You Are A Good Parent with Carla Naumburg

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and seventy one, airing in mid October of twenty twenty two. Sarah is going to be interviewing Carla Numberg, who is the author of How to Stop Losing Your Stuff with Your Kids Not Stuff, but we have a clean rating here on best of both Worlds, which we do not wish to lose. So we will be not saying the entire titles of Carlo's books, but I am sure you can check those out if you're curious about them. She also has a new one called You Are Not a Bad Parent. How to practice self compassion and give yourself a break Again. That is not the exact title, but you can go look it up. And Carla is a great person to talk to about how to enjoy parenting more, to feel more calm about parenting. So we're really looking forward to that. Yes, And speaking of books coming out, those of you who listened to our episode last week, we talked all about Tranquility by Tuesday and how exciting it is. But today is actually the book's release date, So if you have not placed a pre order, today would be a wonderful day to show your support and check out this really really fun read. I feel very confident that if you enjoy best of both worlds, you will enjoy Tranquility by Tuesday. You can send us a picture if you go to a bookstore and see it, send me a picture. I'm always excited to see copies of the book in the wild. Oh yeah, that has to be kind of so thrilling it is, Yes, yeah, yeah, And I'm sure Carla is feeling that way as well with her new book that is out. So, Sarah, have you ever felt like a bad parent? Oh? Yes, I mean I'm not saying I'm not saying I necessarily feel like I deserve to have felt like a bad parent, But there are certain scenarios one might find themselves in where for me at least, like there's some oh god, I feel like a bad parent feelings. I thought of three such scenarios. The first one is public tantrums. Now doesn't mean that I truly am a bad parent because my child is having a public tantrum, No, but it makes me feel like a terrible parent and like everyone must be judging me for not being able to, you know, keep my child happy. Interestingly, the most memorable ones are from like Annabel's childhood, so I don't know if it was because she was like the worst tantrumer or because I've become less sensitive with time, or maybe better at parenting now. I'm just kidding. I don't think it's that, But really I have like some like public pool tantrums that are just like epic and I'll never forget them. And then one on like a city street in Miami where like someone was lying down on the street anyway, just felt like a terrible parent. Were you the one who was lying down on the street. I was not, Oh it's not, but I wanted to. Number two would be ugh, and this is kind of silly, but like you never, like, go to a birthday party and all the kids are happy, and then like, your kid refuses to participation. He's the one in the corner. That's a trigger for me, and I instantly go to, well, I'm a bad parent because my child doesn't want to go down the slide. I don't know. And then number three would be when someone seems to, oh, yeah, like this is more of a social media and one of the reasons I don't really consume much social media anymore. But when I read about someone like Delighting and theirs solo parenting weekend with six children and no screen time and just having the most wonderful time and savoring every moment, I guess I question my existence and why I can't be like that. I question their veracity. But that's a different matter, and you know what, that's probably much more appropriate. But I'm just saying when I've felt this way, not necessarily that I feel like I should have. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure I've had moments for sure of all of those. But what I've kind of tried to adopt is my philosophy is that, I mean, when you think of your life, Like right now, do you think of yourself as totally a reflection of your parents? And you didn't when you were younger either as well, Like we are all our own people. We come with our own wiring, we come with our own temperaments. You know. Ideally we have a family and community that helps shape us so that we can be the best versions of ourselves, but we're still ourselves. And that's you know, kind of how our kids are too. And so even when you have a situation where like your kid isn't willing to do what all the other kids are like for whatever reason, all the other kids feel motivated to do it, whether they enjoy the activity or they feel more motivated for adult approval. And some kids are just not as motivated by adult approval. And sometimes we have those children and that is who they are, and so you kind of have to do it not even be a negative thing in the long run. I mean, if I'm not you know that you don't care so much about what everyone thinks of you. It can be helpful if you are going to have a life where you then have you know, six hundred angry comments on something saying how terrible you are, so it's good to, you know, think about those things. I will say one time, I do feel that if I've gotten mad at a kid for something it turns out they didn't actually do, then I feel a little bit guilty about that. But you know, I'm sure they probably did something else, so maybe we could just transfer that. You know, there's some guilt that wasn't to discovered that maybe we can we can think of that. So what makes you feel like a good parent? I will say when my kids like actively want to snuggle, like at night, you know they want They're like, oh, I love you, and they want me to lay there for ten minutes. I'm like, okay, they need me, they want me. I must be a good parent. I'll say when they're playing together really nicely, even if it's fleeting, I'll just like, for a second congratulate myself, which again, you're right, it's like totally not on me and just might just be like the circumstances or they felt like it at that moment, But it does feel good to see that. And then if I like remember something that is important to them, like oh right, I have to RSVP for this fundraiser because they wanted this, like random thing, and it was hard, but it like I did manage to like keep