Sara:
Here we go…brace yourselves…are you ready for a shocking revelation?
I wanted to return to work after having a baby because…I was bored.
Yes, I admit it, AND I personally don’t think this makes me a bad mother. In fact I might go as far as saying it made me a better mother, because I have a life outside of squeaky toys and touch & feel books, I get to spend time with other adults and talk about adult things and then when I return home of an evening and on weekends my whole attention, 100%, is devoted to my daughter. I hope also that seeing both her father and I work will instil a good work ethic in her.
I must say that I have nothing against women who stay at home with their children whatsoever, in fact, I might go as far as saying I envy the women who can do this, it’s just that I couldn’t hack it mentally. I needed more stimulation. And yes I do have pangs of guilt that maybe I’m missing out on some of the best days of her life, but in other ways she is benefitting from going to grandma’s one day a week and nursery for the remaining three days as she is interacting with people other than her father and me. For the time being we get to spend one day in the week exclusively together, just us, and this time is special, as she gets an attentive, interactive mummy for the whole day. Eventually this will change and I will have to go back full-time, but for the time being, easing into working life suits us all.
I suppose it’s whatever works for you really, different strokes for different folks.
When I did return to work, like having a baby itself, nothing can prepare you for it. By the end of the first week I was nearly in tears I was so tired. You think that nothing could tire you out more than having to wake every two hours to breast feed your baby. Try having to wake at 1am and then 6am (her sleeping pattern had calmed considerably before I returned to work - thank goodness!) and then do a whole day of office work (which I thought would be the relaxing bit, ha!) and then return home to feed, bathe and settle a baby. I remember the days sans child. I used to come home, slip my shoes off, casually throw a nice meal together, sit down, watch a bit of telly, maybe a glass of wine…ah bliss.
These days are different but in a good way. Now I come home feed the baby, bath the baby, settle the baby in bed, hose down the post-dinner/apocalypse kitchen mess, tidy baby toys to enable access to the living room carpet, and then sit down and relax…ah bliss!
Kate:
If you asked me what we teach at the centre I work at I’d be inclined to answer with one word… survival. Think of the film The Day After Tomorrow, the skills required to survive the film are fire lighting and shelter building (covered by our bushcraft activity), long distance walking and rope work (covered by our climbing and off site walking). We teach compass and map work, archery and we encourage team building, giving everyone the chance to lead the group, like being Rick in The Walking Dead, only without the zombies.
Thinking about this in a less extreme way, the things we teach are preparing young people for life. They learn that there are lots of things in life people don’t want to do but they just have to get on with it, be that working with people they don’t get on with, going down a dark cave or getting their hands muddy. They also learn Mummy and Daddy aren’t always right, just because your mum doesn’t like lifts and says she is claustrophobic, it doesn’t mean you are and therefore you might actually enjoy the caves. Getting cold and wet can be fun and getting a bit lost in the woods can be exciting not scary. You have to try things to find out if you really like or dislike them.
I believe it is best to learn these things at an early age, then you can just get on with your life and whatever it throws at you, but I still think there are a few things that adults could learn from the activities that we run. In November last year I attended a canoe and kayaking coaching course at Trentham Lake. During the course I came up with an acronym to teach some basic forward paddling improvements: COWPAT.
Below I’ve translated the acronym to one that could be used perhaps in your place of work or just in everyday life.
COW is the things you might be doing wrong:
C – continuing your arm stroke too long - continuing to think too much
O - overboard – rocking the boat - moaning to the wrong people
W - working too hard – doing other people’s jobs
PAT is the way you can improve:
P – posture and connectivity –be nice and listen to people but…
A – arms length - be careful whom you talk about your own problems with
T – trunk rotation – be prepared to turn around and walk away
I even came up with a game to keep it in mind; it’s basically tick. The participants each have a picture of a cow taped to the back of their boat and they have 5 or 10 minutes to PAT as many COWs as possible. The person with the most PATs wins! Simple.
Not sure how acceptable it is to stick cow pats to people’s back at work, but it might make you feel better?
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