Today's episode is special, not just because it's the last in our Summer Camp series but because it's more than just a single interview; it's an ode to summer, told in parts. On recent camping trip I took my fun little recorder, the Zoom H5, and today I'm bringing you some of my favorite stories and sounds from that trip. Amazing producer (and 18 time winner of the Husband of the Year award) Benjamin Kolp has woven together these, plus my two-part interview with mom and journalist Heather Kempskie, making for a Summer Camp wrap-up that you will love! So before we jump back into fall, grab yourself one final summertime adult beverage, curl up in your favorite camp chair, and enjoy!
In addition to her day job as the Multimedia Editor of baystateparent.com, today's guest has always been a real adventurer in terms of her vacations – in 2014, her family swapped houses with a Danish family for a month! – but their plans for this summer were daring in a different way: she and her family spent two weeks traveling together in a motorhome RV.
In this unusual episode, we spend the first part talking with Heather Kempskie about plans for the RV trip with her family… And then after the trip is over we have a postmortem right here on the show!
Listen for:
Heather's enthusiasm for the upcoming trip, in which the family travels from the Boston area and down along the East Coast, heading inland to the Appalachian Mountains before returning home
what she is concerned about (for example, how do you have any alone time in an RV with three other people?), and how she handles those concerns
her favorite vacation so far – it was that one to Denmark – and how this one stacks up against that one
what the trip was actually like versus her expectations of the trip
If you take one thing away from this episode, I hope it is this: being open to seemingly crazy ideas can make your life much more fun!
A doggie note about this episode: when we recorded part one, we had our beautiful little Shi-Tzu-poodle mixes for less than 48 hours; by the time we got together to record the second part of Heather's interview, care of the dogs had become too much for me. I had a relapse of the condition I've been living with for four years, called tendinosis, and we had given the dogs up and I was back to 30% use of my arms. You can hear the whole story in Episode 17, where I share four ways to help your young children cope with challenging situations.
Welcome to another great Summer Camp episode! Today's is more of an evergreen topic, because we care about the successes of our children in all seasons. It's true that this interview is not solely about summer; but as we head back into the school year, it's also a good time to think about how to help our kids in life. And maybe, not even just our kids – but us! I'm looking forward to sharing this great show with you, you're going to love today's guest.
Do you go through a daily struggle to balance your work time with your family time? Have you ever wondered if your gender plays a part in how successful you are at work, how much money you earn, whether you get a big promotion – or watch it go to someone else? Today's guest and I talk about all things women and workplace, the subject of her very successful podcast with a great name: The Broad Experience.
Ashley Milne-Tyte grew up in London, riding public buses and then the London Tube, both by herself, to school. She spent her summers in rural Pennsylvania enjoying the kind of independence that kids used to take for granted, riding bikes or exploring the woods with friends and really only being required to "be back home for meals." Our conversation starts with differences between childhood then and now, and progresses to where her expertise helps you – and your kids – enjoy successes both in work and life.
Listen for:
Ashley Milne-Tyte's expertise lies in storytelling, and in today's episode we really get a sense of that, as she shares stories from her own childhood, work experiences and setbacks. You'll finish the episode with a huge smile on your face, both because you'll have a better sense of how to be successful yourself and how to help your children be successful in the workplace when they are all grown up. You'll also have a huge smile on your face because you've got so many Broad Experience episodes to listen to in your future!
I'm so excited about this episode, part of our Summer Camp series in which we are setting aside our usual four themes (3R's, Unplanned Adventures, Kids through the Ages, and Risky Business), pouring a nice tall glass of iced tea – or Long Island Ice Tea, depending on your age and what time of day it is – and going on vacation! We will return to our regularly scheduled programming in September, but for now… Let's just enjoy summer!
Today's guest spends her work days helping her clients love their outdoor spaces – and then along with her husband and their three young children, she spends her free time loving and improving their own outdoor space. Jill Brown of mylandscapecoach.com really practices what she preaches, cultivating not just plants but community in all areas of her life.
And she has some great tips for us to do exactly the same! Listen for:
Jill's blog at mylandscapecoach.com has examples and ideas for customizing these concepts for your own yard, plus it's just a fun place to look for inspiration! I know you're going to love our conversation today because Jill has many great ideas that you can use immediately to enjoy life more outside with your young children.