that on my radar and follow through with it. Then that makes me feel like a good parent. Yeah, the organization thing, if you remember or something. We recently went to the Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania, which is something that had been on our radar for a while that a previous trip had gotten canceled, that they hadn't been able to go to, and so then I managed to score a private tour there and so I was like, wooho, go me. But yeah, I think mostly it's when as an actual like parent, when the parenting aspect feels like it has been a good choice. I would say this happens if I have waited something out, was just sort of gentle encouragement and acting chill about something, and a kid finally comes around to what I think was the right choice, but I haven't shoved it, because that is almost universally with my kids going to mean they won't do it. But to have that patience, which you know, patience is not necessarily my primary virtue, But if I have exhibited that patience and waited for them to come around and then they do, I'm always like, yeah, Okay, I want to give myself a little high five here. I totally get that, and patience is also not my virtue, so I understand exactly what you're talking about. I love it. Well, I'm super excited for this conversation with Carla and talking about her books and maybe feeling a little bit better about ourselves by the end of this episode. Sounds good, I go, let's do it all right. Well, I am so excited to welcome Carla Naumburg to the podcast today. I have been enjoying her writing ever since How Not to Lose Your Blank with Your Kids, which I really enjoyed a couple of years ago and was very, very timely for me. I definitely needed a big dose of that when it came out. And now she has written a new book was was just released a couple weeks ago. When this airs, called you Are Not a Blank Parent. For the purposes of this podcast, we're gonna call it you Are Not a Bad Parent. But Carla does love to use more colorful language, so we are just going to keep our clean rating. But it's a really, really fun and saucy book, So go ahead and introduce yourself, Arlette. I'm so glad to be here and thank you for having me on the show. Yeah, I'm a clinical social worker, I'm a mother of two daughters, and I apparently write profanity laden parenting books. And you know the reason I do that is, well, I want parents to know first of all, that I'm not the person who's going to show up and lecture them about parenting. Like that's not my style. And nobody likes feeling talked down to or lectured. And for me, the best way I can show up with my authentic voice is to make it a little spicy, which we won't do on the podcast, but certainly it's in my books. So if that works for you, if that makes you feel like you're sitting across from someone at a coffee shop chillin and talking about parenting, and I'm your gal. Yes, I definitely felt like I gave it a friendly, kind of more casual tone in a way, less preachy. So let's start with, you know, the title you are not a bad parent, or the alternate title like why do you parents feel they are bad? What do you see parents beating themselves up about most frequently? Yeah, so I've been experiencing this. My daughters are now twelve and thirteen years old, and I myself experienced what I label in the book. We'll call it b be parent syndrome, right or bad parents syndrome. It's the syndrome I sort of made up for the purposes of the book to describe what I experienced for a long time, and what I see many parents experiencing this, which I define is the thought, belief, or perception that you're a terrible parent when in fact you're not. And I just think this is something that's happening to our generation of parents in ways that I don't think it happened in previous generations. And I see parents beating themselves up for all of their mistakes steps, missed moments, both real and perceived, because sometimes we think we've done something wrong when in fact, A we haven't or B there's just no way to know because we don't know how our kids are turning out yet. And also I think I should say that even if your kids don't grow up to be everything you or society thinks they should be, that's not necessarily because you failed or did wrong as a parent. That's just a reality of life. But I do see parents really struggling with holding on to a huge amount of blame and shame and really thinking of themselves as terrible parents when in fact they're not. Do you feel like and you mentioned that this is kind of a relatively new phenomenon compared to previously. Why do you think that is? Is it social media? Is it just cultural zeitgeist? Where do you think this is coming from? Yeah, I think it's all the above. And look, I don't want to say that there has never been a parent in the history of time who didn't think of themselves as a bad parent or didn't feel like they were failing their children. I'm sure that has always existed, but I see it happening more and more pervasively now. And I think there are a couple of reasons why it's worse now. One is, yeah, absolutely social media and reality TV and your listeners can't see. But I'm using my air quotes around reality are promulgating this idea that there are parents out there who have figured this out. There are parents out there for whom parenting is easy and graceful, and they have strategies and tricks for everything, and their kids never melt down in the middle of the grocery store and that's baloney, It just doesn't exist, it's not true. But when the vast majority of input you're getting about parenting is that it's really hard to remember that parenting is actually hard for everyone. So part of it is social media. Part of it, I actually think has to do with the way parents are thinking about parenting. You know, it used to be that women, let's acknowledge it was women who didn't go to work outside the home and stayed at home. We were called what were we called in the fifties housewives? Oh, housewiveusewives right, because our job was to take care of the house and make sure that like everything was ready for our husband. Because back then we didn't acknowledge a gay couples or be the you know, single parents. We