I teach/coach parents and one of the main aspects of improving quality of parenting for the child is improving the quality of self care for parents. Adults ten

I teach/coach parents and one of the main aspects of improving quality of parenting for the child is improving the quality of self care for parents. Adults tend to sacrifice self care at the drop of a hat. Here are a few ideas which my clients find useful: - who you are, and what you are capable of, changes, and is influenced by many things, on both short and long timescales. - you on 2 hours of sleep and no food is different from a well-rested well-fed “you” - it is beneficial to look at yourself less as “good” or “bad” and more as “well-resourced”, or “under-resourced” - divide your resources into a few different aspects which you can clearly identify/sense. You can visualize them like the health, energy, mana, ammunition etc. bars in a video game. - I recommend rest/nourishment, belonging/connection, solitude/stillness/reflection, contribution/competency, play/fun, self expression. Yours may vary A bit but these are some of the most common basic human needs. - when these get depleted, your cognitive resources diminish. Your stress increases. Your organism has a breaking point and a meltdown is a signal of your reaching it. - a meltdown in a child is the result of the brain getting flooded with stress hormones and restoring itself to balance. (Cortisol gets excreted in tears for example). Similar to you - it’s a rebalancing process. But, it has impact on others and it’s better to not reach a point of losing control. Resource-wise, you will need to fight to resource yourself - against your old habits, the time crunch etc. Prioritizing your self-care is now vitally important.