 The short seven-minute drive to the office was a blur and before I knew it, I was sitting in my office parking lot. I took a shaky deep breath, blinked away the last of my tears and checked my make-up in the rearview mirror. A fresh coat of lipstick signaled I had it all together on the outside, even if my inside wasn’t so sure. I gathered my computer bag, purse, jacket and two perfectly framed baby photos and walked towards the door. My heart was pounding, butterflies were in my stomach, it was as if were my first day all over again. My hand hovered over the door handle. I took a deep breath and walked in.
The familiar smell of carpet, stale air and coffee filled the unchanged lobby– unlike my house that now smelled like baby powder, shampoo and diapers. Conversations floated over the cubicle walls, a soft hum of customers being helped, not the sing-song cadence of nursery rhymes and paddy cake. Co-workers enthusiastically welcomed me back and obliged when I practically shoved my daughters photo in their face. My chair squeaked in its familiar way and even though someone had changed the height, I knew it was my trusty chair. Mentally I knew I hadn’t been here in over 90 days, but it felt like no time had passed at all. Everything was the same, except me. Over the next few months, a rough outline of a daily routine emerged where reuniting with my happy baby at the end of the day was the highlight. I had figured out the basics of being a “working mom”, but deep down I still could feel the nagging sense I should be doing more at work. Growing up my ambition had been such a clear, driving force in my professional life and now that my priorities had changed, I wasn’t quite sure what my next move was. I was at this weird crossroads where I wasn’t quite sure where my career ambition fit with my desire to be a great mother. I sensed I was not the only one, but no one was talking about this side of motherhood. If only I had been able to read the book The Ambition Decisions: What Women Know About Work, Family and The Path to Building a Life. I learned about this book a few weeks ago while listening to the Atomic Moms podcast where host Ellie Knuas interviewed the book’s co-author Elizabeth Wallace. Along with co-author Hana Schank, the two reconnected with their college classmates to see if they had followed the ambitious paths they had set out for themselves when graduating from college. On the podcast, Wallace shared the central questions the book attempted to answer “Am I doing something wrong? Why is everything not the way I expected it to be? What happened to how ambitious I was when I was 18-22?” Through their interview, the authors learned their friends fell into one of three categories. The High Achievers were those friends who had climbed the ladder and achieved a high level of success in their fields. The Opt Outers left their careers to raise a family, while the Flex Lifers maintained some level of their career while also raising a family. Though I clearly fall into the Flex Lifer category, each story shared was powerful in understanding the thought processes each of the women went through as they made major decisions in their lives. There are so many take-a-ways from each chapter, it’s hard to narrow down the list to choose a favorite. One of the quotes I loved was from the Economics chapter, “Feeling that you must also be deeply, madly in love with your job puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on what is ultimately a way to feed yourself and pay bills. Work can be meaningful in a lot of ways, so consider what makes work meaningful for you.” Isn’t that the truth? It’s hard enough trying to juggle parenting, marriage and career, sometimes your job’s only function is to pay the bills and that’s ok. Another quote I liked was in the chapter on Change, “When you’ve got a routine down of being there to meet the school bus, are used to working from home so you can run out for groceries in between conference calls, or have left work promptly at five every day for years to be there to help with homework, it seems impossible to live life any other way. But these stories remind us that sometimes, when women want something very badly, something that will dramatically boost their career or raise up their life’s work, they deserve to pursue it, even as it disrupts their family life to do so. Ambition, even when shelved for twelve months, or twelve years, demands to be fed.” Often when we get into a routine, it’s hard to imagine things any other way. It’s easy to fall into the belief that we sacrifice our own ambition to raise our children. The stories shared in this book exemplify that it’s never too late, the opportunities will always be there for you, even if the timeline may not be what you expected. As I read this book, it raised some fundamental questions with society and work in general. Why does a promotion in corporate America come with the assumption you will work long hours? How is that healthy for anyone? Should we really be dedicating 10-12 hours a day to anything, much less work? If there is so much work to be done, shouldn’t they hire more people? Or what about the employers who aren’t willing to allow employees to work a flexible schedule? What are they afraid will happen? Is it truly a requirement that the work get done between the hours of 8 – 5 or is it just what we have been trained to believe? Or why do we measure our success by what we thought it would look like twenty years ago? Why don’t we talk more about how to handle the detours and changes along the way? Big questions with no easy answers. At the end of the podcast, Wallace shared the unofficial tagline for the book “Everything you are doing right now is ok”. If I could go back in time and talk to myself as a new mom, that is what I would tell her. This book is confirmation of a truth I’ve come to realize over the years, ambition ebbs and flows. We are taught to believe ambition equates to keeping your foot on the gas, when it’s perfectly acceptable to drive steadily in the right lane for a while. The final pages of the book were among the most powerful, a rally cry from the authors to keep this conversation going. “These are topics that women don’t often talk openly about, but we should, because the more we talk about them, the more obvious it becomes that it’s not just you. It’s all of us. We are all facing the same challenges”. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.
