Having a child changes your life forever. Beyond the joy, it represents a major challenge that requires a drastic readjustment and a titanic effort at all levels, from the economic to the restructuring of personal and work time, physical exhaustion and deep emotional burden. An effort that, in large families, is even greater.
Lourdes Álvarez, mother of 11 children, knows a lot about that. In one of his videos shared on his TikTok account (@solosomos13), he gives some advice on how to deal with mental overload, stating that a fundamental key is to accept the inherent difficulties of each stage.
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“Manage it as you can,” he acknowledges, to give that first piece of advice. “I think first assuming that each age has its own thing. For example, if they are small, obviously you are not going to sleep, so stop trying to sleep, right? The day you sleep, well, that’s what you take with you. Because if you are complaining all day, it’s a horror.”
In this situation, Lourdes reiterates that you must accept that you are not going to be able to sleep, so you have to change the chip: “if you sleep 4 hours, then that’s great. And if that day you have slept five, that’s great.”
“It cannot be that children are the center of everything, they are not the center, they fill everything”
The second piece of advice Lourdes provides is to find time for marriage. “It cannot be that children are the center of everything, because they are not the center, they fill everything.” About this, he tells a friend, who has 13 children, he has a very peculiar phrase that sums it up perfectly: “Children are like gases. Whatever space there is, they fill everything”, something with which he agrees.
For this reason, he reiterates that we must “find time for both of us. And that with elbow grease,” even if it means having to hire babysitters. Thirdly, we also need time for ourselves, in solitude, even if they are brief: “Time for myself alone, what are they? Well, having a coffee on the terrace in the afternoon when it’s getting dark, getting up a little earlier to have a coffee, walking around the block. Sometimes I’ve called the babysitter to go for a half-hour walk.”
Lastly, he states that you have to know how to delegate. With these 4 things, he indicates that you can have “a more liberated mental load and be happy.”