Kayla, all right, Kayla says, "I was wondering if you'd speak about "how you've applied deep life concepts to time with kids. "We have five kids from seven months to 12 years, "and I've chosen to only work part-time for now, "which means I am actively parenting "from one to 8 p.m.

most days." Put a pin in that, I have a question about that. But let's keep rolling for now, but I think Laura has a question about that too. "Time with them can easily feel reactive and unstructured. "I don't wanna create too much structure "because with all the moving parts, "I imagine that would only lead to frustration, "but I also feel that there could be more intentionality "in the way that I spend time with them." Oh, this is kind of interesting.

Okay, so deep life, Laura, I use this phrase on my podcast a lot, being intentional about the different aspects of your life. So I guess she's wondering about how do you do that with kids? Now, how close is this range to yours, by the way? Do you have four kids or five kids?

- Four kids, me, like three years ago, roughly. - Oh, your oldest is 16 now. - My oldest is 16 now. He just turned 16, and my youngest is three. - And your oldest watches the youngest, that's how it works, right? So your oldest just watches all the other kids, and that's how that works?

Isn't that how it works? - No, well, he can, he can, and he does some. But I try not to hit my kids up for too much babysitting when they have other things that they would like to be doing with their time, like studying and such. But, you know, it's a lot of kids.

(laughs) It is a lot of kids when you have five of them. I totally love this question, though, because she's correct that time with children often does feel very reactive, and even if you do have routines, it can feel very unstructured at times. And in many cases, it doesn't feel particularly enjoyable.

And clearly, she's chosen to work part-time because she wants to spend more time with her kids, and yet it can feel like that's not the good part of the day because, I mean, partly the kids have their own things going on, and, you know, five kids can be pretty chaotic.

But I think approaching this with some amount of intentionality, and this goes for anyone, and sort of those hours after work and before bed. Like, I feel like these are the hardest hours to use well in our lives, because we're tired, we're all there, like we all need to get through to the end of the day, and it could be a really cool time, but in many cases, it just isn't.

But being somewhat intentional about it, like saying, you know, what is some little adventure we could have today? Like, what would I like to have done with a kid or some number of kids by the end of the day? And it can be simple, it's just like, okay, well, you know, before we pick up the big kids at school, we're gonna go to the library and get these books from this author that I learned was really good, and then we're going to read those at night.

That's my intention for today. And that would probably make it a better day than if you didn't have that intention, or I've looked at the weather, and, you know, Thursday and Friday are going to be great, so when we pick up the big kids at school, we're all going to, you know, go to this playground, and the 12-year-old can, you know, go read or do whatever the 12-year-old does and ignore the rest of us, and then, you know, the rest of us will play on the playground, and I've invited this other family to join us, and that's gonna make it more enjoyable for me and for everyone else.

Yeah, just thinking it through like that allows the time to feel like it's possible to enjoy it as opposed to just, like, dealing with whatever crisis arises in the moment. - I like that. The other thing I noticed here, this 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. caught my attention because parenting multiple kids, especially if there's a seven-month involved, is as draining as any job you're doing maybe outside of if you're actively on, like, a SEAL team rescue mission, right?

I mean, it is very draining. So if you're working a job till one and then you're taking the kids from one to eight, I'm gonna guess, I don't know the context, but I'm guessing Caleb maybe has a partner that says, "Well, great, since you're now home with the kids "in the afternoon, I can work till, "I have a hard job and I can work till eight." So the way I would see this then is you have two parents who have jobs that you're working until 8 p.m., and when you see that situation, okay, we have two very high power, like jobs that require that much work, almost always the answer is you are gonna have to bring in outside guns to help with that, right?

This is the two law partner parents, the two executives. There's a lot of households like this around where I live in D.C. They end up having huge amounts of support for that. They have night nurses with the young babies. They have nannies to pick people up from school and take them there.

They have coverage in the evening. I didn't know about, I don't know if you know about these evening nannies, you know about this, where you have one nanny that is during the day and then you switch to another nanny who comes at four to make the meals and deal with the kids or whatever.

It's what you do when you have spouses that both work jobs that require this much time. So that's the other thing that occurred to me. It's like, well, you're working a very, very long hour job and it sounds like perhaps your partner is too. You have to acknowledge how hard that is and is that really sustainable without either a lot of help or maybe saying maybe you shouldn't be working to your partner till eight every day.

If that might not be necessary, he might just be thinking, oh, this is great. We don't have to worry about childcare. There's always someone here, so I can just spend time at the office or do whatever. I don't know, the 8 p.m. caught my attention. - Yeah, well, he could, I mean, or maybe they're both there, who knows?

I mean, but yeah, if he's working late every night, I would certainly say you might wanna bring in a little bit of reinforcements to help you with this and if he has the option of not doing that, again, we do the thing where each partner gets one night off, right?

- Do that more clearly, yeah. - So Tuesday, he's home at five and you go off and do your thing and then obviously you're on till eight the other nights anyway, so he can do his thing if he wants to as well. And one thing with five kids is it's a lot for one individual anyway.

If you think about the staffing ratio in a daycare, they don't let you have more than four babies per adult and there's something to be said for that. Granted, they've got older kids, so I'm sure it's not quite the same, but if you have multiple little ones, one thing that actually I've found makes parenting more pleasant is actually getting to interact with the older kids and so sometimes I have time that I am not working but if my husband is gone or something like that, I'll have a sitter for the younger kids and so then I can go do stuff with the big ones and that can allow for a lot more enjoyment of this time 'cause then you're doing something that let's say you've got a 12 year old and a nine year old and a seven year old, that you could do something that the three of them might want to do and go to one of those bouncy house places or a roller rink or I don't know, go see a soccer team play or something, but you could do that and then you're not miserable chasing around a two year old and carrying your infant.

I mean, that just makes everything so much harder. So you might find somebody who, you're there with the little ones from one to the time the big kids get home and then you have somebody else come help a couple days a week from, I don't know, three to six and then you can go do things with the big kids and that might help a lot as well.

- I'm a big believer in that. My wife and I figured that out a few years ago too. If someone is traveling, immediately like great, we're getting babysitters and for exactly that purpose for, okay, so I can take an older kid to do something or just have time for herself or time for myself to go do things where you don't have to be, it takes a little while to figure that out, but that goes really well.

Also figuring out who the high school kids are in your neighborhood, who are, especially the seniors who are starting to worry about money when they go to college the next year and just, we've done this so many times, setting something up like, yeah, like a couple afternoons a week, just come over and take the five year old or the four year old and go do things with them.

And it really makes a difference. And I think people don't always think about it 'cause they say, well, why would I have someone come into my house if I'm here? And that's like a block people have, but it's a one to get past. - Definitely, definitely. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)