Three Mind Management Tips for Parents

Lisa Hoelzer
10 min readJan 31, 2024
Photo by Tanaphong Toochinda on Unsplash

In the previous article, I wrote about how to define success as a parent. Describing success in terms of our own behavior instead of what our children are doing or experiencing empowers us because our behavior is under our control. Unfortunately, it is easier for our brain to notice things external to us (like other people’s words and conduct), but with mind management skills we can turn our attention inward to our own thoughts, feelings, and actions. These are what we can work on to be good parents.

Separating out what is in our control and what is not requires that we keep a distance mentally between ourselves and our child’s behaviors/outcomes. If we can do this, we can feel confident as a parent even when our child is struggling. In this article we will examine three more ways to keep that distance: avoid mirroring, don’t jump in the ditch with your child, and see yourself as a gardener rather than a carpenter in your parenting pursuits.

When you are with someone who is experiencing intense emotion (like anger or enthusiasm), it is common to start to feel the same way. If your husband comes home feeling stressed about his job, you tend to join him in the stress. If your mother is worried about one of your siblings, you also start to feel worried. When one of your children is cranky, all of a sudden you feel cranky. This is called mirroring and for most of us, it comes naturally.

We mirror another person’s emotions without consciously thinking about it. It feels out of our control. It is so natural that we might never have considered that we have an option whether to do it or not. But we do! Once we are aware of the process, it’s possible to interrupt it and intentionally decide how we want to feel.

This might take some practice, but the first step is to notice that you are doing mirroring. When your child is having a tantrum and you feel your frustrations rise, pause and take note of what is happening. Your self-talk might sound like, “Here I am mirroring my child’s feelings. My brain does that instinctively, but I’m on to it now. This is what humans do, and it’s fine to feel frustrated (because we know how to process feelings), but I don’t have to feel that way.”

When you see that you are mirroring, ask yourself, “If I’m not going to mirror my child, what am I going to feel and how am I going to act?” Remind yourself that you can direct your mind to whatever thought you choose and therefore create any desired emotion. At first you might only be able to see this as a faint possibility. It takes time to become skilled at it. But believing it is an option is an important step.

Remind yourself that you can direct your mind to whatever thought you choose and therefore create any desired emotion.

In a stressful moment, you don’t have to mirror the other person’s feelings, but you probably won’t want to choose pure happiness, either. That might not be appropriate for the situation. But you could choose compassion or curiosity. Thinking thoughts that create those feelings keeps you in tune with the other person without joining in with their negative emotions.

This may sound insensitive or like you don’t care what the other person is feeling. But you will be more helpful to your loved one and stay more in control of your thoughts and actions if you are consciously choosing your feelings. You allow the other person to feel however they want to, and you don’t feel compelled to join them.

Here are some ideas that help me separate myself from the upset person so that I don’t mirror them: “Whatever experience she is having is totally fine. That is the experience she is supposed to have. Maybe she wants to be upset; maybe this is how she needs to feel.”

Let’s apply this to the above examples. Your husband comes home feeling stressed about his job, and you get wound up in his story and join him in being stressed. But then you take a second and notice. Notice your heart beating faster and the knot in your stomach. Recognize that you weren’t feeling this before he came home, so you must be mirroring him. Reflect on whether you want to feel stressed right now or not. Will it help your husband or the situation if you join him in feeling stressed? Will it improve your ability to feel compassion, offer him support, or help him problem solve?

No. Mirroring him actually hinders your capacity to do any of those things. You are more likely to feel resentment toward him for bringing this negative emotion into your life, and your upset feelings will cloud your thinking such that you’re unable to generate useful solutions.

The same goes with a cranky toddler. You start to feel cranky when they express their frustrations (usually through a tantrum or other immature behavior). Before you know it, you are acting as immature as they are, yelling and slamming things. As you realize you are mirroring, please have compassion on yourself. You could even see it as humorous. You fell for it again! This is what humans do; nothing has gone wrong.

As you realize you are mirroring, please have compassion on yourself.

But if you want to, you can choose a different emotion. You could choose compassion for child, or, if that is too much of a stretch, you could feel committed to being a good parent. Your thought could be, “This is challenging, but I can get through it. It’s hard for humans to witness someone else’s frustration. I’m going to stay calm and I’m going to be appreciative of myself for doing such a good job.” Work through your unpleasant emotions with the six-step process and direct your mind toward more useful ideas such as, “This is normal for toddlers; this is how they are supposed to be.”

When you’re able to identify that you are mirroring and even interrupt the process, you will have more control over your experience. You will be able to generate more useful feelings and create the result you want more often. For more on mirroring, see this article on how our thoughts create feelings.

The next concept we want to examine, jumping in the ditch with your child, is like mirroring but takes it even one step further. When your child (or other loved one) is going through a hard time, it is easy to buy in to their story, to agree with them that everything is going wrong and that this is not the way things are supposed to be.

Photo by Håkon Grimstad on Unsplash

When my second child, Haley, began her junior year of high school, we had just moved to a new town. My husband and I had had lots of friends in high school and fondly remembered our many fun activities. We hoped that Haley would have this same experience, and we believed that the area we moved to would provide that for her. Unfortunately, that is not how her story went.

She struggled to make friends. Kids were polite to her at school, but no one invited her to do things on the weekends. Week after week, she sat home alone on Friday and Saturday nights, often scrolling through social media and seeing her acquaintances at various exciting outings. She became discouraged and depressed.

