Skip to main content

110: Another Corona Convo: Depression, Decluttering & Dealing with Little Dictators

By April 13, 2020November 19th, 2022Mastermind Parenting Podcast
110: Another Corona Convo: Depression, Decluttering & Dealing with Little Dictators

This episode is from a FB Live I did for my private membership community. I’m sharing what I’m doing in my own household from establishing rules and systems for the week to proactive projects to clean up my mental clutter. I discuss the way it REALLY went down in my household, including dramatic reenactments of my resistant teenagers. We sat our kids down to discuss the plan for our new crazy Coronavirus normal and trust me, they weren’t exactly excited about the structure and accountability. Enjoy!

As always, thanks for listening, and be sure and head over to Facebook and you can join my free group Mastermind Parenting Community, where we post tips and tools and do pop up Live conversations where I do extra teaching and coaching to support you in helping your strong-willed children so that they can FEEL better and DO better. If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it!

About Randi Rubenstein

Randi Rubenstein helps parents with a strong-willed kiddo become a happier family and enjoy the simple things again like bike rides and beach vacays.

She’s the founder of Mastermind Parenting, host of the Mastermind Parenting podcast, and author of The Parent Gap. Randi works with parents across the U.S.

At Mastermind Parenting, we believe every human deserves to have a family that gets along.

Randi’s Social Links

Links & Resources

Get my problem-solving one-sheet!

I created a simple one-sheet roadmap that will assist you in replacing the old school lectures with a tool that actually improves behavior through productive convos. Grab your problem-solving cheat sheet here: mastermindparenting.com/problemsolving

For more help, reach out to me for support: http://Randirubenstein.com/discovery

Get my Free Guide!

This guide contains the condensed nuggets of my mind mastering parenting recipe. I’ve been developing my signature Mastermind Parenting method for over twenty years and I’m BEEEyond thrilled to share it with you. It has the power not to just improve the conversations and relationships in your family but digging in and doing this work will change your life. I can’t wait for you to get started so I can teach you everything! Head over here to get your copy https://mastermindparenting.com/freeguide

Apply for Free Coaching!

Thank you so much for listening and being an amazing mama that listens to parenting podcasts! I absolutely love connecting with other moms during the Real Coaching with Randi monthly segment and share their story. If you would like to get some free coaching on a future episode, head over to https://mastermindparenting.com/freecoaching/ and hit the Apply button.

Get my book!

Hear about my family history and the tools that have helped me replace old parenting patterns that simply don’t work with these puzzling kiddos. It’s my way of paying it forward as a human that wants our kids to experience a kinder and more generous world. Head over here to get your copy https://mastermindparenting.com/book

Thanks so much for listening to the Mastermind Parenting podcast, where we support the strong willed child and the families that love them!

If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the share button in the podcast player above.

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.

Transcription

0 (0s):
You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode one 10, my name’s Randi Rubenstein and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast where we believe when your thoughts grow the conversations in your home up. Well, hi guys, this week, we have a clip from my private mastermind. It’s a Facebook live that I did, and I was just really sharing during all of this Corona craziness and just some real life moments and what was happening in my own family and things I was working on and productive conversations and just a real snapshot into my life.

0 (45s):
And I thought it might be helpful for you a podcast listener. So enjoy it. I need a family. I need to set the kids up for success this week, because really honestly, I started thinking you guys about like what was going to drive me nuts this week. And it was them being on their devices too much, or it’s not having a clear plan just too much free time. Cause even if your kids are kids that are lucky enough to have the school doing the online school, I mean, there’s not on their, it’s not very much time. So they have a lot of time to kill. And it just drives me nuts when I see them devices, devices, devices.

0 (1m 25s):
So I thought, what can I do to set this up for success? And it was about to happen in the shower. And I texted Avery in Cory and I said, Alex, kind of a different deal cause his 22. And, and, and there’s lots of opportunities right now with him, with all things, puppy training. So Alex, his own deal, but Adrian core, are you still in the school? Like actual school, not college. And so I texted them and I said main in my room at eight 45, her a little weekly planning meeting. Now you guys, this is not brand new information to them because every Sunday I say, what are you going to freshen up in your room?

