Latest / Mom Wars / Classically SAHM
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: From the front lines of The Mom Wars. Here's Bethany
- 0:04Speaker 1: Mandel and Kara Kennedy.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of your new favorite podcast,
- 0:13Speaker 2: The Mom Wars. I am Bethany Mandel. I am a
- 0:17Speaker 2: mom of six, homeschooling frequent contributor to The New York
- 0:20Speaker 2: Post and The Washington Examiner. And I am joined by
- 0:24Speaker 2: Cawer Kennedy.
- 0:25Speaker 3: And I am a mom of a nine month old
- 0:28Speaker 3: and I am six weeks pregnant today.
- 0:31Speaker 2: So and we are joined by a very old friend
- 0:37Speaker 2: of mine, Abby Roth, who you might remember as classically
- 0:41Speaker 2: Abby but now has relaunched her whole brand and I
- 0:44Speaker 2: feel like her whole life as the first generation stay
- 0:47Speaker 2: at home mom. You can follow her on substack and Instagram.
- 0:51Speaker 2: First Gen stay at home Mom some variation of that.
- 0:55Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us, Abby. I'm so
- 0:57Speaker 2: excited to have you before you have your baby. I
- 0:59Speaker 2: think that people are going to be listening to this
- 1:00Speaker 2: after you have your baby, but we're taping this before
- 1:04Speaker 2: you have your third.
- 1:05Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
- 1:08Speaker 4: actually be able to fit something in before this baby
- 1:10Speaker 4: makes her entrance.
- 1:12Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and this is her You have two boys. Yeah,
- 1:15Speaker 2: now you have a girl coming. Do you have any
- 1:17Speaker 2: of this stuff bought yet? Or you're waiting?
- 1:21Speaker 4: So I am lucky enough to be part of a
- 1:24Speaker 4: community where everybody is having like their third, fourth, fifth
- 1:28Speaker 4: baby and they're like basically done. So they're giving me
- 1:32Speaker 4: all of their girl stuff. So I just got like
- 1:35Speaker 4: three giant bins of girl stuff and I'm like, oh,
- 1:38Speaker 4: this is pink. I have to wrap my head around this.
- 1:41Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. And so we were
- 1:43Speaker 2: talking before we jumped on. We were talking about how
- 1:45Speaker 2: you're feeling with all of your fake out labor. How
- 1:49Speaker 2: close do you so you know, you know where my
- 1:51Speaker 2: third was born? How close are you to the hospital.
- 1:57Speaker 4: So technically I'm thirty six weeks and four days. I
- 2:01Speaker 4: had my first baby at thirty nine weeks and five days,
- 2:05Speaker 4: and my second baby at thirty eight, thirty eight weeks
- 2:07Speaker 4: and five days, and I have a feeling this one's
- 2:10Speaker 4: coming at thirty seven weeks and five days. But we'll see.
- 2:13Speaker 2: Yeah, That's why I was like, I was nervous because
- 2:16Speaker 2: you have a cold and you had the flu earlier
- 2:18Speaker 2: this week, and I messaged I was like, are you
- 2:20Speaker 2: okay to tape because if you're not, I don't know
- 2:22Speaker 2: when we're gonna do this.
- 2:24Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, And I was like, we're going to power through,
- 2:27Speaker 4: and I'm going to be there for this podcast.
- 2:30Speaker 3: I love it.
- 2:31Speaker 2: I'm so glad that you took the time. So you
- 2:34Speaker 2: so your oldest is three and a half.
- 2:37Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so three under three three and under, So
- 2:42Speaker 4: I have done that.
- 2:45Speaker 2: It's hard, but they are such a posse now it's
- 2:50Speaker 2: so amazing. So I took my older three to Paris
- 2:53Speaker 2: last year and it like really hit home for me,
- 2:57Speaker 2: like I felt like I earned it. I went through
- 3:00Speaker 2: those early years of them all being little and three
- 3:04Speaker 2: kids and diapers at the same time and all that.
- 3:07Speaker 2: And Seth was home with the old with the younger
- 3:09Speaker 2: three kids while I was in Paris with the older three,
- 3:13Speaker 2: and I felt zero zero regret, zero. I just felt nothing.
- 3:18Speaker 2: For I was like, I earned this. I did three,
- 3:21Speaker 2: three and under and now they're so fun and they're
- 3:25Speaker 2: friends and it's great and I earned it and you'll
- 3:28Speaker 2: earn it too well.
- 3:30Speaker 3: Was the hordest pond fee Bathning with three hundred three.
- 3:34Speaker 2: The physical needs, I think, and though honestly it's it's
- 3:37Speaker 2: the neediness it's the never feeling like I can sit
- 3:40Speaker 2: and that I always had a butt to wipe, I
- 3:43Speaker 2: always had hands to clean, I always had something to do,
- 3:47Speaker 2: and I just couldn't like there was no downtime to think.
- 3:51Speaker 2: And I also found it very difficult. And I remember
- 3:54Speaker 2: this actually this summer because I'm home with just my
- 3:56Speaker 2: youngest this summer while my older five are at camp.
- 3:59Speaker 2: They're just going like a day camp. It's during the day,
- 4:02Speaker 2: but I find myself back in that mode of like
- 4:06Speaker 2: I only have a two year old to talk to,
- 4:08Speaker 2: and now with my older kids, like I can have
- 4:11Speaker 2: full fledged conversations. We talk about really deep stuff with
- 4:15Speaker 2: my older kids, and I find it really draining to
- 4:20Speaker 2: be doing the little kid stuff exclusively. Yeah, but man,
- 4:25Speaker 2: is it worth it when they're when they're like ten, eleven, eight, six,
- 4:30Speaker 2: Like that is my sweet spot of motherhood. They're so
- 4:33Speaker 2: fun to hang out with and it's hard. It's like
- 4:36Speaker 2: a trial by fire when you've got the three three
- 4:38Speaker 2: and under. But then like, to have three kids that
- 4:41Speaker 2: close together in age is really nice.
- 4:44Speaker 4: Because wait, I'm curious, though, I have a question. Well,
- 4:46Speaker 4: first of all, I'll say that was kind of our intention,
- 4:49Speaker 4: was we wanted to have them all close initially so
- 4:51Speaker 4: that they could all be be friends and have similar interests.
- 4:55Speaker 4: And it's like, yes, we're going to take on the
- 4:57Speaker 4: hard part from the beginning, but then hopefully as they
- 5:00Speaker 4: get older, we're not like juggling a ton of different
- 5:04Speaker 4: age ranges.
- 5:05Speaker 2: And I say, like, what on weekends and when you're
- 5:08Speaker 2: on vacations and stuff. That's when it really pays off
- 5:11Speaker 2: because everyone wants to do the same thing. We've only
- 5:14Speaker 2: hit in the last like year or so complaining from
- 5:18Speaker 2: my older kids about doing like little kid things quote unquote,
- 5:22Speaker 2: and I'm like, we did little kids things for you,
- 5:25Speaker 2: and now these little kids get to be their little
- 5:27Speaker 2: kid thing. But it must be very hard to be
- 5:29Speaker 2: juggling different needs the whole time, and we haven't until
- 5:33Speaker 2: very recently.
- 5:35Speaker 4: Right, So my question for you is, I actually don't
- 5:37Speaker 4: remember did you take a longer break between three and four,
- 5:41Speaker 4: because I know a lot of people do, but I
- 5:43Speaker 4: didn't know if you had.
- 5:45Speaker 2: So no, so we it's so her. No, they're they're
- 5:49Speaker 2: so they're the farthest apart in age. They're twenty six
- 5:51Speaker 2: months apart.
- 5:53Speaker 4: That to me is a big gap. I'm like, yeah,
- 5:55Speaker 4: that's a big gap.
- 5:56Speaker 2: I so I think I don't remember why I think
- 6:02Speaker 2: I had. I think I might have had a miscarriage
- 6:04Speaker 2: between them. I don't remember, but I know it wasn't intentional,
- 6:09Speaker 2: but that they are the biggest gap between number three
- 6:11Speaker 2: and four because that was the only time that I
- 6:14Speaker 2: ever wasn't There was like a significant chunk of time
- 6:17Speaker 2: that I wasn't pregnant or breastfeeding, and it was like
- 6:20Speaker 2: six months and it was because my third was not
- 6:22Speaker 2: interested in nursing at all. So I weaned him the earliest.
- 6:25Speaker 2: He weaned at like a year on the dot, and
- 6:27Speaker 2: he was like begging for it since he was very little.
- 6:30Speaker 2: He hated nursing and he was like half and half formula.
- 6:34Speaker 2: It was so interesting because my first my second, like
- 6:39Speaker 2: I had to force them to wean at like two
- 6:41Speaker 2: and a half three years old. My third wanted to
- 6:44Speaker 2: wean instantly, like at four months old. I had to
- 6:47Speaker 2: start giving him formula because he just he would give up.
- 6:49Speaker 2: He was like, ah, this is too much work, I'm done,
- 6:52Speaker 2: and he started losing weight and so we had to supplement.
- 6:54Speaker 2: And when I gave him his first ball of formula,
- 6:56Speaker 2: he was like, yes, this was so fast. I love it.
- 7:00Speaker 2: And then four and five nursed and weaned themselves at
- 7:04Speaker 2: a year, very happily nursed, but then very happily weaned.
- 7:07Speaker 2: And then my sixth I just weaned it two and
- 7:09Speaker 2: a half years old. I was like that third kid
- 7:12Speaker 2: was so weird. He loved formula.
- 7:14Speaker 3: What was it like on your body doing it so close?
- 7:18Speaker 3: Because I read something the other day that was like
- 7:24Speaker 3: the closer together that you have them, like it sucks
- 7:28Speaker 3: the new turns out of your body and like, really
- 7:30Speaker 3: it should be a year or two, and I was like,
- 7:32Speaker 3: I don't think that's.
- 7:33Speaker 2: True, like historic, because you are going to be close
- 7:36Speaker 2: together in age.
- 7:37Speaker 3: Yeah eighteen months?
- 7:38Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't know. I like, I
- 7:42Speaker 2: can't really compare it. I didn't have I will say
- 7:46Speaker 2: I had a much easier pregnancy with my fourth, maybe
- 7:48Speaker 2: because I had time to recuperate a little bit, But
- 7:51Speaker 2: I think I was just allergic to New Jersey. The
- 7:54Speaker 2: first three pregnancies were really hard, and I think it
- 7:56Speaker 2: was because I was allergic to New Jersey. Four, five,
- 7:58Speaker 2: six were much better.
- 8:00Speaker 3: Do you have any deficiencies or anything.
- 8:02Speaker 2: I'm like, my blood work never popped up anything, deficiency wise,
- 8:07Speaker 2: it was draining. It was, I mean, but it was
- 8:09Speaker 2: much more like physically draining in the like carrying, and
- 8:13Speaker 2: I just I felt like I was touched out all
- 8:16Speaker 2: the time. Yeah, and that that was the hardest for me.
- 8:20Speaker 2: I really. Like. So we have we have a thing
- 8:23Speaker 2: in our house that like when I'm cooking dinner's screen
- 8:25Speaker 2: time from like four point thirty to dinner, which is like,
- 8:28Speaker 2: you know, just about six o'clock, so they get an
- 8:30Speaker 2: hour and a half of screens a day, and I
- 8:33Speaker 2: love it. I just can listen to a podcast in
- 8:35Speaker 2: the kitchen and I can like just be by myself,
- 8:39Speaker 2: and golly do I love it totally.
