Episode 278: Strong Family Project

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No need to whine and whine.

Welcome to the Winey Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am so excited to have Mel Hashi here with us today. Mel, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Oh, you're so welcome. Thanks so much for having me on.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about her. Her and her family are so fascinating to me. The Hashi family was living a normal life. What is normal, by the way? Everything. Ask her that. No, I'm kidding. Joe was a high school teacher and business owner. Mel was a former social worker turned stay-at-home mom of 3. So we had the same path, by the way. Then 2020 happened and turned their family upside down. They found themselves giving up their dream home and moving 2,000 2,000 miles away to a town where they didn't know anybody. It was the best thing that could have happened for their family. Joe and Mel used their experience to build the Strong Family Company framework that any family can use to establish values and stress-free family leadership. I am like so fascinated by this. So first of all, we're both social workers who became stay-at-home moms. Stay-at-home moms to our 3 kids. So we both did the same thing. So that's pretty cool. But I want to know, like, what inspired this big move? Like, what? Tell us about this.

Sure. So to give a little background, so Joe was a teacher for a while and then he started teaching and running the business, which started in our basement and ended up moving. Like, it's kind of funny because the way things happen for us, they happen real slow. Joe will have an idea and I'll think it's crazy and then we'll follow through with it and it'll be really great.

That sounds similar. Yeah.

So after a couple of those things happened, we ended up at what we thought was our dream home. And we, you know, life was good. We had our business open. Joe actually stopped teaching to run that full time. I was able to stay home with my boys and I have 3 boys, ages 5, 11, and 13. And then when 2020 happened and the lockdowns happened and, you know, you're in New York as well, there was pretty severe lockdowns, our gyms could not be open. We— there was also rent moratoriums, and we had a couple long-term rentals that we weren't getting any money from. And we went on a walk. So we do this every day, we try to go for a walk every day so we can stay connected. And my husband mentioned to me, he's like, hey, what if we moved? And I was like, what? That's just the craziest thing I ever heard. That's never something that I considered. I, I like my comfort zone of where I grew up. I have my parents here, you know, and in-laws to help out with the kids. Like, that was not something that we ever thought about. But honestly, once the wheels started turning in my head, I started to see that there's some opportunities here that I never would have considered. And honestly, the next morning, printed out a list of the 50 states and started to check off where we didn't want to go. And, um, one of the things we searched— I find this really funny— New York can be kind of gloomy and cloudy, and we literally searched where is the most sun in this country, and, uh, we landed in Colorado. So the inspiration It truly was finding in that chaos of 2020, we tried to find what do we have control over? We don't have control over reopening the company. We don't have control over the kids going back to school more than one day a week. So I actually homeschooled that year. Um, but this was something that we had control over. We could fly out and take this big leap of faith and we did. And we've never looked back, honestly.

I mean, that is so amazing to me. I, I relate to struggling with the gloom because, you know, I live in upstate New York. And so I want to hear, before we move on, I want to hear, like, what is the, what is the yearly weather like in Colorado?

Well, we have sun, I'd say, like 320 days of the year. There is some version of sun. So even if clouds, like today is actually one of the gloomy days. Isn't that ironic? Like there's no sun today, but at some point the day you will see sun, and it just— the snow melts much quicker because of that. So even if it— we get like 18 inches of snow, it's usually melted fairly quickly. But it really does make a difference to wake up to sun. I remember in New York, and I kind of feel bad saying this, but I'd wake up and if it was a sunny day, I was like super excited. Here, I expect— I expect it every morning, and it happens most of the time.

Oh my God, I totally understand everything you're saying. I would love to know, like, when did you realize this move was the best thing to happen to all of you?

Honestly, before we, before we moved, because my husband and I flew out. I had never been anywhere in the country that was west. Like, Ohio was the furthest I ever went. So we flew out here and we looked at a couple houses, and we put an offer on this house. And the day before we flew out, we went back and just drove by it and like, like just sat there in the road and looked at the house and said, we're really doing this. Like, I couldn't believe it. It was that like crystallizing moment where you're like, magic is going to happen here, but we just don't know how it's going to play out yet. So I think in that moment I knew that it was the right thing for our family. Now, not until we moved and the kids adjusted to life at school did I know that it was truly the right thing, because the kids really struggled in their— each in their own way about the move. But my oldest was pretty cool with it, actually. My middle son, um, was very displeased. Um, and I could tell you the story of that if you want to hear that. Maybe it would help to know.

