November 27, 2025 • 14 mins
Ever feel like your kids walk straight past overflowing laundry baskets, open doors, or lights blazing—and simply don’t see it? You’re not imagining things. In this episode, Justin and Kylie share the hilarious (and slightly painful!) truth about raising kids who swear they’re “contributing”… while the adults quietly carry the load.
This feel-good Friday wrap-up dives into family meetings, chore systems that actually work, and the emotional load parents carry as we crawl toward the end of the year. It’s honest, relatable, and packed with practical ideas to help your kids step up—no nagging required.
KEY POINTS
- Why teens truly believe they’re contributing (and why parents disagree).
- The difference between helping when asked and true initiative.
- How a simple four-station chore system brought calm back to the household.
- The real reason parents burn out at the end of the year.
- Why “don’t give up” might be the most important parenting rule of all.
- How family meetings create clarity, connection, and accountability—even with adult kids.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“Contribution is about initiative—eyes open, notice, and act.”
RESOURCES MENTIONED
- Family meeting questions: What’s going well? What’s not? What do we want to focus on?
- eSafety Commissioner updates on minimum age for social media platforms
- Happy Families resources at happyfamilies.com.au
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Hold a quick family meeting—15 minutes max—with the three guiding questions.
- Introduce clusters instead of chores (laundry, floors, kitchen, bathrooms).
- Give kids longer rotations (weekly or monthly) to build mastery and responsibility.
- Reframe contribution as noticing—not waiting.
- Stay consistent: gentle reminders aren’t failure; they’re part of the process.
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):
Hello, this is the Happy Families podcast. So glad that
you're with us as we wrap up another week. Oh
my goodness, missus Happy Families. This is the end of
November when we hit the new week on Monday, first
of December. Wooo, things are going so fast. Today on
the podcast, it's Old Do Better Tomorrow, which means we've
got a little bit of housekeeping, some schoolies news. Also,
(00:29):
what's going on with this social media minimum age legislation,
the social media ban. There's been an update that we
need to keep you abreast of. That's in the housekeeping
and do our children pay attention to anything we say
that's our old do Better Tomorrow? Up next. Hello, Welcome
(00:50):
to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real parenting
solutions every single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie call some the parents of
six children on the author of like nine or ten
or eleven books or something like that, host of that
TV show you might have seen, Parental Guidance on Channel
nine and this podcast, So Kylie, as we always do
(01:12):
on a Friday, a little bit of housekeeping, a bit
of this week in parenting, the latest news, about what's
going on for parents.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Not a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Actually, school is wrapping up around the country in various states.
Things are slowing down. Kids are going to school and
watching TV, watching movies, or not going at all schoolings.
If you read the most popular news websites in the country,
schoolies is making headlines on a daily basis. Whether it's
on the Gold Coast or whether it's in Bustleton in
WA for Leaver's Week, or whether it's happening in Victor
(01:46):
Harbor in South Australia or Byron Bay or I mean,
it doesn't really matter. It's happening everywhere, even Balley and Fiji.
And basically the news is as follows. Adolescents, school leaders
are behaving badly. Any surprises. Do we need to talk
about it anymore? No, I mean they're kind of just
(02:08):
this is the same headline every single year, being teenagers
who are not supervised and have access to a whole
lot of things that they normally wouldn't have access to
at home. Hope, if your kids are there that they're
doing okay. Hope if your kids are not there because
they're too young, that you listened to our episode back
on the twentieth of November last Thursday, when we discussed
(02:28):
how not everyone goes to school is and that's not
a bad thing and how you can talk to your
kids about not going Hey. Also one other item of
housekeeping that is that the E Safety Commissioner has updated
the website again with the services that the social media
minimum age legislation are going to be affecting from December ten.
So we've only got like twelve days until this comes in.
If you've got kids that are on social media, their
(02:49):
days are numbered. Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, snapchat, threads, TikTok,
twitch x which was formerly Twitter, and YouTube are all
the services that E Safety considers will be age restricted
social media platforms. So if the kids are on there,
their days are numbered.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Your housekeeping is boring.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
My house? What do you want in housekeeping? What should
I be talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, I can't believe you haven't acknowledged that we went
and saw Wicked Part two.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It was a bit of a letdown. Didn't like it,
brand the room, it was a quick pitted West of the.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
West, unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
You like that?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Why we wasted a.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Ticket on you? You enjoyed it?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Did you not see all of your girls in the room.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Although crying, they were boiling their eyes out. Though yeah,
I mean I love the musical. We've been to see
the musical what three times now something like that, and
the movie was just I felt like it was a letdown.
