Single Parenting Survival to Thriving: Practical Tips, Time Management & Financial Stability with Pat Hankin

What does it really take to go from surviving to thriving as a single parent?

In this powerful and practical episode of Mom’s Brain Is a Coffee Stain, Kayla sits down with Pat Hankin, author of The Field Guide for Single Parents, to break down the real-life strategies single parents need to manage time, finances, and emotional overwhelm.

Drawing from years of experience moderating a community of nearly 470,000 single parents, Pat shares what actually works—no fluff, no unrealistic advice—just practical, research-based tools that help parents regain control of their lives. 

From redefining what “good enough parenting” looks like to building support systems in unexpected places, this episode is full of actionable takeaways for anyone navigating parenting alone (or feeling like they are).

In This Episode We Discuss:

• The biggest misconceptions about single parenting
• How to move from survival mode to thriving
• Creating time when you feel like you have none
• The power of the 15-minute parent connection
• Realistic time management strategies for busy parents
• Financial advice that actually works for single parent households
• Why traditional budgeting advice often fails single parents
• Building a support system beyond family and friends
• Letting go of mom guilt and perfectionism
• What “good enough parenting” really looks like

Key Takeaway:

You don’t have to do everything perfectly to be a great parent.
Progress, not perfection, is what creates stability—for you and your kids.

Guest Information

Pat Hankin
Author of The Field Guide for Single Parents: Practical Tips to Help You Gain Control of Your Life

🌐 Website:
https://pathankin.com/about-the-book/

📘 Get the Book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Single-Parents-Practical/dp/B0FX3F1GTS

Show Information

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Mom's Brain is a Coffee Stain, the only podcast clinically proven to raise your blood pressure and your dopamine. I'm Kayla, Millennial Mom, current chaos coordinator of two spoiled giants who think budget is a TikTok sound. Today we're talking with Pat Hankin, author of The Field Guide for Single Parents: Practical Tips to Gain Control of Your Life. Let's jump on in. All right. Welcome to the show, Pat. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Oh, thanks for having me, Kayla.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yes, well, we are very excited. You are the author of The Field Guide for Single Parents and part of a massive parenting community of nearly half a million people. What inspired you to write this book?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it is a pretty large community. It's specifically for single parents. Um and what I had worked on moderating online communities pretty early on since their inception and did it professionally for 10 years, where I was doing audience research and market research for companies. And come the slowdown during the pandemic, and my daughter was off to university, I thought, well, I got a little extra time. Let me poke around and see what I can do here. And I found this community of 470,000 single parents. And I immediately texted the moderators and said, uh, can I can I join? Can I be a moderator? I have all this experience. Never heard back from them. So I just, so I just did it anyway. That's what you have to do in life. Just go ahead and do it anyway. Right. So I started as as part of it, just policing the community where you make sure people uh obey the rules, like no soliciting funds or no, no creeps soliciting dates or something in this community. And and and thankfully there was actually very little of that to do. Oh, that's true. And I got more comfortable, more and more comfortable about uh you know, being able to uh have input and participate in the community. And what happened was I started, I felt I had something to offer now that my daughter was off at university, and I was on the other side of the high need phase of single parenting. And the response to my posts and my answers and my questions was so overwhelming, I was actually taken aback. Yeah. Why? Why why what am I doing that's so special? And I also felt that the information I was giving people was pretty much all the way out there. It was nothing new. I was just packaging it up for what I felt single parents needed.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

And through this point, I I started finding myself answering the same questions over and over because a lot of topics get repeated. So I actually got organized and I started organizing my answers to the most common questions. Then I started organizing the most qu common questions and realized this really is something that people need. And in in a in one place, it was stopped. I was stopped in my tracks when someone said, where can I read about being a single parent? And I went to do some research and there really wasn't anything there that was fact-based. My background is in finance and consulting, helping companies solve problems. So I took a very objective uh research-based approach to this and tested, tested it out in the community to see is this something you want? And that and the response was overwhelmingly yes. So I wrote the book and published it. And it took me four years.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Wow. That is so crazy that it only took you four years. To me, that just seems like such a quick time to write a book. I've never written a book, but to me, that just seems like a very fast time frame. That's amazing, though. Well, congratulations on the book. Um, yes, and your work combines lived experience with practical expertise in in your areas of like finance, time management, and systems thinking. How did those particular pieces of life come together to shape your approach to the parenting, single parenting advice that you were giving?

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah. Yeah. It was what what I learned from helping companies solve problems is that you really have to streamline a solution that can be enacted. So many times you get these very complicated, this complicated advice that's very, very it's very difficult to know how to apply it to your own solution. And a lot of the conventional advice out there for parenting does not work for single parents. So it was important that you to me that I take this information and these questions and this need, understanding the need that parents had, that's the questions that I had organized, and put it in a format that people could use. So streamline that basic down to its basics. And therefore, and therefore it becomes what we call an elegant solution. Yeah. And you go, oh, why didn't I then it's why didn't I think of that? Well, because you've got all this other noise going on in your life.

unknown 5:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

And sometimes it's better to have someone come in and just say, let's strip it down to to basically what do you want? What's the problem? What's the situation? And let's tar take away all the superfluous information and advice that's out there and get to you to where you want to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

I love that. So it's elegant advice, but it's also palatable advice. I hope that's yeah, that's wonderful. I love it. And you talk about helping single parents thrive, not just survive. So, what does thriving actually look like for a single parent?

SPEAKER_02 6:32

That's a that's a really great question to paint a picture here. Uh that thriving means to me, and it could mean something, and come jump in with if you tell me it's something different for you, because everybody's got their own, is that you're being able to take steps toward your goals. Yes. That there's space for you to be able to do that, that you're not constantly in a reactive mode, but that's you can integrate in there things that take you to what you want. Uh let's say if uh a goal that you have is the independence of your children when they grow up, being able to have them participate in in responsibilities in the household. Even though it's a lot easier for you to just do it yourself and get on to the next thing, which when you have huge deficits of time is is usually the fallback on that. So being able to save$25 a month by looking at something that you get rid of that you're spending money on, that would be a thriving action. And it adds up over time. The time saved and the uh and the and and the steps you take forward with your children and the things you also take forward for yourself, those to me start to get you on the road of feeling less like you're reacting and more like you're taking care of everyone, including yourself.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

