Episode 172: Mindful Parenting During the Holidays: Staying Present and Enjoying the Moment
/Welcome to another episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast. This episode holds a special place as it's our last one before a brief holiday break, and I'll be back to connect with you in 2024. As we approach the holiday season, I wanted to share some thoughts on how to stay present and enjoy the moment in mindful parenting during this festive time.
Here are some key takeaways:
Mindful parenting and its key components
Sharing my simple, daily activities that keep me present and joyful
Holiday-specific practices to cultivate mindfulness
I hope these practices bring you peace, magic, and joy during the holidays. May you savor the moments and create memories that last a lifetime. As we wrap up this episode, I want to express my gratitude for being part of The Balanced Parent Podcast community. We'll be taking a break for the holidays, but I'm sending you warm wishes for a mindful, joyful holiday season and a fantastic New Year. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with me, and let's make 2024 a year of balance and presence.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody. This is Dr. Laura Froyen. And this week's episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast is our last one before we take a small break for the holidays. So after this episode, I will see you in the New Year in 2024. And I wanted to leave you this week with just a quick episode on how you can bring more mindfulness and presence into your holidays and how that can increase your enjoyment and decrease your stress. As I'm recording this, we are approaching Hanukkah. You'll be listening to this in the midst of Hanukkah and Christmas will be approaching solstice and a variety of other winter holidays are looming on the horizon for so many parents around the world. And I know, oh, believe me, I know how much pressure is on us as parents. We moms especially carry the load of creating magic and delight and joy for our families. And I want to hopefully have a minute before we kind of get into the meat of this episode to just relieve you of some of that burden. It's an unfair burden. It's unfair to expect us as parents to create out of thin air, the sense of joy and magic. It's really, sometimes I think that this idea is driven by a lot of consumerism and capitalism. And ultimately, it's not rooted in the truth of children and childhood. Children are naturally inclined to find magic joy and wonder to engage in the process of awe very, very naturally. They do not need very much to get there. And so we'll talk a little bit about how your mindful presence can actually amp up their experience of being in the present moment, their experience of wonder, joy, awe, and magic.
We'll talk about that, but really, I just want you to know that these are not things you need to do. I'm not going to be adding anything to your, to do list or anything to your shopping list. I actually think kids need far less than what they're inundated with in order to experience that joy and magic. And the other piece that I want for you is to know that you are worthy of that sense of peace and magic and joy and wonder and delight as well. And that you actually learning how to experience that for yourself, how to be with that for yourself in the present moment will enhance the experience of those around you. And even if it didn't, you're worthy of it just in and of yourself. Before I sat down to record this message. I was enjoying a cup of tea. I don't know, it's like the winter blend that Trader Joe's puts out at this time of year. I only buy one box when it's gone. It's gone. It creates a little bit of kind of specialness and ceremony to it. And I was just sitting there in my house alone. The kids are at school savoring that and thinking about how often we as moms, dads too, don't allow ourselves the gift of just sitting in a moment, engaging with our senses and drawing pleasure out of it, drawing enjoyment, drawing delight out of it. I was feeling the warmth of the, of the mug in my hands, smelling it. You know, it was a complete sensory delight to engage in drinking this tea. It didn't take a long time, you know, really 60 seconds is all I needed to really kind of savor it and be in it before I came in here to record this episode for you. And so I think bringing that spirit that we get to have pleasure and delight and wonder and joy in our holiday season can relieve some of that burden.
Finding ways to incorporate that I think is so so important. And in doing so, our kids will join us in that. So if our kids see us having a moment in front of, you know, the Christmas tree or in front of the fire where we drop into the present moment, our phones are away and we're really just reveling in the beauty that we've maybe helped create in our home or the coziness of a soft blanket, they will join us, they will be drawn to that. And those are the things that create that sense of magic, wonder and delight for our kids. Not big activities, not big objects, big shopping lists, you know, big things. It's, it's about those moments with each other that are so important. I think it's also really important to know that the act of engaging in mindfulness practices is just good for our nervous systems. So we know this, we also know that it's hard to, you know, parents always tell me that they just don't have time to meditate or they can't find their way into it. So I'm not even talking about meditation. I'm we are talking about mindfulness. So let's talk for a second before we dive into some specific things you can do this holiday season to be more fully present.
