Good Friends; Strong Families The Podcast
Welcome to 'Good Friends, Strong Families,' where family coaches and lifelong friends Angela and Anna, armed with over a quarter-century of combined experience, share research-backed strategies, heartwarming chats, and a dose of humor to make your family stronger, more joyful, and deeply connected. Join us in building resilient families through friendship. 🎧💪❤️
Good Friends; Strong Families The Podcast
Stop Asking ‘How Was Your Day?’: Helping Kids Talk After School
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Why “How Was Your Day” Fails
SPEAKER_01Welcome friends. Welcome to our good friend Strand Families podcast. I'm Angela. And I'm Anna. And this is our podcast session titled Don't Start With How Is Your Day. We love this one bitter back to school check-ins for real families, real families. Anna, this is so good. This is this is great because right now, as we're recording this, folks are getting ready for back to school. Friends, whether you are in a back to school situation or you're not in a back to school situation, this is a great way to give parents practical ways to reconnect with kids once they get home from school and really get beyond that sort of one-word answers. And as kids get older, sometimes we feel like we're interrogated. Just to get or they feel like they're we're interrogated. But our whole idea right now is we want to give you some really good tools to continue to connect with your kids. This is a time, especially as kids are getting a little bit older, that they actually need us in ways they haven't needed us before. And that's a real problem for them because they're pulling back, leaning in at the same time. They just don't realize that they need still so much support because everybody tells them they don't. Oh, come on, you're growing up, you can make these decisions. But really strong families actually think through what are the things that kids are going to need in the in not only their elementary but their middle and then their high school years. And this is one of the things that we often do have to do, and sometimes it's a little uncomfortable. But I want to talk really quickly about this, Anna. I'm so excited to relate this to our lives. This is one of those areas where it's so clear that your life and my life is so different. In that I travel a lot for work, but then when I am working and I am home, I'm generally in my office in my actual home office, which is like a little converted bedroom. But when I'm in the office, it is office work time, and I'm totally focused on that. But parents do this kind of transition just like our kids do when they come home from school. And say, You and I had this conversation about what's it like when I come home from work. Really, for me, I do a couple of ritual
Parents Need Transition Rituals Too
SPEAKER_01things to tell myself I'm transitioning from work to home life. And so our kids can also do that as well. What about you? You have kids, so you actually still have kids that are at home and are like being they're still in their teens, being actively parented. Did they have rituals? Do you have rituals? And your husband has rituals.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think this is gonna also be a new phase for us because this is the first year that our youngest is gonna be going to public school. And so, homeschooling, yes, you can still have transitions that would probably be very similar to your end of the day, end of the work day at home, right? Okay, we need to clean up. We have cubbies where they put their school work and they put that away. And it's this part of the day is over, this part of the day is starting. But it'll be interesting to see, and this is also helping me plot out okay, how can I help my son who is gone to some in-person classes a couple of days a week here and there, but for a couple of hours to five days a week, being gone six, seven hours a day. What how can I best support him? Because he doesn't even really know what he's gonna need yet. So I think some of it's gonna be trial and error, but I always try to talk through, hey, these are some things that might help. Let's try them out and see what helps the most and which feels the best for you. And then I can say, okay, let's we're gonna do that. And I'm not gonna bombard you or I'm not gonna interrogate you when you get in the criticism. I love the word to the door. I promise I wouldn't. Well, I think it's hilarious too, because my husband's a detective. So that's pretty good.
SPEAKER_01Well, this is interesting because friends, we're gonna give you three. We we love this idea as parent educators that one of the things we've talked about for years is that raising our families as friends, we've always had each other. And so we've always had a friend we get bounced this off of, but we're also parent educators, and so we want to give you real skills to walk out the door with. And so we're actually gonna give you three skills that you can use so that you open up that conversation a little bit more, especially as they get a little bit older. You want to keep that connection with them. So we're gonna give you three skills. The first one we're gonna call
Build A Reset Routine After School
SPEAKER_01create a transition window or a reset routine or something like that. This is a good one. This is a sort of the short predictable transition between when they get home from school and your next set of expert their expectations. And let me ask you this because I'm we're gonna talk about something controversial right now. I can remember in our first few years of being parenting facilitators, parenting coaches, that all of the content I looked at said when kids come home from school, you should have a place for them to do their homework, and that's the first thing they should do. Do you remember that? Did you that when you were?