That's so perfectly said. And I think I I would just like to add to me, like thriving is something that not only is there room for growth, but the tools for success. Um, so you have to have access to those tools. Right. So it's really the access is the key word there is to access. So with single parents, because for the uh the listeners who know, um, before I met my husband, I was there was a big chunk of time where I was a single parent. And I was very blessed and very lucky that I had family who was there to support me. And whether it was continuing my further education or helping with my son so I could work and things of that nature, I was very lucky. Not many people can say that they have the same. And I was also lucky in the aspect of if I needed help paying for that college class or something like that, I had access to resources to get that help. I knew how to apply for scholarships. I knew how to apply for or fill out a FAFA or ask a parent or a grandparent or somebody, you know, can I loan this from you and how to amortize a payment schedule to pay them back? You know, like it's the access part of that, which is something that I think is very lacking in being taught in the world today of it's not just saying, oh, you have the room to grow. Oh, that's great. Oh, and there's tools for success. Well, that's great too. If they don't have access to it, it means nothing.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

But you're putting your finger on the very thing that struck me from this get-go from the community is oftentimes people would pose a problem and they had no idea where to start to solve the problem. Exactly. And that's something that we you might be able to take for granted because you, you know, you're older or or you have more experience in a certain area. Money does not phase me. Other people, it does. It it so it's it because of my career was me at, you know, dealing with money, I wasn't afraid of it. I grew up myself in a single parent household. We talked about it all the time. Some households don't. Right. So I think that uh what I what I went for in this book was in the key areas that we talk about, that you get a starting point.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

Where you take it from there, you know, there are guideposts here. Well, you know, there will be guiding principles, but where you take it will be to your specific situation, such as you with the family help that you could access.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yes. And that is so wonderful. So we're gonna move on to another section of breaking stereotypes around the single parenting. And I love this one. Um, you've spoken about wanting to reset the reputation of single parenting. What are some stereotypes about single parents that you think just get rid of them? They need to disappear, we're done with it. Don't they need to die? There's so many for what reason?

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Well, I think it it's comfortable to for people to stick in a certain mindset. And it's um it's really interesting how people respond to you as a single parent. And yeah, it's gonna come from their own personal experience or what they see in the media, or um Ronald Reagan from the 1980s, right? Who uh perpetuated this image of uh welfare moms living off the system and not contributing. And and and that stereotype just doesn't die in people's minds. The the biggest one is that they're all broken broken, right? They don't have any money, they have no skills, no ability to do anything. And if you go and the easiest way to see this is uh, and they're sad. They're just very sad.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

And if these go do a Google search for single parents and look at the images. I had a really hard time with the people designing my website and my book cover because I kept getting these sad sack looking bombs that, you know, had a a a young child sadly looking walking in a field. Maybe they've taken them off Google now, but because I've written them a letter and said, could you change this? But it comes from what's on on the uh, you know, what's it what's out there in the in the uh ethosphere. And it's you look at the tens of millions of single parents out there, and this is includes men as well as women, it's pretty hard to make generalizations about 30 million people or 20 million people. And um if you're gonna do that, you know, you're gonna live in a pretty narrow universe. And if you're an employer, you're really gonna lose out on a very valuable part of the workforce. I mean, it's about 20% of the workforce, you know, no matter how you count it. And what you in fact, the stereotype of single parent should be exactly the opposite. Because they're dealing with deficits of time, a lot of times deficits of money, they are the most resourceful, creative, ingenuity-driven people that you can find. I mean, you can talk about your own experience and look, yeah, yeah, what you did. You went and started a podcast, right? And you've had guests on who started other businesses that worked around what they were doing. And as uh an employer, that's exactly because I I come from an experience of working in very large corporations. I've managed over 2,000 people myself. And um I was giving out remote work before it was a thing before there was VPN. Because the people that were asking me were just so good. I wanted to keep them. Right. That's wonderful. Yeah, I think that's sorry, go on. No, you're fine. Go ahead. It's just a media, this image if if you look at any Hallmark movie with single moms.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Oh yes. So and then they need to find a man to fall in love with or a woman to raise their child, like but they're gonna open a bookstore and make so much money.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Or a flower show. That's the other one they get a flower show. Yeah. And it's like, haven't you guys done this one like four million times?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah, Kayla, we're still watching it. So I yeah, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

My daughter and I were in Kansas City, which is a headquarters of Hallmark at one point. And they had killed off one of my favorite characters in some series. And I I said, look, there's the headquarters. I have to go have a talk with them.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

That listen, I am a huge fan of back in the day, uh, One Life to Live, All My Children in General Hospital were my jams on AD. I've never seen those in school. Listen, daytime soap operas were it for me. Okay. And when they said when the network rolled out the decision to get rid of One Life to Live and All My Children, I was like, that's it. I'm going to California.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Security.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

We have a woman, a mad woman there. What saved them was they kept General Hospital. Okay. That's what saved them. But back to these questions that I have for you today. Why do you think the number of single parent households is often undercountered or misunderstood? And I know you were telling me about this the other day when we spoke.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Yeah, it's um it's interesting. I I never got the thinking behind the methodology that the U.S. Census Bureau uh has. It's not that they weren't willing to give it, is when I needed to go interview them, there was a government shutdown. So I can give you, I can give you the Pat Hankin version of this. Currently, they count 19 million households in the U.S. that are headed by an unpartnered parent. So it's it they they've actually increased changed the methodology that if you're cohabitating with another adult, that's in that's not a single parent household. Which makes sense. The 19 million, though, does not count, it only counts one adult member of a family group. So if there's another adult living across the street, maintaining a second household that the kids go back and forth to, only one household is counted. Oh. And also if there's a joint or shared or some kind of partial custody, that just they only count one of those parents.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Which is crazy because if there's shared custody, the child is spending shared time with each parent who is then a single parent.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Right. But they think that that other household is a single person household. Or that person could be remarried, and then that's a two-parent household. It's just, it's I I have a lot of respect for the Census Bureau. And and one day they'll open back up and I can have my interview with them to ask them about the methodology. Yeah. I trained as an economist. So, you know, it's kind of fun to talk to these guys. They do a lot for little money. So, you know, let's give them our love. Um, but we have to realize that it's not 19 million single parents. And the other part of that that gets undercounted is the number of men that function as single parents. Yeah. Because oftentimes the kids are living with their mom. But they might have joint customs. So that is, um, and you go, well, so what? Right? So what? They undercounted it. It it has so the way they count it currently is it's it's 20% or one-fifth of the households. If you then double it saying that, you know, just I'm just being grossly overstating, if you double it for another parent, because there's a lot of parents that aren't in the picture, right? Right. But if you double it saying that most have a parent somewhere in the picture that checks that checks out, then you're now talking more about 40% of the households. That has huge implications for policy decisions. To me, the biggest implication it has is around universal child care. That is the biggest one. But I have completely given up that the federal government's ever going to get its act together on passing either universal income or universal child care, even though it's proven to work so well in every other country, in every other developed country, just north of here in Quebec, you can get your child care for$9 a day. Wow. But they pay higher taxes. And that's the that's the issue. Yeah, that makes sense. So that's that is um the so I'd say that it now has a bigger implication is for private industry that's hiring people to realize how important it is to attract good. The most imp the most popular employers in my town of Boston are those that have on-site child care. Yes. Absolutely. I was looking to attract talent, that would be in my benefit basket.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah. I know back um when my son was younger, I I did one of my jobs was working in the hospital system as a CNA. And they actually had one of the hospital systems I worked for actually had on-site daycare and it was open 24-7. So you just brought your child, checked them in, you know, you worked your shift, you could go down there on your lunch break, and then when you were done, you just took your child home with you. And it was wonderful on those days because sometimes, you know, I was a young mom. Sometimes I was working 16-hour shifts. So it was it was nice to take a 30-minute break through the first part of my day and go down there and see him and have lunch and then beep feet back up to my ward and then go back down there second half of my day around dinner time and see him and see if he was enjoying his snacks and you know, how his day was going and and then beep feet back up there.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

