Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / A Special Number System that Will Simplify your Life and Make your Day Better, with Elizabeth Santelmann

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A Special Number System that Will Simplify your Life and Make your Day Better, with Elizabeth Santelmann · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Parenting Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Karen Ferguson, wife, mom, grandmom, and children's book author with a background in K-8 education and a passion for equipping parents to raise confident and God-confident kids.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: In this podcast, we'll cover parenting practices for both a practical view and a biblical view.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal is to help you raise kids with a positive, godly self-image so they can become all they were created to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're busy, so we'll keep it short.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take just five minutes and dive in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Five Minute Parenting.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: On today's episode, special guest Elizabeth Santleman will be sharing a special system she and her husband uses to make their busy and sometimes hectic days better.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth is a wife, homeschool mom, podcaster, and Bible teacher.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: She worked in children's ministry before having her own kids and enjoys writing and sharing about Jesus on Instagram and her blog.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: She has a popular podcast called Sunshine in My Nest, and she writes homeschool curriculum for a large community.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth lives in Oklahoma with her husband and three sons.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth, welcome.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's so good to be here, Karen.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you bet.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was intrigued when I heard this topic.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we all can relate to having those bad days and getting stuck in that all or nothing type of thinking.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm excited you're here to share a special system with listeners that you and your husband use on those overwhelming types of days.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me, Karen, how many kids you have.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have two kids and three grandkids.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So both my daughters are grown.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: How lovely.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm sure you remember what those little years were like when you were just waiting and counting down the seconds until your husband would walk in the door after work.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember those days?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes, I do.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm seeing my daughter go through that as well.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she's always super excited when her husband walks through that door.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so our system came into play because I feel like some days I was on it and the day had gone really smoothly.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when he walked in the door, we were all there to greet him and give him a big hug and we were excited to see him.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then other days he would walk in the door, and I had done everything that I could do in a day.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was exhausted.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone was crying.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of looked like the closets had barfed everything out of them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing was orderly.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so he started having like a little bit of maybe anxiety is a little too strong of a word, but he never knew what he was gonna come home to.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it it made that time of day really stressful for both of us.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he would ask me, Karen, if I would just send him a text before he got home and let him know like how the day had gone so he knew what to expect.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But especially on the hard days, like I was too mentally fried to like figure out adequately, like A, how was I feeling?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And B, like, what did I need him to do to make that better?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt absolutely impossible to figure all of that out ahead of time.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the two of us sat down together and we wrote numbers one through 10 and assigned to each of those numbers like a word for the way that I would be feeling, and then a definition for what that looked like.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh action that if he pulled up and was ready to help, uh, how he could help me.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if I he would text me at the end of his day, he's like, What number are we sitting at?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I would text him, like, okay, it's a three, which meant I probably could rally as soon as he got home if he just gave me like 10 minutes to go back to the bedroom and hang out.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It meant everybody, like I was really overstimulated.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I probably had held a kid all day long and things were a little bit chaotic.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if I had a breather or a walk around the block or something, like I could jump in, I could make dinner, we would be like on the same team again.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where if he texted and I was like, okay, I'm sitting at a seven, and since we had it all written out, he could look at the chart and he'd be like, Okay, seven.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: That means like she's ready for fun.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can start a project together, we can do something, or tonight might be a night that it's okay to ask if we can have people over.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it just allowed us, I feel like, to pull as a team a little bit better without there being quite as much mental load in like trying to assign new things, even though I had been responsible for the house all day.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It made a lot of sense to need to be the one to send the update.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but just to kind of like bridge that gap between the amount of mental energy that I had with a partner who is like excited and ready to help.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I love that because I feel like for husbands, that must be super helpful.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't have to guess, they don't have to try to interpret what their wife is describing to them about their day.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I would imagine once you had that system in place, it would save a lot of time.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and maybe even irritation.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, did you find, I mean, did you come up with this all on your own?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: You sat down together and engaged everything.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't even remember, I we hadn't seen it anywhere.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at first he wanted me, because I think most husbands are very good-willed humans.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like they want to come in, they want to roll up their sleeves, they want to help.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times they just don't know what where we want them to start.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they're tired too, from a free word.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, yes.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And with the Instagram community, it's been so helpful.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've had women, because we wrote ours all up.