Absolutely.

And I'll come back to that in one second. And then I have a 5-year-old who then was 2, so he wasn't truly aware of what we were doing. Yeah, but my middle son, he just got very upset and shut down and took it out on me. So as moms, and this happens to dads too, but oftentimes because they're so comfortable with us, they can show us truly how they're feeling. They can be really happy at school, but then at home they're like grumpy. So he wouldn't let me hug him. He wouldn't let me touch him. I couldn't say I love you to him. I would go to my husband because I told you we'd go on these walks every day, which allowed me to get it out of my system. So what I decided to do was I'm going to start writing him little notes and hiding them in his room just so he would know that I love you and I'm still connected to you and it's okay that you're upset. I'm not taking it personally, right? And initially when he would find them, he would just rip them to pieces.

Oh boy.

I can laugh about it now, but— and then eventually he would open it and like give me a little smile or he'd say, okay, Tonight you can hug me. And it was just that meeting him, it's like a social work concept, meeting them where they're at, right? Like he was struggling and he was really having a hard time with it, but I just, with time it worked itself out and now he loves it here. We chose this spot not just because of the sun, but because the, our values are more aligned with this area than in New York. So we're finding families that are more like us. He's loving soccer. He, I mean, they just adore living here.

Oh my gosh, we're going to come follow you. Don't worry, Mom. Don't worry. I'm kidding. I'm not going to move. Well, and you know, our parents are here, which is like really grounding for us. I think that's why one of the huge reasons why we stay here. I mean, how has your family adjusted to you guys moving?

It's a great question. That was the single most difficult piece of this process. So during the year process of selling our home and moving out here and homeschooling and all that, that was the one thing I kept coming back to and saying, but how can I do this to them? Right. And we really just ended up having conversations, my husband and I, about opportunity costs. If we stay, what are we giving up? If we go, what are we giving up? And it just was evident. It was evident for our particular situation that we needed to go. Honestly, what carried me through was that when my parents or my sister, they come out to visit, we have 100% quality time. So before, my— somebody told me this when I was moving, and it helped me to feel better. Before, she'd come over and she'd fold my laundry and like watch my baby, but we didn't truly have like quality time. It was more like housekeeping, you know. I appreciate it, and I completely understand, and I do miss that aspect of it because I have laundry sitting behind me right now. Um, uh, so it was a difficult— it was a blow for them for sure. However, now they get to come out and visit us. They get to see a different part of the country. Um, it's really exciting. And like I said, when they're here, we truly are spending all our time together. So it wasn't easy, but they also can't deny the opportunity that this has provided us. So they're, they're coming around. They, they have come around, I should say.

I'm so impressed with you. I want you to know that. I mean, it's huge, 2,000 miles away. Just wow. So I don't want to put you on the spot to have to remember all 7 elements, but you talk about the 7 Elements of the Strong Family Path. Can you talk about some of those? Because, um, I'm so curious.

Sure, of course. And a little background: this was not something that we like sat down and came up with and then implemented. This was something that we have come up with over the last 5, 6 years, and then people come visit us and they say, hey, this is— you do some cool things in your family, this could help other families, why don't you share it? And that's how the podcast and this idea was born. But to share a couple— so the foundational piece is really the core values. So this— a lot of our ideas come from business. My husband's an entrepreneur. He has gone to so many businesses trying to figure out how they tick, how they work. And the ones that do well are the ones that have core values and a mission statement and actually make decisions based on those things. They don't just live on a wall. They truly live in the employees' hearts and how the company moves forward. So we decided to apply that. So before we even had thought about moving, we had started by coming up with these core values. And we have 6 of them and they are on the wall. The kids have them memorized. We talk about them every week at our family meeting. So it's truly who we are as a family. I think a lot of families want to be great families, but they don't take the time to define what that means. So for example, having gratitude is one of our values. And every night at dinner, we go around the table and intentionally share gratitude from the day. So a simple example like that, or be adventurous. So that having those values helped us make the decision to move. Like, everything on our list of values was like, yep, this means we should go. This means we should go. So that's awesome. In those emotional moments, it's hard sometimes to think rationally. So the core values ground you like, okay, this is what we're about. We need to make choices based on what we're about, not just based on feelings, right?

