"How can we make this feel good for you?" [a sentence that changed the way I parent and live my life]

At the beginning of the month of March this year, my family went through a period of big change. My husband decided to buy a local accounting practice (in busy season...) and went from working full-time from home in our basement to working away in an office. He had been working from home for essentially my kids' entire lives. Up until this point, my kids probably had no clue that most people work away from the home.

That change meant, not only does daddy now leave for work before they leave for the day, but he also is no longer home and ready to play when they get home from daycare. [This whole commuting thing really is a drag!] In addition to having him gone more than we're all are used to, we needed to get a second car so that he could drive to his new workplace.

Did he EVER get a second car.

He got (in my, ignorant, opinion) probably the biggest red pickup truck on the market. With a new vehicle and growing children came a new carseat for my oldest tall girl. Oh, and we had the spring time change that weekend, so now bedtime is in broad daylight.

It was a lot.  And, no matter what age you are, or how good the change is, change is hard.

We were all [barely] holding it together until Monday morning of the first week of the new job and my oldest went to get in the car to go to daycare and her carseat was different. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, and she broke down. She refused to get in the seat.

Feeling a lot of compassion for all this (I was struggling too) I knew I couldn't be hard on her for her reaction.

Then a phrase came to mind that Carol Peat (of Braveheart Parenting) taught me - "how can we make this feel good for you?"

When Carol says it she usually places lots of emphasis on the word "feel". It's true, life is hard and sometimes we have to do things that are uncomfortable to us, but if we can find a way to make whatever that is feel better, usually we can tolerate it. 

I said to my daughter: "This is hard. I can see you're having a hard time getting into the new carseat.  How can we make this feel good to you?"

After taking a moment to think, I offered - "what if we get all your favourite monkey stuffies and make your new car seat a monkey throne?" (we've built 'monkey thrones' out of duplo before). Success! Buy-in. With the monkeys in place she happily climbed in her seat and drop-off was smooth as normal.

That phrase - I've only used it a couple times, but it seems to work magic for humans of all ages. Even for myself, when there is something challenging coming up - like my husband being out of town for work, I ask myself how can I make this feel better for you? And then I book a massage treatment for when he returns.

Life is hard. Parenting is hard. Breastfeeding is HARD. If you're reading this you're probably in the weeds of it right now. So I'm curious: how can we make this feel good for you?

I hope that might be a well-fitting nursing bra, and some clothes that actually make you feel good in your 'new' skin.  If that is the case, I'm happy to help.  Because I know committing to breastfeeding can be a challenge for some.  Some could use a little bit of extra help to make that incredible, difficult choice, feel good to them.  If we can find a way to make you feel more comfortable and happy with that decision, let's do it.