Didn't enjoy it. You're terrible.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
They did such a good job better. I think part
two was way better than part one.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Not even close. It was nice to be with the
family and to go to a movie. We discovered that
there's a movie a cinema what like twenty minutes away
from our home that is less than half the price
of the standard movie theater.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And it's gold class.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And we were able to rock up. Like the gold class.
Tickets were fifteen bucks, which is I mean, that's winning
when you pay twenty five dollars to go to the
movies down the road.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
How much was your large popcorn? Oh, that's a win.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Even that was only like six or seven dollars, which
it's still preposterous, but eighteen when you go to the
other like, it's longers. So we splashed out.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
We don't do the movies very often at all, not
as a whole, as a whole family, but it was
so delightful to spend that time with the kids.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So is that you're oldly better? Tomorrow we took the
kids to the movies.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You're so funny.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's not hard.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, it's not my I'll do better tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Is coming up right after the break, because guess what,
it's a short one today. We are well depending on
when you listen to this on Friday morning, hopefully we're
on an aurplane by now, or we're about to be.
My fiftieth birthday was last month. Last month, yeah, last month, Yeah,
a month and a bit of like five or six
(05:01):
weeks ago, and we're taking the whole family to New
Zealand and we're going to go for one hundred and
sixty kilometer bike ride across four days and then spend
a couple of days hanging out in Queenstown. Really excited
about it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I've been doing the countdown with our two year old
granddaughter Indye.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Every day I talk to her and I'm like, three
more sleeps and we're going on a big plane. And
she said, with pops, And I said yes, and she said,
and auntie em she's so excited. Yeah, she's never going
to want to travel any other way.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So that's housekeeping. That's important housekeeping. I mean, it's a
little bit of it's attle bit of news about the causons.
But I'm fifty. We've got a granddaughter, and we're taking
the whole family over to New Zealand so that we
can go for a big bike ride. It's going to
be cold, it's probably going to rain, and we're just
going to make memories. The memories. I've said to the kids,
it's going to be memorable. It's going to be memorable.
(05:48):
You'll decide why.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
We've been begging them to get on a bike for
about six months.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
It's forty k's a day. Forty k's a day. I
mean that's not very far, and it's not particularly herely
because it's a rail trail and trails don't go uphills
and downhills. But it's one hundred and sixty k's over
four days. Forty k's a day. And we've said day
one you'll be fine, but day two, if you don't
get your butt used to a saddle, a bicycle saddle,
you are going to feel it on day two and
on day three you're going to cry. And guess how
(06:17):
many bike rides they've been on. None? Zero, we've been
giving them, like we gave them three or four months notice,
we've been reminding them every week no bike rides. So
we've just said it's going to be memorable. You'll decide why.
But we're going and we're going to have fun. You
might not, but we're going to have fun every day.
So that's the end of the housekeeping. After the break,
we need to talk about it. I'll do better tomorrow
(06:38):
because sometimes I just wonder if our kids hear a
word we say. That's next. We're back. This is the
Happy Families Podcast. I'll Do Better Tomorrow, Friday edition. Kylie,
(06:59):
You're going to tell the story because you probably ran
this more than I did, but I don't know. Did
it work? Did it not work. Let's talk about what
we're learning about family life as we continue to raise
our children.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
If you've been listening to us for a while now,
you will have heard us talk about family meetings. We
try to have them as regularly as possible. When we're
spot on. It's a weekly event on a Sunday afternoon,
we sit down and we spend maybe fifteen twenty minutes
max with them. We ask them three questions, what's going well?
What's not and what do we want to focus on,
(07:37):
So we haven't done that for a little while. We
now have three adult children in our house, and we
have got there is more movement in our home than
we've ever experienced, three extra drivers, There's just a lot
going on. So trying to organize and orchestrate a family
meeting and one specific timeframe is tricky, to say the least.
(08:00):
This time we were missing one child. Yep, she's like,
I'm not going to be there. But we decided that
we just we just needed to move forward and do it.
I think one of the things that stands out to
me is so often and I feel it personally myself,
is that we get towards the end of the year
and we kind of drop our bundle trying to drag
ourselves to the finish line because we are done where
(08:20):
we've got nothing left in the tank. But for me,
I really want to cross that finish line feeling strong.
And there are some things that have been happening in
our family for a little while now that just needed
a bit of a tweak. So we sat down. I
asked them what was going well, do you remember what
the first thing was?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
They said, no, now that you've raced it. I can't remember.
