27 | Why Playfulness is the Key to Thriving in Motherhood (& Resetting Your Nervous System)
Hi friends, welcome to Intentional Motherhood, the podcast for moms who want to feel more present, more connected, and more of themselves in the middle of raising a bunch of little ones. I'm your host, Kelsey Redd, a mental health counselor turned stay at home mom of four little kids, here to remind you that motherhood isn't meant to be lived on autopilot. Each week, we'll explore practical tools for emotional regulation for moms and kids, mindful parenting, and creating a family culture of calm and connection. Through stories from my own messy experience with raising my kids, to evidence based practices from my years of clinical practice, and other parenting strategies that you can use right away, my hope is to help you slow down, rediscover your joy, and experience motherhood as the sacred adventure it is. So take a deep breath, you're right where you need to be, let's dive in.
Kelsey Redd:I want you to picture this with me. The sun is warm on your back, Your kids are giggling as they edge closer and closer to the edge of a dock. And you're laughing too, fully there. No phone in hand. No mental checklist running through your head.
Kelsey Redd:Just you, your kids, a lake, and this moment of joy. To me, nothing feels more aligned than these moments of outdoor adventure with my kids, where we're experiencing joy, connection, and presence. And here's what I've realized. Being fully present in the play with kids isn't just about letting your kids play and playing with your kids. It's really a sacred reminder to live fully, presently, in the moment so that you can experience full joy.
Kelsey Redd:As mothers, we deserve to feel playful, present, alive. This is what I call thriving. When we do this, even our kids notice, and they light up with us too. This is how we thrive in motherhood. So I want to share something that I've been working on with you today.
Kelsey Redd:I created a little journal for moms just like us called the Purposeful Living Journal, and inside are prompts that help us slow down and reflect so that we can bring intention back into our everyday lives with our kids. And of course, you can grab this journal from the show notes below or at my link in bio on Instagram at creating.intentional.mothers or at my link tree, just link tr.eekelsiered. So let me tell you a little bit about this journal. So for example, one of the first prompts asks, What moment with my kids this week made me feel truly present? And how can I create more of those moments?
Kelsey Redd:For me, one of those moments was this moment I'm describing at a little lake near my house on a dock with my kids jumping into the water together. I was feeling playful, I was feeling free and connected. Typically, I might just sit on the edge and let them go play, but this time I thought, I want my kids to have memories of me playing with them. I want to be the mom that jumps off the dock with them. I want to be the mom that we have memories of laughing together and playing together.
Kelsey Redd:So I decided to play with them. I decided to jump off the dock with them. And you know what? They loved it. And I loved it.
Kelsey Redd:I felt playful. I felt silly and free. And even though it wasn't a big vacation or something huge, it made me feel alive. And that is shared, that energy is shared between us and our kids. And the ability to be present in the ordinary is what makes the difference between burnout and again, that thriving, that present purposeful living with our kids.
Kelsey Redd:So let me turn the question back around to you. What has been your playful moment? What has been your present moment? Maybe it was just being silly at home doing a little dance party in the kitchen. Maybe it was chasing your toddler through the grass when they're just so in awe and you're seeping up that awe energy with them.
Kelsey Redd:Or maybe it hasn't happened yet this week. And that's okay too, because this is your invitation to create it. To give yourself permission to set other things aside and create the presence. We create presence by allowing ourselves to single task. I think so often the ability to multitask is like lauded as a virtue and a skill and a talent that we should be engaging in all the time.
Kelsey Redd:But actually, think it is more difficult in this day and age to single task. But that's a topic for a whole another episode and we'll get to that later. But let's talk about why this playfulness really matters. Playfulness isn't just for fun, although it is, but it actually is really essential to our mental health as moms. Because the thing is that playfulness is not just a luxury, it really is a lifeline.
