155: Back to School, COVID Concerns and Questions from Moms

0 (1s):
My name is Randi Rubenstein, and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast at Mastermind Parenting, we’re on a mission to support strong-willed kids and the families that love them.

1 (13s):
You’re listening to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein episode 1 55. Hi guys, how are you? It is August, 2021, and I am covering a lot about getting back to school and everything that’s going on right now during this crazy pandemic time I’m calling it pandemic 2.0 because we thought life was getting back to normal. And now the Delta variant has come on the scene and things are far from normal and kids are going back to school and there’s a lot of parent anxiety out there.

1 (58s):
So I polled and asked some moms, some parents, but really only moms respond to what a shocker. I know this day and age, even though nobody is going to admit it, parenting is still in many ways considered women’s work. And if you are listening to this and you’re one of the few super cool dads who take your role as a parent seriously, and listen to things like parenting podcasts and our, you know, very much in the day to day caring and raising of your kids, then I’m not talking to you.

1 (1m 39s):
Don’t get your panties in a wad about this. And I’m still using the word panties because the majority of the people doing the child caring are women. So, so you’re one of the good guys. We love you. We, you are a model for all the other men out there, and I’m not being sexist towards you. And unfortunately, even when there are two working parents in a home, it seems like a lot of the child rearing responsibilities or the weight of wanting to raise great kids and do it right.

1 (2m 20s):
And try, and I don’t know, mitigate the amount of screwing them up, you know? Cause we’re all, look, it’s just part of the human experience. It’s messy being a human and we’re gonna do things we’re gonna, we’re gonna have to do some damage control later, no matter what, that’s just, that’s just part of the experience of being a human and, and so let go of perfectionism. No, you’re not going to get everything right, please. I’ve got a 23 year old, a 20 year old and a 15 year old. And literally everybody for the first time in long time is living at home right now.

1 (3m 1s):
And, and we had a family meeting last night because I realized two nights ago, like we screwed something up. Like I said to them last night, I was like, outside of this kitchen, we have three amazing human beings, but the minute those amazing human beings enter into this kitchen, you guys forget all that amazingness. And I didn’t even put it that nicely. I may have called them creeps, which of course my daughter Avery called me out on. And she’s like, okay. So when you call us creeps, but say it’s your fault? Like something just is feeling, I don’t know. So it makes feeling really insulting about all that, but I was like, we did it wrong.

1 (3m 44s):
Y’all we, we, we did to many things for you and now y’all show up and I know that two out of three of you have gone on to live in other places without us. And you take pride in your things and you, you know, take care of your body and feed yourselves and do all the things. And then you all get here and it’s like your, you know, being taken care of by like a full staff of servants. And like it’s, I’m starting to feel annoyed and resentful. So we’ve got to change something here. Like we got to work more as a team and I know why I did it. I know that, you know, I just wanted to get the people fed and just, I just did it.

1 (4m 25s):
I just, we, we did too much. We cooked, we cleaned up, we didn’t require enough. And, and so we’re undoing that now. Okay. We’re undo. It’s never too late to, to change it up. And that’s my point. Okay. That’s my point. So I pulled some moms about, I like, what are your concerns right now? What I said was, you know, what are you worried about? What are you concerned about? I want to know, you know, I want to know what’s on your mind regarding your kids and the new school year, the new 20, 21 school year.

1 (5m 6s):
So I’m going to read some of the responses and then I’m going to expand on it. So the first mom that responded was Natalie. And she said, hi, I’m worried that schools will be virtual again. My two older kids did pretty good with the virtual learning, but for the youngest one, it was horrible. My kids are at the camps this summer and they wear masks. It’s not a big deal for them. So I responded to her and I said, yeah, we’re also ready to put this pandemic behind us. This is such a valid concern. Based on the virtual experience last year, the virtual learning experience. Do you have any ideas for how to do things differently this year? If virtual learning becomes a reality and she said, I don’t have many ideas.