And he could could have cared less when you were in the room.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Oh, he really didn't. He really didn't. But it was nice because instead of like on the days where he was at my mom's, I would drop him off, he would be sleeping. When I picked him up, he would be sleeping. This way, yeah, when I dropped him off in the morning at daycare, he was sleeping. And when I picked him up, he was sleeping. At least I got a couple awake moments with him. Um, because I also worked at a factory. Well, the factory didn't have daycare. So the days that I worked 16 hour days at the factory, he stayed at my mom's. So it was just a nice little switch up because he was. I mean, two months old. You know, like not even two months. I went back to work two weeks after I gave birth. So You're a beast. Yeah. My doctor was not beast. You're amazing.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

But I don't think I was conscious two weeks after I gave birth. I was like, still stumbling around like a zombie.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

I gotta go back to work. That was true.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

But those are the kind of employees as an employer you want. Um I advocate, I was on uh I gave an interview to Employee Benefit News saying, you know, you can't give a benefit, a huge benefit like that, because anybody else complains who doesn't need it. You put it in a basket, let people pick and choose. Um, it might be vouchers for for childcare, because uh these the daycare centers never made sense for me because my hours extended before and after too long. So I had to do I had to do personal child care, family child care. And had there been vouchers to help me pay for that, would have been great. Yeah. Because I live in a high cost of living, as we talked about, and there's there's no there's no inexpensive labor here.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

At all. And um it does it does worry me with the, you know, where this isn't the big problem is that these child care workers get paid a living wage, and people seem to be having a problem with that. Yeah. Because that's that's the shortage here. If they don't get paid, nobody wants to do that. Then we'll work in a factory instead. Where they get paid a real wage.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

That's true. Yeah. That is yeah. So what do people outside the single parent experience often get wrong about what life really looks like day to day as a single parent?

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Okay. I will answer this and then I'd like you to answer it too. Because I'm answering it from the from the community standpoint. Yeah. Most of this is so what generally is um difficult for people to understand is what happens when the whole whole time and financial um issues in your life end up on one person, including emotional support. You don't have anyone to share something with. Um, I was in one parent group, uh infant group when my daughter was born, you know, we go to New Mom's group, and one one said that she, her husband was in medical residency working long hours, so she felt like a single parent. I didn't say anything. And I said, Well, can you can you call him on the phone and get a call back?

unknown 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

You know, and I'm sure when he came home he was tired, but you know, it wasn't gonna last forever. I think it was pretty, pretty difficult for her to feel that way. I think most people can kind of most partnered people can kind of get it if there's a loss through death, because they can visualize what that's like. And in the book, I do tell a story about how um my daughter's friend's father came to drop her daughter off during a catastrophe we had in Boston because I had to stay home from work. And he was bragging about how he and the other guys on the block got a got a sump pump for the a widow down the block. And I had the same flooding going on. And I just he couldn't, he didn't make he he he made a distinction between my single parenting and their single parenting. Yeah. So so I think it's very hard for people to understand when the full weight of the physical and emotional responsibility comes about. I I have a card game that I like to use for as a visual. It's called uh fair play. It's on Amazon, you can get it. And this is where it's about 300 cards that have pre-populated in it all the activities that parents we have to do. Whether it's pickup and driving or working or cooking or cleaning or vacations or whatever, it's 300 cards you can add your own. And the whole thing's to gamify it. And I suggest gamifying it with your kids because they can pick out things that they want to do with the goal is that you get to evenly stacked piles, right? Right. It's never really even, but that's the goal. So I'll do that with somebody that's talking to me with the exact same question that you just asked me, and then I'll have two evenly stacked piles between this person, that person and their husband, and then I'll take them and I'll smoosh them all together, and I'll have all 300 cards on one pile and I'll say that single parenting. And the I visually see them look shocked. I mean, they are physically shocked. They it the body language is unbelievable. It they just never struck them before what that stack looks like. So if you do get that game, I don't know who puts it out. Um, I got it off Amazon. Uh, you can use that to give a visual. And then the other use is you can use it with your kids to start making sure that they contribute.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Yeah, absolutely. And and I get what you're saying. And I think, you know, there's a there's a group of people who can get this who maybe aren't actually truly in the sense of the word single parents, and it's military families and spouses. Um, my husband, uh, you know, when his first wife, when she would deploy, their daughter was very young, baby, newborn. Um, and then vice versa, he would deploy. They were never allowed to deploy at the same exact time, but being in an active wartime, they were constantly, one of them was constantly deployed. So you go from you have two weeks together where you're a married couple raising a child, to boom, one of you is now gone off on a ship in the middle of, you know, the Hermann Strait and for the next eight months. And you're you're solely around the phone a call. You cannot. The the United States military does not care about you needing to relieve some stress and vent to your spouse. Yeah, but you bring up a really good example. And and so I do think that there's that class of people that that that they can they can connect with both, but I also think that's why military spouses are such a high number of divorce rates.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Um and it it's it's horrible to say that, but there's a there's yes, there's the mental health aspect of it. I'm not taking anything away from that. I'm not saying that, but there's also the aspect of it of when the person returns home, that single parent is so used to handling everything. Uh-huh. Now they have to relinquish control. And so as a person that went from being a single parent, I can tell you when I met my husband, you know, we dated for years before we actually recently got married two years ago. Um, but we were together much, much longer than that. Um, it it was actually very hard for me, and it took me a very long time to learn to give him authority and some power to say, hey, you know, I am the father figure role, and you know, you can't just trump everything. It's not just always what you say goes and blah, blah, blah. You know. Took a very long time for that because I was so in habit and used to, like, I control the entire situation. I'm responsible for everything. Like, and and so I think that it's uh I I I just one of those things is like, you know, I've heard people say, well, my husband's um uh what are they called, linemen, and he has to travel for work, or offshore drillman, and he has he's out out in the ocean. And it's kind of like what you said. Yeah, you can still pick up the phone and you can still talk to him. Are they there day in and day out? No. But they do relieve some of your emotional load. When you're a single parent, you do not have that partner to relieve any emotional load. And I think that people forget just how valuable that one key aspect is.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

