April 2, 2025 • 13 mins
Today we explore the concept of "self-care bulldozing" – how parents (especially mothers) create more work for themselves by making it difficult for partners to help effectively.
Breaking these patterns can remove what feels like "50 pounds of bricks" from your shoulders and create more sustainable partnership in parenting.
• Self-care bulldozing typically shows up as micromanaging, gatekeeping, or not voicing needs.
• The solution centers around direct communication rather than expecting mind-reading.
• Two key phrases to remember: "Wishing will not make it so" and "It never hurts to ask"
• Practical tools and ideas for better teamwork will be discussed.
Join us next week as we dive into "parenting from the neck up" and how this common error creates challenges with our children.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to episode 103 of the Sustainable
Parenting Podcast, and in mywork as a parenting coach and
being a mom of two kids andbeing married for almost 15
years, I have experienced andseen many people get caught up
in what I would call self-carebulldozing, and what I mean is
that we are working really hardbut we're kind of creating a new
(00:23):
mountain.
That is also going to just bemore work and in terms of
self-care bulldozing, what I seemost of all is that we can make
it really hard for our partnersto help and we do a lot of
things that take a lot of energy, thinking it's going to make it
better but actually might bemaking it worse.
So I want to talk about thattoday, because when you can
(00:46):
correct this and get in theright pattern of how to make it
more likely that your partnercan truly help you, so long as
you have a partner reallywilling to do that, it can be
like having 50 pounds of brickstaken off of your shoulders, and
I would love that for you todayand this week, mama.
(01:07):
So let's talk about it.
Hello and welcome to theSustainable Parenting Podcast.
Let me tell you, friend, thisplace is different.
We fill that gap between gentleparenting and harsh discipline
that's really missing.
To parent with kindness andfirmness at the same time really
missing.
To parent with kindness andfirmness at the same time and
(01:28):
give you the exact steps to beable to parent in ways that are
more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel
sustainable.
Welcome.
Okay, before I get too muchfarther and we get started here,
(01:51):
I want to remind you that I ama live parenting coach that
works every week with realpeople.
So if you have more questionsafter this episode and are
looking for more support, pleasereach out via the link you see
in the show notes to set up aclarity call with me.
Also, I want to remind you thatif you're enjoying this podcast
, please be sure you havesubscribed and you have left a
review.
You could do so by clicking thestars at the bottom of all of
(02:14):
the episodes and share what thispodcast has meant to you or any
feedback that you have.
Now on to self-care bulldozing.
Now on to self-care bulldozing.
A bulldozer, I picture, isdoing a lot of work, but like
pushing everything into a moundin a different area.
That is just going to have tobe dealt with later and is
(02:36):
additional work.
So I want to talk about how weinteract with our partners and
the things that we want them tobe doing to help our teamwork
and make sure we're notbulldozing, but instead we're
building solutions.
We're going to stop bulldozingand move into building solutions
.
Here's what I mean.
(02:57):
Bulldozing typically in my ownlife looked like micromanaging,
being like you have to do itexactly this way.
Or it looked like gatekeepingand saying no, no, no, you can't
do that because you're notgoing to do it right.
Or it looked like not voicingwhat I really needed help with.
(03:19):
Let me tell some stories ofeach one of these.
So the first one, in terms ofmicromanaging, I can remember
telling my husband that heneeded to clip my son's nails in
just this exact way.
You need to use these nailclippers and you need to use
this file, because if you cliptoo close, then it's going to
(03:40):
hurt him, it's going to beterrible and you have to do it
at this particular time, whilehe's distracted in this way, and
he was like I don't want to doit that way, and it actually
also combined with gatekeeping.
I was like, well, if you don'tdo it that way, then it's not
going to work.
I've tried it, I promise you.
Well, guess what, friends?
He had a different idea, whichwas that he wanted to clip the
(04:03):
nails while our child wassleeping and I was like, oh,
it's going to wake him up, it'sgoing to be terrible.
It didn't, and it worked betterand he wasn't pulling his hand
away, so it actually led to lesslikelihood of clipping it wrong
because he was just thereflopped, sleeping.
So if I had been able toapproach it at first without
(04:23):
micromanaging and gatekeeping,it would have just been
something that he did and wewould have all moved on happily.
And instead it was this battleand I had to be proven wrong
first.
But the good news is, afterthat situation, it really
impacted me, thinking, movingforward Okay, let me figure out
how to not micromanage and howto not gatekeep that.
(04:47):
He might have a different wayto do it.