Yes.

So truly having core values set for your family is the foundation for all the other pieces of the PATH. So that's a really good piece. And since I mentioned the family meetings, um, meetings traditionally sound kind of like blah. Nobody wants to go to a meeting, right? But we feel like the kids need to be part of a high-functioning organization at home. Eventually they're going to go out into the world, work at companies, or even work for themselves, whatever the case may be. We want to be an example of how a highly functioning organization works at, at home. So we started doing these meetings and we start out by everybody in the family sharing how somebody in the family or themselves has embodied a core value. So if I did something like when we first started the podcast, it was a huge personal development for me. That's one of our values to even do this. I've never been in front of a camera before and shared this kind of thing. So we always want to go around and make sure that we're identifying like, this is how we're living out the values every week. And then we go into discussion topics, which is a really powerful part because anybody can bring up a topic and the kids have a say. They feel valued. They get to present whatever's on their mind. And more often than not, they come up with the solutions. So if we say to the kids, hey, you guys have been using your computers a little too much lately. You know, for us, success looks like you being on the computer an hour a day, whatever. How are we going to make that work? And then the kids come up with the solution. So they have buy-in, they're part of a— like I said, they're, they're learning how to communicate clearly. I mean, how often do people go to a meeting and never get to speak their mind, right?

Very true.

So that's a really great part of the meeting. And then we do, um, trying to run through the whole process. Oh, we give each other tough truths if needed. So we've created this culture in our family where it is safe to tell someone a criticism, but only from a loving perspective. Like, we're not criticizing you to be annoying. It's to say, yes. Like, for example, my son got braces and he started to be kind of sheepish in how he was talking. We couldn't understand him. And out of love, we said, you know, we noticed this about you. We really want you to work on it. And then this is said in front of everybody else. Now, there's some tough truths that should be said in private, of course.

Or—

but the powerful thing is they get to give us tough truths to us, being my husband and I. Yeah. So my son called my husband out on using his phone at the table. And he's never done it. He's never done it since then because my husband could say, hey, I'm working, you don't understand, I'm so busy.

Yes.

So they are heard and we actually follow through on what they say as well. And then we go around and give each other compliments. So everybody gives everybody a compliment at the table and we end with like a firm handshake or I like to give hugs. So we're raising 3 boys, so we want to raise them to be strong men, right? So we end with that handshake, but I always try to squeeze in a hug too.

Oh, I love that. And you do this— what do you do this once a week or?

Yes. So our goal is to do it every week and we do it during our Friday family dinner. So we just like stack it on top of something we're already doing because it's difficult to find time otherwise. Yeah. Every Saturday at our family dinner.

Do they— and they buy into it?

They do. They actually call us out if we don't do one.

I love it.

We've certainly missed it because sometimes they have something they want to talk about. My 13-year-old wants to earn some money. And he has a list of ideas and I'm like, you got to bring it to the family meeting so we can all talk about it. And so they're excited to be able to present whatever they want to talk about. And who doesn't want to get a compliment? Who doesn't want to spend that time, right? So it's— we all look forward to it.

That's wonderful. And you're teaching them how to sit in a meeting.

Exactly. Even the 5-year-old. I mean, people will ask us like, what age do you start these things? We started around age 3 for our youngest and he would just sit at the table and color. He doesn't necessarily participate vocally, but he's in the room. He knows he's part of the deal. We give him compliments, and if he's in the mood that night, he'll pass out some compliments too. And I will ask him, do you have something you want to talk about? So we make sure to include him because you're never really too young to have them be part of that system. Yeah, there's no magic.

Absolutely. And they absorb so much more than we think they do.

Oh, yes. Especially from the older siblings. Yes.

