REST
I had big plans for the vibe my family would have. I love classical music and jam band music and Bob Marley. I love cozy blankets and crackling fires. I love the beautiful smells and sounds and sites of nature. I love all things calm and soothing and soft and comforting and chill. I think it’s always been my way to cope with my own anxiety, and I always pictured the perfect workplace for me would be a spa. I had every intention of carrying that vibe over into how I parented and the lifestyle our family would thrive in.
Oh boy. It has been far from the reality of how things have been going. In muddling through the parenting of young children and the task of figuring out the special needs we have in our home, it has been anything but chill. It has been beautiful and full of love and happiness, but it has also been frantic, electrified, a tad loud and flat out buzzing in our home. I laugh as I type this, because we can plan and envision our future all we like. We just aren’t in charge of the twists and turns our life will take. My sharing this is in no way a complaint. I have none, aside from the fact that I’d love a little more sleep. Just a little. It's a fact. Our vibe is the opposite of the therapeutic calm I maintained in my home as a single woman.
I recently read an article about the effects of hyper-focusing on our children. I think the piece was probably written with a typical child-rearing experience in mind, but it stung a little reading it. It made me ask myself a couple of questions. Am I too hyper-focused on the needs in our home, and missing the calm and chill we all would benefit from? Am I able to turn this buzz off by creating that vibe I so desire here, that I had always intended before things got so hard? Can I just rest even within the frantic? Those thoughts all flew through my mind as I read this article.
Then the thought that pops into my mind so often, did just that. It popped in. “But, we’re different”. I have to constantly assess needs and if I’m not focused in, I might miss it. One of the systems we have in place, may fail if not surveilled each moment. And we are different, but hasn’t it been my mission to convince the World that all people are different, and in that way we are the same? We are not so different, that this message should not apply to us as well. We are loving parents. Ensuring that every need is met is important, but the focus of our entire family life does not have to be based on our children. While meeting the special needs we’ve encountered, it feels time to rest in terms of the hyper-focus I’ve felt to this point.
It occurred to me that I had gotten very swept up in figuring it out and in the research and in the moments that I felt helpless in. It clicked that my children will benefit from the calm I’ve always clung to as a coping mechanism for myself. It’s almost as if, in the flurry of the last few years, I’d forgotten how to procure an environment of rest.
After mulling over this, I started claiming some peace and calm at home for myself, but for my children, as well. We can parent our special needs family members well without putting all of our focus on parenting. In removing the unseen microscope from the members of our family, each one can exhale. And if we need anything, after the whirlwind of navigating PANS/PANDAS in our case, we all need rest. We need rest during all of the storms of life.
We are still well within the storm on many days, but I can relax. My kids can, too.
Written by BreAnn Tassone
