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Yoga and Empowered Family Mindfulness

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Taking the ego out of parenting 👣 Been doing a lot of meditating on how my own imagined version of myself as a mother, and imagined version of my child affects my parenting. Taking away your expectations of your parenting journey, and simply accepting yourself and your child for who they are is HARD. One of the many reasons why taking up mindfulness and yoga when you become a parent is so amazing 💪 While I've always placed a lot of focus on accepting my kids for who they are as people; it's only very recently I've been turning my mind to accepting who I am as a parent. Accepting that the parent I always aspire to be isn't a real human. Accepting that my children don't need a perfect parent, but a conscious, open and supporting guide to allow them to flourish. Accepting that I am a human before I am a parent. Forever inspired in a mindful journey by my life partner and amazing parent @hawthorngardens_norwich who never stops evolving as a human and as a guide for my little beings ❤️

Valued contribution 🥭 I've noticed myself feeling challenged by boundary pushing lately, which is normally a good indicator that I need to up my game with giving Philly jobs which allow her to successfully contribute to the household. We're also getting used to Luke being back at work after we've both had glandular fever for what seems like an age. This morning when the nagging and 'whining' started, I cut up some oranges, showed Ophelia how to juice them, and then left her to it. We then saved Luke a glass of the juice for his return, which was a double win because it was confirmation for her little mind that he was coming back in the foreseeable future. When you find yourself feeling frustrated and irritated by something your little one is doing (whining, nagging, rule braking) giving them something important to do INSTEAD of punishing is a really great way of addressing the needs underlying the behaviour. So many of those attention grabbing behaviours are children telling us they want to contribute. Having an arsenal of activities they can easily manage alone us gunna be a really big help for those days when your fuse feels short 💣 What are your go-to activities to encourage independence and values contribution?

Self care in nature 🌿 We've been inspired by @thelifeschoolers to take some self care time outside this week. Normally we have a special time in the day where me and Luke have a drink and an adult chat, while the kids play independently. I think it's really important to set a boundary of telling your kids that you need any bit of adult time; however, they're still learning and it's generally a battle. But, like so many things, taking it outdoors was so much better! Philly was in her element, scaling stumps, riding her balance bike down mud pits and whacking nettles with a stick. Sybil fell asleep like she often does in the sling. Me and Luke got to enjoy that blissful gifts of a conversation where we can both finish a sentence. 🌿🌿 Swipe to see more #ouroutdoorsyjanuary inspiration.

Daily Rhythm 🌿 Realising the importance of predictable routine has been a game changer for the kids. Reducing all kinds of stress behaviours and sensory meltdown symptoms, the predictable day is my best weapon. However, the last couple of days I've been utilising it for myself. We all have those days (I think) where we are exhausted, overworked, stressed, lonely, exhausted, bored, hungry, exhausted and we just can't use our creative brains. With glandular fever & endometriosis on my back this has been me A LOT lately. My temptation is to stare into space as much as possible, mixed up with flurries of stress-induced manic chore marathons and eating junk getting frustrated by myself and impatient with the sprogs. My devised solution is to paint and put up this daily routine for myself to aspire to. It's not designed to be as reliable as the routine chart I make for Ophelia, but a map for a successful day for those times when I can barely think. I just follow the list hour by hour and it's really been great so far. I've prepped some activities to do with the smalls so I really don't have to use my brain at all. It kind of seems like more effort initially than trying to nap and chill, but my experience is that kids don't let that happen, so having some structure is much more powerful. (If your kids let you nap, scrap all of this and nap as much as you can). What are your fixes for days when your brain is soup?

It's okay to be scared! 🔥 We've spent today having Ophelia's first bouldering session, followed by lots of climbing in the woods, and there has been lots of conversation about fear. Accepting and respecting emotions can be much harder than it initially sounds. We want to protect our kids. We want to satisfy their needs. That's good. Kids need to be fed, watered and bum-wiped. But sometimes, particularly when the scaredy-pants come out, what your little person actually needs is to experience their feels in a safe environment; and releif comes when you welcome the challenging emotions. Project calm, accept the emotion, explore the emotion, and come up with a solution together. A parenting lesson came for us today when Ophelia climbed to about double her own height on a wall, and then suddenly got terrified, sobbed and wanted to cuddle. Luke was very keen for her to 'push past' her fear, having been raised to respect sport as a challenge and 'go hard or go home'; whereas my instinct was to wrap her up and tell her she was fine. However, we took the chance to talk about what she was feeling, why she was feeling it. We talked about the idea that she couldn't go any higher than her body could take her, and that me and Luke wouldn't push her to go any further than she was comfortable with. Just like that, the tears stopped and she climbed for another hour; then in the afternoon climbed the epic log pile. How's that sunset for a reward? 😍 My challenge was to project calm, and not be peterbed by by her tears; and Luke's was to remember that we want her to get joy from climbing rather than technical skills. Again we found ourselves considering the qualities we want our adult Philly to have, and I feel this was a great lesson in resilience, calm, respect for emotion and independence. 💪

LYING 🤥 @bbcwomanshour talked today about children & why they lie, and it sparked me to do a little post about my approach to dealing with porkies. First of all, I think it's important to remember two things: all humans lie to avoid tricky situations, and also that young children are not developmentally capable of distinguishing reality from fantasy as easily as us. Why couldn't batman have hit the dog?! Expecting children to navigate the complexities of truth and honesty is actually a big ask. So take a step back and chill, your little angel telling little (or big) lies is totally normal. We recently noticed most of Philly's lies stem from her being backed into a corner "Did you smash that bowl?". When you bare in mind that as far as a child is concerned they have no reason to tell the truth (or really a concept of if they even are) then they are probably just going to tell you a lie when you ask questions like this. Shaming or telling them off, will most times result in the mistaken logic that they just need to get more sneaky; or enact some form of revenge on their unjust parent at a later date. For us, these are not life lessons we want our smalls learning. So instead, we would rephrase that question into a statement "I can see you smashed a bowl, how shall we tidy it up?" This way, you're on your child's side, your child is learning that if they make a mistake they can trust you; and by inviting them to participate in the solution you're teaching them that they can solve life's problems, and that their input is valued. So instead of accidentally teaching sneakiness, revenge, embarrassment or presumed helplessness; we're teaching independence, trust, resilience, problem solving skills and respect.

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