No, it's true. And and all those people who are in military or linemen or on the oil rig, uh, you know, this book can they can benefit from that too. Is for instance, you know, the concept of universal design. So I I have carpal tunnel syndrome in my hand. The 50 years of keyboarding, I got it, right? Nothing you can do, you can have some surgery, but yeah, nothing takes care of the issues. But I go to this website for people who have arthritis and I get all the gadgets that they use, right? That's universal design. You I you know, I can use it too. It's gonna benefit me as well. If you take the the most the things that make it accessible to the people who have the least, use those tools, right? So uh for anybody listening who who feels like a single parent, but is still partnered, even if in name only, these the kind of things that will help you thrive to to to go back to your original um description, these things can help you too, because you're you're taking from people who don't have it. And there was a a book I read by a fellow who became a single dad and he he was a SEAL, a Navy SEAL. And I thought, I'm gonna read this book to see, you know, how he it was a memoir, how he he sort of managed the this situation. But he had zero clue on what his spouse was going through at home. It only felt it was a burden on top of what he had already going on. Um, you know, in the war zone and everything else. You know, he's already under stress and he's you know, I think their their training is pretty is pretty tough. Um and you know, no, absolutely no understanding of what and his wife gave birth to not one but two children during this time. And you know, I kept saying, move home, move home. I I didn't finish the book. It was, you know, it was all her fault, not mine, kind of thing. And that's rarely how that works. Yeah. It takes two to ten gala.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Absolutely. So we are gonna say, we're gonna talk about excuse me. One thing many single parents say is they simply don't have enough time. You talk about creating time when you have none. Yeah. What does that actually look like? It would have helped if I could have got this out the first five times I tried. I think you did, grand. My brain was reading ahead of what my mouth was talking.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Kind of a catchy, catchy phrase, creating time when you have none. Yes. You're like, what the Yeah. It was I and uh I I'm glad I got your attention.

unknown 34:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Because everybody, everybody feels overwhelmed. Now you take that and you and you go two two times. And actually, it's why I liked lockdown. I was made for lockdown. Yeah, nobody's gonna want to see me. I don't have to help any, you know. I can go online and help people when I want, right? And my schedule. So the uh the big thing, and this comes from my work in in as a management consultant, a fancy way of saying I help companies solve problems. But the first thing you do is that you g you give yourself a t a time audit, right? What are you doing now? And I would write mine down in a notebook that I keep in my in my bag. You know, I did this, I did that. Now, if you are able to put down how much time you spent doing it, great. Right? It's called a time in motion study. Uh we actually used to do them with stopwatches. Yeah. Right. Which obnoxious is all hell, but don't do that to yourself. You know, you can just guess. No. And if you look at these things over a period of time and you and you start to realize which of these are low-level activities. And when you and I talked, I think I told you about my trash, my battle with my trash. So my trash has to go a quarter mile out there and it comes out once a week. And I was feeling completely pressed to get my trash out there one a week, once a week, but my daughter's not here. We have very little trash. And so I said, I'm just gonna take it out when it's full.

unknown 35:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah. I live in a cold climate, it doesn't smell. Right. So uh yours might be something else. And that's like I had 10% productivity gain on my trash. There you go. Small thing. The most obvious things are are the time on your devices.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

And and the dopamine hits of uh retail therapy. I and there's a lot of things I just don't do and didn't do as a single parent. And you know, they're gonna be different things from you. I can't sit still in the hairdressers or the manicurist chair. I just can't. Other people, that's their jam. They love doing that. I I don't enjoy shopping as therapy. I'm a mission shopper. You know, I go in and conquer. I should have been a Navy SEAL. There you go. There is there's just things. There were things that I found extremely frustrating that, you know, doing a time audit, my time was better spent doing my taxes than vacuuming my house.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Okay.

unknown 36:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

I'd much rather vacuum than do taxes, but okay. Everybody's got their thing, right? That should tell you how much I hate vacuuming. Now, if we're talking laundry, I'll do taxes over laundry.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

Now, you know, if we it's interesting because in the book, I actually talk about how to decide what's worth your time, and I give you a little formula to figure out the value of your time. And anything you can outsource for less than what you make from from you know your wages is worth sending out. So there's a, I tell it, the tale of two laundry decisions, right? I have a whole setup here for laundry. I even have line drying inside, you know, for things that, you know, you're not gonna put through the dryer. And it's a break. You know, you're not supposed to sit at your desk more than 30 minutes. So it's a break for me to go down and throw something in and it takes a few minutes. And if you don't like folding it, you can just stick it in a big laundry basket and let everybody pick their clothes out.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

That would drive me nuts.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah, you know, you gotta pick your battles, right? You pick your enjoyment. My daughter on the hand to hand at college uh would have to trudge her laundry five blocks in 80% humidity, she didn't have a car, sit there the whole time, feeding quarters or credit cards or whatever into the machine, sitting there so no one takes the laundry, and then going back home with it. So it would be like four or five hours to do a laundry load, you know, a weekly laundry. Right. Where she worked a minimum wage at college for$10 an hour. So she could be could have made$50. And I said to her, what does a pickup wash and fold service cost? We found out it was$33. Yeah. So she could go to work, work five extra hours, or she could and make$50 and spend$33 to have someone else pick it up and send it back all folded.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

And she still made$17 on the day. Yeah.

unknown 38:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

And I think there's a lot of things like that where you talk about the value of your time and what it what what's worth doing and what you can let go of. For instance, you have a lot of family. Right? So you want to spend that time with them. I don't have any family anywhere near me, but I'll I might talk to them on the phone or wherever. Um, those are everybody's got different pressures on their line. And that's why I say I can't tell you which it is, but there's probably a lot of low-level tasks that you can get rid of, one small one at a time. So baby steps on that one.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Absolutely. And you mentioned something called the 15 minute parent. Can you explain what that means and why it can be so powerful?

