Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #223 I'll Do Better Tomorrow

Transcript

#223 I'll Do Better Tomorrow · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:03
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
0:07
Speaker 1: time poor parent who just once answers.
0:10
Speaker 2: Now the tough nut Princess act doesn't work. It reduces resilience.
0:14
Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
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Speaker 1: and dad.
0:18
Speaker 2: Good day. My name is doctor Justin Colson, the author
0:20
Speaker 2: of six books about raising happy families and the founder
0:24
Speaker 2: the owner of the director of Happy Families dot com
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Speaker 2: dot I you raised your eyebrows when I said that.
0:28
Speaker 2: Did I just sound a bit too up myself? Is
0:30
Speaker 2: that the problem? No? No, no, no, okay, Well that's who
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Speaker 2: I am.
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Speaker 3: Who are you?
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Speaker 2: What are you doing in my studio? My wife, Kylie,
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Speaker 2: missus Happy Families, Mum to our six daughters, is joining
0:42
Speaker 2: me as always so that we can talk about making
0:45
Speaker 2: families happier.
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Speaker 3: Hey, I love the reviews that are coming through at
0:48
Speaker 3: the moment. We've had another five star review from Jesse
0:51
Speaker 3: Hill eighty five.
0:53
Speaker 2: Thanks Jesse Hill.
0:54
Speaker 3: My favorite podcast.
0:56
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
0:56
Speaker 3: I've been listening to this podcast for about six months
0:59
Speaker 3: and it has been become my favorite. Most of the
1:02
Speaker 3: topics are equally applicable to kids as they are to adults.
1:05
Speaker 3: I love that the expert semi regularly shares specific examples
1:10
Speaker 3: of how he hasn't lived up to his standards. Many
1:14
Speaker 3: parenting experts admit they also screw up and find it hard,
1:17
Speaker 3: but he's the only one I've listened to that actually
1:19
Speaker 3: shares examples of his parenting fails, which is how we
1:22
Speaker 3: all parent at times, and it makes me feel more
1:25
Speaker 3: secure that my fifty to seventy percent good parenting is
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Speaker 3: normal and I am not failing overall. I particularly love
1:32
Speaker 3: that I Can Do Better episodes and I get marriage
1:34
Speaker 3: tips out of it as well as Justin and Kylie
1:36
Speaker 3: are an amazing example of partnership in marriage.
1:39
Speaker 2: Jesse Hill, you've made our day. Thank you so much
1:41
Speaker 2: for that five star review. Now the I Can Do
1:43
Speaker 2: Better episode, I have to be a bit of a
1:47
Speaker 2: corrector for just a moment. It's called I'll do Better Tomorrow,
1:49
Speaker 2: and that's what today is all about. This is our
1:51
Speaker 2: older Better Tomorrow episode where we review the week, and
1:54
Speaker 2: we did this every Friday. We sort of have a
1:56
Speaker 2: look at what we did well, what we maybe didn't
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Speaker 2: do so well, look for love and opportunities to do
2:02
Speaker 2: better tomorrow as parents, because the great thing about children
2:05
Speaker 2: is that they always give you an opportunity to do
2:07
Speaker 2: better tomorrow, like they're so forgiving and we get it
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Speaker 2: wrong so often. So do you want to go first, missus,
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Speaker 2: happy families or shall life? I can go for it.
2:17
Speaker 1: Well.
2:17
Speaker 3: Last weekend, the kids and I went on a little
2:19
Speaker 3: road trip on our own. It was just the three
2:21
Speaker 3: of us in the car. And normally when I'm in
2:25
Speaker 3: the car, I kind of just sewn out. I kind
2:28
Speaker 3: of get in my own little world, whether it's been
2:30
Speaker 3: listening to music or of late listening to some podcasts,
2:33
Speaker 3: and I kind of just, you know, let the kids
2:35
Speaker 3: do their own thing. But we had about ten hours
2:38
Speaker 3: in the car. It was a long, long drive, and
2:40
Speaker 3: I wanted to find ways that I could connect. And
2:43
Speaker 3: I've watched you over the years connect with the kids,
2:46
Speaker 3: and you'll often say to me, you know, what did
2:47
Speaker 3: you talk with the kids about in the car, And
2:48
Speaker 3: I'm kind of like nothing, I've been doing a little
2:53
Speaker 3: bit of quiet time before it all gets crazy. Sure,
2:56
Speaker 3: but I decided that I would I needed a bit
2:59
Speaker 3: of help. So we have these little conversation starters that
3:02
Speaker 3: have been sitting in the games draw for I don't
3:05
Speaker 3: know how long, and I've never used them.
