Summer With Teens: The Tools Helping Me Right Now

Hi there. Welcome back to The Teenage Guide Podcast. I'm Ashley Chandler, your host and founder of The Teenage Guide and evil eye. I'm really into evil eyes. Can you see that? Yeah. I'm warding evil spirits away. It must be my Greek heritage that is nonexistent. Let's dive in. So I am living and breathing being a parent of a teenager and a tween inside my own life. As many of you know. And I love to talk about the inner work, the relationships, all of that— very important. And at the same time, I think it's really important to give you some actionable tools that you can use right away. So in today's episode, I wanted to share 3 really invaluable tools that I'm using in my personal and my professional life that are making the beginnings of summer feel lighter, more manageable, more fun. They're relieving some stress and pressure because we all know that summer months can mean like 10 times the mess, 10 times the grocery bill, being more of a taxi driver. It's still a mental load, right? And a physical load, emotional load, et cetera. So these are 3 tools that I'm using in home life with my own teenagers and family and professionally that I wanted to share with you today in hopes that they would relieve some stress and pressure from your life. So let's get into it. Hi, I'm Ashley Chandler, here to guide you to the soul-to-system support you both need to thrive from the inside out. This is The Teenage Guide Podcast. Tool number 1 is Claude. Yes, Claude is AI, and I've talked about AI a little bit before and how I am using it professionally and personally. I talked about it in my workshop that I did, the May Reset, throughout May. I will say that we are living in interesting times, right? The data centers, the pollution, all of the negative effects, the environmental impacts. I am keenly aware of all of those and paying close attention and have largely, not that I'm never on ChatGPT, but I'm keenly aware of the differences between an ethical AI model and something that's not as ethical, right? Something that an AI company that is making conscious choices and how they want to improve humanity and make living in this world of AI better from the inside out, and companies that don't really care about that. They don't have a conscience, so to speak. It's all about the bottom line. And so, I think it's important to bring that up. I'm keenly aware of, you know, all the layers of AI, and I'm researching and learning about them all myself all the time. And at the same time, I'm not an expert in AI, but I will tell you that Claude is making a very real difference in my life. With Claude, and I'll link it in the show notes, you can sync it with your email, your, for example, I sync it with my Gmail. I sync it with my Google Drives, all my Google Docs, sync it with other sort of apps and ways to streamline. So I can go into Claude and type in some instructions, some prompts, and I can get— I'm getting my meal plans done, my grocery list done. It's helping me brainstorm ideas about landscaping and gardening, pulling up research from the internet to help streamline that process. I am using it for other research things in my business. I use it to brainstorm ideas, and I never take it at face value and say, yes, that's perfect, right? AI is very imperfect. However, what I am noticing is a significant impact in the amount of time and energy that I used to spend in brainpower in doing all those things. And I don't know about you, but midlife woman over here, and my hormones are also changing, and sometimes I feel like I have brain fog, and we're all managing so many things. That I'm loving the use of AI to cut that time and energy in half, give me time and energy back so that I can be more present when I'm making dinner. And I'm not, you know, with my head in my phone doing this. Or if I've got a long to-do list, I'm not stressing because we don't have groceries, or if I'm not doing the right thing on the home front, or, you know, in my business or something. So it's really been a game changer for me, and I've been using it for the last 3+ months, and I can tell a huge difference. So again, I will link that in the show notes. I am not sponsored by Claude. All the things I'm listing today— if you want to be a sponsor of me, let's talk. But no, I don't have any sponsors yet. So just know I'm not making any money off of these recommendations. All right, let's move on to tool number 2. The summer menu. All right. The summer menu, tool number 2. So I know this is a universal challenge for parents, and I have experimented with so many things when it comes to my own kids. And again, I have a teenager and I have a tween. So having them home for the summer is a different set of circumstances, right? They don't wanna be in camps all summer. They both are like yin-yang with their interests. So that's in the back of my mind in terms of setting up our summer. And at the same time, it's very important to me and my husband that we make sure that they're teaching or they're learning new skills around managing money and contributing to the house. Now I'm not perfect about this. It's not like my house is spotless, but a lot of clutter actually gives me anxiety and I don't like it. I don't like to have things in the dishwasher and piles everywhere, right? People need to clean up after themselves. I know you know what I'm talking about. So it's just like opportunity for like quadruple the mess. And I don't want to feel like a nag always being like, pick up after yourself. Who got this dish out? Who got this mustard bottle out? What are— these crumbs are still on the counter, right? That gets very old and I do not want to be