Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn Childress. I'm

a life and parenting coach. I'm also a parent educator. So I spend a lot

of time learning about parenting, understanding parenting, have studied

parenting, study child development, dynamics, psychology,

all of the things that go into raising emotionally healthy

kids. And part of that, of course, is

your mental health, how you think and feel about

yourself and your kids and what your job is as a parent

and what you're responsible for will inform how you

think and feel about yourself. Your mental health, a lot

of times, is determined by the external factors that

happen in your life, as well as your internal dialogue. And so I'm

here to help you become a calm mama. And when I

think about what becoming a calm parent really is,

it's really having a healthy

mental health. Right? That you're emotionally healthy. When we

talk about raising emotionally healthy kids, I'm talking about your kids

being able to manage stress and manage the negative

emotions that come up with difficult circumstances and manage

that stress in a healthy way. I was very curious

last week when the surgeon general, Vivek

Murthy, comes out with an advisory for parents

and for mental health professionals and communities and schools and doctors and

all of that. And he says, hey. Guess what? I'm issuing an

advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents.

The title of the document is called Parents Under Pressure.

I thought it was really interesting, so I dove deep into it. I read the

it's, like, 36 pages. This entire research paper

on why parents are stressed, what's going on, and what we can do about

it. And I thought it was really encouraging to read that we're

somebody who's in charge of things like mental health

and our physical and mental health. Right? The surgeon general is

addressing this chronic problem, and that is that

parents are stressed. And, of course, I say that and you might

be thinking, duh. Right? Of course, I'm stressed. Tell me

something I don't know. But I wanted to talk about it on the podcast

because I think well, I don't think I know that

part of compassion is when somebody

comes alongside and they narrate your difficult circumstance

for you. They name the emotions that come up when you're

experiencing that circumstance, and then they help you with

some solutions, some strategies to cope with that

difficult circumstance and the emotions that come up. That's my job as a

life coach, and that's what I teach you to do when we do the connection

tool with our kids. When you practice compassion with your kids,

you are essentially helping them understand

what is going on in their life that is creating

this difficult situation and these difficult feelings,

and then what they can do to cope.

Now, what is going to impact your kids negatively is

your stress. And that's what is really revealed in

this advisory notice is that when stress is

severe or prolonged, it can have harmful effect

on the mental health of you, of course, and it affects your kids.

And there was a part of the study that did say that that's been proven

that it has been shown that your mental health

affects the well-being of your children. And when you

have a lot of stress in your life and you're not managing it well, it's

not just stress itself. It's really like you have this stress and how are

you handling it? Are you dumping it on your kids? Are you emotionally checking

out? Are you, you know, feeling overwhelmed and not getting your

your stuff done? Then if that might create

a problem for our kids. So that's why this

is mentioned is that when we have stressed parents and

caregivers, that stress is being passed down to children

in direct and indirect ways, and then that impacts the health and

well-being of our entire society. And that's why the surgeon general of the

United States was, like, uh-oh, everyone, we need to pay attention.

And it's not a parent blame game. It's not, oh, god.

Parents are fucking up their kids. It's really our society

is creating an unsustainable environment for parents, and we need to

address the ways that we are supporting parents. And

we need to create better strategies to support parents, which is

cool. Right? We have this culture, this pervasive

stressed out parenting culture. And I'm gonna

walk through the types of stress that you might be

experiencing. And as you listen, you could be like, oh, I don't have that

one. Or oh, yeah. I have that one. And as you listen,

be thinking about, Okay. That is a stress for me. Let me

think about how I can cope better. Maybe I need to develop some strategies around

that. Get some support in this area so that it doesn't cause me so

much stress. Can we get rid of this stressor?

Sometimes. Sometimes we can alleviate it. We can get rid

of it, but sometimes we can't. You have a

newborn and you don't sleep because you're they don't

sleep. You can't get rid of your newborn. Okay? But

you can manage your tired body in a way

that's loving and supportive and take better care of

yourself by sleeping more or whatever it is. You can't necessarily get

rid of the stressor, but you could deal with the stress different.

So let's talk about why we are so stressed.

