🌻 Amanda Keller Reflects On Parenting With Her Sons

Listen to Amanda Keller's latest episode of Double A Chattery at doubleachattery.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
And Amanda jam Nation Double a Chattery drops today.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Speaking of mums and boys. Anita and I do a
podcast together and freend Anita mcgreat, that's right, and she's
known my sons for fifteen years and we thought, with
Mother's Day coming up, what a great chance to sit
down with the boys. My sons were both free that
day from university commitments, so sucko. It was them to

(00:25):
talk about our parenting and to talk about our lives.
And I've never actually sat down with them and had
a conversation like this, talk to them all the time,
but having Anita's perspective on it was very interesting. It's
funny that the podcast, as you said, drops today, and
a lot of it is raz. Our love language is
raz in our family, and the sort of the as

(00:48):
we say the Pooh sandwich, you start with something nice,
to say, a bit of a stab and then something nice.
We laugh a lot in our family.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
The Pooh can't outweigh the bread.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
No, they have to have more bread. So there's a
lot of laughter in the podcast too. But we've got
to talk about things that I would never normally discuss
with the boys. Because Anita sought from a different perspective
for example, for example, what it was like having a
mum in in a public eye for me, I just
go to work and I do a job for them.
How have they found their privacy around me being a

(01:19):
so called public person and the things I've spoken about
on the radio about them and how I've felt about that.
So it's a really interesting take on how they've navigated
that in their lives. And also was a chance to say,
we've how they felt about my mother ing, because it's
the stuff that you stab yourself with, the fact I

(01:40):
wasn't there early in the mornings, the fact I couldn't
go to the Mother's Day festivities early in the morning,
all that kind of stuff. How have they felt about
my mother? And here they are now, this is Liam
and Jack. And in case you don't know the story
of my sons, Liam this month is turning twenty four.
Jack is turning twenty two. I've put some of the
vision up on our socials and will continue to do so.
So you see that I have a matching terrible mustaches.

(02:04):
But here they are sort of talking to me about
my mothering. You know, it's interesting because Anita and I
often talk about as every working woman we know. Every
mother we know talks about how did we do as mothers?
And I look at the two of you, and I'm
always so proud of the two of you, But my
failings are always in my mind, pretty close to the surface,

(02:26):
and I thought it'd be interesting to see your perceptions
of your upbringing. Obviously, we start with how great I
was and work back to how great I was.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Should we run off the bullet point list you gave
us emphasis on was So that's.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
The tone of it as but it's a chance to
talk about how they have felt about their dad and
the decision we made as a family when I thought
it's time to talk publicly about what's happening at home.

(03:02):
Harley had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a really hideous
form of Parkinson's disease, and so it's been a very
hard trot the last few years. And Harley also made
the decision about, Okay, let's not make it a family
secret anymore. Let's open the window, tell people what's happening,
to give us some freedom. Really, but I did discuss

(03:24):
it with the boys at the time. But what Liam
articulated in this too is that because people know me
and part and that he gets it. Part of my
job is for people to feel they know me, and
I love that about my job. But it gives people
permission to be over familiar with them as well about
their dad. And it was interesting asking them how they

(03:44):
deal with when people ask them about how Harley's going.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
And I think I've been trying to do is talk
about Dad not from a disease point of view, like
just talk about, yeah, he was watching the f one
the other day or you know, because I feel like
when people have a chronic illness, it's such an easy
thing to do to talk about them as if they
are their illness. But yeah, it's a nicer thing to
talk about dad's interests and what he's been up to

(04:09):
and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, and we've got a photo at home so that
the care and see a photo of us as younger people.
It's Hallie and I as a younger couple of you know,
us as a family before all this kind of took
parts of him away, But I think that's a really
nice strategy, Lamb of presenting who who is, not just

(04:30):
the hard bits. And that's why in the early start,
like we didn't really ever talk about it.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
And there's one way you can not say, oh, you know,
not because it wasn't like we were scared to talk
about It's just because that wasn't who Dad was and
it's still not who he is.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
That's very good, it's very insightful from lads.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
And they've had to develop these strategies. And when I
do go out with Lim and Jack and often I'll say,
let's go out to dinner to give them a chance
to tell me how they're feeling about stuff. And we
actually we don't deep dive on it. We just we
know who we are, we know who our family is,
and we kind of just get on with it. But
navigating that in the bigger picture was very interesting. So
we spoke about all kinds of things and the podcast.

(05:08):
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COMET drops today.