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Parenting

5. Looking after Yourself

A series that helps parents raise their children

Introducing this Page

The purpose of this page is to step aside for a moment from the matter of your child to the matter of you. In this page we consider why parenting is sometimes stressful and then various things we can do to cope.

 

Again the style of this page will be short paragraph or ‘bullet-point' style to separate out individual things for you to think about with plenty of white space around to make it easy to read. Each individual bit needs thinking about.

 

Most of the things on this page are more likely to apply to the mother at home, yet fathers also need to be aware of these things, especially house-fathers.

 

Contents:

 

1. Why is Parenting Stressful

a) You are an imperfect human being

b) Your child is an imperfect child

c) You've never walked this path before

d) Life is sometimes just difficult

e) Homemaker mothers have unique difficulties

2. Handling Stress

a) Things I can do on my own in the short-term

b) Things I can do with help

c) Long-term more general issues

d) Breaking into the Stress

3. Planning as a way of heading off stress

a) Take a course of positively thinking about yourself

b) Decide to positively work through some of the things on this site about parenting

c) Start to plan days so you control what happens rather than have to react to crises.

4. Recap

 

  

 

    

1. Why is Parenting Stressful?

 

There are some very simple and obvious reasons why parenting is sometimes stressful and you need to be aware of them if you are to prepare yourself as much as you can to counter them. The following are the basic, primary ones:

  

a) You are an imperfect human being  On a good day you can have good resolves – but every day isn't necessarily a good day!  You get tired, ill, stressed by circumstances.  Your resources run low

b) Your child is an imperfect child  On a good day they can be wonderful – but every day isn't necessarily a good day  They get tired, cranky and stressed by life.  Their resources run low

c) You've never walked this path before  It starts from the moment you come home with the new baby!  Every year your child is a year older and will have changed.  Different ages bring different abilities – and problems

d) Life is just sometimes difficult   ill-health bringing worries and weariness  accidents / infirmities doing the same  promotion at work placing additional burdens on you  things going wrong that bring questions over your judgment  financial difficulties arising  the arrival of your first and subsequent children  inability to have children  death of a loved one  aging  just the general stresses of life.

e) Homemaker Mothers have unique difficulties   Mothers who decide to stay at home caring for their children, especially in the early years face particular difficulties – because you are alone with your child    Once your child cuts back on daytime sleep, in the period before they go off to nursery- playschool, you are their primary company and vice-versa.    If they are ill the main burden of nursing falls on you, etc.

 

For all these reasons there WILL come times when, as a parent, you will feel under severe pressure. What follows should, hopefully, help you in those times.

 

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2. Handling Stress

     

It would be nice to think that we could be so in control that we avoid all stress, but as we've indicated above there will be things that cause us stress and so the following are ways we can deal with this:

  

i) Things I can do on my own in the short term        a) Breathe deeply  Sitting down and breathing deeply and slowly for half a minute will calm your mind and your body        b) Put on some calming and soothing music and sit still for five minutes  If you have longer take longer.  You can buy CDs of the sound over waves on a beach – a good ‘white sound' alternative.       c) Sit in front of a log fire or a tropical fish tank (if you have either)  Watching flames or the movement of fish are both very calming          d) Change your thinking by talking out loud positively to yourself   “This is OK, I can handle this!”   “I'm in control, I will do this.”            e) Change your thinking by turning a negative into a positive (see also P.4 part 4.7)  Think how you can turn a trying situation into a learning situation.   Look at the situation as a challenge and not a difficulty.      f) Be Prepared   If there is a regular situation that causes you stress, consider beforehand  alternative ways of dealing with it  possible ways of heading it off before it becomes a stress          g) Have a hot bath with lots of bubbles   Pamper yourself in the time you have     h) Keep a Journal  Try writing down the stressful times and what happened and then try alternative approaches and keeping a record of what happens.           OK, some of these, if you have a toddler, may require you to wait until they have a sleep time.

