Whinypaluza Live: Learning to Let Go

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza! It is not Wednesday, no need to whine, it's Winey Palooza!

Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza livestream with the Green Family.

Cha-cha chicken!

Thank you, beautiful girls. Okay, so you can, you can go. Will you stay? Will you stay close? Move over towards Daddy. Move over towards Daddy. You can stay. How is everyone doing? Are we throwing you off doing it on Thursday? I'm throwing myself off doing it on Thursday. So for those of you who don't know, for the month of May, Seth and Max have some major soccer going on, so we are going to do our live vlogs on Thursday nights at 9 instead of Wednesdays for May, and We will be back to Wednesdays in June, I hope.

We shall see.

We will keep you posted. Soccer is hopping right now. We are mommy and daddy taxi services. Yes. I wanted to tell everyone that May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

I did not know that.

Which I should have told you last week, right? Yes. You know, you all, if you're a mom, you understand my brain.

Every day is Mental Health Day if you're a mom.

My brain goes like this all day and writing it down helps. I did not write down that it was mental health awareness, so I did not say it because it wasn't on the sheet. It's on the sheet today.

Got to be on the sheet.

Got to be on the sheet. So please, if you are struggling, you are not alone. And I just want to encourage you to reach out for support. We need to really end the stigma of reaching out for support. And I heard someone say that we go to the doctor to take care of our— hi, Randy— we go to the doctor to take care of our physical health, physical health. And there is nothing wrong with going to a counselor to take care of your mental health. It is a strength. It's not a weakness. So moving on to our topic, is there anything else before I move on?

I don't know. I don't have the sheet.

Okay, I have the sheet. So This week I wrote about learning to let go. And what I'm really doing in my life is I am just kind of going with the flow of what is presenting itself to me. What is— what are my friends complaining about or struggling with or venting and sharing or venting? What is going on around me? Well, how am I feeling? And I have realized that I am really learning to let go and grow up with my children. And I mean, grow up as an adult parent.

That's an interesting concept. I've never heard you put— I've never heard it put that way, that we grow up with them. That's really good.

So I'm not growing up.

That's good.

I'm not growing up. I don't know, did I— I think I did write it in my—

I don't think I processed it. Okay, so I was a writer downer.

That is what I wanted to tell you. My website is fixed. Okay, can we knock on something? Knock on some wood.

Um, here, there's wood in the couch.

So the blog Learning to Let Go is now available at winniepalooza.com, and you can find it on Facebook. So I feel like we grow up and we become an adult, and then we become parents, and then we grow up as parents, and we learn as parents, and we learn and we grow. And it started with I really had an easy time leaving Max with my parents. He was attached to them and he didn't cry, so that was not hard for me to learn to let go. But then when he went to preschool, he cried all the time and it was, it was so hard on Max and I. And that was like my first step in the journey to let go. And he has really been the one leading the way because he does everything first. So He went to elementary school and I was like, how is he going to do 5 days a week without me? Well, guess what? He ran to kindergarten. He loved his kindergarten teacher and there were no issues. So elementary school, now we're finishing middle school and he's going to head to high school. So, so sorry. When you do that, it totally throws me off. He's got me on next, next to me on the phone. So Max is really leading the way and teaching me to let go as in each step. And we go back, I want to talk about Ella for a minute and I'm going to talk about you too, pumpkin. Yay! But I want to talk about Ella because Lily, you weren't around to see this. When Ella was a baby, Ella was a preemie and I'm gonna call her my Joey. Joey is a baby kangaroo. And I wore the— help me out—

Bjorn.

I wore the baby Bjorn right here. And she was inside of it at all times. And if I put her down, she would cry. If I handed her to Seth or my mother, she would cry. And she just wanted to be like literally like attached to me like a little monkey. And I just carried her everywhere and just got used to cleaning with her and got used to walking with her. And it was just normal. And now she's 12 years old, and we were in the car driving, and Lily, you're going to remember this because you were with us. And she said, Lily, guess what? She said, in high school, I can try out for the ATA Theater Travel Team, and I can go travel on my own. I can go on my own. And I couldn't believe my reaction because my reaction was Oh wow, that's amazing that she feels that way. The little pumpkin who I carried around all day is talking about traveling without me, and my automatic response was not, oh well, maybe I could go. It was like, that's good for me, right?

That is progress for you. Not like, my baby, you cannot separate me, I shall follow you everywhere.

You have joked that we're going to get apartments everywhere they live. Or houses or whatever. It's, it's kind of a joke.

But I think it's a joke. You do not.

