The end of this month marks the two-year anniversary of the nest’s opening to the public. It feels like I’ve been at this project for much longer; I guess that’s how we often feel when we are deeply engaged in a labor of love. The nest is a dream, but it’s also the cause of a lot of stress in my day-to-day life. Ironically, I find myself time and again talking with parents about how stress influences their day. Stress makes me feel like less of a parent. As a supposed expert on children and parenting, when that thought flies into my mind it is shocking. So I figured, I would soothe myself by giving it some contemplation, and share what I do when the world and my small business tells me in the form of stress that I am not doing a good job with life and my little ones.
Read Related: Am I Really a Bad Mom?
1. Get honest with someone.
Stress can take me to situations where I am short with my kids, avoidant of my kids or worse screaming at my kids. The truth is that it is just part of being human. When our brain is in stress, anxiety and panic mode, it shifts to a primitive state of fight, flight, or freeze. Sometimes in parenting, screaming is our fight or flight or moment of insane freezing. My number one cure for dealing with this part of the stress response is to tell others my truth. Let those close, trusted friends in and tell them what you did and how you handled it so then you can both have that human connection of “me too”. A lot of times in parenting we suffer in silence, imagining that the other parents never lose it. All parents lose it. I have training and expertise and education, and I have my awful moments, so today in my blog, I am publicly sharing my truth. When this is done, I will feel better.
Read the full article on The Nest.
