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Speaker 3Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 11, and today I'm talking about the secrets to a happy family. Now I'm going to be upfront here. There is no. There is no such thing as a perfectly happy family. That's just not reality. What I am going to talk about are the key components that I think we need to master to make family life as harmonious as we can possibly make it. And the biggest secret is about managing our own expectations. Just like the perfect parent is a myth designed to make us constantly chastise ourselves for never living up to the ideal, the perfect family is also a myth. Family life can and is. is chaotic. We can sometimes not particularly like our children or even our lives very much. But by following some simple principles, we can give ourselves the best chance of happiness and contentment for all. So this is a huge area, a huge topic that we could cover. And for me, there are three core sort of important aspects to cover. And those are going to be the bits I'm going to look at within the podcast. So we're going to look at sibling relationships. We're going to look at roles. We're going to look at roles within the family. And we're going to look at communication. So let's dive in with sibling relationships, because I think this by far is the aspect of family life which can bring about probably the largest amount of stress and upset. So let's start with some myth-busting facts. The first of which is that siblings will argue. It's normal. They're fighting for a limited resource, which is your time and attention. When my children were younger, my mother used to look after them when I was studying for my doctorate. And when I came back to collect them from her house each time, she'd always tell me how they'd been behaving perfectly until I showed up. And the reality is they probably were, but they hadn't seen me all day. And so obviously they were then niggly with each other and being particularly challenging. So it's normal for these things to happen. And it will be the same. It's the same reason for you and your children too. Myth number two is that siblings will always compare themselves to each other, regardless of how much you desperately try to treat them equally. Now, there'll be more about that later. We've all heard those words, you love Sophie, Charles, Becky, Bea more than me. And more on that one later too. But in lots of ways, as we compare ourselves as adults to our parents, to our peers, and our children do that too, our family, our siblings, are people that we are constantly around. So that comparison is real. And it also has a big impact on sibling relationships and roles. And we'll cover that one in a little while. Myth number three is siblings do not have to like each other. So please, please, can we stop the whole, you need to love your brother or sister, they'll always be there for you. Goodness me, do you not remember that from when you were younger? My mother used to say it all the time. They don't need to like each other at all. They just need to treat each other respectfully and within the framework of the values you raise your children with in your home. This doesn't mean that you'll end up raising children who hate each other. But I think we have to come away from this notion when we communicate with our children and when we're dealing with sibling, that it is absolutely imperative that our children like each other. They don't have to like each other, but they have to treat each other with respect and within the values that you raise your children. And then the final myth, when it comes to sibling arguments, the biggest problem is us. Yeah, you heard me right. Our interference, our involvement causes the most problems. And we will definitely talk about that shortly. That's definite. So I want to go back, first of all, to this notion of equality. As parents, we are desperate to make sure that we treat our children equally. And this, I think, is where we often go wrong. We see our children all go through different stages and have different needs. When our children are just babies, we're constantly feeding them, changing nappies, taking, you know, they take up a huge amount of our time. Yet as teens, they don't necessarily have the time to do that. They don't necessarily demand that same level of constant attention in that them being reliant on us. And so we're often wracked with guilt because we feel we don't spend the right amount of time with each child. And that can sometimes be an age thing and it can sometimes be a developmental thing or a period of time that your children are going through. So maybe one of your children seems to take up all your time because they worry and you're constantly needing to give them attention because you're coercing and encouraging them. Or maybe they need us to do everything with them because they're worried. Or maybe they're lacking in confidence for some reason. I want to challenge you to change your way of thinking and the way that you communicate with your children and ask you to focus on need and not equality. So rather than thinking or even talking to our children using the language of equality, let's change the narrative to needs and differences. So we might say to one of our children, I love you because we share a passion for, we both love trying new recipes, even if they don't always work. Rather than what we usually say, which is I love you all equally. When we get asked that question of who do you love more. When we change our narrative to one of needs, so we've talked about differences. So rather than saying we love all of our children equally, we can talk about the differences about why we particularly like spending time with one child because we love doing cooking with them and another child because they share our passion for writing and writing. We're doing bicycles or jumping on a trampoline or reading books or watching a particular television programme. So we can use that when we're talking about differences. But when we're often, I guess, really dealing with the day-to-day things, I want us to change our narrative to one of needs. So we might say, I know it feels as though I'm always with your sister or brother and you don't get much of your time. Your sister is very young and needs me to help her eat, go to the toilet, just as you did. When you were her age. We get our special time at bedtime when we cuddle for stories because you love me reading to you. Rather than necessarily trying to spend equal amounts of time with each child and then feeling guilty. It's changing that narrative in our own mind, but also changing the narrative of what we say to our children. And the difference might seem subtle, but it's an important distinction. Our children go through different life stages and they need our time with them. They need our time and attention at different stages. Trying to split our time equally sets us up to fail each and every time. When we focus on need instead, we help our children understand that when they need us, we're going to be there for them. But the landscape within the family in terms of where our time goes is constantly changing, constantly evolving and isn't meant to be equally split, but meant to be as a parent, we're responsible, responding to time. So that's a simple way that we can change narrative and that generally sets us up and sets the scene a little bit better. But now I want to talk about what happens when our children argue because we know that this is something that's going to happen, it's normal, they're vying for attention but they're also vying for their position within the family. Our children have different personalities and we're going to talk about roles in a minute but I really want to talk about the four golden rules of sibling arguments and I want to expand on this because it might change, it might be radically different from what you're currently doing. So we've all been there, the house, it's a school holiday day maybe or it's a weekend and we're in the middle of something in the kitchen maybe, we hear voices raised then there's that almighty scream from a child and they come and then you hear that pitter-patter and they're all racing to see you. You've got one child in tears trying to tell you what their brother or sister did and then the other sibling is trying to explain why they didn't do anything and it was all their fault and if you've got three children then they're also trying to tell the story. So we've all been there where this has happened and these are the kind of those golden rules and the first is so crucial. Do not never ever ever referee your children's arguments. It ends up with you taking sides and you get the inevitable, they're more than me comments. So let me talk to you about what I mean very specifically here. The scenario I just painted for you and I described for you is probably where most of the issues come from and these are situations where our children are playing outside, inside or wherever they might be but we have not seen anything. We may have heard voices, we know our children, we know which one's likely to have instigated things but we have not seen it. So what happens typically is they come in, we hear the story from one child, the other child tells us a different story and we're caught in limbo land. We haven't seen it, we are going on the witness testimony of two highly emotional children and we're having to make a decision as to which child is telling the truth, which one isn't and let's face it, we don't always tell the truth. We paint a picture that tries to minimise our involvement and that's where the problems occur. So in any scenario where your children have argued and you have not seen what has happened, you cannot pass judgment and you should not pass judgment. It's so important, even though you might know that one child is probably more likely to have caused the argument or has lashed out, you just can't do that. It's different if it's an argument that you have borne witness to and you manage that in the same way, as you might do with typical consequences. You know, I saw that you pushed your brother and we don't lay hands on each other in this house. That is not appropriate and the consequence for that is you need to make good, for example. But when you haven't seen it, ultimately you are going to take sides. So in that situation, it's about damage limitations, about accepting, you know, clearly there's been something has gone wrong and we've got upset. Trying, minimise the situation in terms of taking care of each child. So just simply saying clearly something's happened. We're all very upset. I think maybe now we just need to give ourselves a bit of distance and a bit of time. If you've got a child that's physically injured, deal with that. If you've got a child that's upset, deal with that. But really try and create some space in that moment rather than taking sides and then later get them back together. And I'm going to talk to you about a good way of sort of just generally beginning to try and make some changes around sibling arguments. But don't referee arguments that you haven't seen. Golden rule step two is do step in when you hear raised voices to try and avoid things escalating and separate them if necessary. So we can't interfere when an argument has taken place and we've got the tears and the tantrums afterwards. But I would highly, highly encourage you to begin to step in when you know, and we all know for our families, when noise levels are beginning to get to that point where there is a possibility that there could be an argument. So what I want you to do is step into a room and say, I can hear that voices are getting a bit raised. It doesn't sound like we're having a huge amount of fun and being able to negotiate with each other. What I suggest is that we maybe just go off and do something different for a little while and then we'll come back together. Sophie, actually, I could really do with you helping me with this. Could you come here and Johnny, could you go and do that for me? That would be amazing. And then maybe we'll all come back again in a little while. Something like that. It's not about going in in that exasperated way and like, oh my goodness, I cannot believe the pair of you are arguing so much. That's it, out, separate rooms, you know, get away from each other. It's not that, it's just simply us interjecting when we can, and being honest, I can hear that things are getting raised. It doesn't really a