SPEAKER_00I definitely heard that before. As a family who has homeschooled for the last 10, that hasn't really been an issue for us. And they they had in-person classes that they would go to, and so obviously they would have homework for that. And now the girls are in college and they manage that. They're they're much better at time management now as they're young adults. But I am thinking again as I'm plotting out how this school year is gonna be for our family that it's been a while, and so I'm like, I can only imagine that would go over horribly if I was like, you've literally been doing school work for six hours and come home and do more right now, and you can't do anything else until it's done. And I will say, my husband, or not my husband, my son intends to play sports, and so I can imagine that there's times or days of the week where it's like, this is the only window that you have for homework, so kind of suck it up and get it done right now. Yeah, no, I see that. But as a norm, like, I know I would hate that. So I think that having this like little reset of okay, that was school. Now you're home. What do you need to like decompress or to just shake off the day? And at some point, we are going to have to get your homework done, but let's give you some time. And obviously, I think that the key is to not let time get away from you. I think whatever amount of reset time or transition time that we give, it's probably a good idea to have a time reference of, hey, at this time of the day, you need to start your homework, or depending on what your family like dinner time is and how old your kid is, it may be before or after dinner, whatever. Obviously, like your kids have earlier bedtimes and all those things. So it's really this is a time as a family, as parents, to think out those things and hey, what does our day look like? And when do we need to have dinner? When do we need to have bedtime? So if bedtime starts at this time and dinner is at this time, when do you get your where can we fill it in?
SPEAKER_01Well, and we'll offer the same things that we've been talking about, this kind of stuff for years. Like if you greet them at the door, get make sure that there's food or water available, something to eat or something or drink, maybe like their transition is like changing clothes or some kind of movement, sport, a game. Maybe they like quiet or maybe they like to play music or whatever. But here's the controversial thing: do you allow things like video games, phone time? Where do you land on that?
SPEAKER_00I feel like I'm like a new parent in this field because I we it it's gonna be so different
Homework Timing Without The Fight
SPEAKER_00for us. I don't know that we have all those answers yet, but I'm gonna have to get them figured out in two weeks. So I don't know yet.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you where I land, and you could tell me you could tell me how it works out for you. I am okay with video games. Yeah, I'm okay with phone time, I'm okay and phone time meaning games on their phone or whatever. Yeah, but I'm okay with video games, and I'll tell you why. To me, I know a lot of parents, and listen, if this is you as a parent, please do not take what we're saying as that is the gospel truth, and Angela and Aaron's the only way to do it. No, but I'm saying there is a freedom in deciding. And for me, if you have a set time when they're done, and they have they know the set time, and they can stick by the set time. For example, they want to do 30 minutes of video games playing with their friends all around on a video game as soon as they get home. I'm actually okay with that. But as long as they're sticking with that end time, it doesn't matter to me how they decompress as long as they decompress. So I know we may get a little pushback on that, and that's okay. You get to decide for your own family what that looks like. But I think going back to what you're saying is we don't always, you're not gonna always know, but I think sometimes what happens is parents are like, well, I need to talk to them and find out how their day went. And we want that. We started this out by saying that's what we want to do is communicate with our kids. But I think the very first thing we have to have is some kind of a reset routine when they get home. Just like you or me or anybody else, they don't want to start being grilled as soon as they walk in the door.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. I also need a snack, like I was gonna say, I was thinking about when my girls come home from work. It's like food and changing clothes are like sometimes they're trying to do both at the same time. Like they're just like, I need to take off my work day and get home. In fact, I have one specifically who she'll they have worked or whatever, and she'll come home and she'll spend a little bit of time and then she'll go, I need some time in my bed. She'll go and reset in her bed.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I think that's perfect. I think that's absolutely perfect. I think there's a big distinction between, especially as they're getting older, giving them the independence to make those decisions. What do you need? And then also realizing that if they aren't, if they aren't, if you do have a homework time and it has to get started or whatever, that still have to follow up with that. You know what I mean? Like we as parenting adults also know they need a little independence, they need to be able to make some choices, but we need to follow up with that. All right. All right. I just want to make a couple of points on that one. We don't need to turn that into a big lecture, but I wanted to give you a little bit of information. We always talk about the research. Harvard Center on the Developing Child emphasizes that responsive back and forth interactions with caring adults help build communication, emotional, and social capacities. And that's really important because we do need to connect with them. We cannot let them go to their room at the and then we had one parent, one of our classes, the daughter would come over to school, go to her room, she would not come out for dinner. The mom would just bring her and she would just put food in there. And when I was chatting with her about it, she said, Well, she won't come out, she won't eat if I don't put food in there. Do you need to build communication with them? We do need to help them build communication, emotional, and social uh capacities. So we are gonna have to work on that. So um, we can't let them just come home, go in their rooms and be in there the rest of the night. We are gonna have to um continue to parent.
