204: How to create more time by taking care of yourself

Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm listening from the UK. We all want our children to lead fulfilled lives. But we're surrounded by conflicting information and clickbait headlines that leave us wondering what to do as parents. The Your Parenting Mojo podcast distills scientific research on parenting and child development into tools parents can actually use every day in their real lives with their real children. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free infographic on the 13 Reasons your child isn't listening to you (And what to do about each one), just head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe. And pretty soon, you're going to get tired of hearing my voice read this intro. So come and record one yourself at YourParentingMojo.com/RecordtheIntro.

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. And today we are here with special guests Sara who is coming to us all the way from Italy, I think. Welcome Sara. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and who your family is?

Sure. Yes, I am joining you from Italy. My name is Sara. I am American I grew up in New Orleans. But I moved to Italy about 12 years ago to do a master's program in Food Studies. And I have stuck around ever since I met my husband during the same program, who was from Florence. And we ended up through a series of various employments and moving around the country settling near his family, where we now have our two young sons who are five and three years old. So we both work in sort of the spheres of food and education and sustainability and tourism where those all sort of interlock and overlap. And yeah, that's nice.

I have been to Florence once. It was a delayed flight because I got to the airport and I got checked in to the plane. And we were actually on the gangway and I thought I'm gonna throw up in the next 24 hours. It turns out if you say that to the airline, they are actually quite willing to rebook you for free on the next days. So I went home and threw up and felt better.

Sorry, and what's your welcome back?

Yes, thank you. Yes, it was a shorter, shorter trip than planned. But what I saw it was lovely. So awesome. So we have been working together for a little while now. And I wonder if you can take us back even further than that. Right? And to what was your life like growing up? Right? What was family life like for you?

Sure. So I like I mean, I'm sure most people thought that I had sort of the typical average normal, sort of a family relationship, sort of very much, you know, one younger sibling, you know, two parents who are married, living in United States. And so my experience was, like I said, what was my normal, my family was very small. So it was just really the four of us in the nuclear family. On each side of the family, we have one uncle who wasn't super present in our lives. So not a lot of extended family, not a lot of cousins or anything like that. And then even in terms of, you know, socialization, and things like that my parents were not super social people. So they didn't have a lot of adult friends with kids, obviously, you know, we went to school, so we had friends from school, and would, you know, have sleepovers and have interactions in that way.

But, you know, growing up, my impression of my family was sort of just what I thought family was, which was probably, again to a lot of people who can relate to typical 80s, 90s parenting style, being raised by baby boomer parents. So not a lot of talk about emotions or feelings, spankings were accepted sort of a way of, you know, sort of responding to backtalk and sarcasm, and, you know, just when, when kids were not doing what their parents wanted them to do kinds of things. So, yeah, I think, like I say, just not a really close relationship, and not really a great model for emotional regulation. So typically, a lot of fights and, you know, as I got older, and, you know, started to see more representation and talk to people more and started to travel, and, you know, as I grew to be an adult, I realized that there were maybe some things that were maybe not part of the average family where maybe fights would get physical. It wasn't just, you know, spanking a smaller child, but then that turning into well, the smaller child being able to react, and push and shove or, you know, insults and name calling that may be other families didn't see as normal, you know, when I would say that my parents might call each other certain things, or they would call me certain things, and my friends would say, but that's, that's not really okay. You know that right? Like, oh, well, if you say so. So that was sort of my typical upbringing.

Yeah. And did your parents have similar styles or were they different in some way?

I think that my dad was, in some ways more supportive. I remember him being the one to sort of bring us to sporting events that we were participating in for school over the weekends and things like that. But, you know, they both were present for us in certain different ways. My dad was maybe a bit more just sort of laid back, when it came to dealing with feelings. He didn't really, necessarily criticize or dismiss our emotions, but didn't really try to get any deeper conversations going on with us. In terms of the way, you know, we were feeling we didn't have a really open communication in our family. My mother was a bit more, I think, dismissive or disapproving of anything that was tough from a parenting point of view. So I, you know, have some memories of talking about times when I was disappointed with something, the way that something went at school, or not getting a part in the school play or something like that, as a kid and being told, like, well, maybe you just weren't as good as you think you were, or maybe, you know, like somebody else deserved more than you did. Or when you don't have anything to be upset about you have, you know, you're lucky that you were able to go to this good school, you know, sort of things like that. And I kind of always had a feeling that, I don't know, I don't know, if it was really my sister and I both or maybe I feel it more for myself, when we're not necessarily what she was expecting. When she became apparent, whether that was who I wasn't unusual in terms of temperament or personality, or just, you know, the whole gig of parenting, I kind of had the feeling sometimes that we were maybe a bit of a burden or too much work, that she wasn't necessarily excited or to take on or someone had signed up for.

