Reclaim Your Parenting Energy With These Three Simple Rules

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As modern parents, our time and energy is under enormous strain - very often it feels like we don’t have enough water in our energy hoses to care for all the things in our life.

Our energy is leaking into all sorts of daily demands and we all we have is a trickle left to care for what matters most to us - our families, our children, the passions and projects we are most about. 

Much of the advice about what to do when we’re exhausted and overwhelmed centres around how to spread your energy further  - how to be more motivated… how to fit more into your life by better organising your day, your time, your schedule, your kitchen. 

But spreading your energy further is (thankfully) not the answer - especially for parents. 

Your energy is far too precious a resource and is ultimately the key factor that, if you know how to care for it, will allow you to create the easy, peaceful family life that you want so much. 

Today, I’m going to show you a much easier way - three simple, evidence-based rules that we share with the families we work with at Peace Talks, including Matthew, a father of three who came to us because he was so drained by the effort of balancing the demands of his life, he was scared he was going to lose everything -  his job, his marriage, and even his children. 

You can use these as a way to audit all of the ways you spend your time and energy, so that you can see what is working for you and what needs to go to make your family life work better. 

You can also use these rules as a filter to help you decide whether to say yes to a new activity or task - is it actually going to fit in your life, or will it deplete you further? 

Rule 1: Direct your hose carefully 

You can think of your capacity as a garden hose. The water that comes out of the hose represents all of your precious life energy.

The important thing to notice about this hose is that for it to be any use at all, you need it to point at something: the garden that is your life, which you create daily through the flow of your energy.  

This garden is different for everyone, but for you it might include your children, your family and friends, your community, the specific projects and passions you care about, the people you love and the things you love to do with your time. 

Your garden is what you want all of your energy to be directed to.

 What tends to happen in the mix of our busy lives is that we forget to direct the flow of our hose. Commitments and demands spring into your life from every angle and you react to them, giving them your energy. 

The garden that Mathew really wanted to nurture was a simple, loving home life with his children and wife, his passion for music and his hobbies, time to read and spend time with a few close friends. 

When we looked together at how he was actually spending his time, he noticed that: 

• The majority of his energy was pouring into a job, which was in a field he didn’t want to continue in.
• He was regularly checking social media throughout each day, often leaving him anxious and depressed. 
• He was attending weekly social obligations at work, with extended family and neighbours.  
• And most days, he was driving his children to activities (like soccer and dance lessons) that he wasn’t 100% sure they even enjoyed.  

Only a small percentage of his time and energy was actually making it to the things that mattered most to him: his family, his hobbies, his passions, the people and things he loved: his precious garden. 

Each of these other commitments was acting like a patch of weeds in Mathew’s garden that he was watering with his energy. He was putting so much energy into these weeds, that they were growing up and overtaking his whole garden. 

(As we will see in rule number 3 - the size of your garden matters, quite a lot...) 

As a parent, all sorts of things are going to call for your attention and resources each day, and if you're not crystal clear where you want your energy to flow, you’ll end up haphazardly spraying water all over the place, nourishing all sorts of weeds that you didn’t want there in the first place.  

So what are the beautiful flowers you want to grow in your life? Where are all of the little fruit trees you’ve planted? Where are the bulbs you want to nurture for next spring? 

These are the things you want to determinedly direct your energy towards. 

Figuring this out doesn’t have to be a massive visioning exercise, you can just take one minute right now to write down what the 5-10 things that are most important to you in your life right now. 

The secret to creating a meaningful life  that is less overwhelming as a parent is being clear what you want in your garden, and making sure that as much of your energy as possible makes it to those things - the things you care about the most.

 Any new request that comes into your life, any new task or job or committee or social engagement that wants your energy, ask yourself: 

Is this a flower I want in my garden?  

Rule 2: Patch up any holes in your hose by removing "shoulds"

Even if you know exactly what you want in your garden and you have your hose pointed in the right direction, you may still be exhausted as a parent.

This is because little holes can form in your hose that drain your energy.  

Any one of these holes doesn’t take much water away from the flow of your energy, but the cumulative impact of hundreds of these little holes is to reduce the water that actually makes it to your garden to a trickle.

To care for our energy as parents, we need to figure out what is draining our energy, and patch up those holes fast. 

In my own life and in working with parents, there is one thing that I have noticed puts holes in our hoses and drains our energy faster than anything else: "shoulds". And it’s demanding cousins: “Must” and “have to”.

Anything that you are doing in your life because you think that you “should”, "have to" or "must", is likely to be draining your energy. 

Now, this is tricky, because we live in a world that trains us to respond to "should" and "have to" from a very early age. Many of us believe quite deeply that we will only live a life that is worthwhile if we push ourselves to do the things we think we "should" or "have to" do. 

Guilt and obligation become our inner compass. 

The trick to transforming our relationship with "shoulds" is to look at the needs we are actually meeting with our actions and choices. Instead of believing that you have to do certain things because you should, take some time to explore what needs these actions are actually meeting for you.  

When Mathew looked at all of the shoulds that were dominating his time, he saw that many of them were not meeting needs for him, or were meeting needs that could better be more easily met in other ways. He was able to eliminate these items very easily. 

For instance, he realised that he was on the school board because he wanted to contribute to his community. But he saw that there were other, simpler and less energy draining ways he could meet that need. So he was able to let that one go pretty easily.

For some others on his list, it was a bit more complicated. One of the big "shoulds" on his list was that one of his daughters had a lot of difficulty sleeping, and Mathew had come to believe that he "had to" lie with her until she fell asleep each night. 