So the first thing is

that parenting itself is stressful. This has

been true for, you know, millennia. Right? Having

small children or raising kids is going to be a

mental health challenge for you. It's going to be stressful for

you. When they're in early childhood, the stressors,

of course, I just mentioned it. 1 is sleep disturbances

and one is finding out how to be a parent. This new parental

role, learning how to do it is really, you know,

anytime you learn something new, it's stressful. And then balancing

work and family and, like, your your co parent, if you have

one, it can be very stressful those beginning years

because, you know, you're, like, new to it, and you're trying to figure

out how this new child in this life stage fits.

And then you get kinda used to it. You know how it goes. Your kids

sleep through the night a little bit more, a little bit more, and they get

into their mid childhood. And the new challenges show up because your

child has a bunch of new stressors in their life.

They are emotional and social and cognitive and physically

transitioning. And so you're helping them

manage that, and that is hard. Remember a couple episodes ago,

I said they're the 3 stages of parenting where the first is your body,

the next is your mind, and the third is your heart. And in this

parent, what did he call this thing? Parents under pressure. In

this advisory statement, he breaks them down into these 3

stages. Doesn't call them body, mind, heart, but kind

of the truth is in the beginning, you're physically

very stressed. In the middle childhood, you're mentally

very stressed. And then in the later adolescent years,

you have stress because your child is starting to

need independence, and they have risk taking behaviors, and they have their peers

influencing them. And that pulls on your emotional health.

Yeah. So we have, like, in general,

parenting itself is stressful, and that's just kinda true. But

then we add a bunch of these other stressors like

money, financial strain, economic instability,

just for the whole culture. Like, where where's the future jobs? And,

like, a lot of industries are shrinking, and, you know, robots are

coming, and AI is coming, and all that. And so we all kinda feel a

little bit of financial insecurity, maybe not for ourselves, but for our

kids. And then, of course, if you can't meet your kids' basic

needs, you can't pay for childcare, can't pay for your kids' health care

and their education. That financial stress

is going to be intense, especially when

you are financially responsible for

another person or many people. How much food do you

have to buy and how many clothes you have to get and how big your

house has to be and, like, your car has to fit them. And, you know,

there there's so many financial strains. So we have, like,

kind of the parenting itself. We have the money strain.

We have the actual time. I thought this was a really interesting

statistic. They compared how much time

mothers and fathers, in the traditional sense

spent caregiving to their children in

1985 versus in 2022. So this

was fascinating for mothers. There was a 40%

increase in each week how much time a

parent spent on childcare, like, actually

giving care to their children caring for them. It

went from 8.4 hours a week in 1985

to 11.8 hours in 2022.

That means, like, hands on time that you're really

taking care of somebody else's body, physical needs, things like that.

It doesn't really include the amount of time you spend with your children because,

obviously, you're spending more than 11 hours a week

with them. But if you think about 11 hours

of concentrated childcare time,

That's an hour and a half a day of time where you're just

focused on your children's care. There aren't

that many discretionary hours that we have.

Right? We're sleeping for a bunch of the day. The kids are at

school. We're at work. How much time are we really

do we really have available? Not that much. And then if you think about almost

2 hours a day is going to your kids. That's a lot.

Now the increase from fathers was huge.

Kinda cool. So in 1985, they spent about 2.6

hours a week with children, like, doing childcare duties.

And then in 2022, they spent 6 hours a week.

Still not have even reached the same number of hours

that mothers did in 1985.

And it's like about half. But if you kinda split that together, you're like, wow.

So one parent, if you have a 2 parent home with mother and

father, you have almost 12 hours with the mother

and 6 and a half with the father. So that means the child is

getting 18 and a half hours of primary care given to

them a week. It's a lot of focus time. Right?

Then you have to add in work commitments, family

responsibilities, taking care of aging parents. Of course, you're

feeling conflicted. I should be working. I should be with my kids. All that

guilt, that burnout, that is real. So

taking care of children is very time consuming. So we have sort of

these practical things that are true. Right? We

have, like, the money stress, the time stress. Then we get

into sort of the mental and emotional stress of parenting.

1 is the mental load. There's a significant amount

of mental labor involved with parenting. Right? Balancing complex

schedules, anticipating your kids' needs, making, hundreds

of decisions a day on behalf of them, monitoring their progress.