SPEAKER_00I also I also love that concept of like instead of starting off with a question, start with a greeting, like, hey, I'm really glad to see you, or I'm really glad to help. Yes. You know, do you want food? Do you need like what do you need first? Food or whatever. And then also letting them know, hey, I'm gonna give you this time to like, you know, chill, and then I'm gonna check in with you at this time and we're gonna see what your homework looks like for the day. 100% a better way to go about it instead of like, when do you want to start your homework? No, we're gonna we're gonna check in at four and we're gonna see what we need to get done before dinner, etc. etc.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And actually, the younger they are when you start this, the easier it is as they get older because it sets the standard.
SPEAKER_00Or even saying, like, do you want to talk now or later or like at a different time? Giving them again, giving them choice and power is also goes a long way at any time.
SPEAKER_01And you didn't give them the chance, you didn't give them the option not to talk. Do you want to talk about now or do you want to check in later? I love that. I love that. I love that. All right. So that's number one. What about number two? So we said the first skill. We already
Screens As Decompression With Boundaries
SPEAKER_01talked about the first skill. What's our second skill?
SPEAKER_00So again, like having a good conversation starter. I always think of it as like an open-ended question, um, not something that they can just say, yes, no, good.
SPEAKER_01However, good, bad, right? Like we don't ask, and we're like, why did they answer with yes and no? Because that's the answer.
SPEAKER_00And I think we're actually gonna have some resources and we have some lists of questions and some that are catered to younger kids and some that are more for like older children or teenagers, some conversation starters, I think is a better way to say it. And so I think that is something that like I know I feel like I'm constantly like saying, I need better questions. Like, I need like to I always want to communicate better, I should say. I feel like I've learned so much, but I always feel like I could do better.
SPEAKER_01So we actually have like we'll put this list by the way in our show notes, but we'll also put this list on our deltaprevention.org website so you can download it because we actually have a really good list here.
SPEAKER_00And I think some other formats like no, some people have done this consistently at like their family dinners. Some people will call it like high low. So, like, what was the high, like the best part of your day? What was something that wasn't that great? Or some people call it rose thorn bud. So, like something good, something difficult, something you are looking forward to. And even the parents, like you're also gonna be answering this. And so it just makes it more again, less interrogative, but more open-ended conversation. And everybody is just communicating.
SPEAKER_01Listen, I'm gonna ask you this though, because sometimes when we give people these questions they'll or like this, these statements they'll push back that doesn't feel real to me. And I just want to give a little bit of a caveat. Every time we teach a new skill to families, it is gonna feel unnatural because you haven't tried it before. You know what I mean? Absolutely. We have to have a little bit of that, but then on the other hand, you and I have to realize people don't always talk the way we talk or the way the source says they should talk, or communication skills are supposed to be, or whatever. So when you were looking at those, like what are the things, what are some things that would feel like totally unnatural? It would feel unnatural to me to say, what was your Rosenthorn today? That would feel but I could see myself saying what was really great about today and what really stunk about it.