didn't acknowledge them either. And now women who don't work outside the home and have chosen to stand with their kids are called stay at home moms a right, right, And our job is to take care of the children, and it's okay if the house is a mess, as long as the kids are okay. And I think that so not only is parenting like our full time job now, I mean, honestly, whether or not you have a job outside the house. Parenting is like supposed to be your full time job. But also there is this sense that we need to be succeeding at it, and if we're not succeeding as measured by our children's behavior and their successes, then there's something wrong with us, when in fact, parenting is this crazy thing where you never really know of you're succeeding or not. And that's just kind of the harsh reality of it. And what is success anyway? Is it all of your kids in matches outfits on a beach, smiling perfectly. I mean, oh yeah, obviously, yes, No, I don't know. Like, so if my kid is happy and laughing on the moment, so let's mag this is such a great I love this question. Nobody's asked me this. Last night, my child was happy and laughing and smiling on the couch next to her sister. So you might say, based on that information that I was being a good mother in that moment. Okay, but now let me tell you that they both had iPads in their hands and headphones on. Does that all of a sudden switch to like bad mothering because I let them do that? Like, I don't know, I don't know what a successful mother or parent is, and I know for sure that we can't base it on a our children's behavior or happiness in any one moment and be their long term success because we have may have done everything quote wrong whatever that means, and they still might be super successful, right, happy, good job, partnered, whatever, or we could do everything right whenever that means, and they still like really really struggle. So I don't know. I don't know what's success. I love it all right. Well, one thing I want to talk about there was definitely like a zen Buddhist flavor, like you're into mindfulness, even though you do address it in a snarky, profanity laden way, No, I say that in a loving way. It works, and you talk about a concept that I had heard about before, but honestly it never stuck or made sense to me until your book, which is The Three Arrows, And can you tell our listeners about what that is? Yeah, So first of all, you should just know that I'm actually the Dolly Mama. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Sorry, sorry, Okay, So yes, look, even though I write about sort of mindfulness and I share some Buddhist teachings in a sort of snarky, my own voice kind of way. I have such a tremendous amount of respect. And while I myself am not Buddhist, I think Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist psychology is some of the most brilliant stuff out there. It's just amazing. And so the story of the it's initially story of the two arrows, and then later on other more recent folks added on a third arrow. But the idea is that things happen in life, unpleasant, unwanted, unpredicted, undesirable. Things happen in life. We you know, our kid gets diagnosed with ADHD, we get a flat tire, our house gets flooded, whatever it may be. Things just happen. And it's like we've been struck by a first arrow. And this is something that the the Buddha. Buddha talked about arrows, because that back then, that was the bad thing that came flying at you out of the blue. So this first arrow comes at us and it's painful and it's unavoidable, and it's just a thing we need to deal with. And more often than not, so many of us like follow up that first arrow by flinging another arrow at ourselves, a second arrow of shame and blame, and oh, if I had only dealt with things differently, this wouldn't have happened. Why didn't I prevent this? I screwed things up, I forgot something, I did the wrong thing, and that's why the pandemic happened. I mean, honestly, nobody's I hope out they're blaming themselves for the pandemic. But certainly, I think many of us are blaming ourselves for the choices we made during the pandemic because now we're seeing our children struggle, and we're thinking, oh, I should have sent them to school when I kept them home, or I should have kept them home when I sent them to school, when the reality is none of us knew what we were doing. We still don't know what we're doing, and that's okay. But instead of responding to that moment of pain and suffering with compassion, which is what my book's all about, it's about self compassion, we blame ourselves. We stick ourselves with the second arrow, and that's so painful. And then more recently people have been talking about this third arrow, which is the arrow of denial and distraction, and so too many first arrows is bad enough, and man, there's a lot of first arrows flying these days for so many of us. The second arrows in many cases make the pain, the psychic pain, the physical pain, whatever pain you're in, relational pain, parenting pain, almost just intolerable. It's more than any of us can handle. So then we jump to the third arrow, which is this earw of like denial and distraction. And for many of us, what that looks like is our phones right hanging out on our smartphones. I'm mind read here, I'm just as guilty. And the problem is that doesn't really address anything. It doesn't help us figure out a the most skillful way to handle whatever's going on, and b it doesn't give us the chance to sort of heal, to write, to treat ourselves with compassion and kindness and take care of ourselves so we can then face the situation with more clarity, more creativity, more confidence. Yeah, absolutely, like hit me and I had read about it before, but I think the application to parenting was just I mean, it's repeated in the book, but it like finally actually made sense to me. And yes, the phone is probably many people's third arrow, although you also mentioned like substance abuse and other things that people struggle with, so good, absolutely, and oh go ahead. I just want to say here that I think that one of the ways in which this book is different from so many other parenting books is many many parenting