Week 11

This week while we have talked about parenting, some extremely significant thoughts have run through my mind. Parenting is on of the most important roles I will have in this life, next to being a wife. This is an opportunity I have to make a difference. As I have thought about some things that I could do to make myself prepare to be a good parent for my furture children, I have thought of a few things. I started thinking a lot about how as parents we are the ones that teach our children how to think. Whether we realize it or not, how we think as individuals is going to in turn play a significant impact on how our children learn to think. You may think that how we think really isn't that big of a deal, but, it is very significant. My parents are incredible parents, and they really make many sacrifices in devoting their lives to loving and caring for their children. However, they aren't perfect. My mom's mom has a tendency towards very negative and self-critical attitude, and obviously inevitably my mom kind of picked up that same thought process, which in turn has become my way of thinking. I have recently come to realize this, as I have struggled with depression and anxiety significantly in the last couple of month. Unfortunately, changing the way you think is very difficult, because you do it without even realizing it. Luckily, with this realization however, I was able to think this week about that, and have come to realize that if I were to change how I think now, before I start raising them and teaching them how to think, I can prevent them from suffering or going through what I am going through. I would never want anyone to feel what I feel at times, or have to struggle with this difficulty of changing how to think. This has become a huge motivating factor in raising that desire and will to change how I think, because I want to teach my children how to think positively abou themselves, and to recognize their abilities, in addtion to this, one important thing that was suggested in our dicussions this week, was that we as parents need to focus on the behavior we desire, not the behavior we don't desire. So, telling your children the things they do well as opposed to the things they don't do super well, or the things that they need to improve on. This is a good step in changing the way we think from negative to positive.