If you love something that we talked about in this episode, and went out and built something based on it, please let us know! Email me at Karen@weturnedoutokay.com, or just go to the contact page, weturnedoutokay.com/contact, and drop me a line. I'm going to be shouting about my favorites on the show, I hope yours is one of them :-)
This week, we take a temporary break from We Turned Out Okay's Summer Camp series so that I can help you know how to talk with your children when a challenge arises.
Sometimes, even in beautiful summer, bad things happen, and today I share about the tough situation my family and I have found ourselves in over the last several weeks. But rest assured – we've still got three lovely, golden August weeks left to enjoy summer and we will do so!
One last thing before we get into the notes, this show has an epilogue, so after I have said "thanks for listening, see you next time" you still want to keep listening – I have something to share about both the Q&A, and about our dogs.… Not exactly a Hollywood ending, but a better one then I had ever thought could happen!
A Breakdown of Today's Show
Today's show is split into two parts, but before I get to those there is a really neat thing I wanted to share – friend-of-the-podcast Muttaqi Ismael, an amazing whiteboard video artist, has turned a favorite part of We Turned Out Okay: episode 5 – Four Risks That We Take With Our Children's Well-Being Every Day into a fantastic whiteboard video! He's a very talented guy, and to see the video just go to weturnedoutokay.com/017, where it is embedded… My plan is to give the video its own blog post during this month of August. Meantime, enjoy! And thank you Muttaqi – you did a great job!
Our First Q&A!
And now on to the Q&A – Jill asks: "why are my three kids awesome at swim lessons when daycare brings them, but when mommy brings them I'm practically holding their hand in the water (and that's if they actually get in the water) – we've been doing swim lesson since March BTW"
We've all noticed this at some point in our parenting lives, haven't we? Why do they behave incredibly well for somebody else, and freak out for us? Jill, I'm so glad you asked this question because it is such a common concern. My answer dives (pun totally intended) into my experiences with how my kids behaved when they were small at Grandma's versus how they behaved with me – and I recorded the epilogue because, almost as soon as I hit stop recording this episode, I realized that I had been in a very similar situation to yours!
I hope you find my answer helpful, and that it helps you think of other questions to ask. I love Q&A's, I think they're so helpful and also they help us know we are not alone. To submit a question, you can email Karen@weturnedoutokay.com, go to weturnedoutokay.com/contact, friend me on Facebook, find me on twitter@StoneAgeTechie, on instagram@weturnedoutokay… Heck, you can even snail mail me! My address is PO Box 61, Bellingham, MA, 02019.
4 Ways to Help Your Child Cope with Challenging Situations
The main part of this show focuses on the four ways you can help your child cope with challenging situations. This came up because my family has been in a very challenging situation: about six weeks before this episode aired for the first time, we adopted two amazing, awesome dogs… And then the stress of caring for them caused a relapse in tendinosis, this condition that I live with that, at times, has left me unable to walk (which I've since relearned) and with extremely limited upper body and hand use.
Long story short, these wonderful dogs entered our lives and within a very short time, we had to give them up. Truly, it was either them or my health and sanity.
In this episode, I share about how heartbreaking and difficult this has been. But I also share about how grateful I am to have had them in our lives, and how amazed I am by the strength and gentleness of both my husband and our two boys.
Most importantly for you, I share about how we got through this. Because when you are in a tough situation and you don't know how to help your kids get through it as well, it's really helpful to have a guide. I hope you will think of this podcast as your guide!
Here are my four steps to coping with challenging situations, and helping your kids cope as well:
1) communicate with your kids; they WILL know that something is wrong, and consequently you will notice, if you try to keep everything from them, an uptick in bad behavior, anxiety, and tears; sharing with them what you can on their level reassures your kids and helps them trust you
2) help them understand that you are all in this together; be there for tears, questions, reassurances
3) find a way for them to help; children need to be needed, and when you give them a job – a truly meaningful job that truly helps you, however small – they become part of the solution
4) cherish the time we have with our loved ones; because challenging situations often include the absence of a person that they used to see a lot – whether through divorce, or death, or a cross-country move – it is really helpful to talk with our kids about how people come in and out of our lives; sometimes, people are not meant to be with us for long, or not without long intervals between seeing them, and the most important thing is to appreciate the time we have with our loved ones, and cherish the memory of them when we are not with them
Giving up our dogs due to my illness is one of the hardest things we've faced as a family. I'm sharing this experience with you today because I really hope it will help you with the challenges that inevitably come up in your life. Kids are amazingly resilient, and cope well with life's challenges, especially when we grown-ups take the time to communicate with them, share in grief together, find meaningful ways for them to help, and above all teach them to enjoy the time we have with the people we love.