Curious Neuron

Parental stress has become a public health concern: here are my thoughts

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 7 • Episode 2

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In this episode, I discuss the importance of parental stress and its impact on parenting. I introduce the Reflective Parent Club (IT'S FINALLY OPEN!!), a membership program aimed at helping parents pause, reflect, and regulate their emotions. I emphasize the need for parents to respect their time and create meaningful connections with their children. I also encourage parents to evaluate their schedules, set boundaries, and prioritize quality time with their families. The episode concludes with an invitation to join the Reflective Parent Club and a reminder to leave a rating and review for the podcast.

Reflection Prompt: Am I being respectful of my time?

Download our 8-week Reflection Challenge:
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Takeaways

  • Parental stress is a public health concern and can impact parenting.
  • The Reflective Parent Club offers tools and support for parents to regulate their emotions and build confidence.
  • Respecting and managing time can reduce stress and create more meaningful connections with children.
  • Evaluating schedules, setting boundaries, and prioritizing quality time are important for parental well-being.
  • Joining the Reflective Parent Club provides access to resources and expert guidance.


Join me inside the Reflective Parent Club NOW OPEN!!

Use the code REFLECT50 to get 50% off your first month in a monthly subscription HERE

Use code REFLECT20 to get 20% off your first year (only $18/month!!) with our yearly subscription HERE

Or learn more by clicking the link below:
https://curiousneuron.com/join-our-club/


Source:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/health/surgeon-general-parent-stress-wellness/index.html

Get your FREE 40-page well-being workbook:
https://tremendous-hustler-7333.ck.page/reflectiveparentstarterkit

Join our membership, The Reflective Parent Club to learn how to manage your emotions and model this for your child. Use code PODCAST 20 to get 20% off any membership and get 2 FREE WEEKS to try it out
https://curiousneuron.com/join-our-club/

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Speaker 1:

Hello, my dear friend, welcome back to the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. We are officially into season seven of the podcast, and I could not be any happier about the guests that we are going to bring to you the goal of Curious Neuron. We have a different twist when it comes to parenting. The goal of Curious Neuron is to focus on you, the parent, because when you are not well, then it's harder to support and nurture your child. And that is going to be the focus of today's talk, because the Surgeon General released a report and an article saying that parental stress is a public health concern, and so there's no way that I can talk about this, because I have lots of sort of similarities that I've seen in the parents that I've been speaking with. I was on a mission this summer to speak with 100 parents, and so I am on number 60 now of the parents, and I have seen the same thing in terms of parents struggling with stress and overwhelm and burnout, and so I want to speak about that today. First, I want to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute as well as the McConnell Foundation for supporting the Cures Neuron podcast. Without these two organizations, this podcast would not be possible, and, of course, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast, and so, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure that you click the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and if you are listening on YouTube, please take a moment to subscribe to the Curious Neuron channel. I will be making sure that I bring the experts directly to you, and I will try to show up more as well on YouTube to bring some advice and share some articles that I found that would be interesting for you, as a parent, to know about. If you don't know, today is a very big day for Curious Neuron for me. We have been working very hard this summer to test a membership that we have officially launched today.

Speaker 1:

Today is the opening of the Reflective Parent Club. I have been talking to you about this all summer, and what I have noticed is, when I was talking to the parents this summer, there are so many stressors, like the stressors we're going to talk about today, that impact how they're parenting, and so I don't think that we need another parenting platform that gives you advice in terms of how to support your child's behavior. That's going to come in in different ways. In the Reflective Parent Club, I want to create a space where parents could learn how to pause, which we're going to talk about today. Pause and reflect, because sometimes you yell at your child, but it was because of an argument that you had with your partner, and so when you learn how to pause, you notice that, instead of reacting to certain things that your child does or reacting to something that your partner says, you respond a lot more because in that pause, you apply tools, whether it's self-compassion or working on your inner dialogue, or assessing the situation and realizing that your nervous system is dysregulated. I want you to have those tools, those evidence-based tools that I have been telling, talking to you about for so many years now. I want to bring that inside this membership so that you can have access to these tools and me supporting you.

