Our International Adoption Coordinator Megan Montgomery
offers helpful suggestions on how to cope with the swirl of our busy modern life and introduces the book, Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, M.Ed. with Lisa M. Ross
If you are anything like me there comes a day that you suddenly realize that life is swirling around you. The lists, and phone-calls, e-mails and chores are overwhelming your ability to just “live life”.
It’s these times that I have to make myself sit back and appreciate all that I have. Why am I driving myself into a furry when I should be cherishing these moments and making memories with my family and friends?
Our daily lives can become disconnected from the hopes and dreams we hold for our family.Kim John Payne, M.Ed. with Lisa M. Ross
This is the time to carefully look at why I’m doing certain things. Then if I cannot come up with a strong enough argument as to why I am doing it, it just might be time to eliminate it from my to-do list, at least for now.
If you have children, life gets even more complicated. We are living big, busy lives jam-packed with activities, work and various obligations – this impacts our children and places yet another responsibility upon us, which is to teach our children to step back when things are too busy.
Kim John Payne, M.Ed. and Lisa Ross, authors of Simplicity Parenting, refer to “Soul Fever” in children as the time when we see symptoms in our child that they are “out of sorts”, often the opposite of their typical character or exhibiting an amplified character. I come back to the words of Payne and Ross and remind myself that: by simplifying you offer your child support, and a container for the issues and changes they are working through. You also offer them a model, one that may be a lifesaver as they get older. We can teach our children that a period downtime is a form of self-care, but only if we learn how to do it ourselves.
We need to allow ourselves permission to let some things go, even if it is just extending a personal deadline we have set for ourselves or deciding to go out to dinner instead of cooking at home. For our children, they may need time away from sports, a weekend without play-dates or even just extra one-on-one time with a parent.
Don’t worry, I am not so naïve that I don’t realize this will all happen again. Probably sooner than I would like I will have to settle things down again for some extra quiet days and moments of calming deep appreciation for all that I have to help me and my family get back to “normal”. However, I am taking time each day to remind myself that “simplification signals a change, a realignment of our hopes and our everyday lives”.
Read Megan Montgomery blog series What to Expect:
- Preparing for International Adoption
- Orphanage Care
- Attachment and Bonding
- Developmental vs. Chronological age
- Post Adoption-Love at First Sight?
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