- 8:43Speaker 4: Yeah. Quiet time is a game changer. We've had, like
- 8:47Speaker 4: we've gone through multiple iterations of this of like oh,
- 8:49Speaker 4: when the kids drop their naps, you're just like, oh god,
- 8:53Speaker 4: but thank god. Podcasts for kids are amazing and I
- 8:57Speaker 4: just discovered these and I'm like, this is the best
- 9:00Speaker 4: Yodo player, but also just playing them. We have like
- 9:02Speaker 4: a Google speaker. We can just put it on there,
- 9:05Speaker 4: and so when my younger baby, my middle baby kind
- 9:09Speaker 4: of is napping, my older son can listen to like
- 9:13Speaker 4: Thomas the Tank Engine and he's like playing with his
- 9:16Speaker 4: magnetiles for like two hours.
- 9:18Speaker 2: I'm like, that's right, it's amazing. So we are super
- 9:21Speaker 2: into this podcast from National Grade Geographic called Greeking Out,
- 9:26Speaker 2: Me Greeking Out, and it's all about Greek mythology. It's
- 9:30Speaker 2: my older four kids are super into it and they
- 9:33Speaker 2: are like encyclopedias of Greek mythology. And for my oldest
- 9:37Speaker 2: daughter's bot Mitzvah, We're doing a massive family trip to
- 9:40Speaker 2: Greece for a week and then Israel for a month,
- 9:43Speaker 2: and the whole grease trip is mythology themed because of
- 9:47Speaker 2: this podcast.
- 9:48Speaker 4: That's awesome.
- 9:49Speaker 2: So that's like what I'm doing, like this while my
- 9:51Speaker 2: kids are at camp and I have some downtime. I've
- 9:53Speaker 2: been planning that trip and like finding tour operators that
- 9:57Speaker 2: are like kids mythology whatever, and like it'll be expensive,
- 10:02Speaker 2: but I've been saving for this, literally her whole life.
- 10:04Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean it's like either this or a party,
- 10:08Speaker 4: so like this sounds better.
- 10:10Speaker 2: Yeah, So I've been I've been saving. I save. I
- 10:13Speaker 2: would recommend everyone do this honestly because it's so great.
- 10:16Speaker 2: I save like one hundred, one hundred and fifty dollars
- 10:19Speaker 2: per kid. Per month and it just comes right out
- 10:22Speaker 2: of our accounts and then I put it in mutual
- 10:24Speaker 2: funds and by the time the bot MIT's for rolls
- 10:27Speaker 2: around because of the growth of the mutual fund Also, like,
- 10:30Speaker 2: I've got twenty twenty five thousand dollars in that account.
- 10:33Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah, and it's like, you know, very passive savings.
- 10:38Speaker 2: And now you know, planning this trip, I'm like booking
- 10:42Speaker 2: the tour for the Greek mythology for the day. I'm like, oh,
- 10:46Speaker 2: it's seventeen hundred dollars. I'm like, you know what, it's fine. Yeah,
- 10:50Speaker 2: it's fine.
- 10:50Speaker 4: That's what it's for. That's what the money's for.
- 10:52Speaker 2: Yeah. So I want to talk to you about your rebranding.
- 10:57Speaker 2: I disagreed with your decision not to convert classically Abby
- 11:03Speaker 2: to first Gen Stay at Home. I feel like you
- 11:04Speaker 2: should have just changed the username and kept all of
- 11:08Speaker 2: your following.
- 11:09Speaker 4: I am happy to explain it, and I don't know
- 11:12Speaker 4: that I've actually explained it, like the behind the scenes
- 11:15Speaker 4: kind of decision making on that. Yeah, I know, because
- 11:18Speaker 4: everyone's like, you had one hundred thousand followers on classically Abby.
- 11:22Speaker 4: So here's the thing, and I've you know, I've picked
- 11:26Speaker 4: apart all the analytics, and I've picked apart all of
- 11:28Speaker 4: the different things about it. So basically, classically ABBY was
- 11:31Speaker 4: an amazing venture and I'm super proud of it because
- 11:34Speaker 4: it was at a time when I was just got,
- 11:36Speaker 4: I'd just gotten married, and I was really talking to
- 11:39Speaker 4: young women who were pre getting married and then also
- 11:42Speaker 4: post getting married about like how to embrace classic femininity
- 11:45Speaker 4: in a crazy world like ours, where you know, being
- 11:48Speaker 4: a woman isn't even you don't even know what that
- 11:50Speaker 4: means anymore?
- 11:51Speaker 2: What is a woman? Sorry?
- 11:52Speaker 4: Exactly exactly? So I really wanted to talk about that.
- 11:55Speaker 4: So that was all really something I was passionate about.
- 11:59Speaker 4: But then as I started and having babies, like how
- 12:02Speaker 4: often was I actually doing my makeup and curling my
- 12:04Speaker 4: hair and like trying to look like a feminine woman
- 12:08Speaker 4: who whatever? I was like, not very often. What was
- 12:10Speaker 4: mattering to me was like how many times a day
- 12:12Speaker 4: do I wipe my baby's butt? Like that that mattered.
- 12:16Speaker 4: So then when I and really the big big change
- 12:20Speaker 4: was because I am keeping my kids home with me,
- 12:24Speaker 4: I didn't like feeling like my YouTube presence was getting
- 12:29Speaker 4: in the way of my parenting, Like I was like,
- 12:31Speaker 4: you need to go off the other room. It doesn't
- 12:33Speaker 4: matter what you need right now. I need to do
- 12:34Speaker 4: this and I need to record and whatever it was.
- 12:37Speaker 4: And I just didn't have the energy, the bandwidth, the
- 12:40Speaker 4: time to make that work. So then I was like, Okay,
- 12:44Speaker 4: let's say I'm putting a pause on YouTube and I'm
- 12:46Speaker 4: just going to work on my Instagram. I looked at
- 12:48Speaker 4: my Instagram followers. I have eighty five percent male followers
- 12:53Speaker 4: on classically abby yes, and that was the problem. I've
- 12:59Speaker 4: always at a heavily male demographic on Instagram. I think
- 13:04Speaker 4: partly because of who I'm related to, partly because of
- 13:07Speaker 4: what I mean. I have this joke with my friend
- 13:11Speaker 4: who's on Instagram, who's also like more modest, and I'm like,
- 13:14Speaker 4: if only we would just put out some butt selfies,
- 13:17Speaker 4: we would have a million followers. But no, So I
- 13:21Speaker 4: don't know, I don't know what it was about. But
- 13:23Speaker 4: my that was my demos, and so I was like, well,
- 13:26Speaker 4: this is just my if I convert over to the
- 13:29Speaker 4: first gen stay at home mom here, I'm already struggling
- 13:33Speaker 4: with engagement because the engagement that I'm the stuff that
- 13:36Speaker 4: I'm doing is for women and so I'm getting all
- 13:38Speaker 4: these men who are like kind of following me but
- 13:41Speaker 4: don't really know why. I'd rather build up my own
- 13:45Speaker 4: new account that's primarily for people who want to be here,
- 13:51Speaker 4: and so that's why I started the first Gen Stay
- 13:53Speaker 4: at Home Mom and made it its own account, and
- 13:55Speaker 4: I sometimes will like cross post on classically Abby just
- 13:58Speaker 4: for those people who are like, hey, where did you go?
- 14:00Speaker 4: I'm like, this is where I am. But for the
- 14:03Speaker 4: most part, I really wanted to build a new audience.
- 14:05Speaker 4: So it was very exciting to like organically grow to
- 14:08Speaker 4: eleven thousand followers on the first Gen Stay at Home
- 14:11Speaker 4: Mom and have it beat ninety five percent women, because
- 14:13Speaker 4: it was like, Okay, these are the people who really
- 14:15Speaker 4: want to know what I'm up to and want to
- 14:18Speaker 4: learn how to do what I'm talking about here.
- 14:21Speaker 3: I mean, I bet you have more engagement even yes,
- 14:24Speaker 3: like ten percent of the followers, because people are actually
- 14:27Speaker 3: wanting to know what you're up to, you know.
- 14:31Speaker 4: I think. So I think the people who are there
- 14:34Speaker 4: really want to be there, and like they are trying
- 14:38Speaker 4: to do the same thing I'm doing, which is like
- 14:39Speaker 4: learn how to live this life out that I really
- 14:43Speaker 4: had no experience with.
- 14:45Speaker 2: You're one of those friends that I wish that I
- 14:47Speaker 2: had time to get on the phone with more often.
- 14:50Speaker 2: I just basically send you voice memos every now and then.
- 14:52Speaker 2: That's the extent of our relationship right now. But we
- 14:57Speaker 2: have this in common because we're both part of the
- 14:59Speaker 2: orthodox uish world where this is not normal. First of all,
- 15:03Speaker 2: you're you're planning on homeschooling, which I'm so excited about,
- 15:07Speaker 2: and because you're gonna help influence.
- 15:10Speaker 4: Yes, I'm already influencing people. By the way, a few
- 15:14Speaker 4: of my friends have talked to me.
- 15:15Speaker 2: About it a little bit, so I love it.
- 15:17Speaker 4: And it's all your fault because I've been talking to
- 15:19Speaker 4: you about things for years now. I feel like, yes,
- 15:23Speaker 4: and thank God.
- 15:25Speaker 2: And we're going to influence kar At homeschool is also
- 15:27Speaker 2: at all right, we'll.
- 15:29Speaker 4: See, we'll see. You know, you just got to gently
- 15:31Speaker 4: gently walk in and.
- 15:34Speaker 3: At the IQ points. My husband definitely does, but we
- 15:38Speaker 3: have an IQ GAPP relationship, so I think that teach
- 15:42Speaker 3: him will have to foold on him.
- 15:44Speaker 2: No, it's really not rock okay, I mean, no offense.
- 15:49Speaker 2: Let's like all the caveats. So, like, you have such
- 15:51Speaker 2: a hard job, do you have a hard job. You
- 15:53Speaker 2: don't have summers whatever, it's not a hard job. You
- 15:55Speaker 2: get to hang out with kids all day. I'm not
- 15:57Speaker 2: hanging out metals to teachers, but like, how smart are
- 16:01Speaker 2: the teachers that you know?
- 16:02Speaker 4: That's what I always am wondering.
- 16:05Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not rocket scientists.
- 16:07Speaker 3: That's a good point.
- 16:08Speaker 2: We're just not And it's not hard. Like weirdly, I
- 16:12Speaker 2: will say, early childhood is actually really hard. Preschool, pre
- 16:19Speaker 2: K like that whole there that is very difficult actually,
- 16:23Speaker 2: and I didn't realize it until I had to do that,
- 16:26Speaker 2: and now I have, Like my oldest is going into
- 16:28Speaker 2: sixth grade. I love that easy. I can do it.
- 16:31Speaker 2: Math is really hard. Actually, I'm outsourcing that. Everything else
- 16:35Speaker 2: so easy to do my pre K kid. The amount
- 16:39Speaker 2: of thought that I'm putting into like the books and
- 16:42Speaker 2: the crafts and everything, it's not intuitive because we're you
- 16:46Speaker 2: don't remember how you learned sensory things and all of
- 16:51Speaker 2: these things. Like there there's real science behind preschool and
- 16:54Speaker 2: pre k, and a good teacher knows that. It was funny.
- 16:57Speaker 2: I was actually saying this to someone like I didn't
- 17:00Speaker 2: know this person, and I was like kind of really
- 17:02Speaker 2: taking a risk by being honest about how I feel
- 17:04Speaker 2: about teachers, and I was like, but I don't feel
- 17:06Speaker 2: this way about preschool teachers. And I went into that
- 17:08Speaker 2: whole spiel and she's like, I'm a preschool teacher. I
- 17:11Speaker 2: feel so seen right now. And I was like, Oh,
- 17:13Speaker 2: thank god, you're not like a third grade teacher.
- 17:16Speaker 3: Hilarious. I guess most of it is just trying to
- 17:19Speaker 3: gather attention, right.
