personal development

Finding Rest as a Parent Even When You Don’t Want To

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Trees with orange and brown leaves lit by an unknown source of light, as there is a cloudy sky with gray clouds overhead

“You should be so available to play that your children never need to ask,” read the meme. Or least that’s how I read it. (Although it really was close to it.) But what if they always want more than I have to offer? I thought in desperation.

Other memes or oversimplified advice extolled the virtues of connection, especially when it came to getting your kids to do what you want or need them to do, like brush their teeth or come to the table for dinner. Some even made the connection explicit, saying that your kids will be cooperative if only you’re connected enough with them. Of course that message implies the opposite – that if they aren’t cooperative, it’s because you aren’t connected enough.

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Moving from watching to participating as a parent

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of my kids (two white boys in t-shirts) in a carnival ride that has a bucket on an arm that spins around

“You aren’t supposed to lead play, just watch,” the parenting expert voice in the back of my head said. So I sat there on the living room floor and watched, keeping my mouth closed, lest I pass judgment on how my kid was playing.

Even though something felt ‘off’ about this statement, I couldn’t help but see it as the culmination of so much parenting advice – and more strikingly, parent shaming.

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Glimmers of joy

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Orange flowers flopped over in a flower box with pine ones behind it

Often, the most beautiful things aren’t neat and tidy, but messy and unexpected. As someone who finds a lack of control stressful, this can be tough for me to deal with! It takes a lot of effort for me to move past something not meeting my expectations to find the good in it.

But I’ve made a real effort to keep my eyes open for these small moments of joy, both in nature and with my kids. I’ve found them in my kids geeking out together over a shared topic, adorable bumblebees in my yard, the way clouds part just-so around the sun, birdsong, and reading to my kids. And these bright flowers in my neighbor’s flower box.

Some psychologists call these small joys “glimmers,” which are opposite of trauma-induced triggers. They can help counteract the everyday annoyances of life and the endless march of our society’s soul-crushing injustices. With our kids, noticing and remembering these times can really help when we’re frustrated with them or just so tired.

Glimmers aren’t a quick fix or easy solution. They won’t solve those aforementioned problems. But they are a way to find more joy, which can be helpful to most of us.

How a book can start a conversation

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Selfie of me (a white woman in a teal t-shirt) holding up the book A Day With No Words in front of a bookshelf

As I finished reading this beautiful book with my younger son, we read the section in the back where the author (Fidgets and Fries) describes how it’s based on her relationship with her nonspeaking autistic son, although he’s older now than the kid in the book. I mentioned that she’s autistic as well, as is her younger son.

“What’s autistic again?” asked my son. “I forgot.”

So I explained to him how it’s a set of ways some people’s brains are different than the average, including differences in communication, reading social cues, interests, sensory perception, and sometimes coordination. (We have multiple neurodivergences in our family, so he’s familiar with the idea of people’s brains being different from the average.)

I then paused and thought about how to phrase what I was going to say next. “I think I might be autistic too. It’s sometimes hard to tell when you’re an adult and have learned some of those skills.” He nodded, not particularly surprised that my brain (or anyone’s in our family) doesn’t work like the average person’s.

Thank you to Tiffany Hammond for writing such a beautiful book that offers both important representation and the opportunity to start and continue important conversations about the beautiful diversity of all of our brains.

When a lifetime feels like a few days

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Image of the Baby Yoda / Grogu Tamagotchi (not ours, as we have managed to lose the actual Tamagotchi somewhere in the house and the bunny chewed on the ears of the case so badly we had to throw out the little case - <sigh>)

“Baby Yoda left,” my older son told me as I was tucking him in. He was referring to our Baby Yoda Tamagotchi, which eventually leaves with the Mandalorian if you take good care of him.

“Oh?” I said.

“Yeah, I looked to see how Baby Yoda was feeling and he was gone. And I was like, Oh, that’s how he’s feeling,” he said.

“Mmmm, well, you know something?” I whispered to him. “That’s how it feels to me with you.”

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What now keeps me up at night as a mom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of an alarm clock in the dark with the time 10:26 AM, 57% humidity and 71 F

My eyes closed, nearly drifting off to sleep, I startle, awakened by a creaking noise. Is it one of the kids’ doors? Is one of them up, perhaps to go to the bathroom? Listening closer, room still dark, I strain to hear. The noise occurs again, but I can locate it just outside our window. “It’s the blueberry bushes, scratching the house,” I reassure myself. But some part of me doesn’t accept that answer and keeps listening anyway – just in case.

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Showing ourselves the grace we show our kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Shannon (a white woman in a teal scarf) looking up at the camera with my younger son (a white boy) sitting next to me playing a Nintendo Switch on a blue couch

“I’m sorry – what was your name again?” I asked the man sitting next to me at the community meeting.

“Luis,” he replied, then gestured. “Remember, I asked you about hosting the neighborhood pantry?”

“Oh, right!” I recalled. “I’m sorry – I’m really bad at both faces and names.”

I’ve had some variation on this conversation dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

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Respecting all types of family time

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of two white boys cuddled together on a giant bean bag, both playing separate Nintendo Switches

“Nothing is wasted in nature,” I whispered to myself as I dumped moldy strawberries in our composter.

I despise wasting food. There are so many things wrapped up in the production of our food – from how farm workers are treated to the amount of fertilizer used – that throwing it away feels a bit like sacrilege. But we bought far too much for our Christmas fruit salad and the extra got shoved back in the fridge with the other holiday leftovers. So into the composter it had to go.

I at least had the solace that this food wouldn’t be wasted – it would break down into good compost to feed our garden next fall. Just like the fallen leaves in the forest feed the insects and fungus, which in turn feed the roots of the trees and other plants.

In fact, this is idea that nothing is wasted in nature is a mantra I’ve been trying to adopt in life far beyond our composter.

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When everything and nothing has changed in being a parent

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment
Photo of a Chinese-style lantern of an alligator next to a tree wrapped in purple Christmas lights at night

An empty changing table. But in my mind, my memory, it wasn’t empty. There was a child on it, an excitable, squirmy three year old who was potty training – slowly. A shock of recognition went through me – he was that young last time we were here, wasn’t he? Had it been that long? Yes, it had.

I was standing in the bathroom of a favorite cafe – a place I hadn’t been since COVID started. We were on our way to the Zoolights event at the National Zoo – an event they hadn’t held since COVID started. And when COVID started, my kid was a toddler and now he’s a kid. Not even a “little” kid – just a kid. It was strange how time had jumped like nothing at all.

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