The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
On work-days my wife shares child care duties with her mother, and I sometimes drop in after work to take the kid out of depressed-couchbound-woman-land to hit the playground. When the child is in Kindergarten, my wife has half the day free to do as she please. And then she has pretty much the entire weekend off - seriously. Sometimes she does some light household work, but mostly she just cooks and then nothing. - , and from Friday evening to Sunday sleepytime it's dad time for as long as the kid is awake. She's pretty much like your older daughter: demanding of attention, always has her mind set on an activity or topic of conversation and tolerates no deviation from that, and can get very angry if she doesn't get her way. I guess that's how she keeps busy during weekdays, when everyone around her is trying as hard as they can to stare at their phones and forget their physical existence. On the weekends I make it very clear that it's dad-time. She gets attention all day long, no distractions, but she needs to play by Dad rules, which means no sweets, no screens, no screaming, being outdoors whenever possible and we get some chores done during the day. It works. We both have a good time, get things done, and for all that she gets to talk my ears off about volcanoes and the TV shows she watches with her mother and whatever imaginary game ruleset she just invented for the umptenth time in a day, but she has to do so while we get groceries, clean up the living room, or take a walk to check on what flowers are growing this time of the year, and sometimes those activities even break through and grab her attention and the topic of conversation shifts to what we're doing.
I have time to post on messageboards either after getting her to sleep, at which point I should be sleeping myself, or during work-days. Such as now.
I'll readily grant that our situations are not comparable. My observation is simply this: Trying to run and hide from the child to stare at a screen instead makes people miserable. Maybe alter the structure of your days or week to make a little room for yourself? Get your husband to take the kids for a while?
More options
Context Copy link