1 (5m 49s):
I was at work all day and my kids were doing the virtual school by themselves. It was such a disaster. The teacher would message me that my son was not in front of the computer. I would call from work at, to, to my home. And so someone would find him and put him in front of the screen. Last year, I signed up all my kids for Kumon to reduce the learning loss. They’re going to come on all summer too. Okay. So she decided to add a supplemental learning, you know, math, they’re not, she didn’t feel like they were getting what they needed. So she found a supplemental learning. It sounded like she wasn’t disappointed by that. So way to go, Natalie, on that pack leadership.

1 (6m 32s):
And now I know that you have that skill set. Like you’re like, okay, I’m worried. They lost some skills. I’m going to find some supplemental learning and I’m going to implement that. And she even implemented it during the summertime. So I know that Natalie is a pack leader. And so the issue is Natalie’s trying, you know, to go to work and get her job done. And the kids are at home and she can’t, she’s not at home with them. And so when she’s getting contacted by the teachers, like it’s super chaotic and stressful. So what do amazing pack leaders do? We delegate?

1 (7m 13s):
We can’t be all the places at the same time we have to delegate. And we have to deal with our reality, which is these kids are need more supervision when it comes to virtual learning. And it sounds like Natalie’s got people at home to do that supervising, but it also sounds like the people that she’s got in those leadership ship positions, whether it’s a co-parent or a nanny, they’re not doing that thing. So what’s the solution. If let’s just say, you know, virtual learning was offered and we had to go back to that, you know, based on what happened last year, what are we going to improve upon?

1 (8m 4s):
Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But what we know if we’re living according to growth mindset, which is the term that the author and psychologist, Carol Dweck has coined growth mindset in her book, mindset is work constantly learning from mistakes or learning from air-quotes failures, right? We’re constantly assessing what happened before and what the lessons are. And so what the lessons are is, is virtual school is hard and hard for kids and my kids need more supervision.

1 (8m 50s):
So I’m at work and I have to delegate this, but what I’m going to do is I’m going to be a very clear and intentional leader and whoever I am putting in charge at home, I need to make sure they are clear on their job responsibilities. And I also want to have some form of accountability, you know, like an accountability plan built in. Okay. So if Natalie is not sure that the people are going to follow through, then she says, so this is what I need to happen. We need to make sure that at the beginning of every class, we’re making sure that everybody’s where they need to be.

1 (9m 35s):
When they’re done with the class, they come in, they check in, they let you know that they’re done with the class. They let you know if there’s been any homework, like let’s have, you know, one, two and three questions that they answer. And then at the end of the day, I’m going to have each kid, you know, if it’s a kid old enough that can text or email, mom just send me, you know, these bullet points from the day, you know, the number one thing, you know, any assignments that they need help on anything that was confusing, something they feel proud of, right? Like some kind of daily check-in with mom.

1 (10m 16s):
And I would put that for older kids, for sure. On the older kids with younger kids, it might look like, you know, I’m going to call you at this time. And you’ll tell me the rows of the day, the thorn of the day. And, and just the, the little story you want to share that is just fun. And you think I might want to hear, you know, you’re going to have some kind of daily check-in and just put a system in place. You know, what I find is that so often parents, especially moms will come to me who have big, you know, outside of the home jobs. And they have all of this leadership energy and they have the skillset.

1 (10m 58s):
But then when it comes time to bring that skillset home and help to kind of manage the people the way a good leader does, like, you know, setting out what are our intentions, communicating with clarity, letting people know what your expectations are, putting boundaries down. You know, if you know that you’ve got a kid that has a hard time focusing, you know, knowing that they need some extra accountability, not from a place of shaming and blaming, but from a place of positive, clear communication, like, look so yeah. Your English, teacher’s hard to pay attention. What does her voice sound like?

2 (11m 39s):
Aw.

1 (11m 41s):
Yeah. Okay. That’s so rough. So how can I support you in getting the things done that you need to get done in English or paying attention or staying on it? Could you have a little doodle pad close by, would that be helpful? You know, when you start to tune out like, like what if we have some little things that you can smell that help to wake you up when you start to notice that you’re zoning out? I do that too. Oh my gosh. I have this one coworker that I work with. And when we have meetings, they love the sound of their own voice. And I just tune out. It’s so hard for me to pay attention.

