March 6, 2023 • 14 mins
Justin & Kylie answer a listener's question about juggling work and parenthood
Topics included in this episode -
- The increasing cost of living
- Justin & Kylie share a personal story about their past financial struggles
- Get creative
- Routine
- Predictability
- Give them in fantasy what they can't have in reality
Find us on Facebook at Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
Email us your questions and comments at podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
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 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now, if you listened to this podcast episode and you're
doing fine, You've got enough money in the bank, the
interest rate hikes aren't bothering you, and Nora is the
increased cost of living. And you're doing fine, but you
know somebody who is doing it tough. Can I recommend
that you reach out to them and just say, hey,
I know that this is tricky. How can I help?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot you and Channel nine's parenting expert
for the hit primetime TV show Parental Guidance. Season two
is getting closer. It's getting closer, Kylie. It's all I
can say. It's getting closer every single day. Can't wait
for this season to be on the TV. And every Tuesday,
we have a look at the questions that you've sent
(00:53):
to our inbox via podcasts at happyfamilies dot com dot you.
That's podcasts with an s at happy Families dot Amy
has jumped online and shot us an email which says
how do I manage the juggle when returning to work
as a mum with a two year old and a
seven year old with high emotional needs? HARBIORI already works
(01:13):
from seven till four point thirty and as a nurse,
I work shifts all over the place, so the kids
will be in out of school care and daycare a lot.
I've got no idea how to work a routine in,
but we can't afford not to have me back at work, Amy,
I mean, you hear that, and just I kind of
go ouch, right, Because the cost of living is going up.
(01:36):
Everybody's aware of it. It's getting harder and harder and
harder as the Reserve Bank continues to increase interest rates.
And there's a whole economic argument around this that the
people who can least afford it are the ones who
are most impacted by it. There's so many other different
ways that we could slow the economy down, but this
is what they're doing, and this is what we're all
(01:57):
all well, sorry, a huge portion of USANs by so
Amy's in a hard place, Kylie, She's got to go
back to work. And when I read something like this,
I just think life's not fair, Like that it's really
life is hard. You've got kids, you want to be
with them, you want to be looking after them, and
the economic reality of life means back to work.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I want to tread really lightly with my next comments
because I don't want anyone to see me as condoning
or making a judgment call here at all. But any
decision we make around what we choose to do with
employment or stay at home requires sacrifice. So as a
(02:43):
stay at home mum, the sacrifice that we chose was
that you would carry the entire financial load, which at
times felt impossible, impossible, overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I remember when I was I was studying full time
across the week, I was working afternoons and evenings, and
I was doing furniture removals on the weekend.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At one point, you had three part time jobs in
adition to full study full time, and I had three
little ones at home. Yeah, and the enormity of that
meant that we kind of were paupers.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh, we were broke at like so broke. I remember
I remember one time, do you remember this, This is
a true story. We went to the park with some friends.
I knew you were going to share this, and our
baby girl was really upset, and we discovered that her
mouth was full of like mouth ulces or saws. Something
(03:41):
had happened on the inside of her mouth, and she
was just screaming she's.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Brain and getting irritable for days and we just couldn't
work out what it was. And well, we're at the park.
She obviously I was holding her differently in natural lighting,
and she opened her mouth and I couldn't like I
literally could see down her.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Throat and it was just full of saws, hundreds.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Of these little saws inside her mouth.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And so we spoke to our friends and said, we've
got to get some medical help. So they took our
eldest child home to our place. Well, we went off
to the doctor or the hospital or whatever. We had
to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It was a long weekend.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
There was no one open, and so we gave the
house keys and they went in.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
But I was mortified knowing what they were going to
go home to, because they said, don't worry, just take
as much time as you need, will cook Chanel some
dinner and bathur. You just take what time you need.
