How To Be A Parent With A Preventative, Not Protective, Mindset

We can very quickly fall into the protective mindset as a parent. And as soon as you find that you are about to be a parent, your mind can easily run away with you. But this means when you start childproofing your home it's going to propel you into some form of parental anxiety. It's important to be protective, but it's also important to be preventative. How can we become more preventative and operate in this mindset effectively? 

Healthy Habits

This is naturally one of the best ways to be preventative as a parent. It's so difficult for us to make sure that our children have healthy habits, but this is one of the things that you've got to start as soon as possible. Having a healthy diet is not just good for their overall health, but you will see the effects of a poor diet on the teeth. Any dental services provider will tell you that oral health begins with the right diet, but also the very act of brushing your teeth is one of the most preventative things anybody can do.

Stop Thinking in the Negative

Prevention is always better than cure. And if we really want to embody a more preventative mindset, this means operating with a glass half full mentality. Some people may think operating with a preventative mindset is being overprotective, but it's more about gauging the threats to us and our children and ensuring we do not necessarily venture down that pathway. For example when it comes to health, if we don't want our children to be overweight or pre-diabetic, it's about making sure that they maintain a healthy BMI. But in order to actually ensure you are operating with a preventative mindset, you cannot get bogged down in the negative outcome if you don't do something. 

Identifying the Weak Areas

It's about making sure that we are aware of the situation as a whole. So many of us do not necessarily operate with big picture thinking, but in order to be more preventative of potential problems, it's about gauging the entire situation and realizing that there are specific weaknesses in us or our children that could lead them down a certain path. So in order to identify the weak areas, we've got to turn the mirror on to ourselves. And this is not an easy thing, especially if we think things are constantly going wrong. But identifying our weaknesses also means identifying our strengths. When we start to get the balance of both areas, we can then go forward with a better attitude. In order to be protective, it's more important to be preventive.

If we are to be effective parents we've got to be aware of the threats and risks, but it's about having the right mindset as well. Being a parent is something that can be very stressful, and when we start to think about the numerous threats, it can be overwhelming. This is why it's far better to prevent than it is to protect.