How Do I Create A Deep Life With Kids?

00:00:00.000 | Kayla, all right, Kayla says,

00:00:02.800 | "I was wondering if you'd speak about

00:00:04.700 | "how you've applied deep life concepts to time with kids.

00:00:09.520 | "We have five kids from seven months to 12 years,

00:00:13.180 | "and I've chosen to only work part-time for now,

00:00:15.200 | "which means I am actively parenting

00:00:17.200 | "from one to 8 p.m. most days."

00:00:19.500 | Put a pin in that, I have a question about that.

00:00:21.860 | But let's keep rolling for now,

00:00:23.160 | but I think Laura has a question about that too.

00:00:24.780 | "Time with them can easily feel reactive and unstructured.

00:00:27.460 | "I don't wanna create too much structure

00:00:28.900 | "because with all the moving parts,

00:00:30.380 | "I imagine that would only lead to frustration,

00:00:32.220 | "but I also feel that there could be more intentionality

00:00:36.240 | "in the way that I spend time with them."

00:00:38.380 | Oh, this is kind of interesting.

00:00:39.400 | Okay, so deep life, Laura,

00:00:40.620 | I use this phrase on my podcast a lot,

00:00:44.340 | being intentional about the different aspects of your life.

00:00:46.420 | So I guess she's wondering about

00:00:48.280 | how do you do that with kids?

00:00:53.000 | Now, how close is this range to yours, by the way?

00:00:55.100 | Do you have four kids or five kids?

00:00:56.700 | - Four kids, me, like three years ago, roughly.

00:00:59.780 | - Oh, your oldest is 16 now.

00:01:01.620 | - My oldest is 16 now.

00:01:02.460 | He just turned 16, and my youngest is three.

00:01:05.860 | - And your oldest watches the youngest,

00:01:08.420 | that's how it works, right?

00:01:09.260 | So your oldest just watches all the other kids,

00:01:10.800 | and that's how that works?

00:01:12.420 | Isn't that how it works?

00:01:13.260 | - No, well, he can, he can, and he does some.

00:01:17.020 | But I try not to hit my kids up for too much babysitting

00:01:21.660 | when they have other things that they would like

00:01:23.500 | to be doing with their time, like studying and such.

00:01:26.100 | But, you know, it's a lot of kids.

00:01:30.380 | (laughs)

00:01:31.220 | It is a lot of kids when you have five of them.

00:01:33.580 | I totally love this question, though,

00:01:35.720 | because she's correct that time with children

00:01:37.700 | often does feel very reactive,

00:01:40.620 | and even if you do have routines,

00:01:42.460 | it can feel very unstructured at times.

00:01:44.540 | And in many cases, it doesn't feel particularly enjoyable.

00:01:49.300 | And clearly, she's chosen to work part-time

00:01:51.620 | because she wants to spend more time with her kids,

00:01:54.300 | and yet it can feel like that's not the good part of the day

00:01:58.940 | because, I mean, partly the kids have their own things

00:02:01.660 | going on, and, you know, five kids can be pretty chaotic.

00:02:05.860 | But I think approaching this

00:02:07.900 | with some amount of intentionality,

00:02:09.740 | and this goes for anyone,

00:02:10.860 | and sort of those hours after work and before bed.

00:02:13.260 | Like, I feel like these are the hardest hours

00:02:15.220 | to use well in our lives, because we're tired,

00:02:19.380 | we're all there, like we all need to get through

00:02:22.740 | to the end of the day, and it could be a really cool time,

00:02:25.960 | but in many cases, it just isn't.

00:02:27.760 | But being somewhat intentional about it,

00:02:31.100 | like saying, you know, what is some little adventure

00:02:34.060 | we could have today?

00:02:35.660 | Like, what would I like to have done with a kid

00:02:38.220 | or some number of kids by the end of the day?

00:02:41.260 | And it can be simple, it's just like, okay, well,

00:02:43.460 | you know, before we pick up the big kids at school,

00:02:45.660 | we're gonna go to the library and get these books

00:02:48.040 | from this author that I learned was really good,

00:02:50.140 | and then we're going to read those at night.

