https://www.listennotes.com/e/e842204dd0a3446c84e9357928a38c00

I have been thinking long and hard and personally focusing on the areas in which I am helping my kids build self-esteem in themselves and what I'm doing for myself to build self-esteem as well. And in my pursuit of doing this, I realized a really heavy flaw that I had in my approach. And I wanted to dedicate an episode to this because I recently heard that parents are , stealing their children's self esteem to build their own. And when I heard that, I really reflected on it, like, am I doing that? And when I first heard it, I mean, I'll be honest. My first thought was, I don't do that. I'm, I'm not stealing my kids self esteem to build my own. And I felt a little bit defensive about it. Like I needed to prove that I don't do that. And when I let myself be more vulnerable and sit with it a little bit longer, I realized, I actually do this every single day. And it was hard. It was really hard to face that in the language of that, stealing their self-esteem to build my own. When I faced that style of language about it, that felt really difficult. And that's why I wanted to do this episode about it, because I believe we're all doing this to an extent. And the more we can raise our awareness around this, the better chances we have at Building our self-esteem and allowing our kids to build their own self-esteem as well, where neither one of us has to steal from the other person in order to do it. So this is gonna be a really fun episode with lots of reflection, a little bit of storytelling, and practical ways to build your self-esteem and allow your kids to build theirs too. In case you're new here, my name is Tessa Romero. I'm the host here on the Moms at Podcast. I also run the Moms at App in community and membership coaching over there. I create courses and I'm just completely obsessed with words, language, mindset, everything that creates the foundation of our human experience, which is our thoughts, our words, our language. And I love finding ways to improve on those things. So I always want you to know that I'm doing this work right alongside you. I crave so much to just be better in all areas of my life. And in that pursuit to be better as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, as a child of God, I come up with little tools along the way, and I love to share those tools with you. So I hope you enjoy this show. Make sure that you give it a little review and a rating below. If you love the show, I would love for you to do that. And if you want more coaching from me, join me over in the Moms at Home membership. I'll have that linked below. So this really started when I had my fourth son. My fourth son is just about nine months old now, so I had him in July of 2024. and he is my fourth little boy. And I just had this idea going into postpartum. I had heard all this talk around how, you know, having your fourth is so easy. Like that's the easiest transition because you're already in it and now you just have a baby and the baby's like doesn't have an opinion. There's really not much to do except nurse the baby, feed the baby, like feed the baby, change the baby and things like that. So I guess I just went into having my fourth with this idea of, It's going to be so easy. It's just going to be so smooth. It's going to be so easy. And from the moment my labor started, I knew that that was wrong. I knew this is going to be different than I expected. And you know I love that perspective. It can be different than you thought and better than you imagine. That way we can accept when things go differently without getting stuck in this negative spiral of, oh my gosh, worst case scenario, it's all Going downhill, it's going to be awful. So I used a lot of that perspective of, okay, this is different than I thought and probably better than I imagined, which ended up being true. There was, however, a lot of difficulty along the way. So I had my fourth son and I choose to have home births. So right after having my son, it was five in the morning. My, why, I'm trying to think of their ages. My oldest son was awake for the birth. So he was already with me. And after you have your baby, you just kind of have this surge of adrenaline, it feels like, where you're not about to just like pass out and fall asleep. Even if you just had been awake for 24 hours and you had an eight hour labor and you just had a baby, you're just not about to fall asleep. So I felt wide awake. My oldest son is with me and he was born at five in the morning. And then at six in the morning, my other son, my two other boys were now awake. So my whole family is awake at six in the morning. We're at home. I just had my baby and I felt so weak after having a baby. I personally feel really, really weak. Just my abdomen feels really weak, so I'm lacking that core strength. My pelvic floor feels really weak. And that's all to be expected. That's a really healthy, normal experience when you have a baby. There's like your body's not failing you. It's not flawed. It's just it needs to start healing. And so the expectation is that your for myself. I like to expect myself to lay down as much as possible the whole first week postpartum and allow my pelvic floor and my abdomen to just have the opportunity to rest and recover and restore as much as