[click_to_tweet tweet=”My future self is like a superhero with no limits, but my present self is a little less Superman, a little more Clark Kent. When we make plans that only a superhero can implement, we set ourselves up for failure. #parenting #intentionalliving” quote=”My future self is like a superhero with no limits, but my present self is a little less Superman, a little more Clark Kent. When we make plans that only a superhero can implement, we set ourselves up for failure.” theme=”style1″]

Have you ever come up with a good parenting strategy only to have it fail miserably when you tried to implement it?

Why does this happen?

Part of our problem is that when we’re planning what we should do with our kids—what rules we should have and how we should deal with the inevitable breaking of those rules—we are in a different mindset than when we’re trying to implement our plan. When we’re planning, we’re thinking about the future, and we think about the future differently than we think about the present. We think about the future more abstractly. We focus more on the big picture stuff, like our values and ideals. We also think more idealistically about ourselves.

When I think about my plan for getting my six-year-old to stay in bed at night, I think about what I want to happen. I want to patiently tell him he needs to stay in bed and go to sleep, and if he gets out of bed, I want to patiently remind him he needs to get back to bed so he can get a good night’s sleep.

That’s my plan. But what ends up happening?

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*Photo by Ryan McGuire on Pixabay

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Also published on Medium.