When you are using so much of your mental

capacity to focus on your child's

problem solving, that leaves you a lot less

capacity to focus on other things. And it can

negatively impact your own cognitive functioning,

your psychological well-being. When you are consumed

by thinking about someone else's well-being, you're not

thinking about yours. If you're consumed with

thinking about what your child is eating and how much they slept and whether their

clothes are clean and whether you signed up for camp and all of that, you're

not really able to shift gears and you don't have any more

mental thought to think about yourself. That's why self care is so hard for

moms because you're they're like, I can barely even think about myself,

let alone think about what I wanna do in my free time. What are you

talking about? I don't have free time. I don't have any money. Right? I don't

have any brainpower. I don't have any time. I don't have any money. I'm done.

So, yes, that is some stress. Then we

add in, we're hearing that kids are a mental health crisis.

So we start to worry about their mental health. We worry about gun

violence, drugs, and alcohol, and bullying. So we are fearful for their

physical health. We have so much concern

and confusion over tech and social media.

Nearly 70% of parents say that parenting now is more

difficult than it was 20 years ago, and that's because of technology and

social media and fear of violence.

So we have all of these, like, kind of existential

threats happening that we can't put our finger on. We don't really have

control over, and that creates a lot of stress.

When you have a lot of fear in your body and in your mind and

you can't solve for those fears, it

creates existential stress. And so we

have, you know, our kids' mental health. We have tech. We have,

their physical health. We just went through a pandemic. You're like, are my kids

okay? Right? That that was a huge physical health

crisis in our society. And, you know, we're now

thinking like, oh my god. My kids are vulnerable. It's scary. So we have

those kinds of fears in the mix. So we've got the practical stuff. We've

got the fears mixing in, and then we have sort of the

cultural situation, primarily cultural

pressure. So there's, like, some sort of

perceived parenting standard that everybody's

doing it right, and you're doing it wrong, which by the way is

not true because I work with parents. I know you guys are all

amazing parents, and you also are struggling. Like, that's just

true. We think there's some sort of parenting standard and that

you're not meeting it. Right? You're thinking you're not meeting it. So you have,

like, expectations and norms and pressures from the culture.

And then, of course, you're wanting to not, you know, not do it like your

parents. So you're learning new things. And, you know, we are also looking at our

kids, like, oh my god. They need to be more successful, and there's not

enough to go around. Like, we don't understand the future. We don't know

how to set our kids up for success. So we better do everything.

And that is gonna lead to burnout. You cannot do everything.

Right? You cannot prepare children for everything that

could happen to them in the future. But because we can't really

picture what the future is gonna be like, plus, oh, like, climate crisis. I mean,

there's so much going on that as a parent, it

feels like almost like an existential threat, and

we're, like, feeling pressure to perform

and do it perfectly in order to protect our kids. Because you do,

you know, everyone's like, I don't wanna fuck up my kids, but that pressure

is going to create stress. And then you're

gonna have the stress over to your kids, which is gonna make them struggle with

their mental health. So I'd rather you drop the pressure,

feel better and happier and like say no to things.

Don't put so much time demand on yourself. Don't let bedtime

go for, like, an hour and a half. No. That's crazy

pants. Training your kids. Like, I do one book and one

song and one kiss and 2 minutes of laying down, and I walk out.

And they're going to struggle, but that's okay. Thinking about

how to better take care of yourself, knowing that

these stresses are there is going to be really important.

Learning how to set better boundaries for yourself, what you say yes to, what you

say no to. Okay. I'm getting into the action steps. The last

stressor, I thought this was really interesting, is the parental

isolation and loneliness. Parents, even though we're, like, we're

more connected through social media, it's

not really serving us because we're using social media to

create parenting standards that are unrealistic

and to create expectations and norms about milestones

and birthdays and, you know, how we're supposed to act as

parents. But we don't have the support

that we actually need to show up that

way as parents. What we're seeing in the literature is that

42% of parents experience loneliness

and feel left out compared to 24% of

non parents. So 24% of non parents

experience loneliness and feeling left out for 42% of

parents. So we have parents in these little

silos of isolation and loneliness.

