April 2010

Mommy Burnout

By:
Published April 22nd 2010, in Burnout, Parenting

So you are not perfect.  You are not the mom who is home schooling four children, the mom who teaches Sunday school, the mom who cooks vegetable soup for the church’s soup kitchen from her own organically grown vegetables, the mom who volunteers every Saturday at the local hospice, the mom who is the head of the home schooling association, the mom who sews all the costumes for the ballet concert, the mom who is at every sport match her extremely well balanced and over achieving children are the stars of  and you are not the mom who can still make time to train for an ultra marathon and attend the marriage enrichment course to make sure her marriage is in perfect shape.  You are also not the mom who collapses at 8 pm to only wake from a coma like state to resume her daily tasks at 4 am in order to prepare a healthy balanced breakfast for her family of 6, but forgets to eat herself. I say, count your blessings.

Many mommies do not realize, but many are already burnt out or on the verge of burnout.  If you thought it is only lawyers, stock brokers, doctors and other people in high powered jobs who can suffer from burnout, you were truly mistaken.  We found that outside the world of paid work, caregivers are most prone to burn out.  Caregivers are those people who devote their time and energy to serving people who cannot take care of themselves or need assistance in taking care of themselves and do not get remuneration for it.  If you follow that train of thought, aren’t all mothers caregivers 24/7?

Why do mommies burn out?  I think mommies are doing too much. We often forget that moms are daughters, wives, sisters, employees, friends and many things more.  We do not just fulfill one role in life, motherhood is just added to the mix of roles which all have their demands on our time and energy. Moms also tend to do too much for our children. Why do we still set the table, wash the dishes, fold the laundry and make their beds when our children are old enough to help with all these tasks.  What we see as mindless routine tasks might even give your child a sense of being an important member of the family who is needed to help things run like a well oiled machine.  Moms are so worried that our children will be weighed and found too lite in comparison to their friends, that we fill their schedules with endless activities and therefore we are rushing from one end to the other. Nobody gets much needed free time.

Mommies feel so guilty about me-time. When you finally take some time for yourself, you tend to spend it worrying about the children.  Are they okay with the babysitter?  Did they eat enough without my supervision?  I hope they are not getting to many sweets!  Oh my goodness, I did not tell the sitter to make sure that they have to brush teeth and go to the loo before bed time!  Instead of enjoying the precious moments alone or with friends, you worry and end up talking about the children the whole time.  To reiterate: we are more than just moms, enjoy being a friend, a wife, a daughter fully without feeling that you should have spent this time with your child teaching her some important skill.

Mommies mother in isolation. Being a mom nowadays is an extremely competitive occupation and we do it all alone.  Why?  Because if everyone else can do it, it will make me a bad mom if I need to ask for help.  My mother and her mother had to take care of even more children without any support, I will be a failure if I ask a granny to pick up my children from school and do homework with them.  Times have also changed and many extended families are scattered geographically – making it difficult to ask for help.

Burnout, I think, is a result of unrealistic expectations we set for ourselves, constant self-criticism if we do not meet those expectations, feelings of not getting acknowledged for what we put into parenting and taking on too many responsibilities because of thinking it will make us  better mothers.  These negative thoughts leads to a mom being in a constant state of exhaustion physically, mentally and spiritually.  It leads to a loss of enthusiasm, energy, idealism, perspective and purpose. We end up where there are too many demands and way too little resources.

Burnout is a serious psychological condition due to the prolonged stress experienced when we keep up the negative thought cycle, which might warrant some psychological assistance to overcome. There are certain symptoms to look out for:

Physical Symptoms:

  • Feeling tired and drained most of the time
  • Lowered immunity, feeling sick often
  • Headaches
  • Back pain
  • Muscle aches
  • Change in appetite and sleep habits.

Emotional Symptoms:

  • Feeling like a failure and doubting yourself often
  • Feeling helpless
  • Feeling alone
  • Loss of motivation
  • Negative outlook on life
  • Decreased sense of satisfaction in thing you previously enjoyed
  • Loss of sense of accomplishment.

Behavioral Symptoms:

  • Withdrawing from responsibilities
  • Isolating yourself
  • Procrastinating
  • Using food, alcohol or medicines to help you cope
  • Being irritable and quick to react with anger.