That will be okay, and it mighteven go better than how I would
handle it.
The third aspect that ittypically can look like when
we're bulldozing and making lifeharder for ourselves is not
speaking up for what we reallyneed, and an example I can think
of is I remember just morningafter morning, scathing looks at
(05:12):
my husband while he would sitand drink a cup of coffee while
I was getting three peopledressed and fed for the morning.
So he was working.
I was a stay-at-home mom and soin my mind I made this
assumption that that's my job.
His job is to get ready forwork and go to work, so if he's
(05:32):
sitting there and drinking a cupof coffee, that's part of him
doing his job.
I'm the caretaker, a little bitmore the more primary parent,
but while being a stay-at-homemom, so it must be my job to
have to feed and dress and geteveryone going in the morning.
But it really felt unequalbecause if he had a moment to
(05:56):
sit and just slowly sip a cup ofcoffee while looking on his
phone and reading an article,and I was like furiously trying
to put out fires of a hungrychild and a child running away
while needing to get dressed andmy own belly being super hungry
and just wanting something toget going as I was nursing and
needing extra calories, all thethings you know, you know all
(06:19):
the things moms, I, I, Irealized wait a minute.
I am really frustrated at thissituation.
But I have not asked for what Iwould prefer here and let me
just be clear.
I think a lot of us women I'mgoing to super stereotype for
just a moment If you're in apartner arrangement between a
(06:40):
man and a woman or it could besame sex, but you just have
these different dynamics betweenyou two, I typically find that
there's one person for me it wasthe woman myself that is very
attuned to the environment.
I think the nurturers in ourrelationships tend to be people
who really just tune inintuitively who needs what?
(07:04):
And I'm looking at these littlesigns.
I'm seeing someone rushingaround.
I'm thinking, oh, I bet thatperson wants help.
I'm going to speak up and saythat.
But not everyone is wired thatway and especially in our
partnership.
My husband is not naturallywired that way and I see that in
many men that it's like oh, ifsomeone says, will you do x, I
(07:26):
will do x.
But I don't naturally just likeinterpret things the same way
of like seeking how I could behelpful or what this person
might need from me.
If they don't say what theyneed from me, they don't need
anything from me.
That's I'm kind of paraphrasingmy husband's overall view.
But so if you're in a dynamiclike that, like it's not good
(07:46):
guy, bad guy, these are justdifferences of how we're wired
and what I recommend is that youget better at voicing what you
really clearly need.
So in my situation it was comingto my husband and saying you
know what, if you have theability to like sit down for 10
minutes to 15 minutes and drinkyour coffee, I wonder if it's
(08:08):
okay sometimes for me to say,hey, could you help this one kid
with something?
So then we both get to sit downand drink coffee for at least
five minutes, like, can we splitthe difference?
Me zero coffee, you 15 minutesof coffee?
Can we meet in the middle andhe was like totally, oh my gosh,
yeah, like yep, and from thatday forward we have had a better
(08:29):
balance.
In that I always think of one ofmy favorite professors in
college that I was taking thisleadership course and she said
there are two main rules that Ilive by that have helped me to
be more successful in so manyareas of my life, and they are
this wishing will not make it so, and it never hurts to ask.
(08:52):
And oh, those two phrases havereally served me in a lot of
different places in life andthey certainly do with my
solutions with my partner is ifI'm not having space for
self-care, rather than just bein my head and like why doesn't
he know?
Why can't he just see thatobviously he's not doing
(09:14):
anything and I'm doingeverything?
To pause and say to myself holdon, it never hurts to ask.
And wishing will not make it.
So that served me so well toremember.
Okay, I can't just imagine heshould be a mind reader.
Wishing it in my head is nevergoing to change anything, so
let's just ask.
And worst case scenario he saysno, it doesn't work for me for
(09:38):
X, y, z reason.
And then we're still wherewe're at.
Best case scenario, he says,yeah, I just hadn't thought to
step up in that moment in thatway.
Thanks for being clear with me.
And we get to move forward withmore partnership.
So wishing will not make it soand it never hurts to ask.
So, friend, in order to be moresolution focused with your
(10:00):
partner, instead of, you know,being in a space where you are
just assuming they should readyour mind or micromanaging or
gatekeeping, I want to encourageyou to open the gates, say what
you need and be clear about howyou guys can better partner.
Two key little tools that Iwant to give to you.
(10:21):
I'm not being sponsored oranything like this, but I just
love these two tangible toolsthat help.
Partnering in responsibility sothat then you have space for
more self-care is number one tocheck out the app called AnyList
.