And when you are alone and you feel like you're not doing a good job,

you're gonna feel more stressed. You're going to feel like you're

not doing it right. You need to do more, do better, and that can lead

to more burnout, which can lead to more stress. All this is to

say is that if you're feeling stressed as a

parent, it's not because you're not doing it right.

It's not because there's some magic formula that you

haven't figured out yet. It's not because all the other

moms know how to do it and you don't. That's not

what's happening. Your stress is because of

the expectations that maybe you've put on

yourself, some of the fears that you have that you're

not managing well, and some of the,

like, time strain because of over committing,

which comes from a lot of times the feeling of anxiety.

Of course, the financial pressure is real

and that can be very stressful.

And it might mean buying less things, not, you

know, contributing to consumeristic culture. Like your kid doesn't need a new backpack

every year. If you are struggling with money, you don't need to do

that. Right? So we look at these stressors and you start

to realize, oh, yes, I am stressed because of

all these things that are happening in my society and all these things that are

happening in my head. So the the ones in your

head, we can really deal with easily. The ones in society

you can also learn to manage better. So what

is Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general recommending?

So he has 4 primary action steps

that he recommends or that the team recommends

for our society. So the first one is a societal

shift in the perspective on parenting. This is kind of a

bigger picture action item, but it's like, hey. We should value

parents more. We should give them more support. We should see it as vital

part of our society. So that's beautiful. I love that.

So that that leads him to the second one, which was societal

support. So that meant investing in education,

investing in the safety of children, investing in the health of children, and

creating communities where friendships and practical

assistance and an emotional support systems are created

for parents. Right? And then knowing that the more you support

parents, the more the children will be supported. I see that in my practice

all the time. When the parent comes in, they come in because their

child is typically behaving in a way that they don't love. We work

on that, but we also work on the way that you think and feel about

your kids and yourself and your family and the world,

and you do all that mindset shifting, and you feel so much

better. So, yes, you need support. The third thing he recommends

is being more open. He says we need to talk openly about the stress

and struggles that come with parenting. And I see this. I've been

doing this for a long time, and I've been talking I've been saying the quiet

part out loud for a long time. The first time that

ever happened to me was out of, like, a little mommy group.

And I said, I feel like my son is abusing

me. He was 4 years old. And my friend was like, that's not

normal. You you might need to get some help. And I

was like, wait. What? Because I said the quiet part aloud.

And that sent me on a 15 year journey to

get support. And now I do my job here that I help you.

So we do need to be more honest. We need to talk about that we're

having a tough time, that we are struggling with the evolving

demands of parenting, that we are struggling with the financial strain and the family

issues and how to adjust like to technology and

all all of it. We need to say, I need help.

And we need to have open dialogues about these challenges so that we

can combat the feelings of shame and guilt. That's what we

do in our programs. I've noticed that over and over and over when someone joins

the call mama club and then listen to coaching just once or

twice, even one time, they're like, oh my god. That's

me. And then they get support. They watch

somebody else get supported and loved on by me and

get strategies and those strategies work. And then they come back the following week. They

feel better. You're like, oh, this is a place of hope and love

and support. So it's really cool.

I you you really can't shock me. And because

of my dynamic, you can't shock the group. We're just like, yep.

Fell there. Yep. Been there. Yep. I've had that thought too. Yep. I've experienced that

stress before too. Yes. That makes sense to me. Everyone in

the club is validating your experience, and that means

that you don't need to feel ashamed of yourself or ashamed of how you behave.

We all it's so normalized. So that's beautiful. And then

the 4th thing he says, so he says societal shift in in perspective. We need

societal support. We need to be more open and create a culture of

connection. He says, we must foster a culture of

connection among parents to combat loneliness and isolation.

Parenting is made all the more difficult when we feel lonely as more

than half of parents do. Creating opportunities for parents to

come together, share experiences and ideas and support each other can strengthen

parental well-being. When I read that, I just got so

excited about the Calm Mama Club. I'm not even here to pitch it really. I

just was like, Oh, wow. That is what this

group can offer. That's what this group is offering. It's small right

now, but people who are in it, the moms who are in it are getting

so much care. They're getting so much connection.