00:02:52.220 | That's my intention for today.

00:02:54.140 | And that would probably make it a better day

00:02:56.540 | than if you didn't have that intention,

00:02:58.560 | or I've looked at the weather, and, you know,

00:03:01.060 | Thursday and Friday are going to be great,

00:03:02.820 | so when we pick up the big kids at school,

00:03:04.140 | we're all going to, you know, go to this playground,

00:03:06.420 | and the 12-year-old can, you know, go read

00:03:08.300 | or do whatever the 12-year-old does

00:03:09.980 | and ignore the rest of us, and then, you know,

00:03:11.860 | the rest of us will play on the playground,

00:03:13.580 | and I've invited this other family to join us,

00:03:15.420 | and that's gonna make it more enjoyable for me

00:03:17.420 | and for everyone else.

00:03:19.180 | Yeah, just thinking it through like that

00:03:22.220 | allows the time to feel like it's possible to enjoy it

00:03:26.780 | as opposed to just, like, dealing with whatever crisis

00:03:29.340 | arises in the moment.

00:03:31.180 | - I like that.

00:03:32.840 | The other thing I noticed here,

00:03:34.420 | this 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. caught my attention

00:03:37.420 | because parenting multiple kids,

00:03:39.300 | especially if there's a seven-month involved,

00:03:41.140 | is as draining as any job you're doing

00:03:44.100 | maybe outside of if you're actively on, like,

00:03:47.300 | a SEAL team rescue mission, right?

00:03:49.260 | I mean, it is very draining.

00:03:50.700 | So if you're working a job till one

00:03:53.140 | and then you're taking the kids from one to eight,

00:03:54.940 | I'm gonna guess, I don't know the context,

00:03:56.940 | but I'm guessing Caleb maybe has a partner that says,

00:03:59.300 | "Well, great, since you're now home with the kids

00:04:02.540 | "in the afternoon, I can work till,

00:04:04.280 | "I have a hard job and I can work till eight."

00:04:06.260 | So the way I would see this then is you have two parents

00:04:08.340 | who have jobs that you're working until 8 p.m.,

00:04:12.940 | and when you see that situation,

00:04:14.140 | okay, we have two very high power,

00:04:15.740 | like jobs that require that much work,

00:04:18.400 | almost always the answer is you are gonna have

00:04:20.380 | to bring in outside guns to help with that, right?

00:04:23.700 | This is the two law partner parents, the two executives.

00:04:26.700 | There's a lot of households like this

00:04:29.000 | around where I live in D.C.

00:04:30.880 | They end up having huge amounts of support for that.

00:04:33.940 | They have night nurses with the young babies.

00:04:36.660 | They have nannies to pick people up from school

00:04:39.500 | and take them there.

00:04:40.340 | They have coverage in the evening.

00:04:41.940 | I didn't know about, I don't know if you know

00:04:43.180 | about these evening nannies, you know about this,

00:04:46.360 | where you have one nanny that is during the day

00:04:49.420 | and then you switch to another nanny who comes at four

00:04:52.100 | to make the meals and deal with the kids or whatever.

00:04:54.220 | It's what you do when you have spouses

00:04:58.520 | that both work jobs that require this much time.

00:05:01.380 | So that's the other thing that occurred to me.

00:05:03.900 | It's like, well, you're working a very, very long hour job

00:05:06.960 | and it sounds like perhaps your partner is too.

00:05:11.000 | You have to acknowledge how hard that is

00:05:12.960 | and is that really sustainable without either a lot of help

00:05:16.120 | or maybe saying maybe you shouldn't be working

00:05:19.960 | to your partner till eight every day.

00:05:21.860 | If that might not be necessary,

00:05:25.620 | he might just be thinking, oh, this is great.

00:05:27.160 | We don't have to worry about childcare.

00:05:28.480 | There's always someone here,

00:05:29.480 | so I can just spend time at the office or do whatever.

00:05:32.600 | I don't know, the 8 p.m. caught my attention.

00:05:34.480 | - Yeah, well, he could, I mean,

00:05:36.160 | or maybe they're both there, who knows?

