48: Marriage And Parenting Survival And Sanity In Quarantine – Part 1
What’s The Episode About:
In this episode, Stacey will talk about how couples can maintain their sanity during these social distancing and self-quarantining times where parents have to be at home all day every day with their kids. She recently did training with their RelationshipU students on the same subject and it had immediate phenomenal results for those who applied the tools and strategies they learned in their households. Right now families are having a hard time being quarantined at home, and parents are having to navigate things that they’re not used to navigating. That is making frustrations and kerfuffles arise much more frequently and it’s causing more harm than good.
Parents always have an uphill task of raising their kids while also working and making sure everything runs smoothly, and a lot of the times they take on too many things at the same time because they feel it’s their responsibility to do so. Running a household, for example, is a full-time job all on its own, and it can be quite taxing. Especially if the parent responsible also has to work a regular job to make ends meet. The first step to gaining some sanity is to look at all the things one takes on every day and dropping those that can be done by someone else.
Stacey will talk about living a life in reaction and living a life by design, and how living a life by design is the only way to regain sanity, joy, and happiness in any household during these difficult times. Stay tuned as she shares some tools and strategies for reducing kerfuffles and increasing harmony during the current quarantine (and any other time you and your family find yourselves stuck together) to help you navigate everything as best as possible.
Key Points Discussed:
- The importance of being reasonable about what can and cannot be done simultaneously (03:31)
- The frustrations of not being able to escape the craziness-relief pattern (06:38)
- The great opportunity the self-quarantine is creating (08:44)
- How to create sanity and predictability in your days (09:43)
- Creating a plan of how you’re all going to operate together as a team (11:10)
- How time chunking can help in doing things more effectively and harmoniously (12:10)
Where Can I Learn More:
- Get access to the Relationship Breakthrough Retreat – here
- Join the 14-Day Boost – here
- Join our Relationship Development Community – here
When Did It Air:
04/24/2020
Episode Transcript:
Stacey 0:00
Hey relationship transformers. Welcome to the relationship Transformers podcast. Sorry, it’s been a couple of weeks without a podcast, but I’m really excited to bring you this week and next week’s podcast. It’s a two parter. I did a training on how to like get sane and get your sanity back during quarantine when your spouse and your kids are stuck in the house with you every minute with no end in sight. I know frustrations can rise, and kerfuffles can be on the rise, and patients can be short. And so, I did this training and I wanted to share it with you. It’s in two parts. And this week, we’re going to talk about how to use strategies and tools to be able to bring the sanity back when you have everybody kind of living on top of each other, and a lot of things that we don’t usually navigate we have to navigate and… I… when I did this training, so many people posted that they implemented it that day, and saw peace and harmony coming back to their household that day. Like really, really amazing. So, I’m sharing that today in part one. And then next week in part two, I’m going to share another set of tools and strategies, the second part of this training with you to give you some more tools and strategies for reducing kerfuffles, and increasing harmony during quarantine, or whenever you’re kind of stuck together kind of thing, to help you navigate this time. So let’s cue up the intro and then we will dive into part one.
Intro 1:40
So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakable love and unleash passion, divorce, prove their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. We are Paul and Stacey Martino, and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast.
Stacey 2:14
Hi there. It’s Stacey. I wanted to make you this video to talk about how to be sane, everybody at home during this time. So, a couple things, and I had just done this for our Relationship U students, and I wanted to come in and do a quick video for you. Because, what happens for a lot of us is, we kind of just take on the mountain, like especially as moms and dads, we kind of just like, “Oh, I’ll do that. I’ll do that”, like everything comes down to us, and when it comes to like, you know, running the house and taking care of the kids, and also working a job, like first of all, I just want to say, and this may not be popular for everybody, and if it’s not for you, you can ignore it, but if it resonates for you, I just want to say this out loud. Running a household, which means all the cooking, the laundry, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, the ironing, and all of that, is a full time job. Taking care of children, is a full time job. And working is another job. So, for many of us now, we’re up to three jobs. Right? Taking care of a household, taking care of children, and working. And now, with children not being in school, it’s like, “Oh, sure. I’ll… I guess we’re homeschooling as of Monday. So, ah, hello. That’s four jobs.
