After having a baby, your energy is occupied and you have no time to improve yourself. What should you do?

Before having children, my husband and I both had a strong sense of our own space. When we first got married, we would travel on long weekends, but we always made an agreement that we should leave each other private time during the trip. I would go swimming and go to the spa, and he would use this time to read a good book. When I take a walk home at dusk, I want to do some yoga or write an article, while he will check emails or go to the gym downstairs. This hour of not disturbing each other every day has always had a positive impact on our intimate relationship, and it also allows us to maintain the frequency of learning a new skill every year after work. Dad Su originally graduated from a liberal arts college. After working, he taught himself photography, film screenwriting, programming, furniture design, and also learned Ukulele in his spare time. After the baby was born, the two of us were used to \”free space\”. I was confused. After asking around the new mothers around me, I found that they all have the same worries: they spend time with their babies after work every day, and their personal energy is taken up a lot. They agreed to read a book a month, agreed to learn foreign languages ​​by themselves, and agreed to What about your waistcoat line and abdominal muscles? I admit that I am a \”selfish\” mother. If I spend a whole day with my baby, all I do is resist looking at my phone, feed the baby, change the baby\’s diapers, and hope that the day will come soon and the baby will fall asleep soon. This day It will be a very empty life with not much value to speak of. During that time, the question I often discussed with my friends was, is spending time with children vs. self-improvement a zero-sum game? Is the time spent with your baby a sacrifice? Is there a way to achieve self-growth while receiving high-quality companionship? After being a stay-at-home mother for a while, I gradually realized that when I was spending time with my baby, there was something wrong with my positioning: my role should not be that of a nanny, but that of a playmate. The role of the nanny is only to complete the task of \”taking care of the children\”, while the playmates can grow themselves during the interaction between the two parties. In the past two years, Su’s mother has summarized some high-quality companionship methods that can benefit both babies and adults, such as: Parent-child crafts I always thought that crafts were a game only for children. Later, I read an article reporting on the latest findings of neuroscientists. Handicrafts can reduce stress and relax for adults. They can stimulate multiple areas of the brain and improve cognitive abilities (yes, adults’ cognitive abilities can also be improved). improve) and even prevent Alzheimer\’s disease. Doing handicrafts is different from simply watching or walking the baby. The adult\’s role is not only to supervise, but also to participate in the whole process, so you will not feel bored. The temperature in New York is minus ten degrees these days. When we can’t go out, we will spend an hour completing a craft. These crafts are all completed at home these days: △ Ladybugs and ice cream made from paper plates and buttons Making giraffes with sticks and lion hand puppets with paper bags was a topic that once discouraged me. I always felt that the parent-child crafts posted by mothers on the Internet were so beautiful, but it was so difficult to prepare all the materials one by one. For example, if I want to make a giraffe with an ice cream stick, do I really have to eat four ice cream sticks? ? Later, I discovered that when mothers in the United States do handicrafts, they buy ready-made craft kits directly from stationery stores, which contain all the required materials. Even my mother, who is a handicraft scumbag, has become a craftsman in minutes. I can’t figure out how to play with my babyWhen I’m busy, I just take out a pack and do some craft work, and time flies by very quickly. You can search online to see if there is a place to buy it. Cooking and Baking I remember that when I was a new mother, one thing I often worried about was that I couldn’t cook with my baby because the baby needed adults to interact with her all the time. It took me a long time to figure out a way to keep my baby from crying while cooking. For example, when the baby is just a month old, I will lay a crawling mat on the kitchen floor and talk to her and play hide and seek while cooking. After the baby can sit down, I will give her some pots, pans, vegetables, etc. while cooking. Play. After one year old, things really start to change, because the baby starts to be able to participate in the process of cooking. I also often find some simple recipes that I have never tried before and practice them with my baby. I think baking is an activity that keeps babies very involved in the kitchen and allows mothers to learn new skills. Because baking involves a lot of stirring, pouring water, kneading and other actions that babies can participate in. One- and two-year-olds learn really quickly, and as long as they\’re given enough trust and some protection, they\’re less likely to make a mess in the kitchen. In fact, I never thought baking pastry was a new skill before, until I went from being a scumbag who often cooked for my godmother when I was studying abroad, to now being able to bake chocolate cakes with my kids that make the whole family happy. I really agree with baking. This kind of companionship kills two birds with one stone. Exercise and parent-child yoga After having a baby, your exercise schedule will also be affected. It is difficult to go to the gym every time you disagree like when you were single. A plan to accompany the baby + exercise is parent-child yoga. Because parent-child yoga requires cooperation with the baby, the baby may crawl away halfway through the exercise. It will be better to run in for a while, and it can indeed play a role in exercise, but It needs to be completed in fragmented time, and psychological expectations must be adjusted. If there is no yoga studio offering such courses around you, you can try to learn some basic postures from videos online. American mothers (and many fathers) are also very popular in using sports strollers to push their babies to run in the park. When resting and stretching, take out the play mat you always have with you and let your baby play on it for a while. European and American countries also have special marathons for pushing babies. In fact, if you don’t run often, you don’t necessarily need to buy a sports stroller. Tools are just aids. Pushing your baby quickly in an ordinary stroller can also burn calories, so you might as well try it. Mothers often ask me backstage when we read English picture books together. They want to help their babies learn English, but their English is not good and they don’t know many words. What should I do? In fact, reading picture books with your baby can help mothers improve their English. Most of the texts in preschool picture books are relatively simple and rhyme. For mothers who have been unfamiliar with English for a long time, there is really no better way to regain English than reading picture books. This is actually a revelation given to me by an American friend of mine. She is a new mother who once learned Spanish, but forgot it after not using it much after work. After having a baby, she wanted to learn Spanish again, but she never had time. Then she had an idea and went to the library to borrow some Spanish picture books, from easy to difficult, and read them with her baby and her children. word, I could even look it up in a dictionary. In the process, I unknowingly picked up Spanish again and helped my baby become bilingual. I accidentally wrote so much, but there are actually many things I haven’t written about, such as parent-child travel, taking babies to museums, art exhibitions, etc. High-quality companionship and self-improvement can really be achieved together, but this kind of self-improvement is fragmented and in small doses, and requires steady stream and perseverance. After all, improving your English proficiency while accompanying your baby will not achieve your goal as quickly as attending a training class. However, children grow up in the blink of an eye. They only need our intensive companionship for two or three years, and they only need to be held in our arms and held in our hands for only a few years. Having time to spend with your child is a mission; being able to learn something new while accompanying them is a blessing. Maintaining a peaceful, realistic and humble attitude is also a form of growth. Self-learning and growth are a lifelong matter. Accumulation bit by bit will always lead to qualitative changes.