May 8, 2025 • 15 mins
In this heartwarming 'I'll Do Better Tomorrow' episode, Justin and Kylie share personal parenting wins and lessons from the week that was—featuring an inspiring story from Happy Families team member Mim. From the transformative power of early mornings to the deep connection built through presence, this episode is all about slowing down, showing up, and making time for what matters most.
KEY POINTS:
-
Mim shares how getting up early—after 18 years of waking when her kids wake—transformed her mornings, mental clarity, and ability to parent calmly.
-
Kylie reflects on three powerful conversations she had with her daughters, all made possible by slowing down and being fully present.
-
Justin recalls a moment of simple joy: the family naturally gathering in the kitchen, emphasising how unhurried time together creates connection.
-
Time is the essential currency of love—our children need it, even when they don’t ask for it directly.
-
Small changes in our routines can lead to big shifts in our family dynamics and overall wellbeing.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“Connection, feeling seen, heard and valued is the currency of our relationships.” — Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
-
happyfamilies.com.au — Tools and resources for making your family happier
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
-
Wake Up With Intention: Try waking up 30–60 minutes earlier than usual. Use this time to care for yourself before the chaos begins.
-
Gift Presence: Notice the moments when your children might need you most—even when it’s inconvenient—and choose connection.
-
Reach Out: Call or check in with a child you may not have spoken to deeply in a while. Your presence can shift their entire week.
-
Slow It Down: Clear some weekend space for unhurried time together—visit a market, prepare food, enjoy simple rituals.
-
Listen Close
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
When it comes to parenting, there is simply never a
dull moment. Have you noticed that when kids are around,
it's on, there's stuff happening. This is the podcast where
we dissect what's going on in our families and do
our best to make family life better so that we
can all flourish, be happy and feel good about our relationships.
Could they Welcome to the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting
Solutions every Day. It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast where
(00:29):
Justin and Kylie Colson. Kylie, quiet week for you, not
much going on, everything relaxed.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You're hilarious. I don't know where you've been, clearly not
at home.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Five kids at home at the moment and I know four.
We've only got four at home at the moment. So
much quieter when there's only four instead of so much
five or six. Kicking off today, this is our old
do Better Tomorrow episode If You Knew to the Pot.
Every Friday we reflect on the week that was, look
at what went well or what didn't so that we
can be better parents. And I want to share this
from one of our employees. Very rare we get the
(01:00):
opportunity to feature one of our key staff on the podcast.
But my staff actually implement the stuff that we talk about,
Like they listen to the pod, and they read the books,
and they are engaged with the social media, and they
see the stuff that I write, and sometimes they try it.
And this is what Mim told me when she tried
(01:21):
to implement some things that we talked about on a
recent podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hi, Justin and Kylie, it's Mim here. Back in January,
I listened to Your Doctor's Desk episode on sleep and
heard you mention that sleeping in can create a jet
lag effect, while waking up at the same time every
day could set the tone for the entire day. Intrigued,
I decided to give it a shot. A little backstory.
There are three things you should know about me. Firstly,
(01:47):
I am not a mover. I don't like walking, exercising,
or doing anything that requires unnecessary movement. I'd much rather
curl up with a book for hours and end. If
you ever see me running, trust me, you should run too,
because as there are probably zombies behind me. Number two,
mornings in our house are pure chaos. I go to
(02:07):
bed exhausted and wake up feeling like I've been hit
by a bus, sluggish, grumpy, distracted. I struggle just to
wake myself up, let alone wrangle my kids with ADHD.
School mornings often feel overwhelming, especially with one child who
sometimes refuses to go to school hello high emotions, and
another who takes an hour just to put on her socks.