Didn't they say something like we're all getting along or they.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Talked about contribution and how they were doing.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh, they talked about how much they were contributing. That's right,
that was the first thing they said. Oh my joor
nearly hit the floor, like are we living in parallel universes?
Do you think you're contributing? Like seriously? It was at
the point. No, it was later on, later on I
made this conversation because when we got to the what's
not going well? I said contribution and me like, have
(09:07):
you bean something bad? Like what is going on here?
And I said to them, the thing is like Mum's threshold.
And I pointed at you. I said, your threshold, Mum's
threshold for when something needs to be tidy is here.
And I put my hand at a certain level. And
before I could even say another word, they've all gone, yeah,
(09:28):
where's your threshold? And they pretty they'll put their hands
on the floor like like I'm the perfectionist, like like
I'm the one who can't stand a messy kitchen or
something like that. And I said, okay, you don't know
where they would have my mind might be a little
bit lower. And then I'm like, but yours And then
I stood up. I'm like, yours is a right up here,
and you guys are feeling Yeah, you guys are happy
to contribute when you notice. But the thing is, you
(09:49):
don't notice until about four days after we noticed. Contribution
is about initiative and noticing. It's about it's about seeing
that there's something that needs to be and just doing
it without being asked. Oh my goodness, like they're adults.
They're adults, kylie seriously.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And so over the past week, as I was planning
that we would sit down and have this meeting, I
was thinking about how things were not functioning very well
at the moment and that the brunt of the running
of the house is falling on my shoulder.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
They really, truly, honestly think that they're contributing. They do,
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
They do. And so I created I thought, you know what,
we actually have to go back to a roster.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Need to bring the chor chart back. So I created
four workstations essentially.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yes, so instead of saying this is your chore, you
created like, this is a cluster of chores that all
hang together yep. And then I jumped in as I
just have now over the top of you, and I said,
you can do them for a week, you can do
them for a month, or you can just say this
is my permanent job because we're not going to swap daily.
And I think weekly not enough. I think you just
(11:01):
stuck with this one thing for a month and then
we rotate around and that way you get good at
it as well.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
And they were like, ohugh, So we have a laundry station,
we have a bathroom station, we have a floors station,
and we have a kitchen station.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And I'm actually we're only a few days in, but.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, and we're about to go away.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
But while there was some general pushback in the beginning,
once we talked it through, I think there was some
buy in. And the last few days, as we've prepared
to head away, the girls have checked in and said,
all right, does this need to be done today?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yep. So the takeome messages. You've just got to keep
on doing the reminders, no matter how old they are,
and no matter how many times you've had the conversation,
and with appropriate structure, you can actually get the kids
to do their thing.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah. I think it's so easy, and I fall into
this trap all the time. I kind of just ruw
my hands up in the air and go, you know what,
I've asked them so many times, there's no point. I
just can't be bothered. I'll just do it myself. But
then I run myself ragged and I don't show up
with my best self, and they don't get the best
of me. Yeah, and I don't teach them anything either,
(12:16):
And so I think that the take home for me
is don't give up. You've got to have the conversation.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Don't give up.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
One hundred times, you can get there. You just don't
give up.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Don't do it. It's a long game. This parent a
game long one last highlight on this as this wrapped
up on whatever night. It was Sunday night, and I
just emphasized again guys, girls, initiative, contribution, eyes open, notice,
things that need doing. For some reason, I got out
(12:52):
of bed at like nine point thirty ten o'clock because
I know one of the kids was doing something and
I wanted to find out what was going on and
tell them to go to bed, turn off the lights. Office.
The studio that we're recording this podcast in is outside
the house right, like we've it's separate, there's a separate
entry to get into the office. And somehow, for some reason,
somebody had left my office light on and the door
(13:13):
wide open, and I was like, what's going on there?
And then it occurred to me that our twenty something,
one of our twenty something doaorters, had walked out of
the house at about nine pm to walk the dog
and had walked back into the house at nine point thirty,
and she'd walked past that open office door with the
(13:34):
light beaming out and hadn't noticed, hadn't taken the initiative,
and hadn't made the contribution. And I said to her,
how hard is this? Like contribution? There's a light on,
turn it off, there's a door open, close it. And
she's like, I didn't notice. I don't notice these things.
I'm like, oh my goodness, why are we saying this?
(13:55):
What's the point? Anyway? We need to wrap it up there.
