May 15, 2025 • 13 mins
In this episode of I’ll Do Better Tomorrow, Justin and Kylie share two powerful parenting wins from their week—one about holding firm with limits and another about letting go with trust. Together, they reflect on how boundaries, autonomy, and persistence are essential ingredients in helping children grow into capable, responsible decision-makers.
KEY POINTS:
- Children need clear, consistent boundaries—especially when it comes to expectations and screen time.
- Limits may be met with resistance, but they help children develop resilience and internal motivation.
- Giving children autonomy over their food choices (within a supportive structure) can lead to lasting learning and healthier habits.
- Parenting isn’t about eliminating struggle—it’s about guiding our kids through it, patiently and consistently.
- Trust the long game: small wins add up over time.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Once you do the hard stuff, then you get to do the good stuff.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Explore–Explain–Empower discipline framework
happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
- Hold the boundary—even when it’s inconvenient. Kids learn what matters when we stay consistent.
- Allow space for autonomy—give kids opportunities to feel the natural outcomes of their choices.
- Celebrate the small wins—even when progress is slow, it still counts.
- Avoid the path of least resistance—growth often comes through struggle, not shortcuts.
- Trust the process—support, scaffold, and repeat. Your persistence will pay off.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Date night for the kids. Is it a good idea,
is it a bad idea? Does it work or does
it just indulge them? And the importance of setting limits.
That's where we're going today on the Happy Families podcast
Real Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcasts where Justin and Kylie Courson. Every Friday we
share news from our week, good, I'll do about it tomorrow,
(00:28):
what's working, what's not working in our home and our
family with our kids, in the hope that us being
intentional about our parenting will help you to be intentional
about your parenting and raise happier kids, make your family happier.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Kylie, I'm going to go.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
First because my one is about getting heavy, coming in
and setting limits. Increasingly, I'm seeing parents that really struggle
with this, Like we just want our kids to feel
good all the time, We want them to have good
things in their lives, and I'm susceptible to that like
anybody else, Like, we try not to have too many
rules for our kids.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Would that be fair?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yep? Yep, that would be.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And sometimes they do take advantage of that. So for
those of you who have missed the memo Emily is
our youngest. Two stories about Emily today, actually one from you,
one from me.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
But oh, we're not going to be very popular with
the other kids today, are we o.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Kids get angry when we don't share stories about them.
I'm sorry, kids, today is all about Emily. So Emily's eleven,
she's been homeschooled. She's technically in grade five, and she's
keeping up with the curriculum. But just recently she has
been unenthusiastic since the school holidays, because we do school holidays,
she's been unenthusiastic about homeschool. Yeah, really just doesn't want
(01:37):
to be doing it. And the other day you said
to her, until you've done your writing, that there was
a specific writing assignment that she had to do. Until
you've done the writing, no, you can't watch TV. And
she's like, but I want to play a game, or
I want to watch YouTube, or I want to all this.
She just wanted to be on the screen and you
said no, and as a result of that, she refused
to do her writing. But then she also refused to
(01:58):
do any other lessons as well, which that the morning
was completely unproductive. And then you had to go out.
So I'm in the office, Emily comes into me and says, Dad,
can I watch the TV? I give you a quick
call to check in and find out what she's up
to with schoolwork, and you reaffirmed to me that she
hadn't done her writing and that there's no TV intil
the writing's done. And sometimes she's got a lot of
(02:19):
energy for this, and she wins because you've got other
things to do, and we just sort of shrug our
shoulders and go, you know what, it's too hard, and
we're just going to give her the remote because we
need twenty minutes to record a podcast or whatever. But
you were out, I had work to do, and I
just looked at her and said, I'm so sorry, kiddo.
