Powerful Statements To Transform Your Parenting Style

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, I can earn a commission off of products at no additional cost to you. You can read my full disclosure here.

Hi, parenthood is hard. It’s rewarding and it can be fun at times. Overall, if I had to use one word to describe it, I would say that it’s hard. I know that I’m not alone; we all have struggles in the mommy realm. Here are some powerful statements to transform your parenting style into the mom you need to be.

I feel like I’m safe in assuming that most of our end goals as a parent is to be able to have an established healthy relationship with our adult children. So much of what we do right now is dependent upon that.

Before We Begin,

Let me start by stating that I am in no means a great parent. I have made so, so many mistakes along the way. Recently I’ve become more aware of different areas where my thinking has gotten me into trouble. Really, this whole post is more so a conversation I’ve had with myself about areas where I need to improve.

Through this, I’ve developed some powerful statements to transform anyone’s parenting style. Ultimately, I’ve noticed that these statements have changed my attitude and how I interact with my sons.

Obviously, these statements aren’t going to completely change your life or turn you into the perfect mom. That’s impossible. They do, however, provide some framework for what you can go off of when you do fail. They also give you an aid in overcoming failure and pushing on to a new level of growth in the mommy realm.

The Powerful Statements:

“I love you more than…”

So often in my day, I feel like I’m repeating myself like a broken record. Typically, these phrases center around “house rules” of what is allowed and isn’t allowed in our home. Over and over again I’m stating “Don’t make a mess!” “Stay away from the lamp”. “Don’t throw balls in the house!” “No jumping on the couch!”

Everything seems to work great until something gets broken or someone gets hurt because one of the boys didn’t follow one of our house rules. Then, I lose it.

If you hadn’t thrown that ball, the cup wouldn’t have broken. It angers me because I’ve been repeating myself and they aren’t listening to me.

It’s Relatable

I’m sure you have similar mommy moments. However, at the end of the day, I want to be sure that my sons know that I love them more than “whatever” it is that is the problem.

So, I started saying right away, “I love you more than ____”. Yes, I want my sons to obey. Most importantly, I want them to know that I love them more than.

“You Can Never Embarrass Me”

I refuse to be embarrassed when my child does something that’s not okay in public. Scenes happen, and it should be expected. We should look at those instances as an opportunity to really understand what’s going on in their heart. We can do this by ignoring the idea that their behavior is an embarrassment to us.

I gathered some of this idea from “Shepherding Your Child’s Heart” by Tedd Tripp. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to biblically parent the right way. When I read it, it was transformational in so many ways.

A Mistake I’ve Made

There was a time, especially with my oldest, where I was embarrassed by his behavior in public. A big takeaway (from the book I mentioned) that stuck out to me, was that my anger was not right.

Usually, when I was upset with my child’s behavior, it was because I was angry because I felt like I was the one who was wronged. I felt like he was doing something against me. I wanted to deal with the scenes because of my own hurt, not because of what was going on in their own heart.

Self Reflections

When I started to realize this, I dug deep down into some self reflections that I think we can all learn from. First off, we are all sinners–three year old boys throwing a temper tantrum, and 29 year old moms on low sleep and little patience.

Secondly, our child is a human, worthy of respect. Does this mean we allow him or her to rule the roost? No. It does, however, mean that when we’re on the grocery store floor melting over a “no” to buy Mini Wheats, we don’t have to become embarrassed.

We can control our emotions, calmly collect our puddle of a child, exit the store, and handle the situation in a private area. We don’t have to say phrases like “when you do that to mommy, you ___”. Rather, we can show them, lovingly, about the anger or selfishness they’re carrying and how there’s a better way.

My Prayer

When I read this simple phrase, I stopped everything and quickly wrote it down in my Prayer Journal:

Lord, help me not to do any thing today that turns my child away from you.

This starts with our own selves. We have to fix our relationship with Christ at all times. There can be no hypocrisy, facade, or fake reality in our Christian walk. If there is, our child will see that. Their future relationship with Christ is at stake. Oof.

I want my children to see what it means to “walk with God”.

Love Your Family First

I will treat my husband and children better than I treat a friend or stranger at church.

PeeWee Club is an area where this is the most convicting. Wednesday nights are hard for me to get the kiddos out of the door on time for a midweek service. It becomes even more frustrating when I’m the teacher for the kid’s club and typically the other moms are waiting for me to unlock the door.

Once it gets started, I try to become as animated and excited with the little ones as I can be. It works great for PeeWee club until I wonder how my sons perspectives are about me. Do they see me as a “stressed out, cranky, frustrated mom” until we’re in public with other people’s children, and all of a sudden I’m a completely different person. Do they think that I treat other people’s children better than my own?

As moms, we need to realize that our attitude and love of Christ needs to be shown in our own homes first. Yes, love your friends, love you church family, and love the new ones who visit. But love your family first.

Learn To Apologize

I will apologize to my child when I do something wrong (yell, slam stuff, overreact, or misunderstand).

This is such a simple concept to me, but harder to act out on. But that’s why it’s so important. It’s never easy for us as adults to admit when what we’ve done is wrong. By setting an example to our kids and making it right when we wrong them, hopefully one day they can find apologies a bit easier.

