I’ll never forget the day I found out I was going to be a mother.
My husband and I had been married for just three months, and something felt off. I exploded over something relatively trivial and set off the first major fight in our entire relationship.
We smoothed things over pretty quickly, but then came the exhaustion.
I still laugh every time I think about the afternoon before I got the news. I’d picked up some sandwiches for lunch and settled in to watch, ironically, a popular kids movie. Ten minutes in, I found myself passed out on the couch—half-eaten sandwich in hand.
Something was definitely up.
I grabbed a pregnancy test on my way home from work the next day. As I waited for the results, I cautioned myself not to get my hopes up.
I’d been diagnosed with PCOS as a teenager and warned that fertility might be—wait a minute! Were my eyes playing tricks on me?
Two bold pink lines appeared in the test window, confirming the beginning of something I’d always wanted—motherhood.
I dashed out of the bathroom and jumped around gleefully yelling, “I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!”
Twelve years later, my joy has been multiplied. I have three healthy children with extraordinary personalities that keep me in a constant state of awe. Still, I understand why not everyone wants to become a parent.
Truthfully, the responsibility sometimes feels burdensome. The fear of repeating our parents’ mistakes creates so much anxiety, and social media makes us vulnerable to the ultimate thief of joy—comparison.
These often lead to toxic guilt and shame cycles when we inevitably miss the mark as imperfect people—losing our temper or not having the energy to play. It’s also difficult to help children emotionally regulate when you’re still learning how to do it yourself.
On the bright side, none of these factors eliminate the joy of parenting. They merely provide an opportunity for you and your family to seek out joy as a team.
As captains of the team, we lead by example while gently guiding our children through the process of finding their own happiness. We may lose sight of our joy at times, but a playbook can help us regain focus.
This week we’ll look at ways to incorporate joy into our daily rhythm and model habits that will help our children build joyful lives of their own.
Shifting the Spotlight
Last week, I discussed how appreciation keeps us steady in a world full of chaos. The same principle applies to parenting.
When I drift away from my daily brain work routine, I tend to develop a simmering rage that makes everything feel like a personal offense.
“This place looks like a landfill! No one appreciates anything I do around here!”
“So are you guys just going to pretend like I don’t exist?”
“Why can’t I have anything for myself?”
These seem like perfectly reasonable responses to cleaning up messes that make no sense, repeating myself nonstop, and finding my things tampered with or destroyed.
Yet it becomes harder to justify when you realize that the targets of my ire are elementary schoolers, not middle-aged adults.
As parents, we should expect to deal with messes and behavioral issues from time to time. After all, children don’t come into the world preloaded with knowledge on how to clean, get along with their siblings, and respect other people’s belongings.
We have to teach them ourselves, and all the annoying and inconvenient moments serve as learning opportunities. Practicing gratitude every day will help us reframe our thoughts and refocus on the joy of parenting.
For instance, before raging out about the toys littering the house, I could pause and think about the people who would give anything to have a child to pick up after.
As someone who once assumed I’d struggle to get pregnant, this thought hits close to home.
Oftentimes, our negative thought spirals stem from feeling unappreciated. We work tirelessly to try to keep our children happy and healthy, so it hurts to watch them ignore or undo our efforts.
When we slip into this mindset, we need to ask ourselves:
When was the last time I showed appreciation for their efforts?
Gratitude doesn’t come naturally, and children learn best from observing our actions. If we want them to take notice of our hard work, then we need to consistently point out and praise their good deeds—big or small.
I recently started working with a therapist to help my son deal with his anxiety and lack of motivation. During our second session, she shared an amazing strategy that has already cut down the number of power struggles between me and my son.
In fact, it works so well that we decided to extend it to his sisters.
I took a clear peanut butter jar I’d saved for Lego storage and repurposed it as the Puff Jar. It now holds the craft pom poms I deposit every time I notice them doing their chores or acts of kindness. They’ve been promised a special family outing if they fill the jar. This helps them visualize their progress and makes the reward tangible.
It’s been two weeks, and they’re halfway there.
Offering more praise and positive reinforcement has motivated them better than the threat of punishment. They want to keep the positivity flowing, so they put in more effort to clean and get along with each other.
This new method requires me to tune into their highlight moments and shifts my focus away from the things that usually dim my joy. I have more patience because it no longer feels like they always do x or never do y.