0 Comments
 A few weeks ago, I wrote about the documentary Being Serena, which followed Serena Williams from the birth of her daughter through her journey back to playing tennis. What originally struck me was how Serena’s experience as a working mom, struggling to manage her career, family and the emotions that go along with it, was not that different from the struggles of working moms everywhere.
Serena has embraced her new, unofficial role as a spokeswoman for moms. She shares pictures and videos on social media. Most of the articles and interviews touch on her return to tennis since being a mother. It’s a good “story” and with Serena being so open and willing to talk about the joys and the struggles of managing work and family, the media has embraced it. On July 7th, she posted the following on Twitter “She took her first steps….I was training and missed it. I cried.” The honesty and raw emotion is not something you often see in the perfect, filtered world of social media. Over three thousand of her followers left a comment and more than 112,000 followers clicked the heart to like the post. The outpouring of support in the comments was inspiring. People told stories about how their traveling, working moms made them stronger people. They reassured her there would be many more special moments to come that she would witness. One mom wrote the comments in the feed were making her feel better about her own choices as a working mom. The extra training paid off and last Saturday, Serena played in the Wimbledon finals. Ten months after having her daughter, Serena was poised to make history by winning her 24th Grand Slam title and completing the ultimate come back story. But, it was not meant to be. Her opponent, Angelique Kerber, played a near flawless game while Serena did not. As the unforced errors for Serena started to pile up I couldn’t help but wonder, what was her night like last night? Was she up with the baby or did the baby wake up super early this morning? I’m not offering excuses for her play, only thinking about how life at home can influence how you perform at work. After the match, the interviewer asked Serena about being a “super-human supermum”. Serena smiled, and her voice cracked as she replied “No, I'm just me and that's all I can be. But for all the moms out there, I was playing for you today, and I tried.” Often, we describe moms as “Super Moms” for their ability to handle so much all at once but I love that she said, “I’m just me”. She’s taking it day by day, doing the best she can. Like every mom has to, she has made choices based on what is important to her and she is executing them the only way she knows how. Does it really take super human strength to do what you love for the people you love? All working moms miss big events and have bad days at work when your best is not good enough. All moms feel like a super hero when the juggle appointments, homework, activities and still manage to squeeze in dinner. These times can make moms feel as if they are the only ones who experience these feelings. How many of us have had similar days where it seems we can’t handle the pressures of being a working mom? Would it be easier to treat each day like a tennis match where you win, lose, or maybe you end in a tie. Regardless you go out there, you try your best and you move on. You don’t let one day, one match, one project define your abilities. You chalk it up to not being at your best and you come out fresh the next day. Gatorade released a powerful commercial the night before the Wimbledon Finals, titled “Like a Mother”. I love this commercial and am surprised it has not gotten more press. Though the words are meant for Serena, all moms can relate to and find strength in these words. The final line was taken from one of Serena’s video posts when she was showing her daughter Center Court for the first time. Here are the words spoken in the commercial: You sacrificed, like a mother You pushed through the pain, like a mother You got back to work, like a mother You gave 100% without any sleep, like a mother You grew stronger, like a mother You found an extra gear, like a mother You battled You showed them you never lost it You Created Greatness……like a mother “Yes Olympia, your dreams can come true too” Now go take on your day, like a mother. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.  They have golf carts you can drive! And you can shoot baskets on the new basketball court! Have you seen the Viking boat? Dusty Divot is now filled with trees! Did you find a lightning bolt yet?