- 17:21Speaker 2: No. No, there's like real science behind are, like the
- 17:24Speaker 2: importance of like sensory play and you know, teaching colors
- 17:29Speaker 2: and teaching numbers and all learning how to realize numbers
- 17:36Speaker 2: is actually really difficult because it's not just counting, it's
- 17:40Speaker 2: conceptualizing quantity. There's a lot there. I have found I'm lacking.
- 17:47Speaker 2: I'm very lacking in that the crafts, the activities. I
- 17:51Speaker 2: outsourced a lot of that stuff in some way or
- 17:55Speaker 2: another to classes or to like an all morning preschool
- 18:00Speaker 2: program like three days a week for some of my kids,
- 18:03Speaker 2: and I just like, haven't found that for my four
- 18:05Speaker 2: year old this year. Maybe I will, but I'm I'm
- 18:08Speaker 2: trying to rope in my older kids to help me
- 18:11Speaker 2: with him. Maybe that'll I don't know.
- 18:14Speaker 4: I mean, I can say that again, No, I'm not
- 18:18Speaker 4: a homeschooler yet. I am in the sense that I
- 18:21Speaker 4: have my kids home with me, but I am not
- 18:22Speaker 4: a homeschooler yet. And I feel like I have to
- 18:24Speaker 4: justify that constantly because school doesn't technically start until six
- 18:28Speaker 4: years old, and it makes me a little crazy, but
- 18:31Speaker 4: I find that with my three year old kids are
- 18:34Speaker 4: just so naturally curious. My son particularly is like weird
- 18:38Speaker 4: and beyond, but like most kids are anyway, And this
- 18:43Speaker 4: is the one. There's like a billion different methods of homeschooling,
- 18:46Speaker 4: and one of them is unschooling. I don't believe in
- 18:49Speaker 4: unschooling forever, but I do think early on the concept
- 18:53Speaker 4: of just listening to your kids and then oh they
- 18:55Speaker 4: express an interest in that, let's talk about it has
- 18:58Speaker 4: been hugely educational for my son in just the sense
- 19:02Speaker 4: and like that's the part that like he learned. He
- 19:04Speaker 4: basically learned letters, learned numbers, learn counting, because he started
- 19:09Speaker 4: asking me questions about it. And then I was like, Okay,
- 19:12Speaker 4: let's go to the library, let's get books, let's like
- 19:14Speaker 4: try and find a toy that helps you learn how
- 19:16Speaker 4: to do counting. And it's like all of these things
- 19:19Speaker 4: ended up becoming a part of his education in a
- 19:22Speaker 4: way where I wasn't necessarily having to go out and
- 19:23Speaker 4: get a curriculum, but it was just you're interested in that,
- 19:26Speaker 4: let's talk about it. And now he's an expert on space.
- 19:30Speaker 4: So like that's the part of preschooling that I think
- 19:33Speaker 4: is really fun is that you get to explore your
- 19:37Speaker 4: children's interests along their along their timeline, and you don't
- 19:42Speaker 4: really have to have a super strong curriculum quite yet.
- 19:45Speaker 4: And that's the one thing about Montessori that I like
- 19:48Speaker 4: is kind of sensitive periods for this age is the
- 19:51Speaker 4: idea that a child can express interests in certain different
- 19:54Speaker 4: things at different times, and as a parent, if you
- 19:57Speaker 4: can recognize that and like latch on, then they'll learn
- 20:00Speaker 4: it really really quickly in those periods. I think Montessori
- 20:03Speaker 4: is very useful for young ages. And I've kind of
- 20:06Speaker 4: been converted into like Charlotte Bason as they get older.
- 20:10Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so we're like classical Charlotte Mason.
- 20:13Speaker 3: Kind of well, Charlotte Mason, do you want to that's me?
- 20:17Speaker 4: No, I was gonna say, you're the expert. I'm so
- 20:21Speaker 4: I've only just.
- 20:23Speaker 2: Like a philosophy, I guess yeah, so I will say
- 20:25Speaker 2: the caveat that she didn't have children. She's like a
- 20:29Speaker 2: nineteenth century english woman, but she didn't have children. So
- 20:33Speaker 2: sometimes when I read the things she wrote, like children
- 20:36Speaker 2: should spend eight hours a day out of doors, I'm like, girl,
- 20:40Speaker 2: when are you cooking dinner? So I take the grains
- 20:45Speaker 2: of salt. So she wrote a six volume set of
- 20:48Speaker 2: like sort of her educational philosophy that is really brilliant
- 20:52Speaker 2: and I super duper recommend. But it basically hinges on
- 20:57Speaker 2: the idea that like, children are born persons, and you
- 21:00Speaker 2: have to sort of let them be who they were
- 21:03Speaker 2: going to be, and to put a feast of ideas
- 21:06Speaker 2: in front of them and let them sort of step
- 21:07Speaker 2: into that room and eat what they want to eat,
- 21:10Speaker 2: and don't eat what they don't want to eat. And
- 21:12Speaker 2: the feast has to be wide and varied. And they
- 21:14Speaker 2: learn best from literature. The greatest works of literature should
- 21:19Speaker 2: be teaching them how to read and how to write.
- 21:22Speaker 2: When you're teaching art, don't teach them how to scribble.
- 21:25Speaker 2: Like bring them to the National Gallery and have them
- 21:27Speaker 2: stand in front of Monet, and that is how they
- 21:29Speaker 2: learn art appreciation. And it's it's been really wonderful for us.
- 21:35Speaker 2: We do like a little bit of a mix of
- 21:37Speaker 2: classical now, Like we use a lot of materials from
- 21:40Speaker 2: Memoria Press because I don't know, I find them useful. Also,
- 21:44Speaker 2: I think my kids are not writing enough, and Memoria
- 21:48Speaker 2: Oppress there's like literature guides that I like that help
- 21:51Speaker 2: my kids sort of write things a little bit better.
- 21:54Speaker 2: And then we use a science curriculum that also uses
- 21:57Speaker 2: I mean, the one of the bigger things also about
- 22:00Speaker 2: Mason is like there's no textbooks, and so you're learning
- 22:03Speaker 2: from living books, really classic, wonderful books, and so our
- 22:07Speaker 2: science curriculum, I would say, is like pretty Charlotte masony.
- 22:12Speaker 2: They're reading a lot of books and then they're just
- 22:14Speaker 2: doing an experiment about it. It's called no aoscience that
- 22:16Speaker 2: they don't pay me at all, but I'm super recommend
- 22:18Speaker 2: it if anyone's, you know, in the market for a
- 22:20Speaker 2: homeschool science curriculum for you know, older children, like you know,
- 22:24Speaker 2: elementary school children.
- 22:26Speaker 4: Well, I was going to say about the Charlotte Mason
- 22:29Speaker 4: thing is that you recommended for the children's sake to
- 22:32Speaker 4: me probably a year and a half ago, and I
- 22:35Speaker 4: read it at the time where my oldest son was
- 22:39Speaker 4: still he was like one and a half. So I
- 22:42Speaker 4: was like, this is this seems a little extreme, Like
- 22:45Speaker 4: I can't do literature with a baby, like this is
- 22:47Speaker 4: too much, and I don't know that this is like
- 22:49Speaker 4: a good fit for us. So I definitely pivoted more
- 22:52Speaker 4: to Montessori and then ear way earlier than I expected
- 22:58Speaker 4: my son's and now both of them are obsessed with reading,
- 23:02Speaker 4: like and so I was like, Oh, this isn't something
- 23:05Speaker 4: that needs to wait till they're legitimately reading books at
- 23:08Speaker 4: like six or seven or eight. This is something that
- 23:12Speaker 4: makes sense. It just doesn't make sense for a one
- 23:14Speaker 4: and a half year old, right, But like at three,
- 23:16Speaker 4: I was like, oh, so when we listen to a
- 23:18Speaker 4: podcast about Thomas the Tank Engine, I can say, can
- 23:21Speaker 4: you give me a narrative? One of the things she
- 23:23Speaker 4: talks about is like give the way that you kind
- 23:25Speaker 4: of test a child's understanding and knowledge of the topic,
- 23:29Speaker 4: is they do a narrative of like tell you a
- 23:32Speaker 4: narration or there's different methods, but kind of like showing
- 23:36Speaker 4: how they've learned it. And I can even do that
- 23:38Speaker 4: with a three year old because he can listen to
- 23:39Speaker 4: the story, and I can say, can you tell me
- 23:41Speaker 4: what you learned from that? And sometimes it takes a
- 23:43Speaker 4: little bit of like, oh, he didn't understand it, like
- 23:46Speaker 4: I need to go back, we need to go back
- 23:47Speaker 4: and listen to it again, or we need to discuss it.
- 23:49Speaker 4: But that methodology is actually relatable even to a three
- 23:53Speaker 4: year old.
- 23:54Speaker 2: Yeah, and what I love also is that it expects
- 23:57Speaker 2: children to be much more capable than that we give
- 23:59Speaker 2: them credit for. And so if you look, if you read,
- 24:02Speaker 2: I mean a big thing about Charlote Mason is like
- 24:04Speaker 2: a lot of old books are in all of the curriculums,
- 24:07Speaker 2: like one hundred year old books. We just finished a
- 24:10Speaker 2: couple volumes of Black Stallion. We've read like most of
- 24:14Speaker 2: the books we read, and I still read aloud to
- 24:17Speaker 2: my oldest children, like we have chapters every single night.
- 24:20Speaker 2: We've plowed through so much really classic literature. And like
- 24:25Speaker 2: you'd be shocked at the fact that you can read
- 24:28Speaker 2: Tom Sawyer out loud, although I don't recommend it because
- 24:31Speaker 2: there's a lot of n words in there, and I
- 24:33Speaker 2: know what to do there, did not know what to do.
- 24:36Speaker 3: Yeah, Americans have this issue and British people don't because
- 24:39Speaker 3: British people just say it, and Americans you get canceled
- 24:43Speaker 3: and fired. Yeah, we're peating, something asked of the book.
- 24:46Speaker 2: It's quite terrifying. Yeah, And there was also what was
- 24:50Speaker 2: it little House on the Prairie when Ma says there's
- 24:53Speaker 2: no there's no such thing as a good engine, and yeah,
- 24:58Speaker 2: the only good engine is a dead engine was another
- 25:00Speaker 2: thing that Ma said, And so I'd have to pause
- 25:02Speaker 2: and be like, that's just her and that's not a thing, like,
- 25:06Speaker 2: don't say that. But one thing I love, I don't
- 25:10Speaker 2: remember where I read it. I want to say it
- 25:12Speaker 2: was Jim Trelis's book, The Read a Loud Handbook, which
- 25:15Speaker 2: I really recommend. Also is that when you read out
- 25:19Speaker 2: loud to a child, you can go above their reading level.
- 25:23Speaker 2: And that's the way that your kids can be reading
- 25:26Speaker 2: at a level that's above their reading level, and it
- 25:29Speaker 2: super expands their vocabulary. My kids have incredible You guys
- 25:33Speaker 2: have both met my kids like they're super super verbal,
- 25:36Speaker 2: super advanced for their ages. My oldest daughter was telling
- 25:40Speaker 2: me she was at camp this past week and was
- 25:43Speaker 2: talking about something and first of all, she was shocked
- 25:45Speaker 2: that her counselor hadn't read like a couple of books
- 25:49Speaker 2: that she had read and had never been to the
- 25:51Speaker 2: National Gallery, and then she had to define words for
- 25:54Speaker 2: her high school counselor, and she was like, I don't
- 25:58Speaker 2: want to go to school because they seem really dup.
- 26:03Speaker 4: I know a so funny story. I took my oldest son.
- 26:06Speaker 4: And I've heard this a lot that just like kids
- 26:09Speaker 4: being home with their moms, even if you decide not
- 26:11Speaker 4: to home school, even if you decide to have them
- 26:13Speaker 4: home until like they're four or five six, just their
- 26:16Speaker 4: language development skills get really advanced because they're around adults
- 26:20Speaker 4: and not peers and so.
