Slower Parenting

At the Monterey Aquarium 2009

Can we slow down enough in our own lives to be present for our children’s lives? How are we supposed to slow down when there are a million things to be done in a day? Children live in the moment, especially the very young children up until they are able to start looking outside of themselves and registering that other kids might be talking about them or making fun of them.  When children are living in the moment and adults are living mainly in the past or the future, it makes connecting with each other practically impossible.

Raising children, being in a significant relationship whether married or not, running a house, developing a career all take an enormous amount of energy. We know it's not just physical exhaustion, but also emotional and mental energy as well.  Eventually when the energy runs so low, we begin to ask ourselves what are we doing? What is the meaning of all this? I thought I would be happy and this is what I wanted, but why do I feel so exhausted, empty inside, spiritually low?  What do I need for myself to feel happier? 

This is a road that is all too common for women and men.  Who tends to carry the bulk of keeping the family emotionally healthy and the house clean with dinner on the table in your house? How do you split the physical and emotional 'chores' of what needs to happen on a daily basis?  Splitting up physical tasks are easier to talk about and manage like: doing the laundry, housecleaning, making meals, taking out the garbage etc.  and then when your kids are old enough they can start taking on some of these responsibilities.

What about the emotional check-in's though. These are invisible and more challenging to manage. Who's tending to the hearth of your child's heart? The difficult interactions that happened during the day at school with friends or teachers or the frustrations that never got resolved,  Something my husband and I tried to do every night was make sure we spent some moments by each child's bedside either listening to a re-cap of the day or rubbing their back or reading a story.  We have two children so we'd each take one child. 

This was always a quiet time to check in and a good time to introduce short guided visualizations and maybe some music.  It's a time to build a daily ritual that helps release any leftover tension from the day and connect with our child before sleep.  

Slowing down is good for everyone! Especially you, the parent who is probably asking for a break, yet having difficulty giving yourself one. Make the bedtime ritual a regular habit regardless of your child's age, one neither of you will want to miss!