(02:30):
The school bus stops right outside our house, and while
we hear the other kids ready and waiting ten minutes early,
I'm still frantically searching for misin shoes, lunchboxes, hats, and
bus passes, right up until the moment the bus pulls
in Half the time, at least one kid doesn't even
make it out the door in time. Number three, I
haven't set an alarm in eighteen years since my eldest
(02:52):
was born. Sleepless nights with babies, sick kids, and sheer
exhaustion have made even the idea of waking up early
seem absurd. I've always thought I needed more sleep, not less. However,
game changer. About three months ago, after listening to the
episode on Sleep, I took the plunge. When my husband
got up at six am for work, I got up too,
(03:14):
laced up my joggers, and took our dog for a
quick walk. Just as the sun was rising. Then I
had a full hour to myself, quiet, peaceful, uninterrupted. I
ate breakfast, I read a book, and because I took
my ADHD meds earlier than usual, they had time to
kick in before the morning rush. By the time the
kids woke up, I was already alert, calm, fed, and focused.
(03:39):
Instead of meeting their morning grumpiness with my own, I
felt patient, collected, and ready to handle whatever chaos came
my way. Plus, since the puppy had already been walked,
she wasn't bouncing off the walls, making mornings smoother for everyone.
And here's the crazy part. I have been jumping out
of bed at six am every day since, including weekend,
(04:00):
without even needing an alarm, even in pouring rain. Our
mornings are still noisy and the kids are still disorganized.
But I'm different. I'm calm, I'm present, I'm no longer stressed,
and the best part, despite technically getting less sleep, I
feel more energized and productive than ever.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I love this for mem and I've lived this personal
experience so many times where I felt like I just
have not got enough time in my day. And when
I gift myself that quiet time, in the morning. It
makes all the difference to how I show up to
(04:40):
the kids.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Love the way you structured that, love the way you
said that when I gift myself, it doesn't feel like
a gift when the alarm goes off, not know when.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You're starting a new routine like that. So the fact
that she's able to bounce out of bed even without
an alarm just says how much her body was wanting
them winning.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Of course, you've got to go to bed on time,
otherwise it's horrible the next day. So that the structure,
the more structure you have in your life, more competent
you feel, because life makes sense, it's predictable, there's a framework,
there's guidelines, there's boundaries, and it means that everything works.
So mim so glad that you shared that with us,
and so glad, so glad that the stuff that we
talk about on Happy Families is making a difference, like
(05:21):
it would be really bad if it isn't. But I
hope that other people are doing the stuff we talk
about as well. Okay, Kylie, let's look at our week
that was and see if there's any take home messages
and things that people can pick up on to improve
their lives. Why don't you kicks off.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I've had a couple of beautiful wins with our kids
this week. Yeah great, last week I shared that with you.
Surfing all of our holiday away, I got to have
a lot of time to think deeply about each of
the kids and what they needed. And so as I've
come home, I've tried to be a lot more present
with them and not be like literally be in the moment,
(05:54):
not be so caught up and all the other distractions.
And I've had three different conversations through the week with
our kids that would not have happened if I hadn't
have taken that time to really reassess what was most
important to me. I love this and doaorter Number three.
Ella is away in Canada at the moment, and she
calls us once a week now. She usually calls you
(06:16):
on a Wednesday night, but I don't talk to her
until Thursday around lunchtime. So I've got schooling out of
the way and I can really focus on her. But
she got caught up in wanting to talk to me
on Wednesday night. It was past my bedtime. I was
really struggling.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I hate it when she calls me on Wednesday night,
I got to say because I'm so tired, and.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
She asked me how our holiday was, and she wanted
to know all the details. And once we'd finished, I said,
do you know what, do you think we could finish
this conversation tomorrow? I'm exhausted and she's like, yeah, Mom,
that's fine. And as I went to hang up, it's
a video call, so I could see her, I just
noticed her energy wasn't where it needed to be, and
(06:57):
I said, are you okay? And she just started to
tear up. So I ended up being on the phone
for probably another forty five minutes while she shared the
challenges that she's been experiencing over the last few weeks.
And I was just really grateful that instead of my
usual okay, i'll talk to you tomorrow and hang up,
I just took that it was micro second to just
(07:19):
recognize that she actually needed me then, and we had
this really gorgeous conversation and she said that she would
call me the next day, but she didn't. And I
believe she didn't call me because she didn't need to.