possible. And i'll do light breath work, things like that. And that was totally my expectation, having my fourth, like, oh, this is going to be so smooth, so easy. We're just gonna get, like, be in our routine, be in our flow of things, and i'll just have a baby in the carrier. Well, then I had my baby. And because I felt so weak, and that next morning my boys are just expecting our routine because we have a morning routine. They're used to seeing me in the kitchen making breakfast, and they're used to having their clothes ready for them in their drawers, and I'll help them brush their hair and make sure that their teeth got brushed and help them make their beds, or I just make their bed for them. I'm cleaning up after them. I was doing so much for them, and that was the expectation. Like, Mom does these things. Mom makes my breakfast. Mom cleans up after me. Mom unloads the dishwasher. Mom has my snacks ready. Mom gets the game out or the toy out or kind of like directs what to do next. And this is where this fantastic perspective of stealing their self-esteem to build your own really hit me like a ton of bricks. And I realized, oh my gosh, I do that. Because that morning I realized I have not prepared my kids and taught them to do these things for themselves. I have taught them to rely on and expect me to do these things. Expect me to make your breakfast. Expect me to make your bed. Expect me to have your laundry done, ready, and waiting for you in your drawers. Expect me to put your laundry in the washing machine. Expect me to do the dishes. Expect me to to get your games out, to tell you what to do next. Like that was the expectation that I had set. And I really found so much fulfillment in that. It was never a resentful thing for me. Like, oh, I have to do all these things for him. I just, I, I love being a mom. I love being a mom so much. I love caring for my kids. I love caring for my husband. I love cooking the meals. I love meal prepping. I love going to the grocery store. I love cleaning. I just, I think it's the coolest thing ever that I have my own home and my own family to take care of, and it heals so much for me every time I have this opportunity to show up and do it the way that I would have liked it to be done for me as a kid, and to create an environment that I would have liked to grow up in as a kid. And while I have complete acceptance of my own childhood now and a ton of forgiveness there, and I feel so So at peace with all of it. I actually feel grateful for the childhood that I experienced because I love the person that I am today and I love the strengths that I have. And I wouldn't have these strengths if I didn't have that childhood. I wouldn't even value my home and the cooking and the cleaning and the preparation and the care that goes into a family and a home. If I didn't lack those things as a kid, I really don't think I would appreciate them as an adult. So I'm personally really grateful for the difficulty and hardship and honestly the trauma that I experienced. And it took a lot of time and intention to heal from those things and get to this place. So I found a lot of fulfillment in doing all these things and it built up my self-esteem. I just felt really good about my abilities, the person that I am, the things that I do. I looked at myself as, you know, I'm someone that does the things I say I'm gonna do. And I'm someone that can be counted on. Either I'm going to figure out how to do it or I know how to do it. Either way, I'm there to help and I'm going to get it done. And that's how I was viewing myself. And I looked at my family and I'm like, look at all these people that can count on me. And it felt so rewarding. It felt so fulfilling. And it was building my self-esteem. And then I heard that phrase that parents are stealing their kids self-esteem to build their own. And at first I rejected it. I'm like, well, no, I don't do that. And then I thought about when I had my fourth son and it hit me like, Shoot, I have taught my kids to expect me to do all these things. I never put that responsibility on them. And then it got me thinking more about how much that must be impacting their self-esteem. Because here I am feeling so fulfilled and accomplished and just, I mean, so wonderful that I feel so equipped to do all these things. I know I can approach anything in my home and figure it out and do it, like no matter what time of day it is. If I have a lot of time to make dinner or little time to make dinner, I'm gonna make dinner and it's gonna be a great dinner and I feel really good about that. And in doing so though, knowing that I can quickly unload the dishwasher and make breakfast at the same time and get my kids ready and have the morning chores done and do the homeschool, I was stealing the opportunity for my kids to feel good about those things too. Every time I did their laundry for them, I was stealing the opportunity for them to feel that, that accomplishment in doing it themselves. Every time I made the bed for them, I took away the opportunity for them to make the bed and have that sense of satisfaction looking at a made bed and knowing I did that. At every turn in our day, I was taking away my kids opportunity to do something and look back at it and say, I did that. And I did it really well and I did a great job. Instead, it's, my