- 26:23Speaker 2: Or caregivers whose first language is not English.
- 26:26Speaker 4: Right, right. So I brought my son just to like
- 26:30Speaker 4: see if he needed speech therapecause he had trouble with ours,
- 26:33Speaker 4: and which apparently is incredibly typical. But it was very
- 26:36Speaker 4: funny because I went into the appointment and both my
- 26:40Speaker 4: sons came with me, and at the end of the appointment,
- 26:43Speaker 4: she's like, well, so one hundred is average and he's
- 26:46Speaker 4: at one hundred and eight, so I can't recommend you
- 26:49Speaker 4: for anything. He's doing really well. Also, how old are
- 26:51Speaker 4: your children? Like, yeah, they're three and one and a half.
- 26:57Speaker 4: She was like, Okay, so you need to leave my
- 26:59Speaker 4: office basically, which is a big complement.
- 27:05Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to take a break and then
- 27:07Speaker 2: I want to delve more into being a first gen
- 27:10Speaker 2: stay at home mom.
- 27:21Speaker 1: Hello, I'm James Lenwix and I'm at the diner, you know,
- 27:24Speaker 1: classic American diner chrome long boomerang pattern for mich account
- 27:28Speaker 1: of those little jukeboxes. We love these and you can
- 27:31Speaker 1: join me here every Saturday, where we talk about whatever
- 27:33Speaker 1: happens to spring into my mind at the moment. There's
- 27:35Speaker 1: no predicting where it will go, except that it'll be
- 27:38Speaker 1: done in about thirty minutes. Join me, won't you? Every
- 27:41Speaker 1: Saturday From the Ricochet Audio Network Ricochet, Yeah, join the conversation.
- 27:55Speaker 3: Do you find that you have to change the ways
- 27:59Speaker 3: that you teach for your boys and girls? Nick truly believes.
- 28:05Speaker 3: My husband believes that if we had a boy, they
- 28:08Speaker 3: would go to school later than we would send a girl.
- 28:13Speaker 3: He's where I'd like the stuff, and apparently that's what
- 28:16Speaker 3: you should do.
- 28:18Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't see a difference. I don't
- 28:24Speaker 2: I don't think that's true.
- 28:26Speaker 4: No, No, I mean, the only thing I would say
- 28:29Speaker 4: is that I like my sons won't color, and I
- 28:33Speaker 4: know other kids will sit. Essentially that girls can sit
- 28:36Speaker 4: longer than boys, and my boys can, like well, like
- 28:39Speaker 4: they want to be able to learn and ask questions,
- 28:42Speaker 4: but also get up and like run around for a
- 28:44Speaker 4: little bit. I don't know because I've never had a girl,
- 28:47Speaker 4: but I've heard that girls will sit for a little longer, and.
- 28:49Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I mean my daughter would like sit and
- 28:53Speaker 2: listen to Chronicles of Narnia on her speaker system and
- 28:57Speaker 2: color for three hours at a time. It was crazy.
- 29:00Speaker 2: My boys would never in a millionaires do that. And
- 29:04Speaker 2: they're still they're still like doing too much of the
- 29:07Speaker 2: so that my boy, my older boys are ten and eight,
- 29:09Speaker 2: and they do a lot of like the comic books,
- 29:11Speaker 2: and my old my oldest daughter really graduated from like
- 29:15Speaker 2: that kind of content much earlier. But then my my
- 29:20Speaker 2: younger son of like, because I have like two sets
- 29:22Speaker 2: of boys, and so the younger son of the first set,
- 29:26Speaker 2: he'll like casually mention because they all have kindles. The
- 29:29Speaker 2: older three kids have kindles, and so I don't necessarily
- 29:31Speaker 2: know what they're reading their kids kindles, so I know
- 29:34Speaker 2: that they're not reading like weird stuff. But he told me.
- 29:38Speaker 2: He's like, oh, yeah, I read the first book of
- 29:40Speaker 2: the Chronicles of Narnia and I was like, oh, well,
- 29:43Speaker 2: that's great news to me. But that's the exception. Like
- 29:47Speaker 2: has how many times has he done that? I don't
- 29:49Speaker 2: think very many, but yeah, no, I think the attention
- 29:51Speaker 2: span is definitely different. So I want to talk to
- 29:54Speaker 2: you about first en, stay home mom. Your mom was
- 29:56Speaker 2: not a stay home mom. Neither was mine and I
- 30:00Speaker 2: I am a stay at home mom. My kids have
- 30:02Speaker 2: always been home. What was the learning curve for you?
- 30:05Speaker 4: I feel like it was steep. You know, it was, well,
- 30:10Speaker 4: let me think, because there was never an a goal
- 30:13Speaker 4: for me of being a stay at home mom until
- 30:16Speaker 4: it happened. I always thought I was going to work
- 30:20Speaker 4: and have Yeah, I always thought I was going to work.
- 30:23Speaker 4: I had this. There was like a lot of elements
- 30:25Speaker 4: to that, meaning there was the financial element of like
- 30:28Speaker 4: if I wasn't contributing financially, then I wasn't being a
- 30:31Speaker 4: good partner. And then there was the well don't you
- 30:35Speaker 4: just go crazy if you're home all the time kind
- 30:37Speaker 4: of narrative, And there were all of these things in
- 30:41Speaker 4: my head of like that's what women do? Women go
- 30:44Speaker 4: out and work. Children either go to daycare or go
- 30:47Speaker 4: to school, like or maybe you have a nanny. But
- 30:50Speaker 4: like that was just how I thought things were going
- 30:53Speaker 4: to play out. Then I'm trying to remember, like there's
- 30:57Speaker 4: a few different steps, because it started with having a miscarriage.
- 31:01Speaker 4: So my first pregnancy was a miscarriage and that was it,
- 31:03Speaker 4: and it was it was a little bit late. It
- 31:06Speaker 4: was at twelve weeks, so that I had already told
- 31:09Speaker 4: my everybody that I was pregnant, and then it was
- 31:14Speaker 4: a missed miscarriage, so the baby had stopped growing at
- 31:16Speaker 4: ten weeks and at twelve weeks after I'd told everyone,
- 31:21Speaker 4: I happened to be like traveling over passover, I had Yeah,
- 31:25Speaker 4: I had a miscarriage. And so it was like this
- 31:27Speaker 4: huge pivotal moment for me, which I am super grateful
- 31:31Speaker 4: for in a lot of ways because it changed who
- 31:33Speaker 4: I am completely as a human being to say, Oh,
- 31:37Speaker 4: before that, I was like, I'm going to have three
- 31:38Speaker 4: kids and it's going to be very organized and I'm
- 31:40Speaker 4: like going to make sure that I have enough time
- 31:42Speaker 4: and I'm whatever it was. And then I had a
- 31:44Speaker 4: miscarriage and I was like, Okay, if all I ever
- 31:46Speaker 4: get to be is a mother, then that's enough and
- 31:49Speaker 4: that's all I want. So after I had the miscarriage,
- 31:53Speaker 4: I got pregnant with my oldest son, and when I
- 31:57Speaker 4: had him, he had reflux, and at the time I
- 32:00Speaker 4: still didn't know what I was going to be doing
- 32:01Speaker 4: as far as work, but I ended up staying home
- 32:04Speaker 4: with him. And the only way he would have been
- 32:07Speaker 4: able to a gain weight as he needed to be
- 32:11Speaker 4: taking care of the way that he needed to be
- 32:13Speaker 4: taken care of, and for me to breastfeed, and I
- 32:15Speaker 4: ended up batfeeding for a whole year was because I
- 32:17Speaker 4: was home and I was like, Okay, so my baby
- 32:20Speaker 4: needs me. That's cool to know, and now I'm going
- 32:24Speaker 4: to And then I realized that it wasn't just for
- 32:27Speaker 4: the breastfeeding. It wasn't just to get through those first
- 32:29Speaker 4: three months postpartum. It was like all of it. I
- 32:31Speaker 4: felt like, Okay, he needs me, he really needs me.
- 32:33Speaker 4: And then I read Erica Kamasar's book and I realized, Okay,
- 32:37Speaker 4: the first three years are really important. And then after
- 32:40Speaker 4: the first three years, I was like, Okay, homeschooling seems
- 32:43Speaker 4: really cool. And then it was all of that that
- 32:46Speaker 4: kind of made me think, Okay, being a stay at
- 32:48Speaker 4: home mom is something that matters to me, and then
- 32:51Speaker 4: I became incredibly passionate about it. But being a stay
- 32:55Speaker 4: at home mom is not easy when you're an incredibly
- 33:00Speaker 4: structured person. I am somebody who loves routine. Like I
- 33:05Speaker 4: would thrive in an office. I would thrive waking up
- 33:08Speaker 4: at the same time every day, doing my hair, doing
- 33:10Speaker 4: my makeup, getting dressed, going to a workplace, having work blocks.
- 33:14Speaker 4: So being home where I have to make my own
- 33:16Speaker 4: schedule and I'm working with little people who are anti
- 33:19Speaker 4: that schedule constantly is like can be mind numbing for me.
- 33:24Speaker 4: But because of that, I think it also incorporates my skills,
- 33:28Speaker 4: which is, okay, let's get everything back on track, let's
- 33:30Speaker 4: make sure everything is structured. And I think that for
- 33:33Speaker 4: me has been the steepest learning curve of Like how
- 33:35Speaker 4: do you make your day's work without getting burned out?
- 33:39Speaker 4: How do you make everything flow in your home? And
- 33:42Speaker 4: you're not just a mother, You're a mother, You're a homemaker.
- 33:45Speaker 4: You're the CEO of your household. You're running everything that
- 33:49Speaker 4: you see like you are the manager and your husband
- 33:53Speaker 4: is really an employee in your house. So like how
- 33:56Speaker 4: and that's not I just want to quickly say that's
- 33:59Speaker 4: something that I think on the internet gets such a
- 34:01Speaker 4: bad rap, is like men are they don't know what's
- 34:05Speaker 4: going on. And I'm like, well, if you are the
- 34:06Speaker 4: CEO of your household, he is your employee, so you
- 34:09Speaker 4: kind of have to tell him what to do. He
- 34:11Speaker 4: doesn't know how things function in the same way that
- 34:13Speaker 4: you do because he's not there all the time. So
- 34:16Speaker 4: that's something that I.
- 34:17Speaker 2: That doesn't sound very trad exactly.
- 34:20Speaker 4: Well, I've already outed myself as not that tad a
- 34:24Speaker 4: few different times, so but yeah, I just think that
- 34:28Speaker 4: that's kind of what my learning curve has been and
- 34:31Speaker 4: it is still is like how do I keep all
- 34:33Speaker 4: of the engines running as the person who's here? And
- 34:38Speaker 4: I think one of the things that's really kind of
- 34:41Speaker 4: going on a lot. Do you want to interrupt me?
- 34:43Speaker 4: But one of the things I think is such an
- 34:45Speaker 4: important distinction, and I feel like I constantly need to
- 34:47Speaker 4: say this to my friends, is the difference between a
- 34:50Speaker 4: woman who's to stay at home mom and a woman
- 34:52Speaker 4: who doesn't need to work. And the woman who doesn't
- 34:56Speaker 4: need to work is has a husband who's like, really,
- 34:58Speaker 4: really wealthy, and the reason she she's not working is
- 35:02Speaker 4: because she doesn't have to. And so she can hire
- 35:04Speaker 4: somebody to be the nanny and be the cook, and
- 35:06Speaker 4: be the cleaner and do all of the things that
- 35:09Speaker 4: she doesn't want to do, and she can kind of
- 35:12Speaker 4: go out and do her own thing literally all day.