1 (12m 21s):
So a lot of times I’ll keep a little hair tie on my wrist and I like give myself a snap. And it just like, it just like wakes my, wakes my body up and remind me, okay, pay attention. Or I bring in some coffee, you know that like I have to have those things. Cause I know this person is I’m just going to tune it out. And sometimes I even have a doodle pad where that’s the time where I like, you know, we’ll just like draw pictures and keeping my hand busy, helps my brain to stay calm and, and focus more. You know? So that’s where we’re really like, we’re not just setting out our expectations. We’re also doing, it’s an opportunity to do some skill building with your kids because that is life.

1 (13m 5s):
It can be hard to focus. It can be hard to stay responsible. It can be hard to do the things that we want to do. So, you know, I think that a, I think that you are, you have the leadership energy, Natalie, and now it’s just a matter of bringing that home. And I think what gets in the way so often is, you know, many of us are arguing with reality. Like it should be different. They should be doing a better job with virtual school teachers. Shouldn’t be boring. My kids should be able to pay attention. And when we’re shooting all over ourselves, it’s just not helpful. It’s just it isn’t, you know, so I think, you know, it’s like, I’ve got to life, you’re resentful that you’ve got a lot on your plate.

1 (13m 52s):
And the people at home who are in charge, aren’t doing their part in managing the kids. Well, it might be holding those people accountable, having some hard conversations, realizing that your role is the leader of the family. It doesn’t mean you have to be everywhere all the time. It just means that you have to be the one that sets up the systems and holds people accountable and sets them up for success. And, and, and holding those people at home accountable, your babysitter or your co-parent who signed up for the job, you know, that, that does involve a lot of times a hard conversation.

1 (14m 31s):
And so bring, you know, just, just being clear, like we want to avoid hard conversations quite often. But when we learn the right tools, like how to have a productive conversation, you know, no one ever got better at anything, unless they had an opportunity to practice. It’s funny because my loves to negotiate. Like right now he’s negotiating some artwork for our house. And years ago, my husband hated negotiations, which is kind of funny because he’s a business guy and he needed to, but like whenever we needed to buy a new car, like I had to be the one that negotiated, he just hated it because he hated a hard conversation.

1 (15m 13s):
He didn’t have the right tools and he read a book years ago. That’s very similar to my productive conversation process. Of course, he wasn’t willing to learn the productive conversation from the way I was teaching it. He wanted to learn it where a productive conversation basically falls into the business category. So we read this book, never split the difference. I’ve talked about it a lot and he’s read it. He’s listened to it. He’s read it again. He’s read it again. He’s read it again. And, and so he gets a F like a note back from the art dealer, basically saying, you know, which pieces are you, are you interested in? And he was like, okay, game on.

1 (15m 54s):
And he was all excited. He was all excited because now it’s super fun to practice his new skills. And so he looks, he seeds that this is an opportunity to practice these skills. What I want to say is, is these skills, these communication skills of how to be a positive leader, how to have productive conversations, how to not be scared of hard conversations, but to lean in and to help other people, you know, collaborate with you and help solve the problem. How to learn from our mistakes last year was a shit show. How can we do it differently this year? We’re never going to get better unless we have the opportunity to practice. And because when you know these little people with all the ways that they show up in life and all the ways that they’re looking to us for that positive leadership, they’re looking to us to help shape them.

1 (16m 47s):
They’re looking to us to help them learn the skillset, to, you know, solve problems in their own lives. When we lean into practicing new tools, you know, we model that for them. And the more we do it, we’re not going to be experts at the beginning. But the more opportunities we see, which happen on the reg all day, every day, when you’re raising little people, the more we practice, the better we get at it, you know, mastery only comes from practice. So we have lots of opportunity to practice. We’re not like my husband who has to wait for like a business deal or, you know, wanting to negotiate, buying some artwork for his house.

1 (17m 27s):
Like we have the opportunity to master this skill set all day long for the most part. So that’s what I would say to you, Natalie. Okay. So Samantha says I’m future tripping. Okay. That’s what we call that’s basically. It’s like the only thing you can control is this present moment. So when you’re living in the past or only thinking about the future and worrying about the future, we call that future tripping, future tripping. We don’t get to see the school. My son is going to, will he be okay going to the bathroom? Will he eat? Will he make friends? Because his current crew are AR from preschool.

