MA 4-year-old plays in the living room with a dinosaur, a pig, and Jessie the Rider from Toy Story. I'm trying to cook dinner. “Mom, mom, please, can you play with me?” I hear the lid of a pan rattling. The broccoli starts to smell burnt; I rush back to the kitchen. “Help! Come quickly! I'm falling!” I'm in a hurry. She hangs off the couch, pretending to fall down the side of a volcano. “HILP!” Broccoli definitely burns. And here is the door. “Moooooom, I need some poop!”
Most parents know this crazy five-minute ride. Getting through the day is to feel pulled in the directions of the solar system and you take turns being defeated, you feel happier than ever before, like a shell, in control and like you're falling off a cliff. This necessitates learning to plan very well and prioritize what to agree to and when to say no; when to sit down and play, when to say: “Sorry, I need to sit down, or go for a run.”
Take, for example, the morning rush – often this is a key point of friction: you need to put on clothes, brush your teeth, eat porridge, all while getting ready for work. Tension can quickly dissipate, especially if you don't get enough sleep. Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a parenting expert known for her emphasis on attachment parenting, suggests preparing children mentally. “Try to think ahead of time: 'What can I do to make this easier for myself or my child?'”
Otherwise, she says, “We get panicked and everything gets really rushed and they're like, 'Oh, I'm going to bury my feet in the sand and not move.' Then everyone goes into fight or flight mode.
I remember my morning: cortisol spikes, check; unapologetic child, check. Ockwell-Smith suggests a simple way around this problem: “Take another hour out of your day.” Easier said than done when you've slept for five hours, half of it with a foot in your face. “I know it's probably crazy early,” she says, “you have a very relaxed breakfast together. First you play with each other for half an hour… and then everything goes slower and easier. And although getting up earlier is terrible, you will feel much better.”
In some cases, having a routine will add ease to difficult days. Dr. Martha Deiros Collado, a clinical psychologist whose books and social media tips emphasize connection over control in parenting, believes that “small, predictable routines make life run smoother for everyone. We know children do well with routine.” But, she stresses, it doesn't have to be complicated. “It could be things like a rough wake-up time, a rough dinner and bedtime…those are things that we do and they're not negotiable.”
But sometimes over-planning can actually make days more stressful, and Collado is clear that “you need to have a degree of flexibility built into a good daily routine.” Sometimes sudden changes in events – work, illness, especially poor sleep – may mean that you need to change your plans. In those cases, she says, “You have to recognize that good enough doesn't mean you do everything. It means you do what you can, when you can. And on those days when you're in survival mode, you appreciate that you've met the basics.”
However, sometimes it seems impossible to separate what needs to be done from what is needed, good from good enough. This week, for example, making cannelloni with spinach and ricotta seemed inexplicably relevant. The increasingly slippery kilo of spinach in the fridge stared back at me every day, making my week—no exaggeration—25% more stressful than it otherwise would have been. Honestly, this would be a wonderful victory, but not achieving it should not feel like a defeat. Collado suggests thinking about “real needs”: “I need to feed my children, but I need to feed myself. My kids have to go to school and I have to go to work.” Desires, on the other hand, are “additional.” She gives an example of an upcoming walk. If it doesn't feel right that day for any reason, “we'll just say, 'It's okay.'” It sounds simple, but this solution could have saved me, and I'm sure many parents, from having to fit round pegs into square holes.
One way to open up some breathing room is to place yourself and your children in an environment that offers your children the opportunity to interact with other children of different ages; where kids can play without needing you to be their Jessie's dinosaur. Elena Bridgers is a science writer specializing in “motherhood and child-rearing in hunter-gatherer societies.” Given that these are the societies in which we have evolved for most of our species' existence, she believes that “we can learn a lot… by studying [them]”. First, in these societies, “raising children is communal in nature.” That proverbial “it takes a village.” To replicate this at least a little, Bridgers recommends visiting child-friendly public places like parks, and in the winter she used the indoor playground of a local McDonald's, where her “kids would play there for hours with everyone who came so I could get work done.”
Sometimes the days spent raising children would feel much less stressful if we softened our ideas about what we should do, about what kind of parents we wanted to be. Anyone who's ever felt guilty after watching content on Instagram where moms create elaborate game scenarios or tutorials for their kids will know what I mean. Bridgers offers some consolation: “Less is more,” she says. “Evidence shows that babies need sensitive, attentive care. They need social stimulation like singing, reading to them and making silly faces. But they don't really need you to play with them.” Instead, she suggests “getting them involved…if you have chores to do, you can give them a task.” She said such interaction “is beneficial for children's learning and development, and there is no reason to believe that it is any less beneficial for them than playing Lego with them.”
