A Different Approach

I was sent this article earlier and found it very interesting. Patty Wipfler, of the non-profit organization Hand in Hand, recommends becoming a "Vigorous Snuggler" when your children are "caught up in a behavior that isn't working for them or you." Upon the first read, I was a bit skeptical. How does making light of the times your child is not listening to you or doing (or not doing) what you have requested beneficial? Don't they need to know that you are serious? And who has the time to get into a snuggle-fest each time your kid doesn't listen?

But then I tried the approach with my own 3-year-old this morning who has gotten into the habit of whining and making the same request over and over and over, regardless of how many times and how stern I give her the answer.

Following is a recap of our usual breakfast conversation.

Me: "Do you want crunchy cereal for breakfast or toast with peanut butter?" (Note: using two choice option, which I've come to learn doesn't necessarily always work).

Lindsay: "I want you to decide."(spoken in whiny voice)

Me: "OK, I choose toast with peanut butter."

Lindsay: "Nooooo....I don't want toast with peanut butter." (spoken in even whiner voice)

Sound familiar? Then you probably know how the rest of this goes.

But this morning when I asked her what she wanted and she said "You decide" I got down to her level, I "snuggled" her in my arms and and in a funny and light-hearted voice gave her three choices, one of which was a bowl of mud with flies on top. She immediately started laughing and said, "Ewwww...that would be yucky." And then she proceeded to quickly make her choice between the two non-yucky options.

Maybe it was just a fluke this morning. But I'll tell you something, I found myself enjoying the morning much more with her after that interaction. The Vigorous Snuggler concept encourages parents to have a bit more fun in their parenting, lighten-up and see that sometimes you can get the results you want by choosing a communication style that better resonates with children.

If you try this yourself, please share you comments!

Peace Be With You

I thought that I’d want to sleep in yesterday, being that it was Mother’s Day and all. However, instead I found myself wide-awake before anyone else was up. I took this chance to start the coffee and have some quiet time in the house before the other bodies started stirring. What a pleasant feeling. I now understand why a number of moms I know purposely get up in the early hours to get some alone time before the kids wake up.

My time alone yesterday morning was relatively short, but the gift I received during that time was timeless.

I sat down at one end of the couch. A place I don’t sit very often, especially since we’ve moved the living room furniture around. But on this morning, I sat down and immediately my gaze went to the window to my side. Ordinarily this window’s view is nothing other then the side of the neighbor’s garage. But not yesterday.

Yesterday the view was of one dove perched on the top of the garage. For ten minutes or so I sat there and watched this bird puff up its feathers and then “deflate”. And all I could think, over and over again, is that this is what I want to feel in my life—in all areas of my life: PEACE.

I want to feel at peace with my career; at peace with my relationship with my husband; at peace with my relationship and parenting of my children; at peace with my friendships and community; at peace with my body and health. I want to feel a certain peace and contentment and ease. What these things look like is less important to me. How these things feel is everything.

If peace is my feeling of choice, then my next step is to ask myself, “What choices am I making that support that feeling in my life? Which are not?”

We each get to choose how it is we want to feel in our lives. There are many other things I want to feel: happiness, passion, joy, connection (just to name a few), but at the core of all of those, for me, is peace. There are many choices to make in life. There are many paths to choose. I believe that the choice and the path matters less then the peace you feel about the choice or path.

When you are faced with a choice or a new path in front of you, ask yourself these simple questions.

Which will feel more peaceful? Which will bring me a greater sense of peace in my life?

The simple part is asking the questions. The more challenging part is to listen to the answer and then to act accordingly.

I will hold the image of the dove on Mother’s Day as my reminder to choose peace.

And may peace be with you as well…

Put on your oxygen mask first...

I wrote about the topic of 'Paying Yourself First' previously. Here's another excellent article just in time for Mother's Day that reiterates the point so eloquently. If you haven't read the blog Half Full Blogversation: Science for Raising Happy Kids, it's worth it.

An excerpt from A Different Mother's Day Gift Guide, written by Christine Carter, Ph.D., executive director of Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.

I say take the advice of the airlines: put on your oxygen mask first and THEN help those around you. I’m not saying don’t help those around you, but rather, that should you become faint from lack of oxygen, you won’t be much good to anyone at all. Speaking for myself, I’ve found that a certain core of peace and centeredness is necessary before I can really be engaged in raising happy, compassionate, and altruistic children.

So if you are thinking of buying the mother in your life gobs of stuff this Mother’s Day, consider this: stuff won’t make her lastingly happy, but there are other things that you can do that can. And if you are a mother, consider taking the matter into your own hands rather than waiting for a present to make your Mother’s Day a good one. Here are some things you can do to that are more likely to bring you real joy:

(1) Go out with your friends and have a few laughs.
The most persistent finding we have from 50 years happiness research tells us that our well-being is best predicted by how connected we feel to other people. Do we have lots of friends? Know our neighbors? Are we close to our extended family? Care about our co-workers? People with a lot of social connections are less likely to experience sadness, loneliness (duh), low self-esteem, and problems with....(read entire article).