This is something that hashelped us.
I was told about this by mysister in law.
(10:42):
She's like oh yeah, this way wecan both equally pack the
diaper bag with what's it, whatit needs, because we just have a
diaper bag list and it has allthe things that need to be in
there.
We have another list for whenwe're going swimming and all the
things that need to be in there, and the items can get crossed
off and then just unchecked veryeasily to use as a checklist
(11:03):
again the next time.
It's an app that we both haveon our phone and have equal
access to the exact same lists,and that makes it so.
I'm not oh, did you bring this?
Did you pack that?
And then he's like God, whydon't you just do it yourself?
And so that app is reallyhelpful.
It's also helped us to sharegrocery shopping more often.
It used to be that we kept alist on our refrigerator, but
(11:24):
then it felt again like thedefault was always on me, as the
stay at home parent who wascloser physically to the
refrigerator list, to find atime to take that list and go
shopping.
But when we put itelectronically on any list it
made it so that there were.
If my husband got off work 20to 30 minutes early, he was able
to say, hey, I'm going to justrun by and grab the groceries
(11:46):
and I'd say thank you so much.
That's fantastic and I don'thave to give him any information
.
It's all on the app already ofwhat we are needing and what's
missing from our fridge.
So AnyList super great app.
The other app that I really loveif you're in a phase where you
have nursing or feedings or napsgoing on for your young child
is Huckleberry.
(12:06):
This really helps share theinformation so that if the
baby's crying, the non-nursingpartner doesn't have to say when
did the baby eat last or whendid they sleep last.
The information is all trackedin this shared area and you get
to say when the naps arestarting and ending.
So there's this mutualinformation about thinking about
when the naps are starting andending.
So there's this mutualinformation about thinking about
(12:27):
when the next nap is going tohave to happen or the next
feeding is going to have tohappen.
Love that app, huckleberry.
If you have any othersuggestions, I would love to
hear them from you.
Please go to my Instagram orFacebook at sustainable
parenting and see a post relatedto this episode and drop us a
(12:47):
line, or you can DM me.
What are the resources that youfind?
Help partnership so thatthere's more equal, shared
partnership and you have morespace for self-care, that you're
not creating other challengesby gatekeeping, micromanaging or
not speaking up and using toolsto solve problems.
All right, friend, hope thishelps you this week to have more
(13:09):
kindness and firmness in yourparenting so that parenting
finally feels sustainable.
And in our next episode I'mdiving into parenting from the
neck up and how that error canbe really getting in our way
with our kids and the challengesthat we face with them.
See you next time.
You're listening to episode 103 of the Sustainable
Parenting Podcast, and in mywork as a parenting coach and
being a mom of two kids andbeing married for almost 15
years, I have experienced andseen many people get caught up
in what I would call self-carebulldozing, and what I mean is
that we are working really hardbut we're kind of creating a new
(00:23):
mountain.
That is also going to just bemore work and in terms of
self-care bulldozing, what I seemost of all is that we can make
it really hard for our partnersto help and we do a lot of
things that take a lot of energy, thinking it's going to make it
better but actually might bemaking it worse.
So I want to talk about thattoday, because when you can
(00:46):
correct this and get in theright pattern of how to make it
more likely that your partnercan truly help you, so long as
you have a partner reallywilling to do that, it can be
like having 50 pounds of brickstaken off of your shoulders, and
I would love that for you todayand this week, mama.
(01:07):
So let's talk about it.
Hello and welcome to theSustainable Parenting Podcast.
Let me tell you, friend, thisplace is different.
We fill that gap between gentleparenting and harsh discipline
that's really missing.
To parent with kindness andfirmness at the same time really
missing.
To parent with kindness andfirmness at the same time and
(01:28):
give you the exact steps to beable to parent in ways that are
more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel
sustainable.
Welcome.
Okay, before I get too muchfarther and we get started here,
(01:51):
I want to remind you that I ama live parenting coach that
works every week with realpeople.
So if you have more questionsafter this episode and are
looking for more support, pleasereach out via the link you see
in the show notes to set up aclarity call with me.
Also, I want to remind you thatif you're enjoying this podcast
, please be sure you havesubscribed and you have left a
review.
You could do so by clicking thestars at the bottom of all of
(02:14):
the episodes and share what thispodcast has meant to you or any
feedback that you have.
Now on to self-care bulldozing.
Now on to self-care bulldozing.
A bulldozer, I picture, isdoing a lot of work, but like
pushing everything into a moundin a different area.