Just don't even think about us. And we got in
the car left to go to the hospital. While I
am obviously a huge anxiety around my little baby and
what she's going through, all I could think about was
(04:39):
the fact that they were going to open my fridge
and my pantry and find nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, I was like old mother Hubbard, like the cupboard
was bear.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And what blew me away was that we came home
that afternoon and we had to buy medicine for Abby
and you know, you know, spend hours at the hospital
until they worked out it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Was I think we were going for like four or
five hours.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We got home, dinner had been cooked with food that
definitely was not from my pantry, and Chanel had been
bathed and she was ready for bed. And when I
opened my cupboards after they left, they had actually done
a full pantry restock. So what I'm sharing now is
not a judgment at all. But each of us makes
(05:26):
a decision and we have to decide and wigh up
what sacrifice we're willing to live with.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, there's pain either way. If you go back to work,
there's the pain of well, how do I do this?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I'm leaving your children behind and knowing that their emotional
needs you can't physically meet them all the time because
you're not there.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And then there's pain if you choose not to go
to book, because like, how do you feed your family?
It's such an unfair situation. And so I really love
the way that you've shared that there's no judgment here.
But I guess we're sharing this story unscripted and unintended
as it may be, because I guess we've been there,
(06:04):
we understand, and while we chose different to what you're choosing, Amy,
we just want to emphasize there are many families who
are doing it really tough right now, and we get it.
We've been there. Who knows, maybe in the next few
months we're going to be there again. Let's see what
the RBA does. I mean, they're not they're not being
nice to mortgage holders right now. And we happen to
have bought right when house prices were at their very
(06:26):
highest when we moved to the coast. But I think
we need to get a little bit practical here. Let's assume,
as Amy has done, that we've got families who are
being forced back into the workforce to meet those financial
obligations as cost of living, rent, mortgages, fuel, food, everything
is just going up and up and up and up.
(06:47):
It's going to cost either way. I think we need
to talk about the way through it. And the first
thing that I want to emphasize Kyleie is that there's
no magic pill. There's no easy fix here. It's going
to hurt regardless what you do, and therefore we do
the very best that we can with what we have.
Amy says that she's got two kids two and seven
(07:08):
that are high needs, high needs. So when I hear that,
the very first thing that I go to in my
mind is if I've got a high needs person, my
job is not to fix them, but my job is
to make sure that they feel seen, heard, and valued
as much as possible. It means that I want to
connect with them. It means that every chance that I get,
I want to be engaging with them in a meaningful way.
(07:29):
Whether they're two or seven, I want to hear them.
I want to be in their world whenever I can,
because obviously I can't be there all the time, and
that means oodles of empathy and noodles of play and
making the most of those moments. When you've got a
crazy schedule, maybe you work out Okay, So this is
this is what we can do in the mornings, except
when mum's not here, in which case Dad's going to
(07:49):
take care of her. If Dad's got to take off,
maybe you can tag team, maybe not with your own parent,
but with your parents the in laws bring the village
in somehow. To me, the quality of the connection matters
most when we talk about research around resilience and kids
doing well emotionally. One really strong caring adult in their
(08:10):
life is all it takes. So if we can't be there,
who are the other strong caring adults that we can
bring into their world? And how can we make sure
that their needs are being met.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Maybe it's not a grandparent, Maybe it's a friend. Maybe
it's you know, somebody else who's got children similar ages,
who is in the sane boat, And maybe you know
your rosters work out that you can kind of share
the load a little bit. You have their kids, they
have your kids.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And that's with no disrespect to all the people
who are doing out of school ours care. You'd much
rather have them at their friend's house, playing in the
backyard on the trampoline and hanging out than being stuck
at school until you get to finally pick them up
when your shift ends. Obviously, we do what we have to,
and there are plenty of people who are using those
services because they have to. But I really think there's
(08:54):
value and being as creative as possible around this and
building the community and finding ways that you can work
with your children and their friends and their friends' parents
to lighten the load and make it an adventure, make
it exciting for the kids. The second thing that I'm
thinking of to help Amy and people in that situation
(09:16):
is Amy mentioned routine is really hard and.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So well shift working. She's hours all changed at the time.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, I just I guess I want to get