books out there address what I call first arrow problems. You know, getting a baby who doesn't sleep, that's a first erro problem. And maybe the advice in one of those books will help you, and that's amazing. But for so many of us, when the advice doesn't help, we blame ourselves. Oh, I didn't do the right thing. I haven't find the right specialist, I haven't found the right strategy. And what I really want to do is give parents some tips and tools for not shooting themselves with that second arrow. Ooh. And then sometimes there's that variation where you try to read the first arrow advice but it actually gives you a second arrow because the book makes it sound like that advice worked for everybody else and you must be horrible because it doesn't work for you. Yes, been there, done that, wrote that book. I actually had a friend who told me, after reading my first parenting book, not how to stop losing your beep with your kids, but a much earlier one. She said, this made me feel worse as a parent, and I said, thank you so much for telling me that. Please go set the book on fire and never read it again, because there is no amount of advice out there that's worth ever resulting in another parent feeling that way. And if you're feeling that way, you can't make the changes you want to make. It's just not possible. So if you parenting are reading any book out there, including one of mine, that makes you in any way feel less than or stuck or scared or confused, put that book away and go pick up something you love that's going to make you laugh. I love it. We are going to take a very brief ad break and we will be right back with how to fight back against some of these arrows. All right, we are back, and we now understand what the three arrows are. Maybe the first arrow is not something we're going to be focusing on fixing, because that's just not the kind of book that Carla wrote. But let's focus on those other arrows. What are some of the antidotes, What are some concrete ways that we can bring what you describe as self compassion to our parenting lives. Yeah, so look, the first arrows are unavoidable generally speaking, They're going to happen in some way or another. That's just life. So instead of shooting ourselves with the set and arrow, let's talk about self compassion. And in the book, I get very concrete about what this is. And I have three categories we can say of practices that parents can use. Connection, curiosity, and kindness. So connection isn't just about connecting to our support system, to our friends and family and loved ones who are going to listen to us and respond to us with kindness and support and acceptance and not judge us, because thank you, we're already judging ourselves. But they're going to say, you know what, it's okay. We all have a hard time as parents. Let me tell you the story about the time my kid fell off the couch and blah blah blah whatever. They're not going to come at us with advice. And when we get off the phone or when we are done hanging out with our true support system, we feel better. Life feels a little easier, We feel like we can handle things. And in addition to connecting with actual people, I also talk about connecting to common humanity is what we call it in this I would like to give props to doctor Christen eff Out of Texas, who first popular this idea. Connecting to common humanity is just kind of a fancy way of saying that you can remember you're not alone in any of it. And let me give you an example, Sarah, real quick of how this works for me. You know, it used to be when I would lose my temper with my daughters, I would go in the kitchen, head to the pantry, grab the chocolate chip, shove them in my face, feel horrible about myself, and be like, I am totally screwing this up. I'm the only parent on the planet who's totally screwing this up everybody else. I literally somehow convinced myself that I was the only parent screaming at her kids. I truly believed it. I felt so isolated. And now that I've started my practice of self compassion, I've had it for a few years now. The thought that instantly comes to my mind after a rough parenting moment, and yes I absolutely still have them one hundred percent, is I say to myself, you know what parenting is hard. Parenting is hard for everyone. It's okay that I'm not perfect at this, and you don't have to be a perfect parent to be a great parent. And those are the thoughts that are running through my mind now. And you can feel the difference between I am totally screwing this up versus parenting is hard for everyone, right, And so that's the connection piece, connecting to people who love you and support you and connecting to common humanity. Should we go on to curiosity is the same? Yes, yes, I had curiosity on my list, So keep going. Let's do it. Let's do it. So so many of ourselves instantly, so many of uscuse me, instantly judge ourselves. In a rough moment, you know something goes wrong, and I don't know about you, but my brain can instantly go to, here are the twenty seven reasons why I'm terrible, and all the reasons why my kid is terrible, and it's because I screwed it up, and like judge, jury boom, done guilty and I have worked so hard to step back from that and in a bad moment, rather than thinking I'm a mess and my kid is a mess, and we're all going to be a mess fraternity. I think, what's going on, what's actually going on? You know, what is happening here? What do I need? And what does my kid need? And so the example I like to use is, you know, taking my girls out to a town fair when they were like two and three years old and riding the bouncy houses and getting the toys, you know when you pay like eight dollars and then you get the thirty cent toy that you win, and you know, all the fun things, going to see the little booths and all. You know, we had a great time, and then a couple hours later, my kid had this total meltdown, and I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, we have given this child everything she wants. We bought her all the things. We totally went on the bouncy house twenty seven times, even though I hate it. And now she's melting down. What a little jerk. She's going to grow up to be the most