Getting High on Recovery

Coping with each stage of parenting is easy if you keep things simple

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Parenting is like recovery. One decision will change the course of your life. Some things you will have control over, but many things will demand acceptance, forgiveness, and good coping skills.

The really fun thing about parenting is that when you complete one stage, you take that stage with you and it becomes a part of how you cope. For example, most teenagers are a complicated mix of cuddliness, being told to do things now, needing to talk and hormonal prickliness.

Okay moms and dads, let’s not complicate things. There are really only 7 stages of parenting:

1.“You are so cuddly” – The infant stage

2.”Please do this” – The first part of the toddler training stage

• Do this now -The second part of the toddler training stage

3. Let’s do this together – The elementary school stage

4. “I need to talk to you about school” – The pre/teen stage

5.”You are not so cuddly” – The teenager stage

• “Do this by Saturday or you lose your computer time” – Teenager

• “No I will not pay you for doing this” – Teenager

6. “Now that you are 18, you are moving out!” – Late stage teenager

7. “Now that you are 18, you are moving back?” – Young Adult

• “How long will you be staying?” – Young Adult

Coping with each developmental stage is the challenge. The most common parent coping skills are listed below. Not every parent will do each of these, and some parents will do all of them.

The parent’s eight essential coping skills:

1. Pray
2. Drink
3. Pray and Drink at the same time
4. Get support
5. Eat, pray, and drink at the same time
6. Run, walk or do whatever you can to get away from it all
7. Howl at the moon
8. Have more children to distract yourself

I write articles about wellness, leadership, parenting and personal growth. My goal is to deliver the best content I can for you: inspire, inform and entertain. Sign up for my blog if you want to receive the latest and best of my writing. Sharing an author’s work is the greatest compliment you could ever give.

If you like this piece, you need to read A 16 Year Old Dis/Ease and Sometimes I Want to Run Away from My Teenager (which is featured in Disney’s Babble).

Keep it Real

Photo by Patrick Magee