Information Overload

I recently had one of those distinct parenting moments when everything seemed to be spiraling toward crescendo, and responding to my daughter’s soul fever was becoming harder and harder for me. For all of the work our family has done to simplify our home environment and our schedules, I realized that I was still carrying a great deal of stress. The stress was eroding my patience. But where was it coming from?

I couldn’t quite place my finger on it. So I spent some time noticing the typical distractions that I have during a normal day. What are the things that keep me from being truly present with my children? I tuned into the “talk” going on inside my own head, and was amazed by what I heard. There was a running commentary about my parenting happening in there!

All day long, the voice of “the expert” was either pointing out the things I was doing wrong, or telling me what to do next and how and why.

Beginning with my first pregnancy, I have surrounded myself with information... beautiful, wonderful, helpful information that has guided me on my journey through pregnancy, babyhood, the toddler years and on and on. I own a tremendous amount of parenting books and books about play and books about art and books about child development. I visit nearly as many blogs on the same subjects. I honestly love these topics, and do have a great curiosity and desire to keep learning. BUT….

I was holding on too tightly.

The information was entering, but then it was paralyzing me. Instead of being present with my children, I was analyzing our time together. Instead of truly enjoying an activity, I was considering its deeper meaning.

In truth, I was missing the deeper meaning.

Just as our children can have too many toys and too many activities, we can have too many choices and too many paths to take as parents. Even those of us who desire a simple life, can find ourselves bombarded with information about what that means and what that could look like.

Inspiration is a wonderful thing. But it needs to be just that- inspiration. The wave of information needs to wash over us and inspire us and then move on. Special little morsels of truth and clarity will remain. They will inspire small changes that move us toward the life we want to be living.

When information is fueling a self-critique, it is no longer inspirational, and it needs to go! As parents, we need plenty of freedom to simply be with our children, living our own, autonomous lives together. We need to give ourselves space for creating our own magic, and having our own fun. And there are really only two places that we need to look for inspiration to do that: at our children and into our own hearts.

All the information we need is already there.