That is just going to have tobe dealt with later and is
(02:36):
additional work.
So I want to talk about how weinteract with our partners and
the things that we want them tobe doing to help our teamwork
and make sure we're notbulldozing, but instead we're
building solutions.
We're going to stop bulldozingand move into building solutions
.
Here's what I mean.
(02:57):
Bulldozing typically in my ownlife looked like micromanaging,
being like you have to do itexactly this way.
Or it looked like gatekeepingand saying no, no, no, you can't
do that because you're notgoing to do it right.
Or it looked like not voicingwhat I really needed help with.
(03:19):
Let me tell some stories ofeach one of these.
So the first one, in terms ofmicromanaging, I can remember
telling my husband that heneeded to clip my son's nails in
just this exact way.
You need to use these nailclippers and you need to use
this file, because if you cliptoo close, then it's going to
(03:40):
hurt him, it's going to beterrible and you have to do it
at this particular time, whilehe's distracted in this way, and
he was like I don't want to doit that way, and it actually
also combined with gatekeeping.
I was like, well, if you don'tdo it that way, then it's not
going to work.
I've tried it, I promise you.
Well, guess what, friends?
He had a different idea, whichwas that he wanted to clip the
(04:03):
nails while our child wassleeping and I was like, oh,
it's going to wake him up, it'sgoing to be terrible.
It didn't, and it worked betterand he wasn't pulling his hand
away, so it actually led to lesslikelihood of clipping it wrong
because he was just thereflopped, sleeping.
So if I had been able toapproach it at first without
(04:23):
micromanaging and gatekeeping,it would have just been
something that he did and wewould have all moved on happily.
And instead it was this battleand I had to be proven wrong
first.
But the good news is, afterthat situation, it really
impacted me, thinking, movingforward Okay, let me figure out
how to not micromanage and howto not gatekeep that.
(04:47):
He might have a different wayto do it.
That will be okay, and it mighteven go better than how I would
handle it.
The third aspect that ittypically can look like when
we're bulldozing and making lifeharder for ourselves is not
speaking up for what we reallyneed, and an example I can think
of is I remember just morningafter morning, scathing looks at
(05:12):
my husband while he would sitand drink a cup of coffee while
I was getting three peopledressed and fed for the morning.
So he was working.
I was a stay-at-home mom and soin my mind I made this
assumption that that's my job.
His job is to get ready forwork and go to work, so if he's
(05:32):
sitting there and drinking a cupof coffee, that's part of him
doing his job.
I'm the caretaker, a little bitmore the more primary parent,
but while being a stay-at-homemom, so it must be my job to
have to feed and dress and geteveryone going in the morning.
But it really felt unequalbecause if he had a moment to
(05:56):
sit and just slowly sip a cup ofcoffee while looking on his
phone and reading an article,and I was like furiously trying
to put out fires of a hungrychild and a child running away
while needing to get dressed andmy own belly being super hungry
and just wanting something toget going as I was nursing and
needing extra calories, all thethings you know, you know all
(06:19):
the things moms, I, I, Irealized wait a minute.
I am really frustrated at thissituation.
But I have not asked for what Iwould prefer here and let me
just be clear.
I think a lot of us women I'mgoing to super stereotype for
just a moment If you're in apartner arrangement between a
(06:40):
man and a woman or it could besame sex, but you just have
these different dynamics betweenyou two, I typically find that
there's one person for me it wasthe woman myself that is very
attuned to the environment.
I think the nurturers in ourrelationships tend to be people
who really just tune inintuitively who needs what?
(07:04):
And I'm looking at these littlesigns.
I'm seeing someone rushingaround.
I'm thinking, oh, I bet thatperson wants help.
I'm going to speak up and saythat.
But not everyone is wired thatway and especially in our
partnership.
My husband is not naturallywired that way and I see that in
many men that it's like oh, ifsomeone says, will you do x, I
(07:26):
will do x.
But I don't naturally just likeinterpret things the same way
of like seeking how I could behelpful or what this person
might need from me.
If they don't say what theyneed from me, they don't need
anything from me.
That's I'm kind of paraphrasingmy husband's overall view.
But so if you're in a dynamiclike that, like it's not good
(07:46):
guy, bad guy, these are justdifferences of how we're wired
and what I recommend is that youget better at voicing what you
really clearly need.
So in my situation it was comingto my husband and saying you
know what, if you have theability to like sit down for 10
minutes to 15 minutes and drinkyour coffee, I wonder if it's
(08:08):
okay sometimes for me to say,hey, could you help this one kid
with something?