We've got a plan to catch we do. So. We
have put together a whole lot of great podcasts for
the next few days or the next week while we're
doing this bike ride. Oh, I can't wait to tell
you the story about the bike ride. Just I hope
it works. I have it, guys, okay, to help you
to experience the psychology of Christmas, magic and all.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
The good psychology.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
So yeah, very good. That's all next week on the pod,
and we'll be back with another. I'll do better tomorrow
to let you know how it's all gone. If we
make it, have a wonderful weekend. Hopefully this has helped
your family to do better tomorrow. I do those meetings.
They really do make a difference. What's working, what's not.
What we do to make things better this week. We
hope that it does make your week better. A Happy
(14:39):
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
We really appreciate Mim Hammont's for her research, admin and
a whole lot of other support. And if you'd like
more infot to make your family happier, you'll find it
at Happy families dot com dot a
Hello, this is the Happy Families podcast. So glad that
you're with us as we wrap up another week. Oh
my goodness, missus Happy Families. This is the end of
November when we hit the new week on Monday, first
of December. Wooo, things are going so fast. Today on
the podcast, it's Old Do Better Tomorrow, which means we've
got a little bit of housekeeping, some schoolies news. Also,
(00:29):
what's going on with this social media minimum age legislation,
the social media ban. There's been an update that we
need to keep you abreast of. That's in the housekeeping
and do our children pay attention to anything we say
that's our old do Better Tomorrow? Up next. Hello, Welcome
(00:50):
to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real parenting
solutions every single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie call some the parents of
six children on the author of like nine or ten
or eleven books or something like that, host of that
TV show you might have seen, Parental Guidance on Channel
nine and this podcast, So Kylie, as we always do
(01:12):
on a Friday, a little bit of housekeeping, a bit
of this week in parenting, the latest news, about what's
going on for parents.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Not a whole lot.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Actually, school is wrapping up around the country in various states.
Things are slowing down. Kids are going to school and
watching TV, watching movies, or not going at all schoolings.
If you read the most popular news websites in the country,
schoolies is making headlines on a daily basis. Whether it's
on the Gold Coast or whether it's in Bustleton in
WA for Leaver's Week, or whether it's happening in Victor
(01:46):
Harbor in South Australia or Byron Bay or I mean,
it doesn't really matter. It's happening everywhere, even Balley and Fiji.
And basically the news is as follows. Adolescents, school leaders
are behaving badly. Any surprises. Do we need to talk
about it anymore? No, I mean they're kind of just
(02:08):
this is the same headline every single year, being teenagers
who are not supervised and have access to a whole
lot of things that they normally wouldn't have access to
at home. Hope, if your kids are there that they're
doing okay. Hope if your kids are not there because
they're too young, that you listened to our episode back
on the twentieth of November last Thursday, when we discussed
(02:28):
how not everyone goes to school is and that's not
a bad thing and how you can talk to your
kids about not going Hey. Also one other item of
housekeeping that is that the E Safety Commissioner has updated
the website again with the services that the social media
minimum age legislation are going to be affecting from December ten.
So we've only got like twelve days until this comes in.
If you've got kids that are on social media, their
(02:49):
days are numbered. Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, snapchat, threads, TikTok,
twitch x which was formerly Twitter, and YouTube are all
the services that E Safety considers will be age restricted
social media platforms. So if the kids are on there,
their days are numbered.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Your housekeeping is boring.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
My house? What do you want in housekeeping? What should
I be talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, I can't believe you haven't acknowledged that we went
and saw Wicked Part two.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It was a bit of a letdown. Didn't like it,
brand the room, it was a quick pitted West of the.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
West, unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
You like that?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Why we wasted a.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Ticket on you? You enjoyed it?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Did you not see all of your girls in the room.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Although crying, they were boiling their eyes out. Though yeah,
I mean I love the musical. We've been to see
the musical what three times now something like that, and
the movie was just I felt like it was a letdown.
Didn't enjoy it. You're terrible.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
They did such a good job better. I think part
two was way better than part one.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Not even close. It was nice to be with the
family and to go to a movie. We discovered that
there's a movie a cinema what like twenty minutes away
from our home that is less than half the price
of the standard movie theater.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
And it's gold class.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And we were able to rock up. Like the gold class.
Tickets were fifteen bucks, which is I mean, that's winning
when you pay twenty five dollars to go to the
movies down the road.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
How much was your large popcorn? Oh, that's a win.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Even that was only like six or seven dollars, which
it's still preposterous, but eighteen when you go to the
other like, it's longers. So we splashed out.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
We don't do the movies very often at all, not
as a whole, as a whole family, but it was
so delightful to spend that time with the kids.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
So is that you're oldly better? Tomorrow we took the
kids to the movies.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You're so funny.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It's not hard.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, it's not my I'll do better tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Is coming up right after the break, because guess what,
it's a short one today. We are well depending on
when you listen to this on Friday morning, hopefully we're
on an aurplane by now, or we're about to be.