And they're listening to everything. When we think they're not listening, they're listening.

Well, I have, I have a cute little story about that. So another, another part of the path is goal setting. Yes, that was my next question.

You're awesome.

Yes.

So following my agenda, I'm so glad.

So we set individual goals for each person in our family every year. We actually do it in the form of drawing pictures and then we hang them on the wall so we could see them visually. I love visuals.

Yes.

And, and then every week at our family meeting, I forgot this part, we set a weekly commitment. So let's say my goal was to read 10 books this year. My commitment for that week might be, okay, I will read 10 minutes a day, and that's my goal for that particular week. Because oftentimes we set these big goals, but we never stop and actually say, what am I going to do today to take a step forward? Instead, we think, well, okay, next month I'll start doing that, or whatever. And then it just never happens. So at our weekly family meeting, my littlest set the commitment of doing like 10 squats every day. Just, he wants to be tougher, right? So at school last year in preschool, they do a little morning workout and I happened to be there that morning helping out and they were doing squats and he's like, Mom, this is my commitment this week. So at 5 years old, he's already making this connection, which was like, those are those moments where you're like, yes, we're doing something right. Like we need to keep pushing. Pushing forward. It was a really great moment.

That is amazing. It's rubbing off on a 5-year-old.

It is. It does. Can't deny it.

That's a good lesson because we do think often like how young is too young for things? And you're telling us that 3 years old, we can put them in a family meeting.

You can. Someone even asked us, we have a baby, like, what should we do? Like, well, don't you want to have a family meeting just between you and your spouse? Like, talk about the week. Maybe there's something you need to do or schedule a date night. You can do that while the baby's with you. And, you know, then it just becomes a habit having the kid there with you. So there's not— it's never too early to start.

I love that my neighbors sit down every Sunday night and go over their week together. I've always held on to that. I'm not doing it. I, I, I, but I've always thought that was a wonderful idea. So accountability. You talk about accountability and helping our kids to be more accountable. Any tips to help our kids be more accountable?

Yes, well, honestly, a bunch of pieces of the PATH help with this. So if you have family meetings and they solve a problem, they come up with the solution, it's inevitably easier to be accountable because— Absolutely. They came up with it. So you can say, hey, we discussed this at the family meeting, you're not doing it, let's talk about it. So you have that conversation starting point. Um, honestly, I love charts. So we have a tech time chart on our kitchen table. I think it's really great to be able to check things off. If you have a kid who struggles with accountability, let's say they don't get their homework done, they're not getting their reading done, or whatever the case may be, I think charts are great. I, I have Post-it notes everywhere, and when I can cross something off, it feels good.

Yeah.

And in terms of accountability, like, let's say siblings are having a spat or something like that, so it's not like an individual, like, I didn't do this task. It's more, you know, we're— yeah, we're fighting a lot. What's going on here? We really are big on just teaching them how to communicate. So if I notice— well, let me go back one second. There's a piece of the path called Relationships Within the Family. So we are a big family unit, but we're also many small units within that— sibling relationships, parent-child, parent-parent. So once you become aware of all those different relationships, you can nip a lot of things in the bud. I can notice like, hey, my older two seem to be kind of on edge What's up with that? And then I can sit down and have a conversation with them before things blow up. And I actually use a technique that my husband and I learned before we got married in our pre-marriage counseling. It's called "you have the floor," and I just love this. So the first person— and actually you can hold a piece of flooring, so you literally have the floor. You'll say to the one kid, you'll say, okay, well, what— please explain what happened. Help me understand what happened. They get to explain. Then the other kid gets to ask questions, and then they get to clarify, like, "That's not how I saw it. Can you please clarify this piece of it?" Then once the first person feels totally heard, they move the floor to the other person. Now it's their turn. "Here's my side of the story," because as we probably all parents know, there's always more than one side to a story. They get to share their side of the story. Person A kind of repeats it back, and then Person B can clarify. And from there, a lot of times things can resolve. Oh wow, that was a misunderstanding. Or you have to come to some kind of compromise. But it comes back to accountability. We're not here to blame each other. We need to be accountable for what piece we had in the matter. And these things do take time. These things do take patience. But I always have the mindset of I'm raising adults. They're not going to wake up and be an adult one day and know how to do these things. So I try to see opportunities throughout the day.