So then we both get to sit downand drink coffee for at least
five minutes, like, can we splitthe difference?
Me zero coffee, you 15 minutesof coffee?
Can we meet in the middle andhe was like totally, oh my gosh,
yeah, like yep, and from thatday forward we have had a better
(08:29):
balance.
In that I always think of one ofmy favorite professors in
college that I was taking thisleadership course and she said
there are two main rules that Ilive by that have helped me to
be more successful in so manyareas of my life, and they are
this wishing will not make it so, and it never hurts to ask.
(08:52):
And oh, those two phrases havereally served me in a lot of
different places in life andthey certainly do with my
solutions with my partner is ifI'm not having space for
self-care, rather than just bein my head and like why doesn't
he know?
Why can't he just see thatobviously he's not doing
(09:14):
anything and I'm doingeverything?
To pause and say to myself holdon, it never hurts to ask.
And wishing will not make it.
So that served me so well toremember.
Okay, I can't just imagine heshould be a mind reader.
Wishing it in my head is nevergoing to change anything, so
let's just ask.
And worst case scenario he saysno, it doesn't work for me for
(09:38):
X, y, z reason.
And then we're still wherewe're at.
Best case scenario, he says,yeah, I just hadn't thought to
step up in that moment in thatway.
Thanks for being clear with me.
And we get to move forward withmore partnership.
So wishing will not make it soand it never hurts to ask.
So, friend, in order to be moresolution focused with your
(10:00):
partner, instead of, you know,being in a space where you are
just assuming they should readyour mind or micromanaging or
gatekeeping, I want to encourageyou to open the gates, say what
you need and be clear about howyou guys can better partner.
Two key little tools that Iwant to give to you.
(10:21):
I'm not being sponsored oranything like this, but I just
love these two tangible toolsthat help.
Partnering in responsibility sothat then you have space for
more self-care is number one tocheck out the app called AnyList
.
This is something that hashelped us.
I was told about this by mysister in law.
(10:42):
She's like oh yeah, this way wecan both equally pack the
diaper bag with what's it, whatit needs, because we just have a
diaper bag list and it has allthe things that need to be in
there.
We have another list for whenwe're going swimming and all the
things that need to be in there, and the items can get crossed
off and then just unchecked veryeasily to use as a checklist
(11:03):
again the next time.
It's an app that we both haveon our phone and have equal
access to the exact same lists,and that makes it so.
I'm not oh, did you bring this?
Did you pack that?
And then he's like God, whydon't you just do it yourself?
And so that app is reallyhelpful.
It's also helped us to sharegrocery shopping more often.
It used to be that we kept alist on our refrigerator, but
(11:24):
then it felt again like thedefault was always on me, as the
stay at home parent who wascloser physically to the
refrigerator list, to find atime to take that list and go
shopping.
But when we put itelectronically on any list it
made it so that there were.
If my husband got off work 20to 30 minutes early, he was able
to say, hey, I'm going to justrun by and grab the groceries
(11:46):
and I'd say thank you so much.
That's fantastic and I don'thave to give him any information
.
It's all on the app already ofwhat we are needing and what's
missing from our fridge.
So AnyList super great app.
The other app that I really loveif you're in a phase where you
have nursing or feedings or napsgoing on for your young child
is Huckleberry.
(12:06):
This really helps share theinformation so that if the
baby's crying, the non-nursingpartner doesn't have to say when
did the baby eat last or whendid they sleep last.
The information is all trackedin this shared area and you get
to say when the naps arestarting and ending.
So there's this mutualinformation about thinking about
when the naps are starting andending.
So there's this mutualinformation about thinking about
(12:27):
when the next nap is going tohave to happen or the next
feeding is going to have tohappen.
Love that app, huckleberry.
If you have any othersuggestions, I would love to
hear them from you.
Please go to my Instagram orFacebook at sustainable
parenting and see a post relatedto this episode and drop us a
(12:47):
line, or you can DM me.
What are the resources that youfind?
Help partnership so thatthere's more equal, shared
partnership and you have morespace for self-care, that you're
not creating other challengesby gatekeeping, micromanaging or
not speaking up and using toolsto solve problems.
All right, friend, hope thishelps you this week to have more
(13:09):
kindness and firmness in yourparenting so that parenting
finally feels sustainable.
And in our next episode I'mdiving into parenting from the
neck up and how that error canbe really getting in our way
with our kids and the challengesthat we face with them.
See you next time.
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