Becoming a mother is for many women the greatest moment of their lives. You have just worked a miracle and now you get to mother. Taking care of a baby changes your whole life and daily schedule.
Along with your normal rituals comes a ritual to give your child a firm stable foundation. Providing that stable base is easier said than done; in addition to practical matters, you may also notice that being a mother is an emotional event.
Precisely to make it easier to truly enjoy motherhood, I go into how mindfulness can play a role in that in this article.
Mindfulness is a way to be in the here and now with your thoughts. Especially for parents, this can be difficult because you have a schedule in your head that needs to be checked off. If you're busy making the bottle, you may already be thinking about the diaper you may change a few hours after that. Or other things that have nothing to do with motherhood that you also have to do.
With mindfulness, you make sure your thoughts wander less and take less control of your emotions. This allows you to complete the schedule more efficiently and makes you happier. As researchers on thoughts and emotions have said:
Wandering thoughts make for an unhappy person.
Because mindfulness allows your thoughts to wander less, you automatically become happier.
Mindfulness for busy moms
Being a mother is never easy, but no less fun for that; there is always someone who needs to be taken care of, needs help with homework or has had an accident. When your children finally start elementary school it doesn't stop.
Suddenly you want or need to work again, then you also have to do all kinds of activities at your child's elementary school, such as babysitting or cleaning at lunchtime, and you suddenly find yourself super super busy.
It seems like there aren't enough hours in a day.
As a result, your child often comes first and your own care is on the back burner. This is very unfortunate because it makes it difficult to bring your stress levels down.
With all this busyness and wanting to meet your obligations, you can suffer from stress. This negatively affects your blood pressure, sleep and even your weight.
The way for busy moms to reduce stress is through mindfulness meditation. This will only take you 5 to 10 minutes a day. This is ideal to do when your child has just been put to bed to completely unwind.
Now you may be thinking that you need to spend 5 or as much as 10 minutes breathing in a cross-legged position. That is indeed what you can do, but mindfulness meditation is actually something you can apply when you are busy with things. For example, if you are going to wash dishes after the kids have gone to bed, you can do this with mindfulness meditation.
Probably during these types of household tasks, you often think about something other than what you are doing. By applying mindfulness meditation to a chore, you banish those kinds of thoughts. You start doing the chore and experiencing that chore very consciously.
You first take a few deep breaths in and out and focus on breathing. Then you focus on your task. You are aware of the water, of the stains you wash off the plates and pans. Of the sense of resistance it gives just before it is gone. If your mind wanders, even if it is just a thought about what you are going to do after the wash, you let it go and shift your attention back to the washing up, the water, the smells and the feeling of washing up. In this way, you have then still done 5 to 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation during this small chore. This is the ultimate way to multitask and relax.
Worry less through mindfulness
As a mother, you also have many concerns. Are you a good mother, what do other mothers think of what you do, is my child happy, will my child have a bright future? All kinds of worries that can haunt you during motherhood and cause you to sleep worse.
You can banish these worries again with mindfulness meditation, as described above.
Research(1) also shows that mindfulness for mothers helps reduce stress and sleep better. In a study of mothers who were still breastfeeding their child, mindfulness was found to help improve self-confidence in motherhood itself, self-compassion was increased and psychological stress was lower in mothers than in mothers who had not received mindfulness training.
Improve the bond with your child
Applying mindfulness during parenting can also improve the bond with your child. Studies on mindful parenting for children with adhd show that mindfulness can help improve the bond between parent and child.
- When you talk to your child, of any age, how often does it happen that you only listen with half an ear?
- When you engage in an activity with your child, do you enjoy the moment or are you already working on the next thing on your to-do list?
By being mindful in moments you have with your child, you can improve the bond between your child and yourself. Studies of 65 families with children between the ages of 10 and 14(2) show that mindful parenting helps to better "control" your children and improve the bond with your children. The researchers also indicate that mindfulness should be added to programs for parents who have problems with their children.
Mindfulness parenting involves listening to your child with your full attention, becoming aware of emotions that arise during interactions with your child and learning self-regulation during these moments. This means not reacting impulsively to what your child tells you and being compassionate and non-judgmental in your interactions with your child.
Those are quite a few things you need to pay attention to during mindfulness to improve your bond with your child. Mindfulness is also not something you can master overnight, but practice makes perfect. By practicing mindfulness, it will get better and better until it becomes automatic.
For example, it is very difficult not to make judgments about what your child says or does. Something is easily right or wrong. Which allows you to make short-term decisions, but with mindfulness during parenting, you can respond in a way that is actually good for the child and the bond you have with the child for the long term. Precisely that long-term is so important, because of course you do want him/her to visit once in a while after he/she has left home.
Research (3) shows, for example, that if your main concern as a parent is to have control over your child it does not always benefit your child and the relationship in the long run. That need for power often gets in the way of a warm bond with trust in each other. The control you are given often has a short-term effect on happiness, but doesn't do much for the long term.
Mindfulness keeps you aware of your child's needs while interacting with them, allowing you to respond differently to situations so that the bond between yourself and your child is improved and trust is built.
During that interaction, you may find out, for example, that your child has done something you don't approve of. You may then get a judgment, such as that something is not right, through that judgment you may again get an emotion, such as that you are angry, and you may then over-identify yourself with that: I'm an angry mother, so now I have to get angry. Resulting in an argument of sorts, especially if your child has not broken the law. By leaving judgment behind, considering what your child is telling you and what need he has, you can respond more calmly. For example, you can give advice about next time a similar event occurs instead of forbidding something. This maintains a bond of trust and gives your child another chance.
Want to learn more about how mindfulness works and how you can improve your life? Then come to a seminar or check out Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' trainings.
Sources:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00737-013-0337-z
