29. Do these 2 Things - For a Great Halloween Week

Ready for a spooktacular Halloween week? 🦇 Here are 2️⃣ quick and friendly tips to make it scream-FREE for everyone! 😁

By the time you are done listening to this short 10-min. episode, you will know:

• How to respond if your kids are melting down or throwing tantrums over the night not going "their way."
• What to do if your kids aren't listening
• How to manage the candy chaos (ie. "Can I have a piece...can I have another piece...can I have 2 pieces now?" all day