Because his action came from a "should", he resented it. It was therefore putting a massive leaky hole in his energy. 

This “should” festered inside him creating a constant gnawing resentment - with his daughter for putting this burden on him, with his wife for not supporting him well enough, with his colleagues and boss for not understanding the strain he was under. 

Each day, this resentment built in him, making him increasingly tense and prickly as bedtime approached. 

By evening, he was a grumpy, brittle mess. He would lie there in the dark with his daughter, tense and annoyed. His daughter would get quite anxious and would writhe around, asking lots of questions and trying to get some kind of reassurance, all of this further angering him. 

Each night would end with Mathew exploding, and his daughter crying herself to sleep. He  would then spend much of the night replaying this in his mind, holding on to the guilt until morning - waking, tired and depleted, and starting the whole sorry process again.

When we worked through this together, Mathew was able to see a few things about this:

• First - there were actually a number of really valuable needs that he wanted to meet by lying with his daughter each night. He wanted to spend time with her, he wanted to connect and chat and have quiet one-on-one time with her. He also really enjoyed being able to contribute to the family in this way, taking some of the strain from his wife and giving her a break. 
• Second, he realised that there were some important needs that were not being met for him while he was lying there.  He was tense and uncomfortable at this time of day when really needed relaxation and comfort. He realised that there were some simple things he could do to meet these needs better - like taking a book and a pillow with him, so that he could be relaxing while he lay there. 

Seeing his own needs transformed this daily experience for Matthew  - he was able to choose to lie with his daughter because it was valuable to him rather than because he thought he "had to". He could use the time to talk to his daughter and enjoy quality time instead of arguing. And was able to do it in a way that really cared for his needs for relaxation in the evening rather than draining him. 

The bedtime routine became a really peaceful ritual that they both looked forward to each evening. Sleep came easier to them both. 

“Should’s” drain energy faster than you realise: If we want to reclaim our energy as parents, we need to make sure we don’t do anything because we think we “should (must or have to)”. 

Here’s how you can check for yourself. Make a list with three columns: 

1. In the first, write down all of the things you do because you “should, must or have to”. Have a really good look at this list - this list is absolute gold for reclaiming your parenting energy. 
2. In the second column, for each of these "shoulds", see if you can think of a reason why you may actually want to do this thing - what is the important need it meets for you? What actually matters to you about this? What is the value that it meets for you? 
3. In the third column, write down any needs that are not being met when you do each of these things. 

Now using this information, you can reassess each of the items you have listed in the first column. For each, you can decide to delete, reclassify or redesign. 

• Delete: For any of your “shoulds" or "have to's” that don’t seem to meet many needs for you, or that you imagine you could meet these needs in easier, better ways - consider deleting these from your life.  Maybe it’s not needed at all, maybe someone else could do it, maybe there is another way it could happen altogether). If it actually doesn’t have any value for your life - make sure it is gone. 
• Reclassify: For those that seem to meet important needs, consider reclassifying these from something that you “should” or “have to” do, to something that you happily choose to do. If it is something that you actually value, that meets important needs for you, then welcome it fully into your garden, give it a sunny spot and a sturdy stake, prune and water it with the full force of your hose, not simply a trickle from a hole in the side. 
• Redesign: If there are important needs that are not being met for you in your third column, you might consider modifying this task in some way so that it’s not so hard for you, and to make sure it can meet these important needs.  Like Mathew bringing his pillow, what can you do to meet your needs better?

Rule 3: Keep your garden to a size you are able to water (deeply)

As modern parents, we under enormous pressure to continually add things to our lives - more activities, groups, things for our children to do and things for us to care for, more stuff, more issues to worry about. 

Our world is consistently encouraging us to do lots, superficially. So we are ever expanding our gardens.

But the truth is, we have limited time on this planet, and very limited time with our children. When we expand our gardens, the amount of energy we have to care for our gardens is spread over a wider and wider area - each bit gets a smaller amount of water from our hose.

Unfortunately, when you do this (as any gardener knows), you end up prioritising plants with shallow roots and encouraging superficial growth. Nothing with deep roots is able to take hold because the water doesn’t go deep enough. But the weeds will thrive!

If you look back at your garden, you will probably notice that the things that you really care about in life, like connection with your children, building deep relationships with people you love, the issues and passions you care most about, often take a lot more energy than you realise or allow for. 

These are big trees with deep roots. 

A superficial sprinkle on the soil surface is not going to soak deep enough to nurture these roots.

The trick here is to start the other way around, and ask, how much water does it take to care for the plants you want in your garden?

Looking back at the 5 or so things you wrote down as being most important to your life - how much time and energy do you imagine it would take to properly care for these things? How many hours per day, per week or per month would you want to devote to these to give them the deep care and energy that they need for their roots to properly take hold?

When Mathew looked at his life, he realised that the things he cared about the most (his family, his children, his passions) were getting the same superficial spray of water as the things that he cared very little for (the soccer team fundraising and after-work socializing).  

As soon as Mathew set aside deliberate, conscious time to nurture the parts of his life that he cared about most, these parts of his life (finally) started to thrive. 

And so did he.

By Sally Prebble, PhD (Co-founder, Peace Talks NZ)

If you are ready to learn how to apply this approach to your own life, check out our From Chaos to Connection course (we offer this as self-study and accompanied versions depending on your particular needs and the level of support you are after). If you let us walk alongside you for 90-days, we can support you to take some practical strides towards parenting in a way that is both easier, and more aligned for with your wish for peaceful, calm and connecting family life. Feel free to get in touch with us if you're not sure which would be the best fit for you!

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