Designate a Date Day

Remember what it used to be like before kids when you could wake up on a weekend morning and know you had the whole day ahead of you to play around with your spouse or partner? You could sleep in. You could fool around (wink, wink) in the middle of the day. You could go out for a leisurely lunch. You could take in a movie without worrying about rushing home. You could get out of the house and the day-to-day life management stuff and just enjoy being together…for an entire day.

Why not do that now? My husband and I had a date day on Friday. Yep, an entire day. Well, from nine in the morning until four thirty in the afternoon, but when you’ve only had a few brief hours alone over the course of months, nearly eight in the same day feels like an entire day.

How did we do it? We both took the day off. Yep, he took the day off because he knew he was going to have to work over the weekend and, being self-employed, I cleared my own calendar for the day. After dropping the kids off at school and day care, which they would have been going to if we were working, we started our date day together.

Did we feel guilty? Mildly.

Did we do it anyway? You betcha!

And what did we do? Well, after kissing in the car wash (yes, we felt like teenagers), we spent the first three hours of our date day negotiating the purchase of our car at a dealership. Were we thrilled with the length of time we were there? Not necessarily. But we were happy to be there together taking care of something we needed to do without two young kids in tow. (Can you even imagine trying to entertain an eight-year-old and three-year-old at a car dealership for three hours?)

After that it was off to a relaxing lunch at a restaurant we’ve been meaning to try. The hostess must have known that this was a special day for us as she sat us at the back table for two, tucked away from the noisy crowd. We’re use to being put in the back of a restaurant, but it’s usually because we have the small kids in tow. Not this time. In fact, not only were our kids not around, but no other kids were either!

Next, we killed some time wandering through a bookstore before heading to a movie. We agreed that we could easily spend an entire afternoon browsing through a bookstore, especially without children asking to buy things or climbing up the shelves.

And then there was the movie. We got a good chuckle when we walked in to an entirely empty theater. Hmmm….perhaps another opportunity to steal some kisses? Not quite, because a few others did show up, but the thought made us both smile.

I can honestly say that I really did feel more connected to my husband at the end of the day. We held hands more. We kissed more. We talked more. We definitely laughed more. And we came home feeling happy about our day, happy about our relationship, and exhausted from a day spent focused on us.

Your Relationship Deserves More

Over and over again I hear from women who I am talking to about the concept of having the best of both worlds—a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life, with the energy to enjoy it—is how hard it is to stay connected in their marriage with young kids.

Having a successful career or running a successful business takes time, energy and attention. Raising healthy, happy and well-adjusted children takes time, energy and attention. Having a fun and fulfilling relationship takes time, energy and attention. For whatever reasons, the first two usually trump the last when it comes to where you choose to put your time, energy and attention.

However, if you really do want to have the best of both worlds, which includes having a loving, fulfilling and connected relationship with your spouse or partner, you need to start giving that relationship some of your time, energy and attention now. If you don’t, the best case scenario is that you’ll be in a relationship that doesn’t particularly feel good to you. Worst case scenario is that you’ll both feel so disconnected over time that you’ll forget what even brought you together in the first place.

I am going to start offering relatively simple tips and suggestions on this blog for giving your relationship even just a bit more of your focus. Try those that interest you and let me know what you think. Also, if you have any other ideas to share, please email me at nicola(at)trueinsightscoaching(dot)com (using the appropriate symbols instead of the words).

If you don't think your energy influences others, read this

A couple of weeks ago my three year old daughter had two of the biggest tantrums of her life. Perhaps they would be better categorized as melt-downs. Whatever we call it doesn't really matter; if you are a parent, you know what I am talking about. If you are not a parent, imagine high-pitched screams, clenching of fists, repeated yelling of "NO!", lots and lots of tears, kicking legs and flailing arms. You get the picture?

The point is not really about the tantrums, but rather about the timing of the tantrums--which just so happened to occur the night before and the morning of an important speaking gig I had with a large, well-known company. Not only was it an important speaking gig, but it was my first one with them and so there was the added pressure of making a really good first impression.

My daughter is a very happy, usually good-natured child. She has an occasional melt-down when she is hungry, over-tired, or as I've come to realize more often, has different expectations then what is or isn't going to happen (hey, that sounds like me!). So when she does have a melt-down it tends to throw my husband and I off because they don't happen very often. Sometimes we don't know whether to cry because she's so over the top and bringing her down from the ledge is an emotional and physical endeavor we just haven't been training for or to laugh because she's so over the top and, excuse me, can someone please tell us when the devil traded places with our sweet little girl?

But on these particular days I was stressed out.

Bill was across the country for a business trip. On the day he left for the trip I discovered a rodent of some sort had decided to use one of our kitchen drawers as a nest. The landlord had not gotten back to me and the exterminator had also failed to return my phone call. I was feeling under the weather and trying not to think about the fact that I had a horrible sore throat the day before I was being paid to speak. And on top of all of that, I still hadn't decided what I was going to do for my workshop the next day.

