Benefits to Investing in Parenting Skills Before Your Baby Arrives

9 Benefits to Investing in Parenting Skills Before Your Baby Arrives - Miracle Maker Mom Blog

So you’re expecting? Congratulations! That’s really big news.

Starting a family is a magical leap. A life changer.

I once heard this unbelievable quote that sums it all up perfectly:

‘Into motherhood I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.’

I seriously love that quote because it’s so true in every way.

Kids can really drive you crazy, but they inject your life with so much purpose, so much love, so much soul.

I cannot honestly imagine my life without any one of my kids. They’ve given me a life with purpose and soul.

That being said… as much as we parents love and I mean LOVE our kids – they also drive us absolutely

Nuts. Mad. Insane.

Sorry, don’t mean to scare you, but I guess maybe your sister’s kids have done that already. 😊

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ll tell you, I went into having kids with only the best of altruistic intentions. I was 100% sure that we would have only positive parenting in our home, only love and positivity.

The problem is… hypothetical children are much easier to raise that real ones.

Related: The 5 Words that Changed My Life Forever – My story of building a dream family from utter chaos. (Reading this blog - you’ll get a hands-on feel for the chaos my lack of parenting skills brought to my life.)

I wish someone had given me the tools I needed from the start.

Oh how I WISH!

Or even suggested that learning the right tools would help me all the way through from A to Z. Tools, remember, are something we build with – without them it’s hard to get anything of substance going.

For myself I can’t go back in time, but what I can do is point you in the right direction. So here we go.

The benefits to investing in parenting skills before your baby arrives:

1. Time to develop your new skills

Parenting skills are habits that need to be formed and skills that need to be learned.

Now is when you have the time to form the habits and develop the skills.

Trust me when I say that you’ll have a lot less time with a nursing baby/running toddler/active preschooler.

Yeah, you’re smiling now…

2. Learn it right from the start

You’re going to learn everything the right way from the start – and so will your child. I’d say that one of the most difficult parts of going through a parenting course is unlearning all the bad habits that both the parent and child have already developed.

But if you’re going at this from the start – you have a serious advantage. It’s going to be a lot, I mean a lot easier for you.

3. Save yourself a lot of aggravation.

This is going to save you a lot of aggravation. We’re all human and we make mistakes, especially if we don’t entirely know what we’re doing. If you take the time, in advance, to learn the skills you’ll need with your kids – what to do, what not to do – you’ll save yourself from many a feeling of ‘what am I doing wrong’? 

4. Time for self-development

Part of becoming a great parent is becoming a role model. That’s the all-encompassing act of self-development.

You understand that this is not something that happens overnight. This is a process that takes years in the making.

The earlier you start, the greater a role model you gift to your children.

5. Clarity on your Values

When you take a parenting course, you’re going to need to sit down and get clarity on your values, both you and your spouse together.

This is a very important step, because before you can go about learning the tools to teach your child anything, you first need to have clarity about your own values, so you can know what you want to teach your kids to begin with.

This is something you’ll want to think about, brainstorm and discuss with your spouse.

Having the extra time to think about this, discuss and reevaluate is priceless.

6. Competence and Confidence

When you invest in parenting skills, you’ll be more competent - and therefore you’ll feel confident.

Competence breeds confidence.

If you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing, if you don’t feel confident in your parenting, your kids will sniff it a mile away.

That’s when they decide that the reins of control should therefore be in their hands, since you’re not so sure of yourself.

Get what I’m saying? Your kids will walk all over you.

Not good.

But when you develop the right skills from the start, you’ll have that authentic confidence about you.

7. Practice makes progress

One of the greatest skills that you’ll need to acquire to be an awesome parent is unquestionably communication skills.

You want a relationship where your kids don’t just listen to you when you talk, but rather they LOVE to listen to you. And they’re eager to talk to you too.

How to?

That’s where the communication skills come into play. But let me tell you, it’s not just a matter of learning these skills.

You need to practice them, a lot.

The more you can practice these skills on everyone else in your life before the kids come along – the better.

Related: To Do List for Every First Time Expectant Parent

8. You stay calm, cool and collected

There’s nothing worse than standing there in front of your child not knowing what on earth to do next.

Kids say and do all kinds of crazy things and if you don’t know the formula to knowing what to say or do next, I promise you’re going to feel seriously frustrated.

This is where parents suddenly realize they have an anger problem that they never knew about it. It comes out in the frustration of not knowing what to do next.

But when you know what to do next, that frustrated madman doesn’t appear… what a relief!

9. You develop your parenting instincts.

Parenting is not just about learning skills. It’s about awakening instincts, instincts buried deep within.

You could have many skills at your disposal, but until you know for which child and in which instance to apply which, you will always be in doubt about what you are doing.

So, the first and most important parenting skill is awakening these instincts. To go deep down into your inner wisdom and FEEL what’s right for this singular child at this moment.

And developing those instincts is a process that begins with acquiring your tool kit.

That’s it my friend. My best advice, coming from a mom of 8.

Please don’t do what I did and wait until you have 4 kids and are totally overwhelmed with kids who never listen. Give yourself a little more time and sanity in life. You’ll enjoy your kids more, no question, not to mention everything your kids stand to gain from having parents who have given themselves a head start in their parenting.

Investing in your family is investing in your children’s future.

My course, Confident Kids is jam packed with all the parenting tools you’ll need to become the confident, patient, positive parent you want to be for your kids.

These are the tools that I’ve developed and put together over many years of parenting - tools I only wished I’d had when I started out.

Looking forward to sharing so many parenting tools and tips with you.

And by the way… it’s fun too!