Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / How to Stop Wishing Parenting Away

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How to Stop Wishing Parenting Away · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:05
Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to the Happy Family Podcast. Here's the scenario.
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Speaker 1: You are brushing your daughter's hair. It's got knots. She's
0:12
Speaker 1: winging and complaining and saying it hurts. You're running late.
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Speaker 1: You don't really have time for this. If she'd just
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Speaker 1: done as she was asked, you wouldn't be in this situation,
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Speaker 1: and you're really really frustrated. I've been there. In fact,
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Speaker 1: I can't tell you the last time that I had
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Speaker 1: the blessing, the privilege, the joy, the joy of brushing
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Speaker 1: my daughter's hair. I can't tell you what I'd do
0:35
Speaker 1: to be able to do it all over again Today.
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Speaker 1: A two minute idea from a philosophy professor that might
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Speaker 1: change how you experience the next ten years of parenting.
0:47
Speaker 1: Stay with us. That's next. Hello and welcome to the
0:52
Speaker 1: Happy Family Podcast. Real parenting solutions every single day. This
0:55
Speaker 1: is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name's docor Justin Causon.
0:59
Speaker 1: Normally I'm joined by my wife, missus Happy Families, Mum
1:02
Speaker 1: to our six daughters. She couldn't make it today. Sometimes
1:05
Speaker 1: life's a bit like that. It gets complicated, it gets
1:07
Speaker 1: a little bit well taxing. Sometimes on my own and
1:12
Speaker 1: today is one of those days. However, the show goes on,
1:14
Speaker 1: and what that usually means is that with Kylie not
1:17
Speaker 1: interrupting me, I get to say everything that I want
1:19
Speaker 1: to say, but I get to say it faster. So
1:22
Speaker 1: today a nice short one, an idea that works, wonders
1:27
Speaker 1: and may just change how happy your family is. So
1:32
Speaker 1: let's go back to a guy called William b Irvine.
1:34
Speaker 1: Bill Irvine wrote a book called A Guide to the
1:36
Speaker 1: Good Life, and in that book he talked about something
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Speaker 1: called the last time meditation. Basically, it's this, whatever you're doing,
1:44
Speaker 1: this might be the last time you do it. Think
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Speaker 1: about that for a second. All of those parenting tasks
1:49
Speaker 1: that drive you crazy, the last time you carry a
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Speaker 1: sleeping child from the car, maybe the last shoulder right,
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Speaker 1: the last time that a small hand grabs your as
2:00
Speaker 1: you cross the road. Maybe even the last time that
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Speaker 1: they come and lay down on the bed beside you
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Speaker 1: and say, I just wanted to hug before I go
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Speaker 1: to sleep. And here's the great challenge about life. Nobody
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Speaker 1: tells you that it's the last time. The last time happens,
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Speaker 1: you don't know it, and then it never happens again. Now,
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Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes that last time is something that you're actively
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Speaker 1: praying for. I'm really looking forward to the last time
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Speaker 1: that I walk into the kitchen and find twelve plates
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Speaker 1: that have been dumped there by children who, well, at
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Speaker 1: least they took them to the kitchen, but they haven't
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Speaker 1: bothered to do the rinsing. They haven't stacked them, they
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Speaker 1: haven't gotten them organized, do you know what I mean?
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Speaker 1: Like the last nappy, I don't mind that I'm never
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Speaker 1: going to change a nappy again for the rest of
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Speaker 1: my life, at least fingers crossed. Hopefully I'm not going
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Speaker 1: to have to. I don't mind that I don't tread
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Speaker 1: on lego in the middle of the night that's been
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Speaker 1: left on the floor. That kind of makes me feel
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Speaker 1: pretty good. But there's actually some really nice philosophical roots
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Speaker 1: to this idea of the last time that if you
3:00
Speaker 1: have a look at ancient Stoicism, there's something called negative visualization.
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Speaker 1: Seneca you might have heard of Seneca, Epictetus. What they
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Speaker 1: taught was that if you can imagine losing something, it
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Speaker 1: sharpens your appreciation of it. In fact, epictetis this is
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Speaker 1: kind of brutal. That Epictetus even said to remind yourself
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Speaker 1: as you kiss your child good night that they're mortal.
