Teens & Tweens: Exploring a New Frontier

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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 Hart Hunger. 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 one hundred and eighty three, which is airing first in early February of twenty twenty one. We're going to be talking about tweens, teens, and beyond. Not that either of us are huge experts in the tweens, teens and beyond, but we are exploring that stage for both of us, getting into there and learning some things as we're going. So I wanted to talk about what we're kind of figuring out, what we're seeing from friends and their kids, and obviously welcome people's input as well. We'd love to hear your stories of parenting tweens teens, and beyond. So Sarah, just for any new listeners or people who are coming back after a long hiatus and aren't familiar with how much time has passed. How old are your children now? Yes, my children are genevievis three, Cameron when this airs will be almost seven, and Annabel will be nine in April, all right, and mine are Jasper is thirteen, he'll be fourteen this spring. Sam is eleven, Ruth is nine, Alex is six, and Henry is one. So we've we were at the full gamut, as happens when you have five of them. So I mean, is life starting to feel easier for you? I mean now that Jennevie probably doesn't have to be watched quite as constantly anymore, right, is it starting? Yeah? There funny because it's like it's still I wouldn't say it's easy. So one of my favorite podcasts, as you know, it's the Mom Hour, And one thing I love about it is they're very honest about how certain things do get easier with time. Like I feel like they're I've never heard them say like little kids, little problems, or maybe they have said it, but they do. A Sarah in particular, whose kids are now they're like my kids. Their host is also named Sarah if you don't listen to them, but her kids are like my kids four years into the future, and she talks about all the time how things are much easier. So I feel like I'm still waiting, and I'm obviously never going to catch up with her entirely. But you are right, things are a little bit easier with them now than they were maybe a year ago or two years ago. You know, you get to the point with your youngest where instead of you being worried about them like injuring themselves or you know, doing something terrible, you just worried about them like making a mess, which is less of a big deal and you don't need to be as much on them. But I don't feel like we've reached the magic number. What do you think the magic number is? Well, I mean, it's hard to say, because it also depends on what your youngest child does. Like some children are just more responsible than others, and some seem to have a bit of a death wish, which may apply to my second from youngest child now. Their tendency to get into trouble is more than others. On the other hand, he was, you know, and has been able to if you put him in front of the computer, like to watch YouTube videos. I mean, he can be entertained for hours. And so there was definitely a period of time before we had Henry where things felt a lot more relaxed than they had been. Like on a weekend, you didn't have to have a parent who was on constantly. You could in fact both be doing something some personal project while other people were while the kids were all entertaining themselves. So it just had this entirely different feel where of course, now there you have to have somebody on Henry constantly because he is mobile, he puts everything in his mouth, he'll get into anything that the kids leave around, and of course with four other children, it's very difficult to have an entirely baby proofed house. You can clean a space, but then it doesn't stay baby like. Somebody just drops popcorn kernels in there or something. I mean, it's just really almost impossible to keep it completely safe, and so you know, somebody has to be on and it's a lot less relaxing. I guess we decided we didn't like relaxing or something. You have to plunge that I know, I love how you put that it was like we had another baby, because apparently we hate relaxing, yes, exactly, like well, for most feels too easy. For most of this episode, I'm going to interview you because since I don't even have a nine year old yet, I don't feel like I have that much to offer. Although we can take a small dive into my brief forays into the orthodontire world because I've had some experience there, but otherwise I feel like it's all you. So I'm going to ask you some fun questions. Just go over to our audience. We are not going to get super personal because her kids are at the age where well we can even talk about that they care, right, they care. Well, that's one of the things that you know, there's a lot of resources for parents of younger kids out there, and a lot of it is very conversational, like look what my baby did, and here's what we did with this, or you know, here's an issue we're having with our four year old and you know, this is how we handled it. Because at that age they don't care so much, right, Like they're not their own internet presence, for instance, their friends are not their own Internet presence or anything like that. But I mean, once they're older, they definitely do care and they have their own