Relaxed family life: How to defuse ten common stress traps

Often it is the little things that make family life easier: an excursion or more structure in everyday life. We have put together ten common stress traps and show you how you can defuse them.

Identify stress factors

Having family is nice – but it can also be quite exhausting. But what actually makes family stress? Is it the poured glass of apple juice at lunch? The discussions when getting dressed in the morning when the weather forecast has announced a snowstorm but the three-year-old daughter insists on putting on the pink summer dress? Or is it the lack of time you have to yourself to relax again?

Each of us has our own personal stress factors that accompany us through everyday life. Try for a week to write down on a pad those situations that you personally find exhausting and stressful. You may be amazed at what all comes together. And you will see all the more clearly what you should change personally so that your family life is a little easier on your nerves.

Giving up on perfection

A family-physical law says: Perfection is inversely proportional to family size. In other words: If you live together as a couple, you can probably still manage it with the ironed shirts, clean T-shirts and the tidy living room. When you have a child, he quickly irons himself the shirt that he wants to wear in the morning and she simply pulls a tight-fitting T-shirt on from the laundry basket. With two or more children, you first look for the laundry basket, then collect everything that is on the floor and stuff it into the machine – if T-shirts and shirts are underneath, all the better. But comfort yourself: this natural law applies to all families.

Get help

Sisyphus would have been happy with his rock had he known what it was like to do housework every day. Nothing remains, everything passes – this is especially true for clean floors, freshly cleaned windows and tidy children's rooms. If you've been dreaming of ironing and window cleaning at night, let us help you. Even if the household budget is smaller, the cleaning lady does not have to come weekly, but maybe only once a month to clean the windows or to do two baskets of ironing. Or try to install a kind of "friendship aid": You go to the zoo with your friend's children for a few hours and your friend cleans a few windows at the next opportunity. With a cup of coffee afterwards, you can get a nice side out of the chores at home.

Don't do too much

Baby swimming in the mornings, shopping in the afternoon, baking birthday cakes in between and tidying up the apartment: stress is inevitable with a workload like this. Because what can only be done at a run without children is simply not possible with children. As a parent, you're multi-tasking, but it can be quite exhausting in the long run. So shift down two gears, set priorities and plan what is really important to you for the day – or what needs to be and cannot be delayed. And next time you go shopping, just take a frozen cake with you. It tastes good too.

Maintain friendships and contacts

If you still have friends before starting a family, you will have a child afterwards and you will be enough as a family – until you have enough of each other at some point. But if you don't answer calls for weeks and only distribute rejections on invitations, the phone will eventually remain silent. Therefore, take the social rules to heart with your family and maintain your network. Because friends who are important to you and whom you call when you don't need anything from them are all the more likely to step in as babysitters.

Grant freedom

"Fortunately you need freedom, to be free you need courage", the Greek statesman Perikles apparently had a large family and had difficulties breaking free. But what the ancient general noted almost 2500 years ago is still true today. So show yourself magnanimous and give yourself freedom: Your partner would like to go to the sauna again and you have long wanted to meet an old friend for dinner? Give each other presents, so you both get your money's worth and can recharge the batteries for everyday family life.

Every now and then a change of scenery

Let's be honest: how does an average weekend usually go? Go shopping on Saturdays, wash clothes and mow the lawn and on Sundays maybe go to the swimming pool or to grandma's for a coffee. But what else could you experience in these 48 hours? Even a two-hour drive is worth it for a weekend in a mountain hut, at a lake for camping or in a friend's holiday home. There is nothing you can do there other than keep busy with your children, sleep or go for a walk. And in two days you will feel as if you have been on vacation.

Build structures

Have breakfast together in the morning, lunch around one meal, then a short lunch break and around 6 p.m. cuddling and reading aloud is the order of the day. Because afterwards there is dinner and then the last item of the day is just putting on pajamas and brushing your teeth. It might sound a bit narrow-minded, but it's not that bad at all when it comes to structuring everyday family life. This orientation to meal times and fixed processes throughout the day also helps your child to find their way around and make their day more tangible. And it is also an advantage for you, because you have fixed time windows that you can plan or that are fundamentally blocked.

Talk about parenting

Do you think that ice is only available when the sun is shining and elementary school students should only stay up after 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve? Your partner sees it differently, however, and that's why there is regular stress in the family because of little things like these. But when was the last time you talked to your partner about parenting? This does not mean about upbringing problems, but about your own upbringing experiences, about the backgrounds that allow you to set up rules that, viewed from the outside, sometimes seem pointless or arbitrary. Explain to your partner why it is important to you that your child goes to bed at regular times. And why your "ice permit" depends on the weather. Perhaps your arguments are convincing, if not you should choose a middle ground together that is okay for parents and children alike.

Plan time for two

Even if it sounds silly: Put an evening in the calendar at least once a month when the children get a sandwich in the evening and go to bed especially early. When the little ones are in bed, you cook together or get something delicious from your favorite Italian. Or maybe you have a babysitter and go out together. The television is taboo that evening, after all it is about exchanging ideas and finding other common topics of conversation in addition to kindergarten, teething problems and childcare.

This article originally appeared on Eltern.de.

Miriam Dietrich