Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much

A dear friend once gave me a box filled with various words — imagine, blessings, abundance, and such — on individual slips of paper; I pull one out each day, and see what it inspires within me. The daily entries in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much are more than a single word, but each day's entry takes only a single page.

And given the book's title, it's not surprising that it touches on some organizing themes. Here are just a few small portions of what caught my eye; note that the quotes shown are not the whole entry for any given day. Some of them may even speak to those of us who are not parents!

January 20:

We hear lots of parents complain that they are so busy doing other things that they have little "quality" time with their kids.

But if we're going to find that time, we may have to relax our standards. We may have to let the laundry pile up, let a day's phone messages lapse, let the dog go without his bath. A little "disorder" may be necessary, if we're going to find the time to read that bedtime story.

August 16:

As parents who do too much, we are often prioritizing. We will put aside the medical checkup, the long-distance call to a friend — because there are "important" things to get done — things that need our immediate attention.

But let us not confuse urgency with importance. Just because something sits up and begs at our feet, does not mean we have to throw it a bone.

August 18:

The greatest gift I give my children is the time I spend with them.

September 2:

In this society, we are so bent on accomplishing all our tasks as quickly as possible, that we rarely, if ever, think about the enjoyment of our work, how it may enrich us, or what we may learn from it. Rather, we're immersed in getting it "done."

September 14:

Some of us now have a mountain of accumulated things that seemed totally necessary a few years ago. Our basements appear to be a distribution center for Toys-R-Us. It's not just that our children outgrew much of what we bought. That is inevitable. It's that a great deal of these things were never used or never enjoyed.

December 7:

Our lives and our closets have a lot in common. Both are cluttered with things we could easily do without.

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One Good Reason to Stop Running Late

Photo by Evan Sharboneau, Photo Extremist; found on Flickr; licensed through Creative Commons.

I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. No time to say hello, good-bye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late. — Michele Novotni in ADDItude MagazIne, quoting the 1951 Disney movie, Alice in Wonderland

How many of us are in this situation regularly — because we didn't plan our leave-the-house routine well enough, or because we fell prey to what Kathleen Nadeau, also in ADDItude Magazine, called one-more-thing-itis?

We know that running late can become a bad habit, but these words from Laurie Perry, also known as Crazy Aunt Purl, remind us just how serious a problem this can become:

This is what happened last month when that lady hit my Jeep. After the crash she sat in her car, writing out her phone number for me, saying, "I was late for work." I remember looking at her with absolute disbelief, thinking You almost killed me because you were late for work?

That line keeps coming back to me at the oddest times. I'll see someone blow through a red light and hear that lady saying, I was late for work. And then I think, I hope they don't kill someone just because they couldn't bother to leave on time for work today.

Related Post:
Stop Being Late

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