Keeping It Real About Parenting

When it comes to managing family priorities, parents can be pretty busy. Ensuring that your kids are healthy, safe, happy and engaged in life, can be a lot of pressure. In the midst of it all, taking time to connect with your child, and taking a step back to truly enjoy your time as a family, is often not prioritized, as it should be.

We want to share a few things that can help moms & dads along their parenting journey.

Here are some golden nuggets:

1. Keep things simple – Let’s be real, time is of the essence! Break your day up into short intervals of time so that you can do the things you want and need to do throughout the day. Dedicated and uninterrupted time for the kids can be squeezed in (even just 10 minutes, set a timer!) to play a game, read books, do crafts or try something new that your child wants to share with you. Keep dinner simple with a basic meal or take-out on designated nights of the week. We hope you don’t forget your Kaylee’s Culture at the dinner table! Leave the expectations at the door on how the day should be managed, and try new, less complex routines, that could work better for you and the kids.
2. It doesn’t have to be perfect –It’s easy to be drawn to the idea of a perfectly curated home with smiling children, families laughing, playing games, and getting along perfectly. But the reality is, that life is chaotic, messy, and irregular for most families. What we see on social media is often not an accurate portal, showcasing parents without much sleep, siblings fighting, and the dinner burning in the oven. Give yourself grace. Find the moments among the chaos and enjoy them because in the midst of the reality of your life you can find great connections with your kids that create lifelong lessons and memories. It’s going to be hard sometimes and that’s ok.
3. Give yourself permission to take personal time as a parent – During the current pandemic, we are spending a lot of time together and it can sometimes seem like there is only one setting for the family – everyone together. However, all parents need personal time and it’s OK to find the time and take it for yourself. Even if it’s just to paint your nails in the yard, take a stroll with your friend, video games uninterrupted, or time as an adult to connect on a date night…… self-care can be nourishing to the soul. Enabling each other to have personal adult time is a huge gift we can give one another as parents. By taking much-needed time for yourself, you then become more available to your children, more refreshed, more focused, and overall, more patient when connecting with the kids.
4. There are real-life mom & dads sharing their own parenting journeys publicly –from the difficult challenges to the joyful moments that make up motherhood. Hearing from others and learning what they are doing to manage life, parenting and everything in between can be inspiring and reassuring.

Here are a few we love:

https://www.mother.ly/ – Motherly was born to send expert ideas and mom-to-mom inspiration to women exactly when they need it. Because an uplifting online community full of expert tricks-of-the-trade and inspiring stories were exactly what was missing the first time they became moms. Mother.ly’s personalized, week-by-week guides know exactly where you are in the journey because they’ve been there too.

https://www.amomstake.com/ – On this site, you will find a variety of topics from recipes, travel, crafts, gift ideas, and other content to inspire and teach. Since A Mom’s Take began it has grown to include a variety of writers and contributors, you’ll notice a variety of voices.

https://www.everythingfordads.com – Jim is the founder and CEO of Everything For Dads and a dad to seven kids, an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and he is dedicated to helping dads become the man and dad they want to be.

https://theapocalypsedaddy.com – Mark Fielding is a writer. He has been listed as one of the best dad and parent blog writers of his generation and hopes to appear in Fortune Magazine’s 50 under 50 dads of the year. Mark started Apocalypse Daddy out of the belief that parenting content should speak to more than nappies and safety barriers; the disposable culture of memes and dad jokes was not for here either. Instead, he focuses on the experiences that make being a dad special, the memories which remind us of when we were young, and the people our children have yet to become.

5. Remember that your children love you – As parents, we can be hard on ourselves when our kids are struggling, when we wanted to do more for them and couldn’t, or when we’ve had a bad day and feel pressure at home. Just take a step back, and remember that your child loves you, and that’s a wonderful thing.

We hope that Kaylee’s Culture can help your parenting journey, by providing healthy drinks for children that are great for adults too.

Happy Parenting!