8 Habits to Be a More Patient Mom

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Mom guilt and shame spirals are real. As I lay in bed at night, replaying the day’s events over in my mind, more days than not I feel guilty. I imagined myself being so much better at this mom thing than I am in reality! Where is the patient mom I thought I would be? Oh, I don’t know, buried under dishes, and countless sleepless nights is a good place to look for her. Here are 8 habits I have added to my life that have helped to take a few layers off that pile anyway…and she’s starting to climb her way out.

If you are sitting in your closet right now if your cup of coffee, aching for just a second alone without anyone talking to you, touching you, or needing you, let me be the first to say #nojudgement. I’ve been there. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve publically admitted to that in the past by doing an Instagram story from the inside of my closet…

…so really, no judgment.

Motherhood is oh so sweet, like the moments that your children are snuggling together looking at a book. When they defend and protect their littlest sibling from another kid picking on them. The moment they look you in the eyes and tell you they love you… there is nothing sweeter.

My husband says it really well, “having children makes everything ‘more’. More amazing, more significant, more difficult, more exhausting…just more.”

And that’s okay to feel those things. No one (well, at least not most) is judging you for wanting children and now feeling like you want to hide in the closet from them for just a minute. Because being a mom, especially a stay at home (or work from home!) mom is relentless. There are constant, never ending blessed needs that need to be met all day long.

And you’re a person too, dammit. Sorry, I may have been projecting my own feeling with that one.

Over the last couple of years I have started to pay attention to the small changes I have made in my life that create subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences in how my day looks while staying at home with my kids.

Some of them are easy, and some of them you’ll want to punch me right in the face. And that’s okay. Been there.

But it makes a difference. I promise. I wouldn’t spend the time writing this to you if I didn’t’ think that it would make your life easier, friend.

So here are the 8 changes that can be made that I feel will make a huge difference in the way you feel about your day when you’re laying in bed at night trying to fall asleep. You ready?

Consider Stopping Coffee.

Yes love, get it out. Call me all the names. I hear you. I’m holding space for you. Yeah, I hate me too. But please give real honest consideration to this one because I think it just may have been the biggest influencer in my mood of the whole list.

Who am I to even tell you to stop coffee? I mean, do I even know what it’s like to raise kids. Yes. I have three little ones 6 and under. And I will be the first to say coffee is delicious. I tried to cut it out of my life at least 20 different times. So I get it. And I’m not saying cut caffeine, I’m saying to cut coffee (including decaf). I noticed dramatically that when I switched to tea, I woke up happier, I was able to get more done right out of the gates, and I didn’t’ hate my life so much first thing in the morning.

And just to be certain it was coffee, I did an experiment one day. I drank just a few sips of coffee (seriously, just a few sips), I immediately felt jittery and for the rest of the day I was super irritable and ragey. So yeah, while coffee tastes amazing, it sucks for your life. You’re going to just have to trust me one this.

You Need to Exercise.

To be fair, I’m getting all the hardest ones out of the way up front. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, friend.

Exercise takes that ugly grey cloud following you around over your head and fans it all away. It clears the grey. You can go into a workout thinking everything is the pits, you’re pissed off and questioning all your life decisions, and without changing anything about your life, you’ll feel at least 50% better about everything coming out of the workout.

Your brain feeds off exercise. It’s nice to look good, but it’s so much more important to feel good, and you need exercise to feel good.

Not to go too far into evolution stuff with you, but our bodies were made to respond to stress physically. When we saw a tiger, we ran like hell or we fought. We didn’t just stand there and think “holy cow I am so stressed right now” and wallow in that stress. Friend, you would have died. There was no space for that.

And while that sounds funny and ridiculous, that is what we are doing every day. You are replaying the embarrassing moment that you lived through a decade ago for the one-hundredth time as you stand in the shower… and internalizing it all as if it were happening right at that moment. Then maybe you’re eating your feelings, and maybe even picking fights with your spouse because of the toxic stress load you’re unknowingly carrying.

We’re not supposed to experience stress that way. We need to burn it off. Fight or flee. Even if that fight is burpees and your flee is on the treadmill. Just move your body for the love of your brain.

Cut out the sugar.

Or at least some. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I have this on lock down. I’m just like any other warm blooded breathing human. I like sugar, too. And even though my husband and I run a pretty tight ship with healthy food around here, I still, pretty regularly, wake up to a little face about an inch from my own asking me for a marshmallow as my way of greeting the day.

So I know this is hard.

But I have been paying attention. And the days that are the hardest, I have eaten more sugar than I should have. I’m all jittery and irritable.

Notice a theme yet?

