July 06, 2017
Taking the Summer to Nurture Your Family
It’s summertime! No doubt, when you’re parent, summertime is stressful. It’s wonderful to have the kids out of school, and at the same time, it’s completely overwhelming to have them out of school. And if you’re in the process of waiting to adopt, summertime can be a particularly challenging time. You’re watching other people go on family vacations, enjoying outings with their kids and soaking up the sun, and waiting to become a parent amid all that can be lonely and painful.
No matter what your situation is, it’s easy for the best-laid plans to fall by the wayside. Distractions set in, stress overloads, we settle into survivor-mode and forget that we, and our families, need nurturing. Are you feeling like your family unit could use a reset? Take a step back and explore these ways to re-energize your family unit and reconnect.
Inspire creativity. On the whole, people feel happiest when we’re working towards something. For kids, who have so much of the world to experience, let that effort develop by inspiring their creativity. Allows them to experiment, discover, make mistakes, and spend some time letting their imagination fly. Although it’s important to nurture your children individually, think of a few projects you can work on together as a family and make sure to set aside special time for those each month.
Still waiting for your little ones to arrive? What’s a creative way you and your partner or friends can shake things up? Take a class, commit to cooking nights, find an outside project that takes you out of your routine.
Tone down the stress. Big-ticket stressors—death, financial issues, job stress—are always going to come around, so when you inevitably have to deal with those things, why sweat the small stuff? Not only does it rarely get you anywhere, but many studies have shown that people in relationships (this includes your children) will mimic the emotions of their partner (or parents.) Your tension—whether you’re upset because you forgot your phone, or the house is a little messy, or you’re running 5 minutes late—is going to impact your family members, bringing them down right along with you. So before you completely unravel, take a breath, think about it the true weight of this conflict and what it means in the larger scheme of things, and then ask yourself if it’s worth the added stress on you and your family.
Focus on your relationship with your partner. We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. Studies have proven that there is a noticeable decline in the happiness of a married couple after the arrival of their first child. This does not mean that your children are inflicting unhappiness on your life, and we’d never deign to say so, but it does mean that all of that time you had before, just the two of you, is probably diminished and definitely having an impact on your relationship. You can’t be the best parent to your child if you aren’t the best partner to your spouse. The primary relationship that children have to model “normal” from is the one that exists in their very own home—-wouldn’t you like to show them how happy and healthy that can be? Take time for each other, in whatever form best works for you, and make sure to schedule kids-free dates at least once every week or other week. Taking care of your relationship and taking care of your children is synonymous, we promise. And this is the same for you parents-to-be! Not only is it something to be aware of for when your child does arrive, but it’s key to your happiness now as well. Take this time for yourself, focus on connecting with and loving each other, because time will be at a premium once you become parents.
Family dinner. Dinner is, most likely, the one meal you are all able to share together each day, so it had better be a good one. That means, no cell phones, no iPads, no iPods, no Kindles, no nothing but nourishing food and attentive conversation. Come up with a tradition that you repeat at each meal, whether it’s asking about the best/worst part of the day, discussing classwork, or going around and saying something that you’re thankful for. Not only will this connect you and help you learn about what happened in each other’s day, but it establishes dinner time as an expected ritual—not something to be dashed off in a hurry (as much as we want to do that sometimes.)
