Week 24 - Ten Good Minutes

Many people say that when they have children, their children teach them as much about the world around them as they teach the children. This is no less true for me. I see the world in such a different light since Elise was born. Something, a gift from Ellie really, that has altered every facet of my life is more ethereal and less concrete then a specific lesson learned. It revolves around time & philosophy.

Specifically, it is a new way of life I call, ten good minutes. It stems from the put-down method we use for getting Ellie to sleep at night. Invariably, Ellie falls asleep with Meredith feeding her at night, but when placed in her crib she wakes and cries. I do not need to re-chronicle our sleep issues. But what happens next has literally changed my life. After a few minutes of crying, I will enter her room and say ‘okay, sweetie, ten good minutes.’ I proceed to pick her up and rock her gently to sleep.

The timeline is as follows: in the first three minutes she calms down, the next two she falls back to sleep, the next three we spend enjoying the sleep and falling deeper into it and lastly, with the last two I prepare her body to be placed in the crib and actually complete the placement. This works every time… almost. See, sometimes, I break the rules and then it doesn’t work.

The rules are very specific. There can be no cheating, it must be at least ten minutes, longer is okay, but never shorter. It starts from the moment you see the time on the clock. If you don’t look at the time for a few moments when you get in the room, you cannot guess. You must remain focused on the task at hand. Allowing the mind to wander onto unrelated topics will distract you and you will transfer this to the job at hand. In this case, she will stay awake longer, or wake sooner in the night, etc.

As with any philosophy, there can be variations that are acceptable, like the way I hold Elise, but if I break one of the cardinal rules, like trying to put her down before the ten minutes have been reached, then it doesn’t work and the results can be ear-splittingly tragic.

From a broader point of view, we are inundated with noise from every place in our lives. Often, I will seek out media, be it music, or podcasts, or the television that basically keep me from myself and my thoughts. It’s much easier to hear a news story than to examine ones situation at that moment. But in those ten good minutes, I routinely spend with Ellie, I’m in a dark room with nothing to distract me. My thoughts are focused on her, our lives, the future, etc. Feeling her breathe deeper as she falls asleep on my chest cause me to focus on this fleeting and precious moment.

For several weeks now, I’ve been applying this to other areas of my life with varying degrees of success. Meredith doesn’t call me ‘ADD-boy’ for nothing. I have the attention span of a dog that is not looking at food. I am still learning this philosophy, but, it does work when applied correctly. Try it!

If a situation has you riled up:
Take three minutes just to calm down (Ellie like to go from crying to a soft whimper here)
Take the next two minutes to find your center and your rationality (Ellie falls asleep here)
Take the next three minutes to delve deeper into the issue (Ellie goes into a deep sleep here)
Take the last two minutes to prepare yourself to reengage the world (Ellie is dreaming here) and take the first step forward again.

If I package this right, I think I might have the makings of a self-help program here. Ooh, and don’t you think Guru Elise Molloy has a nice ring to it?