105 When your kids control your time
A grounded episode for working moms on how to love their kids deeply without letting guilt, over-functioning, and constant availability run their day.
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Welcome to the Great Leader Great Mom podcast, where we trade in mom guilt and burnout for courage, calm, and a whole lot more joy. I'm your host, Liz Jolly, engineer turned life coach, mom of three and founder of the School of Courage. Here we talk about leading at work and at home without losing your sanity, your sense of humor, or yourself.
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Each week, I share practical tools that you can use to be your grounded self in any room. And today we're continuing on our adventure into ending overwhelm. This is episode 105, and today we're talking about something that I've heard both men and women say. Maybe not this direct, but it's how our kids control our time. And some of you would never say that my kids are in charge of my calendar, or my energy, or my workouts, or my sleep, or my workday, or my ability to use the restroom by myself at the house.
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And so a lot of times we say this a little less directly, like, my kids just need me. I'm their mom. I need to always be there for them. This can just be what good moms or good dads to. I can't let them be disappointed. I can work out tomorrow. I can get all that stuff later, but later never comes or later comes at 10:47 p.m. when everybody else is asleep and you're standing in your kitchen eating random handfuls of cereal or the leftovers, wondering why you're feeling so resentful.
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Nothing has gone wrong. Welcome to being a human in this world, trying to do it right. Let's slow down and let's look at what the issue is here. The issue is not that you don't love your kids enough or not, that you're failing as a mom or dad. The issue is when we spend our day reacting to what's happening around us instead of creating our day.
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When every single request our kids say, we just respond with yes, of course, that's what a loving mom would do or loving dad would do. Here's what I mean. Like this. How many times in your week do your children forget things on their way to school? You realize they forgot something and you think they need me? I need to show up for them.
00;01;59;14 - 00;02;19;16
And I'm not saying that is the problem. I'm saying we do it reactively. We don't do it often. Really consciously, truly, from a place of love. And the way we know this is that we often end up in resentment, blaming them for controlling our time. So the belief we're going to dig into today is that our kids control our time.
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There's probably this piece underneath that belief that says, If I'm a good mom, I'm taking care of all my child's needs, be a good mom is always available. Or if I can help, I should be there for them. If my child's disappointed, I must have done something very wrong. And can we just acknowledge how believable those sound? They really do, right?
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They don't sound dramatic. They sound really responsible and loving like you would find them in the book about how to be an ideal parent. And that's what makes them really sneaky and very frustrating for us and hard for us to shift out of. Here's the problem with believing that your kids are in control of your time. That alone probably makes you feel guilty or resentment or obligation.
00;03;04;28 - 00;03;26;17
And then what happens when you're feeling that way? You give up your workout. You cancel the things you had planned for, maybe lunch with your friends or lunch with your spouse. You move your work around, you leave early. You rush to and from places. Maybe you go to the grocery store when you didn't plan to you over function.
00;03;26;17 - 00;03;52;25
You try to fix and rescue and we say yes while internally we're screaming, why am I doing this? I shouldn't be doing this. And then we call it love. But a lot of times it's not love. It's guilt dressed up as love. And this is why it feels so exhausting when we show up with love for ourselves and love for our children and love for everyone involved.
00;03;52;25 - 00;04;15;06
It feels clean and it honors ourselves. Whereas guilt, it feels really heavy and it always feels terrible when we consciously choose what we want to do with our day, not reacting to our day, it makes us all find that grounded piece of us when we live as moms or dads, and we just react all day and feel frantic.
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It feels exhausting and overwhelming and terrible. And I am saying this from a place of so much compassion, because I know this. I have lived this. So this is not about judging ourselves or self-loathing, which is really easy to get into when you tell yourself like, this shouldn't be happening, why am I doing this? Why haven't I figured this out?
00;04;34;26 - 00;04;54;26
This is about starting to slow down and notice what's happening in our brain. So here's an example to help paint this picture, I once asked my six year old which babysitter was her favorite, and she immediately answered and was like, it's definitely this one. And I said, oh, okay, well why like tell me more. And she said, well, this one always gives me candy when I ask for it.
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And I remember just like bursting out loud being like, of course that equates to your favorite, right? The one that gives you candy, that gives you whatever it is you want in a sense, without thinking of is this really what I want in the future for this person? Because as we all know, as adults, if you eat a bunch of candy, the dentist is not going to be your favorite place because you're going to end up with a lot of fillings.
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So not ideal. But this same behavior pans out in our life. And so in all of this, I want us to think about when we make decisions about our time, what would our future self decide like in the example of the babysitter? If you're the babysitter that just gives in and gives candy versus being like, no, I need to deal with whatever's happening here and get the child to want to get in the car to go to school versus bribing them with sugar.
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That's a totally different thing, because, as we all know, if you just continue to bribe your child to do anything, then that's going to just grow up into bad behaviors. As a teenager, we'd much rather shift it and deal with the root of what we want to change, because the future child we want to have is one that takes that responsibility and does things because they want to, because that's who they want to be, not because they're going to get a reward, like the candy, which then pans out to all the things we don't love, like going to the dentist and having a bunch of fillings and costing you a lot of money.
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So even though our day to day doesn't feel like us giving our kids candy, it's kind of in the same boat because we give in and bring the water bottle they forgot. Or we go and grab and make a second meal for them when they don't eat the meal we made because we tell ourselves, well, they really need this.
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Instead of saying, what do I want them to be in the future? And does this lead them towards that or away from that? So here's another example that may feel more close to home. And I think about this one all the time. So I was having dinner once with my friend who's French from France, and we were laughing and I was telling some story about my kid, and she just looked at me and makes the space and goes, you American women just overdo it with your children.
