Hitting the Pause Button on Unrealistic Expectations

Affiliate Note: Amazon book recommendations use affiliate links, which means I (Tara) get a small commission from the sale of each book. 

As you may or may not know I took a bit of an unplanned break from podcasting back in December. When I first started this podcast I never really thought about weekly podcast potentially meaning creating content to for 52 weeks a year. One of the fun facts you learn owning a small business is there is no real on and off switch unless you make one and doing that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

As part of that break I re-evaluated my relationships with social media, did some deep digging into some research on tech overwhelm/addiction and then as an extension of that I shared my take on marketing and parenting advice from my experience building this brand. All of those lessons can be found in episodes 29 through 31.

Owning a small business in the digital space has taught me a lot about a lot of things and I continue to re-evaluate and build my awareness of how I want to participate as well as how I am modelling my choices with my middle school children. One of my personal takeaways from the last three years is that I’ve learned how I can support my children in this new way of living and building relationships and what media and communication looks like for them and how very different it is from the way I grew up or even taught in. Ultimately it helps me be a better parent, but it also makes it hard to be a parent right now.

As part of this process I not only rely on my experience building Raising Resilient Children, but I also believe in doing research that looks at both ends of the spectrum. Learning from privacy and safety experts like Paul Davis, but also from people like Dr. Devorah Heitner who advocates for parenting digital relationships built on mentoring versus monitoring. It would be irresponsible of me if I didn’t also investigate the real problems of screen addiction, focus challenges and mental health. One of the biggest takeaways in that space was from a book called Attention Deficit: How Technology Has Hijacked Our Ability to Concentrate by Stuart Kallen. There was some real aha moments around shifting between screens and reality. I shared this quote on IG a couple months ago and it was one of my most widely shared posts.

“Mindless smartphone use is more than a harmless distraction. Researchers call it a brain drain. A 2017 study by the University of California, Irvine, revealed that it takes an average of twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds for a person to refocus after a distraction caused by a digital device. In other words, when someone wants to take just thirty seconds to check his or her Instagram feed, he or she is actually going to waste more than twenty minutes. In addition to lowering productivity, the study showed that attention distraction can increase stress and put users in a bad mood. Even if a device is turned off but sitting within reach, it causes distraction.”

That’s intense, but the book also talked about the idea that our brains are amazing and adaptable, but right now we are struggling because we haven’t evolved to handle all the things happening. I feel like the last 3 years were a crash course in digital mental capacity to see what we could tolerate and what we cannot. I’m try to be more mindful of this as I navigate my paths and set an example for my children.

Although technology isn’t going anywhere, I do think we have to be super intentional about the balance we strike with it. This does put me more on team kids don’t need a whole bunch of it in the early years to be competitive or understand how it works. They aren’t missing out on anything except building some essential social emotional skills and the ability to navigate things like boredom and independent play with a growth mindset. We tend over compensate for children in some areas and under-compensate in others. But heading into adolescence and beyond this needs to look very different and that’s the space where I’m currently existing as a parent. As a parent consultant my work spans early years through pre-teen/early teen so I need to have a decent handle on the different layers to provide insights.

Something I have long held to be the theme in my parenting is, build a strong foundation early so that every year I can step further and further back from being the stronghold to being the support. I’m not going anywhere, but relying on my experience having worked with a lot of different ages and stages, by the time you reach pre-teen/teen you want to be in a position where you are loosening up versus tightening up. This can help you with your tech decisions too. This is not screen shaming, this is making a point about our relationships with screens and a notable pattern in children who are struggling with their social emotional skills because they rely on instant gratification, struggle with boredom or boring tasks and simply don’t play or move their bodies enough. It’s about striking the right kinds of balances by putting some thinking into what your goals are. It’s also about recognizing your role as mentor and guide versus friend. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, go check it out! Episode 30: Foster the Relationship You Want With Your Child While Creating the Boundaries You Need.

So this spring I’ve been doing a deep dive into my role as mentor and guide for my children while also reflecting on my role as a small business owner. This has lead me into doing some reflecting on topics like hustle culture, the value of time, the expectations of women in business and a whole array of other valuable life lessons.

Part of these lessons came from some new opportunities where I was forced out of my comfort zone in a really positive way. Growth comes from pushing boundaries and sometimes that involves pushing through some discomfort. Again, a great lesson to share as a real-life parenting example of bravery, discomfort, building resilience to get through challenges and so on. I’ve also been continuing to reflect on what matters to me and why I do what I do.

Everyone consistently tells me they are strapped for time, but do we really not have time or are we just so used to filling it up we don’t know it’s even there. I took a deep dive into this on Episode 31: Stress, Burnout and the Rediscovery of Time I Thought I Didn’t Have.

