Anxiety and Kids: On Finding Rest

 

I'm going to try doing a little series on families and anxiety.  In no particular order, I will attempt to bring together some of what we have found helpful as we seek a peaceful family life and freedom from the tyranny and fatigue of anxiety.  Has anxiety cropped up in your home life?  Do you know the weariness of worry?  There is rest and peace to be had.  I promise because we are finding it.

-Kids shouldn't be too stressed out.  If life is super stressful, kids quirks will be exacerbated.   Quirks like shyness, phobias, sensitivities, and worries.  Stress, rather than making us more ourselves, makes us rely more heavily on our coping mechanisms because we feel desperate! Serious anxiety in the family is a spur to examine our life and sort out what's important, culling some activities and commitments when necessary.  We seem to regularly accumulate more than we can handle, so a periodic re-evaluation of our time commitments thrusts itself on us when we find ourselves chronically swamped.

-We seek a balanced life for everyone in the family.  Grown-ups and kids all need plenty of sleep and nice doses of work and rest and play.  Taking duty and pleasure by turns helps us find an even keel.  We also each need lots of time with good friends who love us.

 -We have found having a day of rest essential to family happiness and peace of mind and body!  A real day, not just a couple hours or part of an afternoon.  And real rest.  By "rest" I don't mean lazing about in pajamas all day in front of the tv, because that just isn't restful at all to us.  Rest is letting our spirits breathe the breath of God.

-We guard our family day of rest as a time truly set apart.  We don't schedule appointments or duties on this day, or do unnecessary work.  I have found it more restful to do the dishes and clean up after ourselves than to leave it all till the next day!  But we try to plan ahead to minimize the unavoidable work on this day, by cooking ahead simple food and even setting out breakfast the night before sometimes helps to start this special day well.

-We seek activities for our day of rest that are life-giving for everyone.  Finding ways we as parents could rest without boring the kids to death or overwhelming them, or that they could rest without wearing us out or jangling our nerves worse than workdays was something that took us a while and is part of healing as a family from anxiety.

-Make little islands of sanctuary in the regular everydays.  A little quiet, times to talk together, spaces to think and play.

 

-During the unavoidable seasons of intensity, we hold it together, and keep up what regularity we can as we ride it out.  Sometimes real rest, for one reason and another, is just unattainable.  These are the times to just keep getting a meal on the table one way or another, falling back on traditions, and clinging to the cross while we wait for the storm to subside. They are not times to give up on everything.  Nor are they are also not times to insist everything be perfect.

pretty happy funny real in Minnesota

pretty.

A day at the Mississipi. We had the place to ourselves. It was beautiful.

happy.

Love this girl. Holding baby Willem.

funny.

I'm not sure why, but watching my own papa bear assemble this hanging shelf thing with my two little bears was a hoot. I laughed the whole time. It was flimsy, and mysterious, and none of them knew what it was supposed to look like, and it took them a long time. I think in the end there may have been found irreconcilable defects with this product anyway? Cool to see them working together.

Willem is back to his regular happy self. Man, is he a great baby.

real.

I think I look like this a lot. I may not know what I'm saying, but I'm saying it emphatically.
A real note in a bottle. A boy I know suprised me when we showed up at the river, by taking it out of his backpack and flinging it into the river. Hopefully worthy hands will find it.

I am not my kids' buddy

I am in awe of God for giving me this family.
They are so beautiful, my heart is all welled up. These gifts are so good. I cherish them every day we have together.

Big question-- as a mother what's my job? They may find me a trustworthy teacher, confidant, advisor, comforter, encourager, home base, love-giver, patcher of pants, admirer of artwork, storyteller, listener. There is some overlap between a mother and a friend. Friends do some of the things mothers do. Some of this is a future question. Lucky the mother whose grown children consider her their friend. A mother can be a best friend to a pre-schooler, but not in the way that another little kid can. A baby almost looks to his mother as a part of himself. But as a kid grows, do they keep wanting Mom to be their friend? More importantly, do they need Mom to be something their friends are not?
It's dawning on me that I don't make the best buddy. Not to my kids. They have lots of other friends and family who can be buddies. Maybe that's not one of my jobs. Buddies don't tell you what to do, and hey--that is definitely part of my Mama-job. A buddy might think you're the juice no matter what you do, but it's Mama's job to help teach right and wrong, to plot the right course, to offer a timely rebuke. Mama's got to take care of you and teach you to take care of yourself.

I want my kids to love me. I love when they tell me their secrets. (Not that I have any secrets. My lips are sealed. Don't try to wrest anything from me!) I hope that we will grow more and more into real, deep friends someday. But right now, these little pups are just learning how to be. How to read, how to work, how to love. When I let myself try and be best buds, there's too much of my own hope that they will love me forever, running me. It keeps me from making decisions that are the best for them. It keeps me from being the mother I hope to be.
We enjoy each other lots, daily. It's not the enjoying I'm talking about here, or the giving and receiving of love, but when I need them to be pleased with me at every turn.