my highlighter out and put a big line through the
word predictability, which is kind of unfair because again, with
shift work and with what's going on in Amy's life,
predictability is really hard to achieve. But to the extent
that you can create a sense of predictability, I mean,
Dad's shifts don't change, so what can happen in the
(09:45):
morning or what can happen in the afternoon, so that
that feels predictable.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Well, even if the predictability is around how mum leaves
the house when she goes on shift, obviously her ships
are changing all the time. But if there's predictability around
the movements that take place when she does that, and
I mean it does Mum for the ten minutes before
she leaves the house read a story to the children
(10:12):
before she leaves, Do you know.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
What I mean?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
That's what I It might not necessarily be at the
same time every day, but the reality is when Mum's
going to leave, I know that we're going to sit
down and have a cup of milk and read my
favorite story. Yeah, before she leaves? Or is it that
we jump on the trampoline for five minutes?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
They work. They're great ideas. I really like that. I'm
glad you added that.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
What's number three?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So this is the last idea that I'm going to
share here. I mean, we could talk about this for
a long long time, but the last idea that I
want to share is don't sweat it too much. Kids
are extremely adaptable. They get it, they'll deal with it,
and so long as you don't become overly anxious about it,
so long as you don't turn it into a thing.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was about to say, like your anxiety level.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, yeah, they'll flow on. If you make thing, it'll
become a thing. But if you just accept that this
is what we're doing now, and this is how it's
going to be, and and things like. I mean, I've
talked about this on the podcast so many times and
by blog articles and books, giving them in fan to
see what they can't have in reality. When they said,
but I don't want you to leave mummy, you can say,
I know, sweetheart. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was
some beautiful magic that we could click our fingers and
(11:18):
I could stay here forever and I could never ever
leave you even when you're eighty and I could still
and turn into something really big and turn it into
a story and an adventure. Lots of empathy, but a
clear limit. Don't you just wish? Wouldn't it be great?
But I have to go, But let's make it really fun.
Let's read that chapter. Let's jump on the trampoline, Let's
walk to the end of the driveway and wave. Let's whatever
the process is when Mum's heading off to work, create
(11:41):
that and don't make a big deal about the fact
that this is what life is right now. It just is,
and therefore, because it is, it is.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I remember when Emily started at Kendy for the very
first time, and we had to say goodbye, and there
was a little book. I don't remember the book. I
obviously didn't wasn't there to read it, but they shared
it with the kids and they got all the parents
to give the kids a kiss on the inside of
their hands, and then they closed up their hands as
we left, and then the book obviously talked to them
(12:12):
about the fact that they had mummies kissed with them
wherever they went. And I just remember Emily coming home
and showing me her hand at the end of the
day and telling me that she'd carried my kiss with
her everywhere she went. And so as you were talking,
I was just thinking about these little kids and how
you know their need for predictability and routine and structure it.
(12:32):
And maybe it's a little soft toy or a blankie
or something that they only get when mum leaves so
they have a piece of Mum. Maybe it's you know,
if she's super creative, she might make something out of
an old T shirt or something that so it smells
like her. Just something little that they know they only
get when mum's not there, just to feel like they're
close to her.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We really hope that this has been useful. One last tip.
If you've listened to this podcast episode and you're doing fine,
You've got enough money in the bank, the interest rate
hikes aren't bothering you, and Nora is the increased cost
of living. And you're doing fine, But you know somebody
who is doing it tough. Maybe Mum has to go
back to work in addition to dad. Can I recommend
that you reach out to them and just say, hey,
(13:13):
I know that this is tricky. How can I can
I help with pickups? Can I help with the babysitting?
Can I help with the mornings? Can I do something
to be involved in your life, even if it's just
one morning a week or one afternoon a week. What
can I do to help? Because I care about you.
I just think about that family, that couple who helped
us that time, and I don't think we'll ever forget
their kindness. It was just a grocery shop and they
(13:36):
were doing very very well financially, so for them, a
couple of hundred bucks on groceries and probably nothing, But
for us, I mean it's still the beauty of that
gift is incalculable. It still moves me today, So maybe
there's a way that you can help as well. Baby
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Rowland from Bridge Media.
