Why You Need To Take Care Of Yourself First

Parenting and taking care of children is an endlessly self-sacrificial job.    I see you and believe me, I completely understand.  When someone is literally dependent on you for their survival and development it feels kind of odd to throw up our hands and tell them “sorry, not right now. I have to take care of something for myself first.”    Then toss in the insane, absolutely crushing guilt and ceaseless worry that’s triggered whenever we even try a teensy bit of self-care- it’s almost guaranteed for us to get trapped in a cycle of taking care of everyone but ourselves.   We get stuck.    We give.   And we give.    Then we give some more.   And not only that.  Our children are too young to really process when they’re asking too much so they’re constantly demanding more from us.  With scrutiny on parenting being so heavy it’s almost like making yourself a target for criticism to stop and take a break so you keep giving.  And society encourages it and even gives little accolades like “I love how you’re always putting your children first!” and “you go super mom!” to really drive it home.    So super mom keeps trudging along and giving, giving, giving.   Now I know that you know that I’m going to tell you that you need to take the cape off and rest.    But here’s the crucial part.    I need you to understand why you need to rest more and why you need to start making it a regular habit and not a “treat myself” type of thing.    In this episode we´ll discuss:  - Why putting your kids first doesn´t really help in every situation  - Why it´s important to take care of yourself  - The importance of rest when parenting Grab the Scripts to Manage the Top 10 Crazy-Making Behaviours: prnt.link/scripts Watch the video recording here: Join the Parenting Posse: prnt.link/group the Mudroom is recorded live every Wednesday at 1:30pm ET/ 12:30pm CT/ 10:30am PT on Facebook: facebook.com/arfamilyservices