put in that position. Or, okay, you sleep till noon. No, I'm not going to take you to the mall and then give you $50 to go shop. So we've got these really kind of real challenges. Like they need to build some life skills. They need to know the value of a dollar. I also want them to be well-rounded, right? Like slothing around, I'm all for it. I can be ultimate sloth sometimes. And if we're slothing around the majority of the time with our face in the screens, this is no good. And I know all of you probably listening feel the same way. And so the summer menu has proven To be a great addition in our house. And it goes hand in hand with the final tool I'm going to share. So the summer menu I've broken up into categories of play, indoor and outdoor work, service, movement, creativity, like theater, art, music, crafting, whatever. Again, this is not my idea. I actually got the summer menu idea. On Pinterest, I think. And then I just created my own. So the summer menu is essentially like pieces of paper with these categories and options. And it's like, oh, it has a little ring in it and the kids can look at it. And then they've got their chart on the fridge where they can track it. It's not through an app. I'm sure there are many apps that gamify in a technological way, the exact same thing. For me, I wanted to make it more tactile and tangible and not buy another app where my kids' faces in a screen. So every day they are responsible for choosing 5 things from the summer menu, 5 things. And on there is hanging out with friends. They need to move their body every day. They need to contribute to the house in some way. So they get to choose what that is. This is a really prime example that speaks to teens. When it comes to boundaries with our teens, I highly suggest you have like non-negotiable boundaries. And those are typically around wellness and safety and negotiable boundaries, which is like choice in time or self-expression, fashion. There's certain things that are kind of negotiable, right? We don't wanna pick those battles. It's just a lost cause with a teenager. We want them to build the skills. That's non-negotiable. We want them to— Take care of, learn, know how to take care of themselves, know how to be compassionate, caring, kind people, and be of service, right? So they get to pick 5 things at their choice, doing the menu non-negotiable. The choices that they can make inside that menu, negotiable. They keep track of it. And then tool number 3 is in conjunction with this. And tool number 3 is Acorns, and it's a money app. And what I love about Acorns is it teaches the power of investing small change, acorns to grow your oak tree. And it teaches the power of a single dollar. I've actually used it for myself because it's cool. It connects with different companies, tons of companies, Michaels, Amazon, Costco, like every online, every time you can shop online, It can connect with that. So if you spend $27.19, it says one around your spare change. So please don't make me do math, but that spare change in $27.19, it will round up to $28. Those of you that are really great at math are laughing at me right now. And that spare change is then invested or automatically saved or gone into a different kind of an account. So that's been a really amazing tool that I'm experimenting with my kids, right now. And so far it's really great because it's automated too. So when they get their 5 things from the summer menu, whatever that is, and they can add options to it too, right? If the options on the menu are not things they would want to do, there's creativity in that. That's where the choice for them comes in. But then it's automated that they get a certain amount of money in their Acorns account and it comes with a bank card that then they can keep track of. And they are automatically building their savings and they're automatically learning how to invest. That piece of it is a little bit more gamified and affiliated with technology. Again, I am not sponsored by Acorns. Give me a call, Acorns. But if you have a kid who responds really well to gamification, right? They want to keep it up. There's tons of ways they can learn about all of this that kind of outsources that education. So you don't feel like you're the nag telling them about the power of compound interest. or saving if they don't receive that from you, but then they can learn and they've got all these different ways to access the good financial literacy through the app and they can educate themselves and automatically they are responsible for certain things that they buy and other things my husband and I pay for, but it helps them start to track their spending and their money in a kind of like low-stakes way, right? So I wanted to share these 3 tips because they really are making a big impact in our lives right now. Let me repeat them. We've got Claude AI, we've got the Summer Menu, and then we've got Acorns money app. So I'll link all those in the show notes. I hope this episode was useful for you. I trust it was in some way, shape, or form, and I'm so grateful that you're here with me. Remember, never underestimate the power that you have as the parent. I know you have limited time and energy, so thank you for being here and kudos to you for investing this time in yourself and your team. If you enjoyed this episode, please continue the ripple effect and like, subscribe, review, and/or share with a fellow parent who could benefit so more people can find my content. Remember, the number one way that you have influence in your teen or your young adult's life is in your relationships with yourself and them. So never doubt how much power you have because you are the teenage guide too.