Kids, Activities, and Parental Stress!
Advice needed from the Life Coach! Stressed and looking for relationship advice, dealing with power struggles and kids activities, a tough question from a great Drink Guy fan!
Dear Life Coach,
I have recently found myself frustrated dealing with a situation that I don’t know how to handle.
I am a parent who bends over backwards for my young children. They are great kids, and very appreciative of all I do.
Yet I find myself dealing with a group of people that are involved with an extra curricular activity of my children that are driving me crazy.
The people running this activity are pushy and aggressive, and they do not, in my opinion, do a good job of running things.
When a group of parents attempted to deal with this in a mature and positive manner, we were berated and shot down.
It has become a huge negative for me, but my children love it. It is a year round activity, and one that is not readily available outside the place they are already involved in, so to move them within the activity we would have to go to another city at an increased cost.
When something is such a negative for me, but my children love it, and my options are so limited, what do I do?
Hoping for advice from the Life Coach !
Stressed and Confused
Dear Stressed,
That is certainly a tough one, especially if you have already attempted to deal with the “powers that be” as a group of concerned parents and gotten no result.
A couple questions for you…is there a “higher” power that be that could be approached? Perhaps if a group of concerned parents could band together and go higher up, some result could be reached?
Particularly if this is an activity that parents are paying for, somebody somewhere must be concerned about the “bottom line” finances of the activity, and would be moved to do something if it seemed that they may be in a position to have that income stream compromised by unhappy “customers”.
Have you spoken to your children? Depending on their age, you may be able to explain what is happening, and you may find that they are willing to, and maybe even excited about, trying something new. This could allow you to remove the negative activity altogether.
If neither one of those options are viable for you, is there a way that a spouse, friend, or relative could help you by taking over the responsibility for this activity? Perhaps someone that is less emotionally connected at this point would be willing to “swap” a responsibility with you.
We all have things in our lives we don’t enjoy doing, and if we could swap those thing with someone else who doesn’t mind that job but would be happy to “dump” another one that they don’t like, we can potentially create a situation where both parties are happier.
Ultimately the decision comes down to a couple key questions…is the happiness of your children worth the emotional turmoil you are dealing with?
Would they be just as happy doing something else?
Do you potentially cause more damage long term by putting yourself in a situation where you are so unhappy and stressed that other areas of your life, and your children’s lives, are impacted negatively anyway?
And of course, you can always try reading the old classic How To Win Friends and Influence People and see if there are any tips in there that you have not yet tried!
Or, if all else fails, you can drown your sorrows with a Bailey’s Chocolate Cherry or two, my favorite of all Glenn’s recipes!
OK, not a serious suggestion, but I needed a spot to link back to this site for my SEO 🙂 .
In all seriousness, not an easy situation. I hope these suggestions help, and I hope that some of our brilliant fans can add some advice from their own experiences for you as well!
So please comment below!!
Cheers, Life Coach Lynn!