 Okay, good evening everybody. I want to welcome you all to virtual playhouse my name is Dan I'm the director of development and programming for the bed for playhouse. And we're going to have a very interesting and informative talk for you this evening. A few quick notes. For those of you who may not be accustomed to zoom. At this point. We invite you at any point in the conversation to post a question at the bottom of your screen if you are on a laptop or desktop as a Q&A button, which you can use to post questions for Sue. At any point, if you are on an iPad or your phone, I believe it's at the top of your screen. Please use that forum to post questions do not use the chat feature gets a little confusing keeping track of everybody's questions. So please use the Q&A. The bed for playhouse, as I'm sure most of you may know, still remains closed due to the effects of the COVID-19 virus. We are hoping to be able to reopen as soon as we are permitted with all of the appropriate social distancing protocols in place. In the meantime, we are presenting programs such as this in a virtual platform. If you enjoy tonight's talk, and you'd like to see more programming like it, please before you shut down your devices, please consider make making a donation to the bed for playoffs on our website, which is bedfordplayhouse.org. And you can just follow the links and the donate link right there on the homepage. Coming up this week, we have a couple of additional programming tomorrow night is the next installment of our classic Tuesday series. We'll be talking about the film war sweet smell of success. Wednesday evening we have a very interesting program focusing on grief and loss during the pandemic with Dr. Mark Leonard. And on Thursday night, we are returning with trivia night with Game of Thrones trivia so if any of you are interested in any of those programs, you can visit our website. And you'll find all the relevant information for that. So that any further ado, I'd like to introduce our moderator for the evening. Margaret Ables is the co host of what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood, which is one of the better podcast names I think I've ever seen a top podcast and Apple podcasts kids and family category with over 3 million lifetime downloads with her co host, Amy Wilson, the what fresh hell podcast has toward the country with their lives moms live moms not out show and produces hilarious video content, including the viral hit quarantine day one versus quarantine day 90, which is on their YouTube channel of the same name. Margaret's writing has been featured on comedy central MTV Nickelodeon PBS kids and Nick mom.com. She's a frequent contributor to parenting tips to the daytime television show Steve Harvey, and she teaches improv and public speaking through the organization rehabilitation through the arts. Please join me in welcoming Margaret Ables to the virtual class. Hello. Hey make how are you. I feel like Linda. Pop on the screen. I'm going to pop off so the show is yours. Have a good time. My name is Margaret Ables and I am here to introduce our speaker and author of tonight, Susan Groner. Susan founded the parenting mentor to provide as an ally in their with for parents in their quest to raise confident and resilient children, and is a certified positive discipline parenting educator. She is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a former advertising executive. She is a resident of Bedford. Hands up for Bedford and the author of parenting with sanity and joy. 101 simple strategies which we will be discussing tonight and I have as you can see my marked earmarked copy of it right here. Welcome to Groner. Hi, how you get your Glinda moment to appear. Okay, come on. She's there. I just saw her there. Why is this not working. Did you hit start video. Yeah, I keep hitting that. Hmm. Hi everyone. Hi everyone ready with that dread new moment of is this all going south right at the beginning but we're both here. Hello. So good to see you and be with you and I really really enjoyed this book and looking forward to talking to you about it start though take us back a couple of steps and tell us about the parenting mentor and what what brought that about and what how you starting advertising and moved into parenting. Yeah, well, when I was single and didn't have kids I wasn't advertising and then I moved into being a mom. So that one then parenting and then parenting exactly. And that's when it all began and I was a pretty cool calm mom up until the middle school years. I was starting I haven't I have two middle schoolers so I'm very interested in this. And all of a sudden, I became this like crazy stressed out anxious mother. You know I'm sure I like was constantly nagging my kids I would creep up the stairs to see if they were actually working on their computers or playing games and you know it was was horrible. I feel like that's interesting middle school I so I have my kids are 1210 and nine. So my, my little guys fifth grader which where I live happens to be middle school it's a little bit unusual but I feel like I'm calmer. Like I'm like oh there's someone else's problem now in middle school but was it the stress of academic like you wanted them to. Yeah, the procrastination and you know all that nonsense that they either do or they don't you know they figure it out on their own but unfortunately I didn't realize that then. As they got older and kept evolving. I, there was like one moment where I'm like wait a second, look at how they're changing look at how they've evolved and why was I so stressed out in English why did I waste all that time and energy when I could have been enjoying it so much more. And I realized I needed to start sharing that with other families because I know I wasn't the only one. Yep, we talk about this so much so much on the podcast, don't miss parenting trying to be a good parent right like and I love in the intro of your book you talk about that you're reading these parenting books and that your husband is like oh no we've got a new system tell that story because it just so resonated with me like we've got a system now. Yeah, it was kind of like when I wrote this particular book, I tried to write it in a way that no one would feel the way I felt when I would read parenting books. You know I would start reading one and then all of a sudden it's like oh my God I've already totally screwed up my kids. You know I hadn't been doing these I hadn't been following the advice, you know what that I should have when they were 10. And I'm like oh my God there's a French baby who eats snails