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Speaker 1: The logic holds here, right, Maybe you don't want to
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Speaker 1: imagine it's your child. Maybe you want to imagine for
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Speaker 1: you that you are mortal, and this could be. It's
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Speaker 1: kind of hard to say. It makes me a bit
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Speaker 1: sad to say it, but it changes the way that
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Speaker 1: you engage in the moment. There's a parallel thread in
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Speaker 1: Japanese culture. My brother spent some time in Japan, and
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Speaker 1: I don't think that I'm going to say this correctly,
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Speaker 1: but it's called it go itchy One time one meeting
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Speaker 1: comes from the tea ceremony tradition, and what they're basically
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Speaker 1: saying is every gathering is unrepeatable, like we're here and
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Speaker 1: this moment matters, but we won't get this moment back.
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Speaker 1: Even if we're all together again, we're going to be different.
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Speaker 1: The moment's going to be different, everything all changed. I
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Speaker 1: think it's also why the Japanese fuss over cherry blossoms
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Speaker 1: because they only last such a short time, like a
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Speaker 1: week or thereabouts. So the last time meditation builds on
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Speaker 1: the psychology that we call adaptation. Adaptation basically means that
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Speaker 1: you become habituated to something like you walk into the house,
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Speaker 1: you see the kids there, and you just take them
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Speaker 1: for granted because they are the wallpaper of your life.
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Speaker 1: You stop noticing. Back in two thousand and eight, a
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Speaker 1: researcher by the name of Kurtz published their paper in
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Speaker 1: Psychological Science. Here's what they did. UNI students were told
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Speaker 1: to imagine that graduation was six weeks away, and they
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Speaker 1: were found to savor life on campus more. They became
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Speaker 1: measurably happier than those who were told that graduation was
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Speaker 1: going to be a couple of years away. Basically, this
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Speaker 1: comes down to the following. It's about perceived scarcity and
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Speaker 1: what it does is that switches savoring on. There's a
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Speaker 1: researcher by the name of Fred Bryant, and he talks
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Speaker 1: about how we can savor what's happened, and we can
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Speaker 1: also save the future, or we can savor right now.
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Speaker 1: This is what I'm talking about. It's the right now moment.
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Speaker 1: You might have heard of a guy called Tim Urban.
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Speaker 1: He has a website called Wait but Why. It's all
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Speaker 1: about curiosity and he invented this concept. Invented he described
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Speaker 1: this idea. He calls it the tail end scary istat
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Speaker 1: ready for this. By the time your child finished the school,
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Speaker 1: you've used roughly ninety something percent of the total in
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Speaker 1: person time you're ever going to have with them. And
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Speaker 1: then the remainder kind of gets rationed into visits because
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Speaker 1: they move out of home, you just don't get the
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Speaker 1: time anymore. So after the break, the Last Time Meditation,
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Speaker 1: how it actually played out at our place last week,
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Speaker 1: and why it matters in your place today, Say what
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Speaker 1: it's We're back. It's the Happy Families podcast. I'm saying,
6:00
Speaker 1: but it's me. I feel a little lonely without Missappy
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Speaker 1: Families today. Fingers crossed, She's back tomorrow. I' feeling a
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Speaker 1: little bit better. Last week, my twenty two year old
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Speaker 1: daughter walked into the bedroom holding her guitar and she said, Hey, Dad,
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Speaker 1: I've been practicing a song. Can I play it to you?
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Speaker 1: I want to sing you a song. And if I'm
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Speaker 1: perfectly honest, even though I'm the parenting expert and I'm
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Speaker 1: having this conversation with you, the reason that I'm doing
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Speaker 1: this Last Time Meditation podcast conversation with you today is
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Speaker 1: because I didn't treat it like it was the last time,
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Speaker 1: at least not initially. I was kind of annoyed because
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Speaker 1: I was rushed, as is so often the case. There
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Speaker 1: were other things that I needed to be doing, and
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Speaker 1: I've heard of sing songs lots, so I just wasn't
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Speaker 1: that roped in by it. And I said, not now,
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Speaker 1: I haven't really got time. And then I remembered the
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Speaker 1: last time Meditation. I said, you know what, because this
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Speaker 1: could be the last song. I didn't say that out loud,
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Speaker 1: but I thought this could be the last time. I'm
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Speaker 1: so glad she's actually still with this. It wasn't the
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Speaker 1: last time, but I thought this could be the last time.
