Loving Yourself While Loving Your Children

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Loving Yourself While Loving Your Children

In the ever-present age of pressures from social media, television, film, and your peers around you to be perfect, it can prove difficult to be aware of whether or not your taking the time needed to simply slow down and love yourself. And if you’re having a problem with loving yourself, it’s going to then be difficult to give love to your children in return.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t love your children. But what it does mean is that if you’re ignoring yourself and putting the needs of your children before your mental and physical well-being, it could lead to problems in the future. Simply put…it’s important to take care of and love yourself, which will make giving love to your children easier and more genuine.

A good place to start when trying to be conscience of loving yourself more would be to be less hard on yourself…less judgmental. Of course, parenting is a tough gig, and you’re bound to run into problems and frustrations along the way. The important thing to remember is to not get so down on yourself. If you’re being judgmental towards yourself, that can likely lead to your children learning to be judgmental towards themselves as well. If you treat yourself in an unloving manner, your children will be more likely to do the same themselves, resulting in low self-esteem and a judgmental perception of themselves.

Loving yourself will automatically translate into being a loving parent in return. Taking the time for self-love and awareness will also leave a lasting positive impression on your children. This is why it’s so important to take the time to love yourself. In taking time to love yourself, however, that doesn’t mean you must ignore your child’s needs in favor of your own. It’s about creating a balance. In creating a balance, you can put aside time for yourself and working on your self-love as well as making the time to use that love of self when spending time giving love to your children.

Setting aside time for yourself can be difficult, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Communication is key in any relationship…including one with your children. Let them know that you need a bit of time by yourself for a while. You can suggest they do things to keep themselves busy like reading a book or playing with their siblings in another room. It’s important to be firm with them but also to help them understand that mommy or daddy needs a little break to rest, recharge, and focus on themselves.

As a parent, it’s important to realize that you must learn to respect your own feelings and needs along with the needs and feelings of your children. Understanding that it’s not being selfish if you need some alone time to focus on loving yourself is also a vital key to making sure you take the time to actually do it.

Often times we get caught up in the lives of our children so much so that we forget that we really need to slow it down sometimes and make sure we are taking care of ourselves as well. In taking care of ourselves, we can then use that self-love and give love more freely and genuinely to our children.

So, when it comes to loving yourself and taking the time out needed to effectively do that, remember, it’s not because you’re being selfish or neglecting the needs of others. In fact, in being aware of our need to love ourselves before we can give love to others, we are being self-responsible. And in turn, those who are self-responsible and self-loving have an excellent chance at raising children who will grow up to be caring and personally responsible themselves.