Yeah, and that must have had a pretty significant effect on you, right? I mean, we're constantly sending these messages out to our parents, am I lovable? And the message you're getting back is maybe. Right?

Sure. Yeah. The idea of, you know, the family that comes together after a conflict that you see on like sitcoms, and like everybody hugs, and you know, it's like, it's okay, we work through it, I love you anyway, it was more just sort of like, I guess I'll figure out a way to deal with this on my own. And that was mainly just sort of, I guess, I'll go to my room and read a bunch of books and sort of isolate that way.

Yeah,nnow you're reminding me of myself. I did this very similar thing. So it was very helpful. And so you know, at some point, you became a parent, And you have pandemic parentage with for a while, and we've been working together for what's been eight or nine months now. And so I'm curious about, you know, what was parenting? Like, up to that point? Were there things that you were really enjoying that were going well, were there things that were difficult?

Sure. Well, I have to say, I think that I was always somebody who, because of my upbringing, never really saw myself becoming a parent necessarily, or saw that, as you know, that's the path that my life is going to take. And it probably wasn't until I was with my current husband and saw, you know, the way his family kind of interacted and what I saw as a much more sort of close and positive model of, you know, siblings who want to talk to you with how they're like, parents and children who talk regularly. And it's not just because they're Italian that he calls his mom twice a day, it's because they actually talk about things. And so, you know, I really kind of saw myself having that part of my life for the for the first time. And so it was a not an immediate path to parenthood.

But you know, we had our two kids, we have our first son in 2019. And so he was about a year, a little over a year old when all of the pandemic started. And after that, I was pregnant with my second son who was born at the end of 2020. So they're about two years apart in age. And so that entire sort of pregnancy and childbirth was occurring through the pandemic. So I personally was already kind of isolated in my introduction to becoming a mother, because we had just moved to Florence, basically, you know, as I got pregnant, wanting to have a support structure nearby, previously lived in other parts of Italy, where, you know, we both worked, And so had a sort of social social support there. Whereas Florence is his hometown. So he's got people here. And then it was sort of just like, well, I can't really go out and meet people anyway, because I am with a young child. So I'm essentially, you know, on maternity leave, or pregnant or on lockdown, which was very, very harsh here in Italy in 2020, and 21. So it was certainly an isolating sort of introduction to all of that. Not having, as I said, just contacts nearby, or even a lot of close friends who had, you know, become parents. I wasn't particularly a young mother, but I still didn't have a lot of people in my life that I knew who had children already.

Yeah. And so, gosh, I mean, so many people struggled through pandemic parenting. Right. And I think we found anger that we didn't know that we had before. Did that happen for you during that period?

It certainly was a lot of a frustration and anger, I guess kind of could be rolled into it into Yeah, I felt like I was maybe just in over my head. You know, it was like I was trying to figure out what being a mother meant period. And then what being a mother in culture that was not the culture of my origin was and sort of trying to navigate that, and not necessarily always going with what seemed to be, you know, expected or normal in that culture. And then, you know, on one hand, we were quite lucky during the pandemic, because we do have my husband's family. So his sister, and her family and his parents very close by. So we were able to have, you know, at least a little bit of a bubble of interaction, even in the strictest lockdowns. And of course, that was amazingly helpful when we had a very young child as well. But it was also sometimes, again, like I say, not necessarily getting the the type of help that I thought that I would get from them, or not knowing how to ask for help. And so, you know, as a lot of people went through with the pandemic, a lot of frustration of just not being able to maybe access resources were nowhere to turn.

Hmmmm. Yeah. And I'm thinking back to a coaching session that you and your partner and I did recently, where he mentioned that you hold other people to a high standard. You hold yourself to an even higher standard. And so when you are trying to be the best parent, you can be under these very difficult circumstances. I'm imagining there's a place for difficulty. Is that right?