spoiled, self entitled blah blah blah, and it's all because I'm a terrible parent. And then I somehow, I don't know what happened because I wasn't so deep in myself compassion practice as I am now I just paused for a moment and I got curious, and I was like, Oh, we forgot to feed her lunch. We didn't feed the child, and she's a mess because she's three years old and not yet capable of telling me when she's hungry. And all of a sudden, in that moment, it was like, Oh, my kid's not going to grow up to be a sociopath. She just needs a sandwich, right, And so that's where the curiosity can be so powerful. Curious is also an inherently kind approach because when you are curious about yourself or someone else, what you're saying is you matter. I care about what's going on for you, And no matter what you say, I'm not going to be scared. I'm not going to be horrified by what I find. Curiosity comes off as like very neutral, positive and not judge. Oh yeah, curiosity is the opposite of judgment. And I will say that since I've stopped judging myself so harshly, I've actually stopped judging other parents so harshly because I got to be honest, Sarah. Before myself compassion practice, I was judging other parents at the drop of a hat. I could judge them for anything, how their kids were dressed, how their kids behaved, how they fed their kids, like what. It doesn't matter what decision they made. I was fully capable of judging them one hundred percent, and that, of course, was absolutely reflective of the extent to which I was judging myself. And now that things have shifted so much from me, when I'm out in public and I see a parent struggling, or I hear a story about it, child who's struggling, or something that's gone off the rails, I am much more likely to think, huh, I wonder what's going on there, or to offer a more generous perspective, Oh, that parent must be really struggling. Oh they must have a lot going on, which is so much kinder than oh they're just a terrible parent. Yeah, which is what I used to think because that's what I thought about myself and it don't makes sense. And in the not judging, you're probably more likely to make a connection because you're probably more likely to maybe see if that mom needs some help because you're not busy thinking she's terrible. So it might feedback on number one. And now you've found someone that you can confide oh completely, Yes, it's all. At the risk of sounding cheesy, it's like this beautiful inner woven web, say, inner woven web. Yes, I'm like. It all just makes everything easier and feel better, and just makes parenting so much less of a struggle and life life less of a struggle when you're not constantly beating yourself up. Well, that leads us right into kindness. Right, that was the third one you mentioned, the connection curiosity and then kindness. Yeah, look, and there are a lot of ways to treat yourself with kindness, And the one that I really focus on the book is about how we talk to ourselves, because if you or any of your listeners are anything like me, which at this point I'm willing to say you probably are. Whereas ten years ago I would have been like, nope, I'm the only crazy person on the show, but now I'm like, we are all in this together. My guess is, if you stop and notice how you talk to yourself in the wake of a difficult parenting moment, it's probably horrible. You probably say things to yourself that you wouldn't say to like your least favorite person on the planet. Right, And yet somehow we've gotten in this mindset of talking to ourselves in this really nasty, contemptuous language. So what I have been working on over the years is changing myself talk, changing the way the thoughts that I have. And it's a practice. It's a practice by which I mean when I first started, it felt hard and weird, and I wasn't very good at it. But I owed up on a regular basis, and I kept trying to change those thoughts. I was essentially learning to speak the language of self compassion. And so instead of I'm a terrible mother, now, what I have is, oh, so I had a rough moment. What do I need? This is ties into the curiosity piece, right, because there's a lot of curiosity in myself talk now, and how can I reconnect with my kids? Or it's okay, it's okay that I'm struggling, It's okay. This is really hard, because parenting is just a hard thing to do even when it's going well. Right. I think a lot of us, and this goes back, Sarah to your earlier question about why do we think so poorly of ourselves? I think a lot of us are walking around with this idea that parenting should be relatively easy and kind of graceful, and that if we're doing everything right, our kids will put on their shoes the instant we asked them to, and you know, they'll want to play soccer, and they'll want to do this instrument, and they'll want to go to math club, and they'll just kind of if there's a problem, we'll just sort of hire the right specialist or read the right book and the kid will be okay. And that's just not how parenting works. I mean, when it works out way amazing. Hold on to that because you got lucky, right, But for the most part, parenting is hard and it's a struggle and none of us really know what we're doing. And I don't know about you, but I actually don't like feeling that way. Well, it sounds like you've been in my house starting with the putting on your shoes thing. It's the shoe thing. It's the shoe thing. The shoes are awful. And I don't have like I mean, I have one little kid, but the other two like you would think. And yet my kids have been putting on their shoes or needing to put on their shoes almost every day for like thirteen years. And it's still a bit of a struggle, so you know you're not alone, parents, But the whole point of the kindness piece is to really learn this new language of self compassion so we can talk to ourselves in a really different way after hard moments. I love it well. I want to take a moment to talk about the last section, which is all about compassion, but instead of towards ourselves, which is incredibly important and don't lose sight of that, but also to our kids. I thought that you did a really wonderful job explaining how there are certain patterns which