Reblogged from Empowering Parents

Watching my child struggle without stepping in to “fix” things for him was one of the hardest things I’ve personally experienced as a mom, even though I knew it was the best thing for him. And the truth is, from the very beginning, being a mother is a balance of taking care of your kids while letting them grow up and learn from their mistakes. Your role of simply loving and protecting your baby from pain and discomfort changes to one of accepting that your child or teen will need to experience natural consequences for his or her actions. The hard part (for them and for us!) is that these consequences almost always include some discomfort, disappointment or pain.

“It’s helpful to allow your child to struggle. Change happens out of struggle and in moments of accepting responsibility for our actions.”

Along with the good, the list of tough things we face as parents is long—and as we all find out pretty early, there are so many challenges that we never even considered or knew about before having children! As a mom and therapist of 30 years, I’ve found the following to be five of the most difficult.

1. “Parent the child you have, and not the child you wish you had.” Many times, we try to parent our kids based on what we think they should be like, and not upon who they really are. Read more>>