I do not think it's a joke. But I thought it was so telling that my automatic response was, oh my God, that's awesome that she feels that way. And that means that I'm doing a good job. Yeah, when our kids become more capable and independent and are able to do those things, that means that we're raising them well. And I was like, give yourself a pat on the back because she said that and you responded appropriately.

Yes, it was not your normal response that would have been a couple of years ago. So yes.

So I have heard people say things like, you know, my child wants to go here, he wants to do this, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think that we need to remember, I have had 14 years raising Max. I'm not done. We still have a million conversations to have. I'm sorry, I haven't talked about you yet, have I? I'm going to talk about you, I promise. So, so, um, going in birth order. I'm going in birth order. So anyways, 14 years raising Max, and we have to start to trust them, and we have to start to see that we're raising them right. Let them try to make some decisions. Let them try to go do things on their own. As you practice and as you test the waters, we will start to see how are they doing with that trust. Are they using the trust and doing things appropriately, or do we need to pull back the reins and have some discussions on how they can earn our trust better? So we just have to kind of test the waters and let them go before college. We want to test stuff before college and we want to teach them the important skills before college. And one of those skills is problem solving. And you are all gonna relate to me when I say this. I am a problem solver and a fixer. And if I'm here, Seth is here because Seth is like me on steroids with problem solving. Right?

Yes, I definitely move to the problem solving faster than you do.

So I want you to respond to what I'm about to say. You look bored out of your mind. Do you want to go?

No.

Okay. That with problem solving, we may want to swoop in and fix it, but when they come to us with a problem, we want to say to them, how are you going to handle that? How do you think you're going to fix that? We have to start to teach them. I help them identify what is the problem, brainstorm some solutions, and if they can't think of something, maybe you give them an idea and say, what, what can you brainstorm? What can you come up with? And then help them learn how to pick what they think is the best solution because we want to see them start to do things on their own. We want to see them start to cope and do things on their own. You know, when Lily was freaking out the other day, I took the peace rock and I handed it to her and I said, peace, peace, peace be with you, peace be with you. And I kept shoving the rock at her and she finally took it and took a deep breath and calmed down. So I'm teaching—

Why didn't you tell me to use the rock?

So I'm teaching her that so that I want her to be able to take the rock herself and do it without me handing it to her. We want to teach them coping skills. How do they handle things when they're feeling like they're gonna hyperventilate or they're feeling like they're super stressed out and overwhelmed? Okay, how do they handle that? We want to teach them the life skills. My, um, I was thinking about how in 2 years— so right now I'm like the taxi service. In 2 years, Max isn't even really going to need us so much for that. We'll see. He's going to be able to start driving himself places, and he was like, I can't wait to go to Wegmans. And like roam the aisles.

That's what he's excited about. It was funny.

I'm going to roam the aisles and get to pick food to buy. And I was like, yes. And I took it a step further in my head. And I was like, I was like, oh, I can teach him how to use a credit card because I want him to learn how to responsibly use a credit card before he goes to college. My friends are teaching their kids how to cook. They're teaching their kids how to do laundry. There's lists and lists of stuff. I was thinking about the courses the continuing ed, the degrees. I was thinking about everything I've taken and I'm like, there's really nothing on helping parents learn to let go. I will tell you that book that I had mentioned in a previous vlog, The Happy Camper, that did have a list of life skills that we can teach our kids before they fly the coop. Is that the way you say it?

Yes. Fly the coop. So can I chime in with two things? Yes. Or am I messing with your mojo?

No, go.

So my favorite question to ask at work is, well, what would you do about that if you were me? And then Max came to me the other day about something and he said, now, Dad, when I tell you this, don't rush to solving the problem like you always do. Let me talk about it first. Oh, so apparently, uh, my— he's realized my MO and actually knew and was aware enough that he knew he wanted to talk before. He didn't want to just get to the solution.

Well, and you don't just want him to be able to talk about it, Seth. Start— we need to start facilitating the conversation to him, thinking about how he wants to problem solve it. And that goes for the other two too. We need to think about, are we serving our needs or are we serving their needs? For example, I'm going to talk about Lily. I tend to rush Lily, and what I have learned over these years is that Lily wants me to let go. She doesn't want me to do things for her. She wants to do things for herself. And what that means for me is that I need to not serve my own purpose and rush her and do it. I need to serve her need and let her do it herself. And that means I need to allot more time to get places because it takes— it might take her longer to do something than I think it should take.

I am sorry that I rushed you. For homework today.

It's fine.

