May 16, 2024 • 12 mins
Justin's singing turned complaints about dishes into a whole lot of fun, with sound levels hitting dangerous decibel levels!
Term 2 of homeschooling started off rather rocky for The Coulsons, but thinking outside the box created an opportunity for a reluctant writer to be creative and expressive in a new way!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Today, we're starting the podcast with the story about a pillow.
I promise we're not trying to put you to sleep.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Well, I promise that I won't tell any dad jokes
in relation to pillows. The girls were mortified that you
told that joke last week.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It was such a good joke. It was such a
good joke. I'm doctor Justin Corsner here with my wife.
I am under our six kids. Kylie. Today, I'll do better
tomorrow and we sort of talk about what's worked and
what hasn't worked so that we can be more intentional
in our parenting and help you to be more intentional
in your parenting as you try to be better tomorrow. So, Kylie,
what's the deal with the pillow and why do we
need to talk about it today?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, we had a long weekend, yes, a few weekends ago,
and you may have shared last week that you were
in Brisbane and you gave me a phone call because
you'd forgotten your shoes.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You got my shoes, yes, and wanted you to drive
from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane, which is an hour
and twenty an hour and thirty depending on the time
of day, so that you could bring me my shoes.
You to buy some. I said, what do you think
I am made of money? I just need my shoes
much more politely than that. And then you, you very
kindly did the drive I did. I mean I met
you halfway. We met somewhere around I don't know that
(01:17):
great big Costco Muhammouth. But I got my shoes in
time for my presentation that night. What a wonderful wife.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, long weekend comes and I am now stuck in
Bunderberg with a whole bunch of young women from our
church for the weekend. And I get there it was
a girls camp and realize that I've packed everything, like everything,
I had everything.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Except your except for my pillow. And you rang me and.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So might have run you. Yes, we rendezvous somewhere so
you could bring me my pillow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Three and a half hours, three and a half hours.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Just ask how much do you love me?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I love you so much, But that you did not
bring me my pl No, I didn't. I didn't because
you've got other stuff. You can use it up. You
can use your backpack.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It was the worst sleep I've ever had.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No you're not.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, I'm not so Now that I've been sufficiently humbled
today's podcast, I'll do better tomorrow. I'm going to share
something that happened just the other night in our kitchen
while the dishes were being done, because I had a
massive win. And just before we play this, I need
to highlight that you might want to block your ears
(02:25):
at now and then because it's pretty hard to hear.
Oh my goodness, what do you think, Emily? Do you
think that they should keep it up or echo professionally?
Can you see them on stage? So that's the first clip,
(02:46):
and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to be giving
you this glimpse. Here's the second one. Once you watch
actually say you're in a low.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Place, it says sound that was hit ninety decibels, hearing
loss repeated the time generally to permanent damage, considering using
here in the Texonal movie too area.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So I was trying to work out how you were
claiming this as a win. Yeah, I heard your harmonizing
in there.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, that wasn't me. If it was off key harmonizing,
definitely wasn't me at all. I was terrible. You were there, Yeah,
I kind of was.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
The reason I wanted to share that is because the girls, well, well,
number one, they were singing so loud that Annie's watch
went off and said you've gone over ninety decibels. You
need to turn it down, which I just laugh. But secondly,
the kids began to complain when I asked them to
help in the kitchen, and then I started singing a
Disney song and then I stopped and they kept it going.
(03:50):
There was about eight a cappella songs. Then the sterea
got cranked up and they they sang and laughed and
had so much fun for taken at least, well, it
took twice as long because they were making so much
noise and having so much fun.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
My sister actually showed up halfway through this process and
she looked at me and she said, what is going on?
She said, I feel like the dynamics have shifted since
Ella's left.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and what was going on is we were doing
the dishes. That was pretty much it, and that's my
alder about it tomorrow. It's really that simple, the fact
that you don't have to make chores horrible when you're involved.
When you're finding things that can bring delight and joy.
Even doing the dishes can be great. And it's just
it just felt so good, Kylie. It felt so good
(04:36):
to be in the kitchen screaming with the kids as
we sang Disney songs.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I've actually watched you do this a couple of times.