They're getting so much support. So I love that. The

big action steps that he recommends for societal

changes, but then there's a few in this parents

under pressure advisory. He goes through and talks about a few

things you can do for yourself, what parents can do. And the first one,

of course, is care for yourself. He says caring for yourself is a

key part of how you care for your family. So, obviously,

exercising, getting as much sleep as you can, balancing your diet,

doing things that bring you joy. And, of course, he

acknowledges that it's difficult to prioritize yourself.

Right? But even small investments of time can make a

meaningful difference. In my club, I have a course called self care

for moms, and it's not massages and pedis the

mani pedis. Like, that does not so those for

me are things on my calendar that I have to go to,

and I don't like them. I don't like having things on my calendar, like, appointments

that I have to go to. It feels like work. So those aren't

self care for me. But sitting quietly drinking

my coffee and playing my Wordle is

self care. Doing a few minutes outside allowing

the sun to be on my face if it's not too hot and drinking

a cup of tea or or, iced tea or something like

that, going on a walk, reading my books, talking

to my best friend on the phone. These are how I care for myself moving

my body. They don't take a ton of time,

but they are really important. When you have boundaries

and you protect your time and you say to the people around you, this

is mommy's time or this is the time that I need every week

to myself. This is my call mama break that

you are setting a healthy boundary. You don't need to feel guilt or shame about

that. Instead, you can see it as how that will ultimately benefit

your children, and you're modeling to them self

care. Of course, that's super important and then taking care of

your heart. So, you're managing your stress, you're decreasing

your stress, you're releasing some of your stress, and you're also being really loving and

compassionate with yourself. He actually says this. He

says, finally, it is impossible to get parenting right all the time.

So being compassionate and forgiving with oneself is essential. Like

the surgeon general is telling you to love yourself deeper. How great is

that? And that's what we talk about all the time on this podcast.

The other two strategies that he recommends for parents is, of course,

nurturing connections with other parents, joining groups,

being being part of your local like PTA or

PFA, just so you can hang out with the other moms, going to playgroups. If

you're a working parent, connecting with other working parents, getting, you

know, mom nights out and stuff like that, go play laser tag with your girlfriends.

Like, go do some fun stuff. And if you're finding it hard

to build a community, join mine. Join the Come Mama Club. We want you in

there. And it will be a supportive environment that

helps you reduce the stresses of parenting, which is cool. You're gonna get

strategies and support so that you feel less stressed. The last one

he recommends is that if you are struggling, get help. Go

talk to your doctor or get

a therapist or hire a coach, get some support, come to the

club. It's okay for you to admit that you might need

some, some support. It's not just okay. It's mandatory.

It's vital. You must do it in order to help your children

and their well-being. Okay. That was kind of a

lot. I hope that you feel

like more seen and more understood and that you can kind

of understand that, yeah, I am stressed

and I need to do some stress reducing strategies.

That is, I hope, your takeaway that you can kind of

look through and you're like, hi, I have a lot of fear about my kids'

mental or physical health. I want to work on that. Or wow, this mental

load is really intense. I want to try to figure out how to decrease it

or jeez, I'm we're over scheduled. I want to decrease that. I have a

lot of money strain. I think I'm going to work on a budget. I'm

really lonely. I'm gonna join the Comama Club or I'm gonna connect with some

girlfriends. You know, I'm worried about tech and I'm worried about social media.

I'm gonna create a tech plan for my family. If you were having

cultural pressure, if you have a lot of things around yourself where you're like, I'm

not doing it right. I'm not living up to the expectations I have. I'm not

I'm struggling. That means you need more self love and probably some strategies.

So looking at the stressors and then

making a plan to how you're gonna deal with those stressors is really,

really important, and you don't have to do it alone.

I'm here for you, and I know that you probably have

other people in your life who love you and care about you. And if you're

struggling, just say, hey, raise your hand. Say, hey,

I need some help here. Maybe your first step is booking a

consult with me, a discovery session with me. Just talking to me about it.

I hope you figure out what your next step is. So I encourage you to

just sign up and connect with me. You can do that on my website,

CallMamaCoaching.com. There's a place to book a call

on the programs page or the about page. Alright.

I hope you have a stress free week as possible

and that you are learning how to take

excellent care of yourself every day. Alright. I'll talk to you next

time.