ways that they would like to be presented to the world. And the stories that you might want to tell are not just your stories anymore, and so I try to be very aware of that. You know, just you need to ask before posting a photo of an older child, for instance, on social media, before writing about an older child, for instance. I think it's good to get permission. They might read it, they might listen to it. So these these are just things that I think makes a lot of parents of older kids not be as opened, and not because they're not being authentic. It's just that it's not just your story to tell. And so keep that in mind that people may be dealing with all sorts of issues that they can't just publicly share, and so it's really helpful to not rely on the internet as much. I think this is definitely a situation where it's better to have, you know, friends whose kids maybe are a little bit older than yours that you know that you can ask questions, because that will be more helpful than trying to rely on somebody who is going to have to be more careful about what they share. No, that totally makes sense. Okay, So I'll try to steer clear of, you know, interrogating questions and if we get there, then you can just say pass or something. All right. So first I wanted to ask about one on one time because you know, my kids are still at an age where they're like, yes, mommy day, I'm so excited. So are you still able to spend one on one time? Do they resist more? Do you enjoy it? And what would you do if they started to resist? Well, it becomes harder to spend one on one time. Part that's a function of the spread of kids that the one year old needs so much attention, and if he's not having attention, then the six year old needs attention, and so there's less time left over. But you can come up with ways. What I've tried to do is have some projects I do with the older kids that they are interested in and I am interested in too. So we do a lot of legos around here, doing a gigantic rocket ship with Sam that is, you know, like twelve hundred pieces, three hundred steps whatever, it's complicated. Ruth and I are making a Lego friends Amusement Park, which likewise has like ten bags and you know those booklets of steps that appear to be a giant novels because they're so long. This is something fun. Michael reads with Ruth pretty regularly. The two of them have been working They work through all of Harry Potter over the past year. They are now going through Nancy Drew, which we have a couple of classic Nancy Drew books. One actually has an inscription from Mary vander Mullen in December twenty fifth, nineteen fifty four. So that was my mom when she was eight and she was reading Nancy Drew. So this has lasted in the family through to this point. So that's pretty exciting. Some slightly less politically correct parts of you know, nineteen forties Nancy Drew books, as you might imagine, but you know, we have relatively sophisticated literature consumption in here that we can explain these things. But yeah, so they've been going through that. Jasper and I need to find something more we can do together. He did get a knife throwing set for Christmas, very hunger games, so he and I did a little bit of that. You know, I need to suggest that we go out and do that he's probably the harder one to spend time with. But you can always get time driving kids, all right. If nothing else they don't want to do anything else with you, they do still need you to drive them places. And so if you can establish some sort of expectation that a child not, for instance, be on their headphones and their phone while you're driving them somewhere, then you might be able to have a chat. But you know, it's so nobody's resisting this so much yet. I'm sure they will. But if you're doing fun things, then I think there's slightly less resistance to it because it's something the kid might want to do anyway, and then they just have company while they're doing it. Well, Like and you used to be able to take the trips with them. That must have been a nice extended quality. Yeah, and I do hope to get back to that. I've done some travel with just the big kids, and you know, like in the summer of twenty nineteen, I took Jasper, Sam and Ruth on a Disney cruise, for instance, and they can just travel in a way that the younger kids can't, And so I definitely want to do more of that. I mean partly just to expose them to stoff that I don't think I ness, so it can bring a baby to you know, we'll figure it out we as we go. I don't want them to not have the travel experience just because we have younger kids, and it's really difficult to travel with younger kids. So we'll do some trading off with that kind of thing, and we'll get back to the mommy days. I'm sure as life opens up, you know, as Henry gets weaned at some point, and as travel is more of an option, then we'll get back to that awesome. Okay, here's a fun question. Clearly middle school dances are not currently happening. That may or may not be a good thing for these kids, because I don't know that I have the fondest memories of those things, and I might not have been that sad if they were canceled. But so, yeah, how are the kids doing socially in the COVID era? It is really tough. I mean, I gotta say I'm not sad about middle school dances not really happening. That's