Sure. Yeah, I think well, another thing that to even go a little bit pre-pandemic, when my son was even before a year old, was, I think that I wasn't necessarily getting the support that I needed at that point. And so then when everything got even more difficult, it was sort of just building, I can think back to the summer when my first son was maybe seven or eight months old, and just being exhausted, because my husband also works in tourism. So summer in Italy is peak season for him. And I was breastfeeding, so the food came from me. So there was just a lot of just exhaustion. And, you know, I remember sort of doing the default family vacation that like his family has always done and just me going along with it and realizing that just this wasn't working, and nobody was adapting to a very small child being there. And he was still in a very, you know, now learn healthy way expressing his needs. He needed time alone. He wanted to have some time to swim. He wanted to do some things. And I was just sort of holding it all inside that I have needs to and I need you to take this child and put him to bed because I can't anymore, you know, for the seventh month in a row. And you know, just having a big sort of breakdown in terms of that and trying to, you know, do cry it out, even though that felt bad to do that, and even though his parents were sort of like, what are you doing what is going on? And it was sort of just like, I never had the realization that maybe I could ask them to interrupt their dinner and maybe go be with my son And stay with him while I had one adult dinner and one adult conversation. Kind of a thing, it was just Nope, it's me and I have to do it. And if I'm not able to do it, then this is a technique that I read about and let me try it. And it felt really bad to do. And you know, it wasn't the solution. The solution was to reach out and find that help. And so yeah, like I say, No, I've traveled a lot and gotten off topic, but finding a way to ask and ask for my needs and meet that and then not necessarily getting that met, because maybe I wasn't being clear about it, or I didn't know how to ask for it was certainly something that, you know, as we went through then even more limited resources, built up a bit and brought me to, you know, the membership here and learning, learning new tools.

Mm hmm. Yeah. And so you signed up for the Parenting Membership first but you knew about Taming Your Triggers. So I guess I'm curious, why did you hop into the Parenting Membership first?

So I had been listening to a lot of parenting podcasts of several different flavors, just trying to figure it out. Like I say, I didn't really know who to turn for, you know, I didn't have any in-laws with with kids. I didn't have a support network in Italy. I didn't even have a lot of friends back home that I could talk with about like, where do you get these resources from? And I didn't have a great model from my parents. So the internet, that's the job of my parents or with my husband is that when he wants to know something, he asked his mom and I ask Google. So I was seeking out lots of different views on certain things. And as that went on, I sort of started to vibe with some more than others. So yours was a podcast that I listened to quite a bit and I, I heard the sort of the announcement that the team in your Triggers workshop was going to open last year, so February of 2023. And I remember saying, like, that's what I need. I'm overwhelmed with work. I'm overwhelmed with kids like the, why do you find yourself snapping in anger, in situations that you know, you should be able to sort of manage in a better way? And the I did not sign up because I entered a few things, I think I have trouble also valuing myself and saying that I should spend this money on myself, or making the time for it and saying, I'm not sure that I'm gonna, that, you know, the high standards, I'm not sure I'm gonna achieve the peak goal of this. So maybe I shouldn't even sign up, you know, you can't fail, if you don't try was my opinion. So it was always in the back of my head.

And then a couple months after that, the guided Setting Loving Limits workshop opened. And I jumped on that, because it seemed a bit more something that I could handle at the time. And it just took some of the things that I was hearing in the podcast, to a much more level that I could implement it and I realized like steps that I could take, and I saw positive results from that. And from that, I joined the Parenting Membership. So when the Taming Your Triggers workshop opened up again, was it in September, October, I basically sign up the first day. It was possible, because I knew that I had seen that what I had been able to implement from sort of the the work with the Parenting Membership meant that I was ready for it. And the schedule just worked out with my my work life as well, I decided that I needed to take a step back, I didn't need to have three sort of freelance style jobs. That too, was fine. So some time available. And it was a good investment in myself.

Yeah, and so I'm curious about what kinds of things you were being triggered by at the time that led you to think, Okay, this is really something that I think I need, and that will help?

