Straight Shoulders: Getting Better Posture for You and Your Kids

Our parents always told us to sit/stand up straight, right? And we didn't? And then we get older and start jobs and a lot of them are jobs where you sit all day, hunched over a desk or your computer. Then you come home and hunch over another computer, answering emails and playing games and jumping around on social media.

Then your back starts curving, and you lose height, and if you could see yourself standing up you'd run out of the room, screaming.

If you go to a gym to work out and work with a trainer, they spend a lot of time on your form, how you stand and hold yourself before you lift weights; how you place your knees on the ground before doing push ups. It's really about being present in your body when you move, or walk, or sit, stand, eat, lie down.

But what if you're not good at that?

I spent most of my life being what people tend to call a "dreamer." Most of the time I'm thinking about play or book ideas or writing them or doing writing work for people who hire me. I don't feel myself when I'm hunched over, writing. I feel what I'm writing about.

Unfortunately, that hasn't been great for me. Sitting is the new smoking, and if you don't want your bones to get brittle and be terrified of falling at the first sign of snow, well. You know you have to stand up straight and walk more. I try to leave my desk and walk outside or jump on the treadmill for 10 or 15 minutes daily, 30 or 40 minutes if I have the time (or an hour if I can.) My doctor says I can watch whatever trash TV I want as long as I'm on my stationery bike, which is extremely motivating.

But the truth is I don't do enough exercise, and my body is suffering because of it.

I don't usually (or ever) watch models walking down the runway anywhere, but when I've glanced at them in a magazine or TV, they are walking in such wonderful ways! They have a real intentionality about walking that makes me wish I could be that way.

I don't mean I want to be a model; but I DO think it's a matter of carriage. How you carry yourself through the world can have a lot of influence over people's perceptions of you. Even if they're not true, you can look confident and comfortable with yourself.

Whether I am or not, I want to look that way. And I'm hoping that by looking that way, I can feel that way too (eventually).

I'm thinking out loud here, as I often do in these blogs. But yes, posture, form, standing up straight, all that stuff our parents told us that we ignored. Should we be listening to them? And what should we tell our own kids? How do we get them to be mindful of their bodies?

YES, I say, standing as tall as I possibly can without slumping. I'm so sorry, mom, for tuning you out on that. The exercise experts I know say it's never too late to start and you really can build up strength and balance.

I just have to spend more time away from the computer, right?

And how, exactly, am I supposed to do that?

(Sigh).

Ideas:

9 Tips for Better Posture

How to Teach Your Child Good Posture Habits

Workplace Ergonomics: How to Improve Your Posture at Work


Clasping Hands Photo: liz west

Children and Art: the Creative Source

Once upon a time, ladies & germs, and several years before my son was born, I was talking to someone about my varied creative projects and she said, “You must not have children.”

It was, at least for me, a very weird moment. I did not have children, but it sounded terribly unfair to me to say that was the reason I was creative or accomplishing a lot creatively.

Yes, children take time. It’s harder to find time to create when you’re taking care of children. But I know many women like fellow Booktrope author Kandi Wyatt, who has five children and who teaches countless others—and who still manages to write some pretty amazing books, including the Dragon Courage series for middle schoolers.

When my son was born, I did have to slow down my creative work for the first year. Some of that was because I was a very inexperienced parent and felt pretty overwhelmed. I went from wanting to get a play produced in New York to wanting eight hours of sleep, and I stuck to that wish for what seemed like a very long time.

But my son has given me some very great joys that I wouldn’t trade for anything, let alone a new dimension on life and my writing. (He once told a friend his mom wrote all her plays about him; while not exactly true, I did use our relationship for many stories and plays).

Whether or not you’re a parent, I believe what you do with your time and creativity is, ultimately, up to you; and kids can add to that creativity by helping you savor the moment. By moment I mean the times you play with them at the playground or hunker down to make an art project; or any of the other things you do and enjoy doing with each other. (If you’re a savor-the-moment person anyway, more power to you. I needed a kid to help me get there.)

What parenting means for creativity is anyone’s guess—but it could be we all need a certain level of happiness to be creative. I say this because creativity requires time and space and what I’d call a healthy level of obsession—which could be more about who we are, deep down, than the number of children we have (or don’t have?)

I did think a lot about kids when writing The Beat on Ruby’s Street, because it was not only about artists but about how some of us become artists. Ruby’s parents are not particularly attentive and the Beat Generation itself never struck me as being focused on family.

And yet. And yet. 

Ruby’s craving for an artistic community is also a sort of search for family. Art allows us to be in and transcend the moment simultaneously and artists want their work to be known because they want it to reach others and to resonate for them. Children's art compels us because their spontaneity keeps them from getting stale and mired in clichés.

That leads me back to how I started today; I am not creating because I did or did not have children. But children have and will continue to inspire me to create.

What do you think? I’m all ears if you’d like to share your thoughts here. To learn more about finding time for creativity as a parent, I’d recommend these articles:

Ask the Art Professor: How do you Balance a Full-time Job, Kids and Your Own Art?

--Clara Lieu

10+ Ways to Make Time for Your Art: An Interview with Rice Freeman-Zachery  --Kate Harper

Finding Time for (Creative) Work when you have Kids  --Michelle Parrinello-Cason