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: We typed it up and we have it so other people can print it off.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've heard women say that she they, especially for spouses with a really hard job, they'll ask each other what the numbers are.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't equal 10, they do they order pizza.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So like just an acknowledgement that yes, like everybody is coming to the end of a day with a specific amount of energy left.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And on the nights where everyone's depleted, then you have to figure out a way to a way to survive more than like be all fancy, if that makes sense.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's good.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been using this system?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we started it right before we had our third baby, and we found it most helpful during postpartum.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I feel like I so I start my hopefully this isn't TMI, Karen, but I start my cycle back super soon after having babies.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so my body, it's just so depleted during postpartum.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh cognitive function and brain fog is a huge way that that shows up for me.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I felt like at that stage, I really didn't even have the capacity to like be creative.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was kind of a way for me to like cut back on being creative.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we go through seasons where we don't have to use it anymore because most of the days are sitting at a seven to ten, and then we'll go through a season like where I struggle with a chronic health issue, or um, you know, I'm in the middle of book edits or a massive project, and it's helpful for us to like circle back to it as a habit.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we allow it to serve us instead of um making it maybe a legalistic practice.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when we do use it, it's helpful though.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and it's nice because I was gonna ask, you know, t specific tips for implementing something like that, but it sounds like you have it all ready to print and and go for parents.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the okay, so then the other the other part of it is one of the things that I found in chatting with my community is like some people have like husbands that are truckers and aren't home every night, or you have people with the experience that um maybe maybe their husband works a really physical job and comes home more tired than they are, even if they've had a long day with little kids.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so um my community and I worked together to create a what did I call it?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's but it's basically uh how you can help yourself to get to one number better.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of times we tend to enter into that all or nothing thinking that you mentioned earlier.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we think like, oh my gosh, my day is at a two and I need it to be at a 10.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And like we get so discouraged because really I don't know that there's any stops we can fully pull out to get a day that's running at a two to be a 10.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if we can like stop the spiral and just get ourselves like one or two numbers forward, um, that can be so helpful.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like once we kind of start working our way out of the funk, it's so encouraging.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of can automatically add another number just because of how excited we are about that.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we created things like, okay, maybe it's just like taking a minute and lighting a candle or turning on a some peaceful music, or uh maybe, maybe you're it's down, maybe you're down at a one and you're either gonna yell at your kids or you need to turn on the TV for 30 minutes, you know, as a last resort.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like if you can just have 30 minutes to breathe, then you can light the candle and turn on the music, and then you know, you've slowly like progressed yourselves, yourself the opposite direction.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're at a higher number and you're super you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, but you realize it's because like you just need to clean the sink out.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you clean the sink out, you'll be sitting at a higher number than you what you would if you were like just continuing to chase little fires.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um a combination of those have really served our family well, you know, and everybody can define what those numbers look like for themselves.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I feel like in explaining it, you've got the method there.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh your numbers can you can write it down and it can be anything that you want it to be for your family.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's what's been helpful for us.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is awesome.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, that sounds like a great system you have going.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's obviously served you well.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, well, before we close, you know, this is a shorter podcast.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have just an encouraging word to moms of littles who are in that overwhelming season?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think the thing that carried me through my postpartum season was the verse in Isaiah that talks about he carries them in his bosom and he gently leads those that are with young.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes we think that we have to do it all.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: We don't allow ourselves to be weak.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable because the people in our lives have said that we can't do that or we can't be that way.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that verse in Isaiah just reminded me that God is familiar with our weakness.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: He created the hormones that it takes for us to bring a baby into the world and to love them, and that he's gently carrying us through that time.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a time to rather than impose extra spiritual practices on yourself, just like having that presence to like continually circle back and remember God is carrying you and hold some of those promises that you already know close to your heart has been so helpful for me.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that is good.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Elizabeth, thanks so much for being here and sharing with families.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where is the best place to find you online?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, people can find me everywhere at sunshineinmy.com or Instagram.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hang out a lot on Instagram.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: My goal there is for it to feel like we're co-workers as stay-at-home moms together, raising our babies.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I hope you'll come over and hang out at my coworking space.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks again for being here, Elizabeth.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me, Karen.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you bet.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Listeners, thank you for joining us.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You will find links to connect with Elizabeth online in the show notes.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: So be sure to check that out.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And please share this episode with another parent you want to encourage.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode, and then come back next week for another episode.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: New episodes release every Thursday.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Have a blessed week.