The sweaters are coming out of closets and the leaves are turning crimson. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder. It’s officially fall!
Summer is great because you can enjoy the outdoors all day, every day. But don’t miss out on the fun that’s still to be had. Your family can enjoy every last bit of this fresh, crisp fall weather before you’re officially locked indoors with the bitter snow whipping at your door.
Here are some fun family ideas to enjoy this perfect season:
There are millions of parents who suffer with anxiety and yet still need to perform the job of parenting. Anxiety doesn’t stop us from needing to get the children ready for school, packing nutritious lunches, or driving them to after school sports. We must continue to do this all with the tint of anxiety colouring each activity of the day.
There is a litany of things that you keep to yourself about parenting. You don’t read about it in parenting books and you definitely don’t share it with your friends who don’t have children.
But other parents? Oh, they totally know.
They know about your not-so-secret secret. You might not talk about it with them but they know, all the same. In fact, they probably have different versions of the same shameful secret.
I know it’s a ridiculous hang up to have. I know I’m making a huge mistake.
I really do know how practical they are. I honestly get it. My in-laws have one and every time I borrow it, I’m astounded by how much easier it is to get from point A to point B.
Do you see dark circles and heavy bags from sleepless nights and endlessly long days? Or do you see glowing eyes that sparkle at the very sight of your children? Expressive eyes that have shed tears of exhaustion and joy from the abundance of emotion that comes with raising children.
As parents, we never want to appear self-indulgent. It can be one of our greatest fears.
But let’s stop and think about this for a minute.
The definition of self-indulgence by Merriam-Webster is:
excessive or unrestrained gratification of one's own appetites, desires, or whims.
Really, what are the odds that, as a parent, you’re ever really self-indulgent? Perhaps child-indulgent or family-indulgent but I doubt many of us are excessively gratifying our own appetites, desires, or whims.
Just a few weeks ago Canadian YouTube comedian Jasmeet Singh, better known as Jus Reign, was clearing security at a San Francisco airport. As a turban-wearing Sikh, he revealed he is accustomed to ‘random checks’ and didn’t think much of it when he was asked to go to a private room for further screening.
Please keep in mind, he stated that this was after he had already complied with the following:
I can’t be the only one who looks to my phone as an escape. Whether it’s an escape from a toddler tantrum of epic proportions or a preschooler acting out her not-quite-teenage angst, it’s an easy way to temporarily pretend that the situation will resolve itself. Or, at the very least, they’ll become bored of it and move onto something else.
So you’ll have to forgive me if I pick up my phone, log into Pinterest, and mindlessly scroll for a few minutes.