mom does that. My mom does a good job at that. Oh, my mom's really good at cooking. My mom's really good at cleaning. My mom's really good. at getting all these things ready for us and done for us. And, oh, my mom, my mom, my mom. And I swear, just hearing that phrase of stealing their self-esteem to build your own really stuck with me. And then the experience after having my fourth and realizing I need them to be a little bit more independent right now because I really want to rest. I want my core to heal properly. I want my pelvic floor to heal properly. I want to just have my baby laying on me. I want to be right here on the couch, and I want other people to have the opportunity to step up and do these things. And to clarify, my husband is the most supportive, fantastic spouse I could ever ask for and imagine. He does just as much of the cleaning. I personally don't let him do as much as the cooking because I love to cook so much. So we have a really awesome flow between us though, and he does step up and do the cooking when I'm recovering postpartum. So in no way I saying like, it's just between my boys and I absolutely, my husband's involved in this too. He just has different strengths than I have. And I love to utilize the strengths that I have and give those strengths to my family and recognize the strengths that my spouse has and let him provide those to our family too. And I love that our strengths are different. So in the postpartum period though, I needed my kids to be more independent. I needed them to be more responsible. And I was faced with the truth of, I haven't taught them how to do that. That's not the expectation that I had set in place. So I believe that transitioning from three to four kids was actually my hardest transition. It really rocked my parenting world. Like hardcore, it rocked my parenting world. Overnight, it felt like it was the hardest transition for me and honestly for my whole family. And it's because I have just like white knuckled, white knuckled this, the daily tasks and responsibilities of caring for a home and a family. And I have not allowed my kids to have more of a part to play in that. That is exactly what made the transition so hard because I had a six year old, a four year old and a two year old completely dependent on my husband and I rather than feeling like they can do it too. So what I started doing after my fourth, and again, this is why my parenting world got rocked because I was trying to change so much at one time, newly postpartum, all the hormones fluctuating, the disrupted sleep, and just doing the very best my family could. We were going through a lot at one time. And what I decided to do was basically overnight, incorporate more things that my kids could do because I knew that in them building their self-esteem and that sense of capability within them of, I can do these things and I can actually do them really well, I needed to let them just start. Let them start, even if they were going to, which they did, resist. Why would they just say, okay, mom, yeah, I'll start doing the dishes now. I'll start vacuuming the floor. I'll start doing the laundry. When I'm the one that's been doing it all this time, and what's interesting is my two-year-old completely on board. He's like, Yes, I make my bed. Yes, I get myself dressed. Yes, I put my toothpaste on my toothbrush, and I unload the dishwasher, and I do the laundry, and he's just game for all of it, my two-year-old. My four-year-old, he was a little bit more like interested to do it. And I noticed that he was more easily influenced by my six-year-old, who my six-year-old was more resistant to doing it. My six-year-old was like, Well, that's not fair. We did it yesterday. We shouldn't have to do it every day. And it's taken months of consistency to teach my six-year-old. This is a responsibility every single day. And if you don't do it, then who is gonna be left to do it? Because it is going to get done. So as a family, we are approaching our daily responsibilities and doing them harmoniously together. So that way they get done faster. , they get done really well and we all can feel really accomplished in the day. So my six year old has taken a lot more teaching and my four year old, he still has this sense of like fulfillment. I can, I can just see in his eyes, the sense of like fulfillment when he accomplishes a task, when he does a task. I mean, he'll literally say things like, that was so easy. And like a little pep in his step, like, oh, that was so easy. And. It's like he's literally right in the middle between my two-year-old and my six-year-old, and he has still that eagerness to be independent and responsible that my two-year-old has, and he's listening to my six-year-old, so he's saying some of the things that my six-year-old says, even if I can tell, like he doesn't actually believe that, he's just saying it because my six-year-old's saying it. So depending on where you're at with your kids, I wanna encourage you, mom to mom, you might face some pushback, you might face some resistance, When you can look back, when you get, when you get to that point of six months later and they just wake up, they make their bed, they get themselves dressed, they brush their hair, they come out to the kitchen, they're unloading the dishwasher before they sit down to