My fiftieth birthday was last month. Last month, yeah, last month, Yeah,
a month and a bit of like five or six
(05:01):
weeks ago, and we're taking the whole family to New
Zealand and we're going to go for one hundred and
sixty kilometer bike ride across four days and then spend
a couple of days hanging out in Queenstown. Really excited
about it.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I've been doing the countdown with our two year old
granddaughter Indye.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Every day I talk to her and I'm like, three
more sleeps and we're going on a big plane. And
she said, with pops, And I said yes, and she said,
and auntie em she's so excited. Yeah, she's never going
to want to travel any other way.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
So that's housekeeping. That's important housekeeping. I mean, it's a
little bit of it's attle bit of news about the causons.
But I'm fifty. We've got a granddaughter, and we're taking
the whole family over to New Zealand so that we
can go for a big bike ride. It's going to
be cold, it's probably going to rain, and we're just
going to make memories. The memories. I've said to the kids,
it's going to be memorable. It's going to be memorable.
(05:48):
You'll decide why.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
We've been begging them to get on a bike for
about six months.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
It's forty k's a day. Forty k's a day. I
mean that's not very far, and it's not particularly herely
because it's a rail trail and trails don't go uphills
and downhills. But it's one hundred and sixty k's over
four days. Forty k's a day. And we've said day
one you'll be fine, but day two, if you don't
get your butt used to a saddle, a bicycle saddle,
you are going to feel it on day two and
on day three you're going to cry. And guess how
(06:17):
many bike rides they've been on. None? Zero, we've been
giving them, like we gave them three or four months notice,
we've been reminding them every week no bike rides. So
we've just said it's going to be memorable. You'll decide why.
But we're going and we're going to have fun. You
might not, but we're going to have fun every day.
So that's the end of the housekeeping. After the break,
we need to talk about it. I'll do better tomorrow
(06:38):
because sometimes I just wonder if our kids hear a
word we say. That's next. We're back. This is the
Happy Families Podcast. I'll Do Better Tomorrow, Friday edition. Kylie,
(06:59):
You're going to tell the story because you probably ran
this more than I did, but I don't know. Did
it work? Did it not work. Let's talk about what
we're learning about family life as we continue to raise
our children.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
If you've been listening to us for a while now,
you will have heard us talk about family meetings. We
try to have them as regularly as possible. When we're
spot on. It's a weekly event on a Sunday afternoon,
we sit down and we spend maybe fifteen twenty minutes
max with them. We ask them three questions, what's going well?
What's not and what do we want to focus on,
(07:37):
So we haven't done that for a little while. We
now have three adult children in our house, and we
have got there is more movement in our home than
we've ever experienced, three extra drivers, There's just a lot
going on. So trying to organize and orchestrate a family
meeting and one specific timeframe is tricky, to say the least.
(08:00):
This time we were missing one child. Yep, she's like,
I'm not going to be there. But we decided that
we just we just needed to move forward and do it.
I think one of the things that stands out to
me is so often and I feel it personally myself,
is that we get towards the end of the year
and we kind of drop our bundle trying to drag
ourselves to the finish line because we are done where
(08:20):
we've got nothing left in the tank. But for me,
I really want to cross that finish line feeling strong.
And there are some things that have been happening in
our family for a little while now that just needed
a bit of a tweak. So we sat down. I
asked them what was going well, do you remember what
the first thing was?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
They said, no, now that you've raced it. I can't remember.
Didn't they say something like we're all getting along or they.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Talked about contribution and how they were doing.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Oh, they talked about how much they were contributing. That's right,
that was the first thing they said. Oh my joor
nearly hit the floor, like are we living in parallel universes?
Do you think you're contributing? Like seriously? It was at
the point. No, it was later on, later on I
made this conversation because when we got to the what's
not going well? I said contribution and me like, have
(09:07):
you bean something bad? Like what is going on here?
And I said to them, the thing is like Mum's threshold.
And I pointed at you. I said, your threshold, Mum's
threshold for when something needs to be tidy is here.
