family

Parenting is a full time job. It’s no wonder many of us have trouble finding time to take care of ourselves and fit fitness into our lives. But in a world where childhood obesity is a national threat and our kids are inundated with technology that makes sitting still all day seem fun, fitness is a crucial life skill we need to be teaching our children. And children learn best by mimicking their parents’ behavior. As a trainer and mom of three teens, I know these ideas for parents of kids in specific age groups make it easier to add more movement and fitness into your family life and your own busy schedule.

Every day, we pose a question to the members of Gaia, Gaiam’s online community for individuals committed to creating healthy lives of meaning and purpose. Recently, we asked our community for answers to the question, “What have you learned from your mother?” In honor of Mother’s Day, here are a few of our favorite responses:

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better. We hope you enjoy this first set of feel-good links in 2009 and wish all of our readers a happy new year!

A friend of mine received a Christmas card from her niece that contained this recount. I share it with you…

A family, traveling to visit relatives for the holidays, stopped at a restaurant for a bite. The parents were tired, their two kids cranky. Food and warmth and a break from the winter roads beckoned. They were shown to a table and given a booster seat for the toddler and a high chair for the baby. Mom and Dad ordered coffee and food and they settled in to wait.

Not to be a total bummer, but no matter how many hours we’ve put in on the mat, how many “Om”s we sing or how many times we dent the meditation cushion, anyone can regress in times of stress. We get snarky, we lash out, we turn on the waterworks and display a host of other behaviors better suited to the Terrible Twos than, say, a holiday dinner at the adult table.

The holidays mean lots of time spent with family, which also means lots of opportunities for stressful situations to arise—it’s a universal law that the people who love us the most and know us the best also push our buttons like nobody else.

“I feel out of sync with my family of origin around the holidays, when I spend more time with them than usual,” wrote one reader recently. “They aren’t interested in honest communication, working on relationships, or other things that are important to me … How can I deal with this in a positive way?

These are challenging times for parents. In our own lifespan we’ve known or been around three different types of parenting challenges.

For our grandparents, the challenges were of the most basic kind: getting enough to eat and trying to keep children alive. My grandparents lost one child at birth, at a time when nearly all births were home-births, and came close to losing my mother to the malaria that was rampant at that time in Florida.

When the holidays approach, we receive a lot of requests from people who are experiencing more conflict and stress in their relationships.

If you’re feeling increased pressures around this time of the year, you’re definitely not alone. Along with the possibilities of great joy in this season come other feelings as well. It’s important to remember that all feelings come through the same “faucet” of your awareness, and that the holidays are an ideal time to open yourself to learning from every relationship moment.