SPEAKER_00So one of the questions is what took the most energy today. I don't think I would ever talk like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't think so either. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So when we give people the quiet year, it's just to give you ideas.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely make it your own, make it your family's thing. Again, I we were talking about this in our prep. Our job as Kerans is to continuously open the door, try to keep that door open of communication. And so we basically the biggest takeaway is don't ever stop opening the door, even if it feels like sometimes they're shutting the door or slamming the door in your face and closing down all communication. We are the parents, and so it's our job to keep opening that door and saying, Yep, I'm still here, I still care, I still want to know about you, I still want to know about your day because I love you. That is, I think, what I want you to take away the most today.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I will say that to people who have adult children as well. That has always been my mantra. And I'll just tell you, I know you and I were talking about this in our show prep that on Mother's Day every year, I text message each one of our kids. And I do it as soon as I wake up in the morning and I do it before I think I've shared this before, but I do it before they could have gotten up to send me a message. And I try to do it every year. I hope I've done it every year. But what I do is for each individual kid, I send them a text message or maybe a Facebook, like a private message in some way, just to say, I want you to know how amazing you are and how grateful I am that God put us together, or that He made that, or to our oldest, you're the first one that ever made me a mole. Or to our
Better Conversation Starters That Feel Real
SPEAKER_01daughter, I can't believe that I got to be a girl mom. You know what I mean? Like, and the reason for that is exactly what you're talking about in terms of it being our job as parents to go after our kids. People will disagree with us, and I don't care. On this, I will stake my claim. Because if you are an adult parent of adults, if you're a parent of adults, and you are waiting for them to call, you're saying, Well, they don't call me, you will hold your breath until you turn blue because their lives are busy, it will get worse when they have kids.
SPEAKER_00And also they're learning from you because if you're sitting there going, how come they haven't called me? They could also be thinking, gosh, how come my mom hasn't called me in a week?
SPEAKER_01So I this is a line that constantly isn't a hard, yes, of course it is, because we're the we're gonna have to chase after them to continue a relationship. Um, but that is what is going to continue a relationship, right? For our kids, this isn't our next door neighbor or best friend. Do you know what I mean? There are other relationships. Maybe we let go because that was just for a season. There is no season when they're your kids. Some of my kids are 30, 40. But I'm not gonna let go. I'm these are there's a different season in their lives. They need me for totally different things. Some of them I see consistently, some I rarely see because they live in different parts of the world or they're very busy people or whatever. But I will not stop chasing after my kids, and I don't think that you should either.
SPEAKER_00I also think um uh for the kids that are at home and these kids who are like, hey, we want to have those check-ins. Another opportunity is bedtime. And I know that sounds weird if because we're talking about like up to teenagers, right? But I say goodnight to my kids every night. 100%. I also think it's an opp another opportunity for conversation. And maybe they have been mulling over something literally all day, and maybe they really need to unload it before they're able to sleep. And so that's right, just again, keep opening the door, keep asking a question, um, or just saying, like, hey, I'm here. If there's anything that you need to talk, keep the communication lines open and look for like little checkpoints throughout the day. Like, hey, it's anything else.
SPEAKER_01There's also that there's that opportunity. One of the things that I do now that our youngest isn't work, he still lives in our job. He it's a later job. And so he wakes up later. I try to get my schedule so that when he's getting up or when he's getting ready for his job, I take lunch then. And then I'll sit and have lunch with him or there are you just have to be creative, but definitely. All right, number three, and number three.
SPEAKER_00We don't want to get to our number three. So I think that this is almost like a part two of like when you're asking questions. So here we are wanting to have communication with our kids. We're wanting them to talk to us. So if they talk and if they open up, don't ruin the answer. If they have opened up and maybe they're complaining about something, or maybe they're stressed about something, or maybe they're venting about whoever, don't shut down whatever they're telling. Look for, look for, I think there's a great are you, do you need to vent? Do you need help? Do you want my help? Do you are you just wanting to talk about it?
SPEAKER_01I want to just jump into this idea of not ruining the answer because one of the reasons I think that we sometimes ruin the answer is because we have our own concerns. And so when we have our own concerns, so if one of our kids answers was his fault or it was her fault, and we've been trying to get them to take responsibility, for example, we might jump in with, was it their fault or was it your fault? Do you know what I'm saying? And I think when they give us, when they start talking and we decide we're going to give them the six step solution, or when they start talking and we want to turn it into a life lesson, they're internally, it's maybe some of those externally rolling their eyes. You know what I mean? So we have to decide is this the right moment? If our goal is to keep the door open, even depending on their personality. This is a time for us to climb, don't jump into the response right now. Keep
Keep The Door Open For Years
SPEAKER_01the door of communication open. We can always circle back to that. And I think that's one of the things, or our 47 questions, or we don't want them to conclude that every time they share with us, it creates more trouble for them or more work for them. Or so I think that's I think that's what we're wanted to put a fine point on that. Three things we talk about this in our class. I just wanted to share this. There are three things that you can do. And again, we'll put this on the show notes and on our on our webpage at deltaprevention.org. Here's a simple tool you can use. We call it the love method, L-U-V. Listen, understand, validate. So while they're talking, our response tool could be listen. So tell me what happened. Understand what was that like for you? And then validate. I can understand why you felt that was embarrassing. And let me just give you this note validating what happened to somebody or how they feel about something does not put us in agreement with them. Maybe they felt it was unfair, but it really wasn't unfair. We're validating them by saying, I can understand why you would feel bad. So listen, understand, and validate. And then that's going to open the door so that when you do want to help them solve the problem, then you just ask them. This is absolute basic, even couples communication. The question then becomes, do you want me to listen? Do you need me to help you think it through? Or is there some action you need me to take? And that's again, it's gonna open up the it's gonna open up the conversation.