Earlier this week a new “season” of the wildly popular video game Fortnite was released. If you couldn’t already tell, it was a very big deal in our house. I have to admit, when I first heard of this game, I was skeptical. I wasn’t totally on board with the idea of a first-person shooter game, but this game is different. The website describes the game as a survival game, there is no blood or graphic violence. After some discussion, we allowed our son to play and there has been no looking back. Apparently, we are not the only ones, it is estimated that 125 million people have played Fortnite in the last year. I have spent some time watching my son play and here’s what I’ve learned. Before the game even starts, there are decisions to make that are almost as important as the game itself. First, you must choose your “skin”, which is your character for the game. The characters are male or female and to my surprise, the female characters are just as popular as the male characters. You also get to choose your glider and a pickaxe. They all have the same functional capabilities and the decision on which to use is purely based on the cool factor. Another big choice is around the dances, because when you are out on the battlefield, you might need a quick dance break to do the worm or floss or jubilation. Chances are you have seen kids, or major league baseball players, doing these dances out in public. A coworker told me his son stopped to show some kids at the mall the right way to do one dance. During my son’s baseball games, you never knew if a fielder might start doing the Floss during a break in the action. These are fun aspects of the game that have little impact on the outcome of the actual game play and are purely entertaining. Another big part of the popularity of the game is the ability to play online with your friends. As parents we might reminisce about long summer days where we took off on our bikes in the morning and came home for dinner. But let’s face it, that was a different time. Would you really be ok with your kid riding off on their bike and not knowing where they were going? Did they have their helmet on? Did they have a phone with them so they could call you or so you could track them and know where they were at? Things are different now. Our kids are growing up in a time where social interaction takes place through a screen. I don’t think we should classify it as a good thing or a bad thing, it just is the way it is. From a game perspective, Fortnite allows players to play alone, with a friend or with 3 other friends. When they play with their friends, their likelihood of success improves if they can communicate effectively and coordinate their moves. They learn each other’s strengths, like building, and figure out ways to utilize those strengths to help them get farther in the game. They share their materials with each other. If one of their teammates gets knocked down, they can go over to them and help heal them. On the surface, these are all actions for the purpose of winning the game, a Victory Royale. Under the surface, the players are learning how to work as a team and how to verbally communicate with someone who is not sitting in the same room. As with any type of communication, it doesn’t always go smoothly. The team doesn’t win, communication breaks down and feelings get hurt. This too is an important part of the game. I listen to what is going on and what is being said. I poke my heard around the corner when I hear things starting to escalate and ask the question “are you still having fun?” This is usually all it takes to reset the tone. On the other hand, like all relationships, they have to figure things out for themselves. What has worked for me is that I ask a lot of questions. As a result, I hear about a lot of details of what happened in each game, but it also opens the door to talk about more of the social interactions as well. Video games are here to stay and with millions of users every day, Fortnite is not going away any time soon. No matter which is the game of choice in your household, if you take the time to watch them play, you’ll feel more comfortable in understanding how they spend their time and why they find it so fun. It will also give you the vocabulary to talk to them about something they are really interested in, which always leads to more conversations and connection. Let’s Go! Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey  Did your heart sink just a little when you read that question? No parent wants to come to the realization their child is the one being mean, not sharing, being bossy or worse, being the bully to another friend in the class. As parents our first step is to accept that we cannot truly know what happens when we are not around. Even if we can watch unobserved from a far, we can’t hear every word they say or know the context of what is happening. As hard as it might be for us to accept, we cannot turn a blind eye and refuse to accept our child might be part of the problem.
