Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I’m circling back to one of the original themes of this podcast: fighting with my boys. I’ve been noticing one common thread behind so many of our arguments—or the moments when we successfully avoid them—and it usually comes down to trust. Whenever I trust my boys, there is less friction. But when I’m worried they won’t manage their time, finish their homework, study enough, come home on time, or do what they said they would do, I start questioning, checking, and assuming the worst. It feels like good parenting in the moment, but often it’s really anxiety and fear pretending to be responsibility. I share a story about buying ski boots with my 10-year-old and realizing that he was right when he said the boots didn’t fit. I also talk about the importance of setting our kids up to fail, because failure is often how they learn. Our job isn’t always to prevent every mistake—it’s to give them opportunities to succeed, fail, and learn for themselves. I also explore the perfectionist side of parenting and everyday life. Sometimes we avoid doing something because we can’t do it perfectly: cleaning the kitchen, working out, recording a podcast, or handling a parenting moment exactly right. My reminder to myself is: do it s****y. Lower the expectations, let go of the perfect process, and just begin. Progress creates momentum, and momentum makes it easier to keep going. This episode is about noticing when we don’t trust, catching ourselves without judgment, giving our kids room to learn, and giving ourselves permission to be imperfect parents who are still doing a pretty good job. Full Transcript Hey guys, how are you? How’s it going? How’s life? I am doing well and solving, problem solving and thinking about you guys. And I think I haven’t talked to you in a long time about fighting, and this is what this podcast started out to be. But I think that I touch upon a lot of different things, and I just wanted to circle around to the fighting with the boys and kind of share with you what’s going on with my teenagers and the one common thread I see throughout all the fights—or lack of the fights. And I’ve definitely talked about it before, but I think it still is very important to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, because that’s how we learn. So it’s very simple. Very, very, very simple so far. Whenever I trust my boys, I avoid a fight. And whenever there’s a lack of trust, and instead I have a fear—a fear that he’s wrong, a fear that he’s not going to manage his time, a fear that he didn’t do a good enough job with his homework, that he didn’t study enough for the test, a fear that he won’t be home on time from the neighbours, a fear that they won’t do the jobs I asked them to do—that’s when there’s friction. Every single time. And it’s very hard for us to trust them because they don’t know what they’re doing most of the time, right? They’re teenagers. But so many times I’m wrong when I don’t trust. I’m just dead wrong. Especially with their work, their time management, studying enough, and things like that. For example, I was picking out ski boots for my 10-year-old. He tried them on and said they were too small. I did not trust him. To be honest, I said to him, “It is my job not to trust you, because when we go to the store and they measure you, they’re going to tell me you need this exact size that we already have at home. So let’s bring this boot with us and go to the store and have them measure you.” So we went to the store. They measured him, and they did say he needed this boot. But then, when we proceeded to try on this boot and the boot size up, he was right. They did not fit. Either they measured him wrong, or his foot just fits differently, or the boots fit smaller, or something. But I was wrong. He needed brand-new boots—not brand-new, but we bought used. The point is, he said to me, “Mom, you did not trust me. I kept telling you and telling you and telling you.” And this was my 10-year-old. I’m finding my 10-year-olds are a lot less teenage-y, right? They have less attitude. They’re more innocent. They’re so honest. They want to do such a good job. So it’s easier to trust them in some ways, and in some ways it’s not, because they’re still little kids who I do have to check on things with. But I want to share these moments with you so that you start paying attention to when you don’t trust. And you know what? This is the thing: the not-trusting part, when we are not trusting, it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, I’m doing a bad thing.” No. It feels like we’re actually doing a really good job parenting. We’re like, “We know what’s going to happen. I need to make sure that I talk to him about this, and I question him, and I double-check, and I need to prevent this terrible thing from happening.” It feels like anxiety. It feels like worry. It feels like preventative parenting. It just feels like good parenting. Like, this is what I know I should do. But it also doesn’t feel that good, right? Because we’re not trusting. We’re coming from assuming the worst. So, being able to catch yourself when you feel like that—when it feels like anxiety but also feels like good parenting—check yourself. Am I trusting them? Can I trust them? How much trust can I give them here? And also, my friend—I was playing tennis with her—and she was telling me a story about her son. She said, “I have to set him up to fail so that he learns.” And that sentence just got imprinted in my head because that is so true. Set him up to fail. Set him up to fail. Why? Because that’s how they learn. They don’t learn from us telling them. They learn from the failure, which is super hard for us to do because we are constantly trying to avoid the failure, right? And when we trust, that’s what we’re doing. We’re setting them up either to succeed or to fail. But either way, we’re setting them up to learn. Succeed or learn. So that’s my little take on parenting teenagers and 10-year-olds. Hopefully, you guys can access that idea of trusting and not trusting and balance it out. And what else? The other thing I want to put in there—a little sprinkle for you and for me—is: do it s****y. Lower your expectations way down. How do we do that? Well, just plan to fail half of the time. Plan to not trust them half of the time. Why? Because we’re human. Because we’re moms. Because we’re parenting. By setting our expectations way lower—setting our expectation to fail—we’re not going to beat ourselves up. We’re not going to feel disappointed. We’re not going to be so shocked. We’re not going to feel like a terrible parent. No. We’re going to feel like, “Hey, we’re actually doing pretty good. Look at how much we are succeeding here.” And the reason why I’m saying this is because the more I find the perfectionist streak in me, the more I’m realizing how much it affects all of us. And the fear is the perfectionist coming out. Perfectionist people are afraid people. If a person is not a perfectionist, they’re not afraid to fail. They’re not afraid to have a messy ending, a s****y result, the failure, the fight, whatever. The more I uncover this in myself, I’m always so surprised because I don’t think of myself as a perfectionist. But every time I uncover it, I’m so surprised. I didn’t think I was, but I am. Even with cleaning up the kitchen. I often don’t finish it because in my mind I’m like, “No, I have to have a longer amount of time. I have to have no disturbances. If I’m just going to be too stressed trying to clean it with this chaos, I’m not going to do it.” And that is perfectionist-type thinking. Why? Because I’m afraid the process will not go perfectly. I’m afraid that I will be stressed out. I’m afraid that I will snap at the kids. I’m afraid I won’t finish. And that is perfectionist thinking because last night I told myself, “Do it s****y. Do it s****y. Just do it.” And I did it. I totally did not do it as perfectly as I envisioned the process, but I got it done. And it looks amazing. And it feels great to get up to a kitchen that’s tidy. So it’s not only the results that we want to be perfect. It’s the process, too. Like, “I’m not going to attempt a workout if I don’t have a full hour and my perfect outfit and my protein shake.” It’s just going to stress me out to even think about working out right now because it’s so busy and I don’t have a full hour. So I’m not going to do it at all. That is perfectionist thinking. Do you have 20 minutes? Can you do five exercises in the clothes that you’re already wearing? Do you have water? Okay, you don’t have water. Just do 10 push-ups and 20 squats. That is going against your fear of a perfect process. Doing it s****y is going against the fear that the process has to be perfect—the way it’s happening has to be perfect. And I find it so exciting and freeing. What else can I do s****y? But the thing is, doing it s****y is a way to get you to do the thing you want to do. You don’t actually do it that s****y. You just lower your expectations of the process and the result, and you get it done. And then you feel incredible because you have progress. Once you have progress, you have momentum. Once you have momentum, you are more excited to keep going, to keep creating, to keep doing the same thing. So I’m just so happy because this is what I told myself about this podcast. I was like, “It does not have to be groundbreaking, but let’s just do it.” Even if I’ve repeated myself, and I’ve talked about it before, it’s still s Support the show