I love you so much, and I wish that you
could have twenty or thirty minutes watching an episode on Telly,
but you've not done your writing assignment for homeschool today,
(02:44):
and so therefore I can't let you watch TV.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And she lost it. I mean, a total screaming banshie.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
If I was a neighbor, I would have thought that
this was a call to the police, right, And I
wasn't near her.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I didn't make any threats.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I was extremely loving, gentle, and kind, but she and
she wailed as she ran through the house and cried
that I was the worst pairing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
In the world and did all the stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Then she came back to me about an hour later
and said, Dad, I've done five lessons now. I don't
know how she did five homeschool lessons in one hour,
but she showed me the evidence and she actually had
They were pretty easy lessons, but she'd done five lessons
and she was like, can I watch TV now because
I've done all the lessons that I had to do today?
And I said, what about the writing assignment that you
had to do?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And she just lost it again. She said, I don't
want to do it. It's the worst.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And when I tried to ask her about it, it
just came down to it. It was not about ability,
and it wasn't even about the valid the usefulness of
that particular assignment.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
She just had zero motivation for doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I was like, kid, I'm so sorry, I'm so glad
you've done five lessons and you deserve a high five
and a hug for that. But she hid so she
wouldn't let me do that I said, no TV, and Kylie,
you're the worst.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
This was worse.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
She responded worse the second time because now she felt
like she'd earned it because she done lessons. And I'm
sitting there going, I'm just trying to get I'm trying
to write a book here about earning and I'm being tested. Finally,
she came to me about half an hour later, and
she did the writing assignment. She showed it to me
and she said, now can I watch TV?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I had to look at it, and she.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Did a completely satisfactory job. She was able to do
it all the way through. And I said, well, it's
so funny you ask. Mum's going to be home in
a couple of minutes, so we're going to show this
to Mum and Mum will decide whether you've done it
satisfactorily or not, and then we'll work out whether you
can watch TV. But well done. You did the hard thing,
and once you do the hard stuff, then you get
to do the good stuff. And it was just I
(04:41):
guess my I'd do better tomorrow. Is this setting limits
matters and our children if they can just like a river,
they will find the path of least resistance. Unless we
provide the supports and the expectations that they will do
the hard stuff before they get the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It was just one of those moments where it crystallized
for me our kids need limits, and when they have
the limits, they do live up to the expectations we have.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Of them, they can do it.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I just felt like it was a great parenting moment
and needed to be shared today in case any parent
is starting to think I'm wavering.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's getting too hard. Maybe I should let go of
the limits.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
They matter, right, They matter with context, you want to
make sure that you're understanding what's really going on.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But they matter. So what's your old about tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, I've actually had a really good win. School in
general has been really tricky since we've got back, as
you've already mentioned, but we've been making some really intentional
decisions around food lately, and we had a couple of
brilliant days with Emily. I introduced her to radish and
snow peas and sugar bees and she did amazing And
(05:56):
then we found ourselves alone, just her and I night
or the girls were at youth that you were out,
and I looked at her, and I said, am, we've
got the house to ourselves. Do you think we should
have a little date night? And she said yes, and
I said, maybe we could get a little treat. You
know what she said to me, She literally looked at
(06:16):
me and she said, Mum, I don't know if I
want to put that bad food in my body after
I've been eating so well witning. I was like, who
is this kid? But I thought, you've been doing so well,
and I don't want her to think it's an all
or nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, so let's not be religiously fanatic about what our
kids are eating.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Like that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And so I said to I just thought maybe we
could go get a scoop of gelato, or we could
just go home and have a hot chocolate with some marshmallows.
And she looked at me and she said, oh, I
could probably do a hot chocolate. She said, we probably
shouldn't get Tim Tam, should we? And I looked at
her and I said, you know what, if we're only
having it on once even once a week, we're doing
(06:57):
one hundred times better than we've been doing in a
very long time. I think we could get a packet
of tim tams.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right, so you're undermining the very thing that you're trying
to encourage that you bought the tim tams.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I brought the tim tams.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I didn't see those tim tams. Are they still? They're gone?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
On?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
No, someone else found there.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
One of the people who are less conscious about Okay,
all right, go on.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So you bought the.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tim tams and we came home. We made hot chocolate.