Sure. So one of the first steps in the workshop is to sort of keep a journal and notice what that is. And, you know, I was, you know, filling up a page or two about it. And I realized that they were all variations on a couple of themes. One of the big ones was what I then put under the umbrella of parenting with an audience. So whether that was in extended family situations, and having, you know, in-laws, sort of watching my child have a tantrum, or a fight breakout between cousins and you know, not knowing how to handle it, or a situation on the playground where I'm trying to ask my son to please stop going up the slide when there is a line of kids who wants to come down. And once you do get to the top and are coming down, please wait for the tiny child at the bottom to be off, so you don't keep them. And thinking that people were observing me and judging me and, you know, falling into some patterns that I think I had in my family, I was like, make a big reaction, make a big show of disciplining or reprimand and your child to show that like, you don't want them to be out of control. But knowing that, that when I was the child in that situation, that didn't feel good. And that didn't help me to change my behavior. It only made me feel resentful towards my parents. And you know, it wasn't working with my kids because it doesn't work. But it was a reaction that I had, because otherwise people would think that I wasn't trying. So parenting with an audience was a big one. I think another one that I had was, that seemed to taper out a little bit more as my experience with the Parenting Membership went on was a bit of just sort of physical fighting with my kids too. I have always been, my husband and I have both been a bit more protective of our younger son, he is very small for his age, and we're not really sure why my he's healthy, but he's just very, very small for his age. And we've had a few health scares with him in my pregnancy.

And you know, when he was a very young child, and so the idea of him getting hurt, I think really kind of makes us feel on edge. So you know, if you hear from another room, like a toy being thrown onto a ground, or you know, somebody falling or someone hitting someone, you know, while you're stirring a pot, of course you run out in your life to the older kid, what have you done? Why are you doing this? You know, why can't you just be better? Like it, you realize, And all of that. And then I think the third one was sort of what I would say would be my my own self-judgment, what I call sort of the shame spiral when I would try to implement tools from the Parenting Membership or things that I had researched and tried to be calm, and it didn't work right away. And I had the intellectual knowledge of you know, but studies show that these techniques work. So I did this two times, why hasn't it had an impact yet? And, you know, losing patience with myself, I've always been somebody who's been in a rush, and not really been good at waiting for the process to take its natural course. So. So for when when it didn't work the way it should have, in theory, the first one two or three times?

Yeah, then our culture kind of encourages that, right? That if you just know the thing you're supposed to do differently, then you should just be able to do it. This is not that hard. In actuality, it tends to often not be the case.

Yeah, and I remember another conversation that we've had in the past in terms of different ways to meet needs, a mantra that I've had to develop is plan for it to not go according to plan. And then you won't be, you know, upset when it doesn't.

Yeah, And have a plan for what happens when that happens, right so that you can still come back and get your needs met. So yeah, yeah. Okay, and so so you joined Taming Your Triggers the first day. So you were super keen to get started, what was it like to get started? What was that, like?

I think my introduction to the course was nice, because I had already had an introduction to circle. So the online community that we use in the Parenting Membership as well. And I'm also somebody who really likes to, like, you know, read all the fine print of everything. So I felt like I was really aware of what I was signing up for and getting into. And so it was pretty quick, I think, to jump in, y'all make it very easy with sort of the introductory sort of process of, you know, introducing yourself finding people in a group that you can, you know, then have the accountability bond with and, you know, like small groups, and the sort of, you know, I call them the homework assignments, the sort of journaling prompts and reflection pieces to think about. So I think the introduction to it was very smooth. In general, the idea of the whole learning and community was something that was kind of new to me, just as a person who has been kind of like, socially isolated by circumstance or temperament for a lot of my life. But I have seen that it's nice, you know, you have a lot of options in terms of how to reach out to people, whether you want to talk to people directly, if you want to just use more of the the online chat with the circle and message boards sort of features. So it was nice to have a few different ways to be introduced.

Yeah. And so you matched up with two AccountaBuddies, I think, and what was it I mean, we try very hard to make it not like PE class in middle school. So that nobody is the last person pegs. And we're helping the matches along rather than sort of leaving a bridge to the wolves to try and figure it out themselves. So once you match, what was that like for you?