at midnight and is totally happy doing that. Yeah, I'm a failure. Failure. And so I would then I would like all of a sudden say okay well we have to follow this and, and my husband would say, you're reading another book aren't you and I'm like yeah do you know and he's like because you just changed everything again, you know and he could see my stress around it and, eventually I had to stop reading them because my daughter would start picking up the books and when I would say something she's like stop with that parenting stuff already would you like I saw I read that I'm a chapter ahead of your mom. Pretty much. So, um, yeah I tried to make it so that it was a really easy to read and you can get through it when as whenever you want and then really non judgmental. And it is I mean the thing that I love about this book and we read I probably read 20 parenting books a month because we have a lot of parenting experts on the podcast. And you make the point again in the introduction it's like, you got 400 pages and and it's a lot to take in and this is very digestible it really is strategies that are laid out categorically and you can kind of. It's a great size advice that is pretty straightforward. Yeah, and you know I just sort of joke like, you know, leave it in your bathroom. I wasn't going to say that because I thought it might be rude but it is a perfect book to have in your bathroom. It is you know so just read a tip or two you know. Like if you have that like if you're done scrolling Twitter for the night you just it's like two or three tips and night and every tip you kind of go. Huh. Yeah, I can see it. I want to let people who are following us on zoom know that they can ask questions throughout in the chat. We're going I'm assuming I don't know who's out there but I'm assuming it's a lot of moms and we know moms have strong opinions about being moms. And so we encourage you as we're talking about parenting to tell us we're dead wrong we're absolutely spot on you have a follow up question and we have a question already from Ellen, who is asking, do you parent like your mom parented you I think that's a really interesting question. Um, yeah that's a good question. Um, certain things I do and certain things I don't. I mean I think that um you know they're they're a lot and that's such a good question because so many of us do parent the way our parents did not because we thought it was right or wrong, but because we thought it was just the way it is. Right, never. A lot of us don't think about the rules we grew up with we just they're just so and you know I think we need to take a step back and say well why am I enforcing that rule does that really make sense to me, you know just because that's the way everyone did it when I was growing up, or that's the way I was told, you know we get so conditioned to a certain type of parenting and that's actually another reason why, you know, partners have so much trouble raising kids together because they each come from a very different place of parenting. You know that it's what they knew it's what they learned it's what's under their skin, as opposed to what I have and what I learned, you know so I might have had a very controlling mom, where my husband maybe had a mom who just didn't do anything at all. And you know where do we need in the middle how do we figure that out that's. And I think that stuff goes deeper in us than we know you know I just moved back to this area and I find I passed the house I grew up in and I'm like that's not where the Christmas tree goes what's wrong with you people like. I'm so attached to the ways of my childhood and and being a mom you have to check in with that stuff a little bit like. Okay I'm very attached to this but I'm attached to it because it's the right thing or am I attached to it just because it's my personal tradition. And you know what, and even a lot of them aren't even traditions that we're dealing with, we're dealing with like real rules like, you know, how you address people how you, what kind of clothes you wear what I mean there's so many different things that that you bring to the party and so I always like the both parents come together and say, talk about the issue that they want to discuss and say well how did you look how did you grow up with this, and, and then I say how I grew up with it and then we just have a conversation. Well what do you think, you know do you like that do you think that's right. What do you think about the way I was raised, maybe there and then maybe come up with your own thing. And bringing us into the actual book I the title is parenting with sanity and joy, and it reminds me of the old you know you can have it fast cheaper good but you have to pick to and it's like. Okay, can we have parenting sanity and joy all at the same time or do we have to pick and especially now that we're in this very kind of ridiculous phase of parenting where we're home schooling and we're with our kids all the time like. Has your perspective changed at all because of coronavirus and what we're all dealing with is there is there less sanity I find there's less sanity a little more joy maybe going on at our house. Yeah, silliness but much less sanity. I could see that I mean unfortunately, you know my kids are 21 and 23. And so I don't need to say there's nothing unfortunate about that I am so jealous of you if you would like some loner children I have three and I think we live pretty close together. Yeah, and mine are available for long and okay well I might actually take you. This is a nephews but they're like, no you can't come over. I don't want them to get sick, even though I'm fine and been tested but anyway. Um, yeah, I'll take you up on that. I think. I think the parenting stuff is the same no matter what if you start with the same basic principles. I think it's maybe a little harder a little more stressful because of things changing so much. You know, and not only have they changed significantly in terms of school but from week to week they might change and so being able to be flexible and, you know, go with the flow is not that easy for a lot of people. And once you finally like get this hybrid thing going all of a sudden schools close for two weeks, you know, and then you have to go to a full learn, you know, full. My house our schools just closed two weeks. Really, you got to be light on your feet these. You do and you know, I think because of co vid that so many parents are so worried from an academic perspective. You know that my kids not going to learn my kids going to get up behind blah, blah, blah. Right. Everybody's