The Incredible Remedy of Slow Parenting

“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.” – Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was right. We don’t have to run ourselves ragged to be a loving parent. If you feel overburdened scheduling your life around your children’s hectic after-school activities and stressed with each demanding day, it’s possible to find a better balance. You can put yourself and your own needs back into the picture.

But while this sounds wonderful, I also suspect you’re worried.

You’re worried that if you don’t take Ashley to her piano lessons across town, she’ll never really appreciate the beauty of music. You’re worried that if you choose a relaxing home-based holiday over Disneyland Paris, you’re selfishly putting your own needs above the kids’. You’re worried about a million and one scenarios in which your children’s potential remains untapped or stifled, all because of a lack of stimulation and missed opportunities. And you’re not alone. There is a common parenting misconception that children must lead full, productive, highly structured childhoods. And sadly, that misconception often results in stress.

But fortunately, you needn’t worry. A more balanced family life is a worthy goal that’s well within your grasp. In this article, I’ll tell you about the challenge of burnout I faced last year, and the philosophy of “slow parenting” I adopted to get my energy back. I’ll also summarise five effective antidotes to stress, so you’ll have a whole bunch of options to try if you’re ever in a similar boat.

Burnout

I didn’t expect burnout to happen to me. Burnout is a form of psychological stress and is characterised by exhaustion, lack of enthusiasm and motivation, and feelings of ineffectiveness. However, after two long-haul flights with three small children, ten sleep-shattered nights, and a move from semi-rural, balmy beachside New Zealand to a tiny inner-city wintertime Zurich apartment, heart palpitations left me floored. A few days later, an ECG confirmed a stress-induced arrhythmia.

Each night I cuddled up with my sleeping children, held them close, and prayed that the heart trouble wouldn’t end my time with them. While the heart arrhythmia was not considered medically serious, it sure felt like it to me. I was a shell of my former self. Fortunately, natural remedies soon took effect and eased the worst symptoms. This was just as well, since there was a new home to find, children to feed, clothe and kiss, and a whole new language to grasp. I managed this at a sloth-like pace, but it would be a few months before I was back to anywhere near my old energy levels.

Stress responses like this are not out of the ordinary for expats, which makes perfect sense. Not only are we dealing with normal parenting stresses, but we’re trying to do it in a foreign land, often without family support, while simultaneously dealing with our children’s adjustment issues (see my article in the August issue). It’s quite the stress load!

The Gift of Stress

But this is not a tale of woe. I don’t see my experience of burnout as a negative thing – actually quite the opposite. The strategies I adopted to overcome burnout have forever changed the way I parent for the better.

Burnout forced me to find less stressful, more mindful ways of parenting and living. Rather than spending so much time in the car and going to activities, we now pay much closer attention to the ordinary, present moments – spotting the slugs and snails, picking the fresh tulips, biking, and taking meandering village walks. We enjoy simple things such as trying to grow a vegetable garden, pegging up washing on the line and picking wildflowers. My children are thriving with this slower pace of life, and the extra time for free play feeds their imagination, independence and problem-solving skills.

If you’d like to read more about the detail we often miss in our immediate environment, the book On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz highlights the fascinating things we miss on our everyday walks.

Slow Parenting

It turns out that there are loads of parents who are similarly concerned with reducing the stress in their lives and with living a more mindful, joy-filled parenting experience. Many parents are saying “no” to crammed schedules, long stints in the car, and an over-emphasis on structured learning. Instead, they’re doing their best to keep the home environment calm, stable and predictable. They’re letting their children be children by letting them get bored, limiting time with technology, and encouraging independent, unsupervised play. Fortunately for expats here in Switzerland, we’re in one of the best countries in the world to practice slow parenting. The Swiss do it all around us. Forest playgroups, short schooling hours, and children walking independently from kindergarten age are excellent examples of how the Swiss value slow family living.

