Life between picking your battles, and the path of least resistance…
If there’s one thing I have learned without a shadow of a doubt it’s that my PRESENCE with my kids is more important than what I let them eat, play, watch or do. That’s not to say that I let them eat, play, watch or do anything they please, it just means that my presence with them will always trump anything & everything else when it comes to improving (or even just surviving!) anything.
My family are, what I would definitely describe as, a “happy family”. That’s not to say we are “perfect”, far from it, and we are even further from “normal” (whatever that means anyway). We have also managed to survive through a daily life situation that could be deemed one of the toughest, and that is where the dad / husband is a shift worker. We’ve been very grateful for the amazing effort he puts in to pull off the rotating 12 hour days & nights in order to provide for his family (which has also enabled me the freedom to set up & run my own business), personally he inspires me at the level of routine, discipline & good health he is able to maintain in order to make it through the process each time as well.
We’ve made some major changes along the way that have helped a lot, such as adding another room onto the back of our small floor boarded house as a multi purpose space for my work, family & social gatherings, but mainly to have a space to retreat to when the kids are in their normal “life is super exciting I just need to jump & scream about it” mode.
In earlier times, with every nightshift I became a tight ball of twitches with a gruff throat from attempting to do a “quiet yell” to constantly remind them about their sleeping father. It’s been quite a juggle attempting to teach them respect for other people while at the same time trying NOT to squash their spirit.
Another thing I have had to come to terms with is that while consistency is optimum wherever possible, there are no hard & fast rules that can apply ALL THE TIME when it comes to parenting, and we risk setting ourselves up for failure if we attempt to try.
Personally I’ve concluded that parenting in fact does dwell somewhere in between picking your battles and the path of least resistance, the sacred middle ground we can reach via… PRESENCE.
The shift work has been a blessing for the days off in between shifts where we are able to spend time as a “whole” family and can all bounce off each other in a more balanced way, where the mother/father dynamic, that thankfully works beautifully between my husband and I most of the time, is at play. The times however when my husband is on dayshift over the weekend and has the longer sets of nightshifts are the times where I have had to work a little harder to remain mindful & conscious of how I am interacting with the kids.
Needless to say it’s been “hard” I’ve been down the road of blaming my inability to cope on the television, we’ve watched plenty because there are times when it seemed to be the only thing that will keep them quiet. I’ve blamed it on food intolerances. I’ve blamed it on devices. But most of all, and perhaps most detrimentally, I’ve blamed it on myself. I’ve blamed it on pretty much everything, and tried everything to fix each one from the outside-in, but ultimately it was through a lot of soul searching that I eventually worked out that I absolutely must begin everything with … PRESENCE.
Our experiences have helped me to conclude that, just like anything else, what we do matters less than how we do it, or rather who we are being. Sometimes shit is just hard but it’s our resistance of what is that creates suffering not the thing itself. When we are in an unconscious battle with ourselves over what should or should not be happening (despite what’s actually happening), it’s our mind battling over the IS-NESS of the moment, and we suffer. But when we allow ourselves to be present with what is, and work through what the moment presents, we become empowered & enlightened, which thinking about it in this way, if we can pull this off as parents we truly are involved in one of the most potent spiritual training of any kind!
With CONSCIOUSNESS & PRESENCE we are able to see that life as a parent actually exists somewhere between these two realities, between choosing when to stand your ground on behalf of the bigger lessons, and choosing when to surrender & just enjoy the experience, because after all this, like anything else is but a moment in time, and this, like anything else too, shall pass.
