Burnt Waffles & Big Reactions

In today’s episode, we’re diving into your questions. Listener Susan G. asks: 

I’m having a really hard day at home with my kids. Everything seems to be spiraling out of control. I’m struggling to keep it together. How do you handle days like this?

Becky and Lacey share relevant, real life stories  and offer tips and techniques for coping with those inevitable terrible, no good, very bad days. Listen in to hear how burnt waffles, broken toys, and fire alarms ended up being the best day ever! 

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becky@thisflockeduplife.com

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Transcript

Becky North: 0:06

Whether you're navigating the challenges of parenthood with a crying baby, a teenager or anything in between. Whether you have one child or a dozen, know this, we see you. We are you.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 0:19

We are modern moms and best friends with out-of-the-box kids, and we're here to cheer you on during this wild ride called motherhood.

Becky North: 0:28

We show ourselves grace, build badass communities, and choose to embrace the chaos with love and humor.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 0:34

Welcome to This Flocked Up Life. Because being a mom is messy, imperfect, and pretty flock'n beautiful. Hey there, I hope you're having a beautiful day. I'm Lacey Verbik, and I'm here with my favorite flamin-gal Becky North. In today's episode, we're diving into your questions. Before we get there...someone had a special anniversary just last week. Happy anniversary you two love birds.

Becky North: 1:15

Thank you so much.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 1:18

So, our question today comes from Susan G. She asks, "I'm having a really hard day at home with my kids. Everything seems to be spiraling out of control. I'm struggling to keep it together. How do you handle days like this?" Hmm, I think we can all relate to that. Right, Becky?

Becky North: 1:38

Yes, ma'am. I think that we we certainly can. Well first, Susan, I just want to say we see you. I think that, like Lacey said, we all have days like that where we find ourselves hiding in the bathroom, or in the kitchen closet with m&ms or any of those things. I know I've had several of those days. I'm sure you have too.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 2:02

Yes, ma'am. Absolutely.

Becky North: 2:05

What I'd really like to do is share a story with you, Susan, about one of those days for me. I want to take it back five or six years ago, when my kids were quite a bit littler and we were getting ready for our day. One of the things that my husband and I have always kind of aligned on is that we get to help make sure that our kids are ready and capable adults when they go into the world. And so, we have been teaching independence from a very young age. My kids have been making their breakfast for quite a long time, you know, at first with a lot of help and a lot of things that were super easy, and now they make much bigger things and do more extravagant meals. But at the time, my middle son was on like the biggest waffle kick. He came running to me and he was like mommy, mommy, mommy, I want waffles. I want waffles. I want waffles. At that moment, I really had to go to the bathroom, so I said, okay buddy, tell me how do we cook our waffles? And he says, Well, you get two out of the freezer, and we put them on the plate. Then we put the plate in the microwave. Because yes, my husband did teach them to microwave their waffles, even though that's disgusting. Ugh! And then you set the microwave for three, zero. And I was like, that's right, three, zero. You can go ahead and cook your waffles, and Mommy's gonna run to the bathroom. And then.....and then....and then. I'm sure most moms can understand that everything bad happens when you have to go to the bathroom. Especially when your kids are little. So, I come out of the bathroom and my house smells awful. It's so bad. And I am like, what's on fire? What is wrong? I go over and I open the microwave, and I pull out this plate and the waffles are so well cooked that they have burnt a hole into the middle of two waffles and straight through the little purple plastic IKEA plate. Oh no! And my house smelled so bad...it was so bad. And I had a moment. I'm sure you've probably had some of those too where it was like"don't explode, don't explode, don't explode." And, I said,"okay buddy, tell me what happened." And he says, "Well, I put my waffles on the plate and I put them in the microwave, and then I hit three, zero, zero. I just kind of stood there looking at him thinking, we just talked about this. And in that moment, I had some really great learning both for me and him. I said, well...three, zero, zero is one more zero than we were supposed to put. So, that morning he got to have pancakes for breakfast instead, because those were our last waffles. So, I got to learn in that minute that we need to be really clear and really precise. And we need to set up different systems for our kids to be able to follow through with all of the instructions in our house. That may not be true for you in your house, but it is true in ours. And he got to learn that if you burn the waffles, you might have to have pancakes for breakfast. So, fast forward...we get it all cleaned up. I'm running cold water over the plate because I'm afraid to put it in the the garbage can because it's really badly melted. I know that may be hard to envision. So, make sure you check out our social media page. And I'll make sure to drop a picture of that this week for you to see. So, we make pancakes, and they're eating and it's it's been about 30 minutes because I'm just finishing cleanup. All of a sudden, my fire alarm starts going off.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 6:33

Oh no!

