From the moment you become a parent, your life is changed forever. If you thought keeping your marriage strong, maintaining a clean house, and tackling the many work obligations was hard work, try adding a child on top of that… all of those responsibilities are stressful but adding a child to that is what leads to parenting stress.

The crazy part about parenting stress is that there are a lot of parents out there that have parenting stress but don’t even realize it. Psychology Today reported that parenting stress is typically found in families with harsher parenting styles because those families want order in their home and they raise their children to abide by the same rules. The only monkey wrench in that parenting style is that kids are anything but orderly… so this parenting style makes parents discipline their child in harsher ways. When the child doesn’t behave accordingly, it causes parenting stress.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, parents who have very passive parenting styles tend to experience parenting stress because their children practically tell the parents what they’re going

to do. Both are very different parenting styles but that doesn’t mean that one is more wrong than the other… it just means that kids will be kids and in order to get a true hold on the parenting style that works for you, you have to learn how to manage your parenting stress.

Parenting stress can make you feel like you’re not good parents, it can make you want to give up, and it can also make your actions straddle the fine line between discipline and abuse, so it’s very important that you learn how to handle your parenting stress and to also be aware of when you’re experiencing it. Some additional signs of parenting stress to look out for include:

● Having a short temper

● Quickly run out of patience

● Your physical, emotional, and mental well-being is declining

The above are serious side effects of parenting stress but prevention is key in this situation, especially when it’s involving your children. If you are a parent and have noticed some of these signs and symptoms of parenting stress, take a look at some of these parenting tips that you can apply to your life to nip parenting stress in the bud.

Hire a Nanny

There is absolutely no rule that says you have to do it all by yourself, and that applies to whether you’re a stay-at-home mom or not; the sooner you realize that, the better parent you’ll become. In fact, one of the biggest ways to keep you and your baby safe is not being afraid to ask for help.

You can always ask the baby’s grandparents for help from time to time but you also don’t want to wear out your welcome with them so for a little more consistency, families will oftentimes look to nanny services for help with childcare and household services. This nothing to be ashamed about either.

It doesn’t make you look lazy or make you look like you’re a bad parent… if anything at all, it makes you look like a responsible parent who values their own physical, emotional, and mental health by seeking help… the quote “it takes a village” wasn’t created for nothing!

Set Aside Time for “Me Time”

As mentioned above, from the moment you have your child, your life changes. One of the biggest changes that occur to you is that you quickly realize that life is no longer just about you anymore. Being a parent is one of the most selfless roles a person can possess but there’s also nothing wrong with dedicating a little alone time for yourself as well.

You have to get back to doing the things you used to enjoy or else you’ll regret it later on and the last thing you want to do is hold resentment towards your child being born when they had no control over that. So, if you enjoyed running in the park, do it; If you enjoyed getting pedicures,

do it. These aren’t things you may necessarily have time to do every day or every week but they’re also not things that you should have to completely give up because you had a baby.

Seek Professional Help

Sometimes the best way to tackle parenting stress is to talk to a professional about it, depending on how severe your stress is. They will be able to provide you with various techniques to do at home when you feel yourself starting to get stressed. Seeing a psychologist might be a little weird to you but you also have to keep in mind that prevention is key. If speaking to a professional will help you ease or get rid of the stressors of parenting, wouldn’t it be worth giving it a try? And again, this would all depend on how bad your stress is… sometimes that much-needed run in the park or pedicure will do the trick!