I only gave her half a cup. I have quite
big mugs, to be honest. So I gave her half
a cup of that, and I put a couple of
marshmallows in it. And she had two Tim tams. So
it's a pretty big sugar rush after having not had
it for a couple of days. But she sat down
and we were playing a game together, and at the
(07:38):
end of her second Tim Tam, she looked at me
and she said, I don't think I should have done that. Mum.
I really don't feel well.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
It's so good.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I just I'm struggling to find the words because this
is so massive. This is massive.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
This is that whole thing though, the conversation that I've
been trying to have with them, and that is that
your brain tells you lies. If you listen to your body,
not your brain, you make different choices.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
If I had have told her she wasn't allowed a
hot chocolate and she definitely wasn't allowed Tim TAM's number one,
she would have missed out on the learning right and
number two she would have thought I was the worst
parent in the world. Sure, second point is not so important,
but the first one is she would have missed out
on the learning by me allowing her to have it.
She has now had an experience where she recognizes how
(08:30):
her body feels.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Trusting in our children's the technical term in psychological speak
is their organismic growth. Trusting in their organismic developmental capacity
to grow in healthy ways towards flourishing. That's fundamentally what
this is about. Rather than making the decision for them,
saying to them, let's give you a chance to do
this and you can listen to what your body says.
(08:54):
You get the sugar rush, Oh that's really good, But
five minutes later, where are you now?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Two days later, she'd had a really good day with
food again, and it was mid afternoon. She was a
bit packaged, and I said, why don't you go on
to the school treats bucket and get yourself out some
grain waves.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I feel like, I feel like I need to interrupt
this story halfway with the going to get the grain waves.
And the reason I want to interrupt it is to
emphasize just how into prepackaged non healthy food this kid
has always been like yellow and white foods only, and
now you're having this experience anyway. So she goes to
get the grain waves.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I guess she goes and gets the grain waves.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Which are a food product, not a food.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
She comes back to me, I'm not sure, maybe three
or four minutes later, and she has half a packet
of grain Waves in her hand, and she said, Mum,
I don't think I can eat these anymore. That's the punchline.
She said.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I just realized I'm looking at you slack jawed because
I didn't know this, and I forgot we're doing a
podcast and people can't see my face, you like.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
She didn't even finish the package.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
She did not finish the packet. Now, I could give
her a full size packet and she.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Would have deled that total.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
This is just one of those little individual packets with
what six chips in it? Wow, And she literally said
I can't finish this. Do you want them?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Take home message?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The takeo message is our kids just need I think
this is a boundary conversation.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Again, really I do.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I think that it's so we fall into these traps
of providing our kids with the things that provide us
with the less the.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Least friction, like the easiest possible way forward.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yes, yes, without giving them the opportunity to learn and grow.
We've gone through this with her multiple times.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, this is not the first rodeo.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
No, We've gone through this multiple times with her. But again,
scaffolding and maturity and ongoing initiation in this area is
making the reinforcement is making all the difference. But what
I'm loving is that she is experienced in the learning.
Instead of me having to dictate and educate and you know,
(11:05):
kind of give her all of the reasons why she
should be eating healthy, she's actually experiencing it. We're now
nearly two weeks past this experience and she actually hasn't
asked for a single sugar item.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
You well, So to take our message for me, there
are a couple. First of all, boundaries matter, and secondly,
supporting kids autonomy by helping them to understand reasons why,
giving them the experiences that they need, and then trusting
in their ability to make those decisions to be in
the driver's seat of their lives. For me, they're the
two things that are really standing out here.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I think it's very easy as parents, we kind of
keep hitting a brick wall with our kids in whatever
area they're specifically struggling in, and we often lose sting.
It's really easy to just kind of give up and
take the path of least resistance to create peace in
the home. What we're experiencing with Emily, this is eleven
(12:00):
years of really hard work. It is very, very hard work.
