There are times when you find that family life has spun out of sync with what you had planned. It’s really easy to throw in the towel as that’s a big mountain to climb to get on top of things. I’m all about the simple things. This is actually a good time to really decide what matters and start doing more of that.
Dip in and find a few ways to have a calmer more peaceful family life ………start.
Calmer More Peaceful Family Life
- Have a regular bedtime routine that signals it’s time to go to bed
- Have a regular kids bedtime routine signals it’s time to transition from Kate and Jerry’s Mummy to YOU….just YOU.
- Our kids are dirty at different rates- bath every night or not find your family baseline and don’t worry about anyone else.
- Bedtime is the traditional time for book reading and snuggles. It’s not the only time. ( You don’t have to do this at bedtime!)
- Regular bedtime slot. They need the sleep. We need the rest.
- Prepare for the next day the night before.
- We have to be further up the list in priorities. Stop deferring YOU as a priority.
- Get up before the kids. Stretch. Smile and read something good to set your mood.
- Be friends with silence…stillness
- Find a morning routine that works- test out different ideas over time.
- Experiment with aromas and scents in the morning to bring calm and peacefulness to your home
- Experiment with different music tastes- mellow, classical, instrumental, jazz, radio…. to how it changes the interaction and mood of the family
- Know the type of meal planner you are…… 2 hours once a month? 30 minutes each week? Plan your meals weekly or monthly. Find your routine and repeat, repeat, repeat.
- Have theme nights. Monday night= soup or stew in our house- think Pasta night, pizza night, veggie night, leftover night, take out night, slow cooker night, curry night etc
- Mess will always be there. Cleaning is necessary. So is play time and the kids. Adjust your expectations to match your situation.
- Share with your partner the games and activities the little guys loved that went well. Build up their bank of good play activities with mutual play activities you know work.
- Listen to your partner when they share their play activities they love to do….give them space to develop and try.
- Plan for your family- write a family quest scroll
- Have a cartoon series in a book, video series or a book series that you all refer to as a family- quote lines all the time. We love Calvin and Hoobs. For years to come you’ll remember places and have strong memories.
- Be intentional about specific things that matter.
- Learn to let go…… not everything will be. What really matters focus there and make sure you’re both together on the what really matters.
- Have long periods of nothing schedules regularly- a whole day is great! A time where members of the family can wander around and join in with what’s going on and find their thing to do.
- Have regular conversations about chores.
- While we’re here- stop calling them chores and call them contributions.
- Everyone contributes to the house. Start early, encourage and show. Persist…..restart
- If perfectly aligned towels matter to you or clothes hung or folded one way then teach, show, teach, show… or accept there’s this other way right now.
- Be happy to occupy the same space but not having to do the same things.
- Age appropriate contributions bond and keep a family together. They begin to appreciate the communal space. It’s our job to share, develop and show this in our home.
- Rotate the contributions. No one likes to empty the stinky trash..knowing someone else is going to do it maybe the only thing that keeps you when you’re wrapping up on a cold December morning to go out and empty the kitchen bin.
- If you like to …bake super! If you don’t skip it. Focus your energy on what you want in your family not what you think’s expected of you.
- Running a household takes time, action, coordination and conversation. We have to do all four with the people in the household….especially that last one.
- Know that routine doesn’t mean set in stone. It can’t be. But there are things that happen regularly.
- Do what’s best for your family.
- Try things…. You never know until you try. Give it your best shot for a reasonable amount of time. Ditch, defer or keep.
- Whatever your current season of motherhood…it won’t always be like this. Do what you can now.Plan for now and later.
- Introduce changes slowly. No one will appreciate cold turkey or radical changes! Transition and suggest substitutions.
- Set goals for life, parenting and play– otherwise they won’t get done.
- Have family roundtable sessions to celebrate, explain and discuss life in your family
- Do less things in your schedule for the week. Find some more margin.
- Get accountability from your mates who get you….if you love lists find your friends that are list makers. If you’re a cluster taker, relaxed, simplifier etc.
- No one around you that will relate? ( or that you want to share these types of details?) Find accountability online with challenges, groups and blogs
- Learn new habits and ideas- read, listen and ask people what they do.
- Be motivated to change or accept your situation. Be happy in the direction you’re going or make plans to change. Then do it.
- Spend time with people who have children in the next stage and beyond . Drink in their wisdom- adjust your mindset- adapt to your family. See #34
- Each parent- spend time getting to know each child- alone. Your second and subsequent children will love that individual attention they never had that alone time because of birth order. Don’t forget your firstborn too.
- Take out each individual child regularly- have conversations, hang out, listen and play games. Love them for just being them- no strings just time.
- A cleaner will be the best present ever- short term/long term. It makes a huge difference to everyone’s bottom line.
- No cleaner available? pair up with a local friend so you have an hour of cleaning time to do those 3 things on your list. No distractions- No Internet- No anything else. Blitz. You’ll both feel better for it.
- Less is more.