Irritability and motherhood don’t go well together. So pay attention, and be honest with yourself what your threshold is. What amount of sugar tips you over the edge, and then dial it back from there.

Reduce Screentime.

I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know the science of why this makes a difference, but it does. I do know that the average American watches over 5 hours of television a day.

Like, what? How? And that doesn’t include time on your phone (I think the number is a big more like 11 hours when you factor that in, which makes my brain explode just a little bit).

There are probably a whole lot of reasons that this makes us irritable, robs us of joy, and steals patience as a mother, I’m going to focus on two major reasons I think we should reduce screentime to be happier, more patient mamas.

Comparison

I have talked about this a million times over on my Girlseeksjoy Instagram account, and I’ll say it again. Comparison is the thief of joy. You are only getting a piece of the story. The person who you are admiring on Facebook or Instagram is a whole person, who is no where near perfect, just like the rest of us.

I have so many women who I follow, admire and question how they do it all, too. But to be honest, because I’ve spent time and energy doing that, that is a huge reason that I’ve been so discontent with my life at times.

I’ve been comparing my life, the one I am spack dab in the middle of the mess, to the photoshopped version of someone else’s.

Waste of time

According to ZDNet, the average American spends 5.4 hours of their day on their phone. Holy schnikes. Can you imagine how much more we could get done in 5.4 hours?

Well you could learn a damn language in less than 4 months! It takes roughly 600 hours to learn a new language. With 5.4 extra hours a day laying around, it would take 111 days, or 3.5 months. Does that put things in perspective at all?

How about the fact that you could clean your house, play with your kids, exercise, start a journal, meditate or read the bible, make new friends, connect with your spouse, start a blog, etc etc etc.

Let’s just stop saying we don’t have time. We do. We’re wasting it.

Pray.

The first time I heard the bible verse to “pray unceasingly”, I pretty much thought that meant all day every day. Anyone else? And I can see how you could find yourself doing that as a modern day mama with littles at home. We are not supposed to do this alone. We are not supposed to be little islands, with all these stressors and distractions.

So, maybe the verse didn’t actually mean have a non-stop roll out of “help me” prayers to God all day long (your kids will think you’re crazy)…

But, take a few deep breaths. Pray. Out loud. Let your kids hear you asking for help. Let your kids hear that you are human and that you too get mad and frustrated. Let them hear healthy ways to deal with that stress.

It’s okay for your kids to see you be human.

Get down on the floor and play.

So often I find myself with my back to my children, at the kitchen sink scrubbing dishes while they play at my feet. They just want to be near me all the time. In reality, isn’t’ that exactly what we want?

But instead, we find ourselves frustrated to not have a moment of time to clean, or work, or heck, pee without someone being right now at all times. And sometimes it just feels like you can’t breathe.

But what I’ve found is that the more I resist it, the more I grasp and grip for just a moment of time, the more things unravel and the more I do as well.

So put down the dishes. Turn off the computer monitor. Get down on the floor and play.

It doesn’t need to be long. It’s been said that in reality, kids only need 10 to 15 minutes of your undivided attention each day. Truly undivided, and 100% present.

It’s not just for them, you know. You will get filled up from those few minutes as well. You’ll feel more connected, lighter, happier and at the end of the day you’ll feel better about your parenting that day.

Change the scenery | Shift the mood.

Go outside. Pack the kids in the car and go to the zoo. Go for a walk. Just get out of the space that you currently are in (where your angry face lives).

If you can’t get out of the house for whatever reason, shift the mood in your home. Light a candle, put some calming music on, put a storytelling podcast on for the kids, start dinner. Do something that changes the energy of your home and look at it as a reset for the rest of the evening.

Ask for help.

As I said before, we are not supposed to do this alone. We are not supposed to be an island.

My husband and I just recently had a big talk about taking our foot off the gas (just slightly) toward paying money each month toward our debt. We’ve been feeling like we’re drowning since having our third sweet baby and having COVID hit just a couple months after he was born.

It has rocked us.

And with no parents living nearby, we’ve struggle bussed our way through it mostly on our own, and let me say, that hasn’t served us well.

So we decided to hire a sitter for 3 hours a week on a Tuesday to connect, get projects done that seem to just be sitting around forever, and finish a conversation. It has been a game changer.

And if 3 hours isn’t something you can afford right now, how about 1? How about cutting something else that doesn’t serve your life or your marriage and putting it toward a sitter for that one hour?

I truly hope that you heard all of these tips coming from a place of compassion and love. Because I have been, and often still am, right there with you. These thoughts have come as the result of so many melt meltdowns (and by that, I mean by me), and paying attention to what has helped me.

Please share this article with someone you feel is overwhelmed, or comment below so that I know you were here!

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