3:07
Speaker 2: I had the little box called the Art of Conversations. Yes,
3:09
Speaker 2: really you've used them?
3:11
Speaker 1: I have?
3:11
Speaker 2: Oh wow, how did that go?
3:13
Speaker 3: It was fantastic, so our ten year old Lily, she
3:17
Speaker 3: I said to her, and there was a bit of
3:18
Speaker 3: a lull in conversation. I said, Hey, I've got these
3:20
Speaker 3: little cards. Do you want to have a game with me?
3:25
Speaker 3: And she happily opened the box. She loved asking all
3:28
Speaker 3: the questions. Wasn't so excited about answering them. She just
3:31
Speaker 3: wanted me to answer them. And I think she just
3:33
Speaker 3: loves getting to know.
3:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to say, that's the whole thing
3:38
Speaker 2: is children love it when we go into their world,
3:40
Speaker 2: when we enter their world and become sort of childlike.
3:43
Speaker 2: But every now and again they love to step into
3:45
Speaker 2: our world and understand what the world is from our
3:48
Speaker 2: perspective or what it was like when we were growing up.
3:50
Speaker 2: They love stories.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what she really appreciated, the stories, where
3:55
Speaker 3: you know, she kind of asked me, what was something
3:58
Speaker 3: that I did that was really naughty when I was little?
4:01
Speaker 2: What did you say?
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Speaker 3: I can't tell you on the podcast.
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Speaker 2: I want to know, you have to tell me what
4:05
Speaker 2: did you do that was not you were little it's okay.
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Speaker 3: Well, it wasn't so much naughty. It was that I
4:10
Speaker 3: didn't own up to it. I was about seven or eight,
4:14
Speaker 3: and me and my little sister had walked home from
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Speaker 3: school and we had we had to let ourselves in,
4:18
Speaker 3: but I had forgotten my key to let myself in
4:22
Speaker 3: the front door. And where we lived at the time,
4:25
Speaker 3: the veranda was level with my dad's shed, and if
4:29
Speaker 3: I stood on the shed, I could actually climb through
4:32
Speaker 3: my bedroom window. And my bedroom window was open, but
4:35
Speaker 3: it wasn't open enough. And it was those windows where
4:38
Speaker 3: you push out so they kind of come out at
4:40
Speaker 3: an angle. And with my young, immature mind, I didn't
4:46
Speaker 3: realize that if I pulled on the corner of a
4:48
Speaker 3: window like that, that it would actually shatter the window.
4:51
Speaker 2: You broke the window.
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Speaker 3: I totally broke, and you didn't it. I didn't tell
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Speaker 3: my mom and dad that I did, and.
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Speaker 2: You told Lily that I did. What did she say?
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Speaker 2: She couldn't believe you're a rebel. You were a seven
5:03
Speaker 2: year old, eight year old delinquent breaking into houses, smashing windows.
5:06
Speaker 2: I can't believe that I married you.
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Speaker 3: This is I did tell my mum and dad. Eventually
5:11
Speaker 3: I was well and truly married, and probably on the phone.
5:13
Speaker 3: I probably did it on the phone when you told
5:14
Speaker 3: them like.
5:15
Speaker 2: Twenty years later, that's right, crack up. So that's your
5:19
Speaker 2: old do better tomorrow. Just the value of having really
5:22
Speaker 2: great conversations.
5:25
Speaker 3: That was part of it. The second part was that obviously,
5:27
Speaker 3: with ten hours, I wasn't going to talk conversation the
5:30
Speaker 3: whole time, and I had to come up with something
5:32
Speaker 3: else a little bit more creative. It is kind of draining,
5:34
Speaker 3: isn't it, especially when I have to tell her all
5:37
Speaker 3: the bad things about me. So I did something that
5:42
Speaker 3: I've never done before, and partly because we were a
5:44
Speaker 3: new territory and so we were seeing things we had
5:46
Speaker 3: never seen before on our drive, and so I said.
5:49
Speaker 2: Why don't we do car bingo car bingo?
5:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I got her to draw up a grid
5:54
Speaker 3: five by five, oh, which meant that she had to
5:56
Speaker 3: come up with twenty five things. So as we were driving, genius,
6:01
Speaker 3: I just called out twenty five things. You know, a
6:03
Speaker 3: red car, a white car, a bridge, a tree standing
6:06
Speaker 3: on its own, a.
6:07
Speaker 2: Horse, an aeroplane. You should have put an aeroplane down,
6:09
Speaker 2: because there's no aeroplanes in the sky. Atline with COVID.