We have never had a child so resistant to food
like Emily has been. But as we have continued to
just reintroduce things to educate her and to provide her
with the support she needs to make good choices, we're starting.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I'm not saying, yeah, we'll see how we're going.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I'm not saying that we're reached reached the pinnacle by
any straight This is a massive win and I am
just so grateful that, in spite of the fact I've
wanted to throw the talent so many times, that we've
just kept plodding along and working with her.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But that's the thing as a parent, you never throw
the talent. That's that's the great, the great challenge and
the great reward.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
We really hope that there's some inspiration for you if
you're having struggles in your family. Thank you so much
for listening to I'll Do Better Tomorrow and The Happy
Family's Podcast.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
The Happy Family's Podcast is produced by Justice.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And Rule on from Bridge Media and More information and
resources to make your family happier can be found at
happy families dot com, dot a u
Date night for the kids. Is it a good idea,
is it a bad idea? Does it work or does
it just indulge them? And the importance of setting limits.
That's where we're going today on the Happy Families podcast
Real Parenting Solutions every Day. This is Australia's most downloaded
parenting podcasts where Justin and Kylie Courson. Every Friday we
share news from our week, good, I'll do about it tomorrow,
(00:28):
what's working, what's not working in our home and our
family with our kids, in the hope that us being
intentional about our parenting will help you to be intentional
about your parenting and raise happier kids, make your family happier.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Kylie, I'm going to go.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
First because my one is about getting heavy, coming in
and setting limits. Increasingly, I'm seeing parents that really struggle
with this, Like we just want our kids to feel
good all the time, We want them to have good
things in their lives, and I'm susceptible to that like
anybody else, Like, we try not to have too many
rules for our kids.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Would that be fair?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yep? Yep, that would be.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And sometimes they do take advantage of that. So for
those of you who have missed the memo Emily is
our youngest. Two stories about Emily today, actually one from you,
one from me.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
But oh, we're not going to be very popular with
the other kids today, are we o.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Kids get angry when we don't share stories about them.
I'm sorry, kids, today is all about Emily. So Emily's eleven,
she's been homeschooled. She's technically in grade five, and she's
keeping up with the curriculum. But just recently she has
been unenthusiastic since the school holidays, because we do school holidays,
she's been unenthusiastic about homeschool. Yeah, really just doesn't want
(01:37):
to be doing it. And the other day you said
to her, until you've done your writing, that there was
a specific writing assignment that she had to do. Until
you've done the writing, no, you can't watch TV. And
she's like, but I want to play a game, or
I want to watch YouTube, or I want to all this.
She just wanted to be on the screen and you
said no, and as a result of that, she refused
to do her writing. But then she also refused to
(01:58):
do any other lessons as well, which that the morning
was completely unproductive. And then you had to go out.
So I'm in the office, Emily comes into me and says, Dad,
can I watch the TV? I give you a quick
call to check in and find out what she's up
to with schoolwork, and you reaffirmed to me that she
hadn't done her writing and that there's no TV intil
the writing's done. And sometimes she's got a lot of
(02:19):
energy for this, and she wins because you've got other
things to do, and we just sort of shrug our
shoulders and go, you know what, it's too hard, and
we're just going to give her the remote because we
need twenty minutes to record a podcast or whatever. But
you were out, I had work to do, and I
just looked at her and said, I'm so sorry, kiddo.
I love you so much, and I wish that you
could have twenty or thirty minutes watching an episode on Telly,
but you've not done your writing assignment for homeschool today,
(02:44):
and so therefore I can't let you watch TV.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
And she lost it. I mean, a total screaming banshie.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
If I was a neighbor, I would have thought that
this was a call to the police, right, And I
wasn't near her.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
I didn't make any threats.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I was extremely loving, gentle, and kind, but she and
she wailed as she ran through the house and cried
that I was the worst pairing.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
In the world and did all the stuff, and.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Then she came back to me about an hour later
and said, Dad, I've done five lessons now. I don't
know how she did five homeschool lessons in one hour,
but she showed me the evidence and she actually had
They were pretty easy lessons, but she'd done five lessons
and she was like, can I watch TV now because
I've done all the lessons that I had to do today?