1 (18m 8s):
Our going to a different school, will we have a severe regression? And my life will suck so hard for a month while he adjusts. You know what, Samantha, you you’re onto yourself. You know, who knows probably guess what? Transitions are hard. New school years are hard. And when your kid is starting a new period of their life, yeah. It’s like Lee, you’re gonna say, yeah, it’s probably gonna suck for a little bit. And as Glennon, Doyle says, we can do hard things. No one ever got stronger because they just had an easy life. We have to go through hard things and we’ll deal with it.

1 (18m 52s):
You know, what all I can do is stay in my own lane and show up as the grounded grownup who says like, we’re going to be okay, and it might be Rocky for a little bit. And its fine. You know what? There might be some lonely moments before he’s found his people. He might have an accident during the day and, and that might be super embarrassing and we can do hard things. We’ll deal with whatever comes our way because that’s who we are. You know, we can get through this and we can get through this together. So to quell mom’s anxieties, you know, it might have, it may help to have that conversation with your little one of, you know, you’re starting something new and this is what I want you to know.

1 (19m 41s):
It might feel scary. You might not know where the bathroom is. You might, you know, not feel comfortable with your teacher and you might not know who your friends are. And what I want you to know is that is all normal. And when you have days like that are hard moments, like we’re the kind of family that we’ve always got each other’s back. Like you come home, you can tell me anything. If you have a day where you’re like, I didn’t know who to sit next to and eat my lunch. And I was lonely. Like I felt like that when I was a kid and I want you to know it’s normal and you can always tell me about it.

1 (20m 22s):
And I’m always here to help in any way I can. Okay. New experiences sometimes can be exciting and a little scary all at the same time, I caught that feeling scared, sighted, where you’re scared, but you’re also excited. You know, new things are coming, but you also aren’t sure what they’re going to be like. That’s all super normal. Hey, that’s the conversation you have. You can’t control every little teeny tiny thing. But what I know is that we are all resilient as humans. And when we feel like we don’t have to go through life alone and when we send our kids the message that they don’t either like that’s where resilience is born.

1 (21m 8s):
Like, we feel like I can do this. I got this. Yeah. I am kind of scared and I don’t have to hold it all inside. Okay. So that, that would be my guidance there. Sarah says, I’m worried about a lack of socializing in the summer. I’m worried about the lack of vaccine access for kids under 12. I’m worried about masking at school. I’m worried about them getting COVID and the unknown long-term effects. I hear ya. I hear you Sarah. And you know, there’s a mask episode coming up in the next podcast. So stay tuned for that one. I think that’ll be really helpful. Cause I know mask concerns are like pretty much on everyone’s radar, who is sending their kids to school.

1 (21m 56s):
Whether whatever stance you take when it comes to masks, I’m just hearing a lot about it. So I wrote an article, I recorded a podcast. So stay tuned for that. Yeah. We don’t have any control yet. You know, over all of these things and it’s guess what guess what is human kryptonite uncertainty? That’s what I think is causing so much anxiety about this time in history. There’s so much uncertainty and we hate that as humans because uncertainty is scary. We want to know, we want to know we want it makes us feel out of control.

1 (22m 39s):
And we’re just, you know, reminding ourselves, we got this, we can do hard things. We’re knocking the curveball falls out of the park when they come our way. And when we we’re resourceful, amazing parents. And when something comes our way that we don’t know how to deal with, we find the resources because that’s who we are. We can have hard conversations. We can let our kids know it’s totally normal for you. This is why this is a yucky time. You know, this is, this is a hard time and you’re just a little kid.

1 (23m 22s):
You just want to play and have fun and learn and do all the things you’re supposed to do. And there’s like all of this other stuff. And so I just want you to remind, I just want you to remember, like you get to be a kid as much as possible and you don’t have to hold anything inside you. I just, I’m so glad you’re telling me these things. I just want you to know that you can tell me anything, right? Because we’re getting through this time together and you know what, at first, when you go back to school, like you’re used to being at home and not playing with friends, I’m kind of like that to me. Like I’m just used to hanging out with you guys.

