5 Easy Tips for Parenting Kids: You Do You

You spend so much time worrying about how people raise their kids, but why? We evaluate ourselves against others, watching social media, creating parenting anxiety. You find yourself asking, ‘Am I raising my kid right?’ Or worse, ‘Oh, I would never let my kid do that.’ Like most things in life, we parent differently. It’s time to stop the parenting shame, stop the judgment, and move toward this thought with parenting kids: ‘You Do You.’

5 Easy Tips for Parenting Kids

1. Stop listening to unsolicited parenting advice. One of the biggest lessons I learned as a dad so far. I know that sounds like a strange thing from somebody who runs a website about how to parent. But, I hope you sought out our advice. When it comes to people telling you, “when I had kids…” or “you know what you should do…” take it with a grain of salt. If you like the advice – keep it. If you think the person is crazy – LET IT GO (now Let it Go from Frozen is stuck in your head – sorry).
2. Ignore the ‘You Just Waits.’ You will hear this 1,000,000+ times in the first 20 years of your kid’s lives. We say something like, “you just wait until she’s five” to share our story with others. My issue, it’s usually NEVER positive. The occasional positive ones still come with a tinge of heartache. When someone starts a sentence with You Just Wait tune them out.
3. Don’t compare yourself to others. This is the hardest part of parenting. In order to embrace the You Do You mentality, you have to let go of what others are doing. It’s easy to compare yourself to that practically perfect Instagram family. Or worse, the parents who have their kid in bed (AND ASLEEP) at 7PM. You will start to wonder, “Where did I go wrong?” Even worse, don’t pat yourself on the back when you see a parent at dinner handing their kid a cell phone to play with, or scoff when you see a child having a meltdown at a store. Trust me it will happen to you too. And as much as you are judging other people for the way they go about their parenting ways, you are also being judged by others for how you get the parenting job done.
4. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Keeping a tiny healthy and happy is a hard job. And, FYI we all have bad parenting moments. In those moments, do what you need to do to regain composure and move forward.
5. Trust your gut.  If a caveman can raise a kid you can raise a kid. All joking aside, if you follow your gut about parenting you will probably end up just fine. Of course, there are always exceptions. For example, if you regularly watch keeping up with the Kardashian’s you might want to get a second opinion on your life choices (I’m kidding again – kind of).

I am not saying you should skip all the advice and all tips that are out there. But, I do feel like we spend a lot of time judging ourselves and our own parenting skills based on the other people’s perception of what being a good parent looks like. If you are a soon to be dad rest assured you will have plenty of people who will tell you the best way to parent. If you have been a dad for any length of time I’m sure you can talk until your sick about how often you were given advice by other parents who could not have been more inaccurate.

People who we see parenting differently than ourselves is just that, different. If you learn nothing else from me at least remember that comparing yourselves to other parents and judging other parents for their parenting style is a lost cause.