What is mindfulness in general? What are the benefits and then how to bring it into your your holiday this year. So the key components of mindfulness are present moment awareness. So this is about being fully present in the current moment, paying attention to one's thoughts, feeling sensations and the surrounding environment, nonjudgmental awareness. So, mindfulness encourages a curious, open and noncritical mindset. As you observe thoughts, motion, sensa sensations that roll through your body. So rather than judging those experiences as good or bad mindfulness is really about accepting them as they are. Another aspect of mindfulness that's important is focused attention. Often, mindfulness practices involve directing your attention to one specific element of your environment or your current being. Breathwork is kind of the easiest to access because you have your breath everywhere, it can be a home for you to go to and we will talk about a few other ways to practice mindfulness during the holidays beyond breathwork. Another aspect of mindfulness that's really important is acceptance. Mindfulness involves accepting the reality of the present moment, including any challenges or discomfort or stressors. And as we know, as we move into the holiday seasons, those can be plentiful. In addition to the joy and fun, the stress is coming right along with it. And so mindfulness is about accepting the reality, the lived experience that you are in the midst of. And about it's, it's really, this acceptance is really key to cultivating a non reactive and a kind of a non struggling attitude when we are resistant to what's happening if we are laden with the shoulds of how things something should be going, how our kids should be acting, what our house should look like, what our food should be like. We are stuck in that resistance and it causes pain and suffering. And so acceptance is, is not about like laying down and being a doormat or, you know, giving up, but it's about noticing what is and approaching what is, how it actually is in the moment with peace and awareness without the desire to change it in that moment. You can have the desire to change it later, but in the moment when we're noticing, we're just accepting it as is. And then the last piece that I wanted to touch on is intentionality.
So, mindfulness is a deliberate and intentional practice. It involves making a conscious choice to bring attention to the present moment and to do so regularly. And again, when we're, we're thinking about mindfulness, you don't have to be perfectly mindful. The the reality is is that your attention will wander, it will move to other things, it will move to your to do list, it will move to your inner narrative. It will, you know, the voices will start chattering in your head. You, you know, you will be distracted and mindfulness is not about achieving some perfect state of not being distracted. It's about exercising that muscle of returning attention intentionally choosing to let go of the distraction, say, you know, you can come back to it later and coming back into the present moment and that muscle exercising that muscle has huge benefits, especially for parents. So there's lots of research on the use of mindfulness practices to reduce stress, to increase patience, to enhance our ability, to attend and focus on the things that matter to us. But for parents and especially mindfulness can help you increase your ability to stay emotionally regulated. It can help you not get caught up in the stories, the narratives that perhaps are coming from your past and pulling you out of the present moment with your kids or kind of whatever is happening in the moment. And so by exercising that muscle outside of the moment, you increase your capacity and your access to that ability in the moment. That's why self emotional regulation is increased. You're able to be in better, more conscious communication patterns when you are well regulated and when you've practiced this outside of the moment, because you're able to stay kind of in the here and now and the words you choose are can be more, you can be more actively intentional in the words that you choose to say to a partner or to your children or to other loved ones. And they will be coming from a place that's grounded in the present as opposed to the past or worries about the future. Practicing mindfulness can also really increase the resilience that you have as a parent, your capacity to handle the ups and downs and those stressors. So it might not necessarily change the amount of stressors in your life, but it can improve your capacity. And it's also a really great way to model healthy, a healthy self relationship. So we'll be talking soon about some specific practices you can do during the holiday to to bring some mindfulness in. But these are lovely things to, to be modeling for your kids.
