Subject: You don’t have to be the perfect role model
Preheader: Message from Roxy inside

Hi %user.name_f%, 

Roxy here. I’ve popped into the NVC Academy inbox to share a message with you. Come sit with me for a few minutes? 

There’s an old saying (that's almost said to death) - 

Kids do what we do, not what we say. 

It’s so true — kids look much more at what we do, and not what we say. 

I say to my kids all the time, you need to do self-care, it's so important… it's a really important thing… it's the most important thing… it's what's gonna help you live long and thrive. 

I long for them to recognise and act on their needs for rest, relaxation, good nourishment, exercise and connection. 

And, 

I am the worst role-model for self-care. 

I regularly stay up late working so I’m also regularly tired. 

So what do we do when there's a gap between what we know our kids need to be doing to thrive in this turbulent world, and what we are doing ourselves? 

For a lot of us, that gap exists. It’s real. 

When I think about my challenges with self-care - and let me tell you, they're HUGE - I know that I will never model to my children the kind of self-care that I truly believe is important. 

So what do I do when I know I’m not tending to self-care? 

I'm very transparent about what I'm doing. And I'm transparent about the cost. 

I used to think that as a parent I had to hide any costs that I was experiencing — the tiredness, the grouchiness, the all round life-is-feeling-too-hard-today-ness. 

It didn’t work. I couldn’t hide it. And it didn’t feel good to me to try. So now, 

I tell them, here’s why I'm doing this thing. 

I tell them why I'm staying up all night working on something (and not getting rest) even though I tell them that bedtime is more important than homework. 

I also mourn the impact my choices have on me. I don’t try to hide that impact from my kids. 

I let my kids know that when I don’t honour my need for rest, these things happen - 

…I get lots of headaches
…I’m fatigued a lot of the time
…I drop (so many!) things
…I don’t show up with the expansiveness that I wish I did 

And when I remember that cost AND say it out loud, I’m actually much more likely to take an hour to rest. 

In doing this, I'm showing my children that we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to have the answers right now. 

Each of us is a work-in-progress. 

Part of being a work-in-progress is acknowledging when I'm not showing up in the way that I want, and taking little steps, baby steps, that can help me create change in myself. 

When we are using ourselves as real, living, flawed examples - when we just keep trying again to move along the path we want to be on, acknowledging all the times we fall over - we are setting the scene for a realistic way of living. 

We are moving away from an unrealistic, unattainable model of perfection. 

This helps us reinforce what we think is important and helps our kids make sense of why there’s a gap between what we’re saying and what we’re doing. 

We can teach our kids what’s important to us, without being the perfect role model. 

If you’re interested in embracing your imperfections and using them to teach your kids about what you value in life, I invite you to take a look at my upcoming course:

Parenting with Purpose: Aligning Values with Actions

If you'd like to try it out before you commit, I encourage you to sign up for the first session for free

Or you can get 20% off if you register for the full course before April 17. I hope to see you there.

Warmly, Roxy CNVC Certified Trainer  P.S. - Creating a teaching opportunity out of the gap between the example you set and the choices you want your kids to make is exactly the kind of stuff I'll be teaching in my upcoming course, Parenting with Purpose: Aligning Values with Actions. I invite you to sign up here. We start Wednesday, May 8.