(13:56):
Craig Bruce is our executive producer. For more information about
how you can make your family happier, email us podcasts
at happy families dot com dot AU or check out
happy families dot com dot a u
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now, if you listened to this podcast episode and you're
doing fine, You've got enough money in the bank, the
interest rate hikes aren't bothering you, and Nora is the
increased cost of living. And you're doing fine, but you
know somebody who is doing it tough. Can I recommend
that you reach out to them and just say, hey,
I know that this is tricky. How can I help?
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot you and Channel nine's parenting expert
for the hit primetime TV show Parental Guidance. Season two
is getting closer. It's getting closer, Kylie. It's all I
can say. It's getting closer every single day. Can't wait
for this season to be on the TV. And every Tuesday,
we have a look at the questions that you've sent
(00:53):
to our inbox via podcasts at happyfamilies dot com dot you.
That's podcasts with an s at happy Families dot Amy
has jumped online and shot us an email which says
how do I manage the juggle when returning to work
as a mum with a two year old and a
seven year old with high emotional needs? HARBIORI already works
(01:13):
from seven till four point thirty and as a nurse,
I work shifts all over the place, so the kids
will be in out of school care and daycare a lot.
I've got no idea how to work a routine in,
but we can't afford not to have me back at work, Amy,
I mean, you hear that, and just I kind of
go ouch, right, Because the cost of living is going up.
(01:36):
Everybody's aware of it. It's getting harder and harder and
harder as the Reserve Bank continues to increase interest rates.
And there's a whole economic argument around this that the
people who can least afford it are the ones who
are most impacted by it. There's so many other different
ways that we could slow the economy down, but this
is what they're doing, and this is what we're all
(01:57):
all well, sorry, a huge portion of USANs by so
Amy's in a hard place, Kylie, She's got to go
back to work. And when I read something like this,
I just think life's not fair, Like that it's really
life is hard. You've got kids, you want to be
with them, you want to be looking after them, and
the economic reality of life means back to work.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I want to tread really lightly with my next comments
because I don't want anyone to see me as condoning
or making a judgment call here at all. But any
decision we make around what we choose to do with
employment or stay at home requires sacrifice. So as a
(02:43):
stay at home mum, the sacrifice that we chose was
that you would carry the entire financial load, which at
times felt impossible, impossible, overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I remember when I was I was studying full time
across the week, I was working afternoons and evenings, and
I was doing furniture removals on the weekend.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At one point, you had three part time jobs in
adition to full study full time, and I had three
little ones at home. Yeah, and the enormity of that
meant that we kind of were paupers.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Oh, we were broke at like so broke. I remember
I remember one time, do you remember this, This is
a true story. We went to the park with some friends.
I knew you were going to share this, and our
baby girl was really upset, and we discovered that her
mouth was full of like mouth ulces or saws. Something
(03:41):
had happened on the inside of her mouth, and she
was just screaming she's.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Brain and getting irritable for days and we just couldn't
work out what it was. And well, we're at the park.
She obviously I was holding her differently in natural lighting,
and she opened her mouth and I couldn't like I
literally could see down her.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Throat and it was just full of saws, hundreds.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Of these little saws inside her mouth.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
And so we spoke to our friends and said, we've
got to get some medical help. So they took our
eldest child home to our place. Well, we went off
to the doctor or the hospital or whatever. We had
to go to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
It was a long weekend.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
There was no one open, and so we gave the
house keys and they went in.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
But I was mortified knowing what they were going to
go home to, because they said, don't worry, just take
as much time as you need, will cook Chanel some
dinner and bathur. You just take what time you need.
Just don't even think about us. And we got in
the car left to go to the hospital. While I
am obviously a huge anxiety around my little baby and
what she's going through, all I could think about was
(04:39):
the fact that they were going to open my fridge
and my pantry and find nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, I was like old mother Hubbard, like the cupboard
was bear.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And what blew me away was that we came home
that afternoon and we had to buy medicine for Abby
and you know, you know, spend hours at the hospital
until they worked out it.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Was I think we were going for like four or
five hours.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We got home, dinner had been cooked with food that
definitely was not from my pantry, and Chanel had been
bathed and she was ready for bed. And when I
opened my cupboards after they left, they had actually done
a full pantry restock. So what I'm sharing now is
not a judgment at all. But each of us makes
(05:26):
a decision and we have to decide and wigh up
what sacrifice we're willing to live with.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, there's pain either way. If you go back to work,
there's the pain of well, how do I do this?