And finally, the last two that I wanted to just make sure I mention is that mindfulness practices can actually really increase your felt sense of an enjoyment and connection in parenting. So parents who regularly practice mindfulness, practice dropping into that present moment, allowing themselves to become fully aware of what they're experiencing in the good times and in the hard times express deeper, more authentic connections with their children and with their partners and tend to enjoy their lives more. I don't know about you, but I did not. Well, gosh, you know, when I became a parent, I had, I had no idea what I was in for. I don't know that any of us really do. I was not expecting it to be as difficult for me as it has been. I've faced plenty of challenges over the years of my, you know, my 11.5 years of parenting. And I will say the times where I am more distracted, more resistance to what's going on. More likely to slip into numbing behaviors, the numbing of social media or technology, food. Those are the times when I'm least happy in my, in my actual parenting versus the times where I am actively pursuing, being in the present moment with my family. Tho those periods of my life are the ones that I look back on with my kids with the most joy. And that's really what I thought parenting was going to look like. And of course, you know, it can all be positive, right? We have to have the ups and downs of life. That's just the reality of being a human. There will be ups and downs and thank goodness that there are that we get the the awesome gift of being full humans able to experience the full range of human emotion. That's wonderful. And I, I just know for me personally that when I'm making a concerted and intentional effort, things are so much better for my own experience in parenting and I think that they're better for my kids too. I definitely have more patience. I'm less snappish. I'm able to be my best self.
So I wanted to share some of the things that I love to do. Things that are really easy for me. They, you know, they might not be easy for you and that's totally okay. But these are some of the things that I find are easy to weave into the fabric of my day and that really helped me stay present. Okay, so first is just a breathing exercise. I like to do box breathing. Sometimes it's called four wall breathing. But I also really love 478 breathing. So box breathing or four wall breathing is taking a breath in for four, holding it for four, breathing out for four, holding it for four. So that's something that's easy and accessible and it's right there. I like doing that at transition times. So maybe like the start of my shower in the morning or as I my body wakes up in bed in the morning. That's something that I will sometimes share with my kiddos. But 478 breathing is similar, but it's really good at getting kind of all of the the oxygen out of your body and helping kind of reset some of your breathing patterns. So it's really good for reducing anxiety, really good for reducing stress. It's evidence based. So it involves breathing in for four seconds, hopefully through your nose if you can, holding the breath for seven seconds and then exhaling slowly through the mouth or the nose. It doesn't, I don't think it matters for eight seconds. And it can really help get to you, get you to sleep. So I use that one when I am attempting to fall asleep. So just focusing in on the breath and I also use that one during high stress times. So if I for example, know someone who kind of activates me or triggers me is going to be coming over, like a loved one who I find challenging to be around. I will do some of that breathing while they are walking to the door. Or I will excuse myself and have some of those that breathing so that the 478 breathing that was recommended by my doctor who has been helping me get through my adrenal fatigue. And it's been wonderful for me. So yes, 478 breathing, you can do a Google too if you want some more information on that one.
I also love to do body scans as I'm waking up and falling asleep, kind of coming back into my body. So a body scan is starting at your toes and gradually working your way up, paying attention to each part of your body, noticing any sensations or areas of tension and then consciously releasing tension as you go. I mean, you can also do it with an intentional kind of muscle activation and then release that can help release tension in your muscles. As a trauma survivor, I found body scans very difficult and challenging for a long time. I needed to do them, supported with a body worker or a breath work coach while I was learning to do them to feel safe. So, if you don't always feel safe in your body and those that can be challenging. So do that with care for yourself and allow yourself to, to pass on that one if it doesn't feel good. I've spent a lot of time and work with my various therapists to help my body feel like a safe space after traumas. And so now it feels good, but it didn't always. And that took work with professionals to get there. So again, be compassionate with yourself, take the low hanging fruit, do what's easy this time period during the holidays is not the time to take on a new practice that's really challenging. Okay, so I'm offering you some options. There's lots of other options out there, find ones that are easy for you. But that is one that for lots of people, it is quite easy and accessible. Both of my kids like to do that when they're having trouble sleeping.