So, please just First of all, see it with clear eyes and be reasonable. That is too many full time jobs for any human to take on. So please just have a reasonable perspective about what can and cannot be done and what is reasonable to take on right now. Okay. So if you need to do some things to help yourself, be sane and calm and peaceful and Happy and have your household the same calm, peaceful and happy during this time too. I want to give you some strategies and tools that you can implement today to have things start running smoother, reduce kerfuffles and increase harmony now, when it comes to relationship and relating to your spouse, your kids, we have loads and loads of tools and strategies for that. Please join our relationship Transformers Facebook group, where we do a lot of training we have a lot of conversations going on and then get into one of our programs like that’s not an optional piece right now. You need the tools for how to relate in your marriage and with your parenting. Now more than ever, don’t wait if you haven’t done our booth get into our booth if you haven’t done our quickstart do that if you are hanging by a thread or if one of you is considering you know if you’re unhappy and possibly talking about divorce or separation. Please join our relationship you program before doing something Like that. So when it comes to all that I’ll do more videos on that. We have programs for that. What I want to talk about today are some strategies and tools that you can implement right now.
To help create more harmony and happiness now, with what everyone’s navigating during these times when you are with your partner and your kids more often and more minutes than you’re used to, the first thing I want to share with you is a dynamic that has probably been invisible to you. And I want to make it visible so that you can actually utilize this and understand part of the dynamic that’s going on. What I see most often and I’ve been doing this so many years, I just this is a pattern that’s very, very clear to me and I see this most often is we wake up in the morning, and it’s like, there’s a little bit of chaos. And there might be anything from like, Ah, that didn’t go so well to Wow, someone had a meltdown. And then they go off to school, somebody goes off to work, or we go to work, and we take a minute we’re like oh, my god. Okay, now We can focus, and we focus, we do our productive work, we fill back up with things that make us happy. And then they come home from school or somebody comes home from work, and a certain level of chaos and dizziness and bickering or fighting goes on. And it’s like anything from, you know, that was okay. Or that wasn’t so bad to somebody who had a total meltdown, or a fight or whatever it was. And then people go to sleep. And then we get like, Oh, God, thank God, we get a break. And we take care of ourselves, or we get things done that we want to do, we focus, and then we go to sleep.
And then we get up the next morning, and the pattern starts all over again. And we kind of go through years and then decades, with this pattern. It gets crazy. We get some relief. It gets crazy. We get some relief. We wake up the next day and do it again. We never actually solve it. We just escape it. And what I want to talk to you about today Just first of all understanding, so strategy number one, you’re not getting the escape that you used to get, your kids are not getting the escape, your partner is not getting the escape, you’re not getting the escape. And so it just keeps building and building and building and building where people just say like, I can’t take it anymore. And I just want you to understand this is a very real dynamic. It’s actually not any different than what was going on. Before you guys were all stuck at home. It’s just that now you’re not getting an escape from it. And you’re seeing this is what is the dynamic. This is why you must take the time now, to get one of our courses, start listening to it every single day, start implementing the new tools, because the only thing that was allowing you to coast before was that you guys were able to escape. But now you don’t have that and so the frustration start to build the tension starts to build the upset and the happiness starts to build This is the time start listening to one of our programs, start watching one of our programs and start making some changes so that each and every day you can actually solve some of what’s going on before the next day starts, it rises it rises, but you use the tools you start to solve that great let’s go into the next day. And you can stop this elevation of frustrations and stress by implementing real tools so this is a real dynamic it’s why so many of our our program students our relationship view students our relationship grants, swimmers have been sharing posts like oh my gosh, thank God I did this work before this happened. I don’t know how I would have survived the old me without these tools. Like it’s intense and were able to thrive and be so happy right now.
But I never would have been if I hadn’t done this program. That’s why you need the tools. That’s why you need the strategies. So strategy one is understand the dynamic that you’re not getting an escape right now. And I would say that’s happening for your own good because This is what was going on before. It’s just we ignored it because life is so busy and we always get another day. This is a great opportunity. There’s so much opportunity right now, a lot of your schedule has been cleared. And I’m going to teach you in a minute how to get more time in your day. This is the time to do the relationship development work so you can solve some of the kerfuffles that come up in your marriage and in your parenting so that you can increase harmony and decrease kerfuffles. So that’s point number one. Now the second thing is let’s talk about your sanity. So many people right now again, talk about like life by default. Oh, I guess we’ll just do that too. That’s life by default life by design is what can we do? What can we do? Well, what can we do to be happy?
And the strategy I want to give you here is about how to create sanity and predictability in your days when your kids are not in school and nobody’s leaving the house for work. It is not a perpetual Saturday, every day. We cannot Live in perpetual, it’s Saturday. Nobody has anything on the schedule to do, it becomes insanity we just don’t do well. Humans do well with structure and predictability, especially when there’s more than one human in a team. And so, in order to create sanity, we need to create some structure and predictability. I will just say that we’re a few weeks into this here of everybody being home. And Saturday and Sunday are very, very different in my house than Monday through Friday. It’s different for Paul and I, we work Monday through Friday, and it’s different for the kids. They have a different cadence Monday through Friday than they do Saturday and Sunday. And that gives everybody predictability and a way that they can flow through the week where everybody can get the time that they need. It is so critical that everybody have personal time during this everybody’s home and that comes down to are you Living a life in reaction, or you living a life by design a life that reaction is like, when everything comes at you and you’re like, Oh, you want to watch this, oh, you want to eat that?
