Permission to do less with your family’s free-time. (and why that’s a good thing)
This is likely to be an unpopular opinion, but please hear me out. How often have you seen bucket lists created and shared listing all the “must-do” activities of the season? It may seem harmless, right? What’s the big deal? The bucket lists, themselves, are harmless —sure, but the feelings they can evoke are quite the opposite.
Somehow along the way, many parents have subscribed to the idea that filling our kids free-time with seasonal activities is a necessity of creating a memorable and happy childhood for our children—and creating a memorable and happy childhood for our children has become the endgame parents are aiming for. I’m not here to judge or shame anyone who has fallen in to this way to approach parenting, I've been a culprit of it too. In fact, my kids and I had a bucket list on the fridge all summer that we made last June!
I write this to challenge you to see this approach to parenting from a different perspective (as I have been challenging myself to reflect on this in the context of my own family). Only through questioning our actions and decisions about what we do and how we’ve gotten here can we truly determine what we want our family to value and why so that we can live more purposefully based on what is best for own unique family.
Things I challenge you to think about in regards to how you use your family’s free-time:
(these are the things I’ve been challenging myself to reflect on lately):
What is the purpose behind my desire to create memorable, “happy” moments for my family? Am I feeling guilty for working too much? Am I trying to make up for being away from them? Am I trying to keep up with my friends on social media and what they are doing with their families? Do I tie my own value as a parent to whether or not my children are “having fun”? Do I worry that if I don’t fill their time with activities that they will just sit on screens all day and “be bored”? Do I get upset when we are at home for long stretches and the house gets messy? Do I carry my own resentment for something I felt was lacking in my own upbringing that I am now overcompensating for with my children? (these are just examples of the many reasons behind why a parent might be choosing to live the bucket list life.) I encourage you to figure out: what’s your reason?
Do a self-check in prior to planning out your free-time: Does my desired intent align with what my kids are actually needing in this moment? So, once you have determined your reason(s) from question 1, I encourage you to reflect on whether your reason for doing an activity matches what your child needs from their free-time. For example, if my intent is to feel connected to my kids because I worked a ton this week, have you asked them when they feel most connected to you? (and could you do that instead?) Or, if you can’t handle your kids saying they are bored and there’s nothing to do, can you determine what they actually need in that moment? (It could be that what they actually need is to learn how to sit with the discomfort of figuring out what to do with their boredom than for you to jump in to take away their discomfort with a fun activity that takes that growth opportunity away from them.) Final example: if your reason is because you see all the other families doing it and you feel guilty like you will let your kids down if you don’t create the same experiences for them, then I encourage you to figure out with your family what you want to value as a family and how you want to prioritize your time based on what you value as your own family, take more time off of social media to help with the feelings of comparison, and remind yourself that you are working on being intentional with the small spaces of free-time your family does have which isn’t going to look the same as the families on your news feed…and that doesn’t make you a less-than mother, that makes you a parent who is grounded and attuned to her own unique family’s needs.
What is the point of taking the time to do this introspective work?
I have found through my work with clients and my own experience as a mother of three, that we often— as parents— are parenting from a place of trying to fix our own childhoods rather than be attuned to what our children actually need from us. This introspection is necessary because it leads to cycle-breaking so that we are able to parent our children based on their own needs rather than our childhood needs that weren't met.
Technology offers instant-gratification and social-media creates over-connectedness that leads to comparison-mindset. Also, kids schedules are so full that every minute of their life is accounted for. For these reasons (and likely more), I’ve noticed the kids in my life are lacking in the following ways:
They don’t know themselves and they are disconnected from themselves. They have learned to always be distracted away from their minds and their bodies. So when they feel different emotions, they don’t know how to cope with them other than to turn towards something that covers up what their brain and their body is trying to tell them. When this happens overtime, the mind and the body will become more and more pronounced in their attempt to signal, which can lead to anxiety or panic attacks, depression, suicidal ideation, etc.
They struggle to see the joy in the small, mundane moments of life. When their life is filled with school, extra-curriculars, or extravagant family activities, they lose sight of how to be content without something to do or somewhere to go. These kids don’t know how to rest and just be. Well-intentioned parents sense their discomfort and step in to fill their time and distract them from their feelings because their feelings trigger our own internal wounds from our childhood.
They struggle to know how to self-start. When everything is decided and planned out for them, they never learn how to create their own fun, fill their own time, figure something out, etc. They come to rely on others to tell them what to do and how to do it.
These things cause kids to internalize beliefs about themselves such as: the belief that resting feels bad and busyness doesn’t. They believe that happiness only comes from the big moments of life and struggle to feel content in the day to day.They believe that their parents like them best when they are DOING SOMETHING and not just because they are. Do you see where I am going with this?
Takeaways:
Make it a priority in your life to be intentional with your kids time.
Do your own internal work so that you are able to meet your children with what they need rather than what you needed as a child.
As a family, determine what your family values are and allocate your time together based on those values. (If one of your family values becomes completing bucket lists of activities, then go for it!) But maybe it just needs to be one tradition that helps the family celebrate the coming and going of each season instead of all of them? Again, what does the child need to feel loved and connected to you in each season of life?
Give yourself the permission to let go of what it looks like to be a good parent on social media and get to know the kind of parent your kids need you to be…and be that.