SPEAKER_02 39:39

Sure. This comes from um Jessica Ames, who's the co-author in the book, is a is a well-known licensed therapist here in the Boston area. She's worked with Master General, Boston Children, Judge Baker. And she introduced me to this concept of the parent-child interaction therapy, which is the whole program you should do with a qualified therapist. But the precept is that what your child doesn't need you on them all the time. What they really take away is in 15-minute focus time where you get down on their level.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

If they're really small or sit on a couch with them and they're not so small, and you just you turn off your device, you get rid of it, and you just spend time listening to them and playing with them. And that's generally enough to fuel them for the day, and certainly a lot more than a lot of short, interrupted uh or long times when you're distracted by something else at any rate. So it is, I think for people who have deficits of time and feel that way, this can be this theory was made for us, right?

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Yes, absolutely. Because it's something that you, like you said, like you you feel short on time and you feel so constricted on what you're able to do. But I think if we all really looked at it, we could find 15 minutes in our day. And especially if that's 15 minutes of our day that we're pouring into our child to help give them some nurture and love and care. So I I love that because that's just something that is so, again, palatable and easy. It's not like you're talking a two-hour therapy session three times a week. You're not talking about that. You just said, hey, 15 minutes a day instead of scrolling Facebook, put the phones away, sit down, talk to your kid. Maybe it's over an ice cream cone. Maybe it's, you know, whatever it, what yeah, whatever it is. I know that's I have the best conversations with my son as we're cleaning up after dinner. And I say, as we are cleaning up after dinner, he finishes unloading the dishwasher and I am loading the dishwasher and he's getting an ice cream cone. And he's standing at the counter talking to mom. Who's talking?

SPEAKER_02 42:02

The big one was my daughter played ice hockey. Oh, and so yeah, you don't have too much of that down in Alabama, do you? No.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Though we do have an ice rink in in Pensacola, and one is being built in mobile. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_02 42:20

So the um I would come home from work, I wouldn't even change. I'd grab her and her bag, and uh the girls tend to boys got really early times that they had to go, and the and the girls had, you know, late night times. It got later and later as she got older and older. Um, and so it was dark. And I had to drive her because it's winter, right? And it gets dark an hour earlier than it does where you are. And I um it's amazing what you can listen to and hear when you're driving in a dark car 15 minutes, half hour to a hockey rink in some town. Yeah, you know, absolutely. That it's it is a powerful way, especially when they're teens, to to have to to have a conversation. Something about the darkness. So I think these type of things, letting your kids um have your attention also teaches patience for when they will get it.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Right. So the hardest thing is you walk in the house, you've had an eight-hour day, or it's longer because you've got to commute both ways. You walk in the house and somebody wrote this in the community, and I I I I just howled with laughter. Some guy walks in and the first thing he gets is, Dad, you be Ken. Yeah, I hadn't even gotten his shoes off yet. Yeah. So you guys I I will do it after I do X, Y, and Z. So she just starts to teach that they're a little patient and we're not giving them attention all of the time.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Absolutely. And for a single parent who feels constantly overwhelmed, what are a few simple ways to regain some control over their time that maybe you've noticed over your years of monitoring these parenting channels? What are some things that work best?

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Well, I think that the again, when we talked about a time audit before, where that goes is to be able to um understand your list. And the list is that tyrannical to-do list that hangs over our head all the time. Yep. And if you go back and look at that time audit you did and and you you get a really good sense of actually what can be accomplished during the day. Um is as professional, having done this for profession, I was still gobsmacked by the fact that I can get five things done a day.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

And my list might have 20. So that's psychologically, that was a huge lift to be able to know that this is something that you lower your expectations on exactly what can get done. And you gotta keep the mantra here. The mantra is the point is never to finish the list, the point is to have a list.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Makes sense. Perfect sense. Yeah. Hey, you're half the battle is making the list.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Well, biggest problem we all have, and I'm gonna quote uh writer Carol here. Um he's he's the fellow who developed the bullet journal. Um he developed when he was in college, and he's uh he's he's self-described neurodivergent. And he said, the biggest problem we have is that we carry our whole lives in our head. And and we always, you know, we have to remember that. We have to remember that. You write it down, it just opens up all that extra space to remember things or to do things or to focus on on things. So to be able to organize it is is the next step after an audit and realizing what you can accomplish in a day. And you don't need a fancy time management system to do that. Which you need no, you just need a blank notebook with the days at the top and the five things that you might want to do in order of priority and then migrate the ones that don't get done.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Yeah, perfectly said. Perfectly said. All right. So moving forward to money and practical life strategies, your background in finance gives you a unique perspective in on money. What are some examples of traditional financial advice that just doesn't work for single parents and it just won't?