And I put my hand at a certain level. And
before I could even say another word, they've all gone, yeah,
(09:28):
where's your threshold? And they pretty they'll put their hands
on the floor like like I'm the perfectionist, like like
I'm the one who can't stand a messy kitchen or
something like that. And I said, okay, you don't know
where they would have my mind might be a little
bit lower. And then I'm like, but yours And then
I stood up. I'm like, yours is a right up here,
and you guys are feeling Yeah, you guys are happy
to contribute when you notice. But the thing is, you
(09:49):
don't notice until about four days after we noticed. Contribution
is about initiative and noticing. It's about it's about seeing
that there's something that needs to be and just doing
it without being asked. Oh my goodness, like they're adults.
They're adults, kylie seriously.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
And so over the past week, as I was planning
that we would sit down and have this meeting, I
was thinking about how things were not functioning very well
at the moment and that the brunt of the running
of the house is falling on my shoulder.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
They really, truly, honestly think that they're contributing. They do,
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
They do. And so I created I thought, you know what,
we actually have to go back to a roster.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah, yeah, we.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Need to bring the chor chart back. So I created
four workstations essentially.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yes, so instead of saying this is your chore, you
created like, this is a cluster of chores that all
hang together yep. And then I jumped in as I
just have now over the top of you, and I said,
you can do them for a week, you can do
them for a month, or you can just say this
is my permanent job because we're not going to swap daily.
And I think weekly not enough. I think you just
(11:01):
stuck with this one thing for a month and then
we rotate around and that way you get good at
it as well.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
And they were like, ohugh, So we have a laundry station,
we have a bathroom station, we have a floors station,
and we have a kitchen station.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
And I'm actually we're only a few days in, but.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, and we're about to go away.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
But while there was some general pushback in the beginning,
once we talked it through, I think there was some
buy in. And the last few days, as we've prepared
to head away, the girls have checked in and said,
all right, does this need to be done today?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yep. So the takeome messages. You've just got to keep
on doing the reminders, no matter how old they are,
and no matter how many times you've had the conversation,
and with appropriate structure, you can actually get the kids
to do their thing.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah. I think it's so easy, and I fall into
this trap all the time. I kind of just ruw
my hands up in the air and go, you know what,
I've asked them so many times, there's no point. I
just can't be bothered. I'll just do it myself. But
then I run myself ragged and I don't show up
with my best self, and they don't get the best
of me. Yeah, and I don't teach them anything either,
(12:16):
And so I think that the take home for me
is don't give up. You've got to have the conversation.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Don't give up.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
One hundred times, you can get there. You just don't
give up.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Don't do it. It's a long game. This parent a
game long one last highlight on this as this wrapped
up on whatever night. It was Sunday night, and I
just emphasized again guys, girls, initiative, contribution, eyes open, notice,
things that need doing. For some reason, I got out
(12:52):
of bed at like nine point thirty ten o'clock because
I know one of the kids was doing something and
I wanted to find out what was going on and
tell them to go to bed, turn off the lights. Office.
The studio that we're recording this podcast in is outside
the house right, like we've it's separate, there's a separate
entry to get into the office. And somehow, for some reason,
somebody had left my office light on and the door
(13:13):
wide open, and I was like, what's going on there?
And then it occurred to me that our twenty something,
one of our twenty something doaorters, had walked out of
the house at about nine pm to walk the dog
and had walked back into the house at nine point thirty,
and she'd walked past that open office door with the
(13:34):
light beaming out and hadn't noticed, hadn't taken the initiative,
and hadn't made the contribution. And I said to her,
how hard is this? Like contribution? There's a light on,
turn it off, there's a door open, close it. And
she's like, I didn't notice. I don't notice these things.
I'm like, oh my goodness, why are we saying this?
(13:55):
What's the point? Anyway? We need to wrap it up there.
We've got a plan to catch we do. So. We
have put together a whole lot of great podcasts for
the next few days or the next week while we're
doing this bike ride. Oh, I can't wait to tell
you the story about the bike ride. Just I hope
it works. I have it, guys, okay, to help you
to experience the psychology of Christmas, magic and all.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
The good psychology.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
So yeah, very good. That's all next week on the pod,
and we'll be back with another. I'll do better tomorrow
to let you know how it's all gone. If we
make it, have a wonderful weekend. Hopefully this has helped
your family to do better tomorrow. I do those meetings.
They really do make a difference. What's working, what's not.
What we do to make things better this week. We
hope that it does make your week better. A Happy
(14:39):
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
We really appreciate Mim Hammont's for her research, admin and
a whole lot of other support. And if you'd like
more infot to make your family happier, you'll find it
at Happy families dot com dot a
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.