6:12
Speaker 3: That would have been smart.
6:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been a long game.
6:15
Speaker 3: A letterbox, a house, a driveway, you know, just different
6:18
Speaker 3: things that you'd see. Well, we were in the country,
6:19
Speaker 3: so there was there were some things on the list
6:21
Speaker 3: that were going to be really hard to find. But
6:24
Speaker 3: what was so great was it got us both kind
6:26
Speaker 3: of focused on seeing things and we saw things that
6:28
Speaker 3: we would never have seen. And what I noticed was
6:30
Speaker 3: on the trip home when we actually played the game,
6:34
Speaker 3: we literally did we were like, have we been this
6:37
Speaker 3: way before? Because we saw things that we just had
6:39
Speaker 3: been oblivious to. On the way out, we saw a
6:44
Speaker 3: flock of EMUs, wild EMUs. There was about twenty five
6:48
Speaker 3: of them and they literally were just in a pack.
6:51
Speaker 3: I don't know what you call what.
6:52
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what a flock of
6:54
Speaker 2: a flock. I don't know. I'm going to google it
6:57
Speaker 2: right now while you can each other story.
6:59
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. I've never seen EMUs out in the
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Speaker 3: wild before.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so a group of EMUs is called a mob.
7:06
Speaker 2: I can tell you that because I'm sure that in
7:09
Speaker 2: one of those Australian one of those Aussie trivia games
7:11
Speaker 2: that we played what was There was an Aussie trivia
7:14
Speaker 2: game when we were kids with an It came in
7:16
Speaker 2: an eski. I think it was called oz Trivia or
7:18
Speaker 2: something like that, and I'm sure it was one of
7:19
Speaker 2: the questions there. Anyway, I love that I'll do better
7:22
Speaker 2: tomorrow just inviting the kids into your world with great
7:24
Speaker 2: conversations and having those conversations starters can really do that,
7:28
Speaker 2: and what a great story. We're gonna have a look
7:30
Speaker 2: at what I can do better tomorrow.
7:32
Speaker 1: Next it's their Happy Families podcast.
7:35
Speaker 4: Are Screens Creating Tension at home? Tweens, teens and Screens
7:39
Speaker 4: is a webinar to guide families to healthy, safe super
7:43
Speaker 4: screen solutions. Bye Today at happy families dot com dot
7:47
Speaker 4: au slash shop, it's.
7:49
Speaker 3: The Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the time poor
7:52
Speaker 3: parent who just wants answers now, And today we're talking
7:55
Speaker 3: about the insights that we've had as parents this week.
7:58
Speaker 2: So my one's actually built out over a couple of weeks,
8:01
Speaker 2: but this week has been the week where the penny
8:03
Speaker 2: dropped and I just went, ah, yes, this, I'm nailing
8:06
Speaker 2: it because I completely failed it at the beginning. Now,
8:10
Speaker 2: before I share what's happened, I want to highlight that
8:14
Speaker 2: it's very easy to come across insensitive when you're having
8:16
Speaker 2: a conversation like this, But I want to just reassure
8:19
Speaker 2: everybody that we've been very very sensitive about it in
8:22
Speaker 2: our home, very careful about it. So basically, a few
8:25
Speaker 2: weeks ago, if you've been listening to the podcast for
8:27
Speaker 2: a while, you may know, one of our kids came
8:29
Speaker 2: to me and said, Dad, Dad, I'm really unfit and
8:32
Speaker 2: I'm really out of shape, and I want to do
8:34
Speaker 2: something about it, and school cross country is coming up,
8:37
Speaker 2: and so can you help me to start running? So
8:40
Speaker 2: I changed all my morning plans. I put off my
8:42
Speaker 2: bike rides and thought, I'm being a good dad here,
8:44
Speaker 2: I'm being noble. I'm doing the right thing. I'm going
8:47
Speaker 2: to run with my daughter every morning and help her
8:48
Speaker 2: to get her fitness back, because I'm a bit of
8:50
Speaker 2: a fitness guy, right, I mean, I really really value
8:53
Speaker 2: good health. And we started our run on the first morning.
8:57
Speaker 2: She was so enthusiastic. I mean she was running really
9:00
Speaker 2: really well for about seventy meters and that was it,
9:04
Speaker 2: and we were running downhill, but she couldn't run any further.
9:07
Speaker 2: I'm not laughing, I'm not laughing.
9:09
Speaker 3: I bet no, because this is a little bit of daja,
9:12
Speaker 3: but it wasn't running. But I remember my first ride
9:15
Speaker 3: with you.
9:16
Speaker 2: Oh you're going to make me look really bad now,
9:18
Speaker 2: aren't you.