Gratitude has given the spotlight to the things that make me proud to be their mom and renewed my sense of joy in motherhood.
When we increase our joy through gratitude, it spreads to our children, resulting in higher self-esteem and better emotional regulation for everyone.
I’ve designed this set of printable Daily Love Notes: Praise With Purpose to help parents reflect on their children’s highlight moments and offer meaningful praise. You can use the sentence starters to write specific and sincere messages and leave them for your child to find. I like to leave them on my kids’ keyboards before they wake up in the morning.
Integrity in Practice
We can set our children up for long-term joy by modeling gratitude alongside meaningful values, such as:
1. Honesty—Research in neuroscience suggests that our brain becomes less sensitive to dishonesty over time. One little lie can plant the seed for a series of even bigger lies if we ignore our conscience.
However, the importance of honesty goes beyond rule-following. It’s fundamental to our integrity. Having integrity means that the way we portray ourselves to the outside world aligns with our inner world.
Conversely, a hypocritical or two-faced person lacks integrity because their words and actions contradict their true thoughts and intentions. What you see is not what you get. In other words, their personality isn’t fully integrated.
Sadly, people without integrity often come from homes where the truth didn’t feel safe. Lying simply became a survival mechanism that followed them into adulthood. We usually think of the pain they inflict on others and ignore the harm they do to themselves.
A life without integrity results in persistent anxiety because at a certain point it becomes impossible to keep track of every lie. This eventually catches up to the individual and exposes their guilt and shame to the outside world.
Undoubtedly, we all prefer to guide our children toward a life of integrity. To do that we first need to lead by example. It can be really tempting to lie to get out of listening to that sales pitch or avoid the embarrassment of our mistakes.
However, our children pay closer attention to our patterns of behavior than we realize. If we want them to feel safe telling the truth, then we need to show them with our actions.
Respectfully declining that sales pitch shows your child how to set healthy boundaries instead of people-pleasing.
Owning up to your mistakes teaches them that everyone falls short sometimes, but we can take steps to make it right.
2. Respect—Our connection to the world around us depends on our ability to show respect. The way we treat others contributes to the health of our personal and professional relationships. If we want our children to be successful in life, then we need to teach them respect.
The discipline I received as a child was influenced by a fairly common misconception about respect—it’s earned through fear.
Stepping out of line meant being iced out until someone else became the target. This kept me compliant up to a certain point. Nonetheless, over time I learned that being a rotational black sheep meant I needed to figure life out for myself and find other sources of validation.
That got mislabeled as rebellion. I never broke any laws, and I graduated with honors.
I simply distinguished myself as an individual.
Respect means recognizing that every person has free will and individual thoughts, feelings, and sets of values. We dignify them by seeking understanding instead of conflict and holding space for different perspectives.
Similar to self-talk, children learn respect for themselves and others from the treatment they receive at home.
We model it by showing consideration for their unique emotional needs and desires. We also view them as being worthy of an apology when we make mistakes or hurt their feelings—just like we treat everyone else.
These are just two of many important values that set children up for a joyful life.
Others include but aren’t limited to:
- Connection
- Courage
- Curiosity
- Empathy
- Fulfillment
- Patience
- Peace
- Trust
Our children learn best from watching us align our own lives with a purposeful set of values. They tend to do as we do, more than doing what we say.
When we face the pressure to compromise, we need to remember our impressionable audience and choose the path we want them to follow one day—the one that leads to integrity and joyful relationships.
This Values in Practice: Guiding Our Children With Integrity worksheet can help you slow down and think intentionally about the values you hope to pass on to your children—and how you practice them in everyday life.
Read more about respect and integrity in these Psychology Today articles:
R-E-S-P-E-C-T | Psychology Today
6 Steps to Leading a Life of Integrity | Psychology Today
Resilience in Practice
Despite our best efforts, every day will not feel joyful. We may not feel like practicing gratitude when we feel overstimulated, or we might compromise on our values in a moment of pressure.
Nonetheless, perfectionism only creates a barrier to regaining our joy.
Instead of beating ourselves up for falling short, we should reframe these struggles as teachable moments. When we take accountability for our actions and problem-solve, we show our children resilience in action.
As a former middle school math teacher, I’ve observed the profound impact that resilience has on academic performance.
