The power of writing things down.
And counting to ten - simple but effective.
Tuesday morning and I was driving my two daughters to school and nursery. Normally my oldest daughter gets the school bus but on Tuesdays I take them both in.
I like taking them in and driving the short ten minute drive from our home to the school, passing fields scattered with hay bales and dotted with sheep. The road is often quiet and I turn down the radio a couple of notches so I can listen to the girls chatter quietly to each other in the back of the car.
One is six years old and the other is two. Their conversations can be interesting…
On this particular morning, we were running a little late. We judge this by where the school bus has got up to. If it is just leaving the village, we will be early. If it is trundling along the long straight road that has hedgerows lining either side, we are right on time. If we can’t see the bus at any point along the journey, then we are late.
My daughter’s eyes must have been peeled, nose up against the window as we started to leave the village and houses gave way to greenery. I could tell she was looking out for the bus as the chatter had stopped. This is unusual; we are normally treated to a running commentary.
To be honest, I hadn’t really given the bus a second thought this particular morning because I had a to-do list as long as DiCaprio’s model dating history. A new client meeting was happening in an hour, the summer holidays are fast approaching which means thinking about fun days out and work and childcare, the car needs work doing to it and a new after school club means some logistical gymnastics with drop offs and pick ups.
So when my daughter pipes up from the back of the car: “I thought that white thing was it”, I really had no idea what she was talking about. Again, this isn’t unusual, we often have faltered conversations that take so long to get going, she has invariably lost her audience by the time she gets to the main point of her story.
The conversation then went like this:
P: “I thought that white thing was it.”
Me: “What white thing was what?”
P: “That white thing was the bus.”
Me: “What white thing are you looking at?”
P: “There.” (Points to, I presume, a white sign at the side of the road which reads Christmas Farm on its front.)
Me: “Oh, you mean the sign.”
P: “What sign?”
Me: “The one you were just pointing at?”
P: “I wasn’t pointing at a sign.”
Me: “The white thing you thought was the bus?”
P: “No not the sign - THAT white thing.”
I have no idea what she is talking about. I can’t see anything else that is white within the immediate vicinity.
Me: “Oh okay, I see what you mean.” *I’m lying.*
L pipes up because she doesn’t like to be left out: “What white sign?”
Me: “It’s gone now, we have driven past it.”
L: “AWWWW NOOOO! I WANTED TO SEE THE SIGN.”
I count slowly to ten, take a deep inhale with a longer exhale and swiftly change the subject. My head feels like it is going to explode from the effort of keeping that conversation going when it is already full to the brim of other important life admin.
So to anyone who feels they haven’t got the head space for the big things today: write it all down in a brain dump on a scrappy bit of paper.
Make lists the old school way with pen and paper. It really helps.
It helps clear some space for those smaller conversations that may take up more room than you will anticipate. The small conversations that might not seem important but are a gentle reminder that if you have kids, you need to be fully invested in any kind of conversation otherwise you won’t have the foggiest what they are on about. And sometimes that is harder to catch up on.
We live in a time where we are taking on more tasks as working parents than ever before and it is A LOT. So finding some small and simple ways to manage the load, I find, is really helpful in our coping strategies.
I wonder what we will discuss today…
Such a good point, thank you x