Parenting yourself 

These days, the goal of parents is to raise kids who get good grades, pay their taxes, and live a respectable life. Occasionally, parents will primarily motivate their children to do these things through discipline. The child is only ever given the options of “do X thing or you will be punished.” Don’t get me wrong, it works while they are in the house, but the problem here occurs when the child grows up, moves out, and now has to regulate themselves. 

Without the outside pressure of the parent, suddenly everything is optional. Dishes pile up in the sink, all day is spent on TikTok, and cake is the new breakfast. In order to want to do these things intrinsically, there are two steps that must be taken to “parent oneself”. 

First, we must find our own motivating factors. This can just be “I want to eat healthier” or “I deserve to live in a clean space.” Ensure these are things you actually care about, you won’t do the thing you want to do if you don’t actually want to do it. 

Second, you need some sort of system to keep you accountable and motivate you. There are three tools here that I would recommend, a morning and night routine, a behavior chart, and a goal tracker. A morning and night routine will keep you in a rhythm. I highly recommend having it on a physical piece of paper so you are able to reference it easily and mark what you have completed. The behavior chart is so overlooked. It can provide you with motivation, if you are low in the chart, you are motivated to do better, if you are high in the chart, you’re on a roll and want to keep it going. Lastly, the goal tracker is a good way to visualize and track where you are at with your goals and what you need to do. 

Having a “because I said so” parent is hard, and it causes a lot of problems down the line, but learning how to parent yourself is the best way to get through it and become a functioning adult.