in the same boat. This is not the ideal way to learn we know that people are doing the teachers are doing the best they can schools are doing the best they can parents are doing the best they can and I'd like to think that kids are doing pretty much the best that they can. You know, and while we may have expectations for them to be able to be completely focused in front of a computer for a long time. It's probably unreasonable to expect that for most kids. And so, I kind of like to look at this year, rather than making it a year of academic learning that it becomes a year of life skills learning. And that's a really amazing thing and so at the end of the year, you can say wow look how my kid can get up out of bed by themselves and get in front of their computer and time for school to start. Awesome. They can make their own lunch every day. Awesome. Right. They are doing their, their chores. I hate that word I like to say family contributions but they're doing them without being nagged and told to do them. They do them just naturally it's become a habit for them. Awesome. They take care of doing their own homework without, you know, you having to be the homework warden. They know, you know, they've agreed to a certain amount of screen time and they monitor themselves. Awesome. And similarly to don't miss parenting for trying to be a perfect parent that don't miss the lessons of the pandemic which are what what's on the other side of wanting that I'm bored, you know, there is something on the other side of it and I think that that's been something that we return to over and over again talking on the podcast is let them be bored and see where that leads, let them struggle figuring out the home learning and see where that leads. Yes, you can help them they don't have to live completely independent lives you are their parent, but let them learn to do the laundry these days like we are in this opportunity to learn really new lessons as a family. And, and in that the pan I can't say the pandemic's been a gift but in don't miss the gifts that it is for all of the frontness that it brings with it. Yeah, and that's not to say that, you know, before after the pandemic your kids should still be doing the laundry. Well, at least I feel that way and I had one guy kids should be doing the laundry funny story about this when my son was in sixth grade at box Lane and he, he was really into art, and so one of the sections one of the quarters he was assigned was in economics, instead of art, and he really didn't want to do it and he wanted art and I'm like, Okay, well go talk to your guidance counselor because I'm all about my kids advocating for themselves and learning how to do that. And I didn't know whether he would or not but I certainly wasn't going to make that call. And he came home and he's like, Oh, I talked to my guidance counselor and I got moved out of home act and I'm like, Oh, what'd you say. And he said, I told her I already know how to do laundry. It was true. Oh, we're for mom. Yeah, so anyway, I was really happy about that. I got, I got me shamed on this topic. I saw a meme that was like if your kid can operate these things and it was like an iPad and a you know DVR whatever all the things kids might ever they can operate this thing and it was a picture of a washing machine and I thought that's pretty good. That's a pretty darn good point. Yeah, actually, you start the kids young it's actually fun for them because they can operate this big adult machine. Listen, guys, let's be real. It's not fun like they're like, I love doing laundry forever but you can kind of stick them in there and get them doing it and it works. Yeah, you know, mentioning before about the boredom thing. That's actually one of the tips in my book that it's okay to be bored. And I firmly believe that and, you know, when our when our kids complain to us like if your kid comes and said, Mommy, I'm bored. Right. The reaction from most mothers is like, you know, annoyed because we hear your family may not bored anymore. Right. But they're just making a statement. And so all we need to do is say, Yeah, I get it. You know, I'm bored sometimes too. Subject. I have I have a pandemic rule. If you tell me you're bored. I find you something to clean. That's the pandemic. Stop coming through with I'm bored because they know it means it's time to clean. Let's visit some of the strategies in the book because there are so many good ones we won't get through 101 of them but why don't you tell me first one of your favorite strategies from the book. I have a list of mine but we'll start with yours. My favorite one is actually the one I made number one. And that is say yes with joy. Now that doesn't mean say yes all the time. Everything. Yeah. But when you're going to say yes. When you know you're going to say yes, whether it's driving your kids somewhere or helping them get something from a top shelf or working on a project, whatever it is that you know that you're going to do. Say sure I'd love to instead of Fine, give me two minutes, you know, which is probably what a lot of us like maybe we don't really want to do it, but we're going to do it. And I swear when you change this little thing and you put a smile on your face and say, you know what, give me two minutes and I'd be happy to do that for you or I'm happy to help you. You actually will be when I started doing it. It made a huge difference and it still does for me. You know do I really want to get in the car and drive an hour to the airport. No, but am I happy to do it doesn't give me time to spend with my child. Yeah, and I love it. I think it this is the key right this is the joy piece of what you write about which is I think a lot of people are pretty good at parenting and and a lot of people are focused on maintaining their sanity, but they've this third part which is finding joy while you're doing it can be hard because We're kind of told that our job is to be good at parenting, not that we're supposed to enjoy parenting and that in fact most of us. A lot of us worked really hard to have these kids dreamed of these and my first kid at 37 you know like this is my dream come true. And then it feels like you spend your time reading books and being like how can I survive this how can I get through this and we forget that like how can I be very joyful in this experience that I long for my whole life is very key and something people forget. And I love this this way into it which is just the joy is there waiting for you but you sometimes have to find a way into it and just saying yes joyfully seems like a very simple