SPEAKER_00I also think another kind of like an extra tool is like a weekly check-in. We're talking a lot about, hey, like a daily, like the kids are back to school, they're coming home, what can we do? But also it could be like at the beginning of the week or at the end of the week, whatever works for your flow. But especially like if there's like long-term like homework projects or hey, what's due? Is there anything due this week? What days of the week are going to be our busiest? So if there's like some people get homework at the beginning of the week and it's due at the end of the week, what day of the week are we gonna have the most time to get homework done? Anything like that, you can also have a weekly kind of like check-in.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a great idea. I think that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_00And I think this helps. Oh, sorry. I think this also helps. I know this was another kind of goes along with that tool, but as our
Don’t Ruin The Answer With Fixing
SPEAKER_00kids get older, parents manage a lot of that like organization when their kids are younger. And we also want to emphasize like, hey, you're still the parent, even when your kids in high school, even when they're a teenager, but you're still setting the standard of, hey, this these are the responsibilities that you have now, and you will have more as you get older. You're gonna have to manage your time, you're gonna have to manage like long-term projects. But right now, we're still the parent. So we still set the standard and we're still checking in with them. We're not going, well, they know they have that project, they can do it. We're still the pair.
SPEAKER_01Well, that is 100% where I was gonna go, but I was gonna go a little bit deeper because if there are things, there are still guardrails that we have to have and things like if there's danger, if there's abuse, if there's threats, if there's like something that requires our intervention, self-care, substance use, they need to know that we will intervene if we need to intervene. And so there are also adult decisions that sometimes need to be made to keep them safe. Things we may have to do, and they may be frustrated with that, but that's not necessarily we can't we can't get away from that parent role just because we're trying to keep a door open. We still are the parent. We're still the parent. Last thing, friend, I just wanted to, I just wanted to talk really quickly about this idea of not disappearing, like making sure that when we do the work that we're supposed to be doing, when we're when we're trying to get them to increase their responsibility and when we are giving all of that, like what instruction they need or that type of thing, that when you think about that from the perspective of how much work they are supposed to do, I just like to say when I think back over the years of growing and learning how to parent at the same time I was parenting, I sometimes got it wrong. And so I just want to encourage our families that if you're getting some of this wrong, that's totally okay. You can adjust, readjust. Yeah. And that's the point of having a good friend. You know what I mean? That's the point of having people you can bounce it off of, or that's the point of
Weekly Check-Ins Guardrails And Closing
SPEAKER_01having this kind of a conversation where you're like, hmm, I've have I been doing too much? Have I not been doing enough? I just want to encourage you if you're listening to this today and you're like, geez, I have been doing all of that, or oh my god, I haven't been doing half of that. I thought the time they got 14, they were good to go. And maybe this is stirring some things up in people where they think, Noah, maybe I need to go back. It is 100% okay, friends, to go back and start including some of these things. Anything you want to say to our friends before we kick them out of here, Anna. You're not alone. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. I'm excited to hear what's gonna happen with your youngest and how that goes. You'll have to fill us in on how that how that has gone. For those of you that are listening, please share this podcast with people. Anna and I just really sincerely want to share what has benefited us over the years. Good friends, strong families, being able to have each other, being able to have the foundation parenting and all of the lessons that we've learned in our classes that we've learned and taught over the years, just to share that with all of you. So share this with a friend and we hope you will continue listening friends, strong families. Bye, everyone.
SPEAKER_02Immediately into your family life.