Series: Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

Have you ever wondered who inspires me?

Well, I thought about this and realized there were parents’ bloggers whose writing I love to read and they inspire me to be the best I can be, because this is their motto too – to be the best parents they can be.

I think these top parenting bloggers are at peace with what they believe, while they appreciate other philosophies. I think they are passionate about what they do and all of them strive to help others make the parenting journey a happy, healthy and joyous adventure, which makes them the top parenting bloggers by my definition.

So for the next 14 weeks, the top parenting bloggers will be discussing different aspects of parenting right here on Family Matters.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction »

Last week, we started the new project Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss when every blogger introduced him or herself. If this is your first visit here, check each blogger on Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction.

Parenting brings a lot of joy, but it also comes with many challenges. In the personal development world, we say that if you know what your problem is, you are half way to the solution. To get half way to the solution, I have asked each top parenting blogger for their list of the 5 biggest challenges parents face today.

Here is what they thought (some of the emphasis is mine).

What are the 5 biggest challenges parents face today?

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (2): Parenting Challenges »

In the first post, our top parenting bloggers introduced themselves and their philosophy on life. In the second post, each parenting blogger gave their view on the top challenges of parenting (because knowing what we are facing is half the solution). Today, our top parenting bloggers discuss the best qualities parents should have. Like in […]

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (3): Best Parent Qualities »

Many parents say parenting has changed their life.

As young woman, I wanted to join a course to become a facilitator of parenting workshops. The director of the project said to me, “Ronit, in order to be a parent educator, you need to be a parent first”. And she declined my application.

No matter what I said, she just replied, “When you have your first child, you will understand”. She was determined and I failed to convince her to accept me into the program.

Later that year, when I held Eden in my arms after a long, hard labor that ended in a caesarian section, I understood why.

Today, in this chapter of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, our experts answer the question “How has parenting changed your life?”

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (4): Parenting Changes Life »

The question “What’s an ideal child?” comes up many times in my parenting workshops. I find it fascinating to discover and re-discover that some parents have only a vague idea of what an ideal child should be like, yet they are disappointed with their own children for not being ideal.

Furthermore, much of these parents’ daily energy is spent on maximizing their kids’ academic achievements, but in their definition of the ideal child, there is no mention of academic achievement.

Our definition of the ideal child forms the framework of our parenting plan. Whether our definition is conscious or not, it still determines how we relate to our kids.

In this part of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, I asked each blogger to describe their ideal child. I find it interesting that each of them had a different definition of what it means to them.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (5): Ideal Child »

Whether we pay for it through taxes or fees, the education system is a service to us parents. Most parents, even if they can afford to stay home and be their kids’ teacher, would rather go to work and do something else. Although parents are the most important educators of their own kids, being a teacher is a whole different skill that would be unfair to expect every parent to master.

When we send our kids to school, we share an important part of parenting with others. Our kids spend 12 to 13 years of their life in the education system with other people who pass on their knowledge, values and attitudes to them. Sometimes, we can afford to choose these people directly, but often, we are bound by financial or geographical circumstances and we do not have much of a choice.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (6): Education »

Parenting can be a hard task. Although we love our kids very much, there are many things in parenting that can drive even the calmest person nuts.

When I ask parents about their challenges, they talk mostly about their kids’ (bad or annoying) behavior. However, I think that is a reflection of other challenges we have. As you will see from the top parenting bloggers’ answers below, parenting challenges are varied and reflect our wider perspective on parenting.

In this part of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, I asked each blogger about the things they find challenging as parents. I told them it did not have to be their kids’ behavior but in parenting in general or anything else directly or indirectly related to raising kids. I believe you will find what they have to say very interesting.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (7): What drives you nuts? »

For some reason, parenting and discipline go together. After all, in order for us to run a home properly, we must set some rules and make sure we follow them to everyone’s benefit, right?

Setting rules and following a discipline routine is not easy. It requires parents to have lots of discipline and self control. To my surprise, when people seek parenting programs to enhance their parenting skills, they look for disciplining tricks and techniques when in fact, what they need is not a one-size-fits-all way of parenting but exposure to many different philosophies, which they can adapt to their own kids, beliefs and circumstances.

I thought that the topic of discipline was probably something every parent would like to hear from people who have made parenting a high priority and somehow managed it well. Here are their answers.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (8): Discipline »

Every one of us has a story to tell about why we think the way we do. When you sit in a seminar and listen to the latest wealth creation guru, you will always hear a story behind him or her, a story that tells the audience what brought them to their success. I guess it is similar in every area of life. As we try to discover what has brought us to adopt our current philosophy, there is always some special event that has changed us in a profound way.

The profound moments in our lives shape who we are not only in good ways and can also explain our fears, our self sabotage and our failures. As a life coach, I know that finding these moments is often a key to moving forward.

The reason I posed this question to the Top Parenting Bloggers was not for you to learn from them but more as an encouragement to ask yourself the question and answer it to yourself. I see it as an important question that should not be skipped when examining our parenting philosophy. Whether you would like to share it or not, I highly recommend you take a moment and ask yourself “What was my most profound parenting moment?”

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (9): Profound Parenting Moment »

As a parent, I am in constant search for parenting tips. In my parenting workshops, I have a goal of learning at least one great parenting tip from my audience and you know what? I always do and I am very happy and grateful for it.

At the beginning of my education career, I gave up one big desire: to re-invent the wheel. It was not easy, because some people thought it made me less creative, but I always gave the example of my mom as a chef – she uses the same ingredients as everybody else but combines them differently. Over time, I stopped asking her about cooking recipes and started asking more about cooking tips, because with the click of my mouse, I can find millions of recipes, but they all lack the experience.

It is the same in parenting. It is even truer in parenting. Asking parents what works for them is a great way to accumulate enough information and make a good parenting style from it.

In a way, when I asked the Top Parenting Bloggers to share their parenting tips, I hoped to find some I can adopt too. I was very happy to discover many good tips and I hope you will too.

Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (10): Parenting Tips »