happy time. I think it might be a good idea if we just take a bit of time to do something separately for a little bit. And then in almost in a distracted way, well, why don't you come with me actually? Cause I wanted you to help me with this. And why don't you do that for me? So you're trying to help them in that moment. Now I know that some of you may well be saying, goodness me, Mary Han, do you not understand how busy I am? I can't keep stepping in every time the voices are raised. And in fact, the voices are raised all of the time. My honest answer to you is you will spend dealing with the fallout of the arguments. Then you will do investing in doing tasks or making, you know, positioning things in such a way that you can just keep an ear out for what's happening. I understand the realities of parenting. I understand that we're being pulled in multiple directions, but I can genuinely and with all honesty tell you that the investment that you place now in the prevention and the problem solving, the less issues you have. And ultimately you will spend more of your day refereeing, resolving arguments than you will do if you step in earlier. And it just changes the atmosphere in the house from one way you literally in your head at your thinking, I cannot believe that my children are arguing so much. This can't possibly be normal to actually coming at things from a space of there being much more calm. So that is golden. Golden rule number two. Golden rule number three is do encourage your children to problem solve. It helps them to negotiate with friends too. It helps them create boundaries so that we do these sorts of ideas about sharing. Sometimes, you know, our children don't necessarily need to share. If they have some particularly precious toys or precious things to them, then that's where they can negotiate boundaries of this particular Lego set is really important. It was given to me for my birthday. It's really special. So I keep it in my bedroom and playing with it is by, you know, a consensual agreement, whereas other things they learn to share.
Speaker 1It's really special. So I keep it in my bedroom and playing with it is by,
Speaker 3That's growtherapy.com. So do encourage your children to properly donate. And use language such as, I have every faith that you can sort this out between you, rather than getting sucked in and constantly asking one child to make sure they share with another. Encourage them to problem solve these are skills that go beyond the family and sibling dynamic and actually set them up in terms of their friendships and life skills and then the fourth rule really goes back to what we spoke about just before which is do not get sucked into the trap of equal instead focus on needs and differences because this all feeds into this whole idea about sibling arguments so if children if you're getting arguments or getting comments around this idea that you always spend time with this child or you love them more than me focus on this idea that you love your children in different ways because you share equal different passions with them and you love different qualities of about them so that's the differences and that your time is apportioned based on need and so that kind of addresses those so that's what to do in the heat of the moment but let's go back to what we might do if we've there's been a big argument we've consoled the children that have need that consolation we've taken the heat out of it i do think it's really important and this also comes up in our final comment later on about communication but i do think it is important that we don't just kind of stick a sticky plaster on the whole sibling thing and think thank goodness we've managed to avert that particular problem and then just wish that the next day is going to be better i think this is really important to talk openly with our children about some of these challenges so when the heat is out of an argument when there is a neutral safe happy space have a conversation with your children and my go-to always for those of you who've known me long enough and those who are new to me i'm going to introduce it to you is that we start off the conversation with i've noticed that i've noticed that during the day there always seems to be a lot of arguments about what we're i've noticed that uh at play when we're playing in the playroom that we're not always great at sharing our toys i've noticed that so it's that whole idea of it's not finger pointing it's not accusatory it's simply an observation i've noticed that this happens and i know that it usually leads to arguments and everyone gets upset and i know everybody doesn't like feeling that way afterwards so what i wondered was what can we do together i thought we could have a chat about how we could make it easier to share the toys make it easier to work out who's going to watch what on television and when so we're noticing it's an observation we're highlighting what we think the issue is and how that usually results not only in the children getting upset but maybe you shouting or getting angry and then you feel rubbish too and then acknowledging that that's not the way that you all want things to be and then posing the problem what do you think we can do how do you think we can resolve this how can we avoid having arguments all the time about what who's going to be on the ipad and who's not who's going to watch what on television who's going to share toys or whatever it might be whatever seems to be the issues you can use that for everything and then encourage your children to problem solve and avoid getting stuck in yourself and offering suggestions leave a slight awkward pause if need be encourage your children to think through what could happen differently what could you try it's not about being right or wrong it's simply saying look we've got this bit of an issue how do you think we could make it better what could we try what's everyone going to commit to trying and then let's catch up and check in and find out how that worked another time so i'm hoping that that helps you because i know that siblings is a big that whole sibling relationship is a big big part of really the secrets to a happy family because they have such a big impact the next one falls naturally from this