 He smiles at me from the top of the twisty green slide, beaming with pride after climbing to the top all by himself. He pauses just for a second to gather his breath, and his courage, before he settles in at the top of the ramp. Damp hair and flushed cheeks are the only visible signs of the warm summer day, the thirst for freedom and adventure to explore the play structure surpasses any discomfort the heat might have brought. He looks up to make sure I’m watching before he launches himself and yells “Go!” He shifts his weight forward and jettisons down the slippery slope, weaving from side to side, giggling the entire way.
The moment is perfect. Your heart swells, feeling all the feels. It is everything you thought parenthood would be. Now at the bottom of the slide, he shouts “Again!”. His momentum still carrying him forward, his feet search for the solid ground. First one foot and then the other and then……his feet tangle together in a way that only a toddlers can. Unable to unravel them, he lands in a heap. My breath catches. His eyes lock on mine and for a split second we both wonder how the other is going to react. My primal parental instinct is to rush over, scoop him up and make sure he is ok, but I know from experience that could lead to tears and a total meltdown. I give a quick scan, no blood, no broken bones, probably a few scratches and a bruised ego. I look into his eyes and see tears starting to pool. Now standing beside him, I push aside my worry and use my happiest voice to say “You’re ok buddy! Hop on up!” In one fell swoop I pop him back up and dust him off. “Can you climb that ladder again? I’ll time you. Go!” And just like that he is off and running, as if the fall had never happened. We have all had those moments where we realize our child is looking at our reaction to decide whether to cry or not. Before they see you, they appear to be just fine, but when mom appears the waterworks start. As toddlers, they watch our reactions and use them as a guidepost on how they should react. A calm mama meant everything was ok and they could keep going. If mama was freaking out it meant, I better freak out too, I must be hurt! We understand this dynamic when our kids are young. We know they are learning. We patiently teach them and accept the fact we will have to repeat ourselves over and over and over again. As they grow up and their reactions become more aligned with their actions, we start to feel comfortable that they’ve learned the basics. We subconsciously release the need to monitor our reactions as closely as we did on the playground. But this is a false sense of security. As our children grow, they still look to our reaction as a guide. The difference now is they are not as likely to just accept our reaction as “the truth”. They have their own thoughts and feelings they are trying to interpret while weighing our reaction. It can be overwhelming and confusing for them, but what we see is a moody kid with an attitude. We don’t realize our reaction during these times is as important as it was that day on the playground when they were deciding to cry or not. As we reach this new stage with our growing kids, we must remind ourselves that how we approach them is going to set the tone for the entire conversation. Our instinctual reaction on the playground feared they were injured, hurt or bloody. You were afraid of what was physically wrong, and your reaction was to protect them, so it wouldn’t happen again. Now that our children are older, we don’t have this immediate fear and may skip this step all together. We see the moodiness or the attitude and react without truly considering what might have brought all of this on. We rarely pause to consider how our reaction is going to influence what comes next. As our children grow our relationship with them needs to grow too, we can’t rely on how we used to do things. Too often we keep doing what we always did and don’t recognize the subtle changes that are occurring. But even as things are changing, some of the fundamentals stay the same, they are still learning and looking to us as a guidepost. Strong communication is at the heart of every relationship, especially the one we have with our kids. As many of you know, I compiled the work I’ve done with clients and friends, and created an online course for parents to learn key strategies on communicating with our preteens and teens. If you feel your communication is shifting and needs a little extra help, I encourage you to click on the link and check it out. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.
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 This week I came to a realization, not quite an “ah-ha” moment, more of a “no duh” moment. As you can imagine, I’ve read A LOT of books and articles on parenting, working, working and parenting and work life balance. If it relates to one of those topics and trying to figure out how to fit it all in, I’ve probably read something on it. I’ve been reading these books for at least ten years and this week I finally realized the one thing that all these books have in common, they all relate successful parenting to good time management. Every one of these books has at least one chapter on how to fit everything into your day. They offer time hacks on ways to create the perfect schedule, use an online calendar, how to divide up the chores and even suggestions on how to say no more often. I have fallen into the trap as well. This is not my first blog about time management, in fact one of the first blogs I ever wrote was about making time for important things in your life.
