In this episode, I talk about this time of metamorphosis and using it to re-balance, re-calibrate and get back to the basics of bike riding, swimming and skating.
Many of our kids are missing out on these basic skills and as a result are unbalanced.
Go outside with your kids. Get on a bike. Lace up some blades.
Get in the pool with your kids and allow yourself to get pruney. We are all going through a metamorphosis right now and it’s time to get back to the basics.
We need this as humans. Enjoy!
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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.
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Transcription
0 (2s):
My name’s Randi Rubenstein and welcome to the Mastermind. Parenting Podcast where we believe. When your thoughts gro the conversations in your home flow.
1 (15s):
You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode one 20. Hi guys. Welcome to today’s podcast. I want to read a post by one of the moms in my mastermind group that she’d put out there recently. And she said, milestone moment, someone can ride without training wheels. Now he’s been practicing on his balance bikes for the past few weeks motivated to learn. So he can, Are a bigger bike for his birthday and keep up with the neighborhood kids. Our uncle came over today and took off the training wheels from his little bike. There’s no slowing him down. This is a big deal.
1 (55s):
This is what I said to her back. I said, this is a big deal. Seriously. I can’t tell you how many kids never learn to ride a bike. It takes time and patience and tenacity for both the kids’ and the parents. Lucky, a little guy who has two devoted moms supporting him and learning all the milestones. Love it. So I just wanted to sort of talk about bike, riding, swimming, skating, like all of the things that most of us grew up doing and how many kids in this day and age are baseball. Starz, you know, have a crazy athletic ability on all the organized sports teams from a very young age.
1 (1m 45s):
And yet can’t ride a bike, can barely swim. And don’t even think about having rollerblading or rollerskating party. Like it’s a, it’s a total shit show. I just experienced that so much over the years. And you know, it’s interesting in this time of the pandemic, your listening to this in real time, you know, we’re going through the pandemic. And my husband likes to say, when you’re driving, it sort of like every is Halloween. Like you’ve got to be so alert because there are so many people walking in biking and kids outside of that, it feels like you are going to run over here.
1 (2m 31s):
A kid, if your not just like hyper vigilant, people are in the streets, out with their families. And it’s like, it’s really nice to see. I’ve I’ve heard a lot of people say it sort of like, it feels like it’s the 1970s. Again. I think people are just playing outside. More people are enjoying being outside and I’d seen a lot of kids recently learn how to bikes and what I’ve even I’ve noticed for my kids growing up is I’ve never none of my kids in the, in the little kid years, we’re, you know, we didn’t do the whole club sports.
1 (3m 14s):
That’s just how it was, has never been our journey. We’ve always had a place down at the beach. We live about an hour and 15 minutes away from the beach. And so we came down lots and lots of weekends and my husband is a lifelong surfer. And so we would come down a lot of times on our weekends and just be at the beach. And, and so we really didn’t do your, we didn’t do your year-round organized sports. Now, let me tell you it there’s pros and cons of that there. My, when my daughter got to high school, middle school and then really high school, and all of a sudden she realized she was an athlete, like literally athlete to the point of, she just graduated from high school and she just, you know, she got like, like buckets full of award, like athlete of this school, girl athlete have this girl, athletes have that.
1 (4m 10s):
And she really didn’t start playing sports until middle of middle school through high school. So that being said for everybody, I mean, granted, some people I think have big plans for their kids to become major, you know, professional athletes. And if you have a kid that’s like a tiger woods. Yes. And that’s their love and their passion. I get it. And for those of you who were just like, no, I really want my kids just to be able to be play sports and be in the mix and yada yada yada. And they seem like they love it. You don’t have to make your life just forts.
1 (4m 51s):
One dimensional. You mean, my daughter is an example who new. And even now, even as she was, I think they said it, the athletic banquets this year. And she said, her soccer coach said if I only had a few more years with her, yeah. She probably would have gone to college and played soccer or lacrosse, but she’s okay. I don’t even know if she would’ve wanted to play soccer or lacrosse in college. Like maybe she wouldn’t have, and she has never expressed to me that she would have, and she sure did have a great high school experience and pushed yourself and enjoyed it. So my point is that I think that getting back to the basics of teaching your kids, to swim, teaching your kids, to ride a bike, teaching your kids to rollerskate or rollerblade, which really just involves going out in your front yard and maybe willing to do it with them.
1 (5m 54s):
So, anyhow, I have so many parents who were like, Oh my God, the witching hours, the witching hours. And let me tell you what makes the witching hours go a lot more smoothly going out side. And when you go outside doing things like I remember tying along jump rope, like a lawn, like an old school jump rope. Okay. Talk to our basketball hoop. And I mean, how many hours did I do report card report card with my kids. And it was just me because I didn’t have another adult to swing. And it was, this was when they were little. And then as they get older, one person, you know, swing the other side and we would ride bikes.
