Meeting friends as an adult is different from meeting a new friend at the sandbox during recess as a preschooler.

Adult relationships require more effort to continue to thrive for a long period of time. They require a higher level of respect, understanding and trust that some people are not willing to put effort into.

So, as life changes, you will also notice changes in your friendship circles.

Ideally, your circle should be elevating alongside you. They should be the fuel that keeps you pushing forward and moving into who you desire to become.

When this isn’t happening within your friendships, you have to recognize the signs that show you what changes you need to make to move forward.

Heres 7 Ways To Know When You’ve Outgrown A Friendship:

1. They always come to you for advice but it leaves you feeling drained and depleted every time you talk to them.
2. They make it hard for you to say ,”No” because they guilt you by saying things like “You’re all that they have”
3. They prefer to spend time discussing what other people should or shouldn’t be doing instead of working on their own self improvement
4. They downplay your goals and dreams because they don’t want to see you go higher than where you are
5. They’re unsupportive of your feelings and overall well being because it doesn’t benefit them
6. They’re always busy when you need them
7. They sit in spaces where other people gossip about you and then report the gossip back to you

Being around these types of people will stunt your growth and keep you feeling stuck! If any of this resonates, it’s possibly time to make some changes within your friendship circle.

Remember that no one gets to stay in your life and treat you poorly just to maintain a “relationship” with you. Release yourself from having to fit in or be accepted by people that have created an internal commit to mistreat you.

Self-awareness is a skill that helps people navigate through the ups and downs that may arise in life. As your children grow, learn, and discover more about themselves, it is important that we instill self-awareness tactics in their every day lives so that they are able to use these skills in the long run as adults.

One way that we can teach self-awareness to children is by helping them to seek self validation first. If we witness our children succeeding at something great, we should offer room for them to self validate themselves before we offer any input on their achievements.

Instead of instantly telling them that they did a good job, we can ask them questions that encourage them to reflect back on how well they think they did so that we can give them an opportunity to validate their efforts first.

For example, instead of saying,”You did great on your homework!” We can change it and say, “I think you did good on your homework, but how do you think you did on it?”

Asking these types of questions will redirect the conversation back to your child to encourage them to become self aware of what it takes for them to complete a task successfully from their own perspective of success.

The objective of self-awareness is to help our children uncover their feelings and their needs as the priority so that they can make decisions in life that they can feel good about. The more we understand who we are and what we need the more we are able to create opportunities for ourselves that align with our values and views on life.

As parents we always want to see our children doing well. However we want to make sure that they are showing up in life in a way that feels good to them–not to please other people.

When it’s all said and done your children aren’t trying to be bad or not listen to you when they misbehave. In fact, they want to do well. But as parents we have to create the space and opportunity for them to feel comfortable enough to express what they need so that we can help them see the importance of being who they are and honoring their needs.

The toddler stage can be tricky! One minute they can be your sweet little angel, the next minute they can be your little sour patch.

Either way, as the caregiver, we are responsible for making sure that our children build an understanding around what is and isnt acceptable behavior.

The best place to begin is within! When children begin to understand more about themselves internally, they learn to make good choices because they enjoy the benefits of making choices that are good.

Our approach to tantrums must alter if we want our children to listen and behave.

This is because children don’t learn anything from spankings or being yelled at when they don’t listen!

Children think and learn through play. Play helps them to uncover more about their emotions, expand their concepts of thought and uncover how the world around them functions. As caregivers, we have to teach the why and the how behind inappropriate behavior in a way that they will understand and learn from.

By choosing to react through spankings, we miss out on the valuable opportunity to teach our children how to behave instead of threatening them how to want to behave.

Typically we think that children need to learn absolutely everything from us! We believe that we have to be the one that set the examples for them to be prepared in life.

However, the truth is that we cant predict the paths that our children will take in life. We can do everything in the world to set the perfect example, enroll them in all the sport camps and have the greatest of intentions for them–but that doesn’t mean that things will “work out better” for them because of it.

You probably see this happening often in everyday life but never pay attention to it. Adults may start off believing one religion as a child and then convert to another religion as an adult. They were given the tools to believe in their childhood religion and continue to utilize it in everyday life but they still decided to change.

Its because we can only guide our children–not lead them.

Think about: We can tell our children to clean their rooms a kajillion times and they can still grow to become messy people who hate cleaning.

Trying to make anyone do something by threatening, yelling or punishing them doesnt work because it doesnt leave room for understanding and clarity. The only way to get someone to change their behavior is by creating clarity around the ideal outcome.

Like, instead of saying, “I told you so” when we respond, we can offer explanations that explain what we need and why we need it.

By creating this clarity around our needs, we help our children to understand why their actions matter when we ask them to do something.

The more we start to parent from this perspective of awareness, the more we will develop a stronger parent-child relationship and normalize a culture of mutual respect and understanding within our homes.