Modern day parenting is hard.
And with modern day parenting, our own happiness sometimes suffers. And it is not only ourselves which suffer, it is also our children's happiness which suffers as the emotional bond between parent and child is such a strong one.
When you become a parent, you can easily become very busy, stretched too thin and sometimes lonely. And with all these emotions floating around, this stress and sadness can easily trickle down to our little ones without us even realising it.
But don’t worry, there are some simple remedies which you can start today to support your own happiness as a parent.
1. Managing your expectations
We talk a lot about self care in modern parenthood, but the reality of this is often harder than you think. Often there are big expectations on when you finally manage to get some alone time with your partner, that you need to have an amazing instagramable date night. When in reality, a simple takeout dinner alone once the kids are tucked up in bed could be the simplest answer. Allowing you both to relax and catch up in peace.
If you’re planning a big catch up with friends, again this doesn’t need to be a big outing. A 20 min skype call could be just what you all need to catch up and have a giggle.
Or perhaps you just need a break to yourself… pass the little ones to your partner for half an hour, run a bath, whack on a face mask and take 30 mins to chill.
2. Take 10
You know what happens, we all have grand expectations on how to bring more self care and happiness into our day-to-days. Perhaps you’ve been sucked into a pinterest hole of self care tips and made a completely unrealistic plan to meditate, exercise, spend quality time with the kids etc etc everyday. And now you’ve realised how unachievable it was making such grand plans and as a result you now feel even worse about yourself.
A very simple solution, is to simply take 10.
10 minutes a day to concentrate on one thing. And just see how you go.
You might take 10 mins to simply be present with your family. And you’ll be surprised at how these small elements in your life make such a big difference. When you begin to focus on noticing the good things in your life you will start to feel more joyful and more connected to your family.
3. Be you
Finding your voice these days is hard. We have access to so much information from all over the world and with this it can be hard to know/understand yourself as a person and as a parent. It is so easy to question decisions and opinions because there is so much clutter in your head.
It’s a simple solution but not an easy one. You need to declutter your head and understand what you want, need and believe. After all, it is impossible to be happy in life without knowing and understanding your truth.
As we said, doing this isn't easy… you’ll need to take a few minutes a day to shut off. Put your phone away, step away from the computer and just sit. Take in the silence and pay attention to what’s on your mind. What thoughts make you happy, peaceful and which ones bring you stress and sadness.
Once you determine this, (and it won’t happen straight away) you’ll need to do this often to understand. But it will allow you to understand yourself more and to not let the thoughts and opinions of others influence your life and your parenting.
We hope these 3 tips have helped you think about selfcare in a more realistic way. Just remember, mini ways to self care are much more achievable and allows you to really decide what self-care really means to you.