Stopping is spiritual.
Have you ever been in a position where you ask your child to stop - stop playing their computer game? stop screaming & running through the house? stop with day time behavior and enter night time behavior?
You ask them to stop (after you've given your 15-minute, 10-minute and 5-minute warnings). You walk out of the room expecting that they will turn off the TV, put their things away and find something else to do. You walk back into the room 10 minutes later and find they are still playing the same game you left them playing.
You get angry. How dare you continue to play. I gave you warning. It doesn't matter if you're in the middle of a game. You knew you had five minutes left, so why would you start another game? Oh, I'm very disappointed.
Well, hold on. Think about your own night time routine. You know you should get to bed by a certain time because you know what time you have to wake up in the morning. How many hours of sleep do you need to function well? I need at least six, but eight will give me the cushion to allot for children waking me up in the middle of the night.
So, WHY do I find myself doing "one more thing" before I retire for the night? It's the same principle as above with our children.... kind of. We're not always engaged in something so fun, but we have things that need to get done. We don't always have time during the day to accomplish all our "things". We feel the pressure and overwhelm with all that we have to do.
But, stopping can be spiritual. Nurturing our bodies, which is what we do when we stop, can feed our soul. Taking the pause that we need will allow us to better accomplish the tasks we need to get done - the most important being - taking care of our children and enjoying our moments with them.
While it may be difficult to stop, we can be a model for our children (even if they don't observe us doing it) by following our own instructions. "It's time to stop. Go to bed. Enjoy some tea. Take a pause and stop doing.... at least for a moment."
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