Monday, October 16, 2006

Quiet Time

I've managed to get Katja into her room, hopefully for at least an hour of quiet time. We'll see. She dropped her naps about 4 months ago, and in all honesty probably could have dropped them sooner. It was at a point where it took me an hour to get her to sleep and she was down for an hour or two . . . she would then wake up screaming/crying and telling me it hurt. I can empathise with this . . . I always feel horrible after a nap. So, as soon as we moved into this house at the end of May, I stopped trying to put her to sleep. It was very stressful, caused me to feel a lot of anger towards her (probably frustration at myself because A Good Mother would be able to put her child to sleep when s/he needs it without any fuss, right? A Good Mother is always shadowing me).
Today is our first attempt at quiet time since then. She has taken the occasional nap, when she's fallen asleep in the car, but for the most part she's just go go go all day. Consequently, I use the TV to help me cope. I need to stop that, it feels so wrong.
She just came out (after 15minutes). I told her to go back, that quiet time wasn't over yet. She said "okay mom" and went right back. I have to say, I'm a little concerned that she might be getting into something . . . but there's nothing dangerous in there, so it can't be too bad. She needs this time as much as I do. She needs time for reflection and creativity. Just like I need time to meditate. To reflect. To allow my thoughts to fully form before jumping to the next.
I hope to be able to use this time each day to reflect on things. My own journey in life, my family, the state of the world and what I can do to affect positive change.
Yes, I think this will be a good change :)