If you are melting down on weekends, letting the kids set the schedule, resenting the husband for sleeping in i suggest you listen to this episode.
Find out what I think the difference is between being a victim on the weekend and feeling grateful.
If you have other thoughts about weekends that i didn’t address here and would like to get to feel grateful and happy on weekends you must come get coached so we can address those thoughts. Sign or a free session here : https://coachingnatalia.com/schedule-an-appointment/
FULL TRANSCRIPT CAN BE FOUND HERE
Welcome to my stop fighting with your son podcast. If this is your first time here, I recorded four episodes, especially for you to help you eliminate the fights right away and start connecting with your boy. As, as possible, go to episodes 54 through 59. I have four boys on my own, and I know better than anyone, how much you want to have a good relationship with your boy and all the things that can come in your way. If you are a mom of boys, I am the coach for you. Let’s go.
Hey guys,
How’s everyone doing today? Is it getting warm where you are? Or is it always warm? You lucky people, but it’s getting warm here. It’s March something. And it’s so warm. We’ve been playing outside after school for so long. I’m really enjoying it. It’s so great to see the kids out because we have really cold winters here. And so you’re really don’t feel like playing outside after school, but here we are, we were enjoying it yesterday and today. I’m sure we will as well. Oh my gosh. I have this topic to talk to you about today. It’s weekends and I am going to talk about the biggest misconception that we bring in to our life with kids about the weekends and how it’s hurting us. I’m gonna talk about that. I just coached a client about that. And I went through the same learning curve myself, and I’m sure a lot of us do that because life without kids is very different.
So when we have kids, for some reason, nobody tells us that your weekends are not going to be restful anymore. I’m people actually tell us, yeah, your life will never be the same, but they don’t tell you specifically how so I’m going to tell you and this mindset, I it’s going to be change your whole life completely. It’s going change your weekends. It’s going to change how you experience weekends. And I do recommend this mindset to get through the early years of having little kids. The it’s not necessarily the same mindset that you need when you have older kids. And I’m officially, I think I’m officially out of little kids stage, which of course I, I am excited, but also a little bit, not sad, but you know, grieving that part of it in, in just a little tiny bit, because they’re so cute still.
And I still love snuggling them, but they don’t need me as much, which is great. So anyway, it’s exciting. But so this podcast is specifically for you little kids with with on the weekends. So my client said about the weekends, her I, her thought was the weekends are long painful and boring. And so we had a good chuckle about that. But the truth is we do think they’re super terrible when we have an expectation of the weekend to be restful or relaxing, even just the word weekend brings out what in you for me, when I say the word weekend, it’s like this nice idea of time that you can spend doing something nice. You know, like after a long week you get to have a weekend, you know, it’s just makes you feel excited for it. You know, looking forward to it, you’re going to do some, anything good for you.
You can have to some time for yourself. And of course, when you have little kids, what happens is the exact opposite. And so when your expectation is that you’re supposed to be resting or enjoying yourself, that sets you up for frustration, you’re going to be frustrated because you have to take care of little kids, right? So you what’s what happens for what happened for my client. A lot of my clients, what happened for me when you have that expectation of it’s supposed to be relaxing, you create frustration for, for yourself when you’re frustrated, what happens in on your weekend? Well, let me describe it for you, right? I’m sure you’ve gone through that. So if that sounds like you, then listen on, you’ll find out the useful mindset. So you yell at the kids because you’re frustrated, right? You do not plan your weekend because you’re supposed to be reli.
You’re not planning to do stuff that that are like enjoyable or arresting things because you have kids. So you’re like, oh, I have kids. I’m not gonna plan anything. And because you are in a victim mode, you don’t take charge of the day with the kids, right? You might do something less minutes continuous, but you’re still in a victim mode and you’re still not enjoying yourself. And you’re just adding more frustration because you have to take care of little kids and you cannot be enjoying anything that you used to enjoy without them. So you let kids do whatever they want to do, because you’re trying to enjoy your yourself. While you’re at the house, they start fighting. You yell at them. That’s not relaxing. And you’re not, you’re not being the mom that you want to be. You’re not really like showing up the best way you can.
You let them sleep however long they want during nap time. Because of course you want to relax. And while they’re sleeping, it’s quiet time. Right? So, but when they sleep along for a long time, during nap time, they don’t go to bed super late. So then you set yourself up for a late night with the kids. And while you’re already tired, you don’t want to do anything with them. And you just let them watch TV, which you feel then feel guilty about because you let them watch too much TV. And that makes you more frustrated. Then you yell at them more. You’re tired. You don’t, you don’t do what you want to do on the weekend because you didn’t plan on it and you didn’t take charge and you didn’t figure out, okay, how can I do what I want to do with the kids?