She'd got what she needed from me, and she was
capable of being able to move forward based on the
conversation we'd had, and I felt really grateful for that.
The second one was our second daughter, Abby. She goes
(07:44):
to UNI. She stays down in Brisbane a couple of
nights a week, and so often there will go a
few days without having any conversation at all. And she's
just a kid who knuckles down, gets it all done,
and she's not kind of interested in the flowery stuff
a lot of the time. And I realized that as
(08:04):
a mum, it probably is a shortcoming of mind that
I don't tap into her more. And so the other
day she was saying over at her friend's house because
she was at UNI, and I just thought, I'll just
give her a call, and I gave her a call
and I had a little chat to It wasn't particularly big,
but the difference that that made to the way she
(08:25):
interacted with me for the rest of the week was profound.
And it just showed me how much our kids are
desperate for our connection, even when we think they're just
gone fine, like life's awesome. And then the last one
was Annie, our seventeen year old. She's in her last
year of high school and we've been doing a lot
(08:45):
of medical testing and things for her at the moment.
So there are a lot of unanswered questions in her life.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Stuff going on for a while.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and we had the appointment. We had the specialist
share all of his you know, kind of musings and
kind of findings, and we finished the conversation and again
everything seemed fine. I had a conversation with her on
the spot to ask her how she felt about what
had happened, and I thought that we had finished the conversation.
(09:15):
But when I got in the car later that day
to go run an errand it occurred to me that
there was one question I hadn't asked her, And so
I gave you a call and I rang her up
and I said, I know, we've heard what the specialist
opinion is, and you know what mum and dad's opinion is,
but what's your opinion? And that led to a whole
(09:35):
another conversation that I never anticipated having. Number one, but
it became so apparent how much weight she's been carrying.
As the adults in the room are talking about I
guess her well being and what's necessary and what's not,
and for whatever reason, her not feeling like she could
(09:55):
actually really share what she was feeling in the moment,
but given time to digest everything she'd heard, everything she's
been through, she was able to then open up and
share share a heart. And I have to believe that
taking that time out for the week where I was
(10:15):
able to really really think deeply about each of our
children has made the difference in how I've shown up
this week as a mum and how I've been more
desirous than usual to let go of all of that distraction,
all of those extra things that I keep telling myself
is so important and need to be done, and just
really be where my kids are when they're with me.
(10:38):
And I've loved it. I've absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So many take our messages. When I listen to what
you're saying, I'm just hearing time kids feel loved to
I am. It can be inconvenient, it can keep you
up late at night, it can stop you from doing
chores and errands that you know you need to do.
But there's something about making that connection. There's something about
remembering that, just like dollars the currency of our economy,
feeling seen, heard and valued is the currency of our relationships.
(11:04):
Being willing to ask your kids step into the conversation
with them, go there they need it make such a
difference for the well being. Okay, my older better tomorrow
is a really really simple one. As a matter of fact,
(11:24):
last Saturday, I gave a talk at the Novtel on
the Sunshine Coast. It was a big conference for Queensland
Foster and Kinship Cares. Five hundred people in the room
and ambassadors and government ministers and all that kind of thing.
Several of them said that they were quite pleased to
not have to go and do all the polling stuff
on election day because they got to sit in a
(11:45):
conference and listen to me talk instead of being out
there eating sausages and Lamington's. I don't know if they
were being polite or if they really meant it, but anyway,
it was just wonderful to be with a room of
people who care so much about kids that they're not
just looking after their own biological children, but they're sacrificing
their time, their effort to help other people's children to
(12:07):
navigate what can sometimes be a really hard and even
a traumatic life. But my favorite part of the day,
as much as I loved giving that talk, was being
able to drive fifteen minutes home which felt really good
because normally I'm on aeroplanes and that kind of thing.