eat breakfast. Wouldn't you look back over the six months and be like, okay, that was worth it. Because that's the experience I've had. My sons, my youngest is going on nine months and that's. The place that we're at now where the expectation is set, they know before you play as friends, before you do school, before you get to play with your Legos and do the things, you're doing these responsibilities, these tasks. And it's been so much easier to build on that, like to see this compounding factor take place where they're understanding this. And now I can add a little bit at a time to that where. For example, now we're coming into spring break. I homeschool my kids. Well, now all of their friends are home from school for this week. And my son finishes his chores, finishes his breakfast, and says, oh, can I go play with my friend? Can I go play with my friend? And it's after school. After school, you can have all day to play with your friend. And it's so much easier for him to accept that now, like, okay, here's my step of responsibility, and then I get to do this play, do this thing that I want to do. So we're really able to teach better that first and then mentality. First we do school and then you play with your friend. First you brush your hair and get dressed and then you come have breakfast. Or first you have breakfast and then you brush your hair and you brush your teeth and you make your bed, whatever you want it to look like in your home. What's fascinating to me though, is as I've given my kids more of these responsibilities for them to do independently and to learn how to do and waited through the learning period where some mornings it's taken them 30 minutes to unload the dishwasher, the two of them. And sometimes it's, I don't want to brush my hair and I'm the boss of my hair. You're not the boss of my hair. Like the arguments that can come, the resistance I can come. wading through that, lasting one minute longer than them with their attitude and allowing us to have this learning. I have seen such an improvement in their personalities, in their character, and in their behavior. Such an improvement just by adding in more responsibility and independence to them. I've seen an improvement in those things where I've noticed they're more kind with each other. They're faster, like if I'm carrying in groceries from the car, they're now walking out to the car and just grabbing something or asking me, Mom, do you need help with something? Before they're asking me if they can go play, they're noticing a pattern and they're picking up on it. And it's been so fulfilling and rewarding for me as a mom. So I wanted to make this episode and share with you what responsibilities , I've passed on to my kids more. That doesn't mean I never do them. It just means I use these as opportunities for them to build their self esteem up. And I've gotten more clear on what it is that I'm doing to build my own self esteem. So that way they don't need to take from me and I don't need to take from them. There's plenty of opportunity for us to do it simultaneously. So the things that I've been passing on to them more is. Number one, make your bed in the morning. I, again, I love to clean my kids rooms. I love to make their bed. I find it so satisfying. I find it satisfying to clean my own room. I have this philosophy that everyone sleeps better in a clean room. So before bed, I'm cleaning their rooms. I'm picking up their toys. Like, I love to reset my whole house before bed because I really just believe we sleep better in a clean room. And that's my little philosophy in motherhood. I love it. So now I've passed on that responsibility to them where you make your bed, putting their toys in their toy box. That is something I've passed on to them. And what's important though is making sure that the responsibility meets their developmental period that they're in, like where they're at developmentally, the responsibility matches that. The workload matches that because it's not realistic to expect my two-year-old, like clean up all these toys. When the reality is, if I were that big and I had that mental capacity and I walked into a room like that and someone told me to clean up all these toys, it would feel extremely overwhelming. As a full-grown adult, we walk into some of those rooms and we're like, oh, my actual heck, what happened in here? Like, this is so overwhelming. There's train blocks and there's Legos and there's cars over here and there's dinosaurs over here and there's laser tag out and every single blanket that we own is Put into this for like what happened that feels overwhelming for us. So imagine how it feels to a six year old, a four year old or two year old to be responsible for cleaning that up, which is why I also really love to minimize the amount of belongings that we own, especially my kids toys, the things that I want them to be responsible for. I like to make sure that if I want you to be responsible for cleaning this up, do I have a system in place that supports you in doing so? Is this a reasonable expectation for me to have given how old you are, what your capacity is, and the amount of things I'm saying you're responsible for? Why am I allowing so much into our home? Coming back to decluttering and minimizing, go listen to the last episode with Julia Ubbenga. That