I also really love mindful walking. So having a date with nature where you are, you're not using headphones, you're fully present in your body as you walk. Your goal for mindful walking should not be to elevate the heart rate or get your exercise in. It's about being fully present in your body and in nature. So usually these walks are short and you are really attending to your body in motion. You are noticing the how your foot rolls onto the ground with each step. You're noticing the feel of the air as it brushes your cheeks as you move you're really paying attention to your body and or your surroundings, you're really noticing the rustle of the trees or the, the chirp of a bird nearby. So the mindful walks are one of the things that are just so good for my nervous system. And I find that my children often love to join me on them. If you are a parent of a toddler, we know that when we go out for walks with toddlers, they go at their own pace and they cannot be rushed. Learning from them allowing them to teach you how to slow down and be in the present moment. Oh, man, toddlers are such a gift for that. So if you have the opportunity to go for a walk with a toddler, take it, I, you know, when my kids were in that stage and we had, we were walking to the park, sometimes, you know, we had an hour and a half to go and play at the park. We sometimes wouldn't even make it there because we took so long and that was okay, because kids are so good at being in the moment and enjoying the process, enjoying the journey. And so, it's really easy for us as the adults to put on our kind of goal oriented culture onto kids. Kids are very good at teaching us how to release the end goal and be in the moment for the journey I highly encourage you to, to practice and let your kids teach you how to practice that.
And then another mindfulness practice that really that I love to engage in on a regular basis is gratitude. So setting aside a few minutes each day to reflect on things that you're grateful for. Sometimes, you know, when you're starting, you know, three, a small number is good challenging yourself to list more than 10, can be really good practice because to do so you have to get into the nitty gritty of things. You know, you can, it's easy, you know, three or five. You know, we have, we have that many people in our family, we're grateful for them. It's easy to put those down. But when we get into 10 or 15, we really have to start noticing the small things that we're really grateful for that. We appreciate that we, that we would miss if they weren't there, the smell of our coffee in the morning, the feel of our child's head pressing against our shoulder. You know, when we are snuggled up in the back seat of the car with them, you know, I mean, just, there's just so many things to be grateful for that we don't even notice or pay attention to the human brain is really good at noticing threats and noticing things that they want it wants to change. It's less good at noticing the positive things that are already happening. And that makes sense, right? So our human brain is tasked with keeping us safe and alive. So it makes complete sense that that this helpful human brain isn't great at noticing the things that are already positive and great in our lives, but we can train it to do so, we can help help it, help us start being more aware of the the blessings that we have in our lives. So those are some general practices that that I enjoy and help me and my family.
I just wanted to tell you a few that I do specifically during the holiday season that really increase my pleasure and joy and allow me to be a better and more present parent. So the first one is the act of decorating. So when I'm decorating our house, we are, I don't know that we necessarily identify as Christian anymore. I mean, we totally celebrate Christmas. We have a, a manger scene. I grew up Catholic and so did my husband. But I don't know, you know, we don't really go to church anymore. We celebrate the solstice where my husband is Polish, I'm Norwegian by descent. So we kind of bring in some Scandinavian traditions like we celebrate Santa Lucia day. So we kind of dabble in a variety of things. I love, I love the decor for this time of year. I love the twinkling lights. I love the evergreens. I love, I just love all the sparkle and the glitz and, and it's ok if you don't love those things, right. We're individuals, we're able to be ourselves. It's okay for me to love those things and it's ok for you not to, but when I am decorating my house, when we're working together as a family to decorate my house, I like to put my hands on every single thing that goes up. I appreciate it. I notice it. I discussed with my family where we got it. So all of our Christmas ornaments are labeled with who gave them to us or where we got them for what event, you know, each ornament that goes onto our tree has significance and meaning and I touch each and every one of them and discuss it with the family. So decorating our tree is just this like delicious moment of mindfulness and presence and love and enjoyment for our family and to you that might sound exhausting and burdensome to hear me describe that.