just the awkwardness would be. I don't know. Any case, it's hard because they go to hybrid school right now. But they've basically taken all the fun stuff out of school. I mean, so even just sitting in the cafeteria, you have to sit six feet apart from everyone, So it's not like you can have a conversation with your friends over the lunch table. You know, people are in much smaller classes that they're not seeing as many people. You're just going straight from class to class like you're not supposed to be, you know, chatting with lots of people in the hallway and so, and then activity is not really happening so much. I mean, so Jasper was in this advanced choir that was great. He had chosen to audition for that and they were meeting early mornings twice a week, and he had a lot of friends in that. And then of course they can't do choir now, and so it's been really hard. And I see this with all the kids, that it's so much more difficult to do those friendship building behaviors when you can't just have a casual conversation over lunch. You know, the elementary school, they don't have recent because they're there just in the mornings where they get their core academic classes. They go home to eat lunch. I enjoy having lunch with my big kids. That's certainly something that I would not have had without COVID. But on the other hand, I'm sure they would like to be eating with their friends more than they like to be eating with me and playing with their friends on the playground, and that just isn't part of the school day anymore, and so it is very difficult to maintain those relationships. Now. They do have some you know, electronics stuff, like people do video games with friends, Like we have video game play dates that they will be on at a certain time to play with friends. They will text and FaceTime with people, and so, you know, there's some of that, but it's really really challenging. I'm glad that Alex at least is in full time in person school because he would have an even harder time of managing any sort of electronic friendship that at age six, I mean, how would you even do that really, So it's at least the older kids have that. Yeah, that is tough. Hopefully will change at some point, although middle school dances probably are not going to be a thrill to anyone. Maybe some people love them, I don't know. All Right, increased responsibility and chores. I'm curious about this. I was actually really impressed with the number of things you mentioned they're doing, because I gotta admit my kids don't do that much. So maybe I'm late on that right now. I feel like all they do is like clear their table. Well that's not nothing. I mean, sometimes clean up their toys. If you don't have to remind them, I mean that's great. Like if they just automatically do it it's a habit, then then awesome. I mean we so we are not doing allowances is a bit of a long story. I had an allowance growing up, and I thought it was fine. But other members of my family have different opinions on this, and it's some things are not worth fighting about when one person feels very strongly about something. So we are not doing that. They do though. The older kids have brokerage accounts, so we skipped the entire allowance stage and went straight to the investings age. So I don't know if you want to say that's that. Maybe we get points for that in the financial community, that the kids can choose stock stocks that they wish to purchase. You know, often it's companies that they know something about of course, because they're even though in general we shouldn't be buying individual stocks, like the goal is to get them interested in it. They set stock price targets like when we will buy based on how the history of the stock and it's ups and downs and you know, it's so hopefully that's kind of like an allowance though if you're giving them money to put in there. Yeah, well we put one initial sum in when they got the account, like to open it, right, because you can't open it without a certain amount in there, and then I haven't you know, anything that comes. It's fortunately the last few years have been great for growing, except for like down in March, and we just didn't show it to them then. But then it's been like got fifty percent in March or something, so it's it's it's a lot anyway, and you don't like let them spend theirs. You're just it's there to sit there so they can watch them. So I should, you know, explain the how how the money works. I get, okay, so the money and chores are totally separate, but how money works is, yes, they get that account when they are ten and then can make investing decisions with it. We generally buy things they need or if there is a good argument for why they want it. So books I will just buy because I want the kids to read. Clothes nobody has, you know, developed an interest in designer clothes, So I mean, if you want something from Old Navy, like I will, I will buy you your sweatshirt from Old Navy. Video games we might argue a bit more about and toys, but I mean there's so many in the house that I feel there's less of, especially you know, when they come in for birthdays and Christmas fairly regularly and with a lot of kids, like other people get stuff for their birthdays that then can also be fun to play with, so there's a lot of gifts coming in over the course