A lively, fun, insightful and honest conversation with Alisa Bowman of Project Happily Ever After about how to have a ‘Happily Ever After’ marriage, even with kids in the picture.
We talked about the need for honesty in a relationship, giving ultimatums, daydreaming about divorce, remembering the little things like the small touches throughout the day, and scheduling sex.
What’s your biggest relationship challenge? Leave a comment.
I’ll admit that this weekend I became a bit obsessed with the show “Jon and Kate Plus 8.” It’s not a show I watched much in the past; just an episode here and there as I was flipping through the channels.
However, since I spent a bit more time lying down this weekend with some contractions (only 3 more weeks until my due date!), I caught a number of the back episodes during TLC’s “Jon and Kate Plus 8″ marathon leading up to the Season 5 premiere.
I found watching the various episodes from years past to be an interesting case study in parenting and the marriage relationship (especially with young kids). During earlier seasons, the parents (mostly Kate) seemed to show a verily nice balance between applying structure to the family’s life in order to maintain sanity with so many kids, as well as allow for some fun and flexibility. The parents also seemed to be on the same page and much more supportive of one another.
However, as the seasons progressed, I noticed a shift from it being less about structure to being more about control, especially in the marriage relationship. There seemed to be a lot more nagging, yelling, belittling and eye-rolling. As this progressed, Jon seemed to become less engaged, more withdrawn and showed less “happy” emotion.
Now, I realize this is just snippets of these people’s lives and I am not in any way placing blame or saying that I have figured out what has gotten them to the point they are at now. At the same time, I will say that the snippets I saw made me realize that this couple is much more “normal” then any of us may have believed.
When I watched the new season premiere last night I felt terribly sad for the entire family. Regardless of why they said yes to doing a reality TV show in the first place, or the fact that they have eight kids, or that they now have become “celebrities” with paparazzi following them, and regardless of which parent has done what along the way, the fact of the matter is that what Jon and Kate’s relationship is going through right now is actually (and unfortunately) more “normal” then we may want to admit.
Assuming they got married and decided to start a family together out of a strong love for each other, means that they are pretty normal.
Assuming that they made a choice (in this case, being on a TV show) based on a desire to do what seemed best for their family and support their financial and lifestyle goals, means they are pretty normal.
Assuming that their vision of their original choice (of being on the show) changed over time, means they are pretty normal.
Assuming that they got caught up in the whirl-wind around them and paid more attention to the kids, opportunities, their careers, the money and outside forces rather then their own marriage, means they are pretty normal.
Unfortunately, these are things that many, many couples with kids are going through. Jon and Kate are not alone. Yes, their relationship issues and struggles are out there for all to see (which is their choice), but the emotions, reasons and challenges are the same as yours, mine and the couple next door.
Here’s the deal: A strong and successful marriage takes sharing a joint vision and dreams. It takes reassessing and readjusting that vision and dreams along the way as you and your family changes. It takes ongoing communication, touching, loving, and support. It takes focusing some time on just the two of you and not only on the kids. It takes making choices that protect and preserve what brought you together to get married and start a family in the first place.
When you lose sight of these things and neglect your love relationship, at best, it will be “just fine” (which to me is not good enough). At worst, you will find yourself at a point where one or both of you have forgotten why you are even in the relationship in the first place, and that can become a quick, slippery slope to divorce.
Join me Wednesday, May 27 at 10 am PT/1 pm ET during my Working Moms Wisdom BlogTalkRadio show as I talk with Alisa Bowman of Project Happily Ever After http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/ about this subject of protecting your marriage with kids from going down hill so that you can have your own ‘Happily Ever After’ story.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again: I believe in the importance of sleep and routine, for both children and adults.
Add the two together to create a sleep routine for each member of your house and I will pretty much guarantee that it will change your life.
But don’t take my word alone. Here’s a short and simple blog post from the Child Psychology Research Blog giving more evidence on the benefits of sleep, as well as a step-by-step process for implementing a sleep routine with a child who has not had one.
Please share your comments and thoughts with me.
Does your child or children have a sleep routine?
If so, at what age did you start the sleep routine (even if it’s changed over time)?
If your child does not have a sleep routine, why not?
One of the things that can be very challenging about being a parent, especially a as a working mom, is that the stages of raising children keep changing; and change rather quickly.