I could not help but jump in the ditch with her. It was cold and wet down there and seemed impossible to get out. I felt like this was a dreadful outcome. I blamed myself for moving her at this age and wondered what it would have been like if we made a different choice. I definitely bought into the story that something had gone terribly wrong.

But being in the ditch with her did not help her or me. My attitude reinforced her melancholy, and it made it difficult for me to think clearly. I needed to clean up my reactions to this situation if I wanted to feel better and be of use to her.

We believe our children’s lives should go a certain way, but maybe we’re wrong about that. We assume our daughter would have a better life if she made the sports team or our son would have the experience he was supposed to if he got into a certain college. But maybe we don’t know what their life is supposed to look like and what they’re supposed to go through. Our role is to support them through their painful experiences, but not buy into them and feed them like fuel to a fire.

When you jump in the ditch with your children, you not only feel negative emotion yourself, but you give the impression to your children that things are going wrong. Wouldn’t it be more comforting for you and your child to believe that there is no mistake, everything is going as it’s supposed to be? This doesn’t mean you can’t work to improve or change things, but what’s happening now is supposed to happen and is for your good. When your child is struggling, one thought you can choose is “He’s always going to have the life he was meant to have; nothing can prevent that.”

Wouldn’t it be more comforting for you and your child to believe that there is no mistake, everything is going as it’s supposed to be?

Think of parenting as analogous to the flight attendant on a plane with turbulence. The passengers are nervous about the movements of the plane, and they look to the flight attendant to see if this is a real emergency. When the flight attendant is calm and reassuring, saying (or at least projecting), “This is fine; this is totally normal. There’s nothing wrong and nothing to fear,” then the passengers can be calm also.

We are the flight attendants of our family’s journey. We can reassure them that although this experience seems scary, nothing dangerous is going to happen.

Our higher brain knows that everyone has problems, but our lower brain is telling us, “Just not this problem!” and sometimes we buy into that idea. We need to manage our minds and remember that our definition of “problem” is a made-up story. We are creating our own negative emotion, but that’s okay too. We’re human and this is what humans do. But overall, there’s nothing wrong and nothing to fear. We can reassure our children, “This is hard, but I know you’re going to have an amazing life. I know everything is going to work out.”

That approach feels better to them. They can rely on our faith in the future when theirs wanes. And it feels better for us, also. It keeps us acting from our highest selves and in accordance with who we want to be during this difficult time.

I was thankful to have mind management skills when my daughter was going through her troubles in high school. After applying the above principles, I wrote out the following and referred to it as needed:

Just like every child, she’s going to have some challenges (which are caused by her brain interpreting the neutral circumstances), and that’s the way of it. I can be calm and reassure her that it’s okay that she’s having struggles. I can give her the sense of “I’m here for you, but I’m not in the ditch with you. I’m not like, ‘Ah! we’re down here in the ditch, and it’s cold and muddy, and we don’t know how to get out!’ I’m like, ‘I see you in the ditch. That happens; this road is slippery and it’s easy to fall in there. Take my hand and I’ll help you out.’”

At each step in the process, I ask myself, What kind of mom do I want to be? I accept what is happening and what she is experiencing and go forward as my best self.

Part of the reason I was tempted to jump in the ditch with her is that I had a specific idea of how her high school years should look. I believed that one way of experiencing high school was superior to a different way. I would have had more chances for positive emotion if I had a looser grip on my vision of her life.

If we picture parenting more like gardening than carpentry, we can keep this looser grip on our how children and their lives should look. A gardener tends to her plants, gives them what they need to grow, and helps them by clearing weeds or pruning branches. But the gardener does not expect the plants to look one certain way. She knows that plants turn out every which way. She finds the beauty in the plants no matter how they turn out.

…the gardener does not expect the plants to look one certain way.

A carpenter, on the other hand, is trying to erect a specific structure. It is not okay if it turns out unexpectedly. The finished product needs to look exactly as she planned it and envisioned it.

Being a gardener in parenting instead of a carpenter can help us stay out of the ditch with our children. It can give us the perspective we need to know that everything will turn out okay, even if it is not how we thought things were going to go.

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Sometimes we feel like our children are making mistakes or their life is going in the wrong direction. It’s helpful to remember in those times: “Maybe I don’t know how my child’s life should go. I’m simply here watching the process and helping where I can.” Focusing on what kind of mom we want to be instead of our child’s behavior or life outcomes helps us stay in a gardener mentality.

Being a parent is hard work. It’s common to equate our success with our children’s happiness or obedience. But we will be more empowered if we can create some distance between the two. We only have control over our thoughts, feelings, and actions. When we direct our attention to these internal aspects, we can be the kind of parent we want to be without tying our emotions to our children’s outcomes.

Three ways to manage our mind in parenting and keep that mental separation is by avoiding mirroring our children’s feelings, avoiding jumping in the ditch with them when they’re having a hard time, and viewing our parenting as more similar to a gardener than carpentry.

Try this on: “If I’m not going to mirror my child, what am I going to feel and how am I going to act?”

Want more about Mind Management? Clap and Follow!

Find an LCS-trained coach here.

“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”

--

--

Lisa Hoelzer

Lisa Hoelzer has a masters in social work and is a lifelong student of the human psyche, including motivations, biases, mind management, and mental health.