In my current job as a mum of two I find myself in challenging situations all the time. My husband actually admitted that he prefers managing 250 employees than one little toddler and a baby. You can’t threaten them that they could be fired if they don’t do what you say and any warnings are pretty much ignored most of the time! Obviously in the evening once they are sleeping like little angels in their beds we can (mostly) laugh about the things that happened and remind ourselves that they are just children who are exploring the world, but in the actual moment we just want to pull our hair out and scream! My toddler was put into time-out twice yesterday for kicking her little brother but to be fair the time-out for probably more for me than for her! I just needed a moment to take a few deep breaths…
I’m reading quite a bit about breathing for my yoga teacher training course at the moment and it’s interesting to observe how many times during the day I actually hold my breath or sigh. Both of those habits are a sign of tension and you don’t have to be an expert to know that it’s important for the body to breathe correctly. I’m really enjoying Donna Farhi’s ‘The Breathing Book’ in which she talks about finding our natural breath again before we even go on to learning any pranayama (breathing) techniques. Looking at our children we can see how freely they breathe and how their whole bodies move when they breathe. Their breath is not yet restricted by the tight muscles and stress of every day life.
There are lots of breathing techniques in yoga that we can use to improve our breath. If you’re like me and you are still listening to your kids singing “wind the bobbin up” at 9.30pm you might not have the energy to clean your nostrils with the help of a neti pot (which is very useful!) and do 20 rounds of Alternate Nostril Breathing or Kapalabhati so what you can do is simply observe your breath and you will find that it calms you down immediately.
A one-minute breathing exercise
…so next time your toddler shows you the lovely art work they put all over the book you’re trying to read take three deep breaths and then decide if you still want to shout at him or her or if you can relax a little and just think that this page was not that important anyway…
Ha ha, we have a similar situation here Christine. Just had to buy new glasses, The oldest is also using his hands to eat (baby brother’s doing it) and “hugging” him until he cries! Nice to know I’m not alone. Might try more breathing exercises…
I need to take lessons from you. I wish I “sighed” all day long. I am more of a shouty and then crap they are only children kind of person. My momma always shouted at us and I think I am the same but I often sit at night thinking like you said I should have laughed and this year its one of my resolutions to access the situation more and think they really are only little and learning. Be more reasonable to them. I had to laugh at the drawing in your book. Buba would do that. I think you should frame it. lol Or maybe I should so it reminds me to sigh more and shout less than move on to laughter. Baby steps hahahaah Thanks for linking up to Share With Me #sharewithme
It’s hard not to lose your temper sometimes! And they can be real little devils 😉 taking a step back usually helps though. It’s really lovely that it’s one of your resolutions this year – And laughing is always good anyway! They grow up so quickly so we better make the most of this time x