I find that just when I get something figured out and am feeling like it’s all working like a well-oiled machine, something new comes up and it’s time to re-evaluate, try something new and establish a new routine or process.
Your child starts sleeping well at night and the next thing you know you are potty training. Your child gets out of diapers and consistently makes it to the toilet in time and the next thing you know you are trying to navigate tantrums. You finally learn how to manage the tantrums in an effective way and now it’s time to find a preschool.
And that’s just from the parenting side.
I know that in my own career, particularly being a business owner, that there are always new stages as well, and just when I’ve figured one out, there’s a new one around the corner. It’s a reminder that life is never done. Really, it’s just a series of changes and transitions. Learning how to navigate, manage and thrive during the changes and transitions is key to living a happy life.
I am at a major transition point right now. I am heading into the stage of having a new baby and all that comes along with such a big addition and change in ones life.
Since this isn’t my first child, I don’t have some of the same questions and concerns that I did the first time, but it’s still a big transition, never-the-less.
On a personal note, I am thinking about how this will change our family dynamic, my time for my husband and my time for me, whether I remember how to do this, how different (or similar) it will be having a boy this time around, and how long will it take me to lose the baby weight.
On a professional note, I am thinking about how much time I will take off when the baby is born; how taking that time may impact my business; how much time I want to work moving forward; and what the most ideal schedule will be after a month, three months, six months, etc. for me, the baby and my family.
I am finding it helpful to balance looking towards the future and setting a loose plan with staying in the moment and remembering that this stage, as well as the next and the next and the next, will go by so quickly. It’s a delicate dance between preparation, anticipation and celebration – of what will be in the future, as well as what already is now.
Change and transition are inevitable. The more we resist it, the more challenging life feels. The more we embrace it and find the support we need to navigate the transitions so that we are making the best decisions for ourselves and our families, the more satisfying and fun life feels.
Coaches Corner Questions:
Is there a change in your life that you are resisting?
Are you going through a personal or professional transition yourself right now? If so, are you embracing and getting the support you need to navigate with ease and grace or are you fighting it out of fear of change and the unknown?
How are you modeling change and transition for your children or for those who work with you or for you?
Let’s face it; life as a couple with kids is very different then life as a kid-less couple. Staying connected and communicating around household and parenting issues can be challenging.
However, when you are in the midst of parenthood, to give attention to and nurture your love relationship, as well as communicate and work with your spouse to create a partnership that supports your family goals is vital in having “the best of both worlds”.
During the episode of The Working Moms Wisdom show with Nicola Ries Taggart, The Executive Moms Coach, we will be discussing this important topic with Life Coach, Corrine Bucher.
You can listen to this blog post by clicking on this player or read the post below.
I will preface this by saying that my husband is an amazing husband and very involved and attentive father. We have a great partnership and I rarely feel like the “burden” of home life and parenting falls primarily on me (notice I did say “rarely”).
BUT….
How is it that the man can hear the click of the thermostat across the house and then question the need for the heat to be on at this time of year, but not hear the crying child in the room less then twenty steps from his head?
I am sitting on the couch down the hall–with three bedrooms and two closed doors between me and the kids’ room–and even I heard the crying. My first thought when I heard the crying was, “Good—he’s back there.”
Then when I continued to hear the crying, my thought was, “Good—he’s back there, but she must need her mommy.”
When I walked through our room to get to the kids’ room and saw that he was still asleep in bed, my thought was, “Are you f-ing kidding me?”
Of course, when I came out of the room after calming my four year old daughter down, who apparently had a bad dream, and told my nine year old step-daughter that it wasn’t even 7:00 a.m. yet and to try to go back to sleep, my husband was awake.
His reply: “Sorry, I was just totally out.”
Um, really? I didn’t notice. Not even the greatest actor could fake that one and pretend to sleep through the volume of wails from the kid next door.
Is there a genetic component to the male system that allows them this ability? Yes, it can be annoying, but honestly, at this point I am more jealous and in awe of this super hero power. With a new baby due in about six weeks I am thinking that this could be a skill that could come in handy.
However, after the episode this morning, I am thinking it’s going to come in handy for my husband and an annoyance to me.
Anyone else have this experience? Any other stories of amazing husband super powers that must come with a genetic predisposition that differs from the mommy abilities? Share, please!
