Willow & Sage Counseling

Recently, I read an article about how today’s parents and caregivers are working more hours and spending more time with their children than parents of yesteryears. This doesn’t include all the school sign ups for things like snack days and chaperoning field trips, extracurricular activities such as soccer or gymnastics, scheduling playdates with other parents, doctor appointments, school forms, and all the myriad other things that go into parenting a child these days. Just writing all of that made me exhausted!

As a matter-of-fact, the US Surgeon General recently issued an advisory warning that parental stress and pressure is a public health problem. You hear that, parents?! What you are going through is a public health problem! Are you thinking what I’m thinking? WTF?!

The article goes on to say that 41% of parents have reported that stress causes them to feel as though they can’t function more days than when they feel they can, and 48% say that the stress they feel makes them feel completely overwhelmed. Parents cite things like the rising cost of child care, healthcare and education as contributing to their stress. But they also cite not having enough time to work, take care of their children, attend to their home (cleaning, running errands, cooking), and then making sure that their own mental health is OK. School shootings and how to let their kids traverse social media also topped the list. 

It’s at this point, I’m going to call bullshit. I COMPLETELY believe that more than half of parents out there feel overwhelmed and stressed to the point of paralysis. I see it amongst my friends and family. I see it amongst my clients. I have lived this experience way more often than I care to admit. I think that the majority of parents out there feel stress A LOT, and the unfortunate fall out of that is that if parents feel stressed, then their kids feel stressed. And on and on it goes. So, what’s a parent who has 3 dozen cookies to bake by tomorrow, a project that’s due by Wednesday of next week, and 2 loads of laundry to complete to do? Well, as the surgeon general’s advisory put it, “caregivers need care too”. 

Now, this is not a new or novel idea. “Caregivers need care too” has been around for quite some time. I’m fairly certain I heard the phrase when I was in high school, back when Jesus was the QB leading our team to State. Go Rams!  But what does the term even mean? Sounds like each of us are supposed to go out there and get our own caregiver, which sounds Uh-mazing, but not entirely feasible or realistic for most people. I’d love to have a housekeeper, a personal chef, and a personal assistant but if I were to do that, then the housekeeper, chef, and assistant and I would all be standing very closely in the cardboard box I would be living in. So, what do we do?

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS

As a single mom, I was often asked, “How do you do it? How do you manage everything? You work, and have a kid, and need to deal with your house? How do you get it all done?” And I would always reply, “I take my expectations and I lower them until they meet my reality.” When my kid was 5 years old, my reality was that the dishes might stay in the sink for a few days, and we might eat a frozen meal a couple of times a week, and my kid might run around the house in her chones (that’s underwear for all my non-Latinos out there! Holla!) all weekend because I hadn’t gotten around to doing the laundry yet. That was my reality back then. 

I discuss this because what I saw then, and what I see now, is that parents put FAR too much pressure on themselves to be perfect. There’s a ton of pressure to always be calm and never yell at their kids, to have the best behaved kids on the planet, to enroll their kids in a bunch of extracurriculars so they can be well-rounded kids and to make sure they’re safe at all times, and to have a picture perfect home that could qualify for the cover of Homes & Gardens. And if we take all of that and add our natural inclination to compare ourselves to how others are doing (thanks, social media, for making that far easier to do), then we say hello to a lot of frustration and resentment. 

So, dear reader, I say to you what I say to all my clients, as well as some of my friends and family, “Take your expectations and lower them until they meet your reality”. Being realistic about what you can do within the circumstances you’re given is a HUGE first step to feeling less stress. Your kid is going to be OK if you lose your cool because they forgot their shoes at home and only just told you as you were pulling up to the school (I’m still having flashbacks about the many times that happened to us). Honestly, your kid is going to survive if they aren’t enrolled into 2-3 after school activities. Studies actually show that kids who are allowed to play instead of engage in constant structured activities become adults who are more autonomous, independent, and confident. And I promise you that your kid is going to be just fine if they have to go to school in clothes that aren’t freshly laundered but look and smell relatively decent. 

We’re not finished though, because the next culprit, the extreme and very natural urge to compare ourselves to others, is relentless and ever present. It’s actually an evolutionary trait. In order to survive, say in caveman days (Hi, Grog! Call me!), we needed to look towards others around us to see how they were surviving, especially those we considered to be thriving. If we could figure out what we were doing differently than them, then we could change that and have a better chance of surviving, and potentially thrive as well! Don’t you just love anthropology? The problem is that we don’t need to compare ourselves to others in the same way we used to in order to survive and thrive, but our brains haven’t evolved much at all since the time Grog roamed the earth (seriously, Grog, call me! You still owe me for the rock I sold you). 

BE PICKY WITH YOUR TIME AND ENERGY

The bigger problem we have on our hands these days is that the developers of social media know that we have an innate drive to compare ourselves to others and have found a way to capitalize on that in order to make money off of you. Sneaky little bastards! Look, I know that social media is a mainstay in today’s world. You’re probably reading this from a link you saw on one of my social media pages. However, research shows that if we can limit our usage of social media, we can significantly reduce our drive to compare ourselves to others, and by extension, reduce the stress we feel to live up to impossible to reach expectations of parenting.

Right now you’re saying, “But my kid was invited to 2 birthday parties this weekend and I don’t want them to feel disappointed if we don’t go to one or both of them”. Guess what! Your kid will survive if they don’t get to go to both parties or neither party. They will learn a wonderful lesson on how to manage disappointment. The point here is that you get to choose whether or not to go, and you get to choose instead to use the energy you would have spent going to a party with a bunch of people you barely know and most likely will never spend much time with, on connecting with people who you really do like to spend time with, or simply spending time at home. The idea here is to preserve and protect your own energy and time so that you can utilize them both for things you actually enjoy or want to do. 

WE LOVE TO CONNECT

Here’s another anthropological lesson for you- we humans are designed to connect with others. We actually survive and thrive more when we are able to connect with those around us and have a sense of community. Let’s go back to Grog (ugh, dude, pick up a phone already!) who is wandering the world alone. He might be doing OK, but he’s far more susceptible to harm or death. But if he were to connect with other cavemen and cavewomen, he would have the protection and support of the group and he would benefit from all that they bring. He would also feel less alone. 

An increasing number of parents report feeling alone and isolated, which can lead to anxiety, depression, and high levels of stress. What’s the saying? “It Takes a Village”? Yeah. It does. And that village cannot be found on some internet forum or social media platform. Like Grog, we need real world support and assistance. We need someone we trust who will watch our kids for us while we go run errands or, even better, go to happy hour with friends. We need validation and comfort that comes from two people building a strong bond together. We need a sense of community.

We also need to connect to nature! Recently I heard that we need 67 minutes a day outside, preferably where there is greenery. 67 minutes. What a strange number, right? Anyway, spending time outside, even in your backyard, helps to regulate your nervous system, and gives you the ability to connect to something bigger than yourself. 

The surgeon general has made it very clear that parents aren’t doing OK right now. And while it would be great for lawmakers and employers to help solve these problems, it’s also very important for parents to practice self-care now while waiting for lawmakers and employers to get their heads out of their asses and fix it.