might need to be broken and kind of how to go about doing that. Can you talk a little bit about compassion for kids. Yeah, So the more we practice compassion for ourselves, our self compassion, the more we'll just show up with this connection and curiosity and kindness to our children in their difficult moments, which is a very hard thing to do because I don't know about you, but when my kid is in physical pain or emotional pain or having a giant meltdown, my gut reaction is just stop, just feel better, just be okay. I just like that is my instinctual reaction, especially when I'm tired or overwhelmed. It's like I can't handle this. Whatever it is just needs to go away, and you need to be all right. And that's not actually how I want to show up for my kids, right. And so the psychologist and writer Wayne Dyer, who was just brilliant, talked about this idea of an orange. You know, what do you get, Sarah, when you squeeze an orange? Orange juice? Yes, you get orange juice. Don't get apple juice. You don't get lemon juice, you don't get grape juice. You get orange juice. And the same is true for humans. Whatever is inside us is what you get when you're squeezed. And so for a person and for a parent, being squeezed looks like you know, a kid who shows up at eight pm the night before the science fair project is due and needs all the supplies, or the kid who calls from school because they've forgotten their lunch and we're at work and we don't know if we should like take them the lunch. Are we enabling them or do we not take them to lunch? And then we're bad parents because they're hungry. I don't know. Some of us are just feeling squeezed all day, every day, because that's how life feels right now. And if we are constantly walking around feeling isolated, judgmental, and contemptuous towards ourselves when we get squeezed, that's what's going to come out at our kids. But if we can find a way into this compassionate place where we are practicing connection, curiosity, and kindness every single day, We're not going to be perfect for our kids. I would never say that because it's not true, but will be a whole lot better. It'll be a lot more likely that we show up for them with an interest in what's going on on, an ability to pause for a moment, and instead of judging them and saying like, oh, you screwed that up, we can say, oh, well, what happened there? Right? We can show up with that curiosity and kindness for our kids. And one of the points I want to make really quickly, as long as I mentioned curiosity is hopefully you may or may not have noticed that in all my examples of curiosity questions, I actually haven't said why. I don't generally say to myself why did I do that? I don't I try not to say to my kids, why did you do that because that's a hard question man. Often, especially kids, but really so many of us we don't know why we do stuff, and then we make up a story. And for us parents, the story so often is oh, I did that because I'm a bad parent, or you did that because you're a bad kid, and I love that. So a better choice, or a more skillful choice, might be what happened? How did that happen? And then you can start to say, well, I did this and I did that, and that's how I ended up in this place, which is much more kind of workable. Oh, this is the steps of events that took to this, So let's change some habits here or whatever it is. So I don't love why, but anyways, when you squeeze me now, hopefully we get a little bit like more sweet orange juice and not the bitter stuff that was coming out before. I love it. I love it. Can you go into There's one algorithm that's particularly I felt helpful, Like I want to put it up next to my desk. In when you are presented with a maybe challenging moment with your kid or they've done something or whatever the moment is, you came up with an algorithm entitled snacks, which is fun just as it is. Can you just go through briefly kind of what snack stands for? Yeah, so this is something an academic came up with a few years ago, and it's really sort of a quick series of steps we can take any time we're having a hard moment or our kids are. And I like the idea of snacks because snacks are quick and easy and yummy. Right, you don't have to make a whole meal, just a little snack. So the first S in snack stands for stop. So what we need to do first is just stop whatever we're doing. I'm not saying you have to do this every time your child wants your attention, because sometimes you need to say, hey, buddy, put a pin in it and I'll be with you in five minutes. But if they're really having a big moment, or if the moment is right, just stop. Put down your phone, walk away from your computer, whatever it is, stop for a moment. The N in snacks is for notice. Notice what's going on with you? Take a moment, take a breath, just tune in. How are you like, what's your headspace, what's going on with your body? Are you exhausted and pained? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Like are you overwhelmed by work stuff? And try to get yourself If you can into a space where you can be present with your child, you can also say, hold on, I need to finish this email and then I need to take a quick walk around the house and take three deep breaths before I am like present with you. And that's the thing I can say because I have older kids. If you have younger kids who can't tolerate that, then just being aware of what's going on with you is going to inform your next moment. And maybe your next moment is I can stop and be really present comfort my child. And maybe your next moment is like screaming for your parenting partner if you have one, because you can't manage this moment because you're about to lose it yourself. Right, So noticing is a really important part of just kind of getting a grip on what's going on for you. The next piece is to sort of just accept whatever's happening acknowledge. Some people like the word acknowledge better. Either a word will work, But there are so many moments in parenting when I just want to be like, no, this isn't happening, and I want to do like the mammy equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and being like la la la, la la, I can't hear you. And