of the year. They also get gift cards that they just don't use. So if there's something that they do want to be like, oh wait, you have this forty dollars gift card from Amazon, sign it over to me, and then I will buy you this video game from wherever and then just put it into the Amazon file, which eventually I used by contact lens solution and socks and stuff like that. Doesn't Amazon have the video game? I'm just sometimes they do sometimes they don't, so, but but you treat the gift cards as cash basically in the household economy. So that is how we And I'm not saying this will work forever because I'm sure they will develop more expensive tastes at some point and then we'll have to draw the line on it, or that they will ask for things that there's no plausible, good reason that they need. But you know, I think if we're not going anywhere either, it's not like they have spending money occasions right now either. So I'm sure this will not last well forever, but we have to do it eventually. All right, let's take a quick break. Okay, I have one more money related question. When you go on trips, do you give them like a budget. That's been our practice. That's the only reason I'm asking, Like if we back in the day we're at Disney, we would tell them, like, you have fifty dollars that you can spend throughout our time here, because we feel like that's good practice, like if you use it all now, it's going to be gone and budgeting kind of an exercise. So yeah, we basically have said, like you can get one souvenir, so think about what that is, and that has been so far has mostly worked. And I'm not saying that it has then only been one souvenir, because then like somebody else will find something small and then everyone else wants that. But it's enough to limit it, Like it's not that we buy something in every single gift store. Like we might start out saying one and then wind up with two. But it's not that we, you know, have a free for all or anything like that. And I'm fine if it's two, as long as it's limited and not over the top. But the chore question should I get back to, I mean, what your kids clear the table? Do they? I mean, do you have any expectation of anything beyond that at this point? I mean they're supposed to pick up their own toys, which sometimes becomes a bit of a battle, and I'll say something like, well, if you don't clean up the mess you made, then we're not watching anything, and then certain children who will remain unnamed, might say, well, then fine, I'm not watching it, and so it's like, okay, well, so now I think that's something we need to work on. And the interesting thing is, you know, two out of three are currently attending a Montessori school, which is super strict about like you have to sweep, and you have this like cleaning cycle, and they're like really specific about cleaning up after yourself and doing things for yourself. And so I'm hoping that we're going to evolve more in that direction. I don't know that I've seen it. So inspire me because your kids are doing a lot. I don't know that they're doing a lot. I mean they I mean they have to pick up their rooms and pick up the basement before the cleaning service comes, right so that things can be vacuumed. I mean, that's pretty straightforward there. Our nanny does their laundry. They are supposed to put it all away right, so, like comes out of the dryer, they are supposed to put it away in joors. Some people do it quicker than others. It's an interesting phenomenon of the order in which it tends to happen. We often request that they empty the dishwasher. Everyone has to take their stuff off the table, and if we ask for help with clearing other stuff off the table, they have to do it. The boys will if asked again. It's not automatic. Nothing of this is automatic. But if asked, they'll help take out the trash. One thing I have needed a lot of is asking them to watch Henry and so the three older children can all watch him for periods of like ten minutes if somebody needs to go do something right, like make dinner, take a shower. So that is something that we have definitely been asking them to do, and I would say people are generally relatively happy about doing that. That's not been any argument over that so far. But you know, certainly they're not doing huge amounts of things we said we don't give an allowance. Michael has offered extra cash for like big projects like weeding the yard a job if they don't want to do it. So it's like, again, they don't need because maybe if their wants are somewhat limited and then there's not really a huge incentive to do it. So there you go. It's like the my screen time motivation exactly. Then by yeah, yeah, so interesting. Well, I think I think it sounds like you're doing I think it sounds like you're doing pretty well in terms of that. I want to work on getting mine to be a little bit more independent and have responsibilities. Okay, where are we? Oh? Wait, you were going to talk about cooking, cooking which is impressible. Well, I've mentioned that. Yeah, Sam will cook mac and cheese for everyone for lunch, which is great. I've been impressed with Jasper has the Family and consumer science class at his Noddle school. But they've done some projects that are He actually made his own pair of pajama pants and they were not bad. I mean like