Oh, you wanted and you’re constantly reacting to what everybody else wants a life by design is you sit down and you create a plan of how you’re all going to operate together as a team. You know, no sports team ever shows up at the first game, never having met before, never having decided who’s going to be in what position, never having practiced. Otherwise, it would be a total shit show. And so it’s the same thing in our households. We can’t just show up each day being like, okay, I wonder what’s going to happen now. And I’ll just react to it. It ends up creating tons of stress and tons of chaos, both for you and for your kids. And then we end up barking at them in a way that we’re not happy about. They’re not happy about and the same thing with your spouse. So one of the tools I want to teach you right now is to use time chunking. So time tracking is where there are blocks in the day. Time tracks, either a 90 minute time chunk or a 30 minute time chunk, and you set up your day from the time your kids wake up until the time they go to bed in these time chunks.
Now we did this the weekend before we had decided to take our kids out of school at a certain point, and we knew they weren’t going to be going to school on Monday. And so we sat down that weekend and said, Okay, here are the time chunks for the day. Here’s a list of 40 things that you can pick. For any given day. Let’s start making the blocks of what you want to do and what you want to do when and what we did was we set a timer in our kitchen using like the Alexa timer or something else. And the timer dings every 90 minutes. So everybody switches their activity. So there are certain time chunks that are electronics time chunks if it’s playing a game or watching a movie. There are others that are more academic like they might be reading or doing. We have a list of like museum tours that are free right now. We’re art classes that are free right now. We’re music lessons that are free online or something like that. Or it might be craft time. It might be outdoor walking, trampolining, soccer, whatever they’re doing. Or it might be doing their laundry or picking up their room.
There are time chunks for all of that. And so what happens is they put their time chunk schedule together. And once a week, we just sit down on the weekend before the week starts. And we talk about, okay, do you need anyone else on this team for any of your time chunks? And if they do, like they’re like, Oh, we wanted to go out and walk on the greenbelt for one of our time chunks. And so grace said that Jake was like, Oh, I would do that too. Okay, that requires a driver. So you guys need to plan that time chunks so that it just lines up together. And with a driver, one of us who can drive you, but the other time chunks are totally independent. You don’t need anybody else to participate in any of those. So structure them any way you want. This way. I’m not dictating you have to do Academic now or you have to do movie time now or you have to do exercise. Now you are dictating when you’re going to do things. The only things you need to collaborate on are things that involve other people on this team. And so we gave them the autonomy to say, okay, and they have a list that’s actually hung up in our kitchen, like, every single day, there needs to be movement time, whether that’s walking or, or dancing, or trampoline or whatever, we need to move our bodies. And if weather permitting every single day, there needs to be some outdoor time. And then twice a week, there needs to be laundry time, once a week, there needs to be wiping down the bathroom time. And three times a week, there needs to be you know, some other time. So there’s a list of like, these are the required chunks of the week. It’s very minimal because you don’t want to dictate too much of what someone else is doing, or that’s not really leading that’s just demanding. So they know like there’s a minimum but they can slide that time. trunk in wherever they feel happy if they want to do their laundry Wednesday morning, they should do their laundry and my kids are old enough to do that do their laundry Wednesday morning. If they’re like, No, I’m gonna do it Friday night before bed, then do it Friday night before bed. I don’t have to control that. But using time chunks, there’s predictability. And we never have this thing where like, I left you at nine o’clock this morning and you are watching movies in front of the TV. I came down at four o’clock in the evening and you were still watching movies in front of the TV. So they’re moving, they’re doing things and the time chunking helps them not to be so bored. And not to be like kind of get that energy where they’re like, they got what they wanted. They’ve been on video games all day and they’re like, Oh, I’m so unhappy because they’ve been sitting right all day. So the time chunking is one of those strategies. That really really works.
Okay, awesome. I hope you got a ton out of this episode. This was part one of a two parter. So your directive, your action steps from this is start implementing, start implementing this now into your days to get your sanity back and have some flow to your home and, and all the people in it. And then next week in part two, we’re gonna talk about now how do we navigate when we have so many other things on our plate? How do we navigate that in a way that reduces kerfuffle and increases harmony, I’m gonna talk about a couple of things that are creating some of the most kerfuffles that I’ve seen, and the strategies for how to solve that. So I will see you in next week’s podcast for part two.
Outro 16:43
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
48: Marriage And Parenting Survival And Sanity In Quarantine – Part 1
