5 Uncommon Tips for New Parents

Maybe you’re currently expecting, or have a baby or are emerging from that first year and meeting your new toddler. 

Regardless of what stage you’re at, as a to-be-parent, new-parent or newish-parent, here are some fundamental conscious parenting tips to empower you on this amazing journey.

1. Discuss What’s Important To You

What are the values and beliefs that you feel are essential that you pass onto your child?

(There may or may not be a religious component to this - that’s entirely personal to you.)

Most of us would probably agree that we think the values of honesty, integrity, and trust are important.  But when you dig deeper on these, where do you draw your lines with these values and are they the same places for your partner? 

For example, do you think it is ever okay to be dishonest? Do you believe that white lies are appropriate?  In what situations?  Or absolutely not?  When does misleading cross the line to dishonesty?  For each of us, the answers to these may be different. 

When you raise a child, it’s really helpful to understand up front where you stand on these nuances and whether you and your partner have different views.  And if you do have different views, is either one of you willing to compromise? 

Children learn most from what we DO, not what we say. 

So using the honesty example, we might teach our children to be honest, but if they experience us “bending the rules” to suit us, they will learn our values from our actions and not from our words.  For example, if we say they are 23 months instead of their actual 2 years to get them into the soft-play centre for free….

Obviously, the more aligned and in agreement you and your partner can be on these fundamental values, the easier it will be for you to co-parent your child.

Even if you do have different views (which, is generally inevitable) then understanding where and how you differ will help to consciously parent through those areas.

2. Discuss How You Were Parented

This is a step that many new parents miss, but that is absolutely critical.

By the time you are ready to have a child, many of us have put our childhood long behind us.  Yes, it’s a part of who we are, but it’s not often a topic of discussion.  Especially not the tactics our parents used in our daily childhood lives.

Every family is unique and has its own societal norms.  Even if you lived next door to someone, had the same cultural background and socio-economic status, you might have had a very different family experience.  That’s because each family brings with it the history of each parent, which might include generations of values, beliefs and parenting practices.

It’s important to talk to your partner about what your parents did when you behaved well, when you misbehaved, when you achieved, didn’t, or how they were in your daily childhood lives.  What triggered them? What made them happy? What things did they emphasise?  How? 

The reason you want to think and talk about these things is that how your parents raised you is most likely how you will initially “show up” as a parent yourself.  That’s nature and unconscious parenting (your subconscious programming).  Maybe you liked the way you were parented and think it’s okay to parent the way your parents raised you.  That’s absolutely fine if you are aware of making that deliberate decision.

What often happens is that we don’t actually think about it and so find ourselves, generally in emotionally-intense moments, surprised that we are behaving like our parents.  Because when we are full of emotion, our subconscious programming takes over. That’s when you hear your mother’s voice coming out of your mouth or witness yourself behaving like your father.

Co-parents are often surprised to see some of their “in-laws” coming out in their partner - it’s almost as if aspects of their personality didn’t exist until they became a parent.  Talking about how you were raised up front helps you and your partner better understand each other when those moments arise - so you don’t think they’ve all of a sudden turned into a different person!

If you can be clear about which “bits” about the way you were parented you want to take forward into your own parenting and which ones you want to avoid, this will help you consciously work on those avoidance areas.  And to find acceptable alternatives to use in your own parenting journey. 

3.  Discuss Your Parenting Principles

Now, you may not have consciously thought about your parenting principles previously but as a to-be or new/newish parent, you’ll find that you already have a few parenting principles that you feel pretty strongly about.

This is all about how you’d like to approach your child.  Do you believe in treating them with respect?  What if they don’t respect you?  Do you believe in punishment for misbehaviour?  Smacking?  A light tap on the hand?  You’ve heard about time-outs - do you believe these are worth trying?

And how about bribing them to do something if they are unwilling?

How do you feel about giving praise and showing affection?  What do these things look like for you?

Do you think rules are necessary?  Do you see yourself setting limits for child?  What comprises being strict or permissive and where on that spectrum do you hope to be?

Often, we feel all these things are a “given”.  We can’t imagine how someone, especially our partner/co-parent, would have different thoughts to ours on such fundamental principles.  However, many parents are surprised to discover that their partners often have very different principles. 

