Why and How Parents Should Learn to Cope with Life Stresses and Anxiety

For someone who suffers from anxiety like myself (health related anxiety to be exact), I know how much it impacts my parenting. I can be one day a happy mom doing so many things around the house and being with my children to the next day where anxiety consumes my day and I procrastinate and am not there 100% for my kids. This is why I decided to write about how and why parents should learn to cope with life stresses and anxiety.

How and Why Parents Should Learn to Cope with Life Stresses and Anxiety

How a Parents Stresses and Anxiety Can Affect their Children

Unfortunately, having severe life stresses or anxiety can affect our parenting and impact the child’s development. It can also possibly prevent the child from gaining certain life skills they may need as adults.

Whether you’re a parent who has just slight anxiety or a parent who has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, you as a parent can take certain steps to better yourself in turn bettering your parenting. {I will share what has helped me below.}

As we may know, or not know, a parents anxiety can pass to their child and can affect their behavior. This is because it is more learned and mimicked on the child’s end what the parent does (and studies show that it’s more learned behavior than in their DNA). Though this does not mean every child will follow in their parents footsteps.

My Experience: I’m an anxious parent, no doubt. And of course my children have seen me and still do in my mood. {Read HERE about it, as well as this post HERE.} I definitely see anxiety in my children and honestly, it makes me sad. I don’t want them to be anxious children who grow up to be anxious adults. I try my best to not show them when I am anxious and act as normal as possible around them. And when they come to me with fears or worries of their own, I try my best to calm them down and remind them everything is okay.

What Can be Some of the Parents’ Stresses and Anxiety?

Every parent is different. We all don’t worry about the same things. Below is a list of different types of anxieties parents may have, but there are more then what is listed:

Worrying if their child is meeting their milestones and development.
Worrying if their child is exposed to too many chemicals that could be harmful to their health.
Worrying if they have enough friends or if they’re being bullied.
Worrying about the health of their child (This ones me! I’m constantly worrying about their health and freak over the littlest things that are in fact nothing, as well as my health.)

What Strategies can a Parent do to Help Cope with Stress and Anxiety?

There are different strategies that have worked for me and still do to this day. I am going to list them to share with other parents out there who may find it helpful in coping themselves.

1. Talk to your partner. Let them know what you’re worried about. Talk it through with them. Most times, they’ll be more grounded and bring you back to your senses to remind you that in fact everything is just fine. This I find helps me because your partner is your #1 supporter.

2. Talk to a parent, family member or close friend. I find this helps me just as much as talking to my husband. When you speak to family and friends, you can in fact learn that they are going through the same thing or that they’ve been through similar and will remind you that everything will be okay. I always go to my mom or my sister and it helps so much.

3. Take care of yourself. I’m talking about eating right. Getting enough rest. Exercise when possible. All these things play a role in how we feel and can help when we take extra care of ourselves.

4. Get some progressional help. This can be a psychologist, but for me, it was my Acupuncturist. I go the more natural route. I went to him a lot (can’t wait to go back when Covid-19 is gone) and getting acupuncture helped bring me back to reality and know my worries were not worth worrying about as everything indeed is okay.

Parents, please remember: Parenting has no magic formula for success. We do the best we can and in order to do that, we must take care of ourselves first. Don’t feel guilty doing things for yourself first. Of course we want our kids to have the best, but for that, we need to make sure we’re feeling good. Hope this post on How and Why Parents Should Learn to Cope with Life Stresses and Anxiety helps you!