And you kind of maybe resenting your husband, right? Because the husband’s doing what the husband’s do. They do what they’re trying to do, what want to do. They may wanna sleep in. They may wanna go to the gym. They may wanna watch TV. And, and especially if they’re enjoying themselves, watch out, right. You’re resenting them even more. How come he’s enjoying himself. I want to enjoy myself too. So that piles on to that. So you, and then by then of you’re so tired. So frustrated, feeling so guilty and ashamed for not being the nicest mom today that you overeat or over drink or Overwatch Netflix. And then you repeat the same thing the next day or the next weekend. So all of that is coming from me, your mindset, your mindset of how reality should be different than it is. The weekend should be different than it actually is.
Okay? And so what I want to offer to you is that you can actually enjoy your weekends, but before you enjoy your weekends with little of kids, you have to go through this ladder. And the ladder is first you go, you start feeling victim, okay? Then you can move into the feeling resistant. Let me explain. So when you are thinking, when you’re victim, you are not happy with the way the weekends are. You’re like, I’m supposed to be relaxing, but I have to take care of the kids, right? Feel like a victim, but then you, I am offering to you that you actually embrace the fact that weekends are your work time. You are doing a job on the weekend. And the job for you is to take care of the kids. If you had to hire somebody to replace you on the weekends, to take care of the kids, you would pay the money.
They would be performing a job for you. You would have expectations. You would expect them to arrive on time, to be ready, to be dressed, to have eaten so that they are ready to take care of little kids. You would expect them to do, take them outside. You would expect them to feed them. You would expect them to re read them books, plan, activity, clean up. You would expect them to give them a little bit of rest. You would expect them to to, to do some crafts with them. You would expect them to take them outside and a noon. Give them snack, all that stuff. Right? So that’s what I’m suggesting that you think of your weekend is that it’s a job. You are, you have a big shift coming up and it’s the weekend right now. Now we’re going to change the association with the word weekend from ni this nice time you’re going to spend two.
Oh my gosh, this is I’m gonna have work to do I have, I have a job up to do is gonna be a long weekend of work. I have two big shifts of 12 hours a day. So you’re going to have that expectation and guess what what’s gonna happen when you think I have a job to do on the weekend for two days, you are not gonna wanna do that. And that’s why I’m offering that. That’s the next step. You feel resistant. You feel dread dreadful. You’re like, I don’t wanna do this work. And part of this stage is you need to remind yourself that you do not have to do this. I’m telling you, you don’t have to do that. Some parents don’t take care of their kids, right? A lot of parents don’t choose not to. They can send, send them to grandparents, can send them to boarding schools.
They can sign them up for after hours care for weekend care. Some people get live in nannies and the nanny will take care of the kids on the weekends. If parents are working, whatever it is, you don’t have to do that. This may take some time. This stage of, of acceptance that that’s a big job will take time. It might take a year. Might take two, might take two weeks for you for it to sink in that this is a big job. And am I gonna do this? I don’t wanna do this. I kind of should do this. Nobody else will do it. And so on. So you are now, you’re going to enter in a conversation with yourself where you will see, or do I actually want to do this? Whatever it is, whether you want to do it or not, there is no judgment there.
Please leave the judgment out. And if you don’t want to do it, it’s okay. It’s okay to not want to do it. And it’s okay not to do it. It’s okay to get someone else to do it. It’s totally fine. I believe that kids get exactly what they need whenever they need it. So if they get someone else to take care of them, that’s what they need it. Okay? So this, I can do a whole other episode on that because you don’t have to feel guilt and shame for having other people take care of your kids, but you do need to realize that that is an option for you. Okay? So this stage will be resistant. It’s work. I’m here to do work on the weekend. I don’t want to do this and I’m going to do this. Okay? So for now, you’re going to be in this truth where you don’t want to do this, but you’re doing it.
And the longer you stay in this truth, this is the job I’m going to do this. I think you will move into naturally into this stage where you are going to be willing to do this work. Okay? But it will take time for you to accept that it’s a job and you will have to practice telling yourself that I don’t have to do this. Once you do those two things, okay, this is a job that I have to do. I don’t have to do this. This is just like any other job, except nobody tells us that, Hey, did you know? You can quit this? I think it’s a very useful thing for us moms to remember that we can quit this. We can quit. I joke about this sometimes not all the time, but I, I joke about it with my husband and say, I quit.