they used a sewing machine. It's nice flannel pajama pants. He's worn them. I mean, it's great. I'm a big fan. He made us with Michael's help. He made a stir fry the other night. Unfortunately, the kids are not adventurous eaters, so not many of them really ate the stur fry. But I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. So maybe I can get them to get them to do that again. Maybe the more they make things, the more they might. You know, I keep reading that as parenting advice, and that's never happened in my house. Like people will grow the vegetable and not eat it. They will prepare the salad but not eat it. They will you know, it's just whatever. That's so funny. I will say it has worked in our house a little bit. So your mileage maybury, but yes, yours tend to be more challenging in that realm anyway. Okay, digital freedom clearly something a lot of people talk about and are nervous about. You know, there's that whole movement like wait until eighth to give your kid a phone, and like when do you do that? And Steve Jobs kids never had any technology, and god knows what mythology is out there, I will share that we were always like, oh, we're never letting her, you know, we're not gonna give our kids phones. And sure enough my phone broke. I replaced it, but then it revived itself, and we were like, anabell, you can help this. I don't know, just sort of happened. It is not connected as a phone, so like there's no data or anything. She can't actually like call, but she can skype. She can pretty much use it as a phone when she's in the house, which is a lot of the time. She's not allowed to take it to school. But that just kind of happened. And so I guess I would say that even if you're a family that's made a lot of decrees, you just never know. You just never know if there's going to be a pandemic, or you just something seems less scary when you get close to it, maybe because it's been fine. I mean, we limit it, and she's using it just like she would use an iPad or computer, so it's not really that different. But how have you handled things because your kids probably want to do more advanced things like I don't know, social media type stuff. Yeah, so we started giving our role in our household was you could get a phone for your eleventh birthday, and it has remained that you get your first like nice phone at your eleventh birthday. But of course, if each kid gets a phone at the eleventh birthday, as you might imagine, you wind up with the supply of older phones, just as you mentioned. You know, Jasper got his phone at eleven, but then he turned thirteen. Before Sam turned eleven, Sam was still ten. So Sam got his old phone at ten, then he got in a phone at eleven, and then Ruth kind of immediately inherited that old phone, which she, you know, doesn't really use for anything other than surfing the web at home or doing her duo Lingo Spanish app, which is great. She's a little chip off the black hair because she's now got a seventy plus day streak of studying Spanish. She also has this Gizmoto watch. This is this might be an interim solution for some families that if you have a situation where a child who's like ages nine to eleven or whatever, you don't want to give them a full cell phone, but you actually do need to text them or call them or anything like that or know where they are. It is a watch, a smart watch that it's like cheaper than an Apple watch, and it can text and call a certain number of people. There's sets and you know, responds to a certain number of things. And that's been good. Like she'll call her grandparents on it, or she can text us if she needs to. She's not away from us anywhere at this point. I originally got it for Sam because we have this whole thing that occupied a whole lot of mental space last year where I was like, I'm going to have the baby and Jasper's gonna have early morning choir and I'm gonna have to bring the baby with me, but I'm gonna have to leave the other kids at home while Michael is traveling, and like all of these things completely disappeared as issues, but we still have the watch, so there are Jasper does have some social media accounts that are limited their private and so the general thought is, if you know somebody in person, then that as a person that can be part of your social media universe. If you don't, then that person should not be. We aren't really policing any of it very carefully. I know that they're watching Netflix shows on their phones. I don't entirely know what they're watching. I have not seen anything on the phone so far that there was one time then a child may have looked at something, but there was a conversation about that, and you know, in general, it hasn't been too much visue again. I think this may change over time, but trying to you know, talk about it as we go and maintain open line of communication because I mean, what else can you do. I mean, I have four boys and the Internet is full of all sorts of things, right like it would be foolish of me to think that I can keep it all out forever, so instead of I can obviously put limits on things and have you know, parental controls and things like that. But I think in general, you also want to have conversations about why you might not want to seek out everything that the unit rent has to offer, And so that's more where I'm