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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Children need to learn that there’s nothing wrong with feeling sad or mad or embarrassed or confused and that eventually those feelings will pass.
Acceptance isn’t about lying down and letting your triggers steamroll you. It’s just about acknowledging the reality of your life.
Single-tasking, Sleep, Support, and Self-compassion.
Now, whenever I find myself getting tense or stressed with the girls, the first thing I do is notice whether I’m multitasking. If I am, I call a time-out on my brain and try to focus on whatever is right in front of me, which inevitably calms me down.
Stress is the belief, feeling, or thought that we cannot handle whatever is happening.
Judging, comparing, stressing, worrying, or fantasizing about who your child is or isn’t, what they may or may not accomplish someday, or where they are or aren’t developmentally is an insidious method of multitasking and an all-too-common cause of shit loss.
Pay attention to your child; be cool with who your kid is right now and what they can do right now.
step 1: Try to realize, whenever possible, that you’re doing more than one thing at a time.
step 2: Remind yourself that you always have the option to do just one thing.
step 3: Decide if now is the right time to multitask or not.
K Are you already tense, stressed, or tired? If so, chances are good that you’ll either drop a ball or lose your shit.
K Are there any significant ramifications if you screw up?
K Are you with your kids?
K Accept that you won’t get everything done.
K Set a timer for ten or twenty minutes, and fully hang with your kid during that time.
K Be intentional and transparent about your task switching (which is what you’re actually doing).
K Get thee some help.
K Teach your children to do chores.
K Ignore the kids.
Teach and encourage them to entertain themselves.
Remember that paying attention isn’t about staying perfectly, unwaveringly attentive to whatever it is you’re doing.
Get some sleep.
Write it down.
Narrate your experience.
Narrating your experience will make it much more likely that you’ll be thinking about what you’re doing, which is way better than not thinking about what you’re doing.
Getting some space from your phone is one of the most powerful changes you can make in your life and parenting.
Chill out. Remind yourself, and truly believe, that you don’t need to read every single text, email, or headline the minute it lands in your phone.
Turn off the beeps and buzzes.
Make yourself unavailable. Familiarize yourself with the Do Not Disturb (DND) mode and use it often.
Wear a smartwatch. This is a great option for folks who are concerned about missing an important call or notification but don’t want to be distracted by everything else on their phones.
Sleep deprivation impacts every aspect of your emotional, psychological, and physical functioning. It messes with your judgment, clouds your thinking, screws up your mood, and makes you way more likely to lose your shit.
Make sleep a priority.
Be honest with yourself about how much you are (or aren’t) sleeping.
Stick to a schedule as much as you can.
Get ready for bed before you’re too tired to get ready for bed.
Regularly and frequently spending time with friendly, supportive adults (could be your spouse, a good friend, or the nice parent at the playground) calms your nervous system, making your buttons smaller, dimmer, and decidedly less vulnerable to your child’s antics.
Even if you are a professional teacher, therapist, pediatrician, or camp director, it is not your job to teach, treat, or constantly entertain your kids.
(a) reminding me that I’m not the only person who can’t do this alone, (b) giving me an opportunity to pay it forward, and (c) giving me permission to ask them for help, which is surprisingly awesome.
If you expect them to help out time and again without offering something in return, eventually they’re going to stop answering your texts.
They’re the ones who don’t clean up their house before you come over, a sweet little gift you didn’t know you needed but are damn happy to receive.
Those small moments are how you know you’re with your peeps. They don’t make you feel crazy or stupid, even when you are being crazy or stupid. They are real with you; your peeps will tell you when you need to take your kid to a speech therapist or to get evaluated for ADHD, for example, and they do it without making you feel like shit.
This is all about owning who you are, what works for you, and what triggers you.
Owning your style and your shit will help you choose the right pro team (if and when you have a choice), and it will help you find your peeps.
The more you show up, the more connected you will feel to the people in your life, and the more connected they will feel to you.
You can’t help everyone all the time. It’s not because you’re a failure; it’s because you’re a human being with limited time and resources.
Each time you say no to a request or an offer that doesn’t work for you, you’re lowering your stress, removing a trigger from your life, and making it less likely that you will lose your shit.
Each time we’re kind to someone, we’re also practicing kindness, and before long it will become easier for us to be kind to ourselves and our children, which is the very reason you picked up this book in the first place, right?
You can be kind and say no and hold your boundaries at the same time. Being kind isn’t the same thing as being nice or always saying yes or throwing yourself under the bus. It just means not being a jerk about whatever is going on.
Rather, it’s about noticing that you’re in the middle of a hard moment and making the choice to respond to yourself with a little warmth and kindness.
Just notice that you’ve had a rough moment and that you’re being unnecessarily crappy to yourself in response.