- 35:13Speaker 4: She doesn't even have to be present, whereas a stay
- 35:16Speaker 4: at home mom, a lot of the time we're making
- 35:18Speaker 4: sacrifices to be stay at home moms, and we are,
- 35:22Speaker 4: but not even sacrifices. We're maybe choosing to do all
- 35:25Speaker 4: those jobs, to be the nanny, to be the cook,
- 35:29Speaker 4: to be the cleaner, to do all those things, And
- 35:32Speaker 4: that is a different it's a different, like those two
- 35:35Speaker 4: things are not the same. They're not equitable. And I
- 35:37Speaker 4: think it's important to recognize that because I think sometimes
- 35:40Speaker 4: it can be confusing for young women who look at
- 35:43Speaker 4: influencers online and think that's what being a stay at
- 35:46Speaker 4: home mom is, and I'm like, that's a woman who
- 35:47Speaker 4: doesn't need to work.
- 35:49Speaker 3: Do you face any backlash when you decided that that's
- 35:53Speaker 3: what you wanted to do, just because it's obviously not
- 35:56Speaker 3: the norm for people in your family to do that.
- 36:01Speaker 2: And in the community too.
- 36:02Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, which is also really interesting, especially in the
- 36:05Speaker 4: modern Orthodox community. I am maybe one of two. I
- 36:11Speaker 4: think I'm maybe one of two women in my community
- 36:13Speaker 4: who are stay at home moms.
- 36:14Speaker 3: That's really surprising to me.
- 36:16Speaker 4: Yeah. And also they're stay at home moms who have
- 36:20Speaker 4: full time nannies and send their children to daycares. So
- 36:25Speaker 4: it's like not not a similar thing, but I would
- 36:29Speaker 4: say it was initially, I don't think, because I didn't
- 36:33Speaker 4: necessarily say like, I'm quitting my job and I'm staying home.
- 36:35Speaker 4: I wasn't really. I had been doing the influencing thing,
- 36:38Speaker 4: so my job was like a little more flexible looking.
- 36:42Speaker 4: I don't think anyone saw what I was doing and
- 36:44Speaker 4: was like, whoa, this is a huge change. I think
- 36:46Speaker 4: they just kind of didn't realize it. And then when
- 36:49Speaker 4: I started becoming more passionate about keeping the kids home
- 36:53Speaker 4: and not sending them to daycare, that's I think at
- 36:57Speaker 4: the moment where people were like, oh, like, you're really
- 37:00Speaker 4: And then when I started talking about homeschooling, then it
- 37:02Speaker 4: was like are you sure? Are you Okay?
- 37:05Speaker 2: We don't live in the same geographic location, but we
- 37:07Speaker 2: have the same community, but just in different locations. We're
- 37:11Speaker 2: also modern Orthodox, and we got a lot of pushback
- 37:16Speaker 2: about homeschooling when we first started. COVID changed that in
- 37:19Speaker 2: a lot of ways. My oldest was in kindergarten when
- 37:22Speaker 2: COVID started, and a lot of people were suddenly like, oh, oh,
- 37:27Speaker 2: your kids are all they didn't have any disruption. They
- 37:29Speaker 2: were like that wasn't at all traumatic for them. But
- 37:32Speaker 2: I think people see the product of it now and
- 37:35Speaker 2: they see how my kids are and they see, you know,
- 37:38Speaker 2: it's working out, and you can see it's working out.
- 37:40Speaker 2: And I think our families, I mean not my family
- 37:43Speaker 2: because i I don't have like close families, so it's
- 37:45Speaker 2: really just my husband's family. I think that they were
- 37:48Speaker 2: they never voiced it, like they're not like foundaries were observed,
- 37:52Speaker 2: Like they never said like you're making a giant mistake.
- 37:54Speaker 2: Sometimes I see in homeschool groups people having like people
- 37:58Speaker 2: asking like I need to prove to my mom that
- 38:01Speaker 2: I can do this, And I'm like, why are you
- 38:03Speaker 2: proving anything to your parent. You're not they're not in
- 38:06Speaker 2: charge of you anymore. You don't have anything to prove.
- 38:09Speaker 2: So people ask for resources about like how they can
- 38:11Speaker 2: convince their mom whatever so we never I mean like,
- 38:15Speaker 2: we never had a conversation with my in laws about
- 38:17Speaker 2: homeschooling one or the other. But I think that they
- 38:20Speaker 2: were reticent. I think that they were like hesitant about
- 38:23Speaker 2: the decision. And we've taken it year by year and
- 38:26Speaker 2: they've seen the product of the homeschooling and our kids
- 38:29Speaker 2: are really smart and not weird, and but they're weird
- 38:32Speaker 2: in the right ways. They are weird, but they're weird, right,
- 38:34Speaker 2: They're weird in the right ways. They really like Greek mythology.
- 38:39Speaker 2: But then they've also seen like the cool stuff that
- 38:41Speaker 2: we've done with them, like bringing them to London and
- 38:43Speaker 2: going to like you know, churchill war rooms, and my
- 38:47Speaker 2: father in law's like, oh, that looks really fun.
- 38:50Speaker 4: It is funny. I've had family members who were like
- 38:53Speaker 4: very very concerned when we have initially said that we
- 38:58Speaker 4: were homeschooling, and then they're like, I feel like we
- 39:01Speaker 4: should have homeschooled, and I'm like, huh, fascinating.
- 39:07Speaker 2: Yeah, we get that a lot too, but it is
- 39:09Speaker 2: isolating because yes, it's me and the nannies and I've
- 39:13Speaker 2: texted you from the park before. Hey, I'm at the playground.
- 39:17Speaker 4: All nannies this is great all nannies.
- 39:20Speaker 1: Yep.
- 39:21Speaker 4: And you know what's an interesting I've talked about this
- 39:24Speaker 4: a lot, and it's funny. I wrote a substack article
- 39:26Speaker 4: about this, and it's one of my it's still one
- 39:28Speaker 4: of my most quicked on articles, and it was a
- 39:30Speaker 4: while ago and I wrote it. It was called the
- 39:33Speaker 4: Loneliness of two and a half, of having your oldest
- 39:36Speaker 4: be two and a half, because in the Orthodox modern
- 39:39Speaker 4: Orthodox community, it's been my experience that people immediately send
- 39:43Speaker 4: their kids at two and a half to school, and
- 39:45Speaker 4: they call it early childhood. And a lot of the
- 39:48Speaker 4: time people will do it because they want to ensure
- 39:51Speaker 4: that they're saving a spot for their child for first grade, because.
- 39:55Speaker 2: They see that's a real thing.
- 39:57Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. The schools fill up so quickly that
- 40:00Speaker 4: they have to send them for a few years before
- 40:02Speaker 4: this child is actually even ready for school to make
- 40:04Speaker 4: sure that they have that spot. And so if you
- 40:08Speaker 4: have a two and a half year old at home,
- 40:10Speaker 4: all of a sudden, your child's friends are all booked
- 40:14Speaker 4: from nine am to four pm every day, and you're like, oh,
- 40:18Speaker 4: the play dates that we could have are now not existent.
- 40:22Speaker 4: And then when you try to look into the homeschooling community.
- 40:24Speaker 4: The homeschooling community really is older people, people with older kids,
- 40:28Speaker 4: and they're going off of their older kids schedules and
- 40:31Speaker 4: not off their baby schedules, which makes complete sense, but
- 40:34Speaker 4: like trying to set up a play date with their
- 40:36Speaker 4: two and a half year old when they're following around
- 40:37Speaker 4: their fourteen year old is also really hard, and so
- 40:40Speaker 4: I think there is a loneliness aspect to doing something
- 40:44Speaker 4: different then off the beaten path. But I will say
- 40:48Speaker 4: that I recently did, like I taught sewing at a
- 40:52Speaker 4: local school and just for like three or four days,
- 40:56Speaker 4: and it was so interesting to me because I working
- 41:00Speaker 4: with children in groups of four, and I realized that
- 41:05Speaker 4: even when you're working with such a small group, trying
- 41:09Speaker 4: to manage them means that any child who's not acting
- 41:15Speaker 4: just completely obediently and complacently and following directions is a
- 41:20Speaker 4: problem child. And it made me realize how like, if
- 41:24Speaker 4: I have my kids at home, no one's going to
- 41:26Speaker 4: be a problem child. Yes, there might be like a
- 41:28Speaker 4: kid who's making more noise like of course, but like
- 41:34Speaker 4: we can also recognize that maybe like some of the
- 41:37Speaker 4: kids I was looking at, I was thinking, you're you're
- 41:39Speaker 4: not a problem child. Really, you're just asking me questions
- 41:41Speaker 4: or like you're showing an interest or you're being precocious.
- 41:44Speaker 4: But I can't. I can't do that right now because
- 41:47Speaker 4: I'm running out of time, and if I was home
- 41:49Speaker 4: with my kids, I could be a little more flexible
- 41:52Speaker 4: and be like, okay, so your strength is this. Clearly
- 41:55Speaker 4: this isn't clicking right now. Let's like put you off
- 41:57Speaker 4: to the side and like give you your own project
- 41:58Speaker 4: or whatever it is. But it's not. You are branded
- 42:02Speaker 4: as the problem because you're not just doing what I
- 42:04Speaker 4: say right now. And that to me was like, Okay,
- 42:07Speaker 4: that's more worth it to me right now. Then we
- 42:10Speaker 4: have a little bit of a loneliness problem and being
- 42:14Speaker 4: super engaged with trying to find social outlets, which okay,
- 42:18Speaker 4: I have to work harder to make those social outlets possible,
- 42:21Speaker 4: but like we're gonna do that because that's more important
- 42:23Speaker 4: to me.
- 42:24Speaker 3: What are some things that you do to negate that
- 42:28Speaker 3: loneliness aspect of it.
- 42:30Speaker 4: I can give some of my things, and then I'm
- 42:31Speaker 4: sure Bethany has like a million more.
- 42:34Speaker 2: But I mean, you're right, it's hard.
- 42:37Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, we are lucky enough that there's a
- 42:39Speaker 4: there's actually a WhatsApp, you know, the Jewish community love
- 42:43Speaker 4: what Loves whats App, So there's like eight thousand groups.
- 42:46Speaker 4: So we have a few homeschooling groups that there is
- 42:48Speaker 4: actually a homeschooling community in my area. The problem is
- 42:52Speaker 4: again that they're like a little bit older. But we
- 42:54Speaker 4: can reach out to them and do weekly meetups. We
- 42:56Speaker 4: go to the library a ton. We love the library,
- 43:00Speaker 4: and they have classes and so we get to see
- 43:02Speaker 4: some people there were signed up for a couple for
- 43:05Speaker 4: one little gymnastics class, so my kids see the same
- 43:08Speaker 4: kids three times a week. And it's just making sure
- 43:13Speaker 4: that we do those things, which is okay, you're socializing
- 43:17Speaker 4: with kids who maybe aren't your best friends, but you're
- 43:18Speaker 4: still getting an opportunity to be social. And then we
- 43:21Speaker 4: have a few friends through our synagogue that okay, we'll
- 43:24Speaker 4: do later in the day play dates like for four thirty.
- 43:28Speaker 4: If we have to make it that late, then that's
- 43:29Speaker 4: what we'll do because we want to make sure that
- 43:31Speaker 4: they see them. And thank God every Saturday for Sabbath.
- 43:36Speaker 4: We're really really social. So our kids are seeing a
- 43:38Speaker 4: lot of people at least once a week. If they're
- 43:40Speaker 4: not seeing them every other day.