Border retention is another hot topic that could play a key role in preventing the steady march from ending by mid-morning. This is much easier said than done, but it can be helpful to think about which of your boundaries are fixed and which are malleable. Ockwell-Smith suggests asking, “Why am I doing this? Does it matter if they jump on the sofa?”
Of course, she says, security boundaries are absolute, while others may provide an opportunity to weaken them. “If your child wants to wear a Spider-Man costume in the nursery, maybe tone it down and make it easier,” says Ockwell-Smith. “If they want to wear it to a funeral, then probably to a lesser extent.” Collado gives examples of “bedtime, breakfast time, bath time.” “My kids don’t go to bed exactly at eight every night… sometimes earlier [if] that's what they need and sometimes it happens a little later because they've been watching Strictly.
Parenting coach and mom of three Olivia Edwards suggests some language that could help push kids by giving them a sense of autonomy: “I wonder how we can make sure we get this all done and get to school on time?” Or, “How do you plan to make sure we can put this away, come back to it later, go downstairs, and put our shoes on?” It will stop being “you just have to do it because I tell you to do it.”
In fact, in every aspect of parenting, language matters. Collado recommends using language that “about accession”. Instead of telling them you need to hurry to get to work, she says, “children are motivated by emotion and playfulness.” Try creating a joint project for leaving the house by asking, “How quickly can you grab your shoes? Can you get to the front door before me?” With older children, she says, “it's important to make sure they feel heard… talk to them, negotiate… Like, 'Okay, you're really tired. I understand you”. But you might say, “I can’t leave you home alone… and you know what?” You need to go shopping with me, but you choose dinner tonight.”
But sometimes situations arise that make you feel impossible. “It would be really cool if we could tell people, ‘You can’t do it all,’” says Ockwell-Smith. “Our society isn't built for this. It's hard because it's really fucking hard.” When there are no quick tips to help, she recommends what she calls “doing as little harm as possible.” So, “at the moment when something desperate calls to you, admin or work, and your child [too]You think, “What causes the least harm?”
When things go wrong and days fall apart, the concept of breaking up and repairing can be a tonic to help reconnect with your kids and also, let's be honest, help ease the guilt of adopting a tone you regret. For young children, Ockwell-Smith says, this could be “an apology, a big hug and play, because that's how children like to reconnect.” Older kids may be thinking, “I need to make time in my schedule to spend the day with my teen to do something fun, reconnect, and make time to listen to him.”
In addition to all the wonderful and enjoyable benefits of connection, Edwards notes that on a practical level, a connected child is “more intrinsically motivated to cooperate… He is less likely to resist and fight back.”
The key to achieving all of this may be acquiring the tools to cope with the situation. Edwards pays particular attention to the nervous system. “It's quite easy for our nervous systems to become overwhelmed from a sensory standpoint,” she says. I remember this morning, trying to put on my squirming daughter's shoes, overheating in a coat I put on prematurely, being tickled with a feather in my ear and asked to sing Jingle Bells. “If you find that your patience and tolerance are low, if you're very irritated by your child's behavior… that's a real sign that you need to prioritize that space and time,” Edwards says.
“A little self-awareness goes a long way,” says Edwards. “Learn to look closely at your own flags, because I think we also don’t read our own science very well until it results in pure deregulation.” H2O is your friend. “Just drinking cold water can be very beneficial for many people, including children. Because it simply prevents the nervous system from going into that state of activation where the heart beats faster. It slows everything down.”
Callado is clear about the need for self-care: “Being a mother doesn't mean you have to be a martyr… this whole idea of self-sacrifice is a social myth aimed at putting pressure on mothers that is completely unattainable.” She points to research: “Children do better when they see their parents as whole people.” And, she says, to be “a complete person, you need to do what fills your cup.” Sometimes she says to her daughters, “You know how you love dates or little parties and having so much fun with your friends?… I need that too.” Modeling this behavior is important, she says.
But as Ockwell-Smith warns, self-care can quickly become “something else we can fail at… “I'm not a very good mum because I don't take care of myself enough.” not because I’m a bad mom.”
It's about “treating yourself the same way you treat your kids. So if you've had a bad day, you just say, 'You know what?' It's just a bad day. It's really hard.” It may seem simple, but being kind to yourself when you feel like you're failing isn't easy. “It's allowing yourself to mess up and be good enough.”