And I walked into the kitchen. You were in the
kitchen with one of the kids. You've been out and
done the shopping. You'd been to the farmer's market that morning,
(12:29):
just to try something different, and you'd bought all the
fresh fruit and veggies. And I've come into the kitchen
and you're there. You're chatting with our daughter. Then I'm
there and all the fruit and veggies bit by bit
getting put away, we're cleaning up the kitchen. We've got
some music on and we're just enjoying. And then one
of our other kids came in and it felt like
I mean, I don't know if we've ever had a
Saturday like it. If we have, it's been a long
(12:50):
time where we were all hanging out in the kitchen
doing a couple of basics that need to be done,
but really just enjoying one another's company and feeling relaxed.
And I just thought, this, this is how it's supposed
to be, right, Like, this is how family life is
supposed to be. Where we're not pushed from pillar to post,
we're not trying to be efficient and effective at all times,
(13:12):
but rather we're just being in the moment doing basic,
simple things, Kylie, it just felt good.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
A number of years ago I brought this beautiful home
daycore piece and it was literally a hand painted wooden
sign that said the gathering Place. And as the morning unfolded,
what occurred to me was that when we create the
right environment, our children actually flocked to us like bees
(13:45):
to honey. Like it was just when when we've got
time and we're not hurried and we're not rushed, watching
each of the kids just kind of meander into our
space and start conversations that were just and there was
no there was no weight to any of it, but
they just wanted to be there and they didn't want
(14:05):
to go. And it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean it made my weekend. I don't know
what else to say other than to say that it
was perfect. It's what a happy family is supposed to be, right,
everyone hanging out in the kitchen and enjoying one of
this's company, bit of music in the background, good healthy
food on the table.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It just felt so did that Basil smell.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I just love the whole lot. Anyway, There our take
our messages and fundamentally, it all comes back to one thing.
Kidspell love t Im, kids fell love t Im. And
the more we can slow it down, the more that
we can breathe and just have the space to be together,
the happier our families feel. Slow it down.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
When you think about how we opened this and shared
MEM's experience, Yeah, this is just a beautiful reality that
the more time we can give ourselves to be the
people we want to be, the happier our families are.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Absolutely love it. We really hope that this gives you
some inspo for the weekend. Hopefully you can, I don't know,
go to the farmer's market tomorrow morning and shop and
fill your fridge with green, healthy, abundant, life giving food
and food is medicine. Food is medicine and spend time
with the kids. Slow it down for the weekend, have
a wonderful weekend, and thank you so much for choosing
(15:21):
to spend your time with us. We're so grateful that
you do. The Happy Famili's podcast is produced by Justin
Rouland from Bridge Media. If you'd like more info and
more resources that will make your family happier, you'll find
them at Happy families, dot com, dot au,
When it comes to parenting, there is simply never a
dull moment. Have you noticed that when kids are around,
it's on, there's stuff happening. This is the podcast where
we dissect what's going on in our families and do
our best to make family life better so that we
can all flourish, be happy and feel good about our relationships.
Could they Welcome to the Happy Families podcast Real Parenting
Solutions every Day. It's Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast where
(00:29):
Justin and Kylie Colson. Kylie, quiet week for you, not
much going on, everything relaxed.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
You're hilarious. I don't know where you've been, clearly not
at home.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Five kids at home at the moment and I know four.
We've only got four at home at the moment. So
much quieter when there's only four instead of so much
five or six. Kicking off today, this is our old
do Better Tomorrow episode If You Knew to the Pot.
Every Friday we reflect on the week that was, look
at what went well or what didn't so that we
can be better parents. And I want to share this
from one of our employees. Very rare we get the
(01:00):
opportunity to feature one of our key staff on the podcast.
But my staff actually implement the stuff that we talk about,
Like they listen to the pod, and they read the books,
and they are engaged with the social media, and they
see the stuff that I write, and sometimes they try it.