- 43:43Speaker 2: When my oldest was your kid's ages, like when I
- 43:45Speaker 2: was you. Basically that was the loneliest part of motherhood
- 43:48Speaker 2: for me, hands down, because now we can do, you know,
- 43:52Speaker 2: my younger kids. We'll tag along with the older kids
- 43:55Speaker 2: and we do more homeschooling stuff. For sure. There's also
- 43:59Speaker 2: just a lot of them now, like they get a
- 44:02Speaker 2: lot of social itch from each other. But I mean,
- 44:05Speaker 2: we do like a kitty music class. My my youngest
- 44:08Speaker 2: kid is having his best only child summer this year,
- 44:11Speaker 2: and so he's I mean because the older five are
- 44:14Speaker 2: at day camp and so we're doing like a kittie
- 44:16Speaker 2: music class. We're like doing that kind of stuff, which
- 44:20Speaker 2: it feels like a blast from the past where I'm
- 44:22Speaker 2: just sitting there and people think he's my only child.
- 44:24Speaker 2: I'm like, no, he's my sid But I don't have
- 44:28Speaker 2: like sort of great wisdom about it. It's just it's
- 44:31Speaker 2: a really hard age. It was really lonely. There was
- 44:34Speaker 2: you know, a couple of bright spots that we had
- 44:36Speaker 2: where we lived. There was like a twice a week
- 44:39Speaker 2: Thursdays and Fridays in the morning. There was something called
- 44:41Speaker 2: the family Den where we lived in Highland Park, New Jersey,
- 44:44Speaker 2: and so we would go and it was like crafts
- 44:47Speaker 2: and music and playing whatever. And it was funny because
- 44:50Speaker 2: I was visiting my like my friends who were living
- 44:53Speaker 2: in Highland Park, and I was like, let's go to
- 44:55Speaker 2: the family den as a whole family, and they didn't, Actually,
- 44:59Speaker 2: we're not allowed to go with our older children. It's
- 45:01Speaker 2: not the family, don it's just the little kid down
- 45:03Speaker 2: as it turned out. And so they were like, it's
- 45:05Speaker 2: fine for you to stay today, but you can't do
- 45:07Speaker 2: this again.
- 45:07Speaker 5: And I was like, oh, oh, yeah, that's something that's
- 45:14Speaker 5: hard with having Like that's another thing just random that
- 45:18Speaker 5: I find as tricky as I would think is tricky,
- 45:21Speaker 5: as like when I only had one, we would go
- 45:23Speaker 5: to indoor play jims in the summer because it's a
- 45:25Speaker 5: thousand degrees in Florida and you cannot play outside.
- 45:28Speaker 4: And I was like, Yeah, this isn't so bad, this
- 45:30Speaker 4: isn't so expensive. And then I have two, and then
- 45:32Speaker 4: I'm like looking at three and I'm like, oh my god.
- 45:34Speaker 4: Every time we would go to one of these and
- 45:36Speaker 4: no playgims would be a thousand dollars.
- 45:38Speaker 2: Yeah you so we before COVID. COVID killed it, unfortunately,
- 45:42Speaker 2: we had this incredible one and we were members of
- 45:44Speaker 2: it and that was I mean, that was what we did.
- 45:47Speaker 2: And so they don't have those that many around here anymore.
- 45:50Speaker 2: Like COVID really killed a lot of stuff around here.
- 45:53Speaker 2: But you can, like, you can be a member of
- 45:55Speaker 2: those places and that saves you a ton of money.
- 45:57Speaker 2: And then you see the same people over and over again,
- 45:59Speaker 2: and then you'll also just have to be like really
- 46:01Speaker 2: shameless at playgrounds. So I was at a playground and
- 46:05Speaker 2: there was a whole bunch of older kids playing and
- 46:07Speaker 2: it was before the school year ended, so I knew
- 46:09Speaker 2: that they were homeschoolers, and I played dumb and I
- 46:11Speaker 2: was like, oh, there's so many older children here. And
- 46:14Speaker 2: then I like got the women to talking and whatever.
- 46:18Speaker 2: They added me to their text chain, and you just
- 46:22Speaker 2: have to be shameless.
- 46:23Speaker 4: Yeah, And that's one nice thing about motherhood. I feel
- 46:27Speaker 4: like that gives you a little bit of like a push.
- 46:29Speaker 4: You're like, for my child, I will talk to strangers.
- 46:35Speaker 2: So I'm the opposite personality to you. I really like
- 46:38Speaker 2: the fluidity of being home with my kids and that
- 46:41Speaker 2: I know, and being a homeschool mom. We don't have
- 46:44Speaker 2: a timetable for school. It's just like, this is your
- 46:48Speaker 2: list of stuff and get it done and however, whenever
- 46:51Speaker 2: it happens. And so my kids really like that. Also,
- 46:54Speaker 2: I like dabbling. I like doing lots of things. I
- 46:57Speaker 2: have ADHD. Yes, you know you're making fun of me
- 47:02Speaker 2: the other day about it. But I find that homeschooling
- 47:06Speaker 2: and being home with my kids like really is well
- 47:08Speaker 2: suited for my personality. But I like, I love I
- 47:13Speaker 2: love watching your type a like this is how I
- 47:16Speaker 2: fill my dread. And I'm like, I don't know how
- 47:18Speaker 2: I feel my day. We're just like I'm like, let
- 47:20Speaker 2: you want to walk to the park, Let's do that.
- 47:23Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
- 47:25Speaker 4: Care there are days like that. I'm just not the
- 47:27Speaker 4: one thriving on those days. My kids are thriving. This
- 47:30Speaker 4: is something that I.
- 47:32Speaker 2: Need to leave the house though. Okay, I have to
- 47:35Speaker 2: leave the house where I lose my mind.
- 47:37Speaker 4: That's why the stay at home mom thing is definitely
- 47:39Speaker 4: a misnomer. It's like, yes, not not staying at home,
- 47:43Speaker 4: Like nobody should be staying at home all day.
- 47:45Speaker 2: I am out when I have a baby. I so
- 47:51Speaker 2: with my fifth kid, I was at Costco two days later,
- 47:54Speaker 2: like at Costco shopping with a two day old. She
- 47:58Speaker 2: was he was four y eight hours old. And it's
- 48:01Speaker 2: a joke that for the last couple kids at day four,
- 48:04Speaker 2: you go to Trader Joe's and I'm just I can't.
- 48:07Speaker 2: I can't sit in my bed, I can't not do things.
- 48:10Speaker 2: And at the end of my pregnancy, I find it
- 48:13Speaker 2: very difficult because I'm so big that it's physically very painful,
- 48:17Speaker 2: and so when I'm able to get out, I'm out
- 48:21Speaker 2: and I love it.
- 48:22Speaker 3: Do you not get freaked out about infection. I'm such
- 48:25Speaker 3: a I'm such a first time mom. I'm like, she
- 48:28Speaker 3: doesn't have a blood brain barrier yet, No, you can't
- 48:30Speaker 3: touch it.
- 48:31Speaker 2: We brought my second to the family den when he
- 48:35Speaker 2: was a week old, and he was in a car
- 48:39Speaker 2: seat in the corner and I was I was playing
- 48:42Speaker 2: with my daughter and I wasn't paying attention and I
- 48:44Speaker 2: turned and there was a swarm of children around his
- 48:47Speaker 2: car seat and he got something I don't.
- 48:51Speaker 3: Remember, Oh my god.
- 48:52Speaker 2: And I brought him to my pediatrician and I didn't.
- 48:55Speaker 2: I don't like my first pedatrician. I'm not a fan of.
- 48:57Speaker 2: But like when we were living in New Jersey and
- 48:59Speaker 2: he was this like German like.
- 49:01Speaker 3: Very Oh I was gonna say it was the Yeah, he.
- 49:03Speaker 2: Was the German one. And he was like, wow, did
- 49:06Speaker 2: he get sick. It's not like you brought him out.
- 49:08Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, of course not. It's a
- 49:13Speaker 2: mystery how he got this.
- 49:16Speaker 4: I found that with my second and I'll do this
- 49:20Speaker 4: with my third. If as long as i'm baby wearing,
- 49:22Speaker 4: I'm fine. I'm like, if the baby's like up in
- 49:24Speaker 4: my space, it's very hard for them to get I mean,
- 49:28Speaker 4: come on, we have brisk we have the circumcision at
- 49:31Speaker 4: eight days and that's a giant party with everyone you've
- 49:36Speaker 4: ever met in your life and an eight day old.
- 49:38Speaker 2: So he turned into a super spreader event during COVID.
- 49:42Speaker 4: Oh yeah, my oldest he got a cold at eight
- 49:46Speaker 4: days old. So you know, it's fine, it's fine. It's
- 49:50Speaker 4: not great, but it's fine.
- 49:53Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so this.
- 50:03Speaker 1: Hey everybody, sorry for interrupting, but I have to remind
- 50:06Speaker 1: you it is well, is it? I don't know. Are
- 50:08Speaker 1: these the dog daves this summer? You know that's so
- 50:11Speaker 1: named because of serious the star and the sky, which
- 50:14Speaker 1: you know, there's Latin and there's dogs and all that stuff. Well,
- 50:17Speaker 1: let's just put it this way. It is August. In
- 50:20Speaker 1: this summer, it is serious time to consider joining Ricochet,
- 50:24Speaker 1: where you can find people who are a serious but
- 50:26Speaker 1: also well. August is also known as the silly season,
- 50:29Speaker 1: so some of the ricochetes are like that as well.
- 50:31Speaker 1: In other words, the gamut of conversation topics, personalities, and
- 50:35Speaker 1: the rest can be found in the member site at
- 50:37Speaker 1: ricochet dot com. Sure, you can go to the front page,
- 50:40Speaker 1: you can read the stuff, you can listen to the podcast,
- 50:42Speaker 1: but there's so much more in the member site. We'd
- 50:45Speaker 1: invite you to go there and become part of the
- 50:47Speaker 1: the Internet's civil center. Right conversation you've been looking for
- 50:50Speaker 1: ever since you plug that thing in ricochet dot com.
- 50:53Speaker 1: If not August, then when.
- 51:03Speaker 2: So when my fourth was less than a week old,
- 51:07Speaker 2: Seth So, I remember how I made Seth keep talking
- 51:11Speaker 2: about it because I was It was a very hard
- 51:14Speaker 2: labor and so we were talking about he had a
- 51:16Speaker 2: he had his deputy editor position not filled, and I
- 51:20Speaker 2: kept telling him, like, you need to fill it before
- 51:23Speaker 2: you have this baby, because like, you have no second
- 51:25Speaker 2: in command, and when I have this baby, you're screwed.
- 51:27Speaker 2: I'm screwed. Forget about you. I'm screwed. It was just
- 51:30Speaker 2: like what yeah, watching the examiner. Yeah, And so he
- 51:35Speaker 2: didn't fill the position before I had the baby, and
- 51:38Speaker 2: so during the whole labor, we're like going through like
- 51:42Speaker 2: who do you want to hire?
- 51:43Speaker 3: Who?
- 51:44Speaker 2: I like, We're throwing names out there, and I'm like,
- 51:47Speaker 2: text him right now and see if he wants the job,
- 51:49Speaker 2: and he's like, that's not how it works. And so
- 51:52Speaker 2: I made him promise when I was in labor to
- 51:54Speaker 2: interview someone, and I made him text while I was
- 51:57Speaker 2: in labor. And then that person saw that I had
- 52:00Speaker 2: the baby and they were like, were you texting me
- 52:02Speaker 2: about a job interview while your wife was in labor
- 52:05Speaker 2: with a home birth? And he was like, so she
- 52:06Speaker 2: made me.
- 52:09Speaker 3: And that my husband, Yeah.