Kelsey Redd:When we laugh, when we are chasing and splashing and playing, we're not just entertaining our kids. We are actually giving ourselves a nervous system reset. And you guys know I'm all about nervous system regulation in this podcast. Play brings us out of the survival mode, out of the sympathetic nervous system where we're kind of almost always getting ready to respond to a threat. It brings us into the safety mode because think about this, you can't play when you're endangered, right?
Kelsey Redd:When we are stuck in stress responses, we're not going be playing. We're not going to let loose and let our guard down and just engage in play. We're going to be on edge. We're going to be vigilant about what threats might come up. So when we allow ourselves to put all that aside to recognize I am safe, and therefore I can play, that's how it's resetting our nervous system.
Kelsey Redd:So it's calming our stress response. It softens our edges. I don't know if there are any other moms out there who kind of constantly feel like we're policing all the time. Like I sometimes think, man, I just would love to stop saying no, or to stop saying, Don't do this, don't do that, put him down, don't make a mess. I would love to just not have that be the only thing that my kids ever hear me say and think that that's the only way I talk to them.
Kelsey Redd:But this play, this present play with our kids, it softens that. It allows us to engage with our kids in a yes attitude. And it helps us to feel grounded again. So it's not just only good for us and our nervous system reset, but it's so good for our kids and our relationship with our kids. Because when we are regulated, we can show up for them with patience and presence and warmth, that yes attitude.
Kelsey Redd:But there's another layer too that I want to talk about, and that is how play reconnects us with our own inner child. I've been known to say that parenting is a time for us to actually learn how to reparent ourselves. And there is a part of us, that inner child, that little girl within us that still longs to be silly and creative and spontaneous and free. Motherhood can pile on so many responsibilities, pressures. Sometimes we feel like we have to be perfect that we sometimes just forget about that inner child within us.
Kelsey Redd:But when we play with our kids, we reclaim it just a little bit. It's so healing. It's like medicine for your soul. And really, it's where joy lies. So that's another one of those journal prompts is how does playfulness with my kid, my kids help me reconnect with my own joy?
Kelsey Redd:I love this question because it invites us to see play, not as just one more thing on our to do list for our kids, but as something that actually nourishes us. It kind of reframes play as being a more purposeful act, a practice that restores our mental health, grounds us in the present moment, and brings us back to our ourselves, our inner child. So maybe the next step in your motherhood journey isn't just about reading another parenting book or trying to organize your schedule perfectly. Maybe it's actually a time to set back, a time to let go of some of the logistics and managing and responsibilities and just play like a kid with your kids. Maybe it's cannonballing into the pool the next time you go swimming instead of saying I gotta keep my hair dry because I got stuff to do after this.
Kelsey Redd:Maybe it's making funny animal noises with your kid. For me tonight, it was getting down into the gravel under my trampoline and doing dump trucks with my son instead of thinking, Oh, now I'm noticing all the weeds I need to be picking right here. I put that aside and said, Let me just play with you. Let me say yes to your ideas. Let me say yes to your play.
Kelsey Redd:Let me just get here on the ground with you. Maybe it's just tossing your baby in the air and watching your baby giggle and giggling with them because that is so special. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of times we get into this mentality of I have to work to earn my rest or my value even. But this helps us to remember that joy is not always something that we have to earn only when the work is done. Sometimes the joy is in the work, and play is part of that path.
Kelsey Redd:So this week I want to leave you with a couple ideas. Maybe some purposeful play can look like five minutes of silliness, whether it's just engaging in your kids' play, letting them be silly and going along with their jokes, dancing in the kitchen, whatever it might be. Five minutes of just letting go of everything else and being silly and playful with them. Of course, you know I'm going to suggest nature time, nature play, walking barefoot in the grass with your kids, maybe collecting rocks or leaves, or sitting outside and laying down and looking at the clouds. Me and my kids did this the other day, and I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world, mostly because I don't think I've done it in a few decades.
Kelsey Redd:And it reminded me that, oh yeah, this is like one of those things, like those quintessential things that you see people doing back in the day that never happens anymore. And why not? Because we're always so busy, because we're always doing something else, because we're always rushing from one thing to the next. And I was like, Man, I gotta make this a more regular part of my life. Another fun idea is the Role Reversal Play.