And this is what Mim told me when she tried
(01:21):
to implement some things that we talked about on a
recent podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hi, Justin and Kylie, it's Mim here. Back in January,
I listened to Your Doctor's Desk episode on sleep and
heard you mention that sleeping in can create a jet
lag effect, while waking up at the same time every
day could set the tone for the entire day. Intrigued,
I decided to give it a shot. A little backstory.
There are three things you should know about me. Firstly,
(01:47):
I am not a mover. I don't like walking, exercising,
or doing anything that requires unnecessary movement. I'd much rather
curl up with a book for hours and end. If
you ever see me running, trust me, you should run too,
because as there are probably zombies behind me. Number two,
mornings in our house are pure chaos. I go to
(02:07):
bed exhausted and wake up feeling like I've been hit
by a bus, sluggish, grumpy, distracted. I struggle just to
wake myself up, let alone wrangle my kids with ADHD.
School mornings often feel overwhelming, especially with one child who
sometimes refuses to go to school hello high emotions, and
another who takes an hour just to put on her socks.
(02:30):
The school bus stops right outside our house, and while
we hear the other kids ready and waiting ten minutes early,
I'm still frantically searching for misin shoes, lunchboxes, hats, and
bus passes, right up until the moment the bus pulls
in Half the time, at least one kid doesn't even
make it out the door in time. Number three, I
haven't set an alarm in eighteen years since my eldest
(02:52):
was born. Sleepless nights with babies, sick kids, and sheer
exhaustion have made even the idea of waking up early
seem absurd. I've always thought I needed more sleep, not less. However,
game changer. About three months ago, after listening to the
episode on Sleep, I took the plunge. When my husband
got up at six am for work, I got up too,
(03:14):
laced up my joggers, and took our dog for a
quick walk. Just as the sun was rising. Then I
had a full hour to myself, quiet, peaceful, uninterrupted. I
ate breakfast, I read a book, and because I took
my ADHD meds earlier than usual, they had time to
kick in before the morning rush. By the time the
kids woke up, I was already alert, calm, fed, and focused.
(03:39):
Instead of meeting their morning grumpiness with my own, I
felt patient, collected, and ready to handle whatever chaos came
my way. Plus, since the puppy had already been walked,
she wasn't bouncing off the walls, making mornings smoother for everyone.
And here's the crazy part. I have been jumping out
of bed at six am every day since, including weekend,
(04:00):
without even needing an alarm, even in pouring rain. Our
mornings are still noisy and the kids are still disorganized.
But I'm different. I'm calm, I'm present, I'm no longer stressed,
and the best part, despite technically getting less sleep, I
feel more energized and productive than ever.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I love this for mem and I've lived this personal
experience so many times where I felt like I just
have not got enough time in my day. And when
I gift myself that quiet time, in the morning. It
makes all the difference to how I show up to
(04:40):
the kids.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Love the way you structured that, love the way you
said that when I gift myself, it doesn't feel like
a gift when the alarm goes off, not know when.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You're starting a new routine like that. So the fact
that she's able to bounce out of bed even without
an alarm just says how much her body was wanting
them winning.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Of course, you've got to go to bed on time,
otherwise it's horrible the next day. So that the structure,
the more structure you have in your life, more competent
you feel, because life makes sense, it's predictable, there's a framework,
there's guidelines, there's boundaries, and it means that everything works.
So mim so glad that you shared that with us,
and so glad, so glad that the stuff that we
talk about on Happy Families is making a difference, like
(05:21):
it would be really bad if it isn't. But I
hope that other people are doing the stuff we talk
about as well. Okay, Kylie, let's look at our week
that was and see if there's any take home messages
and things that people can pick up on to improve
their lives. Why don't you kicks off.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
I've had a couple of beautiful wins with our kids
this week. Yeah great, last week I shared that with you.
Surfing all of our holiday away, I got to have
a lot of time to think deeply about each of
the kids and what they needed. And so as I've
come home, I've tried to be a lot more present
with them and not be like literally be in the moment,
(05:54):
not be so caught up and all the other distractions.
