Brought to you by Northwest Rocky Mountain CASA:

A non-profit serving Grand, Routt, and Moffat counties, CASA endeavors to come alongside kids as well as parents through a variety of outreach, educational and family activities. It’s said to raise a child takes a village; CASA is here to support our village so that local families can thrive. Join us each month in our Parents Pause as we navigate this ride together!

 

Hit the pause, dear one, rewind. As parents, our time is more hotly contested than a Monday night of Broncos football. Work, that’s rarely confined to a tidy 9- 5 these days, cooking, cleaning, running some volunteer group or other, sports, art classes, chopping firewood, and a whole host of other duties all jockey for precedent. That’s on top of keeping the little humans *relatively* happy and thriving. Not that our to-do lists of 102 daily things aren’t important; that’s just it, they are! So as parents it’s essential to the growth of a happy and healthy family (and our sanity, hello!) to hit the pause button every once and a while.

Rewind. Try to still the hands of time. I think the single most popular piece of advice we new parents, young parents, seasoned parents, get “offered” is, “Enjoy your youngsters now. You’ll blink and they’ll be grown.” After receiving this advice from nearly every other shopping cart in City Market, I had to pause and wonder: Could it be so popular because it’s, ahem, true?!

Keep you small if only for today. The reality is, there is no actual way to stall time and keep our littles, little. And remember that list of 300 things to get done by bedtime? (Yeah. It grew exponentially while you were reading this article…) It’s still there, needing to get done. But so are your munchkins. Allow yourself time to languish in your new babe’s fuzzy, not-grown-in-yet hair. Read that one extra story, sing that one more song, spend ten minutes allowing your Kindergartner to direct play time, fully escape into Hogwarts and Legos, and have a real chat with your teen over coffee or tea without texting the convo.

Carving out those brief installments of time, and letting your kids lead through them, is crucial to their development. According to Pediatrics Publications, “When play is allowed to be child-driven, children practice decision-making skills, move at their own pace, discover their own areas of interest, and ultimately engage fully in the passions they wish to pursue” all with you as their co-pilot!

From one parent in the trenches to another, I look forward to meeting you here each month. May we hit that pause button together!

C K Willow

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