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Parenting Journeys · Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub

• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Let Them Fly.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And today I thought I would just have a little ramble about parenting.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Parenting is one of those strange professions, and I can only call it a full-time job, where we never got any training and somehow we're just expected to be really good at it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today, with social media throwing all these brilliant ideas at us, how to be even better and even more perfect parents, whether it's being mindful or it's ensuring your child sleeps all night or they eat healthily, it puts immense pressure on us as parents to make sure we get it right.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I will just ramble, so bear with me, about parenting in general and the fact that being a perfect parent is not all it's cracked up to be.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever learnt anything from being perfect.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Their worlds are small and they don't just think, they know they are at the centre.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: As the toddler tantrums hit, the reality that this is a full-time job plus starts to hit home.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Our worlds become one hamster wheel of demands at work, and then we get home and it doesn't stop.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that this lasts in different layers of engagement for the next 18 or so plus years.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: As parents, the responsibility weighs heavily on us to ensure that we not only deliver in work, but we step up to the mark as parents at home.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, today we're egged on by social media to be the very best version of that perfect parent.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can safely say there is no such thing as perfect.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are varying degrees of I've just about got myself together, and somehow I've made it through the week with children at the right clubs, on some occasions with the right kit, and mostly they were fed.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've even managed to get vegetables into them this week, and homework was submitted on time, so that's definitely what I would call a winning week.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I actually had my own little triumph last week.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: After 26 years of school runs, I did my last one, and I am most definitely not sad that I will not see my carefully prepared school lunch box return as a mangled mess, or that 10 o'clock at night I'm not going to empty a packet of Betty Crocker brownie mix into an oven tray for a bake sale that's referred to on a WhatsApp mum's group.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And on closer inspection, I found that the notifications scrunched up in the bottom of school bag.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: No more drying PE kit on a Tuesday morning with a hairdryer because I forgot to take it out of the washing machine on Monday night.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, I am absolutely devastated not to be searching through Google to solve some impossible maths problem at midnight to avoid tears and tantrums in the morning.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's all over.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And even more of a celebration, they all survived, they've made it in the world, and they've emerged from the last 26 years of my chaos as really amazing human beings.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the interesting bit.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be perfect.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it's better if you're not.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your life has to be real, and the relationship with your children is not going to be the same as someone else's.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can't make yourself into something you're not, and your children are a product of you and your husband.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have the same traits, and they have to fit into your family, not someone else's version of perfect.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, perfect is no place to learn.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I regularly used to sit down with my kids and say, I don't have a parenting handbook.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to help me out on this one.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the answer, and if they'd been naughty, I often used to say to them, I don't know what the punishment should be when it was something bad.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what I did know is that if it was something bad, my children knew they had let me down, and that was more of a punishment to them than anything I could ever have handed out.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: What I will say, though, through this chaos and complete mayhem, was that I was always accessible for the children.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: If they needed me, I was there.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't mean I made up games and took pictures, it didn't it meant sometimes eating pizza and bed with a movie.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The important thing is your children are simply not able to enter your world, so you have to enter theirs.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this doesn't mean taking them out to over stimulating play areas, buying them lots of expensive gifts, or developing charts to reward good behaviour.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I have never rewarded good behaviour because I expect good behaviour.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's the benchmark.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: In Japan, when a child behaves badly, the parent will ask a child, what do you think other people think about you when you behave like this?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I really like this approach, and I've used it so many times.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: But for this to work, you must already have an open communication with your child, and your child must already be able to actually understand, listen, and respect you.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Being present does not mean you have to hover over your child at every opportunity and jump to their every need.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: It means you include them in your life.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You make time to enter their lives, and as they become teenagers, you listen and engage with the mindless gossip that's truly important to them.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Alice had her ears pierced.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Emma got dumped by her boyfriend again.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be up to date, and believe me, my memory doesn't have the capacity to retain all of Emma's boyfriends, but you do have to be interested and ask appropriate questions.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Even if the answer is, Mum, you have no idea.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just take it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that's engagement when you're dealing with teenagers.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: If I was to give any advice to parents, it is your job to assure them that everything is going to be alright.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this can be from the small stuff like they failed their maths test, up to the big stuff like mum, I just wrote your car off.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: This ability to reassure and balance every situation is the single most important job of every parent.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You are the only person they should come to if things go wrong.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the punishment.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: In so many cases, it's about finding the solution.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: You do not you do not have to find the solution, but you have to help your children to find the solution themselves.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're present, they will know this.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: They will know that you have their back.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, they may get grounded, they may lose their phones, but your first reaction is not to shout when you're angry because they have done something wrong.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your first reaction is to check they are okay, and then put in place the measures to make it right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have been a parent to four very different children, and the journey for each one of them along the way has been extremely different.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've always worked, and I'm often way too tired to be that perfect mum.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But on those days, we order takeout, we put on our PJs, and we all just chill together.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you're struggling with the terrible twos or the traumatic threes, I just want you to think about this.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Your mind is capable of doing so much.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what you want to do, but you simply do not have the communication skills to express it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your mum wants you to wear the blue trousers and get ready to go out now.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to wear the blue trousers, they're not comfy, and you just want to finish the picture you started.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But no one is listening to that.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only way forward is for you to throw yourself on the floor, shout and cry, but not because you're not getting your own way, but because you're frustrated, because you can't explain what you want.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Think about your child's feelings and put yourself in their shoes.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Try and be empathetic.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: As an adult, if someone says, Come on, we're going out now, you always have the option to say, can we just wait five minutes?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just finish this page in my book or can I just finish this TV show?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: But as a child, you just expect them to come.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: For all parents, we know that education is where the success parameters for our children lie.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's only then that we feel like we can really measure how successful they've been.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: When they go to school, did they behave?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did they eat their dinner?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do they know the numbers and letters?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Did they win sports competitions?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Did they make friends?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: School is where we start to judge how successful our parenting has been.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also where we often tend to apportion blame.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: My child has badly behaved because of their friend, or the teacher is not giving them the attention they deserve.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what we want from our child is we want them to grow in resilience and to solve their own solutions and to find their path towards being amazing human beings.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess my message today is don't be hard on yourself, but it doesn't matter how imperfect your life is.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your life for your children is perfect.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what you create for them is unique.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: It is unique to your family and unique to your children.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Always make sure you are there to listen.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Never be there to respond in a way that's your response.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because your children are on a train track that's their life.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can guide, you can inform, you can educate, you can support.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: But let them be free to make their decisions and know where the just like where a train track, where the boundaries of those lines sit, if your child knows that this is unacceptable behaviour, they will carry that as unacceptable behaviour for the rest of their lives.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: If they know in which direction that train track is heading, they will keep following that train track, whether you're there or not.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what is so important for your children is that you are giving them the direction and you are giving them the information and that you are their guide and that you are always there with the right answers for them.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And often that doesn't have to be an answer, that has to be a discussion to find an answer.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: If as a parent, I've said it before, and I will say it again, your job is to reassure your child that everything will be okay, and it's your job to help make that okay.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, buckle up, enjoy the ride, and it will be bumpy, just like a roller coaster, there'll be massive highs, massive lows.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, you have to enjoy the ride.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then what's the point of being attempting to do?