Becky North: 6:35

We are lucky enough to have modern fire alarms that don't just chirp at you. They actually say, Woop Woop. Fire! Fire! And so the fire alarm is just going off. And it will not stop. I have the windows open. I'm sure my neighbors thought I was crazy. I'm trying to fan them with anything I can find just to make it stop. And it won't. At one point I'm finally just screaming at the ceiling,"Just stop. It's not on fire. It's not on fire." It finally stops. But in that moment, I let defeat defeat me. That was the moment, looking back, now I can say...Hey, this is a bad day. I probably even said it out loud when my husband called me at lunch. I probably said, "today is just not a great day." I declared that. That's okay, let me be really clear, we all have those moments where we the only thing to say is it's a bad day. It was kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back. It just kept going after that. The kids broke this big Imaginext tower that they love to play with. And at the end of the day, like before my husband comes home, I put pizza in the oven, and we burned the pizza, we burn it. And then my husband walks through the door. I am in tears. And I say, "It's yours". You take it, I have to step away." I want to say sometimes we need to step away. It is okay. And we should be making our own mental health and our own awareness of our feelings a priority. Because by stepping away, we're teaching our kids that's an okay thing to do. And we're making sure our cup is full for the rest of it. And so, I stepped away and my husband decided that we would still have a pizza for dinner. So, instead he just ordered pizza. You know, I got frustrated then because we were using plastic plates instead of paper ones. We had that issue and I had to step away a couple of times. And again, that's okay. One of the things we try really, really hard in our family to do with our kids is in moments of reaction, which is often my reaction, is to walk it back. That's something we do in our family, walk it back, and take accountability for our reactions. To say, "Hey, I showed up in a way that I didn't want to and here's what I'm going to do different next time, and here's how I'm going to change that." You know, we do that with ourselves and with our kids and sometimes we can walk back faster than others. But I wasn't ready to walk it back yet. So, instead I went upstairs and I was doing the laundry and I don't know about you, but the story playing out in my head is like a real life musical. They say musicals aren't real. But it's not true. At any given time, there is a song playing in my mind. And we have a sign in our laundry room that has the words to you are my sunshine on it. So, I'm up there just quietly singing it and my daughter comes, bursting around the door, and hugs me so tightly. She kind of lightly shoves me against the wall...it's not a very big laundry room. But still. And she goes, Mom, it was the best day ever. I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud. I was like...best day ever. Hmm. Tell me about it. And she was like, yeah, you made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. We got to play all day in the living room with all of our toys. We got to have a picnic with pizza tonight. And in that small moment, I got to walk it back. The moment of accountability of seeing it through my daughter's eyes instead of mine. And seeing how, even though I thought it was a very bad, terrible, no good, very bad, awful day, I may have just been looking at it from the wrong perspective. Because instead what we got to do is create some unintentional memories. And it's still a day that my kids talk about today.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 11:28

Oh, that's such a good story.

Becky North: 11:30

So Susan, at the end of the day, I just want to remind you, that we all have days where it feels like everything is crashing down. Like all of the towers are falling, and that even the littlest thing seems really, really big. And so, what I would say is, you don't have to struggle to keep it together. It's okay to have moments where you don't. And then if you decide this isn't how I want to show up, it's okay to own that. I would say, ask your kids and see how their day was because I'll bet that their perspective is a little bit different than yours. And I just want to remind you, you're doing a good job, Mama.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 12:15

So, what the flap are you waiting for? Hit the follow button and become part of our growing flock. Because let's face it, it'll be fun. And you're worth it. Becky, I love that story so much and it called to mind another story that happened to me this week. I think it is also related to Susan's question and I'll just tell it really quick here. My husband and my son got into a little spat, I was probably Thursday of last week, and my husband got pretty upset. And he very rarely gets upset, so it was a little unusual from the get go. He verbally lashed out at our son, who's 15 and has a lot of teenager energy, called him a name, which again is really unusual for my husband..but he was really upset in that moment. It took him about a day before he was ready to talk about it. Before he could, you know, sit down with our son and feel like he could have a constructive conversation. Everything in that moment seemed to be spiraling out of control because he was so angry. And my son was, you know, really misbehaving. So, they waited about a day, my husband sits down with him and says,"Hey, you know, that was not acceptable behavior. And my response and my behavior was also not acceptable. And I'm sorry, son. Here's how we can, prevent this from happening again in the future." The reason I share this story with you, Susan, and everyone who's listening today is that sometimes we do have hard days at home with our kids. Sometimes an argument can feel like it's spiraling out of control, some days, it is important to step away. In the moment, some things really stood out to me. That my husband apologized to our son. He was willing to show his feelings. He was willing to be vulnerable. And, you know, he was really just open and honest about the situation and about how my son's behavior made him very upset. And it was genuine. I think sometimes we just have to come from our heart and say the hard thing.

Becky North: 14:48

I really want to recognize that because I know sometimes that's not easy, though walking it back, like I talked about, and the saying that and the sharing our feelings. I think that's really important. He did that. So that's why I say, "good job" husband.

Lacey Ring-Verbik: 15:03

Oh, thank you for weighing in on that. I so appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, walking it back is not a term that ever came up in our house. But I think it's absolutely brilliant. Sometimes we're not able to walk it back in that moment, maybe not even that day. I think that's what my husband did the following day, when he felt able to was, you know, he walked it back. And that got him into a mindset of being able to relate to our son in a positive way. Recently, I heard a teacher talk about the difference between response versus That's beautiful. I love that analogy. reaction. And it applies here, Susan, sometimes when you're having a really hard day, it's easy to default to reacting: to the perhaps negative, perhaps hurtful, perhaps not very well thought out, versus a response, which is more thoughtful, it's calmer, it's more calculated, it's probably more positive. It's important to learn how to discern between the two. When is it time to react versus when is it time to respond? One other thought I had for you, Susan, is about stepping out in nature and grounding yourself. Becky also mentioned, stepping out or stepping away from a situation where you are having that strong reaction. Something that I do, I will go outside and walk or I will go outside. We've all heard about the benefits and the therapeutic quality of being outdoors and touching in with Mother Earth. So that tends to be where I step out when I need to. And in case you've never heard this...try grounding yourself with bare feet in the earth. Put your bare feet, say in the grass, maybe even in your garden. Grounding and connecting to Mother Earth is a great way to create an energetic and emotional reset. So I highly recommend that on those days where things feel like they're spiraling.

Becky North: 17:06

Remember, this is just a moment. Breathe and try to find joy in the journey. Thank you, Susan, for the great question and keep in touch with us. You've got this! We'd love to feature your question in a future episode. Reach out to us on social media or by email. Our contact information is in the show notes. Thanks for listening and have a great day.