Summertime is synonymous with ease, with lazing by the pool, going to the beach and enjoying cold drinks on a sweltering day. But when you are the parent of a special needs child, ease isn’t exactly the word you would pick to describe your experience.
There always seems to be something that feels incredibly effortful. You might be trying to help your child with a vexing behavioral, social or medical issue that’s come to your attention. You might be struggling to get new resources for them. Or you might be planning a “fun” vacation for the family, which involves trying to think of everything that might go wrong so you can prevent it. In short, instead of ease, you are mostly aware of a lot of striving and stress.
However, there is a way to experience more ease and it is available to you more often than you might imagine. I’m referring to pausing, the act of creating and inhabiting the spaces between activities.
One way to create a pause is by resisting the urge to “get one more thing done.” A while back, I wrote a blog about space-cushions, the act of making more space around the activities of your day. Instead of putting another check on your to-do list, you might inhabit that space between activities to get to your destination a little early, or to have a cup of tea before you go on to the next errand.
Pausing is also the art of appreciating what is happening in the moment, perhaps savoring that first sip of coffee in the morning or noticing the beautiful colors of the flowers outside your window.
We value being productive so much that we forget to inhabit the present moment. Instead, we rush through our to-do list or try to optimize our limited time by multitasking. A friend of mine recently shared that, instead of taking her usual early morning walk while listening to a podcast or book on Audible, she decided to leave her earbuds at home . While she walked, she listened instead to the sounds that surrounded her — birdsongs and the breeze in the trees. She noticed that she felt even calmer after this walk than she usually does. This isn’t to say that it’s bad to listen to your devices. But my friend’s experience illustrates that there is ease in simply surrounding yourself with what the moment happens to offer.
Pausing is also about enjoying the moments that you don’t label as important, which often include the times in which things go smoothly. I can spend a lot of my time focused on issues surrounding my son, or the endless things that need to be done. But this robs me of savoring moments, especially with my son, that have gone well. This Father’s Day, for example, my whole family actually had a nice time doing a shared activity. We played Jenga for about 20 minutes! This might not sound like much, but it was a sweet moment of togetherness that includes both my son and daughter. It’s helpful to give more attention to these moments, which count every bit as much as the times when things aren’t going so well.
This summer, I hope that you can notice and embrace the pause, whether that pause comes from making more space between activities, letting go and noticing the sounds and sights around you in the moment, or cherishing a good moment with your child. No matter how you grant yourself the pause, it gives you the moments of ease that make all that effort just a little more bearable, and make your parenting journey more meaningful.