It's so interesting because I hear parents say to me all the time, just let them work it out, just let them work it out. And I totally understand why they're saying that, but I often listen and realize that maybe they haven't been taught the skills. So I love what you're talking about because we're teaching them skills to use that then they can take and they can work it out themselves. After they have the skills, right?

You're exactly right. This reminds me, my husband does this thing in business, uh, and I don't remember the exact acronym, but you have to show the person how to do a task, you watch them do the task, and then you can have them do it independently. So I love what you said. If the kid was never taught how to communicate, how can you expect them to just figure it out? Some kids might be more astute than others, but I don't want to take it— I don't want to leave it to Well, yeah.

And it's like we teach them math, we teach them English, we're teaching them all these things. Like, let's teach them communication and problem solving.

Yes.

Yes.

You'll get very far with those things.

Yeah, exactly. Well, so you have a term that I am enthralled with that I can't wait to hear about. You say that we can be an emotional ninja. Can you tell me, I mean, like, I love that concept. Can you tell me what that is?

Sure. So an emotional ninja— I know that's really funny. We want our kids to be emotionally intelligent, essentially. So it starts out when they're real little, and a lot of this comes from my social work background. Kids are not born knowing how to identify their feelings. They learn it when you say, oh, you're smiling, that means you're happy. Like, we just kind of reflect it back to them. And even recently, my kindergartner has been saying that he's he's scared, but truly I think he's nervous. So like trying to fine-tune, like this isn't actually scared, this is actually what it feels like nervous feels like. So trying to like fine-tune and find those distinctions and help them to make sure they can identify feeling states. And then once you get good at that, you don't— you're not as impulsive. So we're always trying to move from like, here's where the feeling stuff is, but then what can we do about it? What's the actions we can take? How can we problem solve? So that ninja word is kind of like a tough word. Like, I can be in control of what's going on with my feelings.

I love that. I was like, this is the best. I got to hear about this. And, and teaching them to be an emotional ninja. I think they'll like that terminology too.

They do. There's like a lot of buy-in when you bring in ninjas or superheroes or whatever. They like that a lot.

So you are very good at helping busy parents with time management.

Skills.

Can you help everybody listening with time management?

You know, a lot of what we do starts off with self-reflection. So you can't really make progress if you don't know your baseline right now. So if I really took a week and I wrote down everything, how I spend my time, you will find gaps. Everybody's saying, I don't have time, I don't have time. And I think this came Recently, this really started to make sense to me because my husband will go to my son's practice. Two of my kids are playing sports right now, and he'll walk the track for an hour while my son practices, while other parents are just sitting in their cars looking at their phones. Yes. So now maybe some of those parents are actually working, you know what I mean? I'm not going to say that all of them are just sitting there, but this is what I'm talking about. Like, you have an hour here that you could— you're scrolling Facebook, or maybe you're texting a friend or whatever. But you could be using that time in another way. So I think step one is like, how am I using my time?

Love that.

It's really, really busy. We have to be very honest with ourselves. I mean, I think we all get trapped in looking at our phones and all of a sudden an hour goes by. Yeah. And we want to be good role models to the kids. My kids don't have phones yet, but they see us using ours, and there is that like angst, right? Like, when do I get to have one? Or whatever. So really the step one is figuring out how you use your time now. And a lot of step 2 is selflessness. So in the— I'll give you an example. So in the evening, 2 of my kids will go downstairs, the youngest and the oldest, and the middle one the last month has stayed upstairs to talk with me. And at first that used to be my time to wash dishes, listen to a podcast. That was like my me time, right? And now I noticed that he needs me. So I could say to him like, hey, this is my time, let's talk later. But when is later gonna come? So I think it's really like taking taking the opportunity as it presents itself. So now I've almost like reshaped it. I'm like, okay, my kid's gonna stay up here, I know he is, for 10-15 minutes, and I'm just gonna have to manage that because prioritizing him is more important. And sometimes time management also means getting up early. So because I know I will not have time in the evening to myself, I get up half an hour early so that I have that little bit of coffee, um, read a book or whatever I do that's just me without interruption. So I really, though, think you can't do anything until you recognize, like, where can I make that change? And if someone says, hey, well, that time I spend on my phone is like my me time, okay, maybe you can use that me time more productively or in a way that really renews you. I never feel better after scrolling my phone for an hour. I usually feel worse.