One of the things I do when I work 1:1 with clients who are facing a tricky or overwhelming situation is something I call routine reset. I did an episode on this back in January for creating routines with your children, but I wanted to dig in from a different perspective today because I know it’s a helpful approach.

One of the things many parents face in tackling challenges is that all the decision making you do is often on the spot. Literally this means you have to make them within seconds or minutes at most. The hardest part is that often those decisions are influenced by other factors, usually ones you can’t control in the moment. And some of those factors are imagined or out of proportion because you aren’t able to think about them clearly. Think about the last time your child woke up in the middle of the night or you were trying to get out the door later than planned. Your focus is on the lack of sleep you and your child are getting, the lateness, which then leads to overwhelming feelings of stress that end up triggering your Dino brain. If you are wondering ‘what is Dino brain’ check out episodes 38 and 40…. Or grab my picture book The Adventures of Team Brain.

So how do we more effectively tackle challenges or problem solve. We pause long enough to create an action plan. If you are in a parenting relationship, that means pausing to communicate about next steps, about how to handle some of the tricky patterns that are emerging. I do this with partners because often there is a layer of conflict that makes it harder to move through the problem solving with an actionable solution and having the objective insight is valuable. I also do this with single parents for similar reasons. It’s hard to make decisions when you are all the things.

What does this approach do? It gives you clear steps for making less layered decisions in stressful moments. It also helps you focus on what is causing the behaviour and solve it. Bedtime is never about bed or sleep, it’s always about something else. Getting out the door is never about timers or time, it’s always about missing transitional cues, skills that aren’t mastered to a level they can be applied in rushed moments or unmet needs (logical or illogical).

So, I’ve had a feeling for a couple weeks now that I’ve pushed aside because of the unwritten rules of commitment and consistency. The pressure of my own professionalism, but just like those middle of the night decisions or get out the door while running late, I’m realizing this is a terrible strategy, so I think it’s time for me to hit that pause button on some of the layers of my business because I’ve found myself caught in a snowball again and it’s hard to break habits. Really hard. I talked about this in episode 36: How Long do parents have to try things before they work?

One of the things I need to take a short break from is the podcast. It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 months of weekly shows and nearly a year of podcasting. I really hope you’ve been enjoying them. But I’m also taking the learning from my research about social media and technology, my lessons from hustle culture and unrealistic business expectations with my own practice of routine resets to more effectively tackle challenges.

I don’t want to podcast just because I am suppose to. I want to podcast because I’m creating valuable content that you are interested in hearing. I truly enjoy doing this, but I also want to recognize the online space is shifting, I’m doing more in person things and this podcast is only one of the ways I give back to the community. I’m not paid to do this and most episodes take me hours to draft, record and edit the transcripts for. I need to evaluate how I’m using my time, how much time I spend on content that has become an unwritten expectation of small businesses, especially ones owned by female identifying owners.

When you build a small business without a pre-existing network you are repeatedly told you need to show up to prove your expertise. So I need to hit that pause button because I need to stop and create a better action plan moving forward. One built on intention and authenticity. Will I continue with weekly or shift to bi-weekly? I don’t know yet. I am not tossing in the towel, but I’m also not allowing the snowball to dictate how I do things. This is what I want to teach my children as they move into a world filled with technology, where we have too many tabs open in our brain and sometimes we allow external forces to dictate what appears to be success versus what actually makes you successful. I’m not an expert because I’m insta-famous or run a podcast I’m proud of. I’m an expert because I’ve worked with kids and families for a really long time and I’m a social scientist so I’m committed to constantly evolving and growing and researching best practices. The world is changing. We cannot change that fact, but I want to make sure I’m making decisions because they are important decisions to make, not because I’m distracted by unwritten expectations.

So until I figure out my plan, there are 42 Episodes of the Raising Resilient Children with Tara Gratto podcast on topics ranging from social emotional skill development to how choices might be making your parenting harder to rethinking what success looks like in this rapidly changing world.

Before I sign out, I’d love to hear from you.

What do you love about the podcast? What would you like to see? What are your favourite topics? Least favourite? Drop me a comment at taragratto.ca/podcast.

At the time of this recording the top 5 episodes are:

What Does Raising Resilient Children Mean? 

Giving Children More Choices Might Make Your Power Struggles Worse 

Parenting, Stress & Burnout: The rediscovery of time I thought I didn't have! 

Rethinking Clutter to Handle the Stress of Kid’s Mess with Tara Stewart

Foster the Relationship You Want With Your Child While Creating the Boundaries You Need. 

I shared some other ideas throughout this episode.

So for now, I’m hitting the pause button for a couple weeks, just long enough for me to create an action plan for what I want this to look like moving forward. Talk soon!