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Speaker 1: What if something happens to me, what if something happens
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Speaker 1: to her? So I sat down with her. I said,
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Speaker 1: I'd love to hear you play. And she sat down
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Speaker 1: and she said me two songs, and I didn't want
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Speaker 1: it to end. It was beautiful. So the Last Time
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Speaker 1: Meditation is not about grief, and it's not about morbidity.
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Speaker 1: It's not about mortality, it's not about life is over.
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Speaker 1: It's actually about just stepping into the moment. It's about
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Speaker 1: just being there. I haven't talked about this on the
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Speaker 1: podcast in any detail, but a few weeks ago, I
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Speaker 1: was riding my bike and I came off. I don't
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Speaker 1: know what happened because I passed out. I was unconscious
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Speaker 1: when I came off the bike. I was doing seventy
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Speaker 1: k's an hour. And that's really been on my mind
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Speaker 1: a lot for the last few weeks. When my children
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Speaker 1: ask if they can talk to me, do something annoying me,
7:39
Speaker 1: whatever it is, or if I get to interact with them,
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Speaker 1: because it could so easily be the last time. That
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Speaker 1: car that wasn't on the road, it could have been
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Speaker 1: coming towards me, It could have been the last time.
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Speaker 1: So I just wanted to share that idea with you today.
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Speaker 1: The last time meditation, It brings you into the moment more.
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Speaker 1: It helps you to sit there and really really be
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Speaker 1: there for your family, experience family life differently. If your
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Speaker 1: children are bothering you, it might be the last time,
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Speaker 1: So how would you react differently this time? Here's what
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Speaker 1: I want you to do. Here's my practical takeaway for
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Speaker 1: this podcast today. For this week, pick one ordinary ritual
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Speaker 1: this week or one ordinary moment. Maybe it's bad time
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Speaker 1: if the kids are young, Maybe it's school drop off,
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Speaker 1: if you drive them to school. Maybe the kids ride
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Speaker 1: their bikes or scooters to school, but you usually just
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Speaker 1: watch them as they go out the door and say
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Speaker 1: see you later. Maybe you might do it differently, if
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Speaker 1: you did it like it's the last time. Maybe you
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Speaker 1: might walk all the way to the front gate and
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Speaker 1: watch them go down the street. Maybe the bedtime story
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Speaker 1: if it was the last one. When your child interrupts
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Speaker 1: you with an invitation to watch this or listen to
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Speaker 1: this or whatever, just remember this could be the last time.
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Speaker 1: Don't say it out loud. Just notice. So here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: My daughter don't ask me to brush their hair anymore.
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Speaker 1: I can't comb the knots out of their hair anymore.
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Speaker 1: They're not interested in me doing it. And it would
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Speaker 1: kind of be weird for me to sit down and
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Speaker 1: do that with my twenty two year old daughter, because
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Speaker 1: number one, she doesn't need help, But number two, I
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Speaker 1: don't know. I reckon, there's something that you did this morning,
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Speaker 1: something that I did this morning in relation to our
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Speaker 1: most important people in our lives, and we did it
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Speaker 1: on autopilot that ten years from now you'd trade almost
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Speaker 1: anything to do again. You just don't know what that
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Speaker 1: thing is. And that's the whole point, do it like
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Speaker 1: it's the last time and see how it changes your experience.
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Speaker 1: The Happy Famili's podcast will be back tomorrow with a
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Speaker 1: whole lot more, including what do you do when your
9:43
Speaker 1: twelve year old daughter receives content online that is disturbing, violent,
9:49
Speaker 1: or even sexualized? Plus how can we lift our energy
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Speaker 1: and build a stronger energy game Those conversations add more
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Speaker 1: coming up on the Happy Families podcast this week make
10:00
Speaker 1: should you catch every episode they drop every morning in
10:03
Speaker 1: your feed. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
10:06
Speaker 1: Rulant from Bridge Media. Mim Hammonds provides our admin and
10:09
Speaker 1: other support, and for more infoto make your family happier,
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Speaker 1: visit us at happy families dot com dot au.