If your child has been accused of being a bully, the first step is to talk to them. It is important to find a time when you have their full attention and they are ready to talk. This might mean you wait a couple hours after school or wait until before bed time when you can get them to open up. It’s important you are calm and unaccusing. Ask them to describe what happened. Ask them how they were feeling before and after the incident. How would they handle it differently now? It may be difficult for them to articulate their feelings. We must help them by introducing language to help them put words to their feelings. We then need to take it a step further by talking about how our feelings can influence our actions. Depending on the age of your child, it may take a little time for them to be able to tie the two together but if you keep talking about it, they will pick it up. The child’s personal emotional state is not the only thing to look at when trying to figure out where this bully mentality is coming from. Kids can be largely unaware of how one action will lead to another and another. They don’t have the mental capacity to think of the consequences ahead of time, so often they react without thinking of what will come next (this is especially true of boys who act from the adrenaline rush and not from the consequence). Not only do they not think about the consequence, but they are not thinking about how it would feel to another person. Compassion comes easily to some children and not as easily to others. You can help develop your child's emotional intelligence by using this language on a daily basis. For example, “when you picked up your toys that made me feel very happy”. It may seem simple, but with each example they will begin to develop a greater awareness of emotional intelligence in every day situations. Another thing to consider is your child may be testing the boundaries. I like to think of it as a child trying on a coat. They may have seen someone else acting this way, so they want to see what happens if they do it. They try on the coat to see how it feels and fits their personality. They want to see what reaction they get. They may wear this coat for a few weeks and then decide to take it off. As much as we would like to help our kids with short cuts, there are some things they must learn themselves. It is not easy to sit by and watch. If they are causing bodily harm, then we must step in, but in other situations, if possible, we must let them work out it out for themselves. There are numerous resources out there for parents if you would like to go deeper on this subject. I have linked articles from Parents Magazine, Child Mind Institute and Huffington Post. Lastly, be gentle with yourself. This is not the time to pile on the self-guilt that you should have done more to see this coming. Give yourself a break. All you can do is start from where you are now and move forward. It will not do you any good to worry about what might have happened in the past to contribute to this. All you can do is take small actions each day like spending ten minutes a day doing an activity of your child’s choice or while watching a show talk about how the character must be feeling. You will be surprised how quickly those small actions build on each other to create change. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page.  Summer is here! Each new day stretches lazily in front of you and even the trees seem to take a collective sigh of relief. Time appears to slow down, is it possible there are more minutes in a summer day?
But as these lazy summer days stretch out in front of us, we’re often interrupted by incessant chatter, screams of “not fair”, shouts of domestic injustice and the summer rally cry of “I’m bored” as it echoes throughout neighborhoods everywhere. Ah the joy and cruelty of summer break, a time we look forward to and dread all at once. Most of us have been in the summer mode for at least a couple of weeks, enjoying those idyllic, relaxing days, but like so many things, there is an underlying current lurking. Commonly described as “getting on your nerves” or “pushing your buttons”, your little bundles of joy that bring you so much happiness, can also take your frustration level from 0-100 with an “innocent” smirk. (“Whaaaaatttt? I didn’t even SAY any Thing!” Sound familiar?) Knowing the initial novelty of summer was wearing off, I expected parents were starting to feel a little worn down. Early Friday morning, around 6:30 am PST, I posted this question on Facebook “What is something your kids do to push your buttons?” and within minutes parents were commenting with their answers. You know you’re onto something when people stop their morning routine to comment. This was definitely a hot topic on the minds of many of my fellow parent’s minds. The most popular “button pusher” was kids who argued, challenged, debated or tried to negotiate at every turn. We’ve all been there and it’s enough to bring a parent to their breaking point having “because I said so” on the tip of your tongue at all times. All parents have experienced this one and it’s especially