When Conscious Parenting Feels Hard

Remember this when conscious parenting feels hard. 
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Remember this when your friend tells you that sleep training only took a few nights of crying and now their baby is blissfully sleeping through the night. 
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Remember this when others tell you that you really need to start using "more discipline" so that your child is better "behaved". 
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Remember this when your family tells you that your child needs to be more independent by now and that you really need to stop coddling them. 
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Remember this on the days you feel all alone. 
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Remember this, because it is true. It is much easier to build strong, sensitive, empathic, wholehearted, silly, funny, spirited, boundary-pushing, authentic, cheeky children than it is to repair broken adults. 
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We know that we have a massive impact on the way our children's brains develop. Why? Because relationships lay the groundwork for the brains our babies build. We want to lay the foundation for (healthy) mental health, because if we don't we set our kids up for a lifetime of trying to find their way back. 
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It sounds kind of scary. Like a big responsibility. And it sure is! We have a massive responsibility as parents. We decided to become parents so of course it should fall on our shoulders now, not on our children later. 
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But I like to look at it as an opportunity. We get to change unhealthy generational patterns. And in the process, we reparent ourselves - we become more wholehearted and cheekier and fun-loving and rule-breaking and questioning and authentic people ourselves. And isn't that what our world needs now, more than ever. 
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So, remember this when conscious parenting feels hard. What you are doing is monumentally worthwhile.