it's this idea about roles within the family now i have talked before about the fact that we as parents take on many roles parent being just one of them for example you know we might be mother sister daughter employer employee friend etc but when we're talking about the secrets of a happy family i want to talk about the more subtle nuanced roles we take on within our family such as confidant peacemaker moderator fixer this is how our families see us and these roles themselves begin to become part of who we are from very very early on in childhood now you know i've been very open about the fact that i'm a people-pleasing middle child i have an older brother and a younger sister and you know i've always been helpful that sort of chameleon slightly different but i've always been helpful and i've always been helpful constantly changing myself so that i don't upset anybody adapting to different situations so at home when we were growing up and we were children i ended up with the role of the good girl at home you know much to my poor sister's annoyance as you know i wasn't always a good girl there were times where i was mischievous and and naughty and adventurous i just simply didn't get caught but it's really important that we remember this because the roles that our children end up with that might be inadvertently created can have huge monumentally large repercussions so we need to be mindful of what we might say to reinforce or create roles which our children cannot get themselves out of so maybe we might joke that our child is messy unreliable lazy a daydreamer a fidget yeah so i just want to want us to think about these roles that we might inadvertently create and sometimes they're subtle they can come from grandparents that have made comments or they can even come from our children's friends but they can have a huge and quite profound effect on our children particularly when we think of this in the context of siblings so we do as i said before as siblings we constantly compare ourselves and what you can sometimes find when we're looking at sibling arguments is that you can find that some of the challenging behavior that you get between siblings can sometimes be that one child views their role in a it sees themselves as the lazy unreliable messy sees themselves within a very much a negative light but they perceive and it's really important when we talked about anxiety we talked about this as well but all of this stuff to do with roles and siblings is all to do with how we perceive ourselves and our position within the family but we can perceive that a sibling seems to have things easy they're confident they seem to make friends really easily you know they don't get stressed about anything so often when we see issues with sibling arguments it can be around the roles that our children believe that they have and it may be that they view themselves as the worrier oh my little worry you're always worrying about things you don't need to worry everything's going to be fine but if that's a child who's worried about things you don't need to worry about things you don't need to worry about things you don't need to worry about things you don't need to worry about things who worries and then they see a sibling who always in their mind seems to be laughing and easygoing then that is bound to create some friction and is bound to over emphasize the role that they're the one that seems to always have the problems but their sibling doesn't so we need to be really mindful and i would encourage you after you've listened to this podcast to maybe spend a bit of time and think about what roles actually are have you know what roles do you have as an adult when you i mean i don't know about you but when we were going back home even in our sort of 20s 30s but even once we were married and had children my brother and sister and i we would literally it's almost like we stepped in through the front door back home and we just instantly went back to those roles that we had when we were children so it's thinking through it if you are if you have siblings what were the roles that you had within your family is that really you and what roles can you bring and what roles can you bring you begin to see are beginning to take shape for your children are they helpful are they inhibiting your child's growth and then if that's the case it's thinking through right how can i create opportunities for my children to see themselves in a different light so if you have a child who might inadvertently you've joked about how messy they are how lazy they are how unreliable they are or whatever it might be try and create opportunities for them to step in and see themselves in a different way give them opportunities be mindful of the language that you use because roles can play a huge huge part in the dynamics around a happy family so that's roles and then the final one that i want to talk about is communication because in my view communication is key to a happy family if you don't communicate regularly things get unsaid emotions go and you find yourselves as a family growing apart becoming resentful and i'm a huge advocate of regular sunday family meetings now before you think that's not for you let me tell you why i think it's key what tends to happen is we live our lives in autopilot not because we're lazy but because it's easy habits we do things the same thing day in day out and if we're honest days and months can go by where before we really get a chance to really catch up scheduling a regular catch up with your family means not only do you catch up with your children but you also get to catch up with your partner about how you're both parenting how many times have we found ourselves resent you know resentful and feeling that resentment building up because we feel we're handling everything and our partner seems to be clueless or we don't feel we're parenting consistently or we don't feel they're being empathetic so these are the sorts of things that we avoid by having these regular sunday meetings because the idea of them is simply to catch up on what's happened so it's not a meeting with minutes and documentation but it's simply a reflection on the week that's been and these can this can be particularly useful in the school summer holidays