I think I need to temporarily not care too much what they think of me.
It might actually set them free. Because I'm their Mama. That's not ever going to change. Whether we're buddies today or not.

Overheard

Ezra: Wanna go adventuring in the woods?!
Fiona: I like the woods. I have a picture of me with my friends in the willow tree and we were in the woods.
Ezra: It's special when someone gives you a picture.
Fiona: No, my picture is something that really happened to me.

Our Projects

Looking at our pictures from our little family getaway with Jessica, our doula, (yeah, now we call her our life doula. ) I noticed that we all have projects we work on for fun. It's how we roll.
Even in the woods, you bet Paul has fun making mighty fine coffee.

Ezra and Gibbie did a very involved work involving corn cobs and fire. The hay meadow was planted, I think, to field corn last year, but it never dried out well so it was left on the stalks and little animals grabbed them and now the cobs are strewed all over the woods. They took these and charred them in the fire, and then Gibbie brought them to Ezra who had a station for scraping them. It was all very systematic and satisfying.
Empty pop cans became ammunition. Ezra hoarding cans. It was quite a battle.
They made torches. Sticks with dried leaves tied on with grasses. They really worked, though more smoke than light.
I like to make flower crowns.
Scouts tending the fires.

Don't tell me nursing isn't a project. I know better. This little one is still in the making.

Polaroids, new baby survival skills

Well, awesome Paul has found a way of making his old (old, old) Polaroid camera work again. I love how iconic and vintage the pictures look, as if viewed through decades. They are already nostalgic to me because the last time I saw Polaroids was when I was little, so the flaws of the images look to me like the essence of childhood.
Life with a baby; how does one do it? I met a family at the beach with nine children. I want to know: what are their secrets? They didn't look like they were at their wits' ends. They seemed happy and un-desperate, but didn't share the magic beans with me.

Willem is the sweetest baby. He is a daisy, a lamb, a child already. I delight in him, and cherish holding and caring for him. But I can't put him down! He sleeps wonderfully throughout the day, but wakes up in bare minutes if I put him down. He loves to sleep wrapped on to me with cloth, but I can't chop vegetables that way, knead bread, clean the bathroom, do anything that requires two hands in front of me.

When he does get into a deep sleep, I find myself paralyzed with all the things I could be doing! Beginning tasks is getting harder, as the interruptions are constant!
I've done this before--former me, how did you do it? Oh yeah, I cried a lot.

William Moses

So, William Moses arrived! A while ago now, and just finding the time to post now. It has been beautiful. The birth, thank God was quite and agony and an ecstasy, and both I and the baby were remarkably unscathed. He nurses and sleeps and smiles, and we are overflowing with thankfulness. And relief! Many thanks to all who help us, and pray for us, and love us.
Willem has soft brown downy hair. He has almost-brown looking-eyes. They look and look and look, in wonder at all things. He has a little rosebud mouth, which likes to smile. He has a soft voice, with which he talks to us once in a while.

Willem's big brothers are wonderful. they are laughing, jumping, swinging, dancing, drawing, singing, and creating their way through summer. I have been treated to breakfast in bed, and the baby is constantly regailed with songs and smiles. He is oh-so-loved already. We are stretching into our new size as a family, and learning how to live again with a baby. I am attending to enjoying and being present to each beautiful member of our family. Noticing and soaking up who they are today. I hope that out of this, which itself is an abiding in the presence of God, will come a new rhythm for our days. I'm winging it day by day.

I am feeling a familiar lowering of spirits; a vulnerability, a neediness of the heart for cheer and love and joy. I remember, just as in birth itself, to sink into it rather than clench against it or work to overcome it. Acknowledge the rain, and open my eyes.

Kid's Blogs

Drawings, photos, coloring pages, and real life photo journalism by the children of The Full Cup!
Gibbie's work can be seen at Gibbie'sPhotos.

And original work by Ezra may now be viewed at Ezra's Picture Pages!
Artwork is chosen by the kids, with text dictated by them also.

Gibbie's Camera

Gibbie got a camera for his birthday and has been taking a bunch of pictures (hundreds, actually). Here are some of his favorite picks:

Ezra's 4th Birthday

Monday was Ezra's 4th birthday.

We usually go to a coffee shop on Mondays, and so we asked Ezra where he'd like to go. He picked Kopplins Coffee. Here he is with the owner, Andrew Kopplin:
In the afternoon, we had an outdoor party with neighbors and some family. There was a kid pool (which Ezra was born in...), a slip and slide, and a greased watermelon.







Note: All of these pictures were taken on Arista Premium 400 film using either my Nikon EM with a 28-105 Vivitar lens, or my new Zeiss Ikon Contaflex with a 50mm Carl Zeiss Tessar lens.