We were doing a car trip recently and the kids
were getting a little bit antsy in the back seat,
and you just threw when as part of your conversation
the words from one of their favorite Disney songs. Yes,
and looked at me with a massive grin as they
took over and literally broke out into songs. Changed the
(05:00):
dynamics of the car ride instantly.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, fun and music. If you want to do better tomorrow,
they're too central and absolutely necessary ingredients, Kylie. What's your
I'll do better tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Day one of homeschool for term two was an absolute shocker.
We sat down and Emily needed to do a recount
on a small five minute animated video. She literally had
to recount and retell the story in her own words. Well,
she has decided, for whatever reason, she hates writing, and
(05:37):
so we had a four hour standout.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So you can't get away with that. At school, you
can't say no the teacher for four hours, but when
it's your mum.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Every time I tried to, she just lost it. So
I finally just gave up trying and I just got
on with my day. And each time we'd interact, I'd
just say, Emily, just let me know when you're ready,
and she'd have another big kind of meltdown about it,
until finally she got up and she decided she was
going to get it done, and she actually did a really,
(06:08):
really good job. But what I noticed was, obviously it
totally changed the dynamics of our school day, and I
realized that this is, obviously, for whatever reason, it's a
real sticking point for her.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Just before you go on with that, I remember when
our kids were at a school in Brisbane when we
were living down there, and this particular school had a
policy where all the kids in grade four and grade
five and grade six they did this thing where they
just had to I can't really what it was called.
It was like writing on demand or something like that,
and the kids were literally expected every single day to
pick up a pan, pick up a pencil and write
(06:40):
for ten or fifteen minutes NonStop about anything at all.
They had absolute carte blanche. They could go in any
direction they wanted to. And I remember our kids complaining
about it. They just hated writing, hated sitting there hunched
over a notebook trying to write stuff, especially when they
weren't even given a topic. It just felt like it
was too big. I didn't know what to write about.
(07:01):
So it's not an even though we're homeschooling, it's not
an uncommon challenge for kids to not want to write.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I had some of her school books available to me
to flick through while she was having the smeltdown, and
she kept telling me that she couldn't write and it
was too hard. And I just pulled up last year's
writing book, like her language book, and I started reading her.
Her own words were just exacerbated her mood. She got
so angry that I was kind of like throwing her
(07:27):
words back in her face. But finally we got through it,
and like I said, she did a great job. But
moving forward, I wanted to find a better way for
us to interact with writing because it has been just
so challenging. And you actually shared that remembering of the
kids doing the daily writing and as a young girl,
I kept a journal from the time I was about six,
(07:50):
and I still have that journal. So I actually pulled
it out the next day and I said, em, I
said if you ever thought about writing in a journal?
And she was like no. I said, well, I found
my journal from when I was six, and I said,
can I read you what I wrote? There was very
little detail to it. It was a really short entry,
(08:11):
and I only wrote a handful of times that year,
and then a handful of times the next year, and
a handful of times the following year. But as I
started reading, she started connecting with the things that I
was sharing, and she was like, well, that's really cool,
or I didn't know that was your grandma's name, or
just little things. And I said to her, how do
you feel about writing a journal? Would you like to
do that instead of doing the other things that we've
(08:31):
been doing in school, And she said yeah. So we
went on a hunt for a notebook in the house
because the girls all seemed to collect them and not
use them. And she sat down and she wrote her
first recount of her day, and it was just it
was such a delight. It was an absolute delight to
read and she had a ball writing it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The other day we had an experience and she decided
she wanted to write about it in her journal, and
I rang her to ask her if I could share it,
because she read it to you, you when you were
coming back from Adelaide, and what was your impression?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It cracked me up. I loved it. I just genuinely
loved it. I loved hearing her little voice and she
read with so much expression.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
So I wish she was here so she could actually
share it because it was so hilarious. I'm not even
going to clearly do it justice, but this is what
she wrote. Tuesday is the day I made more cool
dragon puppets. I also did a dot painting, and I
learned about how Aboriginals used the land. Mum was drawing
her gorilla baby and I saw it and I said, girl,
(09:36):
that's amazing. It just needs a more tongue. Lady. That's
as she said it to me, didn't she? And she
goes on to say, after that, I went swimming against
my wheel and I did in brackets deep breath but
iFly breaststroke, freestyle dives, and when I finished, my mum
brought me a lollly snake for me, and going home,
I was on my mum's phone or reading Dragonslayer, then dinner,
(10:00):
bed and sleep, and that was her recount of the day,
and I just I wanted to share that because it
was a couple of things that came out of it.