1 (24m 1s):
And I haven’t been with friends as much and I’m worried like, am I gonna know what to talk about? Remember you guys, the biggest connector and the thing that helps us to feel as powerful as possible is when we feel like we are not the only ones. So when you send your kids, that message of me too. Yeah. This is a hard time. And you listen and you hear them and you reflect back y’all this is just all productive conversation. Remember productive conversations don’t have to happen in one sitting like we can just do elements of it all the time. Me to see their perspective, hear them actively listen.

1 (24m 44s):
Okay. S a P how to master empathy without feeling like a SAP. I know corny. See their perspective that you send them the message of me too. Me too. Me too. You state the obvious. Yeah. You so you blah, blah, blah. This make sense. Get them talking, hear them reflect back. Don’t solve it. Duct tape your mouth, right. Don’t be a fixer. I’m always, you know, trying to dictate my mouth from wanting to fix and solve and happy up, but just listen, like holding space for someone and just being with them and sending them the message that they are worthy of being heard.

1 (25m 30s):
Y’all that is powerful stuff. So that’s what I had to say to Sarah. Okay. Amy says my family’s lost well over a year of normal interaction with others. Essentially. We’ve been treading water since March of 2020. I finally took a, we finally took a vacation, July six and Delta took over while we were gone. We’re struggling with the school deadline to go back to virtual school without an actual schedule on which to plan how. And we have our paid jobs as well. We’re also dreading telling the boys, there’s a very good chance. We’ll keep them out of, on campus, learning at public school for awhile, for a while longer after promising them that they’d be back this fall.

1 (26m 18s):
Plus starting kindergarten is supposed to be fun. Little sisters enrolled in a small program, preschool program, we feel is safe, but how does she get to go? And we don’t, I’m certain that that’s going to be the next question. I don’t know how much to tell them because I don’t want them to be scared, but I feel like I’m losing my mind with worry. So all productive conversation. Once again, you know, kindergarten is supposed to be fun. You were supposed to be back at school. So disappointing you feeling disappointed. Yeah, I know. I feel disappointed too. It makes sense that you’re disappointed.

1 (26m 59s):
See their perspective. You’ve been waiting. You were like, but I get to go to school next year. And you’ve been so patient and, and you know what, you’re over it. This house is awesome, but like you’re sick of looking at just these walls in this house. You were ready to look at fun school walls and meet new friends and be back with friends and, and just get to be a kid and get to go back to school. This is super, this is super disappointing. I get it. Okay. You know, we, me too. I see. It makes sense. Yeah.

1 (27m 39s):
I know. It feels counterintuitive. We want to talk them into, this is not the time to like give them a bunch of statistics. This is just about like hearing them, seeing them understand it. Like, yes, we, you, you absolutely feel disappointed. Yeah, I would to, I know this is your suppose. This, this is supposed to be an exciting time. See? And then it’s like, we’re pausing. We’re not solving it for them. It’s really unbelievable. When you just learn to lean into the pause, how often kids start to solve their own problems.

1 (28m 25s):
It’s like, it’s in there, it’s in their DNA if you allow it. But most of us don’t allow it because it’s uncomfortable. And so we’re trying to run away from uncomfortable moments and we want them not to feel the uncomfortable moments. And then we’re the, we’re worried about when they feel the uncomfortable moments, but what if they just learned to feel the uncomfortable moments? Like what if that was part of the conditioning we were raising them with where, when they got older and became adults, they didn’t have to overeat. Overdrink over shop over gossip over, over, over, over to find temporary pleasure hits to try to escape discomfort.

1 (29m 10s):
What if they like learned how to just feel the discomfort? They say, it takes 90 seconds for an emotion to move through your body. And I sort of heard this and I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And you know, I love S like learning about neuroscience and learning about what’s happening in our bodies. And some really, you know, well, credentialed people claimed that this was true, but I didn’t a hundred percent know what was true, but I was like, yeah, okay, I’ll go with that. I hadn’t really experienced it until my youngest son Corey. And a few years ago, I remember I was telling him that I’m, you know, when he was, he was going to sleep away camp, I think it was three years ago.