Speaker 3 (05:35):
I'm leaving your children behind and knowing that their emotional
needs you can't physically meet them all the time because
you're not there.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
And then there's pain if you choose not to go
to book, because like, how do you feed your family?
It's such an unfair situation. And so I really love
the way that you've shared that there's no judgment here.
But I guess we're sharing this story unscripted and unintended
as it may be, because I guess we've been there,
(06:04):
we understand, and while we chose different to what you're choosing, Amy,
we just want to emphasize there are many families who
are doing it really tough right now, and we get it.
We've been there. Who knows, maybe in the next few
months we're going to be there again. Let's see what
the RBA does. I mean, they're not they're not being
nice to mortgage holders right now. And we happen to
have bought right when house prices were at their very
(06:26):
highest when we moved to the coast. But I think
we need to get a little bit practical here. Let's assume,
as Amy has done, that we've got families who are
being forced back into the workforce to meet those financial
obligations as cost of living, rent, mortgages, fuel, food, everything
is just going up and up and up and up.
(06:47):
It's going to cost either way. I think we need
to talk about the way through it. And the first
thing that I want to emphasize Kyleie is that there's
no magic pill. There's no easy fix here. It's going
to hurt regardless what you do, and therefore we do
the very best that we can with what we have.
Amy says that she's got two kids two and seven
(07:08):
that are high needs, high needs. So when I hear that,
the very first thing that I go to in my
mind is if I've got a high needs person, my
job is not to fix them, but my job is
to make sure that they feel seen, heard, and valued
as much as possible. It means that I want to
connect with them. It means that every chance that I get,
I want to be engaging with them in a meaningful way.
(07:29):
Whether they're two or seven, I want to hear them.
I want to be in their world whenever I can,
because obviously I can't be there all the time, and
that means oodles of empathy and noodles of play and
making the most of those moments. When you've got a
crazy schedule, maybe you work out Okay, So this is
this is what we can do in the mornings, except
when mum's not here, in which case Dad's going to
(07:49):
take care of her. If Dad's got to take off,
maybe you can tag team, maybe not with your own parent,
but with your parents the in laws bring the village
in somehow. To me, the quality of the connection matters
most when we talk about research around resilience and kids
doing well emotionally. One really strong caring adult in their
(08:10):
life is all it takes. So if we can't be there,
who are the other strong caring adults that we can
bring into their world? And how can we make sure
that their needs are being met.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Maybe it's not a grandparent, Maybe it's a friend. Maybe
it's you know, somebody else who's got children similar ages,
who is in the sane boat, And maybe you know
your rosters work out that you can kind of share
the load a little bit. You have their kids, they
have your kids.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And that's with no disrespect to all the people
who are doing out of school ours care. You'd much
rather have them at their friend's house, playing in the
backyard on the trampoline and hanging out than being stuck
at school until you get to finally pick them up
when your shift ends. Obviously, we do what we have to,
and there are plenty of people who are using those
services because they have to. But I really think there's
(08:54):
value and being as creative as possible around this and
building the community and finding ways that you can work
with your children and their friends and their friends' parents
to lighten the load and make it an adventure, make
it exciting for the kids. The second thing that I'm
thinking of to help Amy and people in that situation
(09:16):
is Amy mentioned routine is really hard and.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
So well shift working. She's hours all changed at the time.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, yeah, I just I guess I want to get
my highlighter out and put a big line through the
word predictability, which is kind of unfair because again, with
shift work and with what's going on in Amy's life,
predictability is really hard to achieve. But to the extent
that you can create a sense of predictability, I mean,
Dad's shifts don't change, so what can happen in the
(09:45):
morning or what can happen in the afternoon, so that
that feels predictable.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Well, even if the predictability is around how mum leaves
the house when she goes on shift, obviously her ships
are changing all the time. But if there's predictability around
the movements that take place when she does that, and
I mean it does Mum for the ten minutes before
she leaves the house read a story to the children
(10:12):
before she leaves, Do you know.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
What I mean?
