Managing expectations, releasing mom guilt and having the summer YOU want to have

[00:00:00] Alison: Hello, hello and welcome to the show. So we are in the middle of summer. This episode is, I'm recording it in May because I'm trying to give myself a break, but I still wanna give you guys an episode every week. So I am pre-recording. A bunch of episodes. So that while I'm taking a break, you guys still have content trying to be consistent for you because I know that that is very important.

[00:00:30] Alison: So I'm recording this in May. It is not gonna come out until July. But what I wanted to share with you is so as I'm recording this, we just finished Mother's Day and I saw, and I know that I've experienced two, but I saw a lot of moms on, in the mom's groups that I'm like the local moms groups that I'm part of on Facebook.

[00:00:55] Alison: Book. There's a lot of moms that were really disappointed that really had their feelings hurt just let down and mother's Day not living up to whatever expectations that they might have had in their head. And and this kind of goes into the summer as well. So this is, so this is what I wanted to say about that.

[00:01:19] Alison: Again, I know this is coming out in July, but I'm, it's timely in my head because I'm recording it the week after, the week after Mother's Day. But here's the thing and I've learned this the hard way. Is that you really have to communicate with your spouse what your expectations are. And, and, and I know that that kind of sounds bad.

[00:01:41] Alison: Like these are my expectations for Mother's Day. You shall do blah, blah, blah. No, that's, that's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is this is what in my head, Like my dream Mother's Day, this is what it would look like. And so take some time and think about what that would be for you, right? What does that look like for you?

[00:02:02] Alison: And then from that, you can share that with your significant other, Hey, my dream Mother's Day would look like this, da da da da da da da da da. And, and here's the thing. So I, I had a conversation with Michael about this cuz we've str, we've struggled with this for so long, is I had that mentality of. You know, he should know, right?

[00:02:26] Alison: We've been together for, we've been together for so long. We've been together for almost 30 years, like a long time. We've been married for, it'll be 21 this summer, but it's, we've been, we've been together for a long time. I'm like, he should know. Like, he should know what I like, what I don't like, and all, all the things.

[00:02:43] Alison: Right? And, and to some extent, I mean, he does. He really does. But when I told him, because this is, this is what I saw a lot of people. A lot of people, a lot of moms saying was that they don't want to plan their own Mother's day. And so I had a conversation with Michael about that. I'm like, you should see all of this stuff that I'm reading.

[00:03:07] Alison: And I said, but I get it because, and I said, you do the same thing. You're like, so what do you wanna do for Mother's Day? And my initial reaction is, not plan it. You know? And he's like, yeah, but I'm not asking you to plan it. I'm asking you like, what would your ideal day be?

[00:03:25] Alison: And then he's like, I can pick from that a couple. You know, what I wanna do with it. But just some idea of what you wanna do. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. So maybe. If this is something that you struggle with, maybe looking at it from that lens of, okay, what would my dream day be?

[00:03:41] Alison: Sharing that with your family and then letting the cards fall right where they might. Okay. So, so that's kind of a, a little, a little tangent about Mother's Day, just because it's timely. What, I'm recording this, but parlaying that into the summer. I wanna give you permission to. Do what you want to do and to check your mom guilt at the door.

[00:04:11] Alison: Because here's the other thing that I saw over, over over Mother's Day weekend is a lot of people were asking do you wanna spend Mother's Day with your kids? Do you wanna be by yourself? What, how do you feel? And. The majority of people were like, oh, I love my kids. I wanna spend time with my kids.

[00:04:32] Alison: And I, I was reading that and I was like, well, geez. So then, Am I a crappy mom if I don't want to be with my kids? I'd rather, I'd rather just have quiet, like, does that make me a bad mom? Like, what, what, what's going on here? And I feel like we do that stuff to ourselves, and not just with, with that specifically, but I feel like the summer too, right?

[00:04:53] Alison: Because you have those moms and and I've, I've met a couple of them. That are like, I love my kids and I can't wait to spend all day, every day over the summer with them. And we're gonna have so many things and I just love them and I love being with them and all the things. And that's fantastic for you.

[00:05:12] Alison: Right? But that might not be your reality. That is not my reality. I love my kids. I love my girls. I like spending time with them. I also enjoy quiet. I enjoy being by myself. I enjoy Quiet, let's just be honest. They're loud. Unless they're having their iPad time, they are loud, they've got music on, they are playing with each other.

[00:05:42] Alison: They're whatever like they're being kids, which is fine, but it's loud and I really like quiet, so I do like spending time with my kids, but I also want quiet time, so I wanna just give you permission. To be you and to do what you wanna do and what works for your family. And maybe you've spent the entire year running your heney off and you're so tired.