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And I was like, say more? And so she went in, said, you're just exhausting yourself. You're doing you're over functioning, you're doing all these things. Whereas we grew up in France, this was not at all how we interacted with our children. If they need to, you know, like suffer a little bit, not in the way of like, don't go to the extreme and think, I'm saying super suffering.
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I'm saying like they need the struggle. And she was so right. It was so true. It doesn't mean that you don't love your kids, or that you don't care, or that you don't want to be involved. She's pointing out this very American mom pattern we'll have of like, self-sacrifice and over functioning where we overscheduled over explain over rescue, and then we act like exhaustion is just the cost of being a good mom.
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And that is what I want us to question. So find your inner Frenchwoman that realizes we don't want to over function. We want to create our day consciously and live our day not just at the mercy of everybody else around us. Because your kids, they're going to ask. They're going to ask for candy rides, water bottle returns, everything.
00;08;03;13 - 00;08;23;20
They forgot a second dinner because they didn't like the one you made, and that's not going to go away. The problem is, how are you going to respond? Are you going to let every ask become an automatic Yes. Are you going to let every child's desire become your command of what you do? Who's running the show here? I remember this moment, and this was years ago.
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My middle child was probably like three, and we were on a bike ride and she just stopped and like, outside on the bike trail in front of someone's house. And this man was there and I was so worn out. And I remember asking her like, well, do you want to go home or do you want to keep going?
00;08;39;06 - 00;08;56;21
What do you want to do? And looking back now, I can totally see how I was giving all the agency to her and her questioning of I don't know what I would want to do, I think I want to go. I think I want to say, and I was not being the mom that I wanted to be in the moment in terms of making the decision on if we were going to stay or go.
00;08;56;21 - 00;09;20;29
And the man looked over and said, who's the adult there? And he said it really snarky, which is totally fine, because I probably needed to hear that he was 100% right. But I think about that moment often of who was the adult here who is running the show in your day. So when your brain says, a good mom would do these things, really question it, who do you want to be in this moment?
00;09;21;03 - 00;09;43;10
Do you want to set the example of somebody who lives reactively, or who creates their day? Do you want them to learn the independence and the agency? They have to take care of the things around them while it's in a safe environment, it really is your choice. When your brain says, this is what good moms are, do slow it down and really ask yourself, what do I want to do in this moment?
00;09;43;11 - 00;10;11;18
If I knew I was a good mom no matter what, what would I do? Am I doing this from guilt or overwhelm, or am I doing it because I truly want to? And it's from a place of love for me and love for them. I think many of us get buried in the sneaky ness of what we define as good mothers, because it's easy to equate being a great mom with being endlessly available and always being there to take care of all the needs of our children.
00;10;11;24 - 00;10;30;26
But what if what your kids actually need is not a mom who gives up her whole day on default for them, who gives up her life and has no longer any sense of who she is or what she wants in her day? What if they need a mom who models conscious decision making, who's grounded in any room she's in?
00;10;30;26 - 00;10;51;27
What if they need a mom who shows them I love you deeply and you do not control my time. I get to choose what I do or don't do. That sentence may feel uncomfortable, I get it. I've lived in those shoes to. And that's where our work is. Because many of us, our children's disappointment feels like danger, like we've done something very wrong.
00;10;51;29 - 00;11;17;02
And we want to look around and compare ourselves and think, they would never let this happen. But you in this moment, have the chance to decide, do you want to be the mom who's grounded and in control of her day, who allows her child to struggle because that is a part of life and doesn't give up their entire day reactively to do things that they don't honestly have to go do.
00;11;17;04 - 00;11;35;24
If your child ends up upset with you and your brain says you've done it wrong. This is bad. You should fix it. Question it. It's not true. Your child being upset does not mean you're failing. It doesn't mean that just because they're disappointed you're a terrible mother or you're not loving your child is allowed to have whatever opinion they're going to have.
00;11;35;25 - 00;11;53;27
It's going back to my candy example. If to be a good mom is the mom that gives the candy, no matter what, to bribe you to go places, that's not the mom we want to be, right? So welcome to the 50 over 50 of life. You can't control other people's emotions. We can only control ourselves. So let's choose it consciously.
00;11;53;29 - 00;12;13;18
Sometimes your children are going to think you're an amazing mother. Sometimes they're going to think we are ruining their life and we are the worst because we will not drive across town to get the thing they forgot. That's okay. They're going to survive. They're going to complain about that probably one day on the therapist couch. You're not supposed to do everything, so they're always comfortable and never suffering.
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That's your job. Truly. You're there to let them practice suffering and being a little again, your job is to love them. Number one, that is it. Your job is to show up, love them. And sometimes love says no. Sometimes love doesn't go and get the thing that they forgot the homework. Whatever it is, life includes natural consequences. It includes disappointment.
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And the more we can learn how to handle disappointment and keep going forward, the more agency we have in our own lives. So the next time you give up your workout and you blame your children, really question it. Your children do not run your time. You don't want to believe that's true. It's a chance for you to look at what is it you want to do in your week?
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Who do you want to be and decide consciously? You can say no. You can just honor your commitment to yourself in this moment. The more you practice this, the better you get at it, because you don't want to let your kids control your time. That's a belief that's not getting you where you want to go. Then sometimes love says no because you've made a commitment to yourself, and you're willing to live with the disappointment of your children to not disappoint yourself.
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That is the example we all want to set for our children. If you want to join me and my next end Overwhelm workshop, check the link below or go to Liz Jolley.com/overwhelm. With that, take back your week and I will see you next time.