- Choose to spend your time in the okay areas of your family life and not all your time in the struggling areas. Walking in treacle all the time is tiring and depletes you.
- Relax. Anything worthwhile takes time.
- Talk about your dreams for life, the kids, your home, your travel, your work regularly. Not just around the New Year.
- Talk about how you’ll get to do these things with your time, money and presence. When you’re working on a family plan life takes on a better perspective.
- A kind word goes far. Be an encourager.
- Cook food that you’ll all eat. Encourage new food ideas.
- Read Simplicity Parenting
- Encourage dinner table conversation from everyone there with listening, input and discussion.
- Spend good times together with your partner. Family life isn’t all about the kids.
- Make them and they you a priority. Find out your love languages. Nurture your relationship.
- Listen to positive things everyday– find podcasts and audio books that seed your mind with good thoughts ( funny thoughts too) on the way to work, in the car, while you’re walking, weeding, washing, working out.
- Children busy creating and mess are two very different things to them but not always us. We need to adjust.
- Let toys flow in and OUT of your home. Have regular purges.
- Develop a fall back list- when you’re tired and overwhelmed- what things can the kids do? When you’re pushed for time? – What’s the minimum that has to be done? When there’s no food cooked but everyone’s hungry- what’s the healthy snacks or go to quick healthy meals. When you’re nursing or the little one is napping? What happens with the other kids?
- Read 7 habits of highly effective families
- Be you not a poor version of someone or something online
- Time for reflection, adjustment and reconnection. Give yourself a break. We all make mistakes, try and fail. Get back up and get going again.
- Collaborate with the family. Everyone must feel like they are heard. Find situations where both adults make progress on moving the family forward. We can’t pull our partners along. That resistance is them digging their heels in. Collaborate.
- Seek out new scripts to try with the kids for explosive situations- sibling interactions, conflicts, answering back, sharing, biting, tantrums.
- Lay out your own path.
- Spend time outdoors away from the house in nature.
- Have deeper conversations about discipline, inlaws, where we see ourselves in 5 years? Work on joint family plans keeps you going through the hard trudging times.
- Have a budget. Stick to it. Plan and do the things you’ve decided to do.
- Spend time away from the kids.
- Start building a bank of books that talk about character, values, emotions and actions that are difficult to explain but story brings them to life.
- Enjoy using your kindly even quiet voice when talking to the kids. Lighten up. Smile and try to flip the conversation around to get the result you want without raising your voice or going into one…
- Your environment matters. Reduce toys. Reduce books.
- Be present.
- Learn to smile on the inside when you hear parenting advice that jars with your current stance. People usually mean well. What they say tells you a lot about them and less about you. Be deft at sidestepping not stumbling.
- Adjust your parenting to your child and their situation. Some need more, some need less. Don’t fix a plan and forget it. Adjust and accept that you’ll need to adjust. We all know those one sized onesies never fit well.
- Be kind to yourself.
- Teach and train essential skills to empower our boys and girls to handle a mop, broom, washing machine, their temper, spills and a how to tackle a huge mess.
- Tell stories about good childhood experiences of yours and retell stories from the picture books to novels you’re reading.
- Travel- take trips and journeys to new places physically if possible or through movies, documentaries and books. Quickly you’ll see there’s not one way to do this lovely life of ours.
- Like a good soup flavors need to develop so does family life.. have time and space for your calmer peaceful family to develop.
- Take pictures of the good times- have them on phone backgrounds, screensavers etc to remind you of these good times when the tantrum monster comes to town.
- Compare yourself to yourself. Which direction are you going in and are you happy about it?
- Anger, rage and frustration come to stay in many homes read and learn how to model how to deal with these common emotions for you and for the kiddos.
- If yelling is a problem in your home. Try the The Stop Yelling Challenge
- Read ahead. It’s always harder dealing with problems in the moment.
- Not everyone in your family will approve of your lifestyle and parenting choices. Be at peace with that.How you react and respond to them sets the foundation for future conversations.
- Set some realistic boundaries, for your family around screens. Many of the struggles we have are because we don’t have boundaries AND a way to talk about what’s not working.
- Be on the same page with Discipline and Praise.
- Keep things simple
- Drop all the extra things. Do you really need to do it?
- Work together on activities- cleaning the house, church, road trips, sledging, gardening. Have something that you do together that has happy memories/fun and laughter associated with it.
- Mothers of boys- we have a lot to learn about our sons. They are different, special and lovely. We must educate ourselves on how parenting a boy maybe a different experience than anything we’ve experienced before.
- Learn to draw or print Picture charts so even the youngest fellas know what’s happening next in routines.
- Learn some new ways to discipline because …my goodness you’ll need an arsenal of ideas for those days when your back is against the wall. We all have that special child.
- Embrace Positive Parenting and Gentle Parenting concepts- always checking that this sits well with your family values and children’s personalities.
- Develop your own family style- it’s not your family style or your inlaws family style it’s a unique style. Allow time for this to develop.
- Not to try and do everything on this list…
Which number appeals to you?
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