fix to me. Yeah, and it really does change your perspective on what you're going to be doing. And my husband and I talk about make yes the default answer instead of no you know so that hey can I have dinner in the living room with my brother and sister and have a picnic. I'm like no because that's annoying and it's messy and I hate it and the death but like what if I start with the yes okay is there really a reason to maybe there is there's plenty of things we are I don't think either one of us are saying. So yes your kids for everything and you'll be happy it's just find your yes and come from a joyful place of yes and then the nose or the nose and they're strong but yes is always available and very happy. Yeah, and also it makes your kids feel better especially if they're asking you to do them a favor that they really need you to help them with if you do it begrudgingly. It doesn't make them feel good either right almost a little guilty and that's not good so you know say yes, I'd love to say yes to the smile we have another question from Natasha. How to handle it when sports and activities already feel so competitive in the elementary middle school years we have skipped sports activities because of covid but others have not feel like my son is falling behind his friends. Well, here's the thing you know I think I think you have to really think about why it's important that your son is at a certain level in sports, you know, I think a lot of us. Push and push and push and maybe our kids love the sport to but part of us wants them to really excel because we kind of think it's going to be good. And here it comes for college, you know, and so I always say you know parenting is not an 18 year engineering project. I hope some of you are chuckling out there because you probably know what I'm talking about and if your child can like play the sport and enjoy it maybe with his brother or you can do something in the backyard together and you know you're making a decision for your family not to have him go into sports right now for probably health and safety reasons it's okay so you know what chances are even if he stayed in sports he's not going to be drafted. You know I remember when I was leaving the city to move up to Bedford which I initially was not happy about ultimately I was very happy about but I was so upset because my little daughter wasn't going to get to go to the ballet school near Lincoln Center which was the best ballet school in the city and blah blah blah and someone looked at me once and she goes you know your daughter's not going to be a prima ballerina don't worry about it and that was made so much sense to me. And so it's kind of the same thing you know so if your kids not on the elite team it's okay they're still going to get to play they're still going to enjoy the sport which is really what it should be about anyway. Yeah and that feeling of I'm just entering this phase I feel like of like the highway right and the feeling of like wait the other cars are going faster than me and they have better engines than we do and they're if we stop for a second to have a moment of enjoyment they're going to fly past us on the road to where exactly I don't know college I guess you know Harvard I guess is somehow the exit we're all rushing towards I'm not sure I'm not even clear on what the exit is but there's no exit how do you I think it's very easy to give the advice of like there's no exit guys relax but I understand that every mom. Not every mom but many moms end up with that three o'clock everybody's doing better every other kid speaks Mandarin mine is a loser you know that kind of you know yeah and dialogue how do you fight against that. Well I like to say that if you can buy into the idea that this isn't an engineering project and if you try to engineer as I'm sure we all have done I have done. It doesn't work you cannot engineer a human being and when you try to you get a lot of errors error messages you know and a lot of conflict. No no no. Order not completed. All these expects smoke starts coming out of the computer screen. You have expectations for your child to excel at X Y and Z A they may not be ready for it. Be ready for it. Be they may not be interested in it and see they don't want to let you down and feel like a loser also so that's all this stuff that's going on when you do that. And so I like to think about our role as parenting is more of one of raising self reliant resilient kids who have good problem solving skills and good coping mechanisms and I will tell you that if you buy into that. So much of your stress and anxiety that you have from parenting will go away because all the things that cause a stress and anxiety. Are the things that aren't working out right for our kids you know that they're they're frustration they're disappointment they're unhappiness over whatever it is they're worry they're angry about something they didn't get along something something happened with a teacher or friend. If we go in and fix this stuff or we go and say oh don't worry it'll be fine or you know don't be sad it's okay. The more we do that the more we take away those opportunities for our kids to be able to become resilient can't be resilient if you have nothing to be resilient against. Right if you're not forged in some sort of fire yeah that's how it works you can't develop coping mechanisms if you don't ever have to cope because everything's always made perfect for you right because your parents are busy doing all of the coping on your behalf. Yeah and so what happens is when you do these kids do get to college they kind of fall apart because mommy and daddy aren't there anymore for it to help them to get through this stuff. And so when parents say I just want my kids to be happy. Right I say how about are you sure about that I just want to know that my kids can handle being unhappy. It can handle frustration they can handle disappointment right and then you don't have to like freak out about anything and so oh my God how's my kid going to handle this what am I going to have to do blah blah blah you're going to know like hey don't get through it. And the best part about it is they'll know that they can get through it too. And so yeah you know life has ups and downs. Life's going to have not such great stuff thrown at you. Even this COVID thing is a perfect example. But if you have those skills you know like okay this isn't great. This doesn't feel good. I'm disappointed but I could get through this and I'll be okay. I feel like that ties into one of the strategies which is use an imaginary leash. Talk about that