Yeah, so I mean, in a lot of it was just based on like, I was surprised how international it was. And, you know, there was a lot of math involved in finding AccountaBuddies of, okay, I'm available at this time. So what type of that'd be okay. But yeah, so I matched with two women and one, we ended up realizing that our schedules were surprisingly more hectic than we thought we would be the we were like, okay, we have these windows, that will work. And then well, actually, you're running your own business. and I forgot that this program that I teach at school that's supposed to be on these days, has occasional field trips on third days, And my kid is sick out of school. So we ended up chatting a lot more on every form available. So sometimes we would direct message on Circle, sometimes we would have a quick call, sometimes we would just WhatsApp each other. And then another woman who I matched with, who has a son, about the same age as my, my younger son, we ended up managed to have a bit more of a regular schedule, because of the time that we wouldn't, you know, drop our kids off on the morning and a day that I almost never would have lessons that I had to teach. So we had a pretty regular sort of one hour chat almost every week. So that was a nice regularity and rhythm to check in with.

Yeah. And I'm curious as to where they are. Because I think one thing that folks who are not in the workshop or haven't been through the workshop don't necessarily get is it's like well, I'm in this weird timezone. There's gonna be nobody else in my timezone. So how is this gonna work? And what people I think don't see is that it doesn't matter what time zone you're in, because somebody else is gonna have some weird availability in their day that happens to match with your day. So how did that work for you?

Yeah, well, it did work out for me. So I'm in Florence. So I had one woman who was in my timezone who was in Switzerland, and the other who was in Northern Ireland, so just one hour behind. Okay, but there was a potential match was somebody where who would have been available in the mornings in the US, which was the evenings for me, kind of thing. And then with as well, I'm in an action group in the the Parenting Membership, where we have somebody on West Coast, US time somebody in Central US time, Central European Time, and Western Australia. And it somehow works out.

So the magic happens. Yeah. And so without obviously telling us anything confidential in those conversations, I wonder if you can give us a flavor of some of the things that you would talk about with this person that you have no idea who they were before?

Yeah. So I think we both went pretty much all in where we're like, you know, we know that this is going to be talking about some pretty emotional issues. So let's go for it. And, you know, as mentioned before, every week, they're sort of the the sort of theme that you're sort of working on, and there's some prompts that you can talk about. So sometimes we would sort of try to use those and work off of that sometimes it was more of just natural kind of conversation that came out of things that we came up with in the material and how we were making some sort of not necessarily super obvious at first glance, connections to things that were happening in our lives, you know, both as children but also as adults.

You know, one thing that came up was a lot of just sort of processing. You know, your relationship with your parents as a child and how you view them and how they are your source of authority and your view on it. You know, that's these adults know everything. And as you get older, realizing, Oh, they had really flawed relationships in their marital situations, or, you know, they had, you know, not maybe necessarily healthy views on parenting that, you know, they were expressing with us. And maybe that's because that's how they were parented. And, you know, these are patterns that we do or don't want to repeat. And, you know, sometimes even some of that coming up with, you know, really existential things of like, you know, our parents are reaching a certain age and, you know, do we want to try to be a part of that repair with them? Do we feel like that's even possible at this point? Are there, you know, health concerns that maybe are limiting that? Are there things that you know, maybe we wish we had said that we don't have the chance to say anymore? So there were a really emotional conversations with that, that was nice to process with another person and do alone?

Yeah, and so it tends to not just be about the knowledge, right? Because you could have thought through all that yourself?

Sure. But you know, you hear these things echoed back to you. Or, you know, you have a thought in your head, and you hear somebody else say it, and even if it's just in a slightly different voice, you feel very seen and understood and heard and getting a little emotional even thinking about it now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And so I know, you really went all in on journaling during Taming Your Triggers. And so I'm wondering if you can tell us what that was like for you, why you decided to do that? How was it a big deal for you? Right? What were some of the really big shifts that you made over the course of the workshop?