Listen, our children need to know that we moms are an imperfect sinner and mess up. They kind of already do, but they need to hear us admit it too. I wholeheartedly believe this simple philosophy drastically changed my relationship with my sons.

Fix What You’re Focusing On

So many times I’ve caught myself depending on my husband or my sons for my joy. If they weren’t performing the way I expected them to, my joy, and all of the expectations that came with that joy, was gone. I no longer had a home of peace and tranquility, and the whole unit suffered.

…for you are the sunshine maker of the home, and if you get dismal, there is no fair weather.

Louisa May Alcott

It kind of came to a breaking point, where I realized that I was angry, selfish, and bitter over anything that didn’t fit the perfect picture in my mind. I decided to transform my mindset by fixing what I was focusing on. from now on, I will focus on joy and peace in our home. I will seek to create, every day, happy memories with my child.

Find Our Joy

The first step is to fix where we find our joy. Our joy isn’t in our children, our husbands, or how pretty we can make our home. Our joy isn’t even found in ourselves–our emotions will let us down every time. We find our joy in the Lord, and it gives us strength for each day (Nehemiah 8:10).

When we are having a bad day, when we don’t have enough strength, when anxieties, fear and frustrations overcome us, seek consolation in the Lord. He promises that that consolation will give us joy (Psalm 94:19).

Even when nothing is going right, God even gives us scripture for that time:

Although the fig tree shall not blossom,

neither shall fruit be in the vines;

the labor of the olive shall fail,

and the fields shall yield no meat;

the flock shall be cut off from the fold,

and there shall be no herd in the stalls:

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will joy in the God of my salvation.

-Habakkuk 3:17-18

Create Memories

The second part to this step is to create fun and happy memories each and every day to hold onto.

Moms, this doesn’t mean we have to do something new and different every day. In fact, I think there’s a lot to be said about finding joy in the simple.

Find short, easy activities that might be out of the ordinary and go from there. I started taking walks with my sons. Some days, we color together for 20 minutes. I started reading them stories at night. These little activities are perfect ways to find joy in the mundane.

Build Open Communication Now

I will try to understand and get to know my child each day.

Because I don’t have teenagers, I know that in some way I’m speaking out of turn. I truly don’t know what it’s like to parent a teenager, but I do remember what it was like to be a teenager. I saw some of my friends who didn’t have the good support system that I had with my parents.

So, I can recognize that a lot of that happened because of the investment into my life my parents put into me when I was young. Right now my sons are toddlers to barely school age. The better I can understand them and who they are now, the easier it should be in the future.

So for this moment in time, I will seek to get to know their favorites, interests, dislikes and their personalities. This can get accomplished by asking open ended or detailed questions. But it can’t stop there. Put the phone down and get on their level to play with them. That brings us back to the creating memories that I already wrote about.

Simply speaking, there’s this idea of building a relationship with your child that is strong enough to evolve through every stage of their life.

Enough With the Lies

I’m most likely going to get a lot of hate for this, but I really don’t care. Stop lying to your kids. Honestly, this is the main reason why we don’t really do Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. And yes, you can totally do those things and still develop an open, honest relationship with your child where they trust you. I just personally choose not to.

Really, I’m talking about the lying in general. Sometimes it’s easier to lie to dodge the uncomfortable questions. Or, we avoid the sad, hard topics because we don’t want to ruin their innocent. And I’m all for the explaining situations in an age appropriate manner. But still, don’t lie.

There’s always a way to tell your child the truth without giving out too much information. I have a favorite story to tell to prove this. Shortly after our fourth son was born, my oldest (5 at the time) and my third (he was 3) were having a conversation.

My three year old asked me how the baby came out of my belly. I told him I pushed it out. My 5 year old then chimed in, “but how did he get in there?” I responded with “Daddy put him in”. It seriously can be as simple of an answer as that.

Get creative. Be short and sweet. Don’t sugar coat. Tell your kids the truth.

Children Are Washable; Save the “No’s” For Things That Matter

I actually just recently added this to my list. There’s so many times I find myself telling my sons no simply because I don’t want the mess. And yes, I’m going to still say no to pulling the play doh out 25 minutes before company is coming.

But, I don’t have to say no as much as I am. Sometimes I need to just embrace the mess. 20 years from now, I bet you, I’m going to be missing that mess a tiny bit.

Obviously, there’s another side to this story. There are some times that I just cannot function because my house is so messy. Thankfully, I’m starting to realize those moments and we spend about a day every week focusing on decluttering, catching up, and deep cleaning. So sure, keep your home organized and functional. But at the same time, let your kids be kids.

Complete Transparency

Honestly this post took me an insanely long amount of time to write. It’s so hard to be open and own up to areas where you’re making mistakes. It’s also so hard to speak the truth without being preachy, judgmental, or seem like you’re the one who has all the answers.

This post was written from my heart, sharing my insecurities and failures, and my goals and dreams for the future. I know I’m not alone in this realm of chronic failures but continuous striving for something better. Are there powerful statements you’ve reflected on that have changed how you parent? Be sure to share them in the comments below!