I sat our three (primary-aged) children down the other day and told them ... Actually, that’s not true. I didn’t even try to sit them down. But I did catch their attention when they all happened to be in our kitchen/living area at various stages of getting ready for school.
So no, the kids weren’t all sitting quietly, looking up at me with large, attentive eyes – but at least I wasn’t (as I’m prone to do at times) yelling through the house.
Once I had their attention (or at least, some of it) I told them I needed their help – not just “help”, but theirs. I didn’t go so far as to say I wasn’t coping with the pace of life but that was the gist. I warned them my brain was behaving like a sieve, that my inbox and calendar were out of control, that even if the school sent me three important reminders about this or that, and even if I read them all (I most likely would not), that would be no guarantee I would remember what I was supposed to when I was supposed to. I can’t remember if I added that their dad was also unable to cope with the tsunami.
Long story short: I was absolving us from full responsibility for school reminders (times three) and giving some to them.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my children’s school, and the time its teachers take to keep parents in the loop. I’m not against reminders, or newsletters, or updates, or FYIs. I’d certainly prefer too much communication than too little. I’m just not, well, keeping up with all of it right now. And once it occurred to me that maybe, right now I can’t, it made sense to take a breath, explain, and ask for help.
The problem is, we live in an age where it’s just as easy for someone to contact 50 people as it is for them to contact one, where there’s no limit on how many demands can be made on us, because all it takes is a click of a button to make them. At the same time, there are no more hours in a day. We can upgrade the hard drives on our computers, we can improve their memory, their capacity, their speed, but we can’t upgrade our bodies or our brains. We can only be in one place at one time.
Sometimes emailed information is nice to know but it’s not information I need to know, and I needn’t feel guilty if I don’t have time to process and action all of it. Sometimes I am the person who needs to know something but sometimes I’m actually not. Sometimes the (little) person it concerns can take responsibility themselves.
And often that little person is better equipped to remember library day and cupcake day and free-dress day than I am, because they might actually care, and they might remember on their own – their brains are at a stage where they can absorb entire languages with ease, while I struggle to remember people’s names. Also, they’re at a stage in life where they only really have to manage themselves. They’re not facing requests and demands and expectations from what seems like all directions, all the time. They have capacity that I do not.
I think of myself as being naturally quite diligent and not very rebellious. Sometimes the fact I could not do something I’ve been asked to do – or expect myself to do – doesn’t even occur to me, even if the request or expectation is unreasonable. I’m also prone to feeling guilty, even (or especially?) over the smallest things.
But the more I think about it, the more important my sanity is, for me and for my family. Preserving it by lowering expectations of how much I can manage, my own and other people’s, shouldn’t induce guilt.
Perhaps you have more than three children and/or more than you can manage in the time you have each day. Perhaps you also need to stop attempting the impossible and ask for help.
I’m yet to determine how effective downward delegating will be but I’m hopeful. After talking to the kids, I asked them if they understood. They said they did. Time will tell. But what’s the worst that can happen? School uniform on a free-dress day? No money for a cupcake stall? Reading the same library book two weeks in a row?
It could be worse.
• Emma Wilkins is a Tasmanian journalist and freelance writer