hard because we have no one to blame for this one but ourselves! We encourage our kids from birth to be curious, to ask questions and challenge the world around them. We believe as parents this will make their lives full and interesting and will lead them to a successful life…..but then they start turning it around on us. Challenging us! Questioning us! Correcting us! This was not how it was supposed to work! We console ourselves by imagining their future as a lawyer or how they’ll be able to negotiate a huge salary one day, but that does nothing when you are in the thick of the moment when all you want is for them to do what you asked or just go to bed. What drives their need to be right and argue? Is it that they want their voice to be heard? Maybe they are trying to “prove” they are knowledgeable and show their maturity? Maybe they are testing the waters with you in a safe environment to see how far they can push a boundary? Or maybe they are just being kids with little self-regulation and a lot of growing up to do? The second most popular answer for button pushing was around doing (or not doing) chores. Laundry, trash, dishes or just picking up after themselves is rarely done in the time or the manner parents expect it should be done. Let’s face it, at this point in our lives we know how we like things done and can multi-task three or four chores at once. At the same time, we appreciate how hard we have worked to buy the things we have, and we want them to be taken care of. So, with all that being said, asking a child to pick up their toys, put away clothes or wash the dishes should not be a big deal, right? After all, if we ask our spouse to fix something, they stop what they are doing and fix it right away, right? Or if they ask us to get something at the grocery store, we remember every time, right? Here’s the thing, when you ask anyone to do something for you, especially if it is something they don’t want to do, they are going to meet you with resistance. You do the same thing! The difference is you bite the bullet and get it done or you do it because you know it’s the nice thing to do. Your kids don’t have that level of rational thinking, they react emotionally, that’s how their brain is wired. So, what’s a parent to do? If it is important the child completes the task then you must be prepared to ask them, without emotion, multiple times to do it. We know kids are easily distracted. It’s not that they don’t respect you or are trying to make you mad, they just don’t want to do it (you probably don’t want to do it either, which is why you are asking them to do it). Don’t count how many times you’ve asked them to do it, this only leads to your own frustration. Don’t let your anger bubble with every request. Stay calm. Ask them to do it, then ask them again. If you must, watch them until the task is done, then be happy it’s done and move on with your day. One button pushing response was when her kids are “being kids lol” it pushed her buttons. Isn’t this the crux of it all? We remember and forget this all at once. We assume they should act older because they know so much more than they did before. We’ve been through this before, how come they can’t take what they know and act differently? Because they are kids. Because they are human. How many times do you do something when you know better? For example, you know you should leave 5-10 minutes earlier to get there on time, but you can’t manage to get out of the house earlier. You know better, but you don’t do it. Connecting the knowing and the doing is hard, no matter what age you are. What is the antidote for button pushing? That’s a difficult question and one with many answers. A good place to start is by trying to stay calm and patient in the moment. Our kids are not intentionally trying to make us angry, they are just reacting in the only immature way they know how to right now. I also believe that no matter how old they are, they are looking for your love and validation. Their actions may be saying something different, but deep down they want to know that you see them, you hear them and that they matter. And deep down you know that beyond the dirty dishes, arguments, negotiations, lies and laundry, your love for them will never change. Heart-FULLy Yours, Kacey Don’t miss a post – sign up to receive the blog in your inbox every week. Scroll to the top of the page and you’ll see a box to enter your email in the upper right side of the page. |
Categories
All
Archives
June 2021
AuthorI started writing this blog because I wanted to have deeper conversations beyond "How are you?", "Busy", with other parents. Over the years I've shared personal stories, articles, authors and topics to facilitate conversations with parents about the joys and the challenges of parenting. |
RSS Feed
|
|
Privacy Policy
Disclaimer: I may receive affiliate compensation from the resources and websites mentioned on this website.
© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching
Disclaimer: I may receive affiliate compensation from the resources and websites mentioned on this website.
© 2021 Balanced Heart Coaching