a little bit. I think it's a really good metaphor and it ties into what we're talking about. Yeah the imaginary leash. If you have a dog. You probably have one of those leashes that extends and extends and you can like click it to a certain length. So that's kind of the idea that I had in my head when I wrote that tip and each year I say you know make it a little bit longer. Give your kids a little more independence. Let them figure things out a little bit more by themselves so by the time they're seniors in high school they don't have a leash at all. So break that down a little bit like what are a couple of steps you imagine on the leash. You know playing outside by yourself I guess or with your friends. You know maybe being able to you know when the mall is open again. Post COVID time when we're allowed to leave our house. You let your kids go trick or treating without you trailing behind or to the carnival or you know maybe you give them a little bit more as they get a little older. You let them go to bed on their own instead of enforcing the bedtime like I did I was like a crazy sleep person for nothing. I'm also a crazy sleep person but that's for my own good if it's not quiet in my house by 830 I can't I just can't I have to have a quiet. But you can have it quiet and they don't have to go to sleep they can be in their room with a book or whatever and you can say goodnight. And that's it and if they end up wanting to stay up a little bit later. Let them know what it feels like to be tired in the morning. You know let them figure this stuff out now. Gradually while they're home because then you know that when they go off on their own that they'll be fine. You know let them fall and get up like it's okay they're not going to they're not going to be any big problems. Yeah and they're not going I think a lot of people imagine it is like well I have them and then I will free them when they're 18. But if we haven't been working on some of these skills like laundry like handling yourself away from mom and dad like navigating problems like. One of your things mentions just like drinking water like making healthy choices like someone needs to you need to enforce some foundations that they can stand strong on that are not just I will remind them to do this and it's hard because it's easier to do it yourself and they in the short term have better results when you do it for them. Right and you know what I'm glad you said the short term because so much of what I'm talking about and even like the whole leash thing. And what we talked about at the beginning like if you can look at the end of the year and see all these different accomplishments that your kids are now capable of in terms of life skills. It is a process to learn them. And so if you're you and your kids sit down and say hey honey you know this screen time things getting a little out of control. Let's come up with a certain amount of time that that works for us both what do you what do you think is reasonable and listen to them and hear what they have to say. And then say let's give it a try because that is a favorite phrase of mine. If you say that no one's being boxed into a corner, you're not committing to it. They're not committing to it. But then we're going to do. But here's the key to that right if you want that time, you have to be the one who monitors it monitors it by yourself. And so what happens is is that that's the part that takes the longest. That's hard. You know, I mean, we've all played games on phones. And we've lost track of time too. And so I don't know what you're talking about. Never, never played Candy Crush until 3am. Ever. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you can brainstorm ideas with your kids. Hey, how do you think what do you think would be a good way for you to monitor your time and hear what they have to say. And you may think it's a really bad idea, but just say okay. Why don't you try that. Let's try it for a week. Okay. And during that week, it doesn't work at all. And you can't say anything. You'll have to just let it play out because of your kids on guys, this is the hard part letting it play out when you know you're right. Right. But that 15 minutes extra that they're on their screen doesn't matter at all. Like they're going to be fine. They're not going to be terrible, horrible adults because they have an extra 15 minutes. And the time is so arbitrary anyway. So just from keep reminding yourself of that that this is a process. It's not the goal isn't the immediate action today. The goal is the learning to do it forever. And so after that week, you go, Hey, so how do you think that worked out. Right. So mommy's always right. Yeah. And so we don't want any judgment here. Right. We don't want to say, you know, that was a complete failure, honey. You know, so we're wrong. So tempting. Oh, tempting. So many things are so tempting to say they're so judgmental. And you got to go, then you go to the trial and error thing, which trial and there's no judgment in trial and error, because it assumes error. Right. So that didn't work. What do you want to try this week and you go through the process and now you're teaching your child problem solving skills. It's so important. Like there's so many good things that come out of it. And eventually by the end of the year. They will be managing their time and you never have to worry about it again. And then that warden thing is gone. Yeah, the warden guys, it's not not a good role. Oh, we all fall into it. We have another question from Keith. How do you best find a balance between keeping your kids focused on school activities and being a nag, stay at home dad for 11 years. I like the idea of letting our kids fail and then learn to fail better. But yes, this is a problem right and this is I'm not going to lie a problem in our relationships as well sometimes I want you to pick up that pan that I've told you to watch 10 times. Do I ask you 10 more times or do I just sit here and let my head explode from rage. How do you balance those things. Yeah, well the pan thing. It requires the nice loving non judge mental conversation where you say, hey, you know, so I'm having this little thing, like, you know, can we figure out a way so that like, when you say you're going to watch the pan like that you do it or if you really hate watching the pants just say it, and I'll do it and you can do something else. Right. I mean, just have this like, instead of putting the person on the defensive. With the schoolwork. This is a process this is a long, long process, and I have a daughter who's a procrastinator