but also during term time so it's you know hey guys how how do the how do we think the week went what worked last week and what didn't so maybe if it's a school week it might be didn't really work well when we had swimming after school and we had a pat lunch because we were still hungry when we got home for example or maybe the pat lunch did help and it meant that when we got home we got time to play but it could be in the summer holidays that it might be that it didn't work particularly because you had some work that you needed to do and the children were constantly interrupting you so they didn't have something that occupied them while you were doing your work so it's a reflection on the week that has been what's worked what hasn't and then looking forward to the week ahead so this is what's coming up we're going to go and see granny we're going to be in the car for four hours so what are we going to do about entertaining ourselves because we know that long car journey can be super boring what are you going to take in your bags to make sure that you don't feel quite as bored for example or it might be the week coming up i'm going to be at work for two days and you're going to a holiday camp or you're going to spend time with grandparents or you're going to go to friends what might we need to organize and prepare and get ready for that or i might be doing some work from home and i need peace and quiet between these times what are you going to do to entertain yourselves so that's really the idea it's about catching up checking on what's what what's happened the week before what's worked what hasn't but encouraging your children and your family to work together to problem solve the week ahead where are the challenges where might the problems be what can we do to start setting that up because a lot of these things particularly around if we're occupied with other things and we're working or we're distracted because we've got various different jobs that we need to do by communicating with our children in advance and problem solving and getting them involved in working out what's going to happen and understanding what's happening it makes the sort of the idea about sibling arguments so much more that much less likely to happen because we're planning we're getting them to think it's all part of a collective together checking in and what you can also use the fact that we're all part of a collective family meetings for is for having those moments of look i've noticed bedtime's got a bit out of control we're going to bed really really late and there's lots of in and out of bedrooms and we're just not getting up to bed as we're supposed to let's let's cut i thought it'd be a really good idea if we can talk about how we might make bedtimes better because mummy and daddy end up getting really cross you get upset and it's not the kind of atmosphere we want or it might say i've noticed that there's not a lot of helping around the house and when we're asking you to pick plates after you've eaten and put them in the dishwasher we're getting a lot of frustration from you and and answering back that you don't want to do it whatever it might be you've got a natural forum that you would do that it happens every single week it's not meant to take ages in a really informal way it's just that opportunity to connect and what you do in terms of keeping your you and your partner on the same parenting page is that before you sit down with the children you can catch up you can say look i've noticed that billy's been really very emotional this last week and i don't you know bedtime's been a real struggle i've noticed that he's been particularly niggly with his sister or whatever that might be you just have that opportunity to connect with each other and then you can spot issues more quickly then you're working together then you can agree how are we going to manage billy's emotions in those moments what do we think he needs how might we need to change during the week so it really allows you to connect and communication is just so key and it avoids resentment building up it avoids frustration building up and from your children's perspective it is a guaranteed time of the week where you all get to be together and check in and whether you do that you know after you've eaten your lunch on a sunday whether you do that before a family movie it's up to you whether you don't even do it on a sunday you do it on a wednesday it's up to you when you do it so it's a guaranteed time of the week where you all get to be together and check in and but it is such a valuable regular habit to do that so often with these things you're no longer then firefighting but you're actually putting things in place in advance and that will help with a lot of these things dissipating and if you're not entirely convinced then try it try it a couple of times see what happens you may get a bit of resistance because whenever we try new things our family are going to resist but just explain it's just i want to catch up with everybody i make sure that we know what our plans are for the cut the week ahead and how we can make sure everyone has a great week so i hope that you have found that a useful start to creating a happy family and an environment where everybody feels heard and happy if you would like the free resources then hop over to drmaryhand.com forward slash library pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to this week's resources about the four golden rules of sibling arguments but also all the other resources across all the other podcasts and as ever if you have enjoyed this episode i'd love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time blood donation is now
Speaker 2more inclusive more lgbtq plus individuals are able to donate blood with the american red cross due to fda guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation the red cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood there's a place for everyone in the mission of the red cross including you the red cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply join us and help save lives to learn more and make your appointment to donate blood visit red cross blood.org lgbtq that's red cross blood.org lgbtq
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