- 52:11Speaker 2: Wasn't because this person didn't end up taking the job,
- 52:13Speaker 2: and I'm still mad at them about him. So the
- 52:16Speaker 2: next week they had the job interview, and Seth was like,
- 52:19Speaker 2: I'm gonna, you know, drive to the city, interview him,
- 52:22Speaker 2: come back, and I said, you can't leave me alone
- 52:24Speaker 2: for all that time. It's one of the most angry
- 52:29Speaker 2: I've ever been to my husband. So I said, I
- 52:33Speaker 2: will drive you there, because I get carsick if I'm
- 52:36Speaker 2: in the passenger seat. So I was like, I will
- 52:37Speaker 2: drive you there. I'll go to Trader Joe's with the kids,
- 52:40Speaker 2: and then because Trader Joe's was right next to where
- 52:42Speaker 2: he was doing the interview, and then you come out
- 52:44Speaker 2: and then we drive home. And then I'm never alone
- 52:46Speaker 2: with all four kids at the same time. And I'm
- 52:50Speaker 2: I'm like five days postpartum and it's the middle of
- 52:54Speaker 2: DC summer, and so I go to Trader Joe's and
- 52:58Speaker 2: I like, I had a really hard time because they
- 53:01Speaker 2: didn't have like a parking lot, and so I couldn't
- 53:03Speaker 2: figure out how to juggle like the car seat and
- 53:05Speaker 2: the and the and the and the cart. And I
- 53:08Speaker 2: had all these little kids with me and a newborn,
- 53:10Speaker 2: and so I said, I was like, I'm not going
- 53:11Speaker 2: to do a cart. I'm just gonna put everything under
- 53:13Speaker 2: the stroller. And it was like a snapping a stroller.
- 53:17Speaker 2: And then immediately I had too many things in the
- 53:19Speaker 2: stroller and I needed to take the baby out and
- 53:21Speaker 2: hold her and push and put things in the actual
- 53:23Speaker 2: car seat itself. So I'm walking around holding a five
- 53:27Speaker 2: day old with like three little kids in the middle
- 53:29Speaker 2: of DC Trader Joe's, and every time she would twitch,
- 53:32Speaker 2: people would jump because they thought I was holding a
- 53:34Speaker 2: doll because she was so tiny. And people kept on
- 53:38Speaker 2: asking me like how old is she? And I was like,
- 53:41Speaker 2: who can really count the days? And then and then
- 53:45Speaker 2: one really old lady was like, no, but really, how
- 53:47Speaker 2: old is that child? And I was like, it's on
- 53:49Speaker 2: her fifth day of life. She was like, what are
- 53:54Speaker 2: you doing here?
- 53:56Speaker 6: And then they got involved in a lot conversation. They
- 54:02Speaker 6: lost track of time, and he didn't come out. So
- 54:07Speaker 6: I put all the groceries in the car and we're
- 54:09Speaker 6: waiting outside at the appointed time, and he does furious.
- 54:14Speaker 2: He's in there for an hour longer than he We
- 54:19Speaker 2: had a grade upon and I was like, I started.
- 54:21Speaker 2: I texted him, hey, unread text because it was WhatsApp
- 54:25Speaker 2: so I can see it's onread. I text him a
- 54:28Speaker 2: couple more times than at like the hour and a
- 54:30Speaker 2: half mark passed and it's it's July. Okay, it's so hot,
- 54:36Speaker 2: and I am like, I'm feeling dizzy. For many reasons.
- 54:41Speaker 2: I think women understand what I'm saying. I'm standing for
- 54:44Speaker 2: all that time. Five days postpartum walking around whatever. And
- 54:48Speaker 2: then I call him and he doesn't and so there's
- 54:51Speaker 2: a fountain like sort of near the restaurant and I
- 54:54Speaker 2: was like, you know what, guys, jump in whatever, whatever
- 54:59Speaker 2: it takes. And then one of the kids stripped naked.
- 55:02Speaker 2: I'm like, that's fine too, that's fine. And then they
- 55:06Speaker 2: were doing that for like another half an hour, and
- 55:08Speaker 2: then they lost it and I'm like, you know what,
- 55:11Speaker 2: let's just all walk up to the window with all
- 55:14Speaker 2: soaking wet and this child buck naked and me pouring
- 55:18Speaker 2: sweat holding a baby, and we'll see it. And I
- 55:24Speaker 2: was like, let's see if Daddy can see us. And
- 55:27Speaker 2: as we decide to do that, they walk out of
- 55:29Speaker 2: the restaurant and the look on my face death was
- 55:33Speaker 2: like he looked at his phone and was like, oh sorry,
- 55:42Speaker 2: and I handed him the baby and I was like,
- 55:44Speaker 2: I'm going to sit in the car and you're going
- 55:46Speaker 2: to figure out how to strap all the naked, soaking
- 55:50Speaker 2: my children in and we're going to go home now.
- 55:53Speaker 2: And that person did not take the job.
- 55:58Speaker 4: But I doubt it was your fault.
- 56:01Speaker 2: They just didn't want the job. And I knew that
- 56:03Speaker 2: person didn't want the job.
- 56:04Speaker 3: They just wanted a.
- 56:05Speaker 4: Free lunch and a long conversation.
- 56:08Speaker 2: A long conversation, candell, Oh my gosh.
- 56:14Speaker 4: Speaking of car seats. I had to get all three
- 56:17Speaker 4: of the car seats put into the middle seat of
- 56:20Speaker 4: my van, and it worked. I brought it to the
- 56:23Speaker 4: local police station and they installed them for me. But
- 56:27Speaker 4: it was like it was a challenge initially because he
- 56:29Speaker 4: didn't believe we could do it, and he wanted to
- 56:31Speaker 4: put either the newborn in the like third row or
- 56:35Speaker 4: I know. I was like, I don't think so, or
- 56:38Speaker 4: my oldest who still can't buckle himself in because he's
- 56:40Speaker 4: only three. So I was like, this is And also
- 56:43Speaker 4: if he was in the back, oh my gosh, we
- 56:45Speaker 4: would be having yelling conversations for hours. It was just
- 56:49Speaker 4: like not happening. So we had to figure out a
- 56:51Speaker 4: way to just get them all squeezed into the middle.
- 56:54Speaker 4: And now I it's fine, but I have a guilt
- 56:57Speaker 4: complex about like if my mom comes with me, or
- 57:01Speaker 4: if two people come with me and I need somebody
- 57:02Speaker 4: to get into the back seat, they have to like
- 57:04Speaker 4: go through the trunk and it's like a sixty nine
- 57:08Speaker 4: year old woman like popping out of the back of
- 57:10Speaker 4: my car, like like a clown car. I'm like, this
- 57:13Speaker 4: is this seems not like the greatest plan, but it
- 57:18Speaker 4: is what it is. I guess.
- 57:20Speaker 2: Yeah, I shoot, I on my to do list is
- 57:23Speaker 2: switching around all my car seats. Oh really, Yeah, because
- 57:27Speaker 2: my older sons are tormenting their younger sister. They're all
- 57:31Speaker 2: three in the back row and they're tormenting her, and
- 57:34Speaker 2: I need to move her. It's just yeah, it's mean
- 57:37Speaker 2: at this point, they're really mean to her.
- 57:42Speaker 3: Wait, the youngest girl.
- 57:43Speaker 2: Yeah, my younger girl. Yeah, her older brothers, she's right
- 57:46Speaker 2: in the middle of them.
- 57:47Speaker 3: I would have told that she can fight are and corner.
- 57:50Speaker 3: She's pretty feisty when she.
- 57:52Speaker 2: Has two bigger boys on either side hitting her and
- 57:57Speaker 2: she's strapped in.
- 57:59Speaker 4: Right, So what can she do?
- 58:01Speaker 2: Yeah, she yells. She really gives it to them on
- 58:05Speaker 2: that front.
- 58:07Speaker 4: But oh man, I read in Tim Carney's book, I'm
- 58:13Speaker 4: trying to remember the name of it. He was talking
- 58:15Speaker 4: about just how car seats have actually been the control.
- 58:20Speaker 4: Yeah birth control, Yeah, for sure, for sure, totally makes sense.
- 58:24Speaker 3: I mean, if the Trump administration fixed that issue, they've
- 58:28Speaker 3: got eighty percent.
- 58:29Speaker 2: Of the way to well, we have Sean Duffie in
- 58:32Speaker 2: charge of the Secretary as Secretary of Transportation, so he
- 58:35Speaker 2: has eight children, nine children.
- 58:38Speaker 4: I mean, what would be the method what would you change?
- 58:40Speaker 4: I actually don't know.
- 58:42Speaker 2: So the way that car seat, the way that cars
- 58:44Speaker 2: are constructed and the way that car seats are constructed,
- 58:47Speaker 2: they're not compatible, and so they it's like it's it's
- 58:51Speaker 2: very difficult. I mean I think that car seats are
- 58:54Speaker 2: not I mean you had this issue with the three
- 58:57Speaker 2: in a row. They're designed to take got more than
- 59:00Speaker 2: one seat, yes, and it's they're too wide, and that's
- 59:04Speaker 2: always been our issue, is that they're too wide and
- 59:07Speaker 2: they're not intuitive. I think that one of the one
- 59:11Speaker 2: of the safest places, I think is Sweden, and it's
- 59:14Speaker 2: because they require cars to be built first and there's
- 59:18Speaker 2: like not a thousand different car seat varieties. There's a
- 59:20Speaker 2: couple of car seats they're really safe. They're narrow, and
- 59:24Speaker 2: they're designed to be rear facing for a long time,
- 59:27Speaker 2: which is safer.
- 59:28Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean I even talk to my
- 59:31Speaker 4: friends about it who want big families, and they're like, well,
- 59:34Speaker 4: we have to upgrade the car and we have to
- 59:36Speaker 4: upgrade the car seats. And it's like, how do we
- 59:38Speaker 4: make it all fit? And it's so expensive and it's stressful,
- 59:41Speaker 4: and like for us to try and get these installed,
- 59:43Speaker 4: we have to make an appointment.
- 59:45Speaker 2: And we had a guess on recently that said that
- 59:49Speaker 2: she has a seven seater van and she like bungee
- 59:52Speaker 2: cords the baby's car seat onto the floor. Oh my gosh,
- 59:56Speaker 2: it's wild.
- 1:00:00Speaker 3: The grind with the Trump administration right now, and how
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: I believe that they're not helping the fertility right is
- 1:00:07Speaker 3: the And this is a very personal So there's no
- 1:00:12Speaker 3: such thing as a mother in law visa, which is
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: where he pissed me off, because I believe that my
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: mother should be able to quit a job and move
- 1:00:19Speaker 3: here and help me, and it's not possible. So that's
- 1:00:24Speaker 3: another thing that I'm going to campaign for. Yeah, no
- 1:00:26Speaker 3: such thing as a mother in law visa.
- 1:00:29Speaker 4: Wow.
- 1:00:30Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 1:00:30Speaker 4: One of my loneliness hacks, which I didn't get to
- 1:00:33Speaker 4: mention before, is having a mom who lives ten minutes
- 1:00:36Speaker 4: away and.
- 1:00:37Speaker 2: She helps you a lot.
- 1:00:39Speaker 4: Yeah, she does, she does, like it depends on the week.
