Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Just before we launch into this week's theme, I wanted to let you know that we are on the launch pad for our Simplicity Parenting Care Professionals Seminar. It's three hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday, and that's coming up August 16-17.
It comes up every year, so if you're listening to this on a recording, it's still accessible. The theme for this care professional, we run three or four of them, is for self-care. This is all about emotional self-regulation based on the being at your best when kids are at their worst book.
It's for care professionals, educators, anyone working in that field to help parents feel they're talking with their own voice, speaking in the way they want to, acting in the way they want to be, and just being the best parent they can be. So that is the theme that's coming up. I'll give reminders of that in the coming weeks.
Anyway, that's enough of that. This week's theme, and in the coming weeks we'll be related to this a little bit, I thought, well, okay, I'll sort of pivot into that theme. This week is about self-care.
What is it in our lives where our needs are not being met? Because when our parenting needs, when our human needs, when that sort of total of our life, not just us as parents, but on a deeper, broader aspect, when they're not being met, it can really cause us to be emotionally depleted. And out of that depletion can either come a withdrawal or a fallback or a pushback. It's not just kids who fall back and push back.
It's us as well, right? It's us. And up until we're parents, we're better at meeting our needs. We do better.
And we live our lives, and we sort of almost unconsciously in those earlier years, until we become a parent or a guardian, we're meeting our needs more or less. Sometimes less, sometimes we do okay. But when we become a parent, because we're just so dedicated to these little beings, and bigger beings, you know, as they grow up, we start to neglect our own needs.
And it begins really early. It begins during pregnancy, particularly in those early months. And a baby is just so all-consuming.
There's just this little body, right? And yet it takes up the entire square footage of the house. How can such a little body do that? But it does. And it sets us in a certain sense on a trajectory, whereby we go off in that direction, where as the years go on, we kind of lose track of our needs.
And it's not good for our emotional health. And it's just not good for our relationship with the kids. But then we can go too far, where we are absent so much, because of our own needs are being served way too much.
So it's like, where is the healthy middle ground? Where is this middle path? Mostly, I mean, honestly, if you're listening to this podcast, we are probably the group of parents who are not really serving our own needs and ignoring the kids. Otherwise, you likely wouldn't be listening to this sort of stuff. And just to be aware that it was something that began really early.
And I get it when a baby is like an infant, very, very vulnerable. I get it. We have to just be so, so present.
But in those moments, I think in those early months, this is when we can do these little micro moments, micro self-care moments. Some moms and dads, guardians I've spoken with over the years have said, there's just these precious little moments where we can go for the briefest walk, where we can do the briefest meditation. We can get our colored pencils out, our watercolors out for just minutes.
It's not going to last because you could say, well, when the baby's asleep, you can do this. But when the baby's asleep, we've got so many things to do apart from just being comatose. But I would add a little bit of self-care towards the top of that list.
Now, the reason I'm suggesting this right from the early years, if you're in them right now or if you've got friends in them right now, is that of habit. If we establish a habit right from the get go of self-care, and in these little micro self-care moments, as the kids become more independent, those moments can expand. It might be as simple as just sitting down, putting a poetry book on the coffee table, if that's the sort of thing you love to do, and just slowly reading through a poem.
Just that. It could be when the baby's nursing or when they're sleeping, but just for the time it takes you to do that, because their needs are completely based around, well, us, right? But if you establish self-care right out of the gates, right out of the heavenly gates, then as the baby becomes a toddler, as the toddler becomes, you know, and so on and so on, where they're a little more independent, then that little bit of micro time can also expand as well. Now, that's if you're in the early years.
But the same is true if you haven't been taking care of yourself, you know, if you haven't managed well with what you need in terms of reading or art or journaling or meditation, whatever it is, just time in nature. If you haven't, if you've got off not to a great start, it's not too late. Of course, it's not too late.
Start with small and doable. Start with just these, again, imagine your child, imagine they're way back in the infancy stage, and similarly, just take a micro moment. And then have an intention.
Like if going for a walk in nature is what gives you, is what fills you up, just to use this example, then if you have access to it, just walk outside. And, you know, your child's four, five, six years old, and they're more independent now, but you haven't been taking care of yourself. And do what in some spiritual paths are called a mindful walk, where you just go out and you notice the same one or two plants in the garden, just that plant, that flowering shrub, and just take it in.
Just drink in the changes from yesterday. Drink it in. And then back inside or whatever, dealing with the kid's stuff or the washing or the laundry, you know, like whatever it is.
But take a moment and the best, some parents have told me it's at its best when it's rhythmical. At this time of the day, I'm going to take 60 to 90 seconds for myself at these three times. Other times, we're just doing it catch as catch can.
We just might put on headphones and just listen to a beautiful piece of music that totally relaxes us. We might listen to the next one page of an audio book. Whatever it is, self-care.
Because that self-care will lead to a malleability of emotions, like a malleability of soul, to put it another way. When our kids push us, when their behavior is really pinging, when they're trying it on, they're echolocating with their challenging behavior. If we've managed to have these two or three micro moments through the day, it's actually quite surprising how much better our emotional regulation can be.
What I've found is that if you get that together for about a month, a micro moment or two, then with the intention, some parents have marked it on the calendar, literally marked it on the calendar, that they're going to now build it out to the point where you can build it out where you actually have a full hour to sit with some friends. That's the gold standard, isn't it? Linking up with friends again and not feeling that you're just doing this on your own. And not that we disappear down a rabbit hole when we have kids and our friendships just start to weaken and almost disappear.
So this way of developing self-care is something that I think is acutely important. And have a think about it. Have a think about what is it that I could do, that I love to do, that fills me up, that is going to be caring for myself.
An email came in a year or two back, maybe a year back now, of a mum who just loved to paint. That was her thing. She loved to do it.
She was no artist, apparently, as she said, but she just loved to get her watercolours out. And sure enough, as she painted, her kindergarten, I'm guessing, four or five-year-old daughter, she didn't say how old, but probably that age, then would get her paints out and start to paint. And she said it was just the most beautiful thing because it was almost silent.
And yet she was doing that self-care and her daughter was kind of doing it, a bit of self-care, a bit of decompression herself as well. Now, it doesn't have to be like that. It was just something that I thought was very sweet and very healthy.
So self-care. Try and make this the week or the month of taking care of your own needs, because it's just going to make everything just that little bit more malleable, just a little more kind of watered so our parenting plant can stay healthy. OK, hope that's helpful.
Don't forget the Care Professional course. Big shout out. August 16, 17.
Go right to the link below the podcast. It'll take you to a page. It gives you a whole bunch of information.
All right. Bye bye for now.