And I said, what about the writing assignment that you
had to do?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
And she just lost it again. She said, I don't
want to do it. It's the worst.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
And when I tried to ask her about it, it
just came down to it. It was not about ability,
and it wasn't even about the valid the usefulness of
that particular assignment.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
She just had zero motivation for doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I was like, kid, I'm so sorry, I'm so glad
you've done five lessons and you deserve a high five
and a hug for that. But she hid so she
wouldn't let me do that I said, no TV, and Kylie,
you're the worst.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
This was worse.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
She responded worse the second time because now she felt
like she'd earned it because she done lessons. And I'm
sitting there going, I'm just trying to get I'm trying
to write a book here about earning and I'm being tested. Finally,
she came to me about half an hour later, and
she did the writing assignment. She showed it to me
and she said, now can I watch TV?
Speaker 2 (04:15):
And I had to look at it, and she.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Did a completely satisfactory job. She was able to do
it all the way through. And I said, well, it's
so funny you ask. Mum's going to be home in
a couple of minutes, so we're going to show this
to Mum and Mum will decide whether you've done it
satisfactorily or not, and then we'll work out whether you
can watch TV. But well done. You did the hard thing,
and once you do the hard stuff, then you get
to do the good stuff. And it was just I
(04:41):
guess my I'd do better tomorrow. Is this setting limits
matters and our children if they can just like a river,
they will find the path of least resistance. Unless we
provide the supports and the expectations that they will do
the hard stuff before they get the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
It was just one of those moments where it crystallized
for me our kids need limits, and when they have
the limits, they do live up to the expectations we have.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Of them, they can do it.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
I just felt like it was a great parenting moment
and needed to be shared today in case any parent
is starting to think I'm wavering.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's getting too hard. Maybe I should let go of
the limits.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
They matter, right, They matter with context, you want to
make sure that you're understanding what's really going on.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But they matter. So what's your old about tomorrow?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Well, I've actually had a really good win. School in
general has been really tricky since we've got back, as
you've already mentioned, but we've been making some really intentional
decisions around food lately, and we had a couple of
brilliant days with Emily. I introduced her to radish and
snow peas and sugar bees and she did amazing And
(05:56):
then we found ourselves alone, just her and I night
or the girls were at youth that you were out,
and I looked at her, and I said, am, we've
got the house to ourselves. Do you think we should
have a little date night? And she said yes, and
I said, maybe we could get a little treat. You
know what she said to me, She literally looked at
(06:16):
me and she said, Mum, I don't know if I
want to put that bad food in my body after
I've been eating so well witning. I was like, who
is this kid? But I thought, you've been doing so well,
and I don't want her to think it's an all
or nothing.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, so let's not be religiously fanatic about what our
kids are eating.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Like that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And so I said to I just thought maybe we
could go get a scoop of gelato, or we could
just go home and have a hot chocolate with some marshmallows.
And she looked at me and she said, oh, I
could probably do a hot chocolate. She said, we probably
shouldn't get Tim Tam, should we? And I looked at
her and I said, you know what, if we're only
having it on once even once a week, we're doing
(06:57):
one hundred times better than we've been doing in a
very long time. I think we could get a packet
of tim tams.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Right, so you're undermining the very thing that you're trying
to encourage that you bought the tim tams.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I brought the tim tams.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I didn't see those tim tams. Are they still? They're gone?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
On?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
No, someone else found there.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
One of the people who are less conscious about Okay,
all right, go on.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
So you bought the.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tim tams and we came home. We made hot chocolate.
I only gave her half a cup. I have quite
big mugs, to be honest. So I gave her half
a cup of that, and I put a couple of
marshmallows in it. And she had two Tim tams. So
it's a pretty big sugar rush after having not had
it for a couple of days. But she sat down
and we were playing a game together, and at the
(07:38):
end of her second Tim Tam, she looked at me
and she said, I don't think I should have done that. Mum.
I really don't feel well.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
It's so good.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
I just I'm struggling to find the words because this
is so massive. This is massive.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
This is that whole thing though, the conversation that I've
been trying to have with them, and that is that
your brain tells you lies. If you listen to your body,
not your brain, you make different choices.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
If I had have told her she wasn't allowed a
hot chocolate and she definitely wasn't allowed Tim TAM's number one,
she would have missed out on the learning right and
number two she would have thought I was the worst
parent in the world. Sure, second point is not so important,
but the first one is she would have missed out
on the learning by me allowing her to have it.