We share the same art teacher and I had been
working on this piece and she had asked me so gently, Mom,
have you finished this? And I said, well, I said,
I think it still needs some more work, but I
just don't know how to do it. And that's when
(10:20):
she said to me, you just need to work on
your tone. Meant I didn't have enough depth in my picture,
like enough color, And I said, I don't know how
to get there, Emily, And here's my ten year old
telling me. She said, when I get to that point,
she said, my teacher tells me I just need to
push harder with my pencil. So I went to art
class that night and I sat with her teacher. We
(10:41):
share and I said, Betty, this is the conversation I
had with Emily. And she cracked up and she said,
I'm sorry to say it, but.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
She's right push hard.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So I was able to sit down and have time
to finish it. But the reason I was sharing this
was just because by thinking outside the box, Emily and
I have created an opportunity for her to write in
a way that feels comfortable and natural to her. And
it's really encouraging her to be creative and expressive in
(11:13):
the way she shares her experiences. And it's made such
a difference because we missed a week, and when I
asked her if she just wanted to write a week's
recount in one entry, she said, no, I need to
write for every day. So we've gone from this kid
who didn't want to write at all to now doing
four entries because she didn't want to miss a day.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
You know what you've inspired me to do is pull
out my diaries, my journals from when I was a kid,
and start reading those to the kids. I mean, they
might not be interested, but I am. I think it'd
be interesting to see what I write. And based on
what Emily wrote about her week, I reckon in twenty
or thirty years, she'll look back on what she's written
and be so glad that she's taken the time to
write it. What a wonderful gift. The Happy Family's podcast
(11:55):
is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce
is our executive producer. If you'd like more information about
making your family happier, please visit happyfamilies dot com dot au.
Have a wonderful weekend and hopefully this helps you to
do better tomorrow
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers. Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Today, we're starting the podcast with the story about a pillow.
I promise we're not trying to put you to sleep.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Well, I promise that I won't tell any dad jokes
in relation to pillows. The girls were mortified that you
told that joke last week.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It was such a good joke. It was such a
good joke. I'm doctor Justin Corsner here with my wife.
I am under our six kids. Kylie. Today, I'll do better
tomorrow and we sort of talk about what's worked and
what hasn't worked so that we can be more intentional
in our parenting and help you to be more intentional
in your parenting as you try to be better tomorrow. So, Kylie,
what's the deal with the pillow and why do we
need to talk about it today?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, we had a long weekend, yes, a few weekends ago,
and you may have shared last week that you were
in Brisbane and you gave me a phone call because
you'd forgotten your shoes.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You got my shoes, yes, and wanted you to drive
from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane, which is an hour
and twenty an hour and thirty depending on the time
of day, so that you could bring me my shoes.
You to buy some. I said, what do you think
I am made of money? I just need my shoes
much more politely than that. And then you, you very
kindly did the drive I did. I mean I met
you halfway. We met somewhere around I don't know that
(01:17):
great big Costco Muhammouth. But I got my shoes in
time for my presentation that night. What a wonderful wife.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Well, long weekend comes and I am now stuck in
Bunderberg with a whole bunch of young women from our
church for the weekend. And I get there it was
a girls camp and realize that I've packed everything, like everything,
I had everything.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Except your except for my pillow. And you rang me and.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
So might have run you. Yes, we rendezvous somewhere so
you could bring me my pillow.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Three and a half hours, three and a half hours.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Just ask how much do you love me?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I love you so much, But that you did not
bring me my pl No, I didn't. I didn't because
you've got other stuff. You can use it up. You
can use your backpack.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
It was the worst sleep I've ever had.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No you're not.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, I'm not so Now that I've been sufficiently humbled
today's podcast, I'll do better tomorrow. I'm going to share
something that happened just the other night in our kitchen
while the dishes were being done, because I had a
massive win. And just before we play this, I need
to highlight that you might want to block your ears
(02:25):
at now and then because it's pretty hard to hear.
