Today’s daily prompt asked me a simple but surprisingly loaded question. What is my biggest challenge right now?
The answer came quickly. Consistency.
It has always been consistency, and if I am being honest, it probably always will be. I know that routine helps me. It helps my brain settle, helps me write, helps me show up more regularly in my work and in life. But routine and life with a two-year-old do not always work neatly together.
Life with a toddler is never boring. You have to be switched on constantly. There are no pauses. It is joyful, loud, unpredictable, fascinating and completely exhausting, often all at once.
As I am writing this, I am watching my daughter work out how her Tonie works. She keeps lifting the character off and the sound stops. She turns it upside down. Nothing. She places it on its side. Still nothing. Then she carefully puts it back where the magnet is underneath and suddenly the music starts again.
The look on her face is incredible.
You can almost see her brain firing. Curiosity. Problem solving. Trial and error. Persistence. She does not get frustrated. She just keeps trying. Watching how children’s brains work is genuinely fascinating and it reminds me that learning does not happen in tidy blocks of time.
And maybe neither does consistency.
I think this is where I need to be a bit kinder to myself. Consistency does not have to mean writing every day at the same time with perfect focus. Right now, consistency might look like jotting notes down. Writing in short bursts. Capturing moments as they happen. Letting ideas live in my head until there is space to put them on the page.
Routine does not have to be rigid to be valuable. Sometimes it just has to fit the season you are in.
If you are a parent in your thirties or forties trying to create something, work, write, or build a business while raising a small human, you are not failing if it feels hard. This stage of life asks a lot of us. It stretches us in ways we never expected. But it also gives us insight, patience, and perspective if we allow ourselves to see it.
Right now, my consistency looks different. And that is okay.
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References
Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University. Executive function and self-regulation in early childhood. NHS. Child development stages and toddler learning through play. The Parent-Infant Foundation. The importance of responsive parenting and observation.
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