00:05:37.520 | I mean, but yeah, if he's working late every night,

00:05:39.520 | I would certainly say you might wanna bring in

00:05:41.640 | a little bit of reinforcements to help you with this

00:05:44.040 | and if he has the option of not doing that,

00:05:45.960 | again, we do the thing where each partner

00:05:47.240 | gets one night off, right?

00:05:48.080 | - Do that more clearly, yeah.

00:05:48.920 | - So Tuesday, he's home at five

00:05:50.760 | and you go off and do your thing

00:05:52.040 | and then obviously you're on till eight

00:05:54.480 | the other nights anyway,

00:05:55.320 | so he can do his thing if he wants to as well.

00:05:57.880 | And one thing with five kids

00:06:00.480 | is it's a lot for one individual anyway.

00:06:03.600 | If you think about the staffing ratio in a daycare,

00:06:07.880 | they don't let you have more than four babies per adult

00:06:11.600 | and there's something to be said for that.

00:06:14.360 | Granted, they've got older kids,

00:06:15.760 | so I'm sure it's not quite the same,

00:06:17.720 | but if you have multiple little ones,

00:06:20.200 | one thing that actually I've found

00:06:21.520 | makes parenting more pleasant

00:06:23.000 | is actually getting to interact with the older kids

00:06:25.000 | and so sometimes I have time that I am not working

00:06:29.480 | but if my husband is gone or something like that,

00:06:31.680 | I'll have a sitter for the younger kids

00:06:34.400 | and so then I can go do stuff with the big ones

00:06:37.240 | and that can allow for a lot more enjoyment of this time

00:06:41.440 | 'cause then you're doing something

00:06:42.480 | that let's say you've got a 12 year old

00:06:44.120 | and a nine year old and a seven year old,

00:06:46.040 | that you could do something

00:06:46.880 | that the three of them might want to do

00:06:48.880 | and go to one of those bouncy house places

00:06:51.160 | or a roller rink or I don't know,

00:06:53.540 | go see a soccer team play or something,

00:06:55.200 | but you could do that

00:06:56.840 | and then you're not miserable

00:06:58.440 | chasing around a two year old and carrying your infant.

00:07:02.360 | I mean, that just makes everything so much harder.

00:07:06.580 | So you might find somebody who,

00:07:09.080 | you're there with the little ones

00:07:10.360 | from one to the time the big kids get home

00:07:12.940 | and then you have somebody else come help

00:07:14.560 | a couple days a week from, I don't know, three to six

00:07:17.960 | and then you can go do things with the big kids

00:07:20.080 | and that might help a lot as well.

00:07:22.220 | - I'm a big believer in that.

00:07:23.960 | My wife and I figured that out a few years ago too.

00:07:25.800 | If someone is traveling,

00:07:27.300 | immediately like great, we're getting babysitters

00:07:30.400 | and for exactly that purpose for,

00:07:31.720 | okay, so I can take an older kid to do something

00:07:33.200 | or just have time for herself or time for myself

00:07:37.740 | to go do things where you don't have to be,

00:07:40.420 | it takes a little while to figure that out,

00:07:41.760 | but that goes really well.

00:07:44.060 | Also figuring out who the high school kids are

00:07:45.900 | in your neighborhood, who are, especially the seniors

00:07:49.740 | who are starting to worry about money

00:07:51.440 | when they go to college the next year

00:07:53.180 | and just, we've done this so many times,

00:07:54.900 | setting something up like, yeah,

00:07:56.000 | like a couple afternoons a week,

00:07:57.620 | just come over and take the five year old

00:08:00.620 | or the four year old and go do things with them.

00:08:03.260 | And it really makes a difference.

00:08:04.840 | And I think people don't always think about it

00:08:06.480 | 'cause they say, well, why would I have someone

00:08:09.080 | come into my house if I'm here?

00:08:10.960 | And that's like a block people have,

00:08:13.160 | but it's a one to get past.

00:08:15.160 | - Definitely, definitely.

00:08:16.800 | (upbeat music)

00:08:19.380 | (upbeat music)

How Do I Create A Deep Life With Kids?

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