A Little Bit of Me Time

I am a massive fan of spending time away from my kids…wait that sounds wrong…

I am a massive advocate of maintaining personal interests and relationships beyond those of my children. After I have raised my amazing children the last thing I want to do is wake up next to my husband and think ‘who the hell are you?’ or perhaps even more frighteningly look in the mirror and think ‘and your name was???’

Any parent will tell you that finding time for yourself can be a major challenge. But like so many things in life a little bit of effort can have big rewards.  Its not always possible or desirable to have large chunks of time sans children (although as this is being posted I will be enjoying a lovely night away with my beloved. )  Often it’s the little things that can add up to make a larger picture, it is sometimes far easier to steal away a few cheeky moments here and there. This is something I try to make sure I do as often as possible.

I am not talking about neglecting or ignoring our kids but I think its important to ask yourself what its really going to help me and my family. Is it me rushing about cleaning while bubs sleeps or is it me reading my magazine and having a cuppa.  Because if it’s the latter, that’s fine. I want my kids to look back of their childhoods and think ‘that was fun, mum seemed mostly happy’ not ‘my mum was cranky and exhausted all of the time’. I don’t want my children to view me as a work horse. I want then to understand that we all have needs and every member of our family is important.

I understand there is only so much we can give out without needing to put back in.  As mothers we give our kids everything, we give them use of our bodies to grow and feed them, we give them our minds as we are constantly thinking about them, planning how to help them. We give them our hearts  as we watch them grow and at times making the wrong choices.  I'm sure some would say the some of the same for fathers but I'm not a father so I won’t speak from experience on that topic.

I believe that when we give ourselves permission to go to the gym, catch a movie, read a book, hang with a friends, do a class, work on or craft, pursuit our careers that we are not only filling ourselves back up a bit which helps us be better mothers. We are showing our kids that we value ourselves enough to take care of ourselves, this in turn reminds them that all people are valuable.  I hope that when my kids are older that they will remember the way their parents took time for themselves and that we weren’t just there to provide care for them that we are people just like them which hopefully will deepen our relationship.