And I've had three different conversations through the week with
our kids that would not have happened if I hadn't
have taken that time to really reassess what was most
important to me. I love this and doaorter Number three.
Ella is away in Canada at the moment, and she
calls us once a week now. She usually calls you
(06:16):
on a Wednesday night, but I don't talk to her
until Thursday around lunchtime. So I've got schooling out of
the way and I can really focus on her. But
she got caught up in wanting to talk to me
on Wednesday night. It was past my bedtime. I was
really struggling.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
I hate it when she calls me on Wednesday night,
I got to say because I'm so tired, and.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
She asked me how our holiday was, and she wanted
to know all the details. And once we'd finished, I said,
do you know what, do you think we could finish
this conversation tomorrow? I'm exhausted and she's like, yeah, Mom,
that's fine. And as I went to hang up, it's
a video call, so I could see her, I just
noticed her energy wasn't where it needed to be, and
(06:57):
I said, are you okay? And she just started to
tear up. So I ended up being on the phone
for probably another forty five minutes while she shared the
challenges that she's been experiencing over the last few weeks.
And I was just really grateful that instead of my
usual okay, i'll talk to you tomorrow and hang up,
I just took that it was micro second to just
(07:19):
recognize that she actually needed me then, and we had
this really gorgeous conversation and she said that she would
call me the next day, but she didn't. And I
believe she didn't call me because she didn't need to.
She'd got what she needed from me, and she was
capable of being able to move forward based on the
conversation we'd had, and I felt really grateful for that.
The second one was our second daughter, Abby. She goes
(07:44):
to UNI. She stays down in Brisbane a couple of
nights a week, and so often there will go a
few days without having any conversation at all. And she's
just a kid who knuckles down, gets it all done,
and she's not kind of interested in the flowery stuff
a lot of the time. And I realized that as
(08:04):
a mum, it probably is a shortcoming of mind that
I don't tap into her more. And so the other
day she was saying over at her friend's house because
she was at UNI, and I just thought, I'll just
give her a call, and I gave her a call
and I had a little chat to It wasn't particularly big,
but the difference that that made to the way she
(08:25):
interacted with me for the rest of the week was profound.
And it just showed me how much our kids are
desperate for our connection, even when we think they're just
gone fine, like life's awesome. And then the last one
was Annie, our seventeen year old. She's in her last
year of high school and we've been doing a lot
(08:45):
of medical testing and things for her at the moment.
So there are a lot of unanswered questions in her life.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Stuff going on for a while.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, and we had the appointment. We had the specialist
share all of his you know, kind of musings and
kind of findings, and we finished the conversation and again
everything seemed fine. I had a conversation with her on
the spot to ask her how she felt about what
had happened, and I thought that we had finished the conversation.
(09:15):
But when I got in the car later that day
to go run an errand it occurred to me that
there was one question I hadn't asked her, And so
I gave you a call and I rang her up
and I said, I know, we've heard what the specialist
opinion is, and you know what mum and dad's opinion is,
but what's your opinion? And that led to a whole
(09:35):
another conversation that I never anticipated having. Number one, but
it became so apparent how much weight she's been carrying.
As the adults in the room are talking about I
guess her well being and what's necessary and what's not,
and for whatever reason, her not feeling like she could
(09:55):
actually really share what she was feeling in the moment,
but given time to digest everything she'd heard, everything she's
been through, she was able to then open up and
share share a heart. And I have to believe that
taking that time out for the week where I was
(10:15):
able to really really think deeply about each of our
children has made the difference in how I've shown up
this week as a mum and how I've been more
desirous than usual to let go of all of that distraction,
all of those extra things that I keep telling myself
is so important and need to be done, and just
really be where my kids are when they're with me.
(10:38):
And I've loved it. I've absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So many take our messages. When I listen to what
you're saying, I'm just hearing time kids feel loved to
I am. It can be inconvenient, it can keep you
up late at night, it can stop you from doing
chores and errands that you know you need to do.