trying to focus my efforts. No, that makes total sense, And I think what you said about open lines of communication, because I think, you know, back in the day when we were raised, there was much less of that. Parents and kids kind of kept a lot of Oh, I would never talk to my parents about that kind of a thing. And I think that's a lot of times to kids detriment because if something's a secret, then it could kind of spiral off in the wrong direction, Whereas if you know bits and pieces of things are evolving, then you can kind of offer advice and help steer the ship. And I think that I think that's actually that sounds probably how we will handle such things in the future, because truthfully, eventually kids are going to go to college and there will be no parental controls on their internet there. So to say, you know, if you have a question, don't go ask Google. You can ask me, right And because I don't know what Google's going to cough up, but I know what I can, and so that's what I'm trying to encourage and that's probably in why you spend one on one time together. So if people do have questions, that's an occasion where you're, you know, doing something together, so you don't have to stare at each other having an awkward conversation, but it's it's where things can come up. And so so that's definitely what I'm trying to do. That makes sense. Okay, this is a popular question that we get, and you certainly don't have to share any specifics because this is an area where I also think that nobody wants to hear specifics, but academics. If things are going well, obviously it's easy to say, oh, I don't do anything, everything's great, but maybe even you can share like what your friends have done, Like how involved do you think parents should get if things are not going well? And maybe in terms of like other people, you know, what strategies seem to have worked. Things go up and down in our house in terms and different kids can go through different phases of finding things more challenging than not. I think virtual learning has been hard because there's less of that accountability with the teacher being like, hey, you know, where is this stuff? And you're in the class and you know, you can sort of have that conversation. I think it's easier to blow stuff off when it's virtual. So I'm glad again that they're in at least some of the time. I wish they were in full time because I think there would be more accountability for it. Then, you know, we all go through this transition. I mean maybe you never had to, but where school goes from being really easy if you're a fairly smart kid, to school not being so easy, and like you sort of realize, like, oh, I actually have to work. And that point can hit at different points for different children, but it's going to hit eventually, and I see that it's hitting earlier for my kids and it necessarily hit for me. But I don't think that's because I'm smarter than my children. I think it's that their school is harder, and so I'm glad about that. I'm glad that they have more challenging curriculum. But yeah, we're talking about like, well, if stuff isn't immediately easy, that's not because you are stupid. It is because you have to work on it, and if you put more time into it, you will get better. There's various strategies you can use. Oh look, your teachers have times where they are available that they're not actually teaching. How about you go talk to them during those times. There's an idea like if a particular subject is seeming much harder than being proactive about getting ahead of it, and so that's you know again, it's just the open lines of communication. I think in life, people have to make their own way, and you learn a lot more when you realize that you want to do something. And so I just don't. I mean, I don't really have it in me to be a helicopter parent and to check in on everything. I mean, I will check in if I start getting notes from a teacher that stuff has just never come in, But I can't every single day, and I can't stand over them and do them because I'm not going to be able to do that forever. So I was like, well, you have to want to do this, so let's talk about the things in your future that are going to be enabled by doing well in school now and just keep having that conversation. Part of me is like, yes, that makes sense, and the other part of me is like, as a pediatric endor chronologist, I have learned my adolescents do not care at all about like what their future might look like in five years, like they do not, Like they absolutely don't care. Like I could be like, oh, you're going to be healthy or like whatever. Like the only thing that seems to motivate them is like maybe like, oh, you know, you have football season coming up and your performance isn't going to be as good if you're a one CS twelve that might might or even like we have this cool new piece of technology, but insurance isn't going to prove it unless you are at least checking your blood sugar, like you know, once a week or something. I mean, I'm kind of being very facetious with what I'm saying, but so I'm impressed that works. Maybe it works more when it's coming from a parent than when it's coming from I'm not saying it works one hundred percent, like, but I just have to have faith that long term it will right like that you know it's not