I'll try to, I'll try to give a very brief backstory to why I thought journaling was important, but I have a very, very, I have a brain that doesn't turn off, I have sleep and insomnia problems, because I just can't stop thinking about things. And so you know, it's something you've heard before is like, if you can't sleep at night, write it down, try to get it out, so that you can then just sort of turn it off and, and sleep. So you know, even through the Parenting Membership, the early phases of it, I wouldn't say I'd have these revelations, I'd be like, that's an amazing thought. I'm gonna remember that. And I didn't. And so I realized that, you know, part of why my brain was so busy was I was constantly trying to recall these things, or I was having these thoughts over and over, as opposed to just writing them down, I would write them down on the backs of calendar pages and scraps of paper. And I would remember that they put that one on the printer, and I put that one on top of the filing cabinet that's on the kitchen table. And oh, wait, we cleaned the kitchen table. And I said, I need to go and buy an organized place to keep all of these thoughts. And so it was, you know, a long time coming that I needed to have something that I could regularly find and refer back to, to go through that. So, you know, the first journal entry in the hot pink journal that I bought was, you know, my list of potential triggers, but I use it also for prompts in the Parenting Membership. And then I have arrows and being like, go back to this page and I'm making all of these connections that now that I have it in a physical visual format, which is how I learn, I'm able to see things differently. And I'm able to organize my thoughts in a much more productive way. And I find myself having less constantly running conversations in my head during the day as well.

Wow, that's a pretty big change, right?

Really helpful. It's really helpful to get it out on paper so that I don't have to be: remember that, remember that, remember that, right?

Yeah. Okay. And so we talk a lot in the workshop about your window of tolerance, right? The idea that you're operating within a certain window, and when you get pushed outside that window, then some sort of explosion or shutdown happens. And so was it helpful to learn that? How did you apply that to your situation?

You know, these things that seems so simple once you have them explained to you, but, you know, I didn't realize that half the time I was just, you know, I call it parenting while I was already flooded, like, I would walk into a situation and I was just ready to be triggered, because, you know, I had all these morning thoughts, and it was just something else that would set me off like one more thing that I have to do, or one more thing that I have to remember a one more thing that I have to respond to, even though it wasn't something that needed an immediate response. But you know, we're also kind of conditioned to this by like, our notifications on our phone going off and this and that and things asking for our attention. So something I simultaneously did while journaling was I learned how to turn off the little notification bubbles on my phone or I, you know, turned on the Do Not Disturb settings and things like that.

So one of the things that I realized was a big, you know, sort of, I guess, prerequisite or predisposition for me being triggered was these feelings of being flooded, you know, was just feeling like overwhelmed with you know, I have to you know, grade this assignment for the class that I teach and the woman I'm that I'm an assistant for is asking me if I have, you know, sent this format or, you know, reply to this email yet. And my kid is asking me if I want to play a game with him and I do want to play a game with him but I also want to make them a home cooked dinner. And I have to defrost this for tomorrow night. And, you know, did my husband move the folded clothes, so they're not going to knock them over? And just, you know, all of this happening at once was leading to me just snapping to them or, you know, pushing off spending dedicated time with them and you know, sort of disregarding their needs for connection and their, you know, what I came to see as later as, you know, completely appropriate ways of asking me to fulfill their needs. And when they were being brushed off, of course, then they would react in a way that was to get my attention in another way, you know, pushing their brother or yelling or coming in and knocking things over, because they're completely appropriate bids for attention hadn't been responded to because I was distracted with my own things. So this parenting at a high stress level was setting me up to fail.

Mmhmm. Yeah. Okay. And you also mentioned earlier, the idea of, you know, being judged, parenting, parenting with an audience, I guess, what kind of shift did you make in that regard?

So one of the units to in the membership was, you know, thinking about your values and thinking about what's important to you. And I can't remember what stuff but it was something that I think that came up through with the the Taming Your Triggers. I don't know, I guess it was thinking, what's the worst that can happen and taking a step back and wondering why I was caring so much about what certain people thought of me. Or if I wasn't doing things according to their expectation, and realizing that that was adding more stress that wasn't leading to any positive outcomes. So, you know, in a certain way, just learning to care less about what people's expectations were, and also realizing that they probably didn't necessarily have the expectations that I thought they did. You know, these were things that I was probably externalizing from my own self-judgments. And, you know, especially in the case of playground, things, you know, you don't want your kid to be rough with anybody or hurt anybody. But if they have a bit of a tantrum for a couple minutes, nobody's going home and talking about that with their family at dinner. And, you know, nobody's whispering and pointing at me. They have their own running dialogue going on. And, you know, it's not as big of a deal as I was making it. So just being able to just take that pause and step back and say, I don't want to deal with this in the way that I've been dealing with it. And, you know, people aren't judging me. And if they are judging me, I don't need to care about that. That's not important to me. Their opinions aren't important. The relationship with my kids is important.