Oh my goodness, what do you think, Emily? Do you
think that they should keep it up or echo professionally?
Can you see them on stage? So that's the first clip,
(02:46):
and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to be giving
you this glimpse. Here's the second one. Once you watch
actually say you're in a low.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Place, it says sound that was hit ninety decibels, hearing
loss repeated the time generally to permanent damage, considering using
here in the Texonal movie too area.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
So I was trying to work out how you were
claiming this as a win. Yeah, I heard your harmonizing
in there.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
No, that wasn't me. If it was off key harmonizing,
definitely wasn't me at all. I was terrible. You were there, Yeah,
I kind of was.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
The reason I wanted to share that is because the girls, well, well,
number one, they were singing so loud that Annie's watch
went off and said you've gone over ninety decibels. You
need to turn it down, which I just laugh. But secondly,
the kids began to complain when I asked them to
help in the kitchen, and then I started singing a
Disney song and then I stopped and they kept it going.
(03:50):
There was about eight a cappella songs. Then the sterea
got cranked up and they they sang and laughed and
had so much fun for taken at least, well, it
took twice as long because they were making so much
noise and having so much fun.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
My sister actually showed up halfway through this process and
she looked at me and she said, what is going on?
She said, I feel like the dynamics have shifted since
Ella's left.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, and what was going on is we were doing
the dishes. That was pretty much it, and that's my
alder about it tomorrow. It's really that simple, the fact
that you don't have to make chores horrible when you're involved.
When you're finding things that can bring delight and joy.
Even doing the dishes can be great. And it's just
it just felt so good, Kylie. It felt so good
(04:36):
to be in the kitchen screaming with the kids as
we sang Disney songs.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I've actually watched you do this a couple of times.
We were doing a car trip recently and the kids
were getting a little bit antsy in the back seat,
and you just threw when as part of your conversation
the words from one of their favorite Disney songs. Yes,
and looked at me with a massive grin as they
took over and literally broke out into songs. Changed the
(05:00):
dynamics of the car ride instantly.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, fun and music. If you want to do better tomorrow,
they're too central and absolutely necessary ingredients, Kylie. What's your
I'll do better tomorrow?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Well?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Day one of homeschool for term two was an absolute shocker.
We sat down and Emily needed to do a recount
on a small five minute animated video. She literally had
to recount and retell the story in her own words. Well,
she has decided, for whatever reason, she hates writing, and
(05:37):
so we had a four hour standout.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
So you can't get away with that. At school, you
can't say no the teacher for four hours, but when
it's your mum.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Every time I tried to, she just lost it. So
I finally just gave up trying and I just got
on with my day. And each time we'd interact, I'd
just say, Emily, just let me know when you're ready,
and she'd have another big kind of meltdown about it,
until finally she got up and she decided she was
going to get it done, and she actually did a really,
(06:08):
really good job. But what I noticed was, obviously it
totally changed the dynamics of our school day, and I
realized that this is, obviously, for whatever reason, it's a
real sticking point for her.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Just before you go on with that, I remember when
our kids were at a school in Brisbane when we
were living down there, and this particular school had a
policy where all the kids in grade four and grade
five and grade six they did this thing where they
just had to I can't really what it was called.
It was like writing on demand or something like that,
and the kids were literally expected every single day to
pick up a pan, pick up a pencil and write
(06:40):
for ten or fifteen minutes NonStop about anything at all.
They had absolute carte blanche. They could go in any
direction they wanted to. And I remember our kids complaining
about it. They just hated writing, hated sitting there hunched
over a notebook trying to write stuff, especially when they
weren't even given a topic. It just felt like it
was too big. I didn't know what to write about.
(07:01):
So it's not an even though we're homeschooling, it's not
an uncommon challenge for kids to not want to write.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I had some of her school books available to me
to flick through while she was having the smeltdown, and
she kept telling me that she couldn't write and it
was too hard. And I just pulled up last year's
writing book, like her language book, and I started reading her.