[00:06:08] Alison: And now here comes the summer and what are you gonna do with your kids? And oh, so and so has got 'em in this camp and they need to go here and they, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, nope, nope, nope. You should sit down. With yourself and your kids if you wanna include them in this process. I did. And I'm like, what do you want our summer to look like?

[00:06:28] Alison: What do you wanna do? What are some things you wanna do? And and my girls are 10 and 11, they wanna go to the pool. And they wanna go to trampoline parks. There's a couple different trampoline parks around us. They wanna do that. That's what they wanna do. That's pretty much it. I'm like, all right. Okay. Well that's easy.

[00:06:44] Alison: And then I was meeting with a she's a, she's a retired middle spouse. Actually. She was on the show previously, and she does. She's a time management coach, and I met with her about just had like a consultation about time management and how to, you know, mark out your days and da da da da da.

[00:07:05] Alison: And so we're doing this and this was like, you know, a couple of months before school's supposed to get out. And I'm like, well, yeah, this is gonna be good for when the girls are in school, but when the girls aren't in school and they're home for the summer, then, you know, It all goes the hell in a hand basket and she's like, well, it doesn't have to.

[00:07:22] Alison: You can still have a schedule over the summer and not to be like, we will wake up at this time and we will go here and like super rigid, but just have an idea of how your days are gonna go. And honestly for us this summer is gonna be a little bit different than last summer because I'm teaching classes now at the rec center, and so I've got classes multiple times a week in the morning.

[00:07:43] Alison: So I am gonna be doing that for, you know, it's not gonna be, let's okay sleep until however you wanna sleep in and do all these things right. But it's, it's kind of giving yourself a loose framework to a loose framework to work inside. And it's just having intention. Right? And so your intention for the summer, Might be just to get through.

[00:08:08] Alison: Right. And that's okay. That's okay. It might be to you know, we spent last summer especially, oh my gosh, we like our Colorado bucket list. I was like, we gotta go. I don't know how long we're gonna be here for. Like, we gotta check this stuff off. And we did a ton of stuff. But the problem that we have over the summer here is that it gets hot.

[00:08:30] Alison: It get, and it gets hot real fast. So, so the Denver area is high desert, which I didn't realize this when we moved here. We came from Washington State. I'm like, oh, we're going from mountains to mountains. It'll be great. No, no, no, no, no. The Rockies are here. You can see them. Yeah. But not the Denver metro area.

[00:08:52] Alison: Is high desert. There's a lot of brown. There's not a lot of green. It's very, very sparse. There's not a lot of trees and woods and forests and things like that, and I was not expecting that. And then the other thing, because of this high desert, it gets hot fast. Like if it's, if the high is gonna be like 85, 90, That's the temperature.

[00:09:11] Alison: It is by like 8:00 AM 9:00 AM So if you wanna get up and go do something, you gotta get up and go like early, like six, 7:00 AM I'm, that's not my jam. Especially over the summer. So we kind of got stuck a little bit last summer because I was like, well, geez, I don't wanna go on this hike and I don't wanna do this stuff.

[00:09:30] Alison: It's already, you know, 85, 90 degrees outside. I don't, I'm not, some people like that. I do not like that, which is why Florida was one of my least favorite duty stations because it's flaming hot most of the time, not a big fan. So so we kind of had to adjust fire without a good bit. And then we are slated to move summer of 24, so next summer we'll be moving, we think.

[00:09:54] Alison: And don't have any idea where we're going yet, but so I'm like, okay, I, we made this goal. That we wanted to try and do as many state parks as we could while we're here, but we really have to adjust that because in like once you get into June and July and August, it's hot here and it's not ideal time, especially because it's so exposed.

[00:10:19] Alison: So you don't have trees to walk in and shade to walk in. Like if you wanna go on a hike or whatever, everything's out and exposed. It's just, it's just not enjoyable. She's gonna have to adjust fire. But just, you know, coming into. Okay, so let's, let's like wrap it all up with a little bow. So here we go.

[00:10:37] Alison: Manage your expectations and have your own of, of how you want your summer to be. And don't let anybody else dictate what you want it to look like. Like it's your time and it, you should spend it how you want to. Right? And it might be, Taking your kids to the pool every day and let them play in the pool, and you're sitting on the side of the pool reading a book that you really like or I whatever.

[00:11:03] Alison: Like it does it. Whatever you wanna do, right? But I'm giving you permission. To have your summer. And not that I need to give you permission, but sometimes it's, you know, good to hear you. Right? I don't have to do what the neighbor's doing, or I don't have to feel peer pressure to have my kids in all of these camps and stuff like that.

