Whether you’re a new parent or you’ve done it all before, you will probably have been steered in the direction of the importance of self-care more than a few times. It’s easy to give the advice, but it’s usually much harder to put it into practice when your sole focus is the new member of the family in your life.
Self-care is really something that needs some addressing though because the reality is that you can incorporate it into your life and it does have the potential to help you live a better life as a parent. This has every chance of filtering down and benefitting your child too.
Self-Care Tips for Parents
With this in mind, here are five simple self-care tips for parents that you can look at introducing and see what the positive effects are for you.
1. Change your priorities
After we touched on the fact that you don’t make time for yourself, it’s probably dawned on you that this is the case and the list of things you have or want to do is a mile long! As parents, making time for things that are ‘just for you’ can be few and far between. That’s not to say they can’t still happen.
Reprioritize. What you need to remember is that self-care isn’t just there for you to take care of yourself in the little areas of the day that are left when everything else is done. You need to know that it’s something that needs to come at the top of the list, and by doing so, you’ll become adept at putting your best self forward during the rest of your day.
2. Make sure you sleep enough
Sleep; remember that thing? Being a parent means you’re often going to miss out on a fair bit of that, but it’s absolutely essential that you take positive measures to overcome this at every opportunity because losing sleep is bad for your health.
Setting a routine is very important. This starts with you, so you have to put a routine in place for yourself and then do the same for your little one too. You’ll all benefit from this because humans are all designed to crave routine, whether you think you do or not.
The Sleep Advisor explains that if your baby gets into a regular daily and nightly routine then they will enjoy a higher-quality level of sleep more frequently, meaning that you can indulge in an increased chance of getting the essential rest you need as a result.
3. Eradicate decision fatigue from your life
Were you aware that, on average, everyone makes an astounding 35,000 decisions a day? The trick is to reduce these decisions down so that you can stay as full of energy as possible. You’ll also be able to think a little clearer if you’re stripping back the number of decisions you are required to make.
As we mentioned about humans craving routine, research has shown that we generally repeat around 40% of our behaviour on a daily basis. To put it in the most basic terms, fatigue sets in when you make too many decisions, so, you need to rid yourself of fatigue. You can achieve this by making good choices and following suit each day after.
4. Kill off the distractions
If you want to avoid distractions and concentrate on the important things, it’s best to give the smart devices a break. It’s always hard given that they are such a big part of our lives now, but once you start scrolling, it’s rather hard to stop unless you have some strong self-discipline.
Allow yourself some time to work through those important things first and foremost. Do this first thing in the morning and then they are cleared and out of the way for you to do other things throughout the day. It’s also good as you’ll feel freer in your mind too.
5. Strive for balance, not perfection
It’s wonderful that the options are on tap and the choice is vast when it comes to things to do as a family. Many of these activities are also there to help your child develop and educate you on how to be a better parent.
However, it’s easy to get tied up in trying to go to too many of these types of things in an effort to be the perfect parent. While you might have your best intentions in mind, if you try to over commit, the benefits can be lost.
Ideally, just take into consideration that if all the things you want to attend are great for you as your child, the old saying that less is more should be in your mind. It’s important to be discerning and choose which things are most important to you and your family and pursue those; there’s nothing at all wrong with being selective. Better strive for balance and not perfection!
Always good to get help, definitely important to have someone to lean on at times. Also not putting yourself on back burner 24/7 is too
Great tips!
Getting rid of that drive for perfection is so hard – I like the tips about routine and lowering the number of decisions to make! That sounds helpful
These are great tips,we need to put ourselves first sometimes