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Family Friday Newsletter - 2.5 min read by: Finley Robinson

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Single Sentence From A Season Ahead

Survival Mode 🥺

Typical Parent Question: "How are you guys making it?"
Typical Parent's Answer: "Honestly, we're barely surviving."

I get why that's the response. I really do. When our kids were young, my wife and I found ourselves "barely surviving" all the time.

We had 3 kids, four and under. Most every day felt like a giant tug of war. It is Parent's Lives vs Kid's Needs.

Translation: the only thing that seemed to matter to me and my wife was if we "survived" each day or not. It’s alarming how accustomed we got to living that way.

At each new life stage, as our kids got older, what they needed evolved. However, our way of looking at each day and measuring it didn't change.

Sadly, as we crawled into bed most nights our measuring stick for the day came down to one thing only… did we survive?

I wish I could say that we made an adjustment out of this cycle sooner, but it became too engrained in us. Change is hard.

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Better Measurement 🎈

To address the problem of the "did we survive" approach, I'd like to offer this example.

Picture This: You've grabbed a balloon, filled it with helium, tied the knot, it floats to the top of your ceiling… and then it stays there for a while. Less than 24-hours later though, it's now sitting on the floor.

Why? Because a full balloon only needs a tiny hole to deflate. One simple microscopic hole is the difference between a balloon residing at the top of the ceiling and falling to the floor over time.

Translation: When your key measurement as a mom or dad is for "survival" you leave little room for the hundreds of tiny things that are outside of your control.

Alternative: Choose to measure what was brought in to your family instead of what got let out is the better way. Count what you are filling your family with instead of focusing on the smaller things that are beyond your control.

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Value Add 🤟🏼

For most days of parenting, positives can be in short supply. You will lie down in bed and question almost every choice you made.

But there are two things we found that kept reminding us of our value in our kid's lives...

• The long hope in who are kids were slowly becoming.
• Any sign confirming that we were doing something right.

The "did we survive" way of measuring each day highlights all the things that don't go well. It focuses on the negatives:

A sibling fight.
A temper tantrum.
A forgotten backpack.
A refusal to finish dinner.
A display of extreme entitlement.

All tiny holes that deflate the daily balloon.

If you instead measure with what you bring in to the lives of your kids over weeks and months, your hope and days will be fuller, I promise.

Books read
Mouths fed
Stories told
Tears wiped
Miles driven
Giggles heard
Prayers prayed
Lunches packed
Backs scratched
Strollers pushed

Your impact as a mom or dad doesn’t come down to how successful you are at having no bad days. Please read that sentence again.

It’s the small moments throughout your days that matter. Your words, care, discipline, hugs, jokes, prayers, high-fives, stories, corrections and affirmations that add up to bring so much to your home.

Stop measuring standalone days. Days are hard, especially in the power-decade of parenting.

Instead…Craft moments. Celebrate weeks. Reflect on months.

Recognize the two steps forward even though the three steps back are easier to criticize.

When you slowly move further away from the daily "did we survive" you will find yourself in a more sustainable mental and emotional place.

Ok, good pep talk. Time to go survive the weekend 😉

Finley

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