Bed Time Blues
60 x 80cm
Acrylic, oil, and Pastel on linen
Framed in oak
The bed time blues is a real thing in our home. Emotional intelligence doesn’t just appear over night like many would hope.
When parenting deeply feeling children, it can often be a battle to wind down for bed time. For neurodivergent brains, sometimes no stimulation can feel threatening or unsafe. Emotions can often slip out of your control when lying in bed not knowing where the thoughts are going to go. Anxiety appears and now the calm needed to drift off to sleep is buried under mountains of overwhelm.
When working through the broad spectrum of emotions with my children, we have found colour coding them to be helpful. My son calls the night time sad feels, the bed time blues.
Blue.
Blue is the colour he sees when he feels low in the evening.
By simply giving it a name and a colour, he recognises his emotions and can prepare himself, as well as let us know what he’s feeling. For me, my evenings have begun to shift as I view this colour differently. I see blue as a calm and restful colour. The deep and dark hues of the blues resonate a gentle, soft and cool tone to my thought process.
When the bed time blues have been called, it’s like a signal to my mind that his overwhelming blues need my calming blues.
It is a gentle nudge that reminds me of what is needed to interact and keep calm in the face of his overwhelm. Especially at the end of the day when you’re scraping the barrel for any lasting scoops of energy for yourself.
This painting is to me, wrapping my son’s blue storm with my blue calm. Two blues can be true.
Please note, in-situ image simulated at true-to-life scale to assist with spatial placement.
Bed Time Blues
60 x 80cm
Acrylic, oil, and Pastel on linen
Framed in oak
The bed time blues is a real thing in our home. Emotional intelligence doesn’t just appear over night like many would hope.
When parenting deeply feeling children, it can often be a battle to wind down for bed time. For neurodivergent brains, sometimes no stimulation can feel threatening or unsafe. Emotions can often slip out of your control when lying in bed not knowing where the thoughts are going to go. Anxiety appears and now the calm needed to drift off to sleep is buried under mountains of overwhelm.
When working through the broad spectrum of emotions with my children, we have found colour coding them to be helpful. My son calls the night time sad feels, the bed time blues.
Blue.
Blue is the colour he sees when he feels low in the evening.
By simply giving it a name and a colour, he recognises his emotions and can prepare himself, as well as let us know what he’s feeling. For me, my evenings have begun to shift as I view this colour differently. I see blue as a calm and restful colour. The deep and dark hues of the blues resonate a gentle, soft and cool tone to my thought process.
When the bed time blues have been called, it’s like a signal to my mind that his overwhelming blues need my calming blues.
It is a gentle nudge that reminds me of what is needed to interact and keep calm in the face of his overwhelm. Especially at the end of the day when you’re scraping the barrel for any lasting scoops of energy for yourself.
This painting is to me, wrapping my son’s blue storm with my blue calm. Two blues can be true.
Please note, in-situ image simulated at true-to-life scale to assist with spatial placement.
