Parents and Stress 3

All this week we’re looking at some strategies for reducing the stress you may be feeling as a parent. This comes in response to the recent Surgeon General’s advisory on Parents Under Pressure, and the fact that forty-one percent of parents say that they are so stressed they cannot function. My suggestion for you today is this: stop facilitating a family lifestyle where you are running around, as my grandmother used to say, like a chicken with its head cut off! I continually hear parents lament the fact that they aren’t able to even sit down for a quiet family dinner because of activity schedules, many of those activities being focused on sports, extra-curricular clubs, and a host of other time-takers. While these things are good things when held in a healthy balance, the way we schedule our families now is wearing us out! Much of what feeds this insanity is comparison, as we don’t want our kids left behind. But when good things become ultimate life-directing things, we’ve moved into the sin of idolatry.