The Business of Staying Busy for Moms

Motherhood today seems to be heading at lightning speed and with technology it’s often impacting our children in more ways than one. Motherhood navigates so much in the day to day that the checklists of accomplishments seem to help one think we are getting all of things done.  Mothers often struggle to fill up their child’s time with activities that help with their development and that helps get their energy out. This blog is about how mothers today deal with the aspect of being a busy mother, aspects of being the “perfect mom”,  and how that gets in the way of making authentic connections with their children.  

The business of staying busy in the lives of children is important. It often gives them structure and purpose.  Many mothers fill in the need for childcare as it is now just as expensive as renting in every state.  Mothers are having to fill their child’s schedule after school to get enrolled into enrichment classes like piano classes, soccer and sometimes ways to enhance their child’s academic rigor.  Some students may struggle in math but with a bit of tutelage that can make all the difference in a child’s confidence.  This does take money and time to figure out for parents.   Sometimes, parents are struggling to place food on the table so some mothers are multitasking like making dinner and providing tutoring sessions for their children.  

Mothers have an enormous amount of pressure to provide for their child the best possible educational scenarios.  Also, making the time to make memories because in a blink of an eye, time has taken all of the possible memories that one can make.  Many mothers falter and wonder that if they stay “busy enough” their children will get the most of their time.  

However, the quality of being busy may be an escape for mothers.  Being busy makes time move way faster in a way.  Slowing down requires one to process what is going on in the moment.  Slowing down is much harder in the moment when so much has to get done. When we are driving we slow down and turn down the music to figure out.  Our senses talk to us and help us navigate what we need as mothers.  The kids' volume in the car is often distracting and along with the bickering that is hard to manage.  Somehow we manage and try to teach them about safety.  Some of the best conversations about safety and boundaries can take place in the car.  Eye contact is limited and messages can be heard with simply turning down the music.  

We often are overstimulated as mothers and we tend to try to teach our child that they need to stay over-booked to direct their energy.  Let me be abundantly clear, children absolutely benefit from getting their energy out, but they also need to regulate their central nervous system.  We can teach our children how to respond when we as mothers feel overwhelmed and respond appropriately.  Children are often absorbing the energy we as mothers are trying to fill out in their social lives and we are often rewarded in our society for keeping everyone busy.  Each mother is doing her best to figure out what is best for their family and I see the merits of this.  

Staying busy 

   I often hear other mothers describe themselves as extroverts and they need to stay busy with their children.  This is all wonderful to be outgoing and know this aspect about yourself.  This can work for many families but I urge parents to also learn how to slow down and help your child regulate their emotions.  The chaos of teaching children about their emotions can be caught up with the aspect of staying busy and families never getting a chance to catch up with their own feelings.  Children can get caught up in the overwhelm of chaotic schedules and often miss the ability to regulate their emotions. Many children are highly sensitive people, craving that down time because their senses are over working beyond belief.  Just because children have boundless amounts of energy doesn’t mean they can keep going nonstop.   Children need to be taught on how to slow down & to coregulate with their significant parental figure.  This is no easy feat if a parent has multiple children and multiple roles in her identity.  Mothers work, mothers bear much of the household labor, and mothers often are married. If mothers are single that also is a risk factor because much of the responsibility is on one parent to provide so much for their child.  

Many mothers struggle with keeping up with appearances.  The endless cleaning chores and meanwhile children often need the structure of schedules.  Simply sending them to the child’s room creates isolation for the child and prevents them from identifying their feelings and understanding coping skills. Being able to identify one’s feelings takes time to practice and master in asking for help with coping with their feelings.  As mothers check things off the list, it is easy to overlook a mother’s own needs or feelings.  If mothers are the drivers of social activity, enrichment classes, and medical appointments, this can often leave a mother feeling burnout.  Mothers may be the one coordinating things like obtaining passports for an upcoming vacation and maybe they are figuring out ways to save for the next family trip.  

Children learn from their attachment figure how to manage stress.  An internal voice starts to emerge on how to identify their feelings. Maybe your parents are so busy they don’t talk to you about your feelings, or maybe they don’t know how because they were never taught how to express feelings like “I feel frustrated when I have to share my toys!”    Parents can often be running on empty just to finish tasks. For example, many mothers skip meals to lose weight or some moms may stress on their body image.  Some mothers often have never been taught how to manage or accept their own bodies and know they are beautiful no matter what society says.  

However, in these situations children are figuring out that body cues are easy to ignore and maybe encouraged to just deny their hunger cues in order to lose weight.  Hunger impacts our mood, emotions, and overall health.  Intuitive eating was non-existent in the 80s, 90s and even in the mid 2000.  Mothers had the added pressure to do most household labor, possibly have to work, and have an unrealistic standard of a female’s body image.  

In marriage there is also an issue of how each partner inflicts his or her own childhood wounds onto their partner.  One partner may have been brought up to avoid talking about issues and when conflict arose that person may withdraw.  The other partner may want to communicate and persists to talk things through or anxiously waits, not knowing how to resolve the issue.  These ways of interacting can lead to years of having ineffective ways to communicate about various marital issues, child rearing,  and other issues like managing household finances.  

Survival mode

There are many purposes to keep up with a busy bustling household and they are valid. Embracing some level of chaos reminds a parent to be in the moment.  However, the handyman needs to get scheduled to come fix the much needed tasks around the house.  Or moms somehow figure it out because she gets tired of the toilet roll holder just sitting there broken.  Other things are grabbing her attention and children’s emotions are last on the list.  Many families were taught to keep up with appearances and to make things look orderly.  This is an important aspect of having an organized home but not the only part.  Many dysfunctional families had limited things within their control and cleaning was perhaps a tiny way they felt more in control. 

Many parents struggle with emotions because they are hard.  Perhaps these parents were never taught on how to slow down and pay attention to their own feelings and process them with a safe adult.  Maybe they were taught as young children to just survive and keep feelings hidden.  It takes time to slow down and help a child regulate their feelings.  

This co-regulation with their parents exists as a way to help the child gain the skills to practice coping skills with their feelings. For example, if you practice with your child on deep breathing when they get upset or start to have a tantrum, then they can start practicing it with you in different scenarios.  The end result, over much practice and time will be the child taking deep breaths on her own during meltdown at the grocery store because a parent said no to a toy.  

Children must additionally see a parent model how they regulate their own emotions. When a parent gets overwhelmed after doing “it all” and trying to be the “perfect mom” big emotions can come up for them too. For example, someone wants one more thing and mom is on her last shred of patience.  This mom might snap at their child and may not know how to give their child a proper apology.  Parents are allowed to slip up but it’s just as important to learn from those mistakes.  

Many parents never grew up with a parent that truly sat down to listen to their feelings.  Maybe some parents did hear their child but were incapable of being curious into their child’s emotions.  So those parents never received that coregulation.   These children grew up to be parents just figuring out and perhaps a bit of their parents’ survival mode was inherited.  

I am a  therapist for mothers and caregivers that survived trauma in childhood. I provide avenues of healing that last long term.  We work on things like understanding our emotions and why we get triggered.  EMDR therapy, narrative therapy with journal prompts, and trauma sensitive yoga are modalities that start the healing process.  This healing will enhance your ability to show up as the best version of yourself and in turn will help you parent with more presence. This will in turn significantly decrease your child from becoming another statistic in child abuse.  Schedule a free 15 min consultation here, you may email me here, or call me at 803-573-0279.