Sounds YUK to me unless your palate is a lot more experienced and exploratory than mine.
One of the questions I have asked myself repeatedly is why my brains feel so fried since I became a mama!?!?!? I mean I am very very excess information free but…I have zero social media except WhatsApp which I had to download when my father became ill with the mystery virus Covid, and I kept it for the same reason to only communicate and not to enter excess interaction or beauty parade my fine arse of a happy life. Life for us here is pretty much organised around little bubba. After all the rest of his brain still needs to arrive and all I lay out for him is already being fed into his hard drive. Getting my act together then becomes a property including unveiling the self to the self. If anything to alleviate any extra burden my little one needs to carry is the least I can do. I know there might be limitations I impose on his psyche unknowingly but that too we have a check in kiosk for. It’s the gift of self awareness.
BUT.
Even with all the awareness and self meaning parenting, sometimes we feel brain dead, numb, brainless, “kuku”, and what the other gets for dinner is “brain fry”. You make a dash for the door get into the car look down and see you are still in your slippers! You go through the whole list of what you need for the journey it’s all there. You get to the show but you left the tickets at home. You finally have that date night with your other half, and nothing sounds more romantic than a woohoo feet up time forget the love making let’s make some sleep!!
You write little notes on the fridge different places and you still get lost in it all. You cook the same dish you have known how to since you were ermmm 19? Ok so maybe 29? Only this time you forget how it’s cooked. Suddenly you need recipe books. You need to look stuff up. You need to set reminders alarms and all.
What’s going on folks? Why are our brains getting so fried?
Our brain needs:
Sleep
Sleep
Sleep
And not just any shut eye but the kind that will make you feel rested and rejuvenated. When we sleep the brain makes sense of the days happenings and creates memory. It’s mainly what’s you have focused on with attention that will create a wiring and a firing in the brain.
What happens when we are in the middle of preparing a beautiful gourmet meal and your toddler shouts “mama” “mama”, pulls at your legs, and wants his saucepans washed “now” not later? You politely ask him to wait. He protests. He might even give in move away focus on something else. But you look at his face, and notice the frown, and instead of thinking oh wow my kid is so self sufficient and seems to have gotten the message, with your level of awareness and attuned rapport with your little bubba, you know that he has simply developed a way of making good the situation but he has felt disappointed.
It’s this feeling in him that might park itself somewhere causing you to accumulate maybe a shameful ness or a sense of inadequacy or maybe guilt. You are totally unaware of this. You carry on with the food preparation. The next day the same thing happens. And more guilt is parked. Apart from that emotion, your focus is split. You want to ensure the meal is done and little bubba’s nutrition is optimal. You also want little bubba to know that mama is there fully present and conscious. BUT you also feel like you are not doing so well because little bubba might feel rejected.
On the other hand, you might just feel irritated at the leg pulling and park that irritation away. You may feel frustrated at the whole stop and start way of doing things now. You try and try. And then you cry and cry!! You might shut a part of you down and develop a thick skin to some of it and keep it going. You think about your “me time”. You choose to have your own things to do and arrange for child care. For a while it works. And then you find you still have these fried brain moments.
So what is what?
The brain is a very very delicate organ that thrives on a lot of calm and centred focus. When we pay attention the brain will take note of something and later on once asleep then brain registers it creates a memory. Woohoo! Job done, the next time you can then do the same thing without much effort. It’s in your accessible memory. Okay, so when little bubba is pulling at your strings, and you feel all over the place, your attention is not on one thing. Too many things are happening and not with single pointed focus. Instead there’s a state of disarray, your brain doesn’t know which way is which.
It doesn’t known which task you intended to pay attention to and what gets encoded. It will try and make sense of it all and will most likely serve up a jambalaya of all sorts. So you will then have to make sense of that when you boil the milk and forget all about the milk that’s on your daily list.
So what can we do?
Release the pressure. Relax. Stop the food prep and attend to little bubba. Your attention to him will go a long way for him and even if that adds a few minutes to your dinner time, it will give him the comfort and you the space. It’s all an investment and one that will behove well.
Our brain thrives when it has one thing to focus on at a time; when we have too many things we create brain fry.
How to create brain space:
1, Minimise the amount of tasks a day
2, Attend to little bubba without delay or distress when possible
3, Relieve the pressure
4, Delegate
5, Create space for you when you can
6, Turn off your mobiles during bubba time
7, Dance with little bubba
8, Make your day a joy to live
9, Eat with little bubba
If we can synch our days in terms of when we eat so that meals are a family bonding time, or having your little tea breaks while little bubba plays with his blocks or you watch him explore if he will, these tiny steps might just free your mind a little. Being stroppy or mentally strained even if you are not telling your bubba off is still a heavy bale of blah you can do without. It all bears on you.
Similarly when we spend so much time on the screen, or focused on what’s not in front of you right now, we are taking the present of being here now away from us.
Our engaged presence is the biggest gift and one that is freely available to our little ones – that is the key to their sense of abundant love. A love that’s on tap. A love that’s without effort or strain and one little bubba can pull on your legs for. Revel in your little bubba’s daily wisdom.