Speaker 1:

I meet with you every single Tuesday. You can join at 12 pm Eastern time or at 8 pm Eastern time, and I bring up one reflection what's one thing that we can talk about together as a community, one thing that we could reflect on? And so I create these moments of pause for you. You reflect on different parts of your life, not just you as a parent, but you as your individual, you as a partner, you as somebody who's working as a child yourself that you have in your life or different challenges that you might have. And all these challenges have come up from the conversations that I had with parents.

Speaker 1:

And what was interesting is, when I spoke with parents, the number one thing everybody spoke about was emotion regulation, right? So that's the pause that I'm talking about and that's the switch from reacting to responding. It's when we learn how to regulate our emotions and many of us were not taught that and so I'm bringing the signs into this membership into bite-sized, digestible pieces and reflection audio. So if you're already listening to the podcast and you're like, okay, this is my method of learning, the whole membership is based on that these audios that you can listen to, these very short 10 minute or less audios that you can listen to and focus on one reflection.

Speaker 1:

We have one reflection. That's all around the four horsemen from John Gottman, and so if you are struggling with some unhealthy conflict with your partner or any other adult in your life, there are reflections around understanding what these four horsemen are and what you should be journaling about. All I want is for parents to get into the habit of five minutes a day at the end of their day to reflect, and that is what I help you with If you can take five minutes to reflect on whether or not you connected with your child, or how you were during an argument. Were you taking on your partner's perspective? Were you bringing in one of these four horsemen? Or maybe we're going to take a moment to reflect about your values and you want to think about how your values are helping you with decisions, or maybe they're helping you establish boundaries in places you hadn't thought of before. I will help you look at all of these areas and then I'll bring you an expert every single month. That's going to help you dig even deeper and you can ask them your questions yourself.

Speaker 1:

So that is inside the Reflective Parent Club, and the beauty of this has been that during the past two months, not only is it a space that I'm creating for parents, it's a space that I look forward to coming on. I share my own struggles and I am with you. I'm not just somebody who's created it. I am here with you as a mom of three, and so I can't wait to see you inside the Reflective Parent Club. The link is in the show notes, to join the club officially and for a very limited amount of time, we are going to be offering 50% off the one-month membership and 20% off the one-year membership. With one year at 20% off, it comes to a price that is the same price as three Starbucks coffees. Every single month. You can take the time to like. Every single week, you can take the time to pause and reflect and gain the habits that will lower your stress, increase your emotion regulation skills and, most importantly, build your confidence. So I can't wait to see you inside the club, all right. So now, that't wait to see you inside the club, all right.

Speaker 1:

So, now that we've talked about that and shared my excitement about that, this article online, which I will share in the show notes, talks about the fact that the surgeon general in the US says that the parental stress is a public health concern. A serious public health concern, in fact, are the words that he used, and so he talked about a few reasons why he believes that it has led to this or we've gotten to this point. One of them is more work hours and higher demands in work, balancing work and child care, which we all say right, as parents. What do we talk about all the time? It's the work-life balance that we're struggling with, and so these higher demands are creating a lot of pressure on parents to kind of balance everything, when what I tell you all the time, right, is that I don't think it's possible to balance everything, and so I think it's important for us to kind of think about what that looks like.

Speaker 1:

I just recently gave a few talks actually in schools and school boards here in Montreal, and what was interesting is that I brought up something that every time I brought it up, there was a pause in the audience and a bit of a oh, and I'm going to say this to you because maybe this is something that you haven't thought of, and the Surgeon General brings it up in his article, and I'm so happy that he did so if you think about money, right, and if you think about, you know, let's say you're driving in the car this is a crazy example, but let's say you're driving in the car and would you? I know the answer is no, but would you just take money and throw it out the window? No, we would never do that. We respect our money and we know that it takes a lot of time to get that, and so we respect it, but we don't respect our time and we don't get our time back. So why aren't we showing our time the same respect it deserves it?

Speaker 1:

The day that we lost, or the hour that we lost doing something that, in the end, wasn't really worth our time, that time is gone and it's not to be dark about it. But I think that we need a bit of a wake up call, because I hear parents talk about filling up their time, right, and so another reflection that I kind of bring into this, let's say, in the membership, is something like this Are you spending time with your child or are you with your child waiting for time to pass, right? So if we are going to the park and we are waiting for that afternoon to pass, we haven't really spent time with our child. We were with them while spending letting time pass, and there's a very big difference. And so a few things you know, I've been reflecting about what this article means and what this looks like in terms of the conversations that I've had with parents, and there are a few things that I think are missing from this article, and the one is connection.