was so good. And in the Moms at Home membership through May, just a little reminder, we're actually doing a 28-day declutter challenge. So if you join the membership, Starting on May 4th, we're doing a 28-day declutter challenge together. You can join us. Julia Ebongay is going to be running it with us, and I'm going to be helping with the mindset component of it. And she shares on that mindset and emotional piece too. So it's going to be so fantastic, especially going into summer months, making sure that your home is reset and ready for you, and it's completely obtainable for you to focus on and sustainable in the results. So join the membership for our May challenge of decluttering your heart and your home with Julia Ebongay. And what's helped me though, and a systematic approach to my kids rooms, is they have a bucket in their room and it's a cute bin that I got from Target, like the Joanna Gaines hearts and home line or something like that. I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, it's just this like caramel colored bucket and it's pretty small and my boys have one in each of their rooms. So three of my boys share a room and then my baby has a room. and there's one in each room. And they can keep whatever toys they want so long as they fit in the bucket. As soon as the bucket overflows, they know it's time to donate. And I'll put a box out in their room and let them know the bucket's overflowing. Decide what toys you want to keep so long as they fit in the bin. You can keep them. The toys you're done playing with, they'll be given to a child that needs toys or wants toys and we'll go drop them off today. And then I just leave the room. I let them decide. And that system has helped so much because even if they dump out the bucket and every single toy on, every single toy in that bucket's on the ground, it's super sustain, it's super reasonable to expect them to clean up everything that is on the ground. It's so easy for them to do. It literally takes them two minutes and they just haul it all up in their arms and plop it down in the bucket. It doesn't feel overwhelming for them. Sure, sometimes they're like, ah, I was just about to leave to my friend's house and it might feel inconvenient. It's not overwhelming. It's not overstimulating. It's okay if it feels inconvenient. I don't think it's okay for it to feel overwhelming and overstimulating for them. I think that's more of my responsibility to ensure inconvenience. I'm totally fine with them facing disappointment. Sure, no problem. We can work on that. So the bucket system in their bedrooms has helped a lot with that responsibility. My boys are responsible for unloading the dishwasher every single morning. I've also included incorporated now that I still make all their food. If they want to help me cook something, they totally can. A lot of times they're playing with friends or they're out doing another thing. My two-year-old likes to cook with me a lot. My older boys though, they just love to keep playing and going and going and going. So I still do all the cooking. And what I've done instead now is you're responsible to rinse your plate and put it in the dishwasher. 'Cause before they would just eat and then leave the counter and then all the plates would still be out. And then I was the one doing all the cleanup, which felt very fulfilling for me. And again, I just, I took an opportunity that they could have to build their self-esteem and I used it to build my own. And that's what I'm trying to step away from and teach myself better lines of what to do. So making their own bed, cleaning up their toys in their room, unloading the dishwasher every morning, loads of towels. My boys are responsible for folding. It turns out towels are pretty easy for kids to fold, especially like little dish towels, hand towels. We use like the yellow microfiber ones to clean the house and countertops and things like that. Those are really fun for them to fold. And again, it's just one of those things where I'll put the basket out with the towels and say, boys, it's your turn to fold the towels. or it's time for you to fold the towels. And I just leave it there and I walk away and they get this like mischievous look of, wow, like we actually know how to fold the basket of towels. Like we know how to do this. And I can just tell that it feels rewarding to them to go through this process. Does it take longer for them to do than if I were to do it? Yes, absolutely. Is it done the same way that I would do it? No, absolutely not. And The outcome of building their self-esteem is there. The outcome that I really care about is not a perfectly folded towel. The outcome that I really care about is watching them build their own self-esteem, giving them opportunities to build their self-esteem, that sense of independence, and that, that integrity that comes with it, where you know, you're someone that can contribute no matter where you go, you're growing these skill sets that you can use to benefit yourself and other people, and that feels really good. So I think it's important for us as moms to let go of this idea of perfection and what's going to get it done the fastest and what's going to make it look the nicest. Because if that's the outcome, if that's the ideal outcome, then you're not going to pass off any of these tasks