Dear ones, how often do you think to yourself in everyday life with the children? „Phew, that’s exhausting?“ You long for more peace and quiet, more me-time, less noise, less sibling bickering, less „Please hang up your jacket“ and „You have to learn vocabulary“.
Everyday life with children can sometimes be quite gruelling, we often put our needs on the back burner and fall into bed dead tired in the evening. And yet I’ve just learnt again: when all the kids are full and healthy in their beds at night, that’s a lot of good things we get to experience.
There are so many disasters around the world that we could actually kiss the ground with gratitude every day that we don’t have to go hungry or worry about bombs, that our children can go to school and that we have heating. And yet sometimes it takes a reminder right in our immediate surroundings to make us fully aware of this again.
Suddenly, everyday life is no longer normal…
My daughter had to be hospitalised last week with pneumonia to hospital. Seeing your child in respiratory distress is really awful and it quickly became clear that we would have to stay in hospital for a few days. As she had such poor values, she had to be permanently on an oxygen machine, which is really heartbreaking. As well as worrying about the child, a hospital stay like this naturally disrupts the rest of the family’s everyday life.
Who takes which shift at the hospital, who picks up the little one from nursery. Of course, the older ones also need attention (although the two of them were really great at helping out). All we parents did was hold each other’s hands, there was no chance to take a deep breath. 24/7 tension, because the nights in hospital are particularly exhausting.
When you’re in such an exceptional situation, you suddenly become very humble. You wish so much that your sick child could just romp around again. You wish for a normal everyday life that just goes on, you wish for your own bed, healthy food, meals together.
You think about how families whose children have to stay in hospital for months are doing. Whose children are chronically or terminally ill, whose parents never have a break because they are caring for their children at home. I realised again how helpful it is to have a partner and a good network.
How hard is it for single parents or people who feel lonely? How hard is it when you don’t know how to pay for groceries, when the heating stops working, when you fear for your safety because violence is a factor.
Of course you’re allowed to moan, find everyday life stupid, get annoyed with the kids and long for peace and quiet. But – and this is also a fact: every day that everyone you love goes to bed healthy, full and safe in the evening is a huge gift that we should be very, very grateful for.
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