Speaker 1:

Connection is one of the most important things that we can do in order to nurture our own wellbeing, and it doesn't take a lot of money and time. It just takes us to be a little bit more conscious, right, and a little bit more mindful and intentional about how we're connecting with people, including ourselves and our kids. And so, if you think of the times when you felt disconnected from your partner, for instance, it's very easy for us in those moments of disconnect to get more upset with them, have less patience, you know, get into more arguments. I've seen it myself, I know it, and when my kids were very young. All of a sudden, you're just more easily frustrated with your partner and they haven't said anything wrong, but your patience are thinner. And so when we take the time to sit and connect, we feel more compassion towards our partner and we feel more empathy, and so when they say something, we're not as impatient with them. We have to think about that moment of connection with our kids as well. And I know that you might be thinking okay, what does this have to do with my stress level? Busy being on this autopilot function or this hamster wheel, whatever you want to call it, we finish our day and it feels like it was just as difficult as the day before, but we are not connecting and we are not being respectful of our time.

Speaker 1:

If your child is part of many activities afterschool activities, this sport, that instrument, arts class, whatever it is and then weekends are filled with different activities, and then birthday parties and whose birthday party? And one dinner there and another dinner here. Days and weeks pass and we haven't connected and we haven't respected our time. So here's what I would like you to do right now Take a moment to evaluate your week and then your weekend separately. What would your ideal week look like?

Speaker 1:

Where are you perhaps putting something in right that you might be able to take out? So, for example, if you're thinking about after school, or once you pick up your child from daycare and they have all of these activities, is there room? I know you probably just registered them so we could do that next season, but is there room to open up that time? What do you need, right? Your needs are important, your needs matter, and so if you are overwhelmed by and I feel it when you have to bring kids to different activities, you're always just running and running out of time, and so make the time if you can, if you can cut out some activities. If your child is in two or three activities, can you bring it down to one or two? Right, and I know that you're thinking why would I do that when I know that my child loves what they're doing? I'm not asking you to take them away from everything that they love, but do they have to do all three? And if you ask them to choose and they're disappointed, you're allowed to set a boundary for yourself.

Speaker 1:

If you are struggling with stress and overwhelm and burnout and you need to gain time, you need to figure out where you're going to gain that time, and so take a moment to look at that schedule. If you have two birthday parties every single weekend, or if you have one birthday party every weekend, which ones can you say no to? Or maybe there are family events that are taking up a lot of time. Which ones can you say no to? The difficulty will not be figuring out where you're taking you're spending time that you can cut out. The difficulty will be saying no and setting boundaries because the other people, including your child or your partner or your family members or that other friend that your child was supposed to go to their birthday party will be upset and I want you to know that that's okay and I want you to kind of picture that moment when you talk to them and picture what you will gain by freeing up that time. It is so important for us to respect our time and I truly believe that we don't respect our time. And if your child is upset that now they have one activity instead of three activities every weekend, talk to them about looking forward to connecting with them a lot more. Tell them if we can create a bit more time, then you and I can play board games together, then you and I can spend time going, bike riding or going for a walk or coloring together or doing something together where I don't have to worry about the next activity. And I really, really want to spend that time with you. The more you realize that this connection time will have a difference not only in your stress level but in your child's behavior and their level of stress.

Speaker 1:

I had just posted a reflection prompt inside the reflective club where I spoke about values. I spoke about work values, right? So if we have a leader or supervisor that's very chaotic, very stressed out, it creates a work culture that is extremely chaotic, right, it creates a work culture, perhaps where they're being, if you're being micromanaged? Right, it creates less motivation, less creativity, and your behavior changes. Well, the same thing applies in our home. We are the leaders, we are the supervisors, we are in charge, and so, as that CEO of the home, co-ceo, we are going to create that environment. And if that environment is one of stress and chaos and running around getting or where sorry, where can you cut down time? And if you keep saying no, there's no, absolutely no way that you can cut down time, look again. And then if you think you know what, cindy, I'm serious, you don't know me and you don't know my life and there truly are no areas where I can cut something down, then I want us to flip the script a little bit. I spoke about Dr Shapiro's work.

