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This blog post is all about self care tips.
Life is stressful! Now, let's add in being a business owner. A business owner of a home daycare, at that! You've changed 50 diapers, wiped noses unlimited times, and acted as a chef, maid, referee, and teacher, all in a matter of 9 hours. You're exhausted and overstimulated. Sound familiar?
Caring for children, whether you're a public educator, a daycare center, or a home daycare provider, requires a lot from you. This is why it's imperative to take care of yourself through self care.
The self care tips in this post will help you start putting yourself first, protecting your peace, create a balance, and limit some of the daily stress from this demanding career.
SELF CARE TIPS
What Is Self Care
Self care is the practice of intentionally taking care of yourself every single day. It's not just pampering yourself, although that sounds like fun!
It's about making sure you have the energy, patience, and strength to handle your daily responsibilities.
Why Is Self Care Important
Self care is essential because it helps you maintain both your physical and mental health. While reducing stress and improving emotional well-being. Ultimately, it leads you to a sense of calm, peace, and balance in your life.
As a daycare business owner, it's easy to feel burned out, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and drained. Self care isn't selfish~it's necessary!
Self Care Tips
1. Sleep
This is the first self care tip because it's the most important to start implementing! When you don't get enough sleep, you're asking for irritability, frustration, crankiness, and hangry for all the wrong foods. It's a vicious cycle; I know I've lived it too many times to count. Aim for 7-8 hours a night.
Brain dump your to-do list before crawling into bed. Unwind before bed with a hot bath.
Read a book in bed instead of the dreaded doom scroll. Plug your phone in across the bedroom so you're not tempted to doom-scroll in bed.
Change your alarm to a hatch alarm to slowly wake up to a peaceful sound and lights.
2. Proper Diet
The second most important self care tip is to get proper fuel for your body! Without eating enough protein, veggies, and fruits, you're going to feel tired, irritable, and frustrated.
For breakfast, prep an egg casserole full of veggies to quickly grab a few slices. Or boil and peel eggs. Having a high-protein breakfast prepped will start your day off strong and prevent the carb crash later.
For dinner, always cook enough to have leftovers for lunch! It will keep you from reaching for the chicken nuggets and mac n cheese leftover on the kids' plates!
Keep high-protein snacks on hand. Such as beef sticks, chickpea chips, Just Ingredients protein powder, boiled eggs, Greek yogurt, and cottage cheese.
When you have your fruits and veggies prepped, and in the front of your fridge, you'll grab them more often! It's a fact, try it for yourself!
3. Exercise
Once you are getting quality sleep and eating to fuel your body you'll have energy for self care tip number three, exercise!
This doesn't mean you need to run a half marathon every day unless that's your jam! But rather be intentional about moving your body!
Walking is the most underrated form of exercise. When you're outside playing, walk around the yard. During nap time, instead of sitting on the couch and doom-scrolling, take laps around your yard or house. After your last kid has left, take a few more laps around the yard or stroll your neighborhood. I love listening to audiobooks or Christian music during this time.
Put on a free yoga class on YouTube during naptime. This would be a great way to help relax you right before bedtime, also!
The key here is to take it slow, be intentional about movement, and, most importantly, be consistent.
4. Mindfulness & Gratitude
If you're a Christian like me, the most valuable tool you can utilize is your Bible and prayer for mindfulness. Start every morning with a cup of coffee and time with God.
Shout out gratitude for His blessings. Such as, thank you, God, for the beautiful sunset, thank you for my warm house, thank you for this hot cup of coffee.
Or if you'd rather write your gratitude down daily in a journal, that's great too!
Practice meditation. During nap time for a quick reset, lie down on the ground, turn on relaxing music, and take in slow, deep breaths, quieting the mind. Bonus for training the mind to be quiet is that it's easier to listen for God's voice during your quiet prayer time. This meditation ball is amazing; it brings you back to meditating when your mind starts to roam. Or habit stack this with your sleep routine while you're in bed!
5. Hobbies
This might be the hardest self care tip to implement. Find a hobby that you love and practice it often! Some ideas are reading, painting, pickle ball, riding a bike, running, hiking, journaling, crocheting, puzzles, baking, hosting a book club or game night, blogging, social media content, digital product creation, reading, yoga classes, and gardening.
6. Breaks
This is my favorite self care tip! If you don't have vacation built into your daycare contract, stop everything you're doing and rewrite it today! Seriously, add paid vacation days now!
Every other career has vacation days; you're entitled to them as well. It's none of our business if the families have care on our days off or not
Use every single vacation day that you allot for yourself. Even if you're not planning on traveling, take your days to regroup.
7. Boundaries
When you created your daycare policies and procedures, you should have outlined firm boundaries for yourself. Keep these boundaries to protect your peace! You can't just write them in the contract and then not follow through with them.
No, I can't keep your kids late. No, I can't accept your sick child today. No, I can't feed them breakfast past my meal times. No, you can't pay me late.
This doesn't make you a bad business owner; it makes you a smart business owner! It actually makes you a very professional business owner with firm boundaries. While protecting your peace.
Related topics:
Feeling Burnt Out? These Tips Will Help You Overcome It
The Best Daycare Schedule Tips: Balancing Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers