Anyone Got This Whole Parenting Thing Figured Out?

Anyone got this whole parenting thing figured out? Raise your hand if you have figured out the secret to handling a sleepy cranky toddler while cooking a gourmet dinner for 5 (thousand) that will likely go uneaten in favor of cold pizza and fruit snacks. Add on keeping the house from falling down around you, work, phone calls, bills, and the realization that you are raising a future independent little person who watches every move you make… Hey, if you’ve figured out the secret to balancing all of the crazy that comes along with parenting and creating a happy healthy home, give me a call. I bet we could make millions!

For the rest of us, the real world throws us curve balls. And these little people who we love are silently watching and developing the tools they will one day use to deal with curve balls of their own. It is a high wire act in which we are all juggling 20 flaming swords while riding a unicycle, and it is enough to make anyone feel overwhelmed and sometimes completely alone. I am here to tell you that you are not alone, and you do not have to feel like you are.

I started my internship with the Guardian House parenting program and was excited to work with our clients, but feel like these classes have offered me more than I could have ever imagined. I have been going through skills training and counseling with my special needs child for about 4 years now. I thought for sure that I would have had much of what the program would teach already firmly implanted in my brain. However, even after all the training and research I have done, I find that I still learn new tools and find encouragement and form new bonds with moms and dads who are down in the parenting-trenches alongside me in every single class that we have.

The program focuses on an evidence-based curriculum that helps to develop the skill set needed to raise our kiddos in nurturing homes. What’s more, the facilitators really care for each parent that attends these sessions, and listen with open ears and open hearts to the difficulties that each of us face. Community and family are central in our program, and as we continue to grow and encourage, so does our ability to help our parents. Recently, we began a class in which a hearing impaired couple joined our ranks. We are so happy to say that we are able to accommodate their needs and have an interpreter there to translate.

So, please, if you feel as though your house can sometimes seem like a battle zone, and it all gets to be too much at times, let us be your reinforcements. Let us supply our knowledge, and please, share your own! And while you’re at it, come say hi. I’ll be the one talking loudly and with my hands, completely involved in the ideas and opportunities these classes always bring.

Your fellow mom-in-arms,
Tasha