When you become parents, the daily rhythms change drastically and it becomes difficult to find the time necessary to devote yourself to yourself and your interests. However, recovering that time is also fundamental to be able to effectively look after others
It is 17:30 on Friday and, in a room on the first floor with large windows and wooden floor, nine young women are sitting in a circle with closed eyes.
One of them, Sara, at some point opens them to look around: struggling to concentrate, is no longer used to it. Like her Silvia, a little younger one, who cannot find a comfortable position. Manuela, who guides the meditationevery now and then he invites them to return to their breath, to perceive their boundaries, to stay in the “here and now”. It is not easy for Sara, who seems to hear the voice of her baby who calls her from the floor below, as very often happens at home: “Mom, mom, come!”. For two years now that voice follows her everywhere, even when she is only in her thoughts. Become a mother He changed her deeply, opening in her perceptual channels that she didn’t even believe she had.
In the meantime, in the meantime, the little Paolo, son of Viola, plays with eight other children of different ages in a room equipped to welcome both them and the games and everyone brings and makes available for an hour a week: “L ‘hour of mothers ”, they call it Sara and the others, the time that all have strongly wanted to organize, and make a fixed weekly meeting, for themselves and for their own physical, psychic, relational well -being. Together they rented space, assumed an educator and hired Manuela, in turn mom, who over time has learned to carve out a space for his own person and passions again, yoga and first group meditation among all .
A few hours all for itself
Alessia is an architect specialized in sustainable construction. He loves nature, horses and long walks in the mountains. Among the mountains, however, it hasn’t walked for four years: his child, Nicola, a few months after birth has shown hearing disorders that do not allow him to overcome certain altitudes.
Alessia, however, has not given up on what makes her feel good and that feels decisive for her ability to be a “good mother”: from freelancerin fact, he fought to the street to obtain the maternity allowance that he belonged to her and, having to return to work soon, diverted that contribution to the hiring of a collaborator to whom he entrusts some of his positions. He is with his child more who can and rather renounce the work completely under control. The time that remains it is time that holds for itself: limitedperhaps not completely free, because it always stolen from something else, but still necessary. In the hours that manages to carve out from the current construction sites, Alessia goes to walk, to see art exhibitions near her workplace and make small climbing. In the evening, when he returns to Nicola and his partner, he feels tired but relaxed: Over time he learned to make peace with his sense of guilt.
Occasions of sharing
Anna and Riccardo have three children of 8, 5 and 2 years. Their life resembles the Russian mountains since the day when Camilla was born, the largest. In fact, Anna works in the hospital, while Riccardo is a freelance programmer. The great distance between their work activities, combined with a strong commonality in passions – cinema, travel and Mexican cuisine, which made them known -, was immediately the winning recipe that allowed to keep their interests alive and to do, indeed, a meeting point for the whole family.
Their children, for example, were accustomed immediately to eat both at home and outside, even if always respecting the most suitable times for children of those ages. With the mother it happens that they go to the cinema in the morning, with the dad who make some little trips when his periods of working calm allow him. Once a week, they make sure find yourself all together In a common activity, which likes the little ones but also satisfies the adults, and which is proposed and accepted in turn. It cannot be said that everything always works perfectly and that there is no certain dose of general tiredness, but Anna and Riccardo feel they have found for now a good balance.
Looking for a new balance
“Balance” is perhaps the key word when we speak, today, of parenting. The latter should not be lived and interpreted within the dichotomy renunciation-concession But, rather, as a system of continuous choices and adaptations that are made between constraints and possibilities. How to find, or build this balance from scratch?
First of all, learning to recognize and express their needs: we are parents but also people with desires, passions, needs, in short with a story. All this is not, or should not be, irreconcilable with the commitment and dedication, often totalizingthat children require.
Select, adapt, build networks and delegate are verbs that should become part of the basic vocabulary of each. Surround yourself with positive reinforcementscapable of supporting and promoting these choices, should also become a sort of habit, of good parental practice.
Building relevant networks and families
The education of children, in fact, is certainly prerogative First of all of parents but, like our history and the experience of other societies, even contemporary, teach us, from a certain moment on can become a much more practice shared and distributed: both through the blood bonds and through those of election.
Above all, these past and present references show us that the experience of the cure has a systemic and circular character: as well as taking care of others often has one “Egoistic” propulsion (We do good to other people to feel good about ourselves), in the same way to be present and “centered” towards a child it is important not to feel frustrated or limited in one’s well -being and aspirations.
In order to be good parents, in short, paradoxically it is necessary not to be only and exclusively of parents but continue, as and when possible, to grow themselves as individuals, indeed people.