Speaker 3 (10:13):
That's what I It might not necessarily be at the
same time every day, but the reality is when Mum's
going to leave, I know that we're going to sit
down and have a cup of milk and read my
favorite story. Yeah, before she leaves? Or is it that
we jump on the trampoline for five minutes?
Speaker 2 (10:32):
They work. They're great ideas. I really like that. I'm
glad you added that.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
What's number three?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So this is the last idea that I'm going to
share here. I mean, we could talk about this for
a long long time, but the last idea that I
want to share is don't sweat it too much. Kids
are extremely adaptable. They get it, they'll deal with it,
and so long as you don't become overly anxious about it,
so long as you don't turn it into a thing.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
I was about to say, like your anxiety level.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, yeah, they'll flow on. If you make thing, it'll
become a thing. But if you just accept that this
is what we're doing now, and this is how it's
going to be, and and things like. I mean, I've
talked about this on the podcast so many times and
by blog articles and books, giving them in fan to
see what they can't have in reality. When they said,
but I don't want you to leave mummy, you can say,
I know, sweetheart. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was
some beautiful magic that we could click our fingers and
(11:18):
I could stay here forever and I could never ever
leave you even when you're eighty and I could still
and turn into something really big and turn it into
a story and an adventure. Lots of empathy, but a
clear limit. Don't you just wish? Wouldn't it be great?
But I have to go, But let's make it really fun.
Let's read that chapter. Let's jump on the trampoline, Let's
walk to the end of the driveway and wave. Let's whatever
the process is when Mum's heading off to work, create
(11:41):
that and don't make a big deal about the fact
that this is what life is right now. It just is,
and therefore, because it is, it is.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I remember when Emily started at Kendy for the very
first time, and we had to say goodbye, and there
was a little book. I don't remember the book. I
obviously didn't wasn't there to read it, but they shared
it with the kids and they got all the parents
to give the kids a kiss on the inside of
their hands, and then they closed up their hands as
we left, and then the book obviously talked to them
(12:12):
about the fact that they had mummies kissed with them
wherever they went. And I just remember Emily coming home
and showing me her hand at the end of the
day and telling me that she'd carried my kiss with
her everywhere she went. And so as you were talking,
I was just thinking about these little kids and how
you know their need for predictability and routine and structure it.
(12:32):
And maybe it's a little soft toy or a blankie
or something that they only get when mum leaves so
they have a piece of Mum. Maybe it's you know,
if she's super creative, she might make something out of
an old T shirt or something that so it smells
like her. Just something little that they know they only
get when mum's not there, just to feel like they're
close to her.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
We really hope that this has been useful. One last tip.
If you've listened to this podcast episode and you're doing fine,
You've got enough money in the bank, the interest rate
hikes aren't bothering you, and Nora is the increased cost
of living. And you're doing fine, But you know somebody
who is doing it tough. Maybe Mum has to go
back to work in addition to dad. Can I recommend
that you reach out to them and just say, hey,
(13:13):
I know that this is tricky. How can I can
I help with pickups? Can I help with the babysitting?
Can I help with the mornings? Can I do something
to be involved in your life, even if it's just
one morning a week or one afternoon a week. What
can I do to help? Because I care about you.
I just think about that family, that couple who helped
us that time, and I don't think we'll ever forget
their kindness. It was just a grocery shop and they
(13:36):
were doing very very well financially, so for them, a
couple of hundred bucks on groceries and probably nothing, But
for us, I mean it's still the beauty of that
gift is incalculable. It still moves me today, So maybe
there's a way that you can help as well. Baby
Family's podcast is produced by Justin Rowland from Bridge Media.
(13:56):
Craig Bruce is our executive producer. For more information about
how you can make your family happier, email us podcasts
at happy families dot com dot AU or check out
happy families dot com dot a u
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