- 1:00:42Speaker 4: But oh my gosh. This during the last I always
- 1:00:45Speaker 4: say first three months of my pregnancy and the first
- 1:00:48Speaker 4: three months after my baby's born. You just that's your job,
- 1:00:51Speaker 4: is me. Thank you so much. I don't have and
- 1:00:55Speaker 4: because I don't have any paid help, so my mom
- 1:00:57Speaker 4: comes and helps. I would say, like during this period
- 1:01:00Speaker 4: where we're trying to keep the baby in for a
- 1:01:02Speaker 4: little bit longer more, but typically probably like two hours
- 1:01:07Speaker 4: every other day, she comes. Yeah, it's incredible. And my kids,
- 1:01:13Speaker 4: like I said to my husband, we're so so blessed
- 1:01:17Speaker 4: because we have my parents and we have his parents,
- 1:01:19Speaker 4: and both of them are super involved. And like I
- 1:01:23Speaker 4: was close with my grand one of my grandmothers growing up,
- 1:01:27Speaker 4: Like I knew my other grandparents, but I wasn't super
- 1:01:29Speaker 4: close with them. The idea of my kids having grandparents
- 1:01:33Speaker 4: that are like their family, like that they see all
- 1:01:36Speaker 4: the time, and that like would be just a part
- 1:01:40Speaker 4: of their life is amazing to me and mind blowing
- 1:01:43Speaker 4: because I really didn't have that. So I'm so stoked
- 1:01:46Speaker 4: about that that my kids have that. And it's something
- 1:01:48Speaker 4: that you know, my Jacob is my husband, Jacob and
- 1:01:51Speaker 4: I have talked about a lot, is that it's an
- 1:01:53Speaker 4: element of why we wouldn't want to hire a nanny,
- 1:01:56Speaker 4: is that we would love that to be the relationship
- 1:01:59Speaker 4: in dynamic for our kids is that they have their
- 1:02:03Speaker 4: grandparents who come and like watch them for a day
- 1:02:06Speaker 4: or for an hour, just spend time with them and
- 1:02:08Speaker 4: read books, and that we don't just depend on a
- 1:02:12Speaker 4: nanny to take care of all those things.
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: I think that's another big reason why particularly millennial women
- 1:02:19Speaker 3: so apprehensive towards having kids now is because boomers really
- 1:02:25Speaker 3: seem to not want much involvement at all. Anecdotally, Like
- 1:02:29Speaker 3: I hear this all the time. The boomers are like, no,
- 1:02:33Speaker 3: I want to live my life. I don't want to
- 1:02:35Speaker 3: be treated like somebody that should be paid or like
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: demanded money, and like, no, wonder people don't want to
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: have children if they're going to be completely alone and
- 1:02:47Speaker 3: they don't I mean in their family at all, and
- 1:02:48Speaker 3: their family don't want to be involved. You know.
- 1:02:51Speaker 4: I think it's it's exactly what you just said, plus
- 1:02:54Speaker 4: the last part, which is people move away from family
- 1:02:59Speaker 4: and and don't realize that, Like I can't imagine, and
- 1:03:04Speaker 4: you are amazing, methany that you do this because you
- 1:03:06Speaker 4: don't have family close. I can't imagine doing like we
- 1:03:11Speaker 4: would love to have a huge family, like that is
- 1:03:13Speaker 4: my dream. I can't imagine doing that without my family
- 1:03:15Speaker 4: around a support like, I don't know how women do it,
- 1:03:18Speaker 4: even with two kids. It's so hard. And so I
- 1:03:21Speaker 4: think to myself, Yeah, of course you're not going to
- 1:03:23Speaker 4: want to be a stay at home mom if you
- 1:03:24Speaker 4: don't have even the support system of your parents, let
- 1:03:27Speaker 4: alone a communal support system, let alone friends. Like, all
- 1:03:30Speaker 4: of those things are just going to make you want
- 1:03:32Speaker 4: to reduce your family size. Of course, so we move
- 1:03:35Speaker 4: away from family and don't really think about moving back.
- 1:03:38Speaker 4: And then we also have a generation of people parents
- 1:03:44Speaker 4: who are not super interested in being involved, Like when
- 1:03:46Speaker 4: I tell people that we when a woman in the
- 1:03:49Speaker 4: grocery store asks me, I always say this, it's really funny.
- 1:03:52Speaker 4: I'll be out with one of my kids and not
- 1:03:54Speaker 4: the other. And often, as is kind of makes sense
- 1:03:58Speaker 4: because I have them all close, people just assume I'm
- 1:04:00Speaker 4: pregnant with my second yeah, and so I'll say, oh, yeah, no,
- 1:04:04Speaker 4: I'm having my third, and they like the it's always
- 1:04:07Speaker 4: the boomer older women who are like, why would you
- 1:04:11Speaker 4: do that?
- 1:04:11Speaker 3: Oh my god, I'm so happy that it's not just
- 1:04:14Speaker 3: me that that happens too, because people are acting like
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: I'm a Mormon or something. I got pregnant nine months
- 1:04:21Speaker 3: after having a baby. Honestly, I am being treated like
- 1:04:25Speaker 3: a single teenage mother and it is like a child
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: bride as well. I had that because I got pregnant
- 1:04:32Speaker 3: with my first at twenty five. It's so craignant the
- 1:04:35Speaker 3: reaction and it's always boomers, always.
- 1:04:37Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
- 1:04:38Speaker 2: I remember very vividly not liking to go out when
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: I was pregnant with my second because it was really
- 1:04:46Speaker 2: getting in my head. How many people were telling me
- 1:04:48Speaker 2: that I was making a mistake because they were so
- 1:04:50Speaker 2: close together in age. It's going to be miserable. What
- 1:04:52Speaker 2: we you think? Like random people in the supermarket like
- 1:04:55Speaker 2: stop and Shop in New Jersey, remember very vividly not
- 1:04:58Speaker 2: wanting to go there because it was always differ for
- 1:05:00Speaker 2: old people telling me it was going to be awful.
- 1:05:02Speaker 2: And then once I hit like three, four, five six,
- 1:05:05Speaker 2: when people would say that to me, I was like,
- 1:05:08Speaker 2: I have other children. I know I'm not ruining my life,
- 1:05:10Speaker 2: thank you very much. But I mean a lot of them,
- 1:05:14Speaker 2: a lot of those women actually don't have children, and
- 1:05:18Speaker 2: they're just it's like their form of therapy to inform
- 1:05:22Speaker 2: me that I'm ruining my life. As they're at the
- 1:05:26Speaker 2: super market alone at noon on a Tuesday.
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: So I did like a tour of kind of rich
- 1:05:32Speaker 3: New Yorkers last week because my husband obviously is from
- 1:05:36Speaker 3: Manhattan and went to a very fancy school, so a
- 1:05:38Speaker 3: lot of people in his realm are extremely wrench and
- 1:05:42Speaker 3: didn't have babies until they were in their late thirties
- 1:05:46Speaker 3: and interest in the It was gen X who I
- 1:05:51Speaker 3: told that I was pregnant and they would pull me
- 1:05:53Speaker 3: aside and be like, definitely have a third. Definitely have
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: a third, because I didn't start until I was thirty
- 1:05:59Speaker 3: eight thirty nine, because everybody told me that I had
- 1:06:02Speaker 3: so much time and I could only have one or
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: two by then, And what I really would have wanted
- 1:06:08Speaker 3: is a third. And if you've started early and have
- 1:06:11Speaker 3: set up your life in this way, and then you
- 1:06:13Speaker 3: should do it.
- 1:06:14Speaker 2: And I thinks pretty nice. Someone unsolicited said that to
- 1:06:17Speaker 2: me the other day. We were like getting coffee at
- 1:06:20Speaker 2: a thing, and she knew who I was, and she like,
- 1:06:23Speaker 2: you know, I've been talking about this stuff forever, and
- 1:06:26Speaker 2: without any prompting whatever, she said, I wish I had
- 1:06:29Speaker 2: started earlier so I could have a third. And I
- 1:06:32Speaker 2: was like, wow, that's yeah.
- 1:06:36Speaker 4: Well, that's yeah. I mean that's the fertility gap. The
- 1:06:38Speaker 4: fertility gap is real. I mean there's so many women
- 1:06:40Speaker 4: who the women who say that they would like three
- 1:06:44Speaker 4: and then end up starting too late and having one
- 1:06:46Speaker 4: or two, Like it just ends up happening.
- 1:06:48Speaker 2: It's because they're starting too late because they've been told
- 1:06:51Speaker 2: that it will ruin their lives and it's misery and
- 1:06:53Speaker 2: it's awful, and so they put it off.
- 1:06:54Speaker 4: Because and or that they will be fine starting late
- 1:06:58Speaker 4: and that their fertility won't wane, that they can actually
- 1:07:01Speaker 4: have one, two or three.
- 1:07:03Speaker 3: Yeah, the conversation around fertility that we have is so dishonest.
- 1:07:09Speaker 3: It might be the most dishonest conversation in all society.
- 1:07:14Speaker 3: And it makes me so sad.
- 1:07:16Speaker 2: I was. I was talking to two women the other
- 1:07:19Speaker 2: day who are in their early thirties, like thirty one,
- 1:07:23Speaker 2: thirty two, thirty three, and they were both telling me
- 1:07:26Speaker 2: they wanted a large family, and I was just counting
- 1:07:29Speaker 2: on my fingers and I was like, the math doesn't math, No, yeah,
- 1:07:33Speaker 2: it just doesn't.
- 1:07:33Speaker 3: Well, they're real nice, like, but the time you've gone
- 1:07:35Speaker 3: through one pregnancy, the year is gone, you know.
- 1:07:39Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I mean if you're starting at thirty three
- 1:07:42Speaker 2: or thirty four, and you want to have five children,
- 1:07:45Speaker 2: The math doesn't math.
- 1:07:47Speaker 4: No, I mean I've said that to like. The miscarriage
- 1:07:51Speaker 4: also gave me a real understanding of like, you cannot plan.
- 1:07:56Speaker 4: You think you can plan, but you can't. And so
- 1:08:00Speaker 4: we had our first at twenty I think I was
- 1:08:03Speaker 4: twenty eight, either twenty se I was either twenty seven
- 1:08:06Speaker 4: or twenty eight, and it just made clear to me.
- 1:08:09Speaker 4: I was like, well, I don't want to be super
- 1:08:11Speaker 4: cavalier about how late we push the next baby, because
- 1:08:16Speaker 4: who knows? Who knows? I know so many women in
- 1:08:19Speaker 4: my community who struggle with secondary and fertility who have
- 1:08:23Speaker 4: an easy time getting pregnant with one or two and
- 1:08:25Speaker 4: then have a really hard time getting pregnant with number three,
- 1:08:27Speaker 4: Like you just don't know, And so trying to make
- 1:08:31Speaker 4: plans when you're already into your mid to late thirties
- 1:08:34Speaker 4: is like, that's rough, And I feel like I'm already
- 1:08:39Speaker 4: cutting it close. And I'm not old by any means,
- 1:08:42Speaker 4: but I'm thirty one, and if I want to have
- 1:08:44Speaker 4: five and I want to try and do it before
- 1:08:48Speaker 4: you know, thirty five, thirty six, like I don't have
- 1:08:51Speaker 4: that much time so I like have to view that
- 1:08:54Speaker 4: kind of scientifically. I'm like, Okay, that means my babies
- 1:08:57Speaker 4: are going to be closer together, which is a good
- 1:08:59Speaker 4: thing for me because I want them to be closer together.
- 1:09:01Speaker 4: But it's also going to be harder on my body.
- 1:09:02Speaker 4: And that's okay, Like that's just what it is.
- 1:09:05Speaker 2: Yeah, And with that, I think that we should say goodbye.
- 1:09:09Speaker 2: Maybe we should do this again because this is really nice.
- 1:09:12Speaker 4: Yeah, this was lovely.
- 1:09:14Speaker 2: All right, so thank you all for listening. Make sure
- 1:09:18Speaker 2: to follow Abby at the first Gen Stay at Home
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: Mom on subsac and Instagram. It's first gen Sam s
- 1:09:25Speaker 2: a h M. First surprise. How many people don't know
- 1:09:27Speaker 2: that acronym sadam stay Yeah, you can like and follow
- 1:09:33Speaker 2: and subscribe us. Please leave us a review. It helps
- 1:09:36Speaker 2: other people find us. Until next week, Satellite.
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: Ricochet.
- 1:09:41Speaker 4: Yeah, join the conversation.