You Can't Give to Someone What You Don't Have Yourself

This isn’t my proudest parenting moment. I almost lost it at the playground today. I took a sick kid out to catch some crisp January air, and then tried to go grocery shopping so that we could finally restock our pantry. After a few days of hardly leaving the house we really needed to buy more food. As it turned out, my daughter preferred to stay at the playground instead.

In the next half an hour I’ve tried logical explanations, emotional validation, active listening, counting down the final few times she’d take the slide, singing, gentle bribery, and even kidnapping her with force. She escaped from the stroller before I managed to fasten her seatbelt, then ran back to the climb the slide as fast as she could. We both ended up so frustrated that I called my husband to pick us both from the playground before I leave her there lying on the wooden house floor.

This isn’t the first time my daughter and I had a disagreement about what to do next. But 9 times out of 10 I have the resources required to deal with it. This time I was exhausted, underslept, and hardly functioning at all. After getting up 5 times to put her back to sleep last night, I was really hoping she’d go to the daycare at last so I can recover a bit.

Whenever I’m feeling this miserable and take a moment to figure out why this could be, it always comes down to one of a few things:

• not drinking enough water,

• haven’t left house in 2 days,

• forgot to eat lunch,

• haven’t slept enough,

• haven’t done yoga in more than a week.

There might be all sorts of other challenges that I’m dealing with. But when these few basic things are covered, I know I have everything I need to handle whatever life is throwing at me. If I skip just one or two, everything suddenly seems hopeless and impossible.

Every time I come to this conclusion, I feel a bit like an idiot. If I know what exactly makes me consistently happy, why am I not doing it? I’m trying all the time, the best that I can, but sometimes there’s a sick kid at home, and only enough time to cook while holding her in one hand and hoping there will be time to recover and restore all the usual routines. Sometimes it comes soon enough, sometimes it does not.

Happiness requires maintenance. This is both great news, and terrible news. Every now and then I see another version of a joke that goes “Damn, turns out that exercise does, in fact, make you happier. I hate it so much!”. I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first. How could anyone be so resentful? You just found the secret to happiness! It’s all in your control, just go and get it!

I totally get it now after another sleepless night. There’s so little I need to be happy again, and it seems out of reach at the moment. Yes, I know a good night’s sleep or even just a nap would make all my woes go away. I also know there’s little chance I will be getting some tonight.

But I also know I need to prioritize that sleep, food, and yoga above everything else, above career aspirations, and above any plans I might have including writing this newsletter. If I don’t do that, then I won’t be able to handle my kid. I can’t teach her to move through her emotions with equanimity when I’m not capable of doing it myself. I can’t expect her to calm down and reason with me when I can’t calm down and reason with her either.

I simply can’t afford to let myself slip too much. It won’t just make me miserable, it will also be terrible for my kid. I know she fully depends on me and my ability to self-regulate, and that’s a huge responsibility to carry. I need to take good care of myself, so I can take good care of her too.