That's the Yeah. And I think it goes back to the idea of perfection, right, And that there is a perfect way to parent and that everybody is holding us accountable to it. And that you are holding yourself accountable to that standard, highest of all, yeah.

yeah. And especially not even knowing what that means, you know, you're supposed to hold yourself to this perfect level. But do you even necessarily agree with what society says that that is? Yeah,

Did you learn anything about needs that you have that come up on a regular basis that maybe you hadn't identified before?

I think I definitely learned to serve the needs were always there. But I wasn't great at identifying them, or figuring out how I could meet them myself, or asking for help and meeting meeting them. And so I think that I felt that I had to meet them in through these socially accepted roles of like mother or work employee roles. And if I, if I wasn't able to do that, if I wouldn't, you know, like, creativity is a big one that I had, that I just felt like I wasn't meeting but it didn't feel important enough. And I started recently, taking a ceramics class, and I have been so much calmer. And I'm able to, you know what I mean? It's because it's I'm setting aside, you know, a couple hours a week for myself to do these things. I'm, you know, physically doing something with my hands, I'm having these ideas, and I'm putting them into practice. And I have always been an artsy person. But, you know, you've talked about this before, if it's not something that you can, you're making money off of, then it's not valuable, yeah. But I needed to express myself in that way. And I was trying to, you know, find ways to do that in a way that would make money. But again, you know, I wasn't immediately succeeding at it, or having the time to invest in it. So I didn't really pursue it. And so I was criticizing myself that way.

But finding a way to meet that need has given me so much more patient than just with my kids, because I've realized that a lot of the times when they wanted my attention, I'd have this need, at the back of my head, this unmet need that's been going on for a long time. And, you know, I was always sort of half distracted by it. So I was, you know, looking at books about art or reading things or trying to do that. And I've separated that I've been able to sort of compartmentalize it into like, this is a need that I have, I can meet it in this way. And oh, that need is met. I don't have to be thinking about it. And other times when my husband wants to do something or my kids wants to do something like I have the time for it now. I never thought that if I sometimes I had for myself, I would gain time, I always thought it would be, I'm losing time that I already don't have.

Hmm, wow, that's kind of a miracle, right? Because I mean, we I work with so many parents who are like, I do not have time for anything, I do not have time for any self-care. It is not possible for me to take care of myself, because that will just take time away from the 3 million other things that I'm doing. And what you're saying is that it creates time.

I was just trying to do so much together at once, but doing it also inefficiently. I think that that's where that came from. If I allowed myself to take some time for myself, it was done, it was opened and closed. And then I had other things that I can move on to and it wasn't that I was then getting distracted again. And I think part of it too, is I do admit that I feel like I have a lot of privilege. You know, there's pros and cons to you know, sort of being self-employed. But I do have, you know, the privilege of having no flexibility of, you know, not having a typical 9 to 5 kind of job so I can sort of make time for myself in moments where maybe other people wouldn't necessarily find that time as easily. But I definitely do, do well with the structure. And so sort of breaking up my time in that way has been a way for me to, like I say find pockets of it, where I didn't realize that I had it before.

Yeah. And so I guess I'm curious, like, how are things different? Now, I'm sure you're not at this mythical state where you're never triggered anymore. If you are feel free, let us know. But you know, what kind of things are different?

I come back to the idea of repair a lot more, I have a lot more I think like, grace with myself. So when I do see myself, you know, reacting in a way that maybe my parents would have reacted or is not in line with what I want to be doing. But it's because I've been triggered or because I'm flooding. And I'm able to recognize that. And sometimes I'm able to stop, you know, create the pause we talked about in terms of your triggers, and think about, like, what do I want to do. And it's just not something that I felt like I was able to really do before that sometimes I still react in the way that I don't want to I was reading books to my kids in bed last night. And you know, we had had a great bedtime, we were in bed on time. But then we were sitting in bed and they kept talking to each other and talking over me and like pushing down on the book and like putting the stuffed animals in front of the words to read. And I was just like, I am getting so frustrated. I told you I would read and we're here and we're not reading. And this is not what I want to be doing. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry, can I take a breath, I'm sorry. I said I'd read these books. We have the time to read these books. You're gonna fall asleep 15 minutes later. It's fine. It's fine. And I, you know, give them both a hug. And I said, I'm really sorry. That's not the mom I want to be. And I want y'all to also help me to do that, you know, one is three, but the five year old is calling me out on it. You know, I say like, I want to be a better mom to you. But I'm gonna need some help doing it too. So, you know, let me repair with you. And he appreciates it. But also, you know, remind me tell me what I'm doing right and tell me what I'm doing wrong. And he's starting to. So it's been really, really great. It's not the kind of thing that I could have ever done with my parents. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, even just things like talking about feelings, right? Talking about needs, seems so different than the way you were raised.