Her own words were just exacerbated her mood. She got
so angry that I was kind of like throwing her
(07:27):
words back in her face. But finally we got through it,
and like I said, she did a great job. But
moving forward, I wanted to find a better way for
us to interact with writing because it has been just
so challenging. And you actually shared that remembering of the
kids doing the daily writing and as a young girl,
I kept a journal from the time I was about six,
(07:50):
and I still have that journal. So I actually pulled
it out the next day and I said, em, I
said if you ever thought about writing in a journal?
And she was like no. I said, well, I found
my journal from when I was six, and I said,
can I read you what I wrote? There was very
little detail to it. It was a really short entry,
(08:11):
and I only wrote a handful of times that year,
and then a handful of times the next year, and
a handful of times the following year. But as I
started reading, she started connecting with the things that I
was sharing, and she was like, well, that's really cool,
or I didn't know that was your grandma's name, or
just little things. And I said to her, how do
you feel about writing a journal? Would you like to
do that instead of doing the other things that we've
(08:31):
been doing in school, And she said yeah. So we
went on a hunt for a notebook in the house
because the girls all seemed to collect them and not
use them. And she sat down and she wrote her
first recount of her day, and it was just it
was such a delight. It was an absolute delight to
read and she had a ball writing it.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
The other day we had an experience and she decided
she wanted to write about it in her journal, and
I rang her to ask her if I could share it,
because she read it to you, you when you were
coming back from Adelaide, and what was your impression?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It cracked me up. I loved it. I just genuinely
loved it. I loved hearing her little voice and she
read with so much expression.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
So I wish she was here so she could actually
share it because it was so hilarious. I'm not even
going to clearly do it justice, but this is what
she wrote. Tuesday is the day I made more cool
dragon puppets. I also did a dot painting, and I
learned about how Aboriginals used the land. Mum was drawing
her gorilla baby and I saw it and I said, girl,
(09:36):
that's amazing. It just needs a more tongue. Lady. That's
as she said it to me, didn't she? And she
goes on to say, after that, I went swimming against
my wheel and I did in brackets deep breath but
iFly breaststroke, freestyle dives, and when I finished, my mum
brought me a lollly snake for me, and going home,
I was on my mum's phone or reading Dragonslayer, then dinner,
(10:00):
bed and sleep, and that was her recount of the day,
and I just I wanted to share that because it
was a couple of things that came out of it.
We share the same art teacher and I had been
working on this piece and she had asked me so gently, Mom,
have you finished this? And I said, well, I said,
I think it still needs some more work, but I
just don't know how to do it. And that's when
(10:20):
she said to me, you just need to work on
your tone. Meant I didn't have enough depth in my picture,
like enough color, And I said, I don't know how
to get there, Emily, And here's my ten year old
telling me. She said, when I get to that point,
she said, my teacher tells me I just need to
push harder with my pencil. So I went to art
class that night and I sat with her teacher. We
(10:41):
share and I said, Betty, this is the conversation I
had with Emily. And she cracked up and she said,
I'm sorry to say it, but.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
She's right push hard.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
So I was able to sit down and have time
to finish it. But the reason I was sharing this
was just because by thinking outside the box, Emily and
I have created an opportunity for her to write in
a way that feels comfortable and natural to her. And
it's really encouraging her to be creative and expressive in
(11:13):
the way she shares her experiences. And it's made such
a difference because we missed a week, and when I
asked her if she just wanted to write a week's
recount in one entry, she said, no, I need to
write for every day. So we've gone from this kid
who didn't want to write at all to now doing
four entries because she didn't want to miss a day.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
You know what you've inspired me to do is pull
out my diaries, my journals from when I was a kid,
and start reading those to the kids. I mean, they
might not be interested, but I am. I think it'd
be interesting to see what I write. And based on
what Emily wrote about her week, I reckon in twenty
or thirty years, she'll look back on what she's written
and be so glad that she's taken the time to
write it. What a wonderful gift. The Happy Family's podcast
(11:55):
is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce
is our executive producer. If you'd like more information about
making your family happier, please visit happyfamilies dot com dot au.
Have a wonderful weekend and hopefully this helps you to
do better tomorrow
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