0 (2m 6s):
So we sort of already had to reach one place for a Sunday night, getting ready room freshening for the week ahead. So I said, meet me. My room’s. So they come and they kinda talk about the schedules for the week. We talk about the, you know, daily. And we talk about all of the things. And I posted last night on the thread when I was kind of trying to source you guys’ and pick your brains. I’m like, did you feel like the story time, would you like to see something different or you all like you have these morning videos? And so I posted on that thread, this is what the result of that meeting was. It, it was me and Scott, the air and Scott was just kinda taking notes cause he’s taking the Colbie and he has a high follow through and I’m not systematic.

0 (2m 55s):
So we know our different skill sets, right? So we’re down all the things to be, Oh, and here it is on the printer. I knew I needed to print it up, you know, to print it up and get it in writing. And these phone hours will be amended and they will be, this will be posted here this week. Okay. Now the whole thing, the kids we were done with the kids by it, I mean, we all hung out and, and they were probably out of there by Little off by nine or a little after nine, it was like a 15 minute. And when we started talking about it, you guys, this is what I want to say. They, they went like Avery first.

0 (3m 37s):
She was like, Oh, she wouldn’t have been like talk. I mean, the result of that meeting, I just want to be clear. I did not have hunky Dory teenagers being like, thanks, mom will be meeting dad on a third floor and 11 o’clock to work out with him and his work trainer virtually. That sounds great mom. They were like, Oh, what? And, and Avery was just kind of like, they wouldn’t even look at us and then were just like a dramatic. And then Cory was like, Oh, I can do that.

0 (4m 18s):
I have class. And I was like, what are you talking about in? So he was a kind of I’ve class out of class. I was. So I just kinda pull up the schedule of the Blackbaud, the schedule, like figure it like, so there was a, there was discussion that they were both like, Oh whatever, I just kept talking. I was like, Anne. And I connected it back to a while. I said, you know, I read this thing by Bernay Brown. And she was just talking about how like, boredom is a good thing, especially for kids and that there’s going to be a detox period. And you have to let the detox period of all the screen’s in technology and things were off and everybody’s going to be a little irritable and it’s going to, you know, but boredom has to set in for creative creativity to take place.

0 (4m 59s):
And the reason why it’s important, especially right now is we don’t know how long this is going to go on. And we live in this age of modern technology. And if we give into the quick hit of screen, screen, screen, screen screens, what we’re going to have is we’re going to have a, a worldwide depression on our hands. So now not only do we have a pandemic, we also have people who are severely depressed because that’s what being on screens is going to do. Everyone’s brains. We have to allow, we have to get some systems set up and we have to kind of, we, we have to keep going and create a life within these walls within this new existence for right now.

0 (5m 42s):
And, and it’s time to get to work. And, and so we’re gonna have, there’s a lot of hours on a day to fill. And so we’re going to all work. And so once I connected it back to that, why Avery didn’t really argue? Cause I was like, we can’t be having a Depression on top of all the other things. And so this is for older kids, you guys, for younger kids, it’s really all just about your PAC leadership. The reason my kid’s will sit for our conversation, even though they were like, Oh, it’s because I have just been doing this for a years. And I Q-tip Q-tip Q-tip Q-tip or if there’s no rises out of me over BS, like I’m not, it’s fine. And if you know, it’s fine, if they’re, if they want to come play and they’re not gonna, like, they don’t do that much complaining.

0 (6m 27s):
I mean, Corey kind of digs his heels in ’cause they know like it’s just not going to get them anywhere because no matter what I’m going to follow through, they believe me because I followed through so many times before they know, I don’t even have to say, we’re going to have these systems. And if you all don’t follow through devices or gone for a set amount of time, because I’ve followed through on that kind of stuff enough times, but that’s what you all are like, well, what, I don’t know what to do following through is like Lauren asking kids fighting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she’s like, okay, I can take the TV away from Ryan, but I don’t know what to take away from Sarah time bedtime.