When it comes to math, many people believe there are only two camps: the people who are good at math and the people who are bad at math. There never seems to be a middle road.
This idea is half-true. Math does have two camps, but the differences come down to mindset, not ability.
Some students have a fixed mindset while others have a growth mindset.
Students with fixed mindsets lack resilience. They tend to shut down instead of working through problems that challenge them.
“I can’t do this. I’ll never be good at math.”
On the other hand, students with a growth mindset develop resilience through problem-solving. Instead of shutting down, they lock in and try different strategies until they find a solution.
“I haven’t figured this out yet. Let me go back and check my steps.”
Both mindsets have real-world implications. People who never outgrow a fixed mindset often let life happen to them. They didn’t learn to seek ways to change their circumstances or use healthy coping skills. It can be very difficult for them to find joy when they feel like the entire world is against them.
Conversely, resilient people look for resources and strategies to help them overcome obstacles.
When they can’t change their situation, they adapt by reframing their thoughts or focusing on aspects of life that they can control. This helps them avoid feelings of hopelessness that rob them of joy.
We all need resilience to remain joyful in this chaotic world.
As parents, we have the responsibility of training our children to persevere through problems. We can do this by being open about our own struggles—when age-appropriate.
If they see us confronting problems head-on instead of shutting down, they’re more likely to do it themselves.
We should also avoid rushing in to solve their problems for them. It can be very tempting to quiet them down by removing an obstacle, but they’ll learn to self-soothe and problem-solve if we give them a little time before intervening.
This reminds me of the 2004 Ray Charles biopic starring Jamie Foxx.
At age six, Ray Charles lost his vision to glaucoma. The movie contains a scene where his mother lays out the truth of his situation. She tells him frankly that the world won’t go easy on him because he’s blind, and he needs to learn to rely on his memory and other senses to get around.
“I’ll show you how to do something once, I’ll help you if you mess up twice, but the third time you’re on your own. ‘Cause that’s how it is in the world.”
She teaches him how to count the stairs and use his arms to find his way around.
One day, he runs into the house and trips over a chair while she’s standing at the kitchen counter. He calls out for her, “Mama, I need you.”
Yet she remains silent and resists the urge to help but watches intently as he contemplates his next step.
Realizing that his mother expects him to figure it out himself, young Ray tunes into the sounds around him and cautiously uses his arms to orient himself. His mother cries tears of joy when he finds his way to her on his own.
We can gauge our own level of resilience by examining how we respond to stress. We don’t need to beat ourselves up if we struggle to cope in certain areas. Self-awareness can help us set achievable goals that will strengthen our resilience.
This Resilience in Practice worksheet can help you do just that. It includes guided reflection prompts that encourage you to pause and reflect on how you model resilience for your children.
Next Steps for Your Self-Discovery Journey
If you’re ready to explore what joy looks like in your life right now, start with this Joy Readiness Toolkit. I designed it to help you understand how you experience joy, regulate your emotions, and stay aligned with your values in daily life.
Meaningful Actions to Try:
- Look for opportunities to express gratitude for the ways your children show up for the family. These Daily Love Notes can guide you in offering purposeful praise.
- Reflect on the values you want to instill in your children and evaluate how you model them. Be kind to yourself. Your intention should be goal-setting, not judgment. This Values in Practice: Guiding Our Children With Integrity supports you through the process.
- Notice how you handle stress and the impact it has on your children. If you find yourself struggling in certain areas, set realistic goals that build up your resilience. Use this insight to teach your children how to problem-solve. This Resilience in Practice printable includes gentle prompts to help you reflect.
Additional Inspiration:
Holding Onto Joy
Children bring so much joy into our lives, but living in such a fast-paced world often overwhelms us. It can be hard to appreciate our role as parents when we feel like we’re swimming against the current. Taking time to reflect on our children’s best qualities helps us remain grateful for the gift of parenthood. Regular praise focused on their efforts allows us to extend our joy to them. We also set them up for a joyful life by modeling meaningful values and resilience. They learn best from observing our steadiness through life’s ups and downs.
Thank you for reading. If this post resonated with you, share it with anyone who needs a gentle reminder to focus on the joys of parenting, and subscribe to have weekly posts delivered to your inbox.
Keep it kind, respectful, and focused on self-love and growth—let’s make this a safe, uplifting space. 🌿