9:20
Speaker 3: And you just you kind of looked at me and
9:24
Speaker 3: here I was.
9:25
Speaker 1: I was.
9:26
Speaker 3: My heart rate I think was through the roof. I
9:29
Speaker 3: felt like I was going to have a heart attack.
9:30
Speaker 3: I was working so hard, and you kind of looked
9:32
Speaker 3: over at me and you said, do you think that
9:34
Speaker 3: you could ride just a little bit faster?
9:36
Speaker 2: Quick? Dangine. To just finish this story, After we'd been
9:40
Speaker 2: for a handful of rides and your fitness was starting
9:42
Speaker 2: to improve, we went for a ride. We were living
9:44
Speaker 2: in the Illawarra in the Woollongong region at the time,
9:48
Speaker 2: and we went for a ride from our house in
9:50
Speaker 2: for people who know the area, from a house in
9:52
Speaker 2: Victory down to Dapto and out the back there. And
9:54
Speaker 2: it was it was a cold morning. It was the
9:56
Speaker 2: middle of winter, and I'd given you all of my
9:58
Speaker 2: warm cycling gears so that you stayed nice and warm.
10:01
Speaker 2: But what I didn't realize is that you were already
10:03
Speaker 2: going to be warm because you were working hard. And
10:06
Speaker 2: when I ride next to you. I'm literally my heart
10:09
Speaker 2: rate is as low as it is, if not lower,
10:12
Speaker 2: when I'm walking, like it was that low. And so
10:14
Speaker 2: it was literally one degree celsius it was.
10:17
Speaker 3: And when we went down into the valley, I felt
10:20
Speaker 3: like we just walked into a freezer. It was so cold.
10:23
Speaker 2: And I'm wearing no gloves, no arm warmers and just
10:27
Speaker 2: lycra shorts and alycra jersey, and it was so cold.
10:30
Speaker 2: I was always crying. And you you've got the jacket
10:32
Speaker 2: on the gloves and the beanie and you've got the
10:34
Speaker 2: long legs and you are toasty warm, and you are
10:37
Speaker 2: working so hard, and here's me not working out at all,
10:40
Speaker 2: and it's just like it was so painful that I
10:43
Speaker 2: thought I if I could have cried, I would have,
10:45
Speaker 2: but my eyes were turning into icicles. Anyway, that's a
10:49
Speaker 2: long tangent. Let's come back to. So I'm running with
10:52
Speaker 2: our little one, and yeah, she runs about seventy meters
10:55
Speaker 2: downhill and then she's puffed out and she can't run anymore.
10:58
Speaker 2: And I've kind of looked at it. We were only
10:59
Speaker 2: running a one hundred meters to the park and back.
11:01
Speaker 2: It was going to be a one and a half
11:02
Speaker 2: k run, and I'm like, what do you mean? And
11:05
Speaker 2: I actually got really cross with her. I'm like, you've
11:07
Speaker 2: made me cancel my bike rides. You've made me miss
11:09
Speaker 2: out on my fitness experiences that I have so that
11:11
Speaker 2: I can spend this good quality time with you, daddy
11:14
Speaker 2: daughter time, helping you to get fit. And you're telling
11:17
Speaker 2: me that you're not prepared to run more than seventy meters,
11:19
Speaker 2: And I actually I got really impatient. I said, you're
11:22
Speaker 2: going to run. We're going to make you this time count.
11:24
Speaker 2: This is going to be high caller like high quality time.
11:28
Speaker 2: I mean, it sounds so ridiculous, but in the moment,
11:30
Speaker 2: you know, you're kind of emotional about it. You're like,
11:32
Speaker 2: what's going on here? Anyway?
11:34
Speaker 3: How good was the quality? It didn't go very well,
11:39
Speaker 3: feel the serenity.
11:40
Speaker 2: We didn't even make it to the park. We stopped
11:42
Speaker 2: about three hundred meters shy four hundred meters shy of
11:44
Speaker 2: the park, turned around. I tried to get it to
11:46
Speaker 2: run home. She wouldn't do it. We ended up walking.
11:48
Speaker 2: And what I thought in my mind was, well, if
11:51
Speaker 2: we're walking, I might as well make this just some
11:52
Speaker 2: nice daddy daughter time. But what came out of my
11:56
Speaker 2: mouth was, cheez, you're unfit. You've really got We've got
12:00
Speaker 2: a lot of work to do. If you're going to
12:01
Speaker 2: if you think this is what our morning is going
12:02
Speaker 2: to be like, you've got another thing like I was.
