Don't die for your kids, live for them instead.
It’s easy to forget that whilst you are watching your kids grow up – they are also watching you grow up – they just don’t realise it. And maybe neither do you.
Once you realise that you are also still ‘working on it’ you can not only cut yourself some slack but more importantly you can stop playing the passive survival game and instead push forward – for their benefit as well as yours.
Most of us have heard the safety briefing – put on your own oxygen mask before your child’s. Counter intuitive – yes, the right thing to do – also yes. You think about it and it all makes perfect sense – your kids need you functioning and thinking clearly to navigate whatever crisis is around the corner, whether it’s a loss of cabin pressure or the existential crisis of a lost teddy bear.
“I’d die for my kids” – that’s admirable but how about you live for them instead? Actually live. Society has us strung out to believe that it’s acceptable to follow the herd and grind out indeterminable Monday to Fridays so we can slide exhausted and drained into the weekend and then somehow deliver the best version of ourselves for the very people who matter the most. Let’s be honest, employers will come and go but whether they are 4 years old or 40, your kids are going to be on the family org chart even longer than you are.
So what does living look like? It looks a lot like better choices. Putting on your oxygen mask first and taking care of yourself physically and mentally. Don’t worry you don’t have to become a kale-smoothie consuming physical Adonis who reads The Illiad to your kids every night. But you do need to critically evaluate what the hell you are doing – eat a little better, exercise a little more, talk instead of scroll. Experiment and find some daily practises that help you delineate between work and family – if a ten minute walk before getting home gives your family a far more decompressed parent and partner for the next few hours then that’s an investment worth making.
Remember this is dual layer investment – whilst you’re working on your own mental, physical and emotion wellbeing – you’re simultaneously giving your kids a model for doing the same.
Becoming a parent isn’t an endstate – it’s a start line. They’re growing but so are you. So put your oxygen mask on, breath deep and get to parenting.
Don’t die for your kids. They need you to live.
So live.