When my three year old says, I'm angry, or I'm sad, or I'm angry, I bite you, or, and he doesn't actually bite us. But like, I'm like, that is so great. You know, thank you, thank you for that, you know, that's a phrase that I'm trying to say a lot is like, you know, thank you for telling you that it's really important that you're telling me that. Let's see what we can do with it. You know?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I want to leave parents with this new approach that I'm trying with the homework for, if they want to do the homework, right? If they want to dip their toe in with some mild homework or maybe a little deeper with some medium or if they want to go spicy. And I was curious about whether you have some thoughts on things that you have tried, right that to you and not everybody's experience is going to be the same, but to you felt mild and yet still helpful, medium, little more helpful, and maybe even a little bit spicy? Do you have some practices in mind that parents might be interested in checking out?

Sure. Well, we're all coming from this from different culinary backgrounds. So yes, my mild, medium and spicy might be the opposite direction for other people. But for me, the easiest one to start was the journaling process. Because, you know, it's something that I you know, again, have read about the benefits of and so it was something that I'd wanted to put in practice and it was going out and specifically buying a journal and using it and getting, you know, like I say, silly colored pens and a hot pink journal, but I mean, I can find it in the mess and making that just something a regular process. So if I have the running thoughts, I'm like, I can go find it and write it down. So journaling was my my suggestion for mild.

For medium, a big thing that I realized was helping was you know if you can call it compartmentalizing, call it, you know, whatever it is, but sort of not parenting while already distracted or not parenting while you, you know that you're flooded. So if you can be able to, like I say, physically, I had to physically put my phone out of the room because again, if it's a life or death situation, it's not going to come in the form of a text message. So you know, I don't need to pay that bill. This moment, it can wait until tonight and the kids are in bed, I don't need to respond to you know, some work group texts right now or the parents for the school. Nothing is important right now my kids want my attention right now, it's one last thing to distract me. And I can even manage to interact with them and potentially reheated dinner, if I can do that and have fewer distractions. So try not to parent while distracted. It's another big one. For me, that has been very, very helpful, but was a step I definitely had to build up to.

And then for the spicy, I would say, maybe trying to reconcile a bit more the family of origin and how you want to parent it. So one of the big pieces of Taming Your Triggers is the writing a letter to your mother or another figure that you know, kind of fulfilled that role in your life. And I remember my letter that came out was a bit more angry sounding than I was expecting it to be. But I got a lot of closure out of it that came to it from my self-acceptance. It was sort of just I've put into words, what the relationship was, what was negative, what the impacts were for, for my life. And it would be great if you could repair with me, but I don't think you can. I've made attempts at it in the past. And I just don't think that it's necessarily there. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. And I've gained something from it, which is knowing that I want to be the kind of mom that I can remember with my kids and my kids can expect that from me. So that's not a homework assignment. That's like a month long project. That's extra spicy level five, maybe?

Yes. Yeah. Yes. Pepper. Just pepper spicy.

Exactly.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. I think that gives us a variety of different places to head into this kind of work, depending on how much of it people have done already. So thank you for being with us for being on this journey with me for being willing to share something of your your story, your history and where you are today with us. I really appreciate it.

I'm happy too. I've had a lot of really positive things come out with it, not only with my kids, but also with my husband too. So I'm glad that I took the time to invest in myself for it. And I'm glad that this was something that's available and out there. Yeah.

Thanks so much, Sara.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm listening from the UK. We know you have a lot of choices about where you get information about parenting, and we're honored that you've chosen us as we move toward a world in which everyone's lives and contributions are valued. If you'd like to help keep the show ad free, please do consider making a donation on the episode page that Jen just mentioned. Thanks again for listening to this episode of The Your Parenting Mojo podcast.