12:05
Speaker 2: I started to read it the Riot Act. I couldn't
12:07
Speaker 2: believe that I was and I know better. So anyway,
12:11
Speaker 2: the next day she was ready to go again, but
12:13
Speaker 2: she was pretty reluctant. She was really scared about what
12:16
Speaker 2: might happen. And I apologized to her. I said, it's
12:18
Speaker 2: going to be much better today. I've got a plan.
12:20
Speaker 2: We're going to run from this telegraph pole of that
12:22
Speaker 2: telegraph pole, so it's just literally one pole, and then
12:26
Speaker 2: we'll walk to the next one, and then we'll run
12:27
Speaker 2: to the next one.
12:28
Speaker 3: So what's that about? Twenty meters between the telegraph.
12:30
Speaker 2: Poles are about sort of eighty to one hundred meters
12:32
Speaker 2: apart or something like that. I reckon like they're reasonable distance.
12:35
Speaker 2: And for the next couple of weeks she's been doing that.
12:38
Speaker 2: We've been running one, walking one and we had this
12:42
Speaker 2: really awesome experience on our run earlier this week where
12:46
Speaker 2: she looked at me and she said Dad, I'm going
12:49
Speaker 2: to start doing two poles. And then when we got
12:52
Speaker 2: to the base of a hill. There's one hill that
12:53
Speaker 2: we run up. It's probably about four telegraph poles long, and.
12:57
Speaker 3: She's a tough one though. It's got a good kick.
12:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty tough hill. And she said, I'm
13:01
Speaker 2: going to run the whole hill, and she did, and
13:03
Speaker 2: she was so stoked. And then just in the last
13:06
Speaker 2: couple of days, she was running around the house with
13:08
Speaker 2: one of her sisters and as she ran past me,
13:09
Speaker 2: she stopped and she said, Dad, I feel so much
13:12
Speaker 2: more agile now that I'm running with you every day
13:14
Speaker 2: or every other day or whatever it is that we're doing.
13:16
Speaker 2: And I just thought that could have been catastrophic, Like
13:19
Speaker 2: I nearly blew it. Her fitness is really still quite low,
13:23
Speaker 2: but over the course of maybe three or four weeks,
13:25
Speaker 2: as we've been consistent with it, what's happened is she's
13:28
Speaker 2: got a newfound confidence and she's having these tiny wins
13:33
Speaker 2: and that little bit of progress, daily progress, having regular wins. Psychologically,
13:38
Speaker 2: the research tells us this is one of the best
13:40
Speaker 2: ways that we can build a sense of confidence and
13:42
Speaker 2: mastery and resilience and confidence that the tough Up Princess
13:46
Speaker 2: Act doesn't work. It reduces resilience. But what we've done
13:50
Speaker 2: is we've had little win and then a little win,
13:52
Speaker 2: and each day she's motivated to push herself a bit further.
13:55
Speaker 3: And well, she's so motivated, she's the one who's waking
13:57
Speaker 3: us up. She's literally knocking on our door at five
14:00
Speaker 3: point thirty.
14:02
Speaker 2: We don't leave for fifteen minutes. What are you doing anyway?
14:06
Speaker 2: That's that's why I'll do better tomorrow, because I mean,
14:08
Speaker 2: I really, if I'm honest, I really blew it. But
14:11
Speaker 2: I feel like we were able to rescue it, the
14:15
Speaker 2: two of us. We stayed true to the course and
14:17
Speaker 2: we we're having some really great outcomes now. So I'm
14:21
Speaker 2: feeling like we're doing better tomorrow and it's something that
14:24
Speaker 2: we can take with us moving forward as well. Well.
14:26
Speaker 3: Thanks for sharing that story. That was really cool. I'm
14:29
Speaker 3: loving watching as our daughter just you know, gets this
14:32
Speaker 3: new found confidence. It's so great to see. If you're
14:35
Speaker 3: enjoying our podcast.
14:37
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14:39
Speaker 2: You looked at me like, hang on, you say that,
14:41
Speaker 2: not me. You're like, I don't know what to say next.
14:43
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14:45
Speaker 2: We love those five star ratings. They help other people
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Speaker 2: to find the podcast and make their families happier. The
14:51
Speaker 2: Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from Bridge
14:55
Speaker 2: Media and Craig Bruce is our executive producer. If you'd
14:59
Speaker 2: like more information about it, how to make your family happier,
15:01
Speaker 2: how to go for better quality runs, or how to
15:05
Speaker 2: have better conversations on long road trips, you can visit
15:08
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15:10
Speaker 2: a Happy Family's member and make your family happier today,
15:13
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