Husband out of town + rodent nesting in kitchen + no foreseeable male coming to the rescue (this is where my feminist streak left my body) + important talk + confusion over what I would be saying for important talk + threat of sore throat impacting important talk + need to get to important talk by 8:15 a.m. in the city + no help to get child out the door in the morning + a failure on my part to communicate to child that we would need to get out door in the morning = mommy being a big ball of stressed energy = child being a little ball of stressed energy.

My big ball of stressed energy was not mine to enjoy alone. For along the way this energy disseminated throughout our house and before I could even see what was happening my daughter was expressing her stress in the only way she knew how--two back-to-back tantrums that nearly made me call and cancel the very important speaking gig.

What did I learn:

• That it's helpful to have a good, local exterminator's number on hand in case you ever need it. It took me multiple phone calls to find one, but when I did, I immediately felt my stress level go down.

• How important it is to prepare children for things that are not part of their routine. My daughter is hardly ever woken up in the morning. We head off to day care once she wakes up on her own and leisurely gets ready for the day. Communicating with her the night before about the plan for the morning probably would have changed everything.

• To trust myself when it comes to preparing for a talk or workshop I am leading. Part of why I was so stressed and unsure what I was going to do until the last minute is because I allowed a comment from another speaker to unnerve me, which I then began to question my focus.
  

• That sometimes what seems like a simple physical ailment is really a rather simple emotional or mental ailment. As a dear friend pointed out when I shared with her my concerns around my throat and the talk, her question to me was, "what are you afraid of saying?" Once I determined that I needed to just say want I wanted to say, my sore throat was gone.
  

• How I handle my life directly impacts those around me. I may be thinking that not talking about something that is stressing me out protects my children, but that is simply not true. My attitude, focus, perspective and energy is shared with those around me, whether I say the words or not. Making choices that decrease my own stress means that I am making choices to lessen the by-product stress to my loved ones.
  

Pay Yourself First

I have lived my life caring more about what others want and will think then caring about what I really, really want. In fact, the act of simply turning inward and answering the question, “What do you want?” still feels new and a bit awkward, even though I’ve been practicing on some level for a number of years now. But the more I do it, the more I realize how good it feels and the simpler it makes life.

I could analyze forward and backward why I have a need to please and put others needs and desires (often times assumed needs or desires on my part) above my own, but does it really matter? What really matters is that I have the awareness and with that awareness I can see different choices and take different actions.

Who we are at our core is a person—actually a soul—who knows who we are, what we stand for, what we enjoy and who loves living life fully as a way of uncovering more and more preferences along the way. However, even before we are born we are taught about all that limits us. Our parents have their own fears, expectations and beliefs that are laid out for us to absorb as our own. Over time (and it doesn’t take that long) the pure, limitless core that we are is layered with other people’s crap. From society, the media, our teachers, our parents and friends we are told how the world works and how we are expected to operate in that world. And at the same time we are told, “Be yourself. Be unique.” What conflicting things we are told…

I can remember having a conversation with my mother when I was probably in high school or early college about the difference between being ‘self-less’ and ‘self-ish’. I had been told by one parent that being ‘self-less’ “like Jesus Christ” was what we were to do. I had been shown, by the other parent, that being ‘self-ish’ (as in, do what you want to do and makes you happy) was acceptable.

Didn’t I just get done saying why I had a need to please didn’t matter? Well, it doesn’t really matter, but I share the earlier point to highlight just one of the many ways I received conflicting information while growing up.

And here’s the reason I am writing this post. You’ve heard the concept of “paying yourself first” when it comes to finances, right? The idea is that when you get paid, you should first put money towards your own needs and desires before you pay everyone else you owe.

How about ‘paying yourself first’ in all areas of your life? There are definitely times you need to give to others. If your kid is sick, they need you no matter what. If there is a crisis or tragedy in your family or community, you may feel strongly compelled to put others needs before your own. But what about the little, rather insignificant moments in your life?

When my husband asks where I want to go to dinner, can I stop in that moment and really allow myself to have and speak a preference? If I want to go out with some girlfriends for a drink, but am concerned about leaving my husband on his own with the kids, can I push beyond that concern and still do what I want to do? If someone invites me to something that I really don’t have an interest in doing, can I simply and respectfully decline instead of operating from a place of obligation or ‘shoulds’? If I know I want to go to the gym because I’ll feel better afterwards, can I put that desire ahead of going to the park right then with the family?

Can I first check in with myself, in any situation or moment, and ask “what do you really want?” before asking everyone else?

I still hear the words, “you are being self-ish” in the back of head with each of these simple situations, but at my core I know that ‘paying myself first’ means I’ll have more to give to others along the way.

I know myself too well to know that I’ll always care (at least just a little bit) what others think and will probably often take others needs and wants into consideration. However, my commitment and gift to myself is to not put those needs and wants of others always above my own.

What about you?