In his book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children From The Culture of Hyper-Parenting, Carl Honoré, one of the founders of the slow movement, explores some extreme hyper-parenting behaviour happening in the world today. Honoré uses case studies to query whether our expectations of children are realistic. The hype of electronic “educational” toys, high-pressure preschools, and stressed Oxford students provide some thought-provoking examples. He discusses a forest school in Zurich to illustrate the practice of letting children learn in the natural environment.

Proponents of slow parenting adopt a variety of approaches for combating the stresses of everyday modern family life, and what works for one family may not work for the next. If you’d like to read a variety of practical suggestions for slowing the pace of your family life, the book Slow Family Living: 75 Simple Ways to Slow Down, Connect, and Create More Joy, by Bernadette Noll, is full of them. Each short chapter describes a simple way to reduce the stress and pace of family life – from showering family members with “love bombs” to replacing individual sporting commitments with family karate lessons. There are great ideas to suit many different families.

Five Effective Antidotes to Stress

If you don’t have a lot of time to read more about slow parenting, here is a snappy summary of its wisdom to help you start de-stressing today.

1.  Focus On You: In our haste to raise wonderful children, we often put our own needs to one side. But in the battle to beat stress, the line “I just don’t have the time” just doesn’t fly. If you want to lead a less stressful life, put on your own oxygen mask first. Some tips include:

• Take care of your body and health
• Take time for your own interests
• Connect. Don’t become isolated. Make new friends in person, or through Internet groups.

2. Reduce Stressful Activities: The other day, I had a conversation about stress with a mother of four children under seven. As she cradled her three-month-old baby in her arms she asked me, “What I want to know is how you do all the activities?” She then rattled off a long list of activities her children were enrolled in, and her stress at having to drive them so many places.

When I told her about the concept of “Slow Parenting” it was like a huge weight lifted off her shoulders. Suddenly there was an alternative perspective to grasp. What is stressful to one person will be different to the next. But if you’re mindful, you can figure out exactly what stresses you out. Be honest with yourself, and if there’s something you’d just rather not do, ask yourself whether it’s worth the stress.

3. Be Realistic: To reduce stress, it’s important to have realistic expectations of yourself and your children. If you’re a perfectionist, you’re going to need to lower your standards. If you expect the house will be clean and tidy with young children at home, you’ll be constantly frustrated. If you think the washing load won’t double with the birth of your third child, you’ll constantly feel like a failure. There are no perfect parents, but being a good enough parent is an excellent, healthy goal.

4. Limit Technology: Great advice for slowing things down and reducing stress is “ditching the screen and getting into the green.” Fortunately, Switzerland provides the perfect environment for this. So next time life is stressing you out, take a walk around the forest or enjoy a day on the Berg for the ultimate de-stressing environment.

5. Ask For Help: Sometimes this is hard to do. We love to think we can be everything to everyone and never require a bit of help ourselves. But when stress becomes too great, it’s important to ask for help. This may mean seeing a medical practitioner, phoning your babysitter so you can take a night off, or paying a cleaner to help with the heavy domestic load. Try it, and you’ll be surprised by how just a little help can make you feel a whole lot better.

Reducing the stress in your life is a worthy goal. I’m not saying you should drop all after-school activities and become a domestic recluse, but I do hope you feel you have the right to create a calm, centred, joy-filled family life, and the courage to explore whatever that means for you and your family. I’m happy to report that experiencing and overcoming burnout has forever changed the way I parent. Today I’m excited to be living in a country that presents so many opportunities to relish a slower, more mindful family life, and I look forward to the opportunities for learning and exploration that lie ahead for our young family.

I wish the same peace and happiness for you, too.

By Rachael Soster-Smith

Rachael Soster-Smith is a freelance writer, cultural anthropologist and mother of three young children. When Rachael moved to Switzerland from New Zealand 18 months ago, she anticipated life would be difficult, but didn’t expect to face the biggest challenge of her life. Rachael now loves her new Swiss home, and writes to record her cultural observations at contentedexpat.com.

Illustration by Susana Gutierrez

Susana is the mother of two little girls, and she is also a freelance illustrator. She can be reached at s.escapa@gmail.com