P.S. My husband just read this and wanted it to made clear that part of the reason why I was surprised that he had slept through the crying is because it is very unlike him. Which is true. He also says it’s important to note that he was in a deep dream about our nine year old being an amateur paparazzi who was taking pictures of Spencer and Heidi. I am not even sure I know who these people are…
On this week’s Working Mom Wisdom BlogTalkRadio show I discussed the topic of the importance of sleep when it comes to self-care for working moms.
Although women may know that getting consistently “good” (i.e. quality and quantity) sleep is important to people’s health and well-being, actually doing something about improving their own quality and quantity of sleep is a whole other matter.
During today’s show, I talk about some of the societal beliefs around sleep and the importance of questioning some of those, while at the same time being mindful of the strong medical and scientific evidence around the impact that sleep depervation has on people’s physical, emotional and mental health and well-being.
I also go through an exercise to help you determine what are the primary culprets keeping you from getting the sleep you know would help you function at your best and how you can create a plan to change those habits that may be sabotaging your sleep needs.
Sparked by this cute slide show on www.lilsugar.com I decided to come up with my own list of 10 reasons why I love being a working mom.
Being in a grateful mindset significantly increases our enjoyment and quality of life. The more we focus on what we are grateful for, the more we will experience and attract those feelings.
As a working mom, it can be easy to let practices such as having an “Attitude of Gratitude” slip to the way-side. However, I know from my personal experience and from witnessing it in my clients’ lives that when we spend even a few minutes each day reminding ourselves of all we have to be thankful for and honoring our choice of being a working mom, it becomes easier to see and focus on the good stuff rather then the stuff that drives us crazy.
So, here I go….
The 10 Reasons I Love Being a Working Mom
It gives me an excuse to put on makeup and get out of my sweatpants every-so-often (my husband likes this one, too).
It sparks interest and curiosity in my own daughters as to what I do and how I choose to help other people live better lives.
It gives me time to think about and create things that have nothing to do with my kids or housework.
It allows me to connect with some pretty cool people-colleagues, business partners and clients-who I wouldn’t meet otherwise.
It helps support my family’s lifestyle choices, dreams and goals.
It gives me a sense of inspiration and admiration for making a difference on a greater scale then just my own life.
Owning my own business provides me a wonderful blend of doing work I love during the times I want so that I can also be the type of mother I want to be.
It gives my husband and me a common-ground topic besides the kids or home life to discuss and brainstorm about.
It allows me to see how applying my leadership and business skills to my mothering and home-life can greatly improve my sanity and satisfaction in all areas of my life.
It keeps me connected to a part of myself that I admire, honor and makes me who I am-as a human, not just a business woman or mom.
Coaching Corner:
Why do you love (or enjoy) being a working mom?
Spend a few minutes today jotting down some thoughts as to what the choice of being a professional, working mom brings to your life in a positive way. Regardless of who you work for, how many hours you work, whether you work outside the home or in a home office, if you choose to focus some of your time on your professional interests and career, you are a working mom.*
How is this a positive thing in your life?
*(I realize that even if you don’t pursue a career with kids, you are still technically a “working mom”, but for the point of this post and the women I help, I am defining the working mom as someone who is working within a career.)
I’ve read this before and actually may have posted it previously on my old blog. But today my mother-in-law sent it to me with the message, “You’re still in the middle of the process, so maybe you’ll be able to appreciate the days as they go by, more than I did at the time.”
What a great reminder as I am in the middle of the process, and about to welcome a new baby in six short weeks. As moms “doing it all”–even defined in our own way; even if we are being conscious and present, as much as we can–we still can use the reminders to:
Be in the moment.
Use our intuition.
Listen to our kids input and realize sometimes they are the experts on their own life.
The expert advice may change over time, so take it with a grain of salt.
Don’t take things too seriously.
Do the best you can and continue to pray/trust that it will all work out.
As moms, we may all have our differences (and that’s okay), but at the core we are all the same: We want our kids to live happy and healthly lives…and we will make mistakes along the way as we nurture, teach, guide and love them…and most likely, they will still turn out to be great adults anyway.
With that, enjoy….
“On Being Mom” by Anna Quindlen
If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.
Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.
What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations — what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.
To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleep over. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons…What was I thinking?
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.
Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.
The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.
It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