Oh my goodness, that That's such a good point.

Yeah.

I, I like to get to wherever I'm going early for pickups and get work done in the car and people and right. And I'm listening to you and I think that car time can be such productive work time for me.

Yeah. That's why I never want to assume this. So everybody's just sitting there on their phones, but no, you're using that time. You're not wasting it. Right.

Well, and I love what you said because before I know it, it's been 30 minutes and I've wasted time on my phone and we don't feel good about that. So we need to be aware of that.

Especially if we're telling our kids like, hey, don't waste time on your phone. Like we have to role model it first. Otherwise it comes from that place of hypocrisy, which never is comfortable.

No, it's not. It's not. I don't like the listen to what I say, not what I do. I don't like that.

Yes, I'm the same way. And also the whole like, because I told you so. Yeah, like, I, I don't— I understand why people say it, and oftentimes it's like an in-the-moment emotional response. Instead, I, I might say, if I'm too emotional at the moment, I'll say, I really want to explain this to you, but now's not the time. But then you have to actually go back and explain it. So I try to never say, I told you so. It's just not— it's not a fair answer to kids who will eventually be adults and have to understand why we do what we do. Exactly.

That, that was perfect. Well, and you strike me as the most patient parent. I don't know if I'm accurate, but you seem to have so much patience. I mean, can you help give us more patience?

I appreciate that. It's funny you say that because we just, uh, recorded a podcast about patience.

About patience.

Because recent, in the last couple weeks, each of my kids has tested my patience in different ways. And I sometimes feel guilty about that. Like, one of my kids keeps talking about wanting to buy a go-kart, my 13-year-old. That's all he's talking about. He researches it and he's— that's all he can talk about. And like, after a while you're just like, can we not talk about it?

Pick a new subject.

Right. So honestly, I think a lot of it is mindset. If you see your kids as people that you are raising to be adults, you have to take those opportunities that when they come to you and you have to take that opportunity because otherwise it will pass away. So what I mean is is my son who wants to hang out with me for those 15 minutes and talk about school when no one else is around. If I decide that that time is not valuable and I just say, well, forget it, I don't have time for this, and my— or my patience is wearing thin because it's the end of the day, he won't come to me anymore. He's not going to come to me when he really needs something. So I try to see beyond the moment. Like, if I don't choose to be patient right now, what's going to be the result later? He's not going to come to me, or whatever the case may be. So I guess my key to patience is being super intentional. Like, if I don't give him the time of day right now, he's not going to come to me later, and that's more important to me. And, um, another thing with my little one, so he was like climbing all over me at the soccer game because I'm watching my middle son play, and I just didn't have it that day. Like, I couldn't split my attention well. So I'm like talking, I'm watching the game, he's trying to get my attention, and I kind of I didn't blow up at him, but I was a little bit less patient than I normally would be. So later on when I was home, I apologized for that. So I think we have to be humble as parents as well. Like, let's say you're not a very patient person. It's okay to be like, hey, to your kid, you know, everybody has different qualities. You know, my husband tends to get upset when he's really hungry. Like, he just knows that about himself. So I told my son yesterday, I was like, I just ignore him till it's over because I know that's not him being upset with us. It's just like like something about him. So when it comes to patience, if you don't have it, it's something you can gain and work on if you have that future perspective. But also, it's okay to tell your kids that some people have more patience. I didn't have patience in this moment, and I'm sorry that I responded this way. Can we try again? That's like a therapy thing too, right? Like, oh, we do want to come back to it.

And I—

we're not perfect. I think it's a mistake if your kids think you're perfect.

Oh my gosh, you are so right. And I think that them seeing that we're human and we make mistakes makes them feel better about them making mistakes, right?

I agree.