This is another aspect that will have been informed by the way you were parented, so the more awareness that you have brought to that part of your life, the stronger the views you will have on how you want to show up as a parent.

4. Discuss Family “Rules”

Every family will have a varying degree of rules they adopt in order for things to run smoothly.  Whether you like structure or prefer to be more flexible, your child will need some guidelines for what is acceptable. 

You want to think about what some of the rules you might want to have in your family. 

For example, how do you feel about your child watching TV?  Do you think it’s okay and if so, when or at what times of the day?  (e.g. mornings, when you’re cooking dinner, etc.). And for how long?  Do you like to watch TV and leave the TV on when you’re in the house?  Will you continue to do so when your child is around?

Other areas that are useful to discuss are:  family mealtimes (will you have meals together, how often, do you stay at the table until finished, etc.), personal hygiene (how important is this, when do you brush your teeth, for how long, how often do you wash your hair, etc.), personal accountability (what you’d ultimately like your child to learn to be responsible for, depending on their age).

It’s important that you and your partner have some sort of agreement on some of your fundamental family rules so that your child will learn these consistently. 

As your child gets older, you will find the rules you emphasise may change depending on your family stage so periodically discuss these with your partner (and eventually with your child when they are a bit older) at each age/stage of development.

5.  Discuss Your Hopes and Dreams (and Fears)

This is another one that might require a bit of introspection. 

When we are expecting, most of us would say that hope our baby is born healthy (and that we get through childbirth!).

When we’ve got a baby in their first year, you’re mostly hoping to get the feeding and sleeping thing right and that all of you survive that first year! 

But sometime between when you are expecting and when your baby emerges into a new toddler, we start to develop a lot of hopes, dreams and fears for our child. 

Oftentimes, we keep these intimate thoughts and feelings to ourselves - many parents would struggle to even articulate or share these with their partner. 

Here’s the thing - it is totally normal to have hopes, dreams and fears for your child.  It may relate to them solely or it may be intertwined with feelings about being a parent - whether you are doing a good job, if you’re good enough, what if you make mistakes, what if….

What you need to make sure that you do is to try to articulate and talk about them with your partner.  So that you can understand each other better and also get some insight into what might drive your behaviour when certain things happen. 

Many times, how we react to and interact with our child is driven by our deep-rooted hopes and fears.  Having an awareness of these helps us be conscious about how we react and interact and ensure that we are parenting our child the way we intend to.

Here’s the Truth

Each of us comes to our parenting journey with our own unique background and experiences. 

We have all this “stuff” that we have accumulated in our lives - not necessarily physical, but emotional and mental - that make up much of who we are.  It includes the stuff we’re passionate about as well as those things we wouldn’t give a second thought to.

Our values, our beliefs, opinions, and outlook on life.  And our emotional history.

A lot of this comes from our own childhood and would, therefore, have also been influenced by our parents, their life and experiences, as well as the generations before them.

They say Parenting is Instinctual.  The most Natural role we play.

And on some level, it is true.  When your baby cries, you will go to try to soothe them - even when you are totally exhausted or think that emotionally you can’t handle it anymore.  You find a way - that’s biology.

But conscious parenting - is not necessarily natural. 

If you were fortunate enough to be raised with conscious parents who spoke to you with respect, used positive discipline and descriptive praise then you are one of the very lucky ones who will find conscious, positive parenting comes almost naturally to you.

Most of us were raised with the most loving and well-intentioned parents.  But these same parents, despite their best intentions, used threats, bribes, shame, guilt, punishments, shouting, criticism and evaluative/low-meaning praise.  They didn’t know any better and were likely parenting mostly the way they were parented with a few “practices of the era” (like low-meaning praise - “awesome” “well done!”) thrown in.

It takes a good deal of self-awareness to break the deep-rooted parenting patterns that are ingrained in your subconscious programming from your own childhood.

It is entirely possible to parent your child differently to the way you were parented - to take the “good” from your own experiences and to avoid the “not so good”. 

You can do this.  You can be the pioneer - the one to break through the emotional triggers and historical patterns and parent intentionally. 

Start with these 5 tips and you’ll have laid a solid foundation for being the conscious parent you want to be.  (Click here to download a copy of these tips to refer to later.)