That was a terrible day today. I quit. Right? But it’s not that 99% of us will not actually quit. There are some parents who will quit and I can totally understand why, because it’s a very hard job. But do you think that if you allow yourself to, you will leave the kids, you will actually leave them. I would bet all my money that you will not do that. In fact, especially if you’re listening to those podcasts, you will not leave your kids. But the process of allow yourself to quit will allow you to access the truth, which is actually, you want to do this job. You want to do it. And here we come into the next stage, the stage of willing, okay, I don’t want to do this job, but I’m willing to do it because it’s important to me to be there for my kids.
It’s important for me to raise them. It’s important for me to be with them when they’re little, it’s important to me for all these other reasons. And so we’ve gone from feeling like a victim of having little kids, and then we’ve gone to the next stage to feeling resistant and accepting that weekends are no longer weekends. They are now our work. They are now our sick and largest two largest shifts of work during the week. And then we move into being willing to do the work. And after you’ve practiced those for a while, you will have access to feel grateful. Because again, you don’t have to do this. Someone else could be doing it. Someone else could be taking care of your sweet little, cute kids, sweet little son, someone else could be laughing with them, playing games, taking them to the park, enjoying like cappuccino while they watch them in the park or reading them a book and struggling with them.
Someone else can be doing that. And you know what you get to do that. That could be what you’re going through. That could be what your reality can feel like. Especially when you come from of a victim mode, okay? And notice how nothing will change except your mindset. Right? You can do that. You can go through that ladder and get yourself from a feeling super bad for yourself for having terrible weekends, for having them to be long and painful and boring. And you have meltdowns and you yell at the kids to, to be really grateful for the fact that you get to be with your kids on the weekend. Wouldn’t that be amazing to have that as a true feeling in yourself, that takes work. That takes discipline with your thoughts. And as soon as you fall back into victim mode, you remind yourself that, Hey, this is not supposed to be a vacation.
This is actually work. This is a job. Am I going to do this job? Okay. If I’m going to this job, I can pick my attitude. What kind of attitude am I gonna pick today? I don’t have to be excited about it. I don’t have to have a most amazing time with my kids. You know what, today I’m going to pick, just being willing. All I am today is I’m just willing to take care of them. And that’s all that’s required of you to take the first step to enjoy it. Okay. So I’m so passionate about this. I hope this is as helpful to you as it was to me, because now I am truly at a grateful place of getting to be with my kids. And sometimes I feel like I don’t even have enough time with my kids because they’re, well, they play with each other so well now, and so much that sometimes I feel like I don’t get to see them as, so that’s the other side of it.
Right? But I am really, really excited for you to really enjoy time with your kids on the weekend. And I know that’s why you, part of you wants to have those family time, that family time on the weekend and go for day trips and go do something together as a only, but you have to start with meeting reality where it is. And the reality for you right now is hard work, especially on the weekend when they’re not away from you. When you have to do all the meals, you have to do something with them. Anything, even if it’s just staying home and letting them watch too, V you still are there being responsible for them. It’s still a job it’s still, you’re still doing work. So let me know what you think. If you have trouble dealing with this, if you have any other thoughts that come up for you about weekends, that I did not address here, I would love to coach them on you, you on them, because they’re the ones that are going to stand in the way of you enjoying your weekends.
And I can’t uncover them here because I’m not talking to you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. So that’s why coaching is super valuable is because I get to find out your thoughts and show them to you. So then you can decide whether you want to keep them or not. So I, I invite you to sign up for a free session with me to see how you can enjoy your weekends with your kids. Little kids, even big kids. The same thing, because big kids is a whole other story because they are now requiring different kind of attention and different schedules and all different concerns. And your weekends are different when they’re bigger. So you might need a different mindset for that, but come sign up for a session. You can go to my website at www dot coaching, natalia.com go to the tab where it says, sign up for a free session.
If you don’t see the time that works for you, please just email me and we can find the time that can work for both of us. So thank you so much for listening. If you are finding this helpful, please, please, please leave a review on apple, iTunes podcast, or just share it with your friends. Whoever might need help. I would love, love, love for more people to hear this message. Because weekends don’t have to be painful. They can be super fun. You could feel grateful for getting to be with your kids. All right, guys, I will talk to you next week. Thanks a lot. Bye.
