It’s 3:30 am and I’ve been awake since midnight when my almost-two-year-old son wakes up, hungry, perky, and ready to play. I want to shove his (and my) faces into the pillow and go right back to sleep.We’re on day eight of god awful jet lag from a 9 hour time change and a 12 hour flight from San Francisco to Rome and I’ve been getting about 2 hours of sleep at night and maybe a solid nap during the day if I’m lucky.
But sleep isn’t in the cards for anybody. Up we go. Take the kid to pee, take myself to pee. Wake up his dad.
Offer the kid a banana. Kid refuses. Toddler hunger wails ensue.
I lose my shit, yelling at no one in particular that he’s obviously not hungry enough if he won’t eat the damned banana, and throw the banana on the kitchen counter, which between in the dark house and my sleep-deprived aim, splats against the wall instead.
I throw my son into his dad’s arms, pop two more melatonin because the three I spaced out over the last four hours have proven crushingly ineffective.
I then go cry myself to sleep. Which even with the melatonin and nearly a week of shit sleep takes over an hour to actually happen.
I’m gonna pause right here.
This isn’t a sob story about the woes of travelling with toddlers or blog about how to about getting over jet lag. Because I read about 30 such articles in the last two weeks and all suggestions turned out to be useless. The internet doesn’t need another how to get over jet lag article, anyway.
The truth is, sometimes you can’t fix the problem or reduce the pain of your struggles. But once you’re on the backside of them instead of the shitty middle, you might just learn something.
I’m not talking how to not to fall back into another nasty poop puddle, because you inevitably will. But about how to sludge through next time with a little more grace.
Here are three things you can learn from a bad jet lag:
1. Resilience: Bouncing back is something you learn how to do, not something that just happens.
Slow it down. Wayyy down. Sloooower. Slowweerrr. Just relax… You’re feeling your body unwind and melt into the earth… OKAY GET UP AND DO THREE HUNDRED JUMPING JACKS!
It’s no secret the sleep deprivation is one of the most famous, and effective, forms of torture. Add in a toddler in a throwing phase and you have a recipe for an adult meltdown.
It’ll stretch you and possibly break you. But temporary sleep deprivation (as all new moms know) won’t kill you even though it certainly feels like death it preferable at times.
Once you get through it, you realize things like “Wow, I didn’t know so much is possible on such little sleep!” or “Man, I could really work on my patience and emotional outburts when I’m under this kind of stress.”
Either way, it’s a learning experience if you let it be that way. And learning something from one tough time and carrying what you’ve learned into the next is what creates that bounce-back resilience.
So you don’t have that parental guilt next time because you held yourself back from screaming at your child for something he undoubtedly deserved but well… it’s not exactly the behavior you want to model.
2. Adaptability: No one said it was easy to flex and give but if you don’t, you’re definitely going to break.
Read while it’s dark and swim in the sunshine. I mean this quite literally. I am a book nerd so when I couldn’t sleep for a week, I read four 400 page novels.
If you’re a Netflix worshipper, binge your heart out. You do you.The point is, don’t force things that just aren’t happening.
Traveling has taught me a ton of lessons but in the top 3 is undoubtedly adaptability. You learn to flow. You learn to think of other options instead of beating your head against a wall trying to make something work that just isn’t.
Like forcing a toddler sleep.
3. Humility: Help from the right people is a gift, not a burden or leverage to be used against you.
Yeah, did you read the intro? Not me at my finest. Once I woke up semi-rested later that day, I was embarrassed I threw a banana at the wall and sad that I snapped at my son.
It didn’t really feel so great to ugly cry in front of his dad either but whatever. I had absolutely hit my limit. I was falling into pieces. I was losing my control in every way.
And I needed help. And despite our relationship status, he was there to help when I asked for it.
It takes an emotionally mature person to ask for help when they need it. Not asking for help is based in pride or fear or both. And it’s ridiculous.
I know this because when I was pregnant, broke, jobless, and living with my parents for Christ’s sake, I had to learn the hard way to let people who love me, help me.
Humility is a super important quality to have as a parent because it cultivates a genuine relationship with your child. It’s easier to admit when you were wrong, say you’re sorry, and of course ask for help.
And I think we all know that we’re not going to instill any values into our kids that we’re not modeling ourselves. Humility is a precursor to empathy, something our kids are gonna need in spades to solve a lot of the problems their generation is going to have to deal with.
In the end, as humans, as parents, we deal with some rough stuff sometimes. We grow, and become better humans and parents through the funk.
And we get up stronger.
Sometimes it’s a direct consequence of a crap choice, sometimes an indirect consequence, and sometimes you just never saw the bastard coming.
But our growth, our character, and our actual health depend on how we deal with these rough spots. Denial doesn’t work. And perspective and perseverance are often the only two things that’ll get you through it.
But once you do, you just leveled up big time with life experience points and empathy awards. Success in your personal growth journey is not measured by never getting into trouble, trust me.
Or better yet, trust Brene Brown. That woman knows what she’s talking about.
Next time you’re on the verge of a breakdown, a blowup, or a burnout, know that the whole everything happens for a reason could very well be useless pigeon poo.
But in every experience is an opportunity to learn. What do you want to take away after life’s shit storms? Who do you want to be? That, my friend, is up to you.
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