She has now had an experience where she recognizes how
(08:30):
her body feels.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Trusting in our children's the technical term in psychological speak
is their organismic growth. Trusting in their organismic developmental capacity
to grow in healthy ways towards flourishing. That's fundamentally what
this is about. Rather than making the decision for them,
saying to them, let's give you a chance to do
this and you can listen to what your body says.
(08:54):
You get the sugar rush, Oh that's really good, But
five minutes later, where are you now?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Two days later, she'd had a really good day with
food again, and it was mid afternoon. She was a
bit packaged, and I said, why don't you go on
to the school treats bucket and get yourself out some
grain waves.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I feel like, I feel like I need to interrupt
this story halfway with the going to get the grain waves.
And the reason I want to interrupt it is to
emphasize just how into prepackaged non healthy food this kid
has always been like yellow and white foods only, and
now you're having this experience anyway. So she goes to
get the grain waves.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I guess she goes and gets the grain waves.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Which are a food product, not a food.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
She comes back to me, I'm not sure, maybe three
or four minutes later, and she has half a packet
of grain Waves in her hand, and she said, Mum,
I don't think I can eat these anymore. That's the punchline.
She said.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I just realized I'm looking at you slack jawed because
I didn't know this, and I forgot we're doing a
podcast and people can't see my face, you like.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
She didn't even finish the package.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
She did not finish the packet. Now, I could give
her a full size packet and she.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Would have deled that total.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
This is just one of those little individual packets with
what six chips in it? Wow, And she literally said
I can't finish this. Do you want them?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Take home message?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The takeo message is our kids just need I think
this is a boundary conversation.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Again, really I do.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
I think that it's so we fall into these traps
of providing our kids with the things that provide us
with the less the.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Least friction, like the easiest possible way forward.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yes, yes, without giving them the opportunity to learn and grow.
We've gone through this with her multiple times.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah, this is not the first rodeo.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
No, We've gone through this multiple times with her. But again,
scaffolding and maturity and ongoing initiation in this area is
making the reinforcement is making all the difference. But what
I'm loving is that she is experienced in the learning.
Instead of me having to dictate and educate and you know,
(11:05):
kind of give her all of the reasons why she
should be eating healthy, she's actually experiencing it. We're now
nearly two weeks past this experience and she actually hasn't
asked for a single sugar item.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
You well, So to take our message for me, there
are a couple. First of all, boundaries matter, and secondly,
supporting kids autonomy by helping them to understand reasons why,
giving them the experiences that they need, and then trusting
in their ability to make those decisions to be in
the driver's seat of their lives. For me, they're the
two things that are really standing out here.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
I think it's very easy as parents, we kind of
keep hitting a brick wall with our kids in whatever
area they're specifically struggling in, and we often lose sting.
It's really easy to just kind of give up and
take the path of least resistance to create peace in
the home. What we're experiencing with Emily, this is eleven
(12:00):
years of really hard work. It is very, very hard work.
We have never had a child so resistant to food
like Emily has been. But as we have continued to
just reintroduce things to educate her and to provide her
with the support she needs to make good choices, we're starting.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I'm not saying, yeah, we'll see how we're going.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
I'm not saying that we're reached reached the pinnacle by
any straight This is a massive win and I am
just so grateful that, in spite of the fact I've
wanted to throw the talent so many times, that we've
just kept plodding along and working with her.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But that's the thing as a parent, you never throw
the talent. That's that's the great, the great challenge and
the great reward.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
We really hope that there's some inspiration for you if
you're having struggles in your family. Thank you so much
for listening to I'll Do Better Tomorrow and The Happy
Family's Podcast.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
The Happy Family's Podcast is produced by Justice.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And Rule on from Bridge Media and More information and
resources to make your family happier can be found at
happy families dot com, dot a u
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