Conscious Family Journal

3 Great Ways to Be Nice to Your Neck

Self-care will always be an important part of your conscious parenting toolkit. Here are some of the ways that I keep myself healthy, so that I have what I need to raise healthy kids.

I love my children, really I do. Being a parent is the absolute, most wondrous thing that I have ever experienced. Still... every now and then... my little darlings can be a real pain in the neck.

And I'm not speaking figuratively. Adolescence has blown right past the "terrible two's" when it comes to cringe-inducing, brain-frying, jaw-clenching behavior. Some days I can actually feel the muscles in my neck tightening up. Then my right eye starts to twitch. Soon, my head is pounding.

Just another day of parenting pre-teens.

Of course, I can't blame it all on my kids. There is also my laptop, which I spend too many hours hunched over, typing away my life stories (or compulsively playing Freecell.) And then there are those forty-pound bags of salt, which I need to purchase and carry regularly to feed the voracious appetite of the water softening system in our basement.

There is much in life to strain, tighten and generally abuse our poor neck muscles. Fortunately, with a little extra attention, we can give them the care they need to stay strong and healthy. Here are three great ways to be nice to your neck:

It's All About You!

  

Conscious parenting means taking better care of ourselves, so we can take better care of our children.

  

I had three unplanned hours to myself the other day.

  

It was rather strange.

  

A family friend had just pulled out of the driveway with boys in tow, on their way to a baseball game. I had already finished my writing for the day, cleaned up from dinner and done a little yard work.

  

What to do with myself?

  

I took a long walk with my MP3 player for company, followed by a solitary bubble bath. I called my mother to chat.

     

It was lovely.

     

It reminded me of the importance of self-care. I have written about this topic before, but it bears continued focus: We cannot possibly hope to take care of the needs of our children, if we are a walking mass of unmet needs ourselves.

  

We cannot fill our child’s love bucket if our own is empty.