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I know how precious time is for busy moms… even more if you are a single mom. Sometimes it feels like you are taking care of every one except yourself. Even going to gym might seem like an onerous task, but you keep hearing left and right how you need to exercise for good health, and it seems like you can never fit it into your schedule, or you are simply too exhausted to do anything!
What happens, if you’re like me, is you start with good intentions and then there’s a hick up and it all falls on the way side, and then you are down on yourself for not being able to sustain it.
So let me share what works for me. It has to be simple, doable and not take 2 hours of my time. The idea is to do a little bit every day and build it into a routine.
I try to do stretches in the morning using a quick yoga routine, and then I do an intense 5 minute workout. Depending on my work schedule, I will also work into my schedule a relaxing night time relaxing yoga routine (or just stretch). And I do all this from the comfort of my home. This is my new routine and I am hoping to work my way up to a 15 to 30 minute routine 2 to 3 times a week in addition to the 5 minute routine. When I get to that point I’ll keep you posted. Thing is, it’s not perfect yet but it sure is better than doing nothing. And when you see the links that I will send you to, you will understand that these short intense workouts, although brief offer great benefits.
I love Anita Goa for her yoga/fitness/palates routines. She is a personal trainer and offers a variety of videos for all types of levels (beginner to advance; relaxing to more challenging). She also has Philosophy Friday where she offers great wisdom and tips.
Here is a brief description of what she offers on YouTube:
Fitness Vinyasa™ is a dynamic flowing workout that connects traditional yoga poses, plyometrics, strength training and aerobics into creative combinations (vinyasas) linked to ones breath.
Fitness Vinyasa™ is a wholeistic approach to working out. It’s a workout designed to get your body strong, flexible, enduring and toned while having a lot of fun.
By using yoga as the foundation for this yoga inspired fitness workout you will flow, breathe, sweat while connecting to your body, mind and spirit. Fitness Vinyasa™ is not a yoga practice trying to give you a fitness workout or a fitness workout trying to give you the yoga feeling, it’s a workout that is thoughtfully crafted fusing the two into one. On the mat you are put in positions where you will learn organically about your body, mind and spirit so you can trust yourself enough to follow your own flow whether it’s on the mat or off the mat to live your life to your fullest potential.
Here are two videos I really like, the night routine and a quick 10 minute stretch routine:
I also really enjoy the intense and short workout videos that Zuzka Light has to offer.
Here is how she describes her workouts that you can find on YouTube:
Short, high-intensity workouts get your heart rate up and your metabolism moving fast. The idea is to push yourself with max effort for a short period of time, 10-20 minutes. I implement an innovative wrapping format of cardio exercises with other complex move-based exercises. This puts the body in a state of stress management to break plateaus and get real results. The exercises alone are not always complicated, but put into this complex wrapping format, the exercises together become challenging and body-changing. I like to change my workouts on a regular basis and program different move-based exercises to focus on specific areas like abs, butt, core, upper body, etc.
Here is one of my favourite leg exercise:
Finally, another type of quick but effective workout routine is called Tabata. It is a high intensity interval training. completed in 4 minutes.
Tabata training was discovered by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata and a team of researchers from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo.
Each workout lasts four minutes and 20 seconds (with 10 seconds of rest in between each set).
Here are a couple of example you can find on YouTube:
Anyhow, try it out… schedule these in. Keep me posted and tell me what works for you!
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Although a certain amount of conflict between spouses is to be expected, there are ways to fight and argue in front of your kids that are acceptable but there are ways that simply foster fear and anxiety.
If you don’t know how to fight fair it is best to spare your children. Also, please don’t expose them to adult issues. They are too young to understand and it just confuses them, worries them, and creates fear in them. Children are too young to hear about your financial problems, your work problems, or hear you bad mouth a neighbour, friends or family member.
When you know how to fight fair, and of course make up afterwards, you actually teach your children that it is normal to have disagreements with someone and you still love them regardless. It teaches them to stand up for themselves, to be assertive and not fear being rejected or unloved. It feels safe.
However, when parents resort to screaming, verbal abuse, insults, throwing things, threats, leave for very long stretches of time (e.g. 8 hours to days) and so on, children get scared. They worry that their parents will get hurt, they worry that they will leave and not come back, and they fear for their safety. Whether you know this or not, children feel the urge to protect their parents and they worry for them.
We are our children’s first teachers. We teach our children how to cope with conflict because they observe us and simply imitate us. They will carefully mirror back to us what we will have taught them, and then we will witness how they argue with us, their friends and other adults. Remember that. What children witness in their homes they repeat within the family system or in the school yard.