But there's something about making that connection. There's something about
remembering that, just like dollars the currency of our economy,
feeling seen, heard and valued is the currency of our relationships.
(11:04):
Being willing to ask your kids step into the conversation
with them, go there they need it make such a
difference for the well being. Okay, my older better tomorrow
is a really really simple one. As a matter of fact,
(11:24):
last Saturday, I gave a talk at the Novtel on
the Sunshine Coast. It was a big conference for Queensland
Foster and Kinship Cares. Five hundred people in the room
and ambassadors and government ministers and all that kind of thing.
Several of them said that they were quite pleased to
not have to go and do all the polling stuff
on election day because they got to sit in a
(11:45):
conference and listen to me talk instead of being out
there eating sausages and Lamington's. I don't know if they
were being polite or if they really meant it, but anyway,
it was just wonderful to be with a room of
people who care so much about kids that they're not
just looking after their own biological children, but they're sacrificing
their time, their effort to help other people's children to
(12:07):
navigate what can sometimes be a really hard and even
a traumatic life. But my favorite part of the day,
as much as I loved giving that talk, was being
able to drive fifteen minutes home which felt really good
because normally I'm on aeroplanes and that kind of thing.
And I walked into the kitchen. You were in the
kitchen with one of the kids. You've been out and
done the shopping. You'd been to the farmer's market that morning,
(12:29):
just to try something different, and you'd bought all the
fresh fruit and veggies. And I've come into the kitchen
and you're there. You're chatting with our daughter. Then I'm
there and all the fruit and veggies bit by bit
getting put away, we're cleaning up the kitchen. We've got
some music on and we're just enjoying. And then one
of our other kids came in and it felt like
I mean, I don't know if we've ever had a
Saturday like it. If we have, it's been a long
(12:50):
time where we were all hanging out in the kitchen
doing a couple of basics that need to be done,
but really just enjoying one another's company and feeling relaxed.
And I just thought, this, this is how it's supposed
to be, right, Like, this is how family life is
supposed to be. Where we're not pushed from pillar to post,
we're not trying to be efficient and effective at all times,
(13:12):
but rather we're just being in the moment doing basic,
simple things, Kylie, it just felt good.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
A number of years ago I brought this beautiful home
daycore piece and it was literally a hand painted wooden
sign that said the gathering Place. And as the morning unfolded,
what occurred to me was that when we create the
right environment, our children actually flocked to us like bees
(13:45):
to honey. Like it was just when when we've got
time and we're not hurried and we're not rushed, watching
each of the kids just kind of meander into our
space and start conversations that were just and there was
no there was no weight to any of it, but
they just wanted to be there and they didn't want
(14:05):
to go. And it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean it made my weekend. I don't know
what else to say other than to say that it
was perfect. It's what a happy family is supposed to be, right,
everyone hanging out in the kitchen and enjoying one of
this's company, bit of music in the background, good healthy
food on the table.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It just felt so did that Basil smell.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I just love the whole lot. Anyway, There our take
our messages and fundamentally, it all comes back to one thing.
Kidspell love t Im, kids fell love t Im. And
the more we can slow it down, the more that
we can breathe and just have the space to be together,
the happier our families feel. Slow it down.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
When you think about how we opened this and shared
MEM's experience, Yeah, this is just a beautiful reality that
the more time we can give ourselves to be the
people we want to be, the happier our families are.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Absolutely love it. We really hope that this gives you
some inspo for the weekend. Hopefully you can, I don't know,
go to the farmer's market tomorrow morning and shop and
fill your fridge with green, healthy, abundant, life giving food
and food is medicine. Food is medicine and spend time
with the kids. Slow it down for the weekend, have
a wonderful weekend, and thank you so much for choosing
(15:21):
to spend your time with us. We're so grateful that
you do. The Happy Famili's podcast is produced by Justin
Rouland from Bridge Media. If you'd like more info and
more resources that will make your family happier, you'll find
them at Happy families, dot com, dot au,
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