Alison Curtis: Sometimes with kids, you gotta be like Elsa and Let It Go

Alison Curtis: Thanks to lockdown, I'm stressing less about the little things when I'm parenting. 

Over the past few weeks, we are slowly getting back into a routine that seems remote but familiar. We are back to school, the days are taking on a shape that has made up the past number of years. The traffic is building in the mornings, the evenings have homework again and we finish the day once again prepping for the next.

The speed of the day has gone up a notch too. We are once again slotting more things in like piano lessons and one or two outdoor activities.

However, it dawned on me the other day as the pace of life picks back up again should I take any lessons learned over the past fourteen months with me into the future. As parents, we are jumping back on that daily treadmill but what have we learned that we can keep going in order to make our lives easier and happier.

The one big thing I am going to apply is “letting go.” By this I mean let the smaller stuff slide. I am in part a perfectionist and this has pros and cons. In terms of work, it is generally a good thing but in terms of parenting, it isn’t.

One example of letting it go was a few days ago after getting dressed for school my daughter Joan wiped a large amount of her breakfast onto her clean pants. Pre lockdown me probably would have asked her to change into a fresh pair but post lockdown me said nothing and let her go happily into school with yoghurt on her knee.

I felt less stressed addressing it and I am sure she did too. 

What does it matter if she has a food stain on her clothes, she would likely get one during the day anyway. Is someone going to examine her knee and assume our family lives in utter squalor, the answer is no.

Another example is when we would sit down to do homework pre lockdown me would encourage getting it all right however now I am much more focused on if I feel she is actually learning and it is sticking. Sometimes I would have asked her to re write something because I thought she could do it better. But now, if I can read it, I leave it.

I am letting a lot more go in terms of Joan's behaviour too, again the smaller things. If she is putting up resistance to doing something before I would go straight to telling her “do it or else.” Now I am trying to get cooperation more easily. Taking time to talk it out more, maybe find out why she doesn’t want to do something or explain why I need her to do it.

We had this time during lockdown to get cooperation and it worked. I want to keep that harmony going.

Another letting it go scenario is have stopped worrying if there are clothes or wrappers lying on her bedroom floor, instead I have waited til the end of the day and given her a chance to clean it all up in one go before bed.

We have all said that we really and truly learned what was important in life over the past year and I think the next step is looking at our daily lives as parents, see what we learned from lockdown and apply it going forward. It is a tricky enough job raising children as it is, so lets take a positive from a negative and make life easier and more enjoyable for all of us. We deserve it.