(ThySistas.com) The biggest difficulty with being a stay at home mom is the lack of time you have to care for yourself. Not just care for yourself, but to be with yourself, unbothered. If you go to the restroom there are little fingers under the door and heavy breathing on the other side. If you take a shower, it’s short lived, before someone needs something that can’t be provided by anyone but you, or so it seems. You just don’t get to love on yourself as often as needed, when “working” such a high stress “job.” The most common misconception is that being at home with your children is not work, however, you know the truth. It is far more than most do at their nine to five. While it is difficult to find time for yourself, it can be done. If you just make a few adjustments and stick to them no matter how difficult they may get or what you have to give up to achieve it.
Schedule Bedtime
This is often a controversial topic. Some mothers feel like six is too early but nine is too late. The beauty of this part is it all depends on you and what is best for your household. You want to make sure you pick a time that will allow you to get self time in, before the usual time that you go to sleep. You also want to make sure you factor in the 30 minutes to an hour that it will take for the children to actually be sleep. Usually, once they are put to sleep, that’s when they get the most energy, have all of these unnecessary questions, and are just plain avoiding going to sleep.
When creating a bedtime schedule also keep in mind that in order to make this sleep schedule a success you will have to cook dinner by a certain time. If you are hoping to put your children to sleep by 7:30 pm, then you might want to start dinner around five o’clock. This is to make sure you have enough time to cook and feed your children before they go to sleep and not have to alter the schedule. Also consider the time it will take to do your night time routine if you have one.
Schedule your Day
As a stay at home mom one of the things that often goes unrealized is that food is a really big portion of the stress. Not just the food itself, but what to eat and when to eat it. If you schedule the times that you will feed your children everyday, it will make your day run smoother. You’ll know that every morning at eight, or what time fits best for you, the children should be eating. Not only will having a scheduled time for feeding provide structure but it will also allow you to alleviate that feeling of the day getting away from you. You’ll be able to look at the clock and know what comes next and how much time you have to get there. Allowing you to fit in whatever other work you need to have done.
Also, if you can, schedule what you will be preparing for the day. It doesn’t matter if you do it the night before, the week before, or the morning of. This will save a lot of time you often spend worrying or trying to figure out what to feed yourself and the children. Hunger is the primary reason that most children cry, are impatient, and are usually in your face. So if you can schedule it out and have them on a schedule, their stomachs will adjust to the schedule and they won’t even get hungry until that time. If you have other important occurrences in your life then you want to make sure to schedule those as well, however, just scheduling feeding times and sleep time will provide some additional you time.
Keep Them Occupied
The primary reason why children are seemingly unruly is because they don’t have anything to do in order to occupy their time. Sure a phone or tablet will keep their attention for a certain amount of time, but it gets old as well. You want to make sure first that they are getting a good balance of leisure and educational time when using technology. It’s also beneficial to be with them during the educational time, so that you can re-enforce what they should be learning.
Outside of technology you should have a few go to activities that will fill up the time when they are not on technology, unless you have a technology free home. Technology free in the sense that you don’t allow your children to use it. In that case you would want to have quite a few different activities for them to do. The activities that are the most effective are the ones that you do with your children. A few examples are coloring using a coloring book, drawing on blank paper, block building, learning toys, chores, etc. The more their minds are occupied the more time you will have to focus on other things. Be mindful that if you have multiple children there will still be some fussing, fighting, and crying but it will be minimized.
You got this. Just a few simple changes will have your days feeling more productive and less of a drag. Sometimes all you need is a start and then everything else falls into place.
Staff Writer; Sister Victoria X
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