A Running Habit = Better Parenting

A Running Habit

Running for me is a habit: one that is key to how well I function, how effective I am in the world, and the quality of my relationships.

It is a habit that has been formed over twenty-five years: from a twelve-year old jogging up and down his street in the picturesque Highland village of Carr-bridge, to a thirty-seven year old running a 2.47 marathon in Edinburgh in 2024.

This series of blog posts looks at the benefits of building a running habit, before exploring how to build your own running habit.

Parenting

I have two small boys, who recently turned six and three. They are, all in the space of a two-minute section of the day: amazing, frustrating, the ultimate patience-test, joyous and exhausting.

Now, fear not, this post is not going to be about how running has turned me into the best father since Atticus Finch. That would be categorically untrue (not just because Atticus is the greatest character ever in literature). I am, as they will no doubt tell me frequently themselves when they enter the dark realms of adolescence, fairly useless at a number of parenting aspects.

Parenting for me, however, is a deeply shared process, and I’m very fortunate that my long suffering wife and I balance each other out and care deeply about working together as parents.

What role, however, does running have in helping me hold the intention to be the best possible Dad I can be?

Emotion regulation

I explored much of this in last week’s post about running helping to manage anxiety. For me, running is the best mood stabaliser I have come ever across.

Young children, in my humble and very uninformed opinion, require almost superhuman levels of calm and stability from the adult role-models in their lives.

The sheer ridiculousness of some of their behaviour, for example, makes this intention to be secure in mood an essential part of parenting. Just this morning my two boys managed to have an epic argument over a pair of socks. Socks, needless to say, which were mine (they are Shakespeare socks, so obviously the height of cool).

We could go down a neurological rabbit role to justify some of their behaviour: their tender pre-frontal cortex’, for example, isn’t fully-formed so they are making most of their decisions with their amygdala, the emotion centred part of their brain. They also don’t have a vocabulary to express their emotions, and their nervous systems are on fire.

We might all intuitively know that, but it certainly doesn’t help when they are smashing each other in the face with (Shakespeare) socks.

What does help, however, is the oasis of calm that is the product of a run. The fact that all that pent-up-energy has been released through the repetitive motion of putting one foot after the other, means we can take a deep breath and attempt to patiently resolve sock-gate. Of course, we aren’t robots, and inevitably we will fail at this: ending up like a more exaggerated version of groundskeeper Willie in the Simpsons. At that point, we need my next crucial reason why running helps: self-care.

Self-care

I appreciate this is a fairly nauseating phrase, found in everywhere from Boots adverts to the Zoo (don’t ask).

Yet, as a parent, it is pretty essential. I learned this very quickly in my first year as a Secondary English teacher: you cannot be the best version of yourself standing up in front of 30 teenagers hour after hour, unless you prioritise your own needs.

As a parent this is just as, if not more applicable. I appreciate I have a filtered role of what being a parent involves, which will change as my children grow up. For very young children, my current parenting point, there is an all-consuming intensity that I have never experienced before.

I did use to worry that by persevering with my running habit I was being selfish, neglecting others for time that was only for me. I then realised, however, that I was a much better version of myself, a much better parent, if I did put that time aside.

Some of that was about maintaining an essential part of ‘me’: separating completely from my role as a parent and sustaining another interest.

The other was in my final reason why running helps to improve my parenting: stamina.

Stamina

Here is a gloriously obvious sentence: running makes us fitter, stronger and gives us more energy.

I’ll follow it with another obvious one: parenting tests our fitness levels, our energy levels and our strength!

Therefore, by having some running fitness, we are able to keep up with the little darlings, we are able to throw ourselves into yet another half-an-hour of chasing each other, we are able to face the kitchen of dishes when they finally crash out to sleep.

That, for me, is a really important part of my parenting. I don’t want to crawl to forty and tell my children I don’t have the energy to play footy with them in the park. I want them to see a positive, passionate, energetic role model – who is committed to the most challenging and rewarding of all jobs: being a parent.

So, want to be a better parent today? Go for a run.

Read: ‘How to Talk So Little Kid’s Will Listen’ by Joanna Faber and Julie King

Listen: The Single Most Important parenting Strategy. Becky Kennedy Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHpPtdk9rco