Dictionary For Dads

All Parents need time to connect well with each child they raise by developing and nurturing independent relationships with them. Connecting in a generous, loving, supportive and non judgmental way with our children is at the heart of parenting role. Parents also need time to tend to their other relationships with their spouse/lovers, friends and extended family members. Parents also need time to nurture themselves, maintain sanity, learn crisis management skills and maintain households and jobs. 

Today parents are going through a serious ethical, moral and personal conflict all over the world. Today there is more Single Parent housholds and Working Parents than ever before but the traditional responsibilities and roles of parents has maintained the same. In short, time has been taken from parents in drastic proportions over the last 30 years and in order for Parents to maintain and manage their lives and families new skills must be adapted. Every parent  experiences poverty of time more so for working and single parents who does not have the luxury to dedicate as much time as they would like to in raising and educating their children. The work of parenting is vital, and it takes time which by no fault of their own, parents do not have enough of today.

Parent Needs:

All parents need companionship, support, and a sense of security. Parents also need recognition and reassurance for the many jobs and roles they balance in being a parent today. Parents need a way to release the feelings they store up, day after day, while they do the best job they can with their children. All Parents need a chance to relax, free from worry and guilt.

There's no magic formula, but there may be a few practices that can help us to satisfy our needs to connect well, to relax and play, and to think about our children. Here are some ideas that parents have told us are helpful.

• Organize help. We have been trained to think of parenting as a one- or two-adult project. So when we get worn, we blame ourselves for our lack of energy rather than seeing that we are expecting ourselves to do a superhuman task. The truth is, when you are tired, day after day, you deserve help. When you find yourself short-tempered, you deserve help. When you've run out of energy to talk with your partner or get together with your friends, you deserve and need help. Parenting is like building a bridge or keeping an intensive care patient alive through a crisis: it is not work that's meant to be done in isolation. We need to identify the toughest times of our week, and experiment with setting up assistance at these times.
   
• Accept Help:Extended family members, neighbors, church or temple members, and teenagers in the neighborhood looking for work can be asked to do child care or errands or cooking. Parents in a neighborhood can cook for each others families, forming dinner co-ops. Parents can organize child care co-ops, in which time is exchanged, rather than money. Some city recreation programs and libraries have services for parents of young children. Even "weekends free" exchanges between families, in which once every two months or so, one set of parents gets Saturday through Sunday noon away from their children, and the other set does child care, can be arranged.
  
  
• Build a Listening Partnership with another parent. Make the commitment to tell someone what it's like for you, what your victories are and what is driving you up the wall, and then listen back so that parent gets listening time, too. It's surprising what a difference this exchange of listening time makes, even if it's just 5 or 10 minutes of listening each way over the phone. The time you invest in connecting with another parent won't make you less busy, but it will help you see the choices you have, solve problems more quickly, and feel less alone with the challenges you face.
  
  
• Let Go of some expectations. Do you really have to have a clean house? Must you really fold the clothes? Is a hot meal at dinner time really essential every night? If you are a harried parent, these questions can be irritating. It feels like, "Of course! What would people think! And me--how can I cope with things being more undone than they are now?"

Above all, don't blame yourself for your overwork. It's not your fault! Remember that we live in a society that cares more about your ability to produce than it does about your time for parenting, so the pressure you feel is the sign of backwards priorities at large, not a sign of personal failings. To take the ease every parent needs, you'll need to be active in working on your own behalf at home and at work. Think, listen, talk, and see what you, and fellow parents, can do to make time and make change.