This is how bullies are made: redirected aggression. They can’t hurt their parents so they take it out on their siblings or their peers, or even the family pet. Hurt people, hurt people.
If you can’t keep your act together the least you can do is to not punish or scold your children when they freak out, because they are simply repeating what you, the adults, are doing. So when your child exhibits behaviour that you deem unacceptable, the first thing to do is to look in the mirror and first ask yourself if you exhibit this behaviour in any way. If you do, YOU need to change your behaviour first and your child will follow.
YOU need to own up to the dysfunctional coping style, apologize and reassure your children that you are working at bettering yourself. YOU need to take control of your anger and learn healthy ways to fight. YOU need to keep these destructive scenes away from your children.
So if your children’s angry outbursts upset and annoy you, as I said, first look in the mirror and see where in your life do you act in the same way. Your child most likely learned it from you. Your corrective lectures or punishments are hypocrisy if you exhibit the same unacceptable behaviour as your child. How can you teach a child not to hit, not to scream or throw things, be respectful if you yourself don’t put it into practice. It will just confuse them, you lose face, you lose their respect. Not to mention that you are teaching them a double standard: that people can hurt them but they can’t hurt people.
Children exposed to high conflict parents become bullies themselves or victims of bullies, they develop anxiety, depression , poor self esteem, poor coping skills, they take it out on their siblings, it teaches siblings to bully and mistreat each other, it teaches lack of respect. it makes them exhibits symptoms akin to ADHD (can’t concentrate, fidget, oppositional etc), it makes them fearful, some want to run away from home, they resent their parents, and on and on. These are but a few of the consequences of witnessed parental conflict that I have seen in my office over the years…
Furthermore, if you mistreat your spouse, it also teaches your children how to treat their boyfriends and girlfriends later on in adolescence and adulthood. You set the stage for how their relationships are likely to unfold What you model as a couple is most likely what your children will seek out with a partner. Regardless of the gender of the child. It is what we call intergenerational transmission of patterns. So if you don’t want your child to grow up to become an abuser or a victim, don’t expose them to these models.
Finally, if you cannot do it on your own, please seek counselling… and if it is passed the point of no return, for the sake of your children… end the relationship. Divorce is not traumatic to children, but high conflict is.
Lecturing them about how to behave during a conflict is a waste of time. Children learn by what they see not what they hear. You need to trust me on that one. Change your behaviour and you will see your child’s behaviour change as well.
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If you want your children to open up to you and seek advice from you when they are teens, you need to keep them close to you from the time they are little.
Too many parents are concerned that their kids will lack socialization opportunities so they are obsessed with enrolling them in all sort of activities outside the home, play dates, classes, etc. But tell me, do you usually learn new skills from a novice or from an expert?
Involving kids in all these activities and play dates are opportunities for exposure to other humans, but to think that they will learn appropriate social skills from other clueless individuals is an illusion.
You and other closely attached adults are the one who teaches your child socialization skills, and only in your home can you control what your children learn. Proof is, how many of you report how you kids picked up bad habits or manner from kids they hang out with? Or have been bullied or pushed around? Or have had their possessions stolen or broken? Can you say that these are appropriate social skills?
School, extra curricular activities, play dates are all artificial means to learn appropriate social skills. And they are not representative of real life. We don’t hang out with people who are only the same age, same color, same religion, same interests, etc. In real life, we are exposed to a melting pot of different kinds of individuals and this is how we learn. In the olden days, they had it right. Classrooms were mixed age groups and the younger children would learn from the older ones.
When you keep sending off your children to play with peers, or go to classes from a young age, where they spend less and less time with you (maybe one hour a night, if so), unknowingly, you are teaching your children that their best teachers are their peers or people outside your home. They become less and less attached to you and more and more attached to their friends.
Humans, and animals need to feel attached. After years of training them this way, it is no wonder that when they hit puberty, they don’t really care for your opinion, and look to peers for support and advise. That’s exactly what you will have taught them. It is a natural need… if you don’t make sure your children are securely attached to you, they will look elsewhere to fulfill that need.
On the other hand. If you keep your children close, you get involved in activities with them and their siblings or close friends or extended family, you feed that parent-child bond in a positive way.
Are homeschooling kids outcasts and socially inept? On the contrary, how about people who live in isolated areas? Socialization is taught at home and by adults, not peers.
So for parents of young children don’t be so worried that your children have to constantly be with other children to become social creatures. Your first concern should be that they are securely attached to you, their parents, and nourish that bond carefully, or you will lose the closeness of your relationship with your child. You want your children to come to you for support, advise, and help.
I recommend you read Dr. Neufeld’s book : Hold on to your kids. It will guide you on how to navigate this road. It is full of great advise. Look here for great courses he offers.
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