Earlier this week, I started jotting down some of my thoughts, in preparation for this blog. The next day, my husband sent me a link and said “you should watch this, I think you’ll like it.” The video was created by Jay Shetty, a former monk who now creates impactful videos on timely topics and posts them on social media. This video is only three months old and already has over 60 million views, his message is striking a chord with a lot of people (not to mention the 240 million minutes people have spent watching this 4-minute video). I was talking to a good friend yesterday and the topic of time management came up during our conversation. She is trying to add more “want to-do’s” into her day to balance out the long list of “have to-do’s”. We don’t get to talk very often and yet, in our short conversation, an aspect of time management came up. Is time management really the answer we are looking for? All those books I was talking about in the beginning offer great ideas on how to become more efficient and put less pressure on yourself, but even after reading the tips and implementing what we can, we are still left feeling like our list is too long, that we are too busy and that we don’t have enough time. In Jay Shetty’s video, he points out “everyday 86,400 seconds are deposited into our life account”. He goes on to say, “We would never waste it if it was money, so why do we waste it when it comes to time?” In this sense I believe this is where parents are different, we are not wasting time. We are doing our best to maximize our time, trying to fit every possible thing into each day. We take it to the other extreme where if we are wasting time, we feel guilty that there is something else we should be doing. No matter which way you choose to look at it, our time limited. We can’t earn more than we are given. We can try to control it, but it will continue regardless of our best efforts. What would happen if we allowed the day to just unfold and see what happened? Even as I type that question, I worry about all the things I would forget to do if I didn’t have a plan for the day. That is sad and at the same time evidence of why I should try to do it for a day. Is time the answer or the source of the problem? What if time is not the issue? What if it is our mindset? What if we let our heart guide what is important instead of the clock? What is the worst that could happen? Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.  Times have changed. Gone are the days when you use a formal dining room more than once or twice a year. Gone are the days when you welcome guests into a “sitting” room or living room to sit and talk. The times have changed but the layout of our houses have not. For this reason, a few years ago we pushed all our furniture up against the wall and created a baseball field in our great room (a combo room where the dining room merges into the living room). This make shift baseball field provided hours of entertainment for our four-year-old. Pick up games could start at any time of the day or night. There was always a play-by-play announcer calling the balls and strikes and sometimes you’d even hear the announcer call out the name of a famous player in the MLB, as if he was playing alongside us. The baseball “field” was put away when it needed to be, on those one or two days a year when we would have a fancy meal or when company was coming over. However, for the majority of the time, the baseball field was a center piece in our home. Sadly, the day came when my son’s swing became too strong and the fear of seriously breaking something became a risk we could no longer take. After hundreds of innings played, numerous busted balls and bats, we reluctantly pulled the furniture away from the walls.
Once the baseball field was gone, there were fewer reasons to go into those rooms. Occasionally we’d use the dining room table for a big class project or jigsaw puzzle. Occasionally on a Sunday afternoon you might find one of the kids sitting on the couch watching their iPad, but for the most part the room was used infrequently, no longer the center piece of our weekends like it once was. After some time had passed, my husband started talking about replacing the dining room table (the light wood didn’t match our dark wood accented home). We agreed to go shopping the following weekend. Throughout the week I thought about this table. Sure, we could get a fancy new table that would be nice to sit around during the two special holidays, but I couldn’t help but reminisce about our baseball field days where we’d spend hours playing while avoiding the scorching Arizona summer sun. As the time to go shopping drew near, I went to my husband and said, “What would you think if we got a pool table instead?” It appeared as if he didn’t hear me. If you ask him he might tell you it is the most surprising thing I have ever said in almost twenty years of being together. Of course, he was all for it and the kids agreed as well. We decided to convert the entire room into a game room, not only with a pool table, but a dart board, poker table and big screen tv to watch whatever important sports game might be on. Earlier this summer we began the conversion of the dining room/sitting room into the game room. It took a number of weeks to change the flooring, paint the walls and get all the pieces put into place. The kids impatiently waited and filled the time with stories of what they would do when it was done, which friends they wanted to invite over and who’s team would get the first team party. The day came in early July when it was finally done. We all excitedly chose a pool cue and were ready for our first game of eight ball (solids vs. stripes). The carefully racked triangle cracked loudly as the balls rolled their separate ways. There were lessons on the right way to hold the cue and how to line up the perfect shot. It took about five minutes (maybe less) for frustration to set in, the competitive nature of each member of the family, along with Daddy’s superior pool skills, was putting a damper on our new game. This was supposed to be a fun way to spend time together. My image of how much fun we would have in our new room was fading fast. I called a time out and said, “Playing is better than nothing.” Everyone looked at me with a confused look on their faces. I admit, it is not my most eloquent phrase, but I continued “Look, we’ve been excited for this for a long time. Now it’s here and guess what? You’re not going to be good at these games right away. We have two choices. We can play and have fun. Or we can do nothing and not play at all. What do you want to choose?” Without hesitation everyone agreed that playing WAS better than nothing. We finished the game laughing, learning and celebrating a few lucky shots. When the last ball dropped into the corner pocket, it was quickly followed by “Let’s play again”. Over the last few weeks, we have all improved quite a bit. “Playing is better than nothing” has changed the perspective of why we are playing. We’ve had important discussions around teaching our friends how to play and how to be both a good winner and loser. But most of all, we’ve spent more time together playing, talking, dancing and enjoying each other’s company. As your kids get older, it becomes harder to find ways to truly play with them. They have grown out of Legos and coloring books. The slow pace of board games is no competition to exciting video games. (I realize this sounds like a welcome relief to those of you with little ones.) On top of all that, as kids get older, they become busier. They have their own activities, obligations and social calendars. When you finally do get time to just hang out, one of you is probably tired and the easy solution is to crash in front of a movie or TV show. Any time you can spend with your kids is important, but when some of that time is unrestricted, free, play, a window will open inside both of you. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.  Yesterday, I challenged a couple family members to send me 3-5 words to describe my 13-year-old daughter. I wrote down my words and waited to see what the others would say. My husband picked three of the same words I did and while his other two weren’t the exact word I chose, they had similar meanings. It shouldn’t have surprised me that as her parents, we both describe her in similar ways, but it did. When I asked my sister, her words were also nearly the same. This was further confirmation in the strength of my daughter’s traits, that someone whom she doesn’t see every day can have such strong sense of who she is. When her grandmother listed her words, she gushed as only a grandmothers can. And when I finally asked my daughter, she could only give me three words. One word matched mine, one word I didn’t include but agreed with and the third was the opposite of one of the words I chose. What was interesting thing was how all of us used very similar words to describe my daughter and in doing so we all agreed on the words we used to describe her. So, if we have such a clear idea of who our daughter is, why does her behavior sometimes surprise us and why do we think we should try to change it?
Let me give you a very basic example. One word that appeared on all our lists on was artistic. She has always loved to draw and color. Any type of homework assignment where she could add a creative flair is done to the max. Sometimes this means art supplies are strewn out across the table or homework stretches into the night to beautify the presentation of the assignment. It’s easy to get mildly frustrated wondering when she is going to be done, couldn’t she keep her area cleaner and try to encourage her to hurry her process along. However, we all agreed this is who she is, why do our reactions ignore this fact? Who are we to stifle any kind of creativity that is obviously so intrinsic to who she is? My list also contained the word studious. The others chose similar words including intelligent, perceptive and smart. Whatever adjective we chose, we all agreed she enjoys and does well in school. Our challenge as parents comes when we see her doing her homework in front of the TV. Our instinct is to ask her to turn it off, so she can focus, which we equate to sitting in a quiet room. However, why do we think that? She is doing just fine. Too often we react without taking into consideration the personalities of the people involved. Why do we feel the need to impose “our way” onto her when we all agree it comes naturally to her? One of the words her dad and I matched on was friendly. We can’t set foot in a local store without her knowing at least one person. She can hold a conversation with an adult just as easy as she can with a friend and like most teenagers her social circle is very important to her. So, when the mom taxi is on the clock, often making multiple round trips for forgotten items, pick-ups and drop-offs of various friends, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. It’s easy to commiserate with other parents about the constant shuttling and a social calendar busier than most adults. To some extent we know this is what we are signing up for, but somehow, we are always surprised and often exasperated by it. In her first book, The Conscious Parent, Dr. Shefali explains “You are raising a spirit throbbing with its own signature.” As a first-time parent I was surprised when my newborn baby showed us her unique personality from day one. I think we believe their personality comes later, when they are a little more grown up, but we quickly realize it’s in them from the start. Dr. Shefali goes on to describe an interaction she had with her daughter when she was small, she says “I find myself so conditioned to sermonize, so oriented to teaching, that I am often insensitive to the wondrous ways in which my child reveals her uniqueness, showing us she’s a being unlike any other who has ever walked this planet.” I relate to this so much because instinctively I jump to the teaching based on what I think is right, when I have never examined why I think it’s right, much less asked myself the question, is it right for my daughter? No matter what age you child is, take a couple minutes today and think of the 3-5 words you would use to describe them. Ask your spouse, co-parent or other family members what their words are to compare. If your child is old enough have them make a list as well. Then find some time to talk about each person’s list, maybe over dinner or before bedtime. The list is a chance to see if how you see your child is the way they see themselves. If there are differences it will give you the opportunity to talk through it and better understand why they feel the way they do. By having this discussion, you will have the opportunity to let your child know you see and appreciate who they truly are. Then as you go about your week, think about whether you have been parenting your child in a way that compliments their traits. This is definitely easier said than done, but if we can align with the unique spirit of our kids we give them the best chance to thrive and in the end isn’t that what every parent wants? Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page. |
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AuthorI started writing this blog because I wanted to have deeper conversations beyond "How are you?", "Busy", with other parents. Over the years I've shared personal stories, articles, authors and topics to facilitate conversations with parents about the joys and the challenges of parenting. |
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© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching
Disclaimer: I may receive affiliate compensation from the resources and websites mentioned on this website.
© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching