#17 - Mom Life - Broken Record

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

kids, listen, broken record, expectations, mom, structure, trisha, thought, parent, feel, day, repeating, life, parenting, yoda, noise, employment law, children, write, important

SPEAKERS

Trisha Barita

00:02

Hey there, I'm Trisha Barita. I'm a mother of twin girls, a wife, an entrepreneur, a psychology major, a lawyer, and a coach. With all these different roles in my life, in the past, I truly struggled with limiting beliefs in my ability to adequately juggle all these roles successfully, I often would be frustrated that time and again, I let my goals and dreams always take a backseat to everything else I was trying to do. And those dreams always seem to be on the horizon, just out of reach, until I discovered tools and thought work to help me tackle and learn to balance all of it. Now, I don't let these titles define my limits. I define my balance in life, by how I choose to show up for myself, every day, Am I perfect? Hell no far from it. But I do work every day to believe in myself, and to be present with whatever I experienced in this life, The Good, the Bad, and The really fucking ugly. to own my truth and own my thoughts. I created this podcast to talk about how that noise gets in the way of our goals as women. And now I help women and teach them tools to cut the overwhelm of noise in their life, preventing them from getting the balance they want. If you like this podcast and want to take my free course to get started on designing your balance, and saying fuck that noise, go to Trisha barita.com, forward slash free course. Now let's get after it.

02:07

Hello, fabulous friends. So what I thought about being a mom, you know, before I became a mom, I imagined all the important conversations I would have, how I would guide my child's little mind to be inspired to seek happiness, you know, to have all of the knowledge that I had gathered to live a bigger, better life. So fast forward. Now, when I find myself on the sixth time of saying you need to put your shoes on. Where's your backpack? Those conversations that they don't feel inspiring, you know, instead, I have feelings of annoyance. I mean, I didn't, I didn't think that being a mom involves me being a broken record. Just repeating the same thing over and over again. Hoping my kid will start listening at some point. So I can just stop repeating myself. I mean, what kind of job? Is this this mother thing? I mean, at some point, it would be comical if it wasn't so frustrating. Like both Peter and I will turn to one of our kids and be like, Were you listening? And they're like, yeah, like in this total obvious tone of Yeah, of course, I was listening, you know, they're like, yeah. And then often one of us will say, Well, what did I just say? And guess what? New but he can remember. big surprises. If you've ever gone through this, you know what I'm talking about? Well, with multiple kids and you know, with with my twins, I mean, this will happen when they're both in the same room with me. Okay? I mean, how could they both not be listening. And while my logical brain knows that this is part of development, maturity and practice for my girls, this whole cycle of repeating yourself over and over again to your kids, like a broken record, can make you feel like you're losing your mind. And certainly feel like you're going to lose your cool as a parent. Because you see, I don't want to be a broken record of my kids. I just want to love them and guide them, you know, like Yoda to Luke Skywalker, or let's be honest, I probably want to be a little like Mary Poppins too. I mean, I remember Luke in Star Wars being a little whiny. And those kids in Mary Poppins were definitely bringing some attitude. And look at that. It all worked out for them. So, but will it all work out for me? As a parent? You wonder, right? You think should I be more strict here? Should? Should I be more lenient? Should I care about this? Should I not care about this? Why aren't they listening? What am I doing wrong here? Oh, and don't get me started on googling about this for parent advice. For all the articles out there saying you should care about this or that, in regards to parenting, there's this same amount or more saying there's some study that it doesn't matter. So how does that make you feel and think about yourself as a parent? I don't know. For me, I was like, this is confusing, and can kind of feel defeating sometimes. I mean, how do you make your children listen? In my opinion, the answer is, you don't. Now wait a minute, you're probably thinking, Did Trisha just say I can't make my kids listen? Okay, so before you all throw your hands up in the air in wild frustration, let me say what I said again, how do you make your children listen, I said you don't.

06:32

And when I say you don't, it's because well, they aren't robots we can type new code into, or program their behavior, their little humans growing into whatever human they're gonna be. And they're gonna have good days, and they're gonna have bad days, and what I call growing days, you can't force little human beings to listen as much as we want to. And believe me, when I'm standing at the back door, with all my stuff, ready to drop them at school before I take off to work. And I have a kiddo who misplaced her water bottle, or can't find her right shoe, because she spent the morning not listening and tootling around wasting time. Oh, I want to make them listen, believe me. I think I really want to listen. But I think part of figuring out how to handle parenthood is doing as much as you can to set yourself up for success. But to create, you know, thoughts for yourself with the reality of children in mind. And if you have teenagers or even adult children, there will always be a part of us that wants them to listen. And that's okay. I think that's just part of being a parent. You know, that thought just doesn't disappear. You know, I think it's more about what you do as a mom when they don't listen. So I mean, I'm just a regular mom struggling to make my kids happy, and not go insane. Okay, so, um, so I'm going to share with you some ideas that you can try with with your kids and some ideas for thought work in this area. Number one, I think structure is important. Maybe this is my lawyer training, combined with taking care of two kids. And for me, of course, that was two infants at the same time when I was starting out as a mom. And let me tell you, we made a lot of moves in our household towards structure because it made it easier to manage to infants, and all the needs that go along with that. So I'm a big fan of structure as a parent. And don't get me wrong, I like the chaos and fun and play time for sure. But for everyday routine, I just, I get this feeling and sense with my kids, at least for my kids that they get a sense of security from structure. So we definitely try to lean into that here. Unfortunately, though, you know, structures, not something I feel you can just Google and copy other moms plans. Believe me, I've tried that noise work. I mean, you can do it, you could do it. But you know, whoever plans you're copying their kids may not be like your kids. Please, don't give up don't give up on the structure if you're trying to do that. And it doesn't work exactly like someone else. Kids are different, right. So I think I think of structure for kids as like a moving living thing. First off, it takes some experimentation to see what works well for your particular kids. And to be honest, you have to know it may need adjustments and change as they change or as their circumstances As change, whether that's school or extracurricular activities, or hormones, or whatever is going on with them. And this, you know, this may or may not work for you, so not, you know, whatever it is you're trying, so not giving up and, you know, just continuing to see what works for kids is all part of that process. I know, I just want to say like, I know, I'm not, you know, gonna pretend that parenting is a cookie cutter thing, I could give you some magic formula, you know, that, you know, the mom that you met at some PTA or parent night or whatever, who's doing something that works for her kids doesn't work for mine. That somehow that means something about your parenting or something about your children. You know, for most of us, parenting is not a crackpot deal is no set it and forget it kind of thing. So. So that's what I think about with the kind of you working towards this structure piece. Number two, is more about you, actually, than the kids.

11:11

And that would be expectations and communications. I think having expectations without communication, like good communication, it's pretty much useless. In my opinion, I actually think that this is true, even maybe this because I've been an employment law attorney, but like when, when you're managing workers, you know, when I'm doing employment law, and I'm advising, you know, CEOs or HR people on how to handle that, you know, one of the one of the best things you can do if you're a manager in management or CEO, is to communicate your expectations in a way that motivates your workforce. Well, I feel it's the same way with kids. I like my kids to know my expectations of them right up front. And I want anyone saying later, why didn't realize that was important to you, mom? No, no, I go out to convey my expectations, clearly. Since listening is a big part of that. And that's the problem we're talking about here today. I found that writing down what my expectations are of what they're supposed to do, even from a young age that it seems to help I give them my I give my kids a list of the day, or some days a schedule if they're if they're going to be with me all day, because they're home from school or something. Or it's a weekend and we've got some structure that we want to have. But for me, it eliminates some of the broken record now stuff. Especially since you know, now I have kids that read, you know, the whole broken record thing where they're like, Mom, what do you want me to do next? And my answer is, did you look at the list? And they're like, oh, yeah, that list. Now, it's not helpful when they lose the list. Because then you get a whole nother thing, you gotta rewrite the list, or it's a whole nother problem. But anyway, needless to say, that is, sometimes this is something that Elsa is in our house. So for me writing it down. And, you know, it also makes me sure I'm managing my expectations on what is realistic for them to accomplish. Sometimes when, you know, you just feel like you're barking orders trying to tell these kids like what's going on what they need to do, they they're not anticipating, like, what what is next for them to do? Or, you know, with a, what you think they should be doing, you know, if you write it all down, you're looking at the whole thing, you realize, okay, that's too much, or, you know, maybe we need some something else here or something like that. It can be kind of helpful to write it down, jot it down for yourself, and then you give it to them. And they kind of tootle around with it. Well, I think that's good, because So my number, you know, three ideas about this issue is that it can be helpful to recognize kids want to feel that they have freedom to make their own choices. I mean, kids are not adults. But it doesn't mean kids don't want to be like adults, right? I mean, have you ever seen a kid play in a play kitchen? What do they do? They pretty much do whatever they've seen you do in the kitchen. So that kind of structure mean of I mean, that kind of way of playing and stuff is just an example of how they think. Right? They're, they're eager to make their own choices. And then I'm not saying they're, or they're ready to make all those choices. But for you know, for instance, with mind, kids, we have a lot of discussions about if you do this, you can get this result. But you could choose to not do that and then you'll get this result. Which would you like to do? Now, obviously, you can't do that in all instances, I mean, sometimes they have to do something that you need them to do. But where there's room for decision to be made? Yeah, I try to, we try to let them choose, you know, I try to let them choose. As an example, when I give them a list of the morning routine that they're working on, we often don't have a lot of room to budge, you know, we, we have a certain time period, we gotta get out the door, you're gonna be late for school. So they carry it around, and they check off the items. And when you have young kids, you can see that they feel more powerful that they're taking charge of their day, and they're following this kind of list thing. It's pretty darn cute, actually. But if they go along with excuse,

15:53

but if it's like a day home from school, and I'm working from home, I, you know, I create a schedule, and I let them contribute to it, I can easily do it without getting their contribution. But it probably easier for me to make it and faster. But I, you know, I think about I think about how that makes them feel important. And so, you know, I try to look for those opportunities where I can given to them. And so I say, you know, what would you like to do at 2pm here, I'm gonna write down a little schedule for you today, would you like to do an art craft project or build with Legos or you know, do something like like, write or something or play a game with your sister. Again, this makes them feel like they're, you know, contributing to what molds their day, and I think that's an, it's a, it's a cool thing to recognize. And if you can empower them, it can kind of ease that feeling, I think of you always feeling like you're the broken record, telling them what to do, and they're just the person not they're doing the things or listening to you. Okay, and number four, I would say some thought work for you as a mom around what it means when your kids, you know, I whatever age don't listen to you. I mean, even at the young age of my kids, I've spent time on my thoughts around this. Because since I can't force a child to listen, I don't want to spend all my time with them frustrated, throwing my hands up in the air, because of my thoughts about being the broken record. So through my own journaling and coaching on this. And these may not work for you. But for me, I just wanted to consider other thoughts I could have around this. So one thought I connected with that may be useful for you to try on is you know, you know, when they're finding ways you know, to have my kids understand my expectations of their daily routine to live in our house. That's, that's a life lesson for them. You know, when they leave my house, and let's face it, maybe before that, probably, they people have expectations of them that will be conveyed to them through you know, someone speaking to them and them needing to listen. So when I watch them not listen, I try to lean into some extra patience. Because I'm, I'm helping them learn something they'll need to be successful in the future. And I recognize that's not always easy to learn. Now, does that thought always fit? The answer's no. Okay, but it's a good one. And it has helped me in moments with them when I when I do feel like the broken record when I do feel like I'm just saying the same thing over and over again. Look, I'm not expecting my kids to save the galaxy from Darth Vader like our good friend, Luke Skywalker. But I think I had thought that the broken record feeling as a mom didn't make me have my Yoda moments. But now I lean into listening between the skips and sputters on the turntable of the repeating myself over and over again with my kids. And I look for those moments when they grow a little. And I hope that I helped contribute to that. And I'll leave you with that. Now go get after it. You got this

19:49

Hey, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, and are a woman ready to say fuck that noise so you can start designing the balance in your life? Go take my free course to get start. added at Trisha barita.com Ford slash free course. Now Have an awesome day and I'll see you next week.