amazing in school, but a procrastinator she's still working on it and really working hard on it now in grad school. You know she always, but she had ways to get through it. You know she figured out her own coping mechanisms for it. When you tell your kids how they have to do their work and when they have to do their work. It's not, it doesn't, there's no long term positive effects to that, rather, do the trial and error thing say hey you know, I can see that that you're having a little trouble getting all your stuff done in a timely manner and it seems like it's stressing you out. Not it's stressing me out because that shouldn't really matter. Right, but I can see it's kind of stressing you out. Do you want a brainstorm some ideas that might be make it easier and then you can try one, and then you can try another. So it's the same thing. Maybe they want to use a planner and block out homework times. You know, maybe they want to do the homework block where they sit for two hours and do everything or however much time they need. You know, there's a lot of ways to figure this out. Maybe they're better working in the room. Maybe they're better working in the kitchen. Maybe it's better with music and further without. I feel like this brings us to another strategy from the book which is don't compare your children. And it's not just don't compare them to other people. It's don't, it's almost don't label your children right like oh you're always this you're always that you're not like this one you're like we have a saying on the podcast parent the child you have. And that I think is very much kind of the heart of this area of parenting which is really focusing on this is the kid I've got this is the boat they're driving and you can spend your life banging your head and being like I wish you had a different kind of boat I wish you were a speedboat instead of a rowboat but there's not a lot of happiness down that path for either of you. Yeah, and the other part of that is what what your robo is now may end up you may end up getting an engine for it. Three years ago, like seriously, I've seen this happen over and over again, where we think our child or someone else's child, you know is going to be one way forever, and then they like completely change. Right. Oh, okay. And I feel like people hear that and they think that means my underachieving child could go to Harvard. It's every direction the kid who is like straight and narrow for 18 years can go Hey Walker, it's it's it's poinko it bouncing a lot I know someone whose son graduated from college with a 2.8 grade point average. Okay, that is nothing alright home about right ended up through a couple different ways but he ended up graduating from Harvard Law I mean, it can happen. I mean, these kids are young, brains develop fully at 25 years old. So skills and passions and hard work comes eventually. I had a client once who had a 10-year-old. And he said, my wife and I are both super type A. And we can't understand it. Our son just like whips through his work and goes outside to play. And I said, so, you know, without judgment. So do you remember what you were like when you were 10? And he said, well, when I was 10, I couldn't care less about my work. And I just wanted to go outside and play. I would call a child when I was 10. And I said, did you hear what you just said? And it was like, you know, this little light bulb for him. And I'm like, give him time. Kids of 10 shouldn't necessarily be type A. I want to invite everyone who's following us and listening along here on the Zoom webinar to submit questions because we have a couple of more things we're going to get to, but we'd like to get to everyone's questions so you can submit them in the Q&A and we'll turn to questions at the very end. But here's another strategy that I really liked. And I think it's something that it comes up for us a lot. Do not dismiss your child's concerns. Yeah. I think, again, in the time of COVID, this is a very important conversation. And in a time of uncertainty on so many levels for our kids, I have pretty little one. I have a middle schooler. There's a lot of conversations going on that are concerning to my kids. And how do we deal with those concerns? Yeah, I think, first of all, we have to be honest. And we can't just say, oh, you hear, Mommy, what if you get COVID and you get really sick, right? By saying, honey, don't be ridiculous. I'm strong and healthy. That's not going to happen to me. The temptation is that would never, ever happen. Cross it off your list of concerns. Yeah, and also part of it, we want to say this so our kids don't worry, right? That's probably the point. And so we don't worry. Something happened. I can't remember. But I was flying somewhere and my kids like, but what if the plane crashes when it's about to land? It was very specific. And I was like, OK, now I'm going to be freaked out about that for three days. It's a lot, kid. You're holding it distant for your kids and for yourself, I think. Yeah, you kind of have to address it. But in an honest, easy way, hey, you know what? We're being really careful. We're wearing masks. We're staying calm. That's why you're not doing sports. That's why X, Y, and Z precautions. But if, by chance, I did get it, I would quarantine. There's a lot of good medications coming out. And there's a lot of good care that I will get. And so and so will come and take care of you when I'm if I have to be in the hospital. We're doing everything that doesn't happen. But yeah, we have a plan. That's right, because I think what your kid is really asking you is, is there a plan? And when you say, don't worry about it, they hear there is no plan. And when you hear if I were to get sick enough to go to the hospital and dad also got sick, we would then your aunt would come and then this would happen. And when I got better, I would come home. And I think that's right. It's so soothing for kids. And it's it's weird that that's not our instinct. Your instinct is really like that. Never mind, never going to happen. Yeah, I feel like I feel like the whole maternal instinct thing has gone really crazy. You know, it used to be just that we, you know, the maternal instinct was to protect your offspring from physical, you know, danger. And now it's like we want to just protect them from everything being alive. Yes. Yeah, from having any experience. That isn't like totally positive and completely impacted. Sonia has a question, which is, do you have specific tips, insights for parenting between young teen middle schoolers? I also have this question for you. So please go