard when I reached high school. And then I set out to focus more on it and ended up loving the subject. In fact, later I went on to do a major in math. And my belief about math changed. So when my daughter said this, I immediately thought how a change in mindset could change her belief. And that’s the difference between a growth mindset vs fixed mindset. **This post contains affiliate links. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase through my affiliate link** FIXED MINDSET VS GROWTH MINDSET Carol Dweck, a lead researcher on the topic defines a fixed mindset and growth mindset as, In…

Parenting advice

How to teach positive affirmations to kids

I have been reading self-help books for about fifteen years. I first learned about the power of affirmations from these books. But only recently I had the breakthrough that we all use affirmations regardless of we are into personal development or not. Our kids use affirmations too. How is it that we all use affirmations? All our thoughts and internal monologues are affirmations. When struggling with a subject, does your child say that “I hate math, it is hard”? There. It is an affirmation. When struggling with parenting you might tell yourself “ I hate having to fight with my kid every day. It feels like I am a failure as a parent”. All these are affirmations. The sad thing is most of us use negative affirmations most of the time rather than positive ones. And it is not conscious but happens unconsciously. We all have our moments of self-doubt.…

Parenting advice

20 things parents should never say to their children

Words. Words have so much power. Words can make or break a person’s entire life. If you want proof, think about the most hurtful words spoken to you as a child. Do those words still bring emotions to you? If you reflect upon the memory, you might find out that those words have had some kind of effect in your belief system and in the formation of your character. In fact, you might still be believing that ‘you are not good enough’ or ‘you are not good at _____’ because someone said that to you when you were growing up. And you didn’t want to try more because you believed those words. In the past year, I have been reading so many books about the power of our minds in shaping the reality we want in our life. The research is mindblowing and I am amazed by the effect of…