Welcome back!
Kathy Ireland shared a favorite solution for busy moms during our recent interview on The Mommy-Muse Is In. In her empowering book, Real Solutions for Busy Moms: Your Guide to Success and Sanity, she writes about “bubble times.” Here are her words to our listeners:
“Life is so hectic and crazy for all of us. I find that if I don’t enforce this bubble time, it doesn’t happen. That is time when I just shut out the rest of the world from myself and our kids. It’s time we get together.
We have three kids, different ages, and different interests. It’s challenging to come up with activities that we can all do together. Frequently, we’ll do individual dates. It’s not elaborate or complicated. It’s just spending that time together, that uninterrupted time. The drive to school – we have about a twelve minute commute to school, each day. That has become such a joy to me because I’ve turned that into a bubble time. All the driving around, whether it’s to school, ballet, guitar practice, or whatever it is; we don’t do the iPods, the Game Boy, and the cell phones. The kids remind me, “That goes for you, too, Mom.”
It’s time for us where we shut out the rest of the world and we talk. If the morning has been really hectic, crazy, and people are fighting and stressed, we use that twelve minutes while we’re getting to school to try to turn it around. Maybe we’ll pray, maybe we’ll listen to music, or sometimes if people are picking on each other we take turns; we go around and you have to give a compliment to everybody in the car, a really genuine compliment.
It’s amazing how hearing your big brother say something good about you can lift your spirits. It can start off as a disaster when we’re getting in the car, and by the time we’re at school, it’s like everybody is happy and it’s good. That works!”
One of my listeners, Tamara, wrote in to say what a difference this simple concept has already made in her life:
“Fridays are very hectic getting ready for Sabbath, cleaning, cooking etc. I have 5 kids from 6 to 17. My 17 year old and his dad are going through some difficult times right now. Just as Shabbat came in last week we lost power and had a table full of candles. The tension level was very high. It was a make or break it time, and how the dinner went would have affected the whole evening. I decided to try it out to bring down the tension level. Had each one say something nice about everyone, and I went first. I was shocked at how the atmosphere changed. I was even more shocked at some of the wonderful things my kids said about each other. It made me cry, as well as a few of the others. We will definitely do it again. It was awesome!”
Isn’t it amazing how just a few minutes of being focused on creating a different experience in your life, as a family, can have a profound effect on your entire day? Kathy and I look forward to hearing more of your stories of transformation!
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My favorite mini-medi’s (small meditations) are while driving to and fro, I connect my iPhone to my car and open my Pandora app to the genre of the moment and get lost in a memory or prayer or just the sound of the music. Its like my recharge. Sometimes it even works when the kids are in the backseat and we are listening to the _Newsies_ soundtrack (its our fav) and I can hear those little voices singing their heart out, or they talk to God. It’s those moments when I tell myself, life is not that complicated and I am a good mom.
This really great advice from Kathy Ireland to take time when you “just shut out the rest of the world from myself and our kids. It”™s time we get together.”
I am a soon to be grandmother and I just can’t wait and have already started a blog on being a grandmother. Today, there is an unbelieveable amount of multitasking and I am a chief participant in that. However, somethings require undivided attention and can only be appreciated in that way. Having undivided attention time with children cannot be underestimated. I am still amazed at what my grown children remember most about their childhhood – the books we read, lullabies sung, family time at our mountain cabin (no TV has ever passed the door). Those are the times we shared our inner self – in both directions and in the long run….it has made all the difference.
So Moms with hectic lives, re-read this article and take it to heart.
Visit my new blog on being a grandmother and invite your Mom to visit too.
Marion Conway
http://grandmachroniclesblog.blogpost.com
Hi Marion,
What a treat to hear from you! Of course I’ll check out your new site and have Mommy-Muse co-founder, Linda – aka “Grama” visit you as well