into as much detail as humanly possible. I may call my 12 year old in here and have you speak to him directly? Yeah, OK, well, we all know that's like a really uncomfortable, awkward time for we all went through it. And so the first thing I would suggest is that you go and put yourself into your child's head if you can. The more empathetic you can be, the more validating you can be, the more aware you are of what they're going through, the better off you're going to be able to handle it. You can't fix it. But you can say, yeah, I know that really sucks. I remember when I was in middle school, tell them stories about the things that you went through and that you survived them. And it's almost like, make a joke about it a little. It's a rite of passage. It's a stinky rite of passage. But it's still one that we all just have to go through. I think that's right. I think I remember I had the worst middle school experience and I truly have post-traumatic stress. I don't volunteer at the moment. I never walk into the middle school. I'm like, you guys got to walk down the block up and give the library. I truly don't even want to be near the building. But I think one of the things that really saved me was my parents always had this kind of funny, ironic detachment about it. Those kids all sound like morons. What do you do? They just sort of brought this perspective that was like, I don't know. It helped me realize that maybe I shouldn't be taking it so seriously. Yeah, and don't give your kids scripts either. It's more like, well, if they do need to deal with something, what do you think? How do you think you should deal with it? What would you like to say? Do you want to practice this with me and see if it's comfortable? Just help them out that way instead of saying, well, that girl's a horrible person and you shouldn't talk to her ever again. And next week, they're going to be best friends and then you're going to be like, what? You said something terrible about her mom. You don't understand. Yeah, that I would definitely stay out of. Don't have big sides in the battles because it's game of thrones. Like you never know who's up and who's down. Let's hit on a strategy that is extremely important to me personally, keep cookies around. I feel like this is maybe the most important strategy for moms and children. Yeah. Always have cookies. Yeah, I mean, I didn't do that. I was a loser mom in that respect. I said, well, you don't have to make the cookies. I buy the cookies. Yeah, I'm not talking like, you know, Fig Newman's. I'm talking Oreo's, the cookie that everybody loves. And you know what, I didn't do that. Like I had to have the healthy stuff around. I was, that was when I was, you know, before the parenting mentor. I wish I had me. Now, you need that like ghost of soon grown or past to tell you. My kids would like Oreo's. My kids would go to other people's houses and go to that snack drawer and go nuts, you know. And I finally like when they got older and they would have friends over. And it really like, I was so proud of myself. When my son, my son ended up going to boarding school cause he begged and begged. And when he came home and had some friends over, I'm like, well, what do you want? He goes, just some like junkie food mom. And they went to the store and I like got these chips and this ice cream. And I was just grabbing all the crap. And he was so proud of myself. And he was really happy. And it was like, you know, he's smart. He knows what's healthy and what's not. And he's really good at moderating it. But I think if you're an all or nothing person, like it's never gonna work well for your kids. So- I remember my parents asked this once. Like, who do you know? Like, who has the good, like the best parents? And I was like, this girl, Jen, I won't say her last name, but like that is who has the best parents. And then it came out later that they had a soda, a fridge just for soda. And I was like, they are the best parents. They have a fridge just for soda. Yeah, that's what I noticed. There's some truth to that. That's the best parenting, right? Fridge full of soda. At least that's what your friends kids friends think. And you know, listen, if you don't want your friends, your kids friends to come over and hang out at your house, then don't have the cookies. But if you do, make sure you got a stash. This is soda people, that's the key. Let's focus for a minute on the chapter about gratitude. Cause I think this is something that a lot of parenting books skip in trying to make perfect children. We forget to make decent children. And I thought there was a lot of lovely stuff in this chapter and just talk a little bit about some of the things, some of your strategies in terms of really raising kids who are grateful human beings. Yeah, you know, I do. I feel like that's a really, really important thing. I mean, one of the things that, oh my God, that I just never wanted my kids to feel was entitled. You know, lucky is fine, entitled, it's where it's expected, is so not okay. And so the first step I think is that we do, we model that kind of behavior, you know? And you can't tell a little kid, you need to give up some of your toys for another kid who doesn't have any because they don't understand that. They're too young. I think it's like eight years old is, I think that's what the elementary school teacher for my daughter, the principal told me because I'm like, my daughter understands everything but she doesn't seem to get that. And she's like, well, she's not supposed to yet. Well, that's appropriate, it's fine. Yeah, so, you know, we would do things. We would do, at the Boys and Girls Club had a like a secret Santa thing and you'd get a family and they had a list of the things that they wanted. And so we would go to the store and we would, you know, shop for, I mean, these kids wanted like a pair of mittens, you know, or pajamas. And it was so fun for my kids to help pick out all these things and they would get really excited. Well, what would this kid want? Like, if it was me, what would I want? And we would have this whole basket of stuff that that's like a way to start to teach your kids to do something like that. You know, when you can go and work in a food pantry on Thanksgiving, we would bake cookies and take it to the, I forget the place in Mount Kisco, but they would do a big Thanksgiving for the day laborers and we would go and we would help serve. And we would see how happy and appreciative these people were. And we would talk about how, you know, they couldn't make these meals for themselves at home. You know, maybe they