because it's not going to be done to your standard. And then you're going to continuously feel frustrated that you're doing quote unquote, everything on your own. No one appreciates you. No one's helping. When your kids and your spouse may feel the very same way, we don't feel seen by her. We don't feel appreciated by her. She doesn't pass anything off to us because she doesn't trust us. We haven't been able to get her to trust us. We haven't been able to get her to like see us and notice us and recognize like, Hey, we can help and we actually want to help. So if we switch our mentality about it away from the outcome being what's the fastest and what's the nicest and into the outcome of this is building our connection, this is building independence, this is building responsibility, this is building self-esteem. It's actually really cool, the things that we're willing to start passing off and it feels so rewarding for you too. A few other really practical things that I've given my boys responsibility of is like vacuuming living spaces. I found that to be really easy for them to do where again, it's not about it being done perfectly. I think I am much better at vacuuming up the dog hair and the tracked in dirt into the house. It's not about it being like the most time convenient thing or what's going to get the job done the best possible way. Not about that. It is about building up their self-esteem and showing them like you're capable of doing this too. And as time goes on, months and years in the process, they will get really skilled at it and be very thorough, just like I am. So unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming the living spaces, making their own bed, brushing their own hair, rinsing off their plate, putting it in the dishwasher, putting their clothes in the wash machine. Like if I know I'm about to start a load laundry instead of going to their room and getting their basket of laundry, I now ask them to bring it and they put in the wash machine and they turn on the wash when it's time to switch laundry, they, I have at least one of them help me switch it. Again, putting it into the basket from the dryer, that's one that my two-year-old really thrives in. So I just know that there are really simple ways you can give more responsibility to your kids and doing it for more than just the purpose of they need chores. Well, why do they need chores? To build their self-esteem. to show them that they're meaningful contributors within the family and to help them build up that, that capability, that skill set where no matter where they go or who they're with, they know that they have something that they can provide. Another part that I wanted to add into this episode, though, is what am I doing intentionally to build my self-esteem because I no longer want to be stealing the opportunities from them to build their self-esteem. I need to be very intentional with, okay, I was. Finding that I built, I was building my self-esteem by doing those things for them. And now I want them to do those things for themselves so they can build their self-esteem. So what am I doing that builds my self-esteem? Some really practical ways that I'm doing this is doing the things I say I'm gonna do. If I say I'm going to do my morning routine, then making sure I do it. If I say I'm going to the grocery store, running that errand, or I'm washing the baseboards that day, that could be something to help me with. If I say, I'm going to clean out my car, like if I'm going to be working in the garden, whatever it is that I said I'm going to do, making sure I do it. Paying that bill, responding to the email, calling that person back, keeping my word really helps to build self-esteem. So my morning routine and my bedtime routine, if I say, I'm going to bed at nine o'clock, holding to that, even if my husband says, Hey, do you want to watch a movie tonight? It's being able to say, oh, I actually decided I'm going to go to bed at nine o'clock tonight. I would love to sit on the porch thing after the boys are asleep and we can hang out together, or we can start planning our next trip together before bed. I'm happy to do any of those things. I still want to connect. I just want to choose to do something different so that I can still go to bed at nine o'clock because it matters to me that I do the things I say I'm going to do. Um, another way that I'm building my self-esteem is in my communication style and the high standards of thought work that I hold myself to when responding to my husband, to my kids, to other people. That's an excellent way to build your self-esteem is when you recognize I am responsible for every single thing that I say, the way that I say it, and the outcome in which like my part contributes to, like I'm responsible for all these things. So you start to build self-esteem in the way you communicate instead of tearing down your self-esteem in the way that you communicate. If you're really quick with your words and you lash out and you say hurtful things and you're quick to yell and you say things frequently that you didn't mean and you're trying to take it back, you are eroding your self-esteem every single day. Every time you communicate like that and it's outside of alignment with the person that you wanna be, you are eroding your self-esteem. So your style of