entirely going over the head, that it's in there somewhere too, yes, And you know, you have much more of a relationship with your children obviously, and they're watching you and how you live versus me who I get to see my patients like a few times a year, so that probably also helps a lot. But it is funny becuse I'm like, oh, the horizon talk with your team, Like I yeah, they struggle with that, and it's not their fault. It's their it's the way their brain is designed. And sometimes I just have to remind myself of that because it could be frustrating from a clinical perspective. But okay, I'm getting way off track, but yeah, I think this is an area where everybody I know struggles and has a lot of opinions. And maybe we'll have to have another expert guest later. Although what we were saying is, and you mentioned you said, probably nobody knows what they're doing when it comes to teenagers. Yeah, I know. You asked me like who do I follow to get advice? And I was like, you know, everyone's just figuring it out, and I mean inevitably. You want to be careful about putting yourself out as an expert because then it's like your kid's going to do something terrible. It's like, you know, the marriage experts who then get divorced, and like the parenting expert whose kid has been you know, publicly arrested. In some horrible way. I mean, it's just like nobody knows and you just try to do the best you can and if they turn out great, that's awesome. Like it's probably not all because of you. That again, if something goes terribly wrong, again, it's also not probably all because of you either. So we just have to hope on a day to day basis that the better angels of our nature will prevail. Okay, one more fun question, which is any TV shows or pop culture that you've kind of enjoyed sharing with. Well, you mentioned a couple. I will say Harry Potter has been like a really fun stage to get to with my kids because I feel like before that, you know, I could try to enjoy, but I like legitimately enjoy reading because I haven't read those books for a long time and they're so good, and just getting to re experience that with them has been really fun and something that wouldn't. It is a little tough because Genevieve gets bored and starts like singing, and I have to like talk really loud to talk over her. And it's a reminder that three year olds really can appreciate Harry Potter. But you know, almost seven to nine year olds can, So that's that's fun. But any specific series or things that have been fun of experience with your big kids, well, I mean, part of the problem is here, I'm not a huge movie or TV person, so I haven't necessary necessarily been watching The Jasper and I may try to find maybe some sort of makeover show we can watch together. I'll work on that with him, and you know, Ruth is doing Nancy Drew now with Michael. I read A Little House in the Big Woods to Ruth and Alex. They seem to mostly like it. You know, there's parts that are a little slow, but they like the idea of playing in the woods and the preparations for winter and all the things that they pulled together from their own homestead, which is of course always really fun to think of with the Little House books. So you know, I think I'm trying to Some of the series I've suggested people read have not gone over as well, and maybe it's just the oh well, nobody. People have to like their own thing, and different kids like their own things, and hopefully they'll stumble on to some of the books I liked and decide they like them too. And some of your kids have express interesting Game of Thrones and you're trying to decide if that's so. Michael does, in fact like violent TV and Josh loves Game of Thrones, like Superman. I mean, there's just been a bunch of like terrible stuff. But we're trying to figure out what shows they can watch together. And I know that there is some boy time after I've gone to bed on weekends where they're watching movies or watching TV shows, and I just I stay out of it completely and trust that some judgment is being exercised, which may or may not be the case. But I mean, if you're watching it with your dad, I guess having a parent by their side, it's kind of like the best case scenario. You could. You could fast forward, you could discuss, you could, you know, all kinds of things. Josh likes to watch Marvel with Cameron at times, and it's not very interesting to Annabel nor me. So there you go, there you go. It's good that they have their things. They can they can do. I have boy, I just can't stay up late. So I guess it's good that they're doing it with him. Awesome. I think I think that's that's good. Maybe we'll have to do like a second edition later because I feel like there is more we could go into related to big kids. But this was very fun hearing about all the things that I and many others can expect in their life. Ooh, I'm going to provide a very brief orthodontic update. Yes, orthodonic update for those who read my blog. I talked about how Annabel was getting a palette expander, and she is not. She's a little sensitive when it comes to pain, as many of us are, so I wasn't sure how that was going to go. And the first day she came home and I had to like pure everything because she wasn't going to chew anything solid. But I'm so happy to report she can pretty much talk normally