      

ii) Things I can do with help    i.e. these are things where I definitely need someone else to give me space from the kids.        j) Go for a quiet, slow walk,    Fresh air and calming activity have a de-stressing effect.         k) Go for a power walk      Pumping blood round the heart sometimes picks us up (as does a visit to a gym).            l) Walk beside a river or along a beach      Running water or beating water creates a therapeutic effect.   An alternative is go and sit in the silence of an old church building for half an hour. Total  silence is equally therapeutic.     m) Go and drink coffee with a friend without the kids  This is simply another relaxing thing to do if you can get relief.  NB. Talking with someone about how you feel usually helps – but don't do it with someone who is a negative person!   NB. Once your child(ren) is at playschool, nursery, kindergarten, junior school or whatever, do positive things with your life while they are there. Doing things for yourself will have a calming effect.

   

  

iii) Long-term more general issues   There are two things you need to do to minimise difficulties, which are plentiful enough already:       n) Watch your health  In the early days of a new baby you are vulnerable to tiredness from broken nights, and some are vulnerable to post-natal depression  If you have a partner share with them – see page 1, section 4.  When you child goes to school you join the wider market place for infections – you will fight off colds, coughs etc. if you maintain good health yourself  Maintain a healthy diet and get exercise – two keys to health!        o) Share with your partner  Again see page 1, section 5 ‘Do Talk'  Where there are two of you it does need to be a partnership

     

   

iv) Breaking into the Stress   Sometimes consciously breaking into the stress by doing something different brings immediate change. We'll deal with this as a means of dealing with your child's negative behaviour on another page, but for now we're talking about breaking into YOUR stress.

     

    

Illustration: On one parenting course I was running we were having a time of sharing and one lady started talking about a particularly trying time she was having with her child at home. As she shared, she suddenly said, “In fact I'm so wound up with it that all my stomach muscles have gone tight even as I've been sharing.” Without appearing to respond to her, I said, “Right I want us all to stand up and go out into the next door hall” which we did. “Right I want you to all walk round the outside of the room three times and in that time, with someone else, I want you to come up with twenty things you could do at a child's party.” This they did. I then sat them back down and turned to the girl who had been sharing previously and said, “What do you think you can do about your situation?” She immediately started coming out with some positive suggestions. I stopped her and said, “By the way, how are your stomach muscles?” She said she was completely relaxed, even though she was talking about her situation again.

 

Breaking into a time that makes you feel stressed, with something different that is physical and/or mental, can often completely release you from the tension and enable you to move on positively.

 

If you are a parent who is a Christian there are additional recources for you. CLICK HERE

   

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3. Planning as a way of Heading Off Stress

  

     

As overall strategies, stress can be headed off in the following ways:

     

a) Determine to start positively thinking about yourself    Without going into this process in detail, speaking the truth to yourself regularly DOES overcome the negatives that we so often think about ourselves.     The difficulty about this is that the negatives of your past will deny the good things about yourself, so you may need to sit down with a friend and ask them to tell you positive things about you.    When you have a list from them, read out and declare that list as truth about yourself, twice a day for a week.     Watch how you feel about yourself and you mind find some good changes!

   

b) Decide to positively work through some of the things on this site about parenting    Working on things you find in these pages bring a positive approach to your parenting     Particularly pick up on areas you feel unsure about.

  

     

c) Start to plan days so you control what happens rather than have to react to crises.    If your child is still at home, think how to bring purpose & variety into the day     If your child goes to school, think how to master the evenings    When holidays come up, plan projects, places to go etc.

   

 

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4. Recap

 

    

Things we've covered on this fairly short page are:

 

1. Why is Parenting Stressful?

•  reasons why being a parent isn't always easy

2. Handling Stress

•  things we can do to beat stress

3. Planning as a way of heading off stress

•  things to do to be on top of parenting

 

Remember, on a bad day when it doesn't all work out as you had dreamt it would, there's a new day tomorrow and you can work at making sure it's not a repeat of the bad day.

 

At times being a parent is tough stuff, but you're made to handle it!

 

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