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah, it just doesn't. Uh, if you're getting your financial advice off of BuzzFeed, don't just you know, find a second source and make sure it's right. Because the stuff I see on there is um it it might feel very accessible that you can do X, Y, and Z, like cancel your subscriptions, which is, you know, low-level task. Uh, but that's um that's only the starting point. Um doing everything yourself to me is the most aggravating thing I see online. It just remember I talked earlier about knowing how much what the value of your time is. Right. There are just many tasks, for example, vacuuming.

unknown 47:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

In my case, uh some other uh some other person might be cutting the lawn themselves, that it just makes so much more sense if you know the value of your time to outsource that to someone else, unless you really, really love vacuuming, like you do. Right. You know. So, you know, you can work an extra hour and and pay someone and you'll still be net positive, like my daughter with the laundry service. Um some of the suggestions I see there are faux frugal, like you know, raising a garden. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of time and it's a lot of money to start. You know, you do get your benefits done. So you better love it if you're doing it, because financially it it it's really not much. There's no real gain there. Um, there's a very famous book called The Tight Wat Gazette by a woman named Amy Decision up in came out in the 90s, and it became the Bible for people to be really frugal on things, and she waxed prolifically on the fact that she had this giant garden while raising six kids. And I'm good luck to you, okay. The story was I was gonna, I read that, I got all inspired. I had this little urban house with my daughter, a tiny urban yard, and you couldn't plant they're all big trees, right? So you couldn't grow anything there. So I said, okay, I'm gonna plant tomato plants, which you can't kill, in pots. I'm gonna put them on her radio flyer red wagon, and I'm gonna run it around the yard with the sun, right? So every time the sun moved positions, I'd move the wagon. I'd be like, okay, let me go get my actual plant move it away. I got one tomato, and I think it cost me$50 for the plant spots. And so I'm$50 tomato. The other big thing is the um I've backed off on this no debt dictum, and I'm gonna have to talk to Dave Ramsey and his people about this. I think you have to look at your money as not a point in time, what the what you're spending money on today is different than what's going to be tomorrow. What you're earning today is gonna be different than what you're earning tomorrow. And there's gonna be a lot of hills and valleys in both. And while I do like a lot of Dave Ramsey's um baby steps and ways to make finances, money management accessible, the concept of debt, and I I do agree, I am a hard line on credit card debt because the interest rates at 25% make that like that's like mafia interest rates at this point, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Right.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

Uh you you never get out from under it, and it's a big problem. And um, you know, I've talked to a lot of people, it's not only the single parent community, but also there's a personal finance community. And you go through it, and yes, credit card debt is something you should get rid of, but then we I don't have a problem with people borrowing. Um the uh there was one person I was consult uh consulting, just I'll do a little um private consulting for people on their budgets. And this is a woman I worked with, and she came to me in a panic because her kid was going to college, and she didn't I think in three years, she's now gonna pay for it. It's kind of a little late, yeah. Right. She should have started at$25 a month back in the day. But I explained to her the hierarchy of savings and you know, making sure you had an emergency fund first, and then you could start to put money towards different goals and you can split them out. Um it was clear she was gonna have to borrow money for education. And I that is that to me is borrowing for an appreciating asset, which is your skill base.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Right? That makes sense. A a house mortgage, right? Is something that you brought. I um there are certain investments that can serve as emergency funds, like a Roth IRA. Because you won't you won't get hit with the penalties if you withdraw it. Um you never want to withdraw your your regular 401k because you can't get that back again. You're gonna pay a penalty, plus you can't put it back because it's only you can only put it in during a particular calendar year. So, but you you can take a loan out from it. Um, it should be a last resort. And this woman um came and you know, she ran off, she was all happy, and then she kind of sent me an email and said, I felt so relieved after talking to you that I drained my small 401k and bought a boat. Oh wow. And then she got laid off six months later. Oh wow. So I've seen all sorts of rationales on why people say they're gonna do things. But I would say I've I the conventional advice to me is that debt's okay. Just make sure what you're using it for because there are you might need to replace the roof on your house while you're keeping up the value of your biggest asset, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Um and the the one that I get the most pushback on from financial people is about transportation. And I think we talked about that. I don't I don't like the fact this this dictum buy a car only with cash, even if it's a beater. It doesn't work for single parents if you don't have substitute transportation. If there isn't another car in the house, if there's not public transportation near you, um, if Ubers are highly priced. The the unrelia and then you don't get to work, you're deemed an unreliable employee, and then you've got a bigger problem.

unknown 53:36

Right?

SPEAKER_02 53:36

Yeah, for sure. I'm uh I don't like cars. I'm not they're not my big thing. We all drive the same car here in New England, which is a Subaru. I think in Maine it's a Ford truck, but but the uh the idea of not telling people you shouldn't lease a car. I I I've leased cars. You know, I had a 2008 recession, my car died, blew a head gasket, was a big problem with Subaru's back then. Um I didn't have money for to go buy cash on a car at that point. And I ended up leasing a car, then bought it off the lease, and then my daughter went to college and really didn't need a reliable car anymore. So there are, you know, different phases of your life, but don't discount leasing a car. Now, this assumes you're not going to get a giant SUV or a muscle car or a truck.

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Yeah. Something that works within your budget. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And speaking of budgets, when you're balancing work bills and parenting alone, how can someone start building financial stability without constantly feeling behind and kind of sticking to a budget?

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Well, I I think you can save and pay down debt and pay your life at the same time. And I'd start saving at$6 a day. And getting yourself to one month's salary, all of a sudden you're going to feel so much more relief. Right. And um deciding the three most expensive things in your life are gonna be education, housing, and vacations.

SPEAKER_00 55:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

I think vacations, people have this idea it has to be Disney or bust. Really? Yeah, yeah. I I see this as tremendous pressure these days, and I can tell you your kid won't remember what they did there anyway. Sorry, especially when they're small. So I, you know, the the rationale, remember the lady with the boat?

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

Who bought the boat? So I there's another person I worked with. He he felt his kids needed to go to Europe to see their his wife's family to meet them. Now, why the wife's family wouldn't come here, you know. Don't know. But he took his kids over there. He felt stressed the entire time he was there with the amount of money it was costing him. He had never been, he didn't know what travel like that took to do. Right. He got home and his his car caught on fire. Oh my. And because he like he's New England beaters that we drive, right? And um so, you know, I I did the budget thing with him and we figured out a way he could get the down payment to get a a truck, right? Because he lives in Maine. Truck. And uh in that, you know, he could he had to borrow the down payment to go get a new a new car. And as soon as he paid back that down payment, then he said, Okay, we've we're we paid back the down payment, we're out of debt, we're gonna go to a destination wedding in Cancun. Oh boy. Yeah. So it's I've heard a lot of what people talk about to rationalize themselves. I think you will feel better off if you have a savings and emergency account to put the down payment on a new car. Should something happen to the one I have. You know? Yeah. So so it's that kind of thing that I think will will help you feel a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

Makes perfect sense. And you talk about building support systems with less than usual suspects. What does that actually mean?

SPEAKER_02 57:35

So the you which what's the usual suspects for support system?

SPEAKER_00 57:39

I think you net you you nailed it when you talked about your situation when you were like your parents, your siblings, you you know, your closest friends, your grandparents, yeah, spouse.

SPEAKER_02 57:50

Have you um had a single friend that didn't have all that available to them or single friends? And what did they do for their support system?

SPEAKER_00 58:00

They used mine.

unknown 58:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

And they still do. And that is they're like our fourth sister, and that is we wouldn't have it any other way. And her kids are like my nieces and nephews.

SPEAKER_01 58:13

So Well, I think that's a good suggestion, you know? Look leverage off someone else's system.

SPEAKER_02 58:20

I had a lot I had a single mom lived across the street from me, and every time she saw a worker on my house who came to repair something, she'd run across and ask if they could go to her house and do something. Without fail. Iris, I love you. Next time you go look them up, right? So she but the same thing, she was accessing my support system. And that's what I mean by the less than usual suspects.

unknown 58:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:47

Because I didn't have family like you did, which you know, I'm I'm really jealous, Kayla. I'm really jealous. But the I would write notes to all these repaired people. I uh that other thing we have in New England is really old homes and they're made of wood. Yes. So it's my father used to say 150-year-old house, 150 years of problems. And and I would write notes to these guys when I pay the bill and say, thank you for making us feel safe. And and the next thing I know, I'm I'm top of their list.

unknown 59:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

That's a support system, right? Right. And and teachers I would nominate for awards. And this wasn't self-serving. I wasn't trying to get this back, but in my experience, what happened is they would clue me in on things that they didn't have to, what was going on in the schools. And the same is with coaches and teachers. And, you know, uh I that I'd have to drive downtown Boston. You park in these huge vertical lots because we have we have no land here, right? And I'd say that this is parking lot attendant who is a real hustler. And I I said, hey, you know, here's a few pucks, don't bury my car. So when I left, it didn't take me a half hour to get out of the parking lot. Right. That was that was money well spent. And I think understanding like your medical staff in your doctor's office and being able to show appreciation for them and not wrecking people's schedules, you'll get paid back a lot. That comes back to you in a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

It's like when my mom used to always take the plow or plowman who ke would plow our street. She always would make him and his wife their favorite cookies. And at the beginning of snow season, she would make sure she would wait up or be out there when he would run his plow and he would never bury our driveway. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

We always lifted the Can you send the guy up here? Because my guy could.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

I'm like, mom, you're bribing him with cookies. And she's like, Do you want to shovel it at 6 a.m.?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

You talk about, yeah, you got this huge, it's not just snow. It turns to ice.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

Ice at the end of the driveway. But if you have a Subaru, you can get over it. I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

There you go. There you go. See, well, and where we lived in Summit County is it's like all of the houses on our street were like at a big, steep downhill. So it was like, it was already hard enough to get your car up into the driveway and you had to put like blocks behind your tires so it didn't slide down it. Oh, wow. So you really didn't need there to be ice and snow packed up at the bottom because then you're just gonna flop. There's like a speed jump. And my mom used to have one of those little geotrackers. Maybe be a new Olympic sport in the winter. Oh, we shouldn't.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

You have hills in Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

But I love that. Yeah. I mean, that is that is just wonderful. Because it's like you said, you don't necessarily do it expecting anything, but even if they just make you a priority, even if it's just the plumber that's like, oh no, I have to run over here. They're having a problem with this, you know. It's great to know that they think about you.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:17

Yeah, yeah. But usually you'd get a second job because Irish would come over and ask for it. Word of mouth. Word of mouth. Let's go to Pat's house and get, you know, yeah, they're like, but uh, you know, karma, karma goes around, right? You treat people the way you want to be treated. However, I have to tell you, as a banker, I never got anybody who wrote me a thank you note. So me neither. Yeah. Yeah. So it's why college jobs, you know, they don't. Yeah. We don't we don't get the love.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:50

Speaking of the love, many single parents struggle to ask for help. How can they start building a reliable support system without feeling like a burden?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

Well, I think I think it that's that's a real thing. It it's a real question. I mean, I know I it's my biggest problem, but I think that this thing we just talked about around showing your gratitude to other people, um, they can they'll they'll step in without you asking, right? Right. That's one aspect. I got that too. The um the other thing is if you break it down to really simple tasks, you know, you have that list, that giant list of things you have to do. If you look at breaking it down, asking people to do something as small something small for you, that for them's no time at all, but for you is is hugely mind-boggling. For instance, if you ask me to look at your budget, your household budget, and mix and give you ideas, that's something I'm more than happy to do. I I'm one of those people who's more than happy. Don't ask me to do your taxes, though. It's hard enough for me to do it. Because it's all gone online now. You know, it's one of these turbo tax things. And make it easy for someone to help you. Right. That's that's really what it is. But the whole idea is for anybody listening to this now, go make your list of all those things you have to do and then start breaking it down. And this particularly is important where I've talked about in the book, if you don't make a six-figure salary here in Boston, you need subsidies. It's the highest cost of living area in the country. Having someone help you fill out that paperwork or at least get the documentation together, because it's it's all the same documentation, that's something small that they can do. If that's their skill. I don't think anybody would like it if I asked them to vacuum, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Somebody might. You never know. And what do you think are the three biggest stressors for single parents today?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

Well, number one's childcare.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:18

And you know, i i it doesn't get easier because once you start to get up to high school, then you got the driving around to the activity thing. Yeah. But I understand now you can Uber will take teens.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

I I think I've seen something about that. It's like called teen pickup or something like that. I got a camera. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:38

Yeah. Where you can see it. The world's getting better, you know. There's there's Ubers, there's cameras, there's remote work, so it so it is easier. But the um the child care is is a big one. And the um doing small small things for each other can go a long way. And absolutely. You know, I uh I I was having um a breakfast meeting with someone the other day and they said they had a single mom living next to him and every time he went to the store he asked, Can you pick me this up? Right. So that that kind of thing. Um but expecting reciprocity from a single parent is uh is not good. They don't have it to give you. So if you're gonna expect if you're gonna keep score, that that that won't work. But um my community is being able to put together a child's care solution, like my town that where my daughter grew up in, it's a different city. They had a vaunt it, everybody loved their after-school child care program. So if you don't have one there, be the change and push them to get it there. If your library has its story time only at 10 o'clock in the morning and you go to work, uh tell the library there's a lot of people who work and would appreciate a different time.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

