To the struggling parent

We are all struggling

Parenting has the highest rate of burnout of any vocation. Giving constantly without break or empathy is exhausting. I read once gentle parenting is great for children, but difficult for parents because we aren’t receiving what we give. Not that we shouldn’t be be connected, empathetic parents, but we need to increase giving to ourselves.

I wish I could say I remained calm through all my kids’ upset but I did not. Sometimes I was right there in the upset with them — screaming, flailing, crying.

Yeah it wasn’t always pretty. But I got to where I was calm more often than upset when they were melting down.

As my kids are older, life upsets them less, so when we had a rough morning a few weeks back, I reached out to my parenting expert friends for tips on remaining calm. Their advice jogged my memory loose for remaining calm. The following is a compendium of their advice and my experience.

Remaining calm is a practice

“Neurons that fire together wire together.”

The more we exercise a skill in our brain, the stronger the skill becomes. This means when we practice calm, we become skilled at remaining calm under stress. The best way to practice calm is mindfulness, meditation, and gratitude.

When meditating don’t stress if your mind wanders a ton. That’s the point. You wander and you return your focus. Interruptions used to frustrated me until I learned they are part of the process. As long as you return your focus, you are meditating. Don’t worry about spending a long period meditating either. A couple minutes several times a day is beneficial.

Self care is necessary

I often say this and then cue Mission Impossible theme music. You are exhausted and busy. Self care is one more thing on your plate. Plus, who has 30 minutes to soak in the tub? Getting a massage is an impossible dream.

Throw out what you think about self care. Throw out activities and time constraints.

Start small. If you don’t have 30 minutes, do 15. Don’t have 15 minutes try 5. Or 2 or 1. You can build from small steps.

Do easy activities. Put on your favorite song. Warm up your coffee… again and spend five minutes enjoying two sips. Read one page of a book. Write one sentence in a journal. Write two things you are grateful for.

The Power of 1%

What’s the point if you can’t get to 100% on the first try?

No one runs a marathon on day one. No one meditates an hour daily on the first try. No one starts a relationship as best friends.

Every day increase by 1%. If you sleep 6 hours per night, going to bed 1% earlier is 3 minutes. Go to bed 3 minutes earlier every night and before you know it you are getting 7 then 8.

Meditate 4 minutes once a day, the next day 8 minutes over the day. Before long you meditate for 10 or 15 minutes.

1% of your day is 14 minutes. Spend 1% of your day connecting with your kids. 1% connecting with your spouse. 1% connecting with yourself.

Avoid screens 1% of your day. Spend 1% of your day engaged in an activity that fills your heart.

Small steps are the key to winning. Life is comprised of small moments. When you combine them, they make a difference.

I learned the tiny steps from many places.

The Super Better app. The first time I used Super Better, I quit quickly. How does a walk around the block help my anxiety? How does listening to my favorite song end my depression? Until I read the Super Better book and watched Jane’s talk. Then I understood, small steps

Shaunta Grimes and the 1% to infinity. BJ Fogg and tiny habits. Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Empathy

Give yourself empathy for how hard parenting is. You are doing the best you can. We all do the best we can.

We have this negative voice in our head telling us we aren’t good enough. That voice is the past; the people who tried to control and motivate us through negative motivation also known as punishment. A lifetime of punishment teaches us if we feel bad enough, we’ll be motivated to improve (or at least act as our punisher wants us to act).

It’s false, feeling bad doesn’t motivate us. Unless you want motivation to eat more chocolate, quit trying, and crawl into bed and cry.

When you have empathy and validation, you have hope tomorrow you will improve. And you will have energy to make those improvements. My friend Vivek Patel talks about empathy best.

Vivek Patel of Meaningful Ideas talking about sustained empathy

Connection

Brene Brown wrote about how we can reduce shame by connecting with people who can validate us in I Thought It Was Just Me. Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote about how connection can reduce burnout in their book Burn Out. Connection is at the center of gentle parenting, so too it should be at the center of our self-care.

If you don’t have real life support, digital fills the gap. Gentle Parents Unite, where many of my principles come from is my favorite place to seek connection. The GPU healing circle is an in-depth group run by my parenting coach friends for breaking cycles. Breastfeeding Mama Talk is my favorite page for breastfeeding support. I am affiliated with those groups in an administrative capacity, but there are others.

People act as if face-to-face connection is the gold standard. Face to face is great, but my closest friends, the people who support me unconditionally don’t live close enough. Making friends is hard, people are busy and tired. My online friends support me through big and small crises. I have learned more about life, gentle parenting, writing, sex, friendship, empathy, connection than with the people I knew in real life.

Movement

We often call it exercise, but I find there’s a negative connotation with exercise. It involves thoughts of running and high intensity training and guilt of not doing “enough.” Once more, we start small and build. A walk around the block is better than all day inside. Two push-ups are better than none. Don’t let perfection keep you from taking any action.

It’s also great, because it’s the easiest on the list to involve your kids. Park time, wrestling, running, jumping, crawling, crashing. Kids are natural at getting movement into their days. Kids need movement as much as we do, and high energy rough play is great for connection.

Stretching or yoga moves are an easy option for embodied movement and meditation simultaneously. You focus on your breathing and your body and have your kids crawling on you while you stretch. Nothing is perfect.

The parenting struggle is real. We are prone to burnout faster if we aren’t getting self care. We all struggle with staying calm. You will struggle too, but over time it will get easier. Everything comes down to practicing connection and empathy.

Start small. Take care of yourself. Find others who need support.