With a goal to find more success in balancing our LifeSTYLE, we decided that making changes slowly will be most effective and less traumatic!

OUR FIRST CHALLENGE

We’ve looked at some of the things in our current lifestyle that are triggers or culprits sabotaging our ability to find the balance we seek. We gained insight for our inspiration in a great book called Simplicity Parenting by, Kim John Payne, M.ED, with Lisa M. Ross. The culprits we discovered as sabotag-ers of our balance are mostly associated with TOO MUCH and have all lead to signs of anxiousness in ourselves and our kids.

After analyzing our daily life, we decided our starting tackle point was centered in the fact that:

TOO MUCH ADULT LIFE IS ENTERING OUR KIDS WORLD

(No, I’m not referring to our dates or how many glasses of wine we drank last night)— this is the ambitions, fears, heated political opinions, fast paced deadlines we are struggling to meet, obligations, conflicts, all that “stuff” that we openly discuss with other adults in front of our kids.

Chad and I didn’t even realize that just our daily conversations about our work, our constant “phone checking” breaks and our other conversations as a couple in front of the kids was creating anxiety for them— but it is. What kinds of anxiety signals?

Some nervousness, challenges adjusting to change and controlling behaviors, a few tantrums from here and there-- so, as parents we'd like to build the balance and confidence level in these things, enabling our kids to be more centered and joyous.

To start hacking away at the stress inducers, and “start protecting the environment for our kids childhood to unfold slowly— at their pace,” we created a to do list.

OUR BALANCED LIFESTYLE "TO DO" :

1) My husband and I will set social media “check times” for the day, all when we are NOT with the kids.

2) Because we both work from home AND together, it is very difficult NOT to talk about work “stuff”, so my husband and I are going to make the effort to separate HOME and WORK, NO GREY LINES- it’s black and white. The work day starts when the kids leave for school and ends when they get home. **This will take some serious effort for us**

3) We will not discuss parenting strategies that are conflicting or strongly opinionated topics like politics or “scary” news, our stressors for deadlines or ambitions, etc in front of the kids. Instead, we will set time aside in the morning after the kids have left for school or after they go to bed at night to discuss important issues— (we’re looking forward to the added bonus of defusing any heat that might be attached to the conversations to be had.) The hard part of this strategy will be biting our tongue in the moment…

Hoping our new strategies will bring more balance. Any small improvement is a walk in the right direction!