Speaker 1:

There's somebody who has done this work where she talks about confetti, time confetti. That thought left my mind. But the time confetti. And so what she talks about is sometimes we sprinkle this time confetti throughout our day and time confetti is wasted time. For example, if you wake up in the morning and you scroll your phone for half an hour before starting your day, that is time confetti If you watch TV at night not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you spend two, three hours watching TV and then the next day you're like I wish I don't have time to read books or I don't have time to fold the laundry, can you kind of maximize that time? Instead of it being time confetti, can you take the time to fold while you're watching? I don't know something like that, right. Or if you say I feel disconnected from my partner or my friends or, let's say, partner, but you're watching TV together, that's not connection, and so if you feel disconnected from your partner, then that shouldn't be the activity you do together. It should be conversation and so thinking about what your time looks like.

Speaker 1:

I had done this at the beginning, when I started Curious Neuron. I had hired a business coach, and so what he did is he walked me through where are you spending your time? I had to open up an Excel spreadsheet, start it at 6am, finish it at midnight or whatever time. I was finishing work Because I work evenings, by the way, I don't work 6am till midnight and so I was looking at where am I spending my time and so noticing that it was taking me a lot of time to prepare, for example, social media content. I said, okay, now that I've seen that that's taking up way too much time, how can I reevaluate the way that I'm doing that? And so I cut it down from a few hours to an hour and a half a week and that freed up my time.

Speaker 1:

But I don't think that we learn these skills enough and I think, as parents, we need a little bit of that leadership and business management, a bit of those skills and tools so that we can kind of reevaluate how we're spending our time again, because we need to respect our time. And so, thinking about time confetti, thinking about time blocks, what am I doing? Where am I doing it? How long am I doing it for? Can I do this more effectively?

Speaker 1:

Right Meals, if mealtime is taking you a certain amount of time, can you prep a little bit the night before and then gain a little time in the evening and spend that extra 10 to 15 minutes with your child and connect with them? I guarantee you that taking the time to connect with yourself and with your child or with your partner is going to make some of the stressors that will naturally come in our lives as parents, feel a little bit less intense, and the more that we can do that, the more that we could feel less of the overwhelm and feel less of the burnout. It's not going to make everything go away, but I think that, as a society of parents, I think we need to rethink a few things, and our time is one of them. And so, my dear friend, I need you to think about if you are respecting your time, where you are spending your time, how you can better manage your time and where you are sprinkling that time confetti or that wasted time. And when you start to think about that, you will see a difference in how you are feeling at the end of the day. It won't feel like that hamster wheel, it won't feel like that being on autopilot feeling. And if you need support doing this and you're like, okay, I get what you're saying, I don't think I can do this on my own.

Speaker 1:

Join the Reflective Parent Club. Like I said, for a very limited amount of time. We are going to be giving you a discount so that it is easy for you to join and well, not easy, but it gives you more of an incentive to join and start the work, that internal work that is going to make parenting much easier, less stressful and give you the confidence that you need. Join with the link below and if you have any questions, send me an email at info at kirstenroncom. And you can also, by the way, if you take a moment to leave a review and a review and a rating for the podcast, on whichever platform you're using, whether it's spotify or apple podcast, if you see value in the content that I'm putting out there, please leave a rating and a review, even if you're just going to mark it as how many stars on five stars. Take that little moment, because that is what allows me to get the funding to continue this, and the number of downloads allow me to continue this podcast. These metrics matter. So please take a moment to do that and if you have a question, send me an email at info at curiousneuroncom.

Speaker 1:

I will create a podcast episode. It's helping me know what to talk about If you tell me what your struggles are as a parent, or maybe you just want to come say hi and let me know that you've been listening. Thank you so much for everybody who has been supporting Curious Neuron. I never thought that we would be launching a membership, let alone this kind of membership and hearing. I'll put a testimonial in the show notes as well. I'll put the link to the page so you can get more info.

Speaker 1:

But it has been such a pleasure meeting everybody 60 parents so far. I still have a few to talk with. I'm taking a little break now, but it has been a pleasure meeting everybody who is part of the podcast and everybody who's listening or has been listening to this podcast for years. It feels like we know each other Well, it feels like you know me, but now that I've spoken with you on a Zoom call, it feels like I know you. Thank you for the support that you've given. Curious Neuron. Come join us on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube and, most importantly, I will see you inside the club. Have a wonderful and beautiful week. Happy reflections everybody.