And I want to tell you that's okay, if you never do your Christmas tree or you don't have a Christmas tree or you never do any decorations like that. It's, it's totally okay if that feels overwhelming and not your cup of tea, that's okay. But I would encourage you to find, you know, if you do decorate for holidays at this time of year to find some opportunity to drop into the present moment with the objects you're choosing to put around your home, to really connect with him and think about why am I choosing this? What pleasure does this give me over my, my kitchen where over our kitchen sink, we have this ledge and normally that ledge is filled with plant cuttings that I'm propagating. But during Christmas, I fill it with pink colored Christmas decorations. It's the only part of the house that has pink in it. And it just, each little piece has been carefully chosen and curated over the years to bring me a lot of joy while I'm so that I have something so beautiful to look at during this season, while I'm doing dishes and I just encourage you, you know, again, like there's no pressure to decorate your house, there's no pressure to do any of this. But if you are just look at these things as an opportunity to drop into that present moment and, and handle, you know, if it means you're putting out a candle, you know, you're placing a candle in a candle holder, hold it in your hand and think about the beings, the bees that worked together to create that wax. The humans who perhaps dyed it and formed it. The workers who packaged it and put it on shelves, the person you who chose it and brought it to the cash register, the worker there who checked you out, you know, I mean, there's just in a candle that you're putting in a menorah, there is just so much that goes into that candle. Allow yourself to witness it, allow yourself to see it, to experience that whole kind of production, really notice it. And if you have the capacity, do it out loud. So you can model that for your kids and feel that gratitude well up within you.
Okay, so I feel like I went a little deep on that one, but I just, I really do love this idea that you know what we choose to put in our house has meaning to us. Maybe not everything but certain things do. And so it's okay to drop into the present moment with those things and savor that meaning. Okay. Another practice that we do at the holidays that I really enjoy is we have this Advent Calendar. It's shaped like in a triangle, kind of like a tree and has these little compartments that you can put things in and we set it out. And we set it out empty. I know advent calendars are supposed to open it and take something out. But instead we set it out empty and over the course of our lives together, we've collected little rocks and acorns, shells, you know, just little pieces from our family walks. And so what we do with our advent calendar is, we fill it as we count down to Christmas. And so we, you know, each evening the children get to choose one thing we talk about where we collected it from what we were doing as a family and we place it in the calendar. So that like that practice really helps us kind of review the year, savor our family memories, appreciate nature. We really enjoy that one.
Another thing I invite you to do is to engage in mindful eating this holiday. So during the holidays, we often have lots of food and drink experiences that we don't get to have throughout the rest of the year that feel quite special. Allowing yourself the gift of savoring those things, really sitting down and being fully present with your body, with your taste buds, with your, with your senses of smell and touch. Kind of really getting into all of those things can be really delightful, inviting your kids to be a part of that. There are really many kids are very, very good at this, very naturally. It might seem weird to them at first if you don't do this often. But they just need the smallest invitation, just the smallest little like if you're having a cup of cocoa together, the smallest little invitation to smell it before you drink it and really like like really just talk about what do we smell, you know, like, oh look, I'm noticing how the marshmallows are starting to melt in there and it's creating these rivers of white and I'm just wondering what that will taste like. You know, really heightening that experience. It doesn't have to be for every meal. It doesn't have to be for everything you are consuming, you know, or drinking over the holidays, but take a couple of moments to really do that with, for yourself and for your kids.
And then the last thing that I think can be really fun this time of year is going for walks as a family. So whether it's a nature walk, or a walk through your neighborhood, noticing the other decorations that other families have put up or noticing kind of what's going on in your, you know, your world, your part of the world during this time can be a really lovely thing to do. Here in the US, it's quite dark after dinner, we like to do those walks in the evening. Sometimes we bring a lantern but sometimes we don't, we do wear reflective gear, and being out in the quiet with the snow, can be quite magical just being fully present with each other with the warmth of each other's hands as we're holding them. And, you know, just noticing what we see. Okay, so I know that the holiday season can be both joyful and hectic. So I'm hopeful that you can take some of the things that you learned here in this episode and apply them to your life and that they can help you savor the positive stuff that's happening while managing and coping and navigating the stressful stuff. I think it's really a great idea to start weaving some of these practices just into your daily life or into the fabric of your holiday celebrations. So let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you. And, if I don't, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a joyful New Year and I'll see you in January.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!