we do a lot of chronic ear infections in my house, and my kids will look at me and be like, my ear hurts and h and immediately my mind goes to okay, and there's another trip to the doctor and the antibiotics and the tubes, and I sometimes I'll just look at them and be like, no, they don't. And of course this is not for all you parents out there. That's not actually a very effective parenting technique, but like, there is this part of me that just wants to be like, no, your ears don't hurt, And so it does take a moment of shift to be like, Okay, this is what's happening right now, and it doesn't mean we can't change it. It doesn't mean we can't work on it and like try to get things to a different place. But unless we acknowledge this is where I am and this is what's going on, we don't have a chance. So we have stop notice. Except her acknowledge and then the sea is for curiosity, which we've talked about right, getting curious about yourself and about your kids. And I have a lot of examples of how to do that in the book. The K is for kindness. We can always treat with them with kindness. And just to be clear, treating a kid with kindness doesn't mean bending the rules, doesn't mean flexing your boundaries, doesn't mean giving them whatever they want. And there have been times when I have like sat, this is one of my better parenting moments, when I've sat with my daughter in my lap and she is crying because I've said no to her, right, No, you can't have that cookie. No you can't go on that outing with your friend, like whatever it is, we just can't do it. And I am treating her with kindness. I'm snuggling her, I'm rubbing her back, I'm acknowledging what a bummer it is. Even though I'm the person who said no, right, I totally have the power to say yeah us, But for whatever reason in that moment, that's not the right choice for her or for our family. And so treating a kid with kindness doesn't necessarily mean giving them what they want. You can still really hold that line right, you can still really hold a kid accountable if that's what needs to happen. But coming from that place of connection, that kind connection is always an option. But it really calls on us to be able to do it. And I know what I'm saying to parents is hard. I don't do it all the time. I don't expect you to do it all the time. None of us do. But it's a thing to shoot for. And then the s at the end of snacks, because we all need more than one snack, obviously, is to start again, start over. We can always begin again. This is a big thing we talk about in the world of mindfulness that at any moment we come into the present moment, we notice what's happening, and we've got a shot to start again. And that's just it's a gift. It's such a gift right to have that possibility that we can have a rough moment, we can reconnect with ourselves and our chi and begin again. I love it. I love the beginning again. I think that's why I started a new planner like every month anyway, So I love this. We're gonna remind everybody where they can find your book and all of your resources. But first we are going to share one love of the week. And I recognize I don't think I reminded you about this, but that's okay, because love of the Week can be anything. It can be a sunset you saw, it can be your current weather. It could be a book you read, a TV show you watched, it could be anything. And I will go first to give you a moment to think about yours. So mine is, oh my gosh. I might have already said this, but I don't really care. I'm still deep in it. I'm watching The Handmaid's Tale and I'm like five years too late, but it's so good. It's just so good. I don't think I've watched anything so absorbing in years, and I just look forward to every single episode. And I'm only midway through season two, so I have so many fun episodes ahead of me. And you're shaking your head because you're shocked. I hadn't watched it yet, I think, But it's really really good, Sarah. I am shocked and impressed for a very different reason. I read that book in college years ago, and it totally freaked me out then, and so when I heard that movie, that TV show is coming out. I was like, nope, And so to show all your listeners where my headspace is right now. My love of the week is that four nights a week, my family and I sit down and at the end of the day we watch two episodes of blue together. And my daughters, remember are twelve and thirteen. We do not have a toddler or preschooler in the house, and we are like so hardcore committed to Bluey, all four of us, my husband, myself, both of our girls. We love it and we're the ones late to the show. We only discovered Bluey like six weeks ago and we're still working our way through the first season. You guys, I don't care if you're a grown up who never watches animated cartoons. I don't care if your kids are in high school. I don't care if you don't have kids in the house. This is like a little injection of joy. Since the pandemic started, I have been deeply committed to ending that every day laughing. And we love blue And so I got your Handmaid's Tale and then over here I'm like, well, the Blue character you can watch cartoons. I feel like they're very compassionate, kind character is in Bluey, so it goes right along with your work. And now I have the Bluey music in my head and it will never leave. So thank I'm sorry. I'm I'm not sorry at all. I am sorry. Oh my gosh, this has been so fun. Please tell our listeners where they can find you, and remind everybody exactly not with the bad word, but but the title of your book is so they can buy it and read it and enjoy it like I did. Yes, my book is called you Are Not a beebe beepy, You're not a beepy parent self, compassion and give yourself a break. It's available in paperback and audio and ebook, and you can find it at your favorite bookseller, independent bookseller online. I'm also on carlonnomburg dot com and you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. Awesome, Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a blast. Thank you so much. I've had a great time. All right, we are back. That was so much fun speaking with Carla and I have a question that came in. It was they said it was for best of both