now, she will eat everything. She's been very good when it comes to like turning the little crank that you have to turn on the top to Why didn't the palette which I got to experience as well as a child, So I guess we have genetically laying palettes. But so it's been much better than I expected. Now she doesn't have brackets put on yet, so I think that'll be a next hurdle to climb but I've been pleasantly surprised at the adaptability of a kid with stuff in their mouth. Yes, I don't want stuff in my mouth ever. Ever again, all right, well, let's head over to the question section here. This is I guess this is for you too ready to much in this episode. That's okay, it's a good episode, all right. Since you hosted a time tracking challenge recently, and for those who follow Alwa's blog, she had like a week time tracking challenge in the beginning of the year, and so this person asked, what is the best way to track from your phone or do you advise carrying a piece of paper or print out everywhere? Well, so, there's lots of different ways you can do this. What I do is I have my spreadsheet on my laptop, and my laptop generally stays on my desk at home unless I am traveling for multiple days, and then obviously it comes with me. I check in three times a day to fill out the time log, so it really only requires three minutes on the computer on any given day, and so I don't feel like it has to come with me. Now, I've been tracking for close to six years now, so I remember how I'm spending my time. This is not challenging for me. I can see how if you are first learning to do this, it might help to check in a little bit more frequently. But even so, I mean every three or four hours is probably okay. So you can take notes as well, So if you are going to be away from your computer, for instance, or from your smartphone or wherever you are recording it, you can just take notes on a piece of paper and then fill it in later. And that can help for situations where you actually don't want to be on your device all day long. So I think that's what that question was getting at, Like, do I actually think you need to carry this thing with you all day? I mean, I'm not going anywhere. I don't know. Maybe this person just goes more places than I do. I mean, I'm working from home in a pandemic, so I haven't had to be away from the all that much. But I do know that in the past it has either come with me for longer trips or if I'm you know, out and about doing a lot of stuff, I'll just, you know, send a note to myself on my phone, email myself the rough time log, write a note on a slip of paper, fill it in later, and that's that's been fine. I don't track time, but if I did, and I was going to use my phone, I would probably use the notes up because it's just so easy. You just have like a blank little document for the day. You just like, oh, I'm doing this ten thirty, going to dentist or whatever. So right, Sarah, what is your love of the week? All right? My love of the week is a book I just finished and it was so good. It was a little like harrowing, so it's not the most relaxing read because you might be a little stressed or sad while you read it. But it was just so well done. And I don't know. It's my Station eleven equivalent of twenty twenty one. It was in Napolitano's Dear Edward. So if you want a book that's going to be very propulsive and you just want to like empty your heart into something, it's about a lane crash, a soult survivor oh dear. But it's really well done. Okay, all right, well that's good. Yeah. I know, having read Station eleven made the whole start of the pandemic a bit not not fun. I mean, not that it would have been fun anyway, but just the ideas of what could happen. Not great times I read it. I read it in January. It's like the worst timing and it's the same. I had the same feeling. But even even before the pandemic, as I was reading it, I was like, this book is like it's beautiful and it's interesting, and it's also horrifying and emotionally draining. So I have the same feelings about Dear Edward, but I don't anticipate like the events, you know, coming true in any way, shape or form, even in a mild form. So that makes a little better. That's good. So my love of the week is this fleece snowsuit type thing I think we got from well, we didn't buy it from LBE, and my older brother's family had it and their children wore it, and Henry now sent it over his pajamas and I feel like he's been sleeping better and it's he's just because he must have been cold. So, you know, anything that works. He now is, you know, spending much of his life in a little fleece thing on top of his clothes or on top of his pajamas. And he seems to be more comfortable, so I'm happy with it. And it's you know, made gotten through eight children now, I guess because my older brother's three kids and then R five, we've all used it, so it's it's great. And it seems improbable that he'd be cold because he has this like steel like level of blubber. But babies can be cold too, I guess everyone can be cold, and Pennsylvania in January. It's part of the part of the deal. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been talking teens and tweens. We will be back next week with more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com 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.