didn't have room or maybe they didn't have the money or the kitchen supplies or whatever it was. You know, when there was a terrible, what was it? I forget, something happened in Haiti and, you know, we started a drive at school for people to bring supplies. And it was like my kids were involved and they got their friends involved. And it was a really great, exciting day when more and more people kept bringing supplies. And so little things make a difference. You know, another suggestion is like every season, everyone goes to their rooms and they find a few things that they wanna give away, right? And then it just becomes like a habit. Okay, the first Saturday of every, you know, third month, we're gonna, you know, get our box together and we're then gonna bring it to the community center, right, and why? I mean, and not that everyone has to do all of these. You know, when my kids had birthday parties after a certain point, they didn't need all these toys. They didn't need all this junk that they were getting. And so I said, you know what? You could have as many people to your birthday party as you want, you know, but no gifts. We're not gonna do the gift thing and you get to pick a charity and you can ask your friends to bring a donation. And, you know, it stuck. My kids got gifts. Their closer friends brought it up. Their family members gave them gifts. So it wasn't like mean that way, like you don't get any gifts because that's funding it gifts. You should need so many of them. And the joy that my kids got from, you know, going to the SPCA and giving the person the money and they got a little picture taken and a plaque put up and played with the kittens. And, you know, the development person was so appreciative. Like, it's things like that that you can do without it being like in their face, you know? We come back all the time on the podcast too. You want the trick to get there faster but the unfortunate truth is your children are going to live the lives they've seen you model for them and this is the example. You can tell them, oh, you know, we really have to care about other people but you have to unfortunately model good eating habits, good, you know, practices towards other people, good self-discipline. You have to model these things because whatever you say that is going to be kind of how it actually, what you're actually imprinting on your children. Yeah, and you don't have to do this all the time. You don't have to, you know, there's no such thing as a perfect parent. There's another tip I don't want to bring it up but I will, it's follow the 80-20 rule. And, you know, you can do that for food, you can do that for almost anything. You know, 80% of the time, you do a pretty darn good job. The other 20% of the time, whatever. You do the best you can, good days, bad days. It's like 80% of the time it's a nice dinner, 20% of the time it's pizza rolls and it all turns out fine. Yeah, 80% of the time maybe you eat organic. The other 20% of the time, go out to dinner and have a nice time or, you know, you want an apple, you get, I use a crazy person with the organic stuff. I used to get like physically ill if my child was eating a non-organic apple. And the stress to being perfect, that stress of that extra 20 is so bad for us, it's worse than... Well, it sucks the joy out, that's the thing. You can stay, you can do the sanity that way, but you can't do the joy that way. And I think that's the top of the mountain for everybody. If it's not joyful, like what are we doing here? So we're just about at the end of our time together, but I want to finish as you finish the book with your last tip, tip 101. Love them every chance you get. I think, you know, it's hard. When you're in the, we often say that like the most annoying thing is like the mom who sat, when you got like a toddler vomiting on you and a baby crying and like some horrible woman passes you in the supermarket and is like, enjoy every minute, it goes by fast. And you're like, I want to throw this bottle of syrup at you, but I know that's illegal. But so you're not saying enjoy every minute because that we know is just unsightly advice. It's that every chance you get. Yeah. Just remember when you brought your baby home and that feeling of just unbelievable love that you had for this little baby and look at that annoying child and say, you know what? Yeah, they're smelling each child. I love this child. This child is part of my team. And you know what? I'm going to try to be a little more loving and understanding and a little less warden-y and a little less, you know, with my expectations. And I'm just going to let them be and I'm just going to hug them and kiss them. That you're not going to be able to do forever either. Yeah. It's going to go by. I can't believe it. Mine, I never thought it would go by and here they are. They're halfway done. The book is Parenting with Sanity and Joy, 101 Strategies. Tell everyone where they can find the book and where they can find you and all of that good stuff. My website's probably the best place to go. It's theparentingmentor.com. You can get the book there and you can order it off of Amazon, bookshop.com, bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, but all those options are available on my website. And if you want to get in touch with me, there's also a contact form. And if you want a little extra piece of advice every day or almost every day, check out my Instagram, which is at theparentingmentor and you'll get a little nugget. A little nugget every day. Who doesn't want a little nugget every day? A little nugget. Sue, it was so nice talking to you. I really enjoyed the book. As you said, I don't want to say bathroom book because it sounds, I don't know, upsetting, but bedside table book. Just throw it on your bedside table right before you go to bed. You're like, I can handle that. Little tidbits. And thank you so much to the bed for playoffs for hosting us. Oh, there's- Thank you, thanks to you. Yeah, I've been here the whole time. This was great. You're back. Fascinating. Meg, why don't you give the website for the podcast also? We're at whatfreshhellpodcast.com. You can listen to us. What fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood wherever you find podcasts. Awesome. We'll put that up on the screen for anybody who needs it in a moment. But thanks to the two of you again very much. Thanks for having me. I hope everybody has been listening. Thank you. I want to thank you more. And thank you for your questions. And I hope we can do this again sometime. Great. Great. Have a good night, everybody. Thanks.