worlds or best laid plans, so it is planning adjacent but both Laura and I have some takes on this one, so I'll go ahead and read it. She writes, you have assuaged my baby related angs before, but I'm back with a new question about baby angst. Did she write it like two years ago and had another baby and then now she's writing back? How does this work? I think? So okay. She has two little boys, and she says a biological clock that is ticking. She'd like to have a third and final one, so her husband and she have been talking about starting to try again in the next few months. She writes, My question is about planning for the baby year. I know by now that that year can be right off from the point of view of amazing productivity and sticking to elaborate planning routines. But is there nothing that I can aspire to in the planning realm? Must I just throw away my planner and let every day pass as it will. I have near planner, piece of the moment, and the one thing I feel most anxious about losing again if I have another baby is those energizing and calming planning moments at my desk, which I totally understand Laura may not as much I was like, wait, I mean, would I would be kind of more concerned about like the sleep, but maybe that's just me. Well that too, this the lack of sleep interferes with the ability to plan. Well, okay, so my thoughts were, yes, during the baby year, you will absolutely have less sleep, less time, less ability for that executive function that I think is what you're kind of talking about that makes things like planning more difficult. But less is not zero, so it's temporary and it's not going to be quote unquote planner piece, but you'll be able to achieve the satisfaction of getting to planner piece again at the end of it. And I think that lowering your stakes is going to be necessary but very much worth it if you want to add a third baby to your planner. From a logistical standpoint, I do very much prefer a paper weekly planner rather than a daily when I have a baby, and I've done this for at least two, if not all three of my kids, Like I switch from a daily to a weekly because it just felt like too much pressure, too many things to think about, and the number of things I could accomplish when I had that baby brain could easily fit in that you know, one seventh of the page and a weekly planner rather than a full page, so you might want to think about just making mistakes a lot lot lower. But you know, your mileage may vary. If it's really important to you, you might be able to also carve out time like in the beginning of your workday, or just be really imperfect about it and like scribble tiny baby milestones on some pages and not others and call it a day. Yeah, I would say when I heard this question, I was like, I think we have very different ideas of what planning routines mean, because the bulk of my planning routine is twenty minutes on Friday where I sit down and think about what do I want to have happen over the next week, what has to happen over the next week, Where roughly do I think those things will go? Are there any problems I foresee? And can we do with the logistics of those So twenty minutes on Friday feels like it can happen whether you have a newborn or not. So my suggestion would be to just try thinking of planning more as functional that planning is about how we think about what we would like our time to look like understanding that some of it is without our outside of our control, but some of it still is within our control. And if we have limited goals for any given week, we are often likely to get through them. We can't say what we want to do every minute if we're caring for a newborn, because that's going to determine a lot of those minutes. But certainly in the course of any given week, if you have like three to five things you're trying to get done, you will probably find a time over one hundred and sixty eight hours to get to those three to five things. So I thought this woman was possibly giving a little bit much all or nothing thinking vibe going here, that her thought that must I just throw away my planner and let every day pass as it will? No, of course not. There's a huge difference between nothing and something. So I'm not sure exactly what you are planning right now that is incompatible in your mind with doing this with a newborn. But maybe you can think about what are the core elements of planning that matter to you, which to me is about having a functional and orderly life, and that can happen in just the equivalent of a few minutes a day, and so no, you're not going to create a gorgeous spread that you're going to post on Instagram every day. I mean, if that's your job, go for it, right, Like, you could probably still do that, but that would be then your primary priority for the day versus something else that might be your priority if you're in a different line of work, And so you just have to choose what you wish to put your time on. And most likely when you have a newborn, and if posting pretty planner spreads on Instagram is not your full time job, you will be doing a couple professional priorities taking care of the newborn and your other kids, and maybe like going for a walk that's great. Yeah, you can probably handle all of those. So make sure it's more functional oriented than anything that's more elaborate. I equate this to the fact that like, right now, my kids being bigger, I'm getting back into more serious running and I'm thinking about longer races and like more elaborate training plans. But right after I had my babies, it was like, you know what, if I get out and move a few days a week, I'm winning. I think again, it's not the all or nothing, but like, hey, something is actually great during these harder periods, and you can always go back to the more elaborate stuff later and it's worth it because babies are awesome. Babies are awesome. We love babies at best of both worlds, so this has been best of both worlds. Sarah has been interviewing Carla Naumberg about how to stop losing your stuff with your kids, how to stop feeling like a bad parent. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoe box dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.