Maybe you know, storytime's great. Love storytime, love libraries. But if it's only, you know, they're running it when everybody else is at work, which most people do work now, yeah. It's you telling them that would be is something the community could do.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:16

Yeah. That's wonderful. And guilt is something we hear about a lot from parents, um, especially our single parents who feel like they are already stretched to the max. How can they manage that feeling of not doing enough?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

Well, I'm gonna cut the shred here because they are doing more than enough. And you're not a fake parent. You are a professional. You go to work and you even if you're not feeling well, you're you don't stop parenting, right? You're uh you're playing the long game, you're playing to feed your families and make sure they're safe. And this is not fake parenting it. Um you can take some solace in those fifty a lot of the 15-minute parenting things we talked about earlier in this. There's a whole lot of programs like that we talk about in the book where things could if if 15 is too much, do five. Right? Start small and get bigger. You got you got it. And I think that you have to differentiate between shame and guilt.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:33

Shame is I screwed up. Uh, I'm a bad person. Guilt is I screwed up, I'm gonna fix this. And every day you can do something small to fix it. And we all do it. We're all learning, we're all imperfect. Your kids are imperfect, your four your exes are imperfect, your family is imperfect, and you'll lose a lot of guilt and stress if you stop expecting them to be. And, you know, it's okay if you didn't do something right, or you were late to pick up. Your kid will survive.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:11

Absolutely. And I think that's the best way for single parents and just parents in general to take care of themselves and to manage that guilt. And maybe if they are even feeling shame, is self-compassion and grace. Give yourself grace. You are showing up for your kid, you are there, you are doing your absolute best. If you're making a mistake, you're working to fix it, whatever it may be. But no one, like you said, no one is perfect. As long as you give yourself grace and you recognize you don't know anybody that's perfect and you aren't perfect, that's the best thing that anybody can do.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:51

And a lot of people are trying to let make other people think they're perfect. And this is a big problem. Okay, I can kick rocks. Right, right. And like I told you about that book, Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid. Yeah, you did. I didn't read it, but I love the title.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:10

I love that title too.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:12

It does happen. Uh there's a lot of competition that goes on a lot between parents, and uh, I was shocked. It would start before my kid could talk. Yeah. You know, it was, I was like, all right, well, okay, I'm I'm really glad for you. It just I it but let's start even more basically. Not a lot can be done for your own self unless you have the Holy Trinity. And that's sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:42

And this is not pick two. You gotta do all three. And I'm giving you permission to sleep. There we go. I would have been a lot more patient if I'd gotten more sleep. Yeah. Same here. Well, you know, independence is the goal here, not a perfect childhood.

unknown 1:11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

And while we're on the topic of it, what does good enough parenting look like in a real-world practical sense for single parents?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:11

Well, good enough is is that you're you're being able to work towards your goals together and nobody died during the day and there's no blood. Absolutely. I I think that um, but on a more serious note, you know, good enough is I I'm an active cook, but if it's got more than four five ingredients, I probably won't make it. So, you know, goal is, you know, nutritious good food, so you don't default to fattening takeout, you know, yeah, all the salt in it. Um I have a a neat home, but it would never be in a in a magazine. Um, it's that whole hate to vacuum thing. Good enough is you have a simple haircut and simple wardrobe that's easy to maintain. Yeah. That's good enough. And you know, your kid got a B or a C versus an A, you know? That that's good enough. Right. They they probably don't feel really good about that C. And if they're self-motivated, they'll wanna work with you to do those things. Um, those those are the kind of things that, you know, good enough is times when we don't give them our undivided attention. Times when we don't um respond right away. Now, this is after infancy, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:35

These are these are things that um good enough is good enough. And that's not just for you, but for the other parent as well. And it's you pick that that other person. So, you know, you're you're you're in the mix too. Yeah. And uh uh trash talking the other parent is a no-go in my book. I don't care what a jerk they are, it's not your kid's fault and they didn't pick that situation. So that will a good enough parent is one who just doesn't say bad things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:09

Absolutely. I a hundred percent agree. And if listeners walk away from this conversation with one key takeaway about single parenting, what do you hope it is? Life is messy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:22

We're not perfect, you can do everything right and it still won't go wrong. That's not that's not a fail. That's being human.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:31

And and I think that um just keep trying. You're usually said. Just keep trying, go to bed early, forget all the nonsense that happened during the day and start new tomorrow. And I didn't make that up. That Ralph Walder Emerson was saying that in the 19th century.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

You know, at some point we might listen to him. I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:55

Might have a little trouble getting him on on the you know, I think he died 120 years ago, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:02

Well, we can at least at least listen to his sage advice moving forward. He was a popular speaker for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And where can our listeners find your book, The Field Guide for Single Parents, and connect with you online?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

Uh, it's yes, the field guide for single parents. And the subtitle is practical tips to help you gain control of your life, which we've been talking about for the last hour. Um, you can get it on Amazon. Oh, wonderful. You you can connect on my website, which is pat at pathankin.com. And I'm sure you'll have the spelling in your show notes. Show notes.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

I will have it linked in the show notes. So if you guys just scroll down to the underneath the episode, y'all know where the show notes are. You can just click on it from right there. And we'll link the book from the Amazon link too. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

And you'll um you can get some free downloads there.

unknown 1:14:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:58

Uh one of my goals for new year is to give you lots of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a wonderful conversation. We're so glad you were able to come and talk to us.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

Oh, thank you, Kayla. It's been fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

Well, that's it for today, you beautiful caffeinated disasters. If any of this resonated with you, hit that follow button. And if you would, please leave us a review. It really helps other tired moms and dads find the show. And if you want to become a supporter of the show, or just keep us caffeinated so we can keep bringing the chaos every Tuesday, head over to our Buzzsprout page at mom's brain is a coffee stain.buzzprout.com. Even a couple bucks means the world and helps us keep the coffee and the show flowing. Now you can even become a subscriber of the show and get access to new episodes two days early. And don't forget, check us out on social media. You can find us everywhere at mom's brain is a coffee stain. Slide into our DMs or email us your best no guilt hacks, cringiest mom moments, and episode requests at mom's brain is a coffee stain at Outlook.com. Guys, don't forget, head over to check out Pat's website at pathankin.com and grab your copy of her book, The Field Guide for Single Parents. We will put the links in the show notes for you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to mentally prepare myself for my son's first real driving lesson. Love y'all. Mean it, go sip on for us, and we'll see you next Tuesday.