1 (6m 40s):
And we would rollerblade. And my son, my oldest son, who wasn’t really an organized sports kid necessarily, he would poke us, but I would run them like puppies and, and everybody would be filthy and exhausted and guess what we would go inside. And you’re like, but how do you get dinner made? Like you just figure that shit out. You guys like you don’t need to be a gourmet cook, get this stuff made that you do it ahead of time or by, I do such a mixture of buying and stuff and preparing some stuff.
1 (7m 20s):
But not that like in preparing ahead of time, like you could make taco meat ahead of time. And now all of a sudden you’ve got a mouth or a chicken taco made or whatever it is, but nothing needs to be fancy making. You ha have a big thing of beans and rice in your fridge, fresh fruit, veggies, beans, and rice grill. Some chicken, make some taco, or like have it at the beginning of the week. So you can literally throw dinner together in 15 minutes. It’s not a big deal. It does not need to be a gourmet meal. And when you have little kids and you are feeling like the days or just so exhausting and how do you do this and how do you do that? It’s really just packed leadership and, and just having some systems and organizing yourself and this, listen, if your feeling annoyed, like this is like, Oh, easy for you to say, I am the least structured, naturally systematic person on the planet.
1 (8m 16s):
But what I realized was was that those witching hours from like four to, you know, eight, really, it, it was like half of my afternoon, they’d take me out. They would take me out if I didn’t have a plan. So we would go outside. And that’s when my kids learned to do the basic things. And as far as swimming, I just look at swimming. Like I look at swimming lessons. I think that’s just, if you’re not taking your kids to swimming lessons, I personally feel like it’s negligent. Parenting because to me, swimming is, well, we live in Texas.
1 (8m 58s):
And so it was so high in the summer that lots and lots of people have pools, but just to be nervous to any time you’re near the body of water that your kid could drown. Like, I just feel like you’ve got to teach them to swim. You, you just, you just have to do so to me, swimming lessons are, are a must. It’s like going to school, like you got to teach your kids to swim. You got to teach your kids. But the things that you don’t have to do is you don’t have to teach me to ride a bike and they don’t have to teach ’em to roller skate or a roller blade. And what I’ve seen them up with my son, like during the pandemic, the only time he’s really he could really have with his friends is we would let them go on a air quote, social distance, bike ride.
1 (9m 41s):
And, and so we it’s really been funny cause it really feels like the Goonies, like there’s a pack of the, it, like we’ll be walking in all of a sudden weather. It’s my son or my other kids. It’s like a, you know, the bike path, girl gang. And you just see like all these groups of kids, bike riding, like never before. But I said to my son like, Oh, what about so? And so why don’t you invite him? He’s like a, he didn’t know how to ride a bike. And it’s like this kid that is super athletic. He’s been playing soccer his whole life. He’s been playing baseball his whole life. And I was like, Whoa, what do you mean? He does know how to buy you a ride, a bike. He was like, he didn’t know how to ride her bike. I’m like, well, and bite him and include him.
1 (10m 21s):
And maybe that I’ll put pressure on ’em to learn. So it doesn’t get left out. He was an athletic kid. I bet he could learn quickly. And, and of course it’s like, I don’t want it to embarrass them. Like, Oh, it’s like embarrassing to be 13 or 14 years old and not to know how to ride a bike. So, and Andy and the funny thing is, is that his parents, especially his mom, she’s like the mom who like goes the extra mile for the birthday parties and at this and all of that. And I’m like, really you didn’t. And you know, she has them extra tutored to get into the fancy private school and I’m thinking, but she didn’t teach them how to ride a bike like that sort of a basic thing.
1 (11m 7s):
So if you’re not covering the Basics with your kids, what I want to highly encourage you to do, especially right now during this pandemic, during this reset, during this time of cocooning, I’d shred a great article on the New York times all about how we’re literally going through collectively what a Caterpillar goes through when it becomes a butterfly we’re going through that stage of dissolving so that we can reemerge. So that’s what happens to a Caterpillar. It’s a, it’s a period of metamorphosis. And, and, and this article says, and if you looked inside that Chrysalis, when the Caterpillar goes in, when it’s going through the dissolving process to reemerge and then grow into a butterfly, like it’s not pretty, it’s messy.
1 (12m 1s):
And I think that’s what a lot of us are experiencing right now, but it’s, it feels messy. Like it feels like how many months can I do this? Oh my God, I’m going stir crazy. Every day is the same. And it’s like, as we dissolve, maybe it’s about grabbing some of those basic tools that we have sort of lost sight of or forgotten, or like teaching our kids too, ride a bike or swim, or a roller blade, you know, and, and, and work on all the different things that involve balanced. Maybe this is a time for us to become rebalanced, recalibrated as a society to really get back to the basics.
1 (12m 49s):
So that’s what I want to invite you guys to do today. If you have been all about organized sports and the club teams and pushing your kids and schlepping in the car every afternoon, every weekend, the whole family going and watching countless hours of baseball games and whatever. I want you to get quiet, recalibrate, rebalance yourselves, and get back to the basics and let me know how it goes.
1 (13m 30s):
Okay, you guys,
0 (13m 31s):
I have a great week. 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 or process 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 a 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’ll be having productive conversations all day, every day. It really is the solution to solve any problem. 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 problem solving all one word.