I don't want them to think that I'm perfect. They know I'm not. Um, what do you think the biggest lesson is that your family has taught you?

Oh, that my family has taught me? Wow. Probably that— this is going to sound corny— that like together we can do anything.

Oh, I love that.

Because honestly, this move was not easy for any of us. It was exciting, but not easy. And I was very afraid for my kids. Like, what if we move and they hate it? You know what I mean? Like, that was very scary. But now that we're past that part, I see how their resilience has grown. I don't want to move again, but I could. Like, I see that resilience has grown in me, that confidence in me. And just personally, I didn't have much confidence when I got married. Very, very little. And I think over time I have grown confident having the kids, helping them through this process of moving. And my husband is super confident, so I feel like I kind of glean it from him as well. But really, we can do anything. We're more resilient now, and I personally just have more confidence because of being a parent.

That's amazing. What about the community? Do you feel like you have developed a good community there?

Very much so. That's another piece that was kind of special and unanticipated because we didn't know anybody. We did happen to find a house in a wonderful district, so we have this cute little school at the bottom of the mountain. It's like 3 minutes from the house, and they have a lot of focus on outdoor learning, which I appreciate very much. It's really in line with what my kids' needs are, and I just make sure that I make a lot of time to help at the school. So every Thursday I help teach math in the 6th grade because I like math. And my son's in 6th grade right now, but it's my way to both help with math, but then I get to know all the kids my kid is hanging out with.

Yes.

And then the school, like, the principal already knows me. I know a lot of the teachers now. And then I get to become friends with my kids' friends, but kind of fine-tune, like, hey, like, do you really want to hang out with this kid?

Yes, yes.

But we have developed that. It's been really special. Plus we did join a church family and I found some really great people that way. And, uh, the really powerful thing about moving though is that we got to be intentional. It wasn't like you have to go to this place because it's what you've always done. We get to now choose and that's been real powerful. So yeah, I can't say that, that that's, that's gone very well too.

It's wonderful that it's been such a good experience for you.

It really has been. And I don't want to— I feel like when I talk about it, I'm just saying all the great things. There are challenges, of course, for sure. Again, the family piece is probably the hardest part. We didn't get to go back to New York this summer. The kids did well with it, but like, it is a little sad that we didn't have that time because we have such a big life here now. As your kids get older, it's tougher to leave in the summertime.

I couldn't believe how busy my 16-year-old was over the summer. I was like, we don't have time for anything because he's so busy, right?

It's true.

It was, you know what, it was the four of us a lot because he had so much stuff going on, which makes me sad. But I love, you know, I love who he's becoming too. So what do you, what do you think the best advice is that you've ever gotten?

Oh, the best advice, that's a tough one. I'm thinking a lot about the move right now because we were talking about it. I think the best advice that I got, and it was actually from my husband, is simply to think about opportunity costs. It's going to sound kind of silly, but everything I do now, I think to myself, okay, if I do this, what am I not doing? Or if I buy this, what can I not buy? And I think that mindset is so helpful. It helps me to say no to things when they're not going to be valuable. Like, I don't have to be a part of every committee at the school, I can say no. So that— and honestly, as when I think about parenting, when I was— whenever someone has a baby now and they ask me for advice, this just came to me as I was talking. I always say to them to trust your instincts. I think when I first was pregnant with my first son, I knew nothing. I didn't babysit when I was younger, nothing. And I started to read books and it just didn't feel like right. And then when I had him, I just learned to follow your instincts. So instead of listening to what everybody else is saying, like, here's—

so my best advice is to not follow You know, it's so interesting because if you go online, you know, 10 different mothers are going to tell you 10 different things.

Yes.

And then if you're like me and you, we have 3 kids and then the things are going to work differently with each kid. So I feel like it's like figure out each kid and, and right.

You're right. And advice really come, I think advice sometimes come from, comes from a place of that person wanting to validate their own experience.

Yeah.