But you see what I'm saying? That you want to do things independently, and I used to be like, oh, I used to be so frustrated, like, she wants to do everything herself. And now I've learned this is a strength. She's independent and capable, and she wants to do everything herself, right? Do you have anything you want to say about that? You want me to move on? This is one of the hardest things for parents, and chime in if you disagree with me.

Chime in if you agree.

Chime in if you agree.

Chime in either way.

We'd love to hear from you. We have to let them make mistakes, and I want you to think back to the mistakes that you've made. And when I think back to the mistakes that I made, my parents didn't rescue me, and they weren't there to tell me what to do. They don't realize this, but they let me make some mistakes that I needed to make. And they were like my greatest teachers. They taught, they made me who I am today. And I have to remember this when I want to rescue, right?

Yes.

Do you agree with that?

I am guilty of that. I resemble that remark.

It's, it's really sad what I'm about to say. I'm growing up as a parent and all those things that you didn't have time for. As your kids get older and have their own stuff and want to go do their own things and see their friends and aren't hopping in your car, you can have date nights, you can have friend nights, you can, you can get a new hobby. What's that? You can exercise. Do you have time to exercise? Because a lot of you probably don't feel like you have time to exercise. We can start to build stuff in our days that we want to do because our kids are older and more independent. And as much as I miss the babies, I can't go back to that. And I, and I need to just cherish the fact that they're growing and they're thriving and they're doing what they're supposed to do. And we don't want them to be here living with us forever. We want them to go fly and make their own families one day. Right?

Yes, very much so.

Andy Andrews told me when we were talking, he said, we are not trying to raise good kids. That's not the goal. The goal is not to have a good kid. The goal is— the ultimate goal is to have a successful adult. And I think that we forget that. I think that we forget that the ultimate goal is to have them be independent. And we want to do things with them and we want to be with them, but we also want to see them foster some independence. So when they don't want to be around me all of the time, part of that is sad and part of that is celebratory that they— that we're doing something right. And we need to give ourselves praise because the more we can trust them and the more independent and capable they are, the more that means that we are awesome parents. Right?

Yes.

This is a hard, this is a hard topic because I am such a baby person. Are you kidding me? Do you think I didn't love that Ella was my little like monkey on top of me all the time and didn't want me to put her down? I mean, I'm sure there was some cursing.

There was when you were overheated.

Well, and it's not even just that, like I couldn't leave the house. I would leave the house and she would be screaming. Do you remember that?

Uh, painfully, yes.

We have come a long way. What would you two like to add to this? Um, I'm sure that Lily has something to add. Do you think we're doing a good job?

Yes, and I wanted to say that, um, I like this topic.

You like this topic?

Why do you like this topic, honey?

Because I like when you bring up your kids.

Oh, don't I bring them up every week? Yes, you like to hear me talk about my kids. I love my kids very much.

I like to hear when you like talk about me because then I can know what I'm doing right and when I'm doing wrong, and I can learn.

Wow, Lily, Lily, you are working so hard on your coping skills. Do you know what that means? Do you know what that means? It means that when you get really upset, you're doing such a good job helping yourself calm down. And when you know that you're being disrespectful, do you know what that means? Yes. If you're not being nice to me, you know that you're not being nice to me, and you've come to me and you've apologized and you've said, "I'm so sorry. I'll be nice." And that means so much to me, and I'm proud of you, and I'm proud of how capable you are. You are really, you are really flying, girl. So it is Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow is my Friday Family Podcast. And we have Nihal— oh, I'm gonna mispronounce her last name. I forgot to practice. Soni? Does that sound right? Nihal Soni. She was so lovely to talk to. She's such a knowledgeable woman, so good at meditating, so good at so many things. Tune in and learn from her because I learned from her and I loved talking to her. And thank you for watching my vlog. Thank you for reading my blog and thank you for tuning into my podcast. We would so love for you to subscribe and leave me a 5-star review. Everyone who subscribes and leaves me a review is going to be entered each month to win a $25 gift card. We have to decide where is the gift card going to be to.

Should the person get to pick who wins?

I don't know. Do we want to— tell us when you win stuff, what are your favorite things to win? Do you like winning Amazon? Do you like winning Starbucks? Do you like what vacations do you— do you like winning like a Visa, um, prepaid gift card? Tell us what you like to win. And, um, thank you so much for joining us. Do you know how to sing us out?

Yes. Okay, thank you for watching Whiny Palooza Wednesday.

I knew you were gonna say Wednesday. It's not Wednesday.

Thank you for watching the Whiny Palooza livestream with the Green Family.

Have a good week, everyone.