It’s been a week
It’s hard to parent nicely when things are hard. It’s hard to think about extending grace and patience when you yourself are hard-pressed in several different ways.
Some of the things that have happened this week:
- Two full on shouting matches with one child who has dragged heals about a big school work project and this week it is due.
- A large glass bowl with food for supper and a mug came crashing to the floor right before supper time and really in the twilight hour of the day when lots of other mundane but important things need to get done and we’re all tired…
- Every single morning we fought about getting children out of bed.
- LOST homework book. Completely gone. With work project inside.
There were some much bigger issues swirling around as well, but these were the kind of day-to-day ones.
During this week which has held a lot of stress for a lot of different reasons, I have struggled to parent, umm, nicely.
Honestly, this week sucked. It was not easy. I am so incredibly aware that so many other families are going through way, way more than we have been through this week. It’s hard to parent nicely when things are hard. It’s hard to think about extending grace and patience when you yourself are hard-pressed in several different ways.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to clock out of parenting. Our children are looking to us for cues on how to respond, they look to us as their emotional barometers. They do what we do and they somehow feel what we feel.
I can only say, again, how important it is that you are aware of yourself and your stress levels and when you need to reach out for help. Take stock, again, of everything you and your children have been through. It’s been 7 weeks since the unrest in KZN, and 18 months of living in a pandemic.
Notice that there are tangible reminders every single day of what we’re living with and where we’ve been. We have masks and sanitizer and various social restrictions to remind us of the pandemic. And we have increased police and army presence around, a reminder of the unrest. In every sphere, both the pandemic and the unrest have added stress to life.
All of this means that we may have less emotional energy to deal with every day normal stress stuff that happens. We may have a little less resilience when we’re tired. We’re expending a little more energy trying to keep a sense of safety and balance in our being.
So, yes, the kids are tired even when they’ve had enough sleep. We are tired, all the time! Small stressors become huge ones. We overreact. There may be more inter-personal conflict, or what was always there is being shaken to the surface and being exposed.
It may seem that I paint a bleak picture. I still believe in fresh hope. There have been other things that happened in my week
- I harvested broccoli out of my garden
- A little boy’s belly laugh at a story we read together made my day!
- A little girl wrote me a card that said “you repaired my heart into a new one and put a plaster on it”
- I had life-giving conversations with good friends
In these times we need to celebrate all that we can. And on the days we can’t, or in the moments we definitely can’t, that is ok. Everything is not always ok. But not everything is bad all the time.
I’d like to encourage you to share with someone you trust, what happened in your week that sucked? And what happened that brought moments of joy? How would you like to spend time preparing yourself over this weekend for a new week of life?
Like I said before, your children use you as their emotional barometer. How you’re handling the stress matters. How you are, matters. You matter. Have a good weekend.