1 (29m 54s):
So he was like, he just went into it. So he was going into seventh grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade. 10th grade. No. So he’s going into eighth grade, I think. Yeah, he was going into eighth grade. And when he goes to sleep away camp, you know, one of the things I love the most about sleep-away camp is that it’s a tech free experience. And so it was the night before he was going, I was going through like all of his things, his packing and just making sure everything was good. And I said, so where’s your carry on bag? Do you have your book in it? And he was like, no, I put it in my trunk. I’m not taking a book. I’m like, well, what are you going to do on the plane? He’s like, well, I’ll be on my phone. I was like, but your phone staying at home member, campus tech free.

1 (30m 36s):
He’s like, no, they take your phone when you get to camp. But everybody uses their camp, their phone on the plane. And then after camp, they give it back to you for the plane ride. I was like, yeah, we’re going to do a tech free door to door experience.

3 (30m 49s):
And he was like, mom, but no, but everyone will have their

1 (30m 53s):
Phones. I was like, I know it’ll be hard. That’s why I was saying, you may want to pack your book and your carry on. And he starts to get all worked up and I can tell it’s going to go nowhere. So I just like stay in the room, but I go like over to his bathroom area and I start like tidying up something that doesn’t need to be tie-dyed. And I see him from the corner of my eye, go over to his bed and kind of lay on his side and stare up kind of in the distance at the ceiling. And I see him, his chest, like move, like move up and down and he’s just staring up and I’m telling you guys it was 90 seconds.

1 (31m 36s):
And then I went and sat down next to him and I said, you know, what else are you worried about that you’re going to be bored? Or the other kids maybe I’ll make fun of you. And he like looked at me and he was like, it’s fine. Like, he had felt the discomfort and it moved through his body and he had already moved on to like, it’ll be fine. It’s not a big deal. And it’s amazing when we learn to lean into the pause, when we empathize, we see their perspective. Yeah. It’s, you know, and we acknowledged the feelings. Yeah. It’s going to be, you know, it’s going to be hard.

1 (32m 16s):
It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be, this is going to be that you’re feeling this. And then we give them some space to sort of work through it without exacerbating it without arguing or power struggling or trying to convince them. And we allow them to feel the feelings and then they resolve it on their own. It’s unbelievable. And most of us don’t do this. So if you’re like, well, my kid would never do this. It’s because I want to ask you, like, have you tried, like, have you done it this way? So, you know, we can do hard things. What does that mean? It means this, it means not starting kindergarten when you were really looking forward to starting kindergarten, it means having to go back to figuring out, you know, virtual school and looking at last year and say, seeing what worked, what didn’t work, how can we improve upon it?

1 (33m 11s):
It means not living in the sheds, right? It means what can we do to deal with this hard time, right? Like this is our reality. It is what it is. And when we don’t argue with reality, but we just show up as the resilient humans that we are, guess what we can accomplish a whole lot. And we can get through a lot of less than awesome moments in our lives. And that’s where we are right now. Right. And I think it’s important to feel like I’m not alone.

1 (33m 51s):
I have resources available. I can learn how to feel the hard feelings. And when I modeled that my kids learn how to do that too. And maybe they’ll get to adulthood with a better skillset than I have, because isn’t that the point of being a human isn’t, every generation supposed to just get it a little more right than the one before I think that’s called evolution. Okay guys, that’s what I got for you.

0 (34m 19s):
I hope this was helpful. Thanks for listening today, guys. I hope you picked up some tips tools, maybe some baby steps for creating more balance and boundaries in your life. And I just wanted to let you know, if you want to continue moving the needle forward in creating this for yourself, having a happier household. I want you to go to my website and check out Mastermind, Parenting dot com. We have three beginning programs, and if you need some accountability and more support than please look for the one that would be a good fit for you. And as always, we’re on all the social channels under Mastermind Parenting on Instagram, it’s Mastermind, underscore parenting.

0 (35m 4s):
And you know, periodically I do pop up on different Instagram lives, Facebook lives, where I give you teaching and coaching. And I love engaging with you live to help you help your strong-willed kids so that they can feel better because when they feel better, they do better. And I love, love, love, getting to know you guys. So thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review super, super appreciative.