[00:11:24] Alison: They do. You know, like, I don't know about you guys, but my kids, they're doing it. They're gonna do a couple art. Things at a local like ceramic studio. They have a couple of different just, it's just like a short morning thing, like a couple hours and they do like a project cuz my girls love art.

[00:11:39] Alison: Other than that, that's all that they're doing because they, the prices holy crow are insane. It's like hundreds of dollars. Per kid for a week, and I'm like, holy, I just, I'm not, I'm not interested in spending. We sent the girls to a horseback riding camp last summer for a week and it's, it was almost $500 each.

[00:12:04] Alison: And I'm like, how? , this is insane. How are people putting their kids in camps on a weekly basis? Maybe it's just here. I don't know. But I was like, Uhuh, we ain't doing that. So, Just take a moment and think about what you want your summer to look like. And it might be just survive it, right? I don't know.

[00:12:26] Alison: But what also, what are some things that are important to you that help you get through your day? For me, It is a little bit of quiet in the morning and being able to do a meditation write in my journal, have that time, so I've gotta figure out what time I'm telling the girls they're allowed to get out of their bed and so I can get up before them and make that happen.

[00:12:49] Alison: The other thing that's really important to me is exercise. If I don't work out, I've just trained my body that way. And, and it, it's not gonna start out that way for you, but I mean, I, it's been like, I'm going on 10 years now of like hardcore fitness and I work out if I go more than two days without working out, I.

[00:13:10] Alison: I notice a marked difference in how I feel and how I cope with situation. It's not, it's not good. It's not good for anybody. It's not good for my mental health. It's not good for how my interactions with my family and the people that I love. So that is really important to me. So I make that a priority, especially over the summer.

[00:13:30] Alison: And I don't know what it looks like for you, but for me, I need to get my workout done early because if I don't get it done ki before lunch, then it's probably not gonna happen. That's just me. So look, you, you know yourself, right? Better than anybody else. How can you set yourself up for success and then you know, if, if that is something that's important to you?

[00:13:52] Alison: I have a gym in my house so I can work out here, so that makes it a lot easier. And you might not have that. You might have a facility that you need to go to. And that's okay too because most of those facilities hopefully have childcare. So, you know, maybe that's something that you look for as you're if you're looking for a place to work out and to be able to exercise, if you set that goal for yourself.

[00:14:15] Alison: Find a facility that has childcare so that you can at least take that away as a barrier. And then, you know, sit down with your kids. Don't ask your kids whatever you, whatever you wanna do. But like, what, what do you wanna do? Like, what do you wanna do this summer? What do you want it to look like?

[00:14:31] Alison: What are some things, we always call it our bucket list, like what's our summer bucket list? Because they're very familiar with the bucket list. We've talked about, I've talked about it on the show many times. That is, One of our major coping mechanisms for when we're gonna PCs is we are going to a new place.

[00:14:46] Alison: What can we look forward to? And that really helps in that transition process.

[00:14:51] Alison: So doing that for yourself, so they're familiar with the bucket list process. So we do that for the summer as well. What are things that we wanna do? What's our summer bucket list? And then and then go from there. Okay. So that was it. It was really manage your expectations and don't feel like you have to do what everybody else is doing, and.

[00:15:14] Alison: And I don't want you to feel guilty for not, maybe not enjoying spending every waking moment with your children and. You can't wait to plan activities and be with them from six o'clock in the morning until they go to bed at night. And so excited to get up and do the same thing the next day. I mean, you know, again, for some people that's their jam.

[00:15:34] Alison: For others of us, like myself, not so much. No, no, no. I need, I need quiet. I want time to myself as well. And then the other part too, to kind of factor into that is , we did an episode the first week in June of how to avoid. The summer slide.

[00:15:53] Alison: Right. Especially if you're PCSing. And so this last year from third to fourth grade for Sophia, she really declined a lot. And so I'm being very, very, very mindful of how can we help them. Not do that this summer. So I have already asked her teachers for, again, I'm recording this in May. I've already asked her teachers to give me some stuff over the summer that we can work on.

[00:16:19] Alison: We're gonna make sure that we prioritize reading together and multiplication facts. Keeping it simple. Cuz again, it's the summer. I don't, they need a break. I need a break. Everybody needs a break. But it, we could still take. 30 or 45 minutes every day. Let's go through some flashcards. Let's read together for about 20 minutes and then move on.

[00:16:38] Alison: You know, but just making sure that that's a priority too. So anywho, okay. That's all I got for you today. I'll talk to you again soon.