Reframing Outta This Pandemic

There's no doubt after months and months in this house everyone has started to be affected. The good, bad, great and "worst" has started to seep in even more as your place of refuge with your children starts to get frustrating and small no matter how big it is. The repetitive loop-like motion of what has become a semi new normal pandemic lifestyle is bleeding into the hearts of my household and probably yours. It's been months and those traits that I usually could easily sweep under the rug, I now have to make a truly conscious effort to reframe.

So what the hell is even reframing to begin with?

The basic definition of reframing is to express differently. In the grand scheme of positive parenting, it's taking traits or a situation and gaining that new angle in order to mentally and physically deal with the situation . Reframing is a small, but vital tool in the parenting arsenal. It's something that at first seems tedious, but can become second nature. It can take a higher stress, seemingly personal incident to a no big deal teaching moment.

If it's such a small tool why does it even matter?

In the grand scheme of things it'll eventually make a big difference. It'll be subtle at first. The first place you'll notice a difference isn't even in your kids: It's in you. Reframing literally brings my stress levels down. The other day I shared a post where parents reframe seemingly "negative" characteristics in their children and my post caption included me participating.

So transparency moment the "issues" I've always had, but that have escalated with my children are as follows:

My eldest daughter has always been one to lie alittle, now she isn't good at it and she doesn't get in trouble for lying, but I secretly was taking it personal inside sometimes. By reframing her lying as simply a call for creativity, I am able to get rid of those secret negative feelings (that do eventually deep into your parenting) and stress. It also allowed me to semi find a viable solution and encourage a new hobby. By seeing what I thought was a fault as a call to creativity, I am/was able to feed a new interest, and help curb the lying behavior for the most part. Progress over perfection.

For my oldest son , his high energy and impulsiveness has skyrocketed. I've obviously increased activity and outside time which helped indeed, but not enough. We are taking looks at a new diet too, but that takes time. I was (and still do occasionally let's be honest it ain't perfect this way) secretly getting frustrated because he just doesn't slow down. There are days he can't even slow down to eat and there are days he's so impulsive and moving so much he's consistently hurting himself or others (not too terribly so thank god). I have to reframe that or I was going to go insane stressing about it. So the answer is he is NOT impulsive or overly hyper, he simply radiates with energy and boldness.

For some, reframing takes a long time to pick up and that's okay. It's truly a mindfulness technique more than anything, but I promise it makes a difference especially during this pandemic where limited creative solutions can happen outside the home. It limits parental stress and in turn that helps me be gentle, and more forthcoming in interactions with my children.
 Anything that offers more and deeper connection is always a great thing and worth it in my book.