There are few things in life that cause as much stress, worry, frustration, and irritation as raising children. The days when they seem to constantly be fighting, whining, or when their relentless needs and demands feel endless. Parents often pray for the hours before bedtime to pass quickly and usually find themselves falling asleep—worn out from mental exhaustion—just as quickly, or even before the kids do. Those are the days when keeping your sanity while raising children feels impossible.
It may be that an important part of being a parent is learning to live without sanity. There are so many aspects of childhood and children’s behavior that seem to have no logical source or solution. The mischief and mayhem that come with a house full of kids is often filled with senseless acts and irrational expectations. Many of these seem to be intended to try the patience of the parents or to fulfill our own parents’ prophecy that we would have children just like we were. Once a parent is born, so much understanding and insight into why our parents did and said the things they did is gained! Even so, there are many things a parent can do to maintain the internal balance and stability that their children seem intent on stealing at any moment.
Strategies for Maintaining Your Sanity
For one thing, an important part of parenthood is learning to tune out many of the non-essential, unimportant, and meaningless behavioral quirks of your children. Once you realize that they will grow out of it, it becomes much easier to stop wasting energy wondering why your child bangs their head against the wall or cries every time they hear an airplane overhead. It’s rare that anything in childhood is permanent. You might feel at the brink of insanity because your children seem to be in cahoots at 2 a.m. each night, sneaking into your bed to steal your covers. Lack of sleep can do funny things to a parent, but soon, they will rarely, if ever, come into your room—and you may even miss these sleepless nights.
Keep in mind that tuning out is very different from not listening. Tuning out means hearing the sibling fight and not feeling the need to intervene until that pivotal moment when you know someone is about to get hurt. Tuning out means cooking dinner while nodding at intervals as your 3-year-old rambles endlessly, asking you silly questions and pretending to be your mommy. She thinks you’re listening, but you’re really thinking about having a bikini body and sitting on the beach with your husband again. Tuning out means sitting at your laptop, surfing the web while cartoons blare in the background. Tuning out is also listening to the hysterical words and screams of your two-year-old (knowing they’re just being bratty) and feeling unphased, content to finish folding the laundry without exploding.
Another way to keep your sanity while raising children is to try to spend as much time as possible with other adults. Sure, the kids can come along, but having the camaraderie of adult companions who are also deprived of adult conversation can go a long way to making you feel better. Instead of going to the park alone or taking the kids to McDonald’s by yourself—where they’re bound to drive you crazy on the car ride alone—enlist a relative or friend to go with you. The constant whines of the kids will seem like soft background noise against the common-sense communication of another adult. Most parents who are driven to insanity rarely, if ever, get out of the house, and when they finally do, they’ve lost the capacity to act “normal” in public. These parents can be spotted just about everywhere, with their nervous tics, inability to lose their maternal tone, constant access to germ-x, and their haggard, unshowered appearance. Those folks have definitely lost their minds!
Another tip for holding onto the last shreds of sanity when the children seem determined to turn you into a wall-climbing, Zoloft-addicted maniac is to either change the scenery or introduce the kids to some body of water. For kids, these two things can instantaneously and completely turn their attitudes around. Take them outside, to a park, or for a walk—or better yet, fill up a pool with water, or let them run through a sprinkler. Sometimes, just giving them the hose or a bowl of water and two paintbrushes can be enough. Chances are, when the children are at their worst, mom and dad are too! By using the outdoors or water—two of the most natural elements that children respond to—they’ll calm down, and you’ll relax. Within 30 minutes, you might even find yourself counting your blessings, smiling, and laughing again at the crazy antics of your children.
Keeping your sanity while raising children is often about redefining the word “sanity.” For childless people, sanity means something completely different than it does for a parent. Sanity for a parent may be two minutes of quiet, the ability to pay a bill on time, or even the chance to have a 5-minute conversation with a client without trying to muffle the screams of kids. Sanity means a bowl of popcorn and a really good Disney movie that magically gives you 55 minutes of peace. Sanity can also mean driving to the store to pick up a gallon of milk without the kids or using the bathroom without an audience. Sanity can mean taking a shower without rushing because the baby might wake up. It can even mean 10 minutes of watching your children get along for the first time all day. In so many respects, there are hundreds of tiny moments throughout the day that can be sanity savers.
When none of those things work, or when you truly feel like you’re going to literally go crazy, call or visit that one person you know who has four kids that act like raving lunatics every day of their life. You know the one mother you try to avoid because her children are more annoying than yours, and she’s constantly engaging the kids in loud, irritating banter. Everyone knows that one mother or father whose children are so chaotic and out of control that you wonder how in the world she survives a minute in her house. You hear them screaming long before they even get out of the car and can tell the minute you walk into Walmart if they’re somewhere in the store. Call that family, talk to that parent, spend 5 minutes with those kids, and you’ll feel sane by comparison. This experience won’t just help you keep your sanity while raising your children, but it may also invoke feelings of deep-seated gratitude that you have the family you have—and drive home the idea that life at your house, with your kids, is not so bad after all!
