Its funny how much we can learn from our kids if we listen carefully enough.
The other night my husband, son and I, sat down to spend some quality time that we call “special time” where we devote a specific timeframe to focus exclusively on playing whatever our son wants to do.
It really is fascinating to see the places he can go in his imagination and be immersed in his 5-year old world.
As we sat down to play, I asked him what he wanted for me to do, as in, which toy he wanted for me to play with along him, or which character he’d like for me to impersonate, or anything else. To this, he responded, “pretend to be the audience.” I was quite confused so I asked him to clarify what he meant. He said, “Yes, mommy, just be there and watch Daddy and me play.”
At first, I was a bit disappointed that he just wanted for me to sit there and instead do all the fun playing only with his Dad. Especially seeing my kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, I felt that I could be taking care of the house or anything else, versus just sitting there for 20 minutes.
Nevertheless, I stayed and watch silently as my son and husband carried on with all the games and role-playing of children’s fictional characters. As I sat there, I began to enter a state of reflection that brought a new awareness of my present reality.
My day had been a constant go-go-go, as I was trying to juggle working from home, taking care of the kids, and juggling house chores all at the same time. I hadn’t really taken a moment to catch my breath and think.
So, my son’s request gave me exactly what I needed: some time to just BE.
As I reflected, I realized that in addition to pretending to be an audience for my son’s “special time”, I could also pretend to be an audience for our current reality, with all its challenges.
At that moment, my whole day passed through my mind as if I was watching a movie in fast motion. I realized how busy and overwhelmed I had felt for most of the day, and how better it could have been if I would have taken a step back and been the observer of our reality.
With everything we have going on right now, and especially as each day the media seems to deliver more and more bad news, it will be so helpful for all of us to pretend to be the audience of this story and not see our current reality only from an insider’s perspective.
Taking this approach can help us become more aware of our thoughts and actions, as well as those of our family.
So, next time you feel overwhelmed or stressed, ask yourself: “what if I pretended to be the audience right now?”, and see if anything changes.
I recently shared more insight into this and more upcoming topics inside my new FB group “Entrepreneurial Musician Mothers”. Be sure to join if you haven’t yet done so yet.
Coming soon I’ll be doing FB lives in my group interviewing musician mothers who homeschool. We’ll discuss how to manage being a musician mother and getting things done with kids in the house 24/7. More on that next week!
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