Kelsey Redd:And this is where you let your child be the parent and you play the kid. This is hilarious, my kids love this when I say I'm gonna be the kid. Sometimes I can also slip in some little lessons about like, Oh, you don't like it when I just sit here and complain? Maybe I feel that way too. But typically it brings a lot of laughter out, which is fun.
Kelsey Redd:Otherwise, we're just talking about little micro moments where the phone is put down, you just are engaged with your kid in just a shared giggle or a little tickle fight. Do your kids ever come up to you and try to tickle you and you kind of just push them off because you're busy? What if just for five seconds you just turned to them and tickled them back and just engaged in that moment for just two seconds longer before you say, okay, I gotta get back to making dinner, honey. You know, like, can we just engage with these moments when they bid for our attention? Something like this can really shift to the whole atmosphere of your day, especially for highly sensitive kids who need that attention and that affection.
Kelsey Redd:The point really isn't how big or planned out the moment is. It's really just that you are fully there, fully present. Kids don't need perfect activities all the time. They just need you. Alive, engaged, and joyful.
Kelsey Redd:I worry that there are a lot of moms out there, and myself included, that because of the challenge of motherhood are typically more in a negative energy. And as often as we can, let's turn that around and engage with joyful yes energy with our kids that shifts the atmosphere, the energy of the home so much. And here's one more deeper layer to consider. If we are able to give ourselves permission to play, we also give ourselves permission to release some old and heavy negative beliefs or stories such as I have to be productive to be valuable. That's one that I have struggled with probably my whole life.
Kelsey Redd:I'm working so hard to learn how to disconnect my worth and my value from productivity and efficiency and, you know, whatever it might be. But to be able to just let go of this feeling of I always have to be doing something in order to be valuable and to earn my joy would be really good for a lot of us moms. And the next one is, I always have to get everything right to be a good mom. Maybe we need to release those expectations about motherhood to be able to feel more free. My friends, you don't have to be a perfect mom.
Kelsey Redd:And you don't have to be endlessly patient or endlessly productive. You're doing enough. You are enough just as you are. And purposeful playfulness can remind us of that. It grounds us in the joy, in the love, and in the truth that presence matters more than performance.
Kelsey Redd:So as we move into this next week, I just want to leave you with these couple invitations to reflect on. And feel free to go into the show notes and grab my purposeful living journal. In the meantime, reflect on these questions. Can you notice your joyful present moments? When do you feel most present and aligned with your kids?
Kelsey Redd:Write it down, share it with someone, reflect on it in your journal, and then ask yourself, how can I create more of these moments? And my second invitation for you is to choose purposeful play. Not as another task that you're going to write on your to do list that you have to do today, but as a gift for yourself and for your kids. Remember that this isn't something you have to earn and it's not something more to do. It's just something that you can change your approach in the moment.
Kelsey Redd:Can change your energy in the moment to become a nourishing, grounding, nervous system reset for yourself. Thriving in motherhood doesn't mean that we have it all together. It means that we feel alive and engaged in the moments, the little moments that really matters the most. It means that we can laugh and play and be silly with our kids, because we can remember that we're more than just the roles that we carry, the homemaker, the meal planner, the person handling all the logistics. But you are a woman who was created for joy and connection.
Kelsey Redd:Feminine energy is meant to be soft, and emotional and loving, not always hustling and working and earning. I really appreciate you spending a little bit of time with me today. And if you would like to go deeper with these questions, check out the Purposeful Living Journal. It was created for moms just like you and me, who want to live with more presence, more playfulness and purpose. And it will be linked on the show notes or you can find it on my Instagram link in bio creating.
Kelsey Redd:Intentional. Mothers on Instagram, or you can even just find it on my Linktree at linktr.eekelsierd. All of my handouts that I've created for you are available there. Until next time, remember, you are doing an amazing job. I'll see you next time on Intentional Motherhood.