My Little One is awaiting his last four molars and as they take their tricky little time he is reacting with lots of breastfeeding and a whole heap of emotion. First time around my Eldest was just glued to the boob, exhausting but manageable, now I have her to consider whilst my youngest is flailing & wailing around the floor for 10 minutes because he put his shoes on the opposite feet!
I am stretched. Really, really stretched. I have this little voice in my head saying ‘I’d just like a night off please, just one’. In all these last 5 years I haven’t really heard that voice but listening to it now, I know it means I’m close to burn out.
I know why, I know that nature didn’t envision us parenting this minimalist, cut off way, without our huge extended family carrying us through parts of it all. I know this is not the tribal way and I also know that it is what it is, right now and that is all.
So how do parents support and raise their children without burn out? How can we help ourselves, and each other, to hold our values and parent and rest….?
When I look at discussion forums on these issues, I often see similar suggestions: weekends away; putting them in childcare; taking a physical break from the kids etc. These are emotionally viable choices for some and not for me. So what can I do? What can others do who wish to hold that attachment and not bring on that deep sickness that can come from true burn out?
Part of my own problem is that I’m good at carrying the load, I almost don’t notice how near the edge I am until I am about to topple over. So for me, the best beginning point is to try and implement gentle changes into my daily routine rather than fire-fighting tactics at the moment of melt-down.
I started by introducing baths…. I’ve always been a bath rather than shower type, but since my first born I had designated bath time to the long distant future, showers were the speediest way to get myself ready and back into the fray. Then a friend told me about a Steiner teacher & mother who had created a time in her day where she would take 20 minutes just to sit and read a book and the children soon learned that this would happen every day and adjusted to it accordingly. I haven’t started on that yet, but I did swap my showers for baths. Initially they both wanted to get in with me every morning, which seemed like such hard work, not very relaxing for me and a more elaborate dressing time for them, but they did adjust, now they just moan about my bath whilst quietly playing on the bathroom floor…. but one things I’m clear about it that my bath happens. No negotiation (except when they’re sick!).
Next meditation. I want to meditate; I know it’s going to bring me a whole lot of clarity, mental rest and restorative energy, but how to do this with two kids demanding my attention? I’m going to teach them to meditate, I’m ordering a children’s meditation CD (yet to be determined) and I’m going to create a space in our day to meditate, I’m already smiling at how this might look for a while, but just like my bath time, it’s going to happen.
And that part of me that is making it happen is my spirit, my self-love and my self-nurture and that will carry me through and beyond the burned out mama….