- I homeschooled my four kids,
even before Corona was a thing
and do you know what their main complaint to me
would be at the end of the day?
Mom, you didn't spend enough time with me.
I mean, we had been spending pretty much all day
every day together and this is what my kids would say to me.
Because here's the thing, as we all know,
we can spend time with someone
and we can spend time with someone, right?
Being really with them.
You might be with your kids all day but you're absent.
You are on your phone, you're in your to-do list,
you're frazzled picking stuff up.
You're anxious, you're in your thoughts, right?
And that's totally natural and normal
and we're all experiencing that, especially now.
I wanna tell you that it is completely unrealistic
and undesirable for you to be fully present
with your children every day.
That is not a possibility nor is it something
that would be good for your kids.
It would create a great sense of dependency
and they wouldn't have time to play
and explore the world on their own terms.
However, kids do need to feel connected to us
and they do need some undivided attention
and focus at some points throughout the day.
So I wanna share a really helpful tip
that will help us bridge these gaps, right?
On the one hand, kids need our attention.
On the other hand, we can't give it
and we don't wanna give it all day
and we all need that sense of separating
and coming together, right?
So that it's not constant constantly,
all the same type of gray, mushy feeling
of kind of together and kind of not.
Instead we wanna polarize things
come together more intensely
and then separate more intensely,
even within the four walls of our home.
So I wanna share this tip that has helped me immensely.
It was brought to me by Magda, by the founder of RIE,
which was popularized by Janet Lansbury
and one of the things that they teach there is
this idea of giving full attention during caregiving times.
So what are caregiving times?
Well, anytime you're actually taking care of your child.
Like when you're getting them up in the morning,
getting them dressed, brushing their teeth,
giving them a bath, feeding them, changing them.
Anything like that, cleaning them, etc
is when you're taking care of them
and the idea in RIE is to be fully present for those times.
During those times, you look into your child's eyes,
you talk to them, you relate to them,
you really put your attention on them.
You put your phone away, you put your thoughts away
and you're like, babe, I am here with you.
You bring them your full presence to that moment.
So when you're sitting down for a meal together,
you're there with them, you're watching them eat,
you're helping them, you're talking to them,
you're connecting, changing a diaper, wiping a tish
bring your full presence to it like I'm here,
I'm caretaking you, right?
And then the rest of the time, you liberate yourself
and you don't expect to be present with them
and playing with them and entertaining them all the time.
Sure, you still there and you're still gonna help
and support them in finding things to do
and in doing those things when you need help
but you can liberate yourself from being fully present
with them the rest of the day when you know
that you've anchored and filled up their buckets
during those points of connection.
Waking up in the morning, going to bed at night,
mealtimes, caregiving times.
I have found this incredibly liberating.
Rather than beating myself up
for not constantly being present,
I allow myself to do my other things,
to be on my computer, to be on my phone,
to talk on the phone or to listen to a podcast
or a course or whatever I wanna listen to,
whilst I'm with my kids, we're living our lives side by side
but then we come together at myriad points
throughout the day and they get my full attention
during that time.
So I really hope that this liberates you to realize that
it's better to come together fully and then separate fully
than to constantly be in this battle of
a little bit of presence and a little bit of not presence
and not really being able to enjoy
either of those modalities.
So this is helpful for you.
I want you to share out presence
during caregiving times, right?
Presence during caregiving times, share it out,
you can copy the words from the email
or on the challenge of this page and share it out
so other parents can benefit from this
and just use the #PlayPandemic.
We're running a prize competition
with all sorts of awesome prizes
like my Parent in Love course, a full Spielgaben set,
a Grimm's Rainbow and anyone joining present play
who has shared these things out can be entered to win.
So please do it, it will be so much fun
and we need a little bit of fun right now, right?
We all need a little bit of fun and a little bit of focus
on the things that we have control over.
We're the CEOs of our family.
We can do this, we were built for this
and if we want, you're gonna quickly catch up
on all of the tools that can help make this time
pretty magical and turn it from forced lock down
to a full-on family retreat.
All right, share it out guys.
Let's give full-on attention during caregiving times.
(soft music)