Like, if I did it this way and you're not doing it this way, then something must be wrong with how I did it. But that's not true. Like you said, every kid is different. I explained earlier when we were moving, my middle son and my older son had very different experiences with this move. And if I had assumed that I could fit them all in the same basket, like, it just wasn't going to work. Now, my older son did say, where are my notes? What am I not getting notes? Um, which is kind of funny. I think I started writing them for him too at that point. But it's true, everybody, every kid has such different and that can be exhausting, but it's also really special too. Like, I don't want my kids to all be the same, even if it'd be easier for me right now.

I know, I know. I totally agree with you. It's kind of fun figuring them all out, right? We look at— if we look at it that way. Yes. I always remind myself, they're not you. They're not you. They have very different thoughts and feelings than you.

That's a— that's great advice right there, actually. It's true. I think a lot of times we just assume— I teach them about assumptions. I say, I'd much rather you tell me what you're feeling or tell me what happened at school, because otherwise I will assume. And honestly, I'm usually wrong.

Oh my gosh. Yes.

I'll tell them what I assume. They're like, no, that's not it. I'm like, see, like, you have to tell me. I don't know.

Oh my God. That's so funny because my daughter, my daughter will get in the car and she will look upset and I'm off to the races in my head of what I think happened at school. It's like we have to ask. We have to ask.

That's exactly right.

And they might not tell us until later in the day, but we have to ask. So I could ask you a million questions and I already have. Is there anything else that you would like to share that I didn't ask you?

Oh, that's a good question. I actually would love to talk about the evening debrief part of the PATH just because since we're talking so much about communication and patience and opportunity, that's another amazing opportunity. So when I was a therapist, usually the person would sit with me, the client, for like 45 minutes. The last 5 minutes is when they would bring up those conversations that we should have had at the beginning.

Yes.

So we always— I think we always called that like the doorknob conversation. Yes. You're about to touch the doorknob, right? The same phenomenon happens in families, I think. So I noticed at the end of the day, that's when the kids were like, they had their shower, they're laying down on the couch watching a show or whatever. I come in and do like a prayer with them or read them a book. Book, that's when they would bring up those real sensitive topics from the day. And initially I was like, wait, this is like 9 o'clock, like I want to go to bed, the day is done, I'm— my patience is low right now. But I noticed that those are the times that they needed me to listen, sometimes problem solve, but oftentimes just listen to whatever drama happened on the playground. Um, so if we don't make that opportunity every day to give them a chance to speak to us about those things that are in their heart, then again, they're not going to come to us. They're not— you're not going to say, well, let's talk about it tomorrow morning. That's not— you know, like, you sleep it off and then it's gone. So I think it's important to intentionally say, okay, I'm gonna— even if you're like, your patience is gone, the next 15 minutes I'm gonna go sit with my kids and see what's up. And sometimes nothing's up, and then you're just like, okay, I can go to bed early. And some nights I sit down there with them for like a good half an hour and just hear them because I, again, I know I'm like putting— I'm investing in this relationship with them. I'm like putting deposits in every night that I speak with them. So again, if you think about it that way, it's much easier to have patience because you know you're doing a good thing.

It's all our perspective, because me wanting to go to sleep is not going to help the situation.

Exactly. I mean, it's funny because I'll come upstairs and my husband's usually ready to sleep, so I kind of do the evening debrief part. And, um, if there's something that comes up that they really need their dad, because as they're getting older— I only have boys— they need him more. And I make sure to tell him, but I'll come up at like 9:30 and he's like, wow, I guess some topic came up tonight because you were down there for like half an hour.

Oh, that's so funny. And he's like, it's bedtime, what's going on?

Exactly.

Well, tell everyone about your podcast and your website and where they can find Great.

So we try to keep it simple. Everything's at strongfamilyproject.com. We have articles there. We give away a free PDF explaining the 7 steps of the path. And then our, our podcast, the first 7 episodes actually go in deeply about each of those steps. And then after that, we talk about different parenting things, things that are on our minds. We've interviewed a couple times, um, other people, and we're just trying to grow a community of strong families. Please. That's wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.

It was, it was great conversation. Thanks so much.

Um, this is Rebecca Greene reminding everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, Please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

This show has been produced by Market Domination LLC. To discover how you can have your own show completely done for you and turn it into a real published book and become the authority in your marketplace, go to www.marketdominationllc.com/podcastoffer.

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