0 (7m 10s):
Like the party stops when bedtime happens and what happens when you have to follow through the first, you know, maybe week it’s going to be terrible, especially if you’ve never, if you’ve been dancing around them feeling any discomfort and then you have to follow through on, yeah, you’re going to bed earlier, you know, and the rules, you broke them. This will help your brain. Remember, wow, it’s bedtime. You get out of the bed at all. You will be returned. There will be no talking. And as much as you resist this, it’s going to be a 30 minute that earlier by the time until further notice, so you can show, you know how to do this responsibly done.

0 (7m 51s):
That’s what I’ve done for years for them to believe me. So that was the conversation at my home. The other thing that came through my head is to be clear, we have to have to want them to stay off of screens all day, to want them to use this time, to not get depressed, to see this as an opportunity for growth, for us to do the connection and not give in to the fear and panic. And, and to make the most of this time, we have to model the behavior we seek. So we want our kids off screens this weekend. They were on screens more than we wanted, but we were all in the family room and I decided to do minimal.

0 (8m 36s):
Like I decided to allow myself to get triggered and minimally. And I had to turn around, which is at least we’re all on the same space. Scott modeled working as a puzzle. I modeled reading a book and now I’m going to model Decluttering my physical space because I know that that clutters my mind. I know there’s a correlation between physical clutter and mental clutter, the way we do anythings, the way we do everything. So I may, and I told my kids this this week is the week of Decluttering is the week of we’re going to simplify and we’re going to declutter.

0 (9m 15s):
And granted we have we’re moving in. I don’t know how many months it keeps getting pushed back probably six months. So this is a perfect opportunity for us to start. Really Parenting like that. That’s why I fall. So in love with you guys, especially when y’all raise your hands for deep Coaching ’cause, everyone’s so interesting. Everyone has an interesting story and it all ties back to my why, of what we’re doing with our kids. It does shape them for the rest of their lives and we are programming them so well. And, and so what we are doing here one more time, Oh, I can’t do it. They’re driving me nuts that are on their screens too much.

0 (9m 58s):
LA. And then, and then it’s like, Hmm, and we’re shaping humans and we’re shaping humans. So I’m ready to declutter my physical space. I’m ready to declutter in my mind, I’m ready to have my kids take part and make it sort of a family project. And more than anything, I’m ready not to lecture them about it. I’m ready to continue modeling the behavior that I see. So we did have a meeting. I did set it out a plan. I will not hound anyone. That’s my commitment to myself today. And I’m making the commitment that I am going to let me think of what I’m going to declare I’ve already, of course started this morning.

0 (10m 40s):
And I started with, I started with my fridge. There’s the old food that needs to be tossed away and put it in the distance. So, but I wanted to do a big project. And I think where I’m going to start, I’m going to start in my closet. I am going to have a lot of light crap all over Shelly. And I also have a lot of business stuff in there. Papers that need to go. And I want y’all to you. He wants to do this with me and have a, a mental Decluttering that happens. So we can be the people that and modeled behavior and, and, and do all of the things.

0 (11m 22s):
Be the people we hope our kids will grow up to become the pack leaders, the calm grown-ups, who everyone feel safe with in the moment of a crisis, the emotional grownups, right? Isn’t that who we want to be. Don’t we want our kids to grow up, to be able to handle anything in everything to know they got it to have the confidence to do so. We still have a life. We can it in our homes and it doesn’t social distancing and all that. There’s plenty to do plenty to read plenty of areas to walk up to.

0 (12m 5s):
So let’s get going. All right, guys, are you ready to start having productive conversations? Have you been listening to the podcast for awhile? And you hear me go through my three step PRODUCTIVE conversation processes to solve any problem. And you’re thinking, how does she do that? Guess what? I made a really cool resource for you guys. I call it the problem solving one sheet. Okay. It’s one sheet front and back. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but it will walk you through how to have productive conversations and you’ll practice. And before you know it, you will be having productive conversations all day, every day. It really is the solution to solve any problem.

0 (12m 46s):
So you can download it at Mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash problem-solving all one word that’s Mastermind Parenting dot com forward slash or problem solving all one word.

Happy Household Cover

Sign Up for Our Newsletter and Get Our Free Guide

Creating A Happier Household

by Randi Rubenstein