Hello everyone and welcome to the Village Voice, parenting beyond discipline, the place to learn about all things parenting and get your questions answered. I'm your host, Erin Royer-Azreland. And welcome to our episode on peaceful parenting. In today's episode, I will cover the basics of

peaceful parenting. Now, this is about a two and a half hour class when I teach it in person,

but I'll squeeze in as many of the basics as I can into the episode. First, I want to be honest and say,

I'm not the perfect parent who never yells. It's a great goal to shoot for,

and I do have some great guidelines and boundaries about communication for parents when they do get

frustrated that I do hold myself to. But yes, I do raise my voice, and yes, I do get frustrated.

I just had to get that out there, so everyone doesn't think our home is all Mary Poppins games and roses.

Modern parents are extremely busy, and this can frequently make things stressful.

We want so much for our kids, not just to keep the laundry clean and relatively healthy food on the

table, but we want them to be and stay strong academically. We have them in sports, music, language,

and other cultural activities. We want them to grow up and be happy, be nice, be successful,

to not be slabs, and on and on. We put so much pressure on ourselves to not screw up, to help them reach their potential, all of that on top of taking care of our own lives. Whether we work or stay home, we get sick. We have a bad night's sleep, bills to pay, households to run, businesses, and our bosses. It can all get overwhelming. This is one of the most popular classes that I teach.

So today I'm going to share an intro and some basics to peaceful parenting,

keeping your cool when situations heat up. So first, what do I mean by peaceful parenting? What I mean is the parent as an

inspiring leader and calming authority. I know it's a tall order. But can you imagine having someone

like that in your life? Maybe you do. If you do, you're extremely lucky.

But what an amazing gift. You can be that person for someone, or more than one, your own kids.

Does this mean that you will never lose your cool? No, of course not. But it does mean that you're

committed to using what works and evaluating situations and finding better ways so that calmer methods

and ways of interacting become the norm and so that yelling, screaming, belittling, and threatening

do not become the habits.

But also, be sure to set realistic expectations.

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