If you suspect that you are on the road to burnout it is important that you slow down, cut back  and get support from friends and family. You have to sit down and reevaluate your goals and priorities in life. It is time to make sure that your basic needs are met – eat regular meals and get enough sleep.  Spend your free time wisely without worrying about your children. Most importantly change your mindset from trying to be SUPERMOM to just being yourself.  Do what you do with love and authority and have fun being a mom.  Many women would love to have the privilege you have to be a mom!
New Time Management Secrets

Teaching your Child to Listen

By:
Published April 19th 2010, in Listening Skills

Are you tired after a weekend of trying to get through to your child, raising your voice and scolding even punishing your child for not listening to you? I sure am.  I feel like my children are so used to my voice (constant nagging?) that they perceive it as background noise – irritating background noise.  Not very flattering to be ranked similar to the rumbling of the tumble drier. When do I pay attention to the tumble drier – only when it makes funny noises or when I am glad to hear that the cycle has finished.  In other words, my children only listen when I scream or they hear me saying what they want to hear.

Children today can sit in front of the television set listening to their i-pods and playing on their nintendo’s.  Being a tumble drier myself, I can understand that I would be ranked right at the bottom when I try to get my voice heard.  Our children are constantly bombarded with engaging media and we as parents do not have enough glitz and glamour or animation to compete on a level playing ground.

We have to teach our children to actively listen, because there is a difference between hearing and listening.  Listening leads either to gathering information, understanding or enjoyment. Hearing does not necessarily lead to any action or response.  I sat in the car with my two daughters when the youngest kept on repeating the same question over and over and over again.  Her sister did not respond.  When I got fed up and raised my voice and told her to answer her sister, she immediately shouted the answer back to her sister. What does this illustrate? Even though she heard the question, she was not listening and therefore did not to respond. Interestingly she shouted the answer back at her sister – maybe she feels she also will not be heard if she does not speak louder. Listening is active, hearing is passive.

Reading is such a powerful way to teach children to listen.  Sitting down in a quiet room with your children and reading a story to them, will keep them spellbound.  And the bonus – they are giving their full attention to your voice and learning how to listen.  In addition to teaching active listening skills, reading promotes bonding with your child.  Reading teaches children how to communicate effectively, aids in language development, increases attention span, stimulates imagination and teaches what socially acceptable behavior is.

After reading a story, you can test how much they listened.  Engage with your child by asking questions about the characters, who they identified with, would they have behaved the same or differently to the hero or villain in the story.  While reading a story they know well, change the names of the characters and see how quickly they correct you.  Wow – they were actually listening to you!

Other games you can play with your child to promote listening skills is:

  • Sit outside, close your eyes and see how many sounds you can recognize
  • Put a variety of objects that make sounds in a bag, take one by one and let your child try to identify the object – bells, rattles, squeaky toys etc.
  • Play around with rythms.  Use your voice to teach difference in pitch, loud/soft, fast/slow etc.  Play music and let your child clap with the music.
  • “Simon Says” is an old game, but still very effective especially if mommy is also willing to make a fool of herself.  Kids love to laugh at their parents.
  • Listen to stories on a CD in the car.
  • Play “I went to the store and bought an apple.”  Everyone gets to add on an item, but has to remember all of them in sequence.
  • Start a story and allow everyone to add a sentence to the story.
  • Songs with movement is fun and good to teach your child to give the appropriate gesture when they hear a certain word in the song.
  • Play with walkie talkies!  Your child will be more than willing to follow every instruction you give – maybe try: “Go upstairs and clean up your room. Over.”

Important strategies to incorporate into your daily life to help your child to listen to you is:

  • Have a rule that your child must listen to you the first time you speak.
  • When you speak, make eye-contact with your child.
  • Give clear and short instructions.
  • Give your full attention to her to get her full attention.
  • Tell her how many things she has to remember. For example: “You have to remember to do three things – pack the puzzle away, get you pajamas and come to the bathroom.”
  • Repeat the keywords to her – “puzzle, pajamas and bathroom”
  • Remember to praise her for her efforts to listen.

Most important of all my advice is to model active listening behavior to your child.  If you do not listen when she speaks to you, she learns that she does not have to listen to you. When you listen to your child try to make sure there will be no interruption and be patient.  Children struggle to verbalize what they want to say to us as fast as we can.  Waiting patiently for her to say what she wants to say, teaches her that she is important enough for you to take time to listen to her and that she should have respect to also listen to you in a similar way!