communication is an excellent way to build up your self-esteem. And what I really love about that when it comes to mindset, communication, that thought work is you'd never be stealing it from somebody else. Because someone else is always going to be responsible for what they choose to say, what they choose to think. And the better you do it, the more you help other people see the way they can do it and build their self-esteem too. And this is, I think, a huge reason why I love working with women so much. Moms and, and wives, mothers and wives. I love working with them so much because it's the ripple effect that takes place. You improve your communication style and so does your spouse and so do your kids. You improve the way you're talking to and about yourself and everybody else. And the people around you do the same thing. They conform to the way that you're choosing to communicate. for better or worse. So that's a really great way to build up your self-esteem. If you're feeling like, okay, Tessa, if I'm gonna, you know, same boat as me, if you're gonna have your kids start doing so much of what you were doing that was building your self-esteem, these are the ways that you can still be building yours. That's really practical towards you. Um, another way is focusing on the respect that I have towards my husband and accepting his opinion and preference without, . Deeming it wrong or finding the flaw. That's for sure something that I've been focused on really my entire marriage, just trying to be better at and it's been a big learning process. I've improved tremendously though, and honestly just appreciating my husband's perspective, appreciating his opinion and his preference, and finding the good in it, finding where it is that we have our similarities, and appreciating where we have our differences. That is a way that I have noticed my self-esteem increase because I find that I am someone that can accept the person that I'm around and appreciate the value that they bring, especially when their strength and value is different than mine and they're viewing things differently than the way that I do. I've gotten really good at seeing the good in that and it has increased my self-esteem. , and, yeah, so getting your self-esteem from, you know, doing the things that you say that you'll do, exercising regularly, dialing in my nutrition and preparing better systems in my home have all been ways that it increases my self-esteem. I've noticed the way that I treat myself, the way I get, like what I choose to wear that day, how I'm dressing myself, my activity levels when I'm working at my desk instead of sitting in a chair, I'm walking on my walking pad now and. I noticed those boosts in my self-esteem recognizing that even when I'm alone in my office, I'm still choosing to do things that serve the greater good of my health, my wellness, and in turn, the way that I'm showing up for my family. So this is something that I hope that you take to heart in recognizing the ways that you can be building your self-esteem that do not steal from others. Like letting your husband build his self-esteem by having his Responsibilities and his, his, I mean, even just the responsibility of his relationship with the kids. I, I strongly believe that as individually, we are responsible for our relationship with our kids. There's nothing I can do to be responsible for my husband's relationship with my kids. That's my husband's job and it's my job to be responsible for my relationship with the kids and, and vice versa. And I want to be someone that sets an excellent example of really taking accountability of that and taking charge of that and doing all that I can to have these wonderful relationships and being the person that I want to be for them, for my kids and my husband. So as you're working on building your self-esteem and allowing your kids to greater enhance their self-esteem it first starts by recognizing the areas that you've been doing things for your kids because it felt good for you to do and letting You're kids have the opportunity to do those things themselves because it will feel good for them to do. Even if you're met with some pushback and some resistance and some arguing, that's normal. And again, look at it as in six from in six months from now, I want to be able to look back and see what types of changes take place. That could be a really great journaling prompt for you. Get out your journal and write down in six from in six months from now, I want to be able to see what changes What have taken place? What do I notice that's different in our routines and the responsibility that we each have and the behavior that I notice in my kids, their characteristics, what, what differences have I noticed in my patients and my perspective of my kids and my spouse. There's so much good that can come from this. So explore that writing prompt. Um, I'm super glad that you joined me on this week's episode. I will see you next week here on the Momset podcast. And when you're ready, I will also to see you inside of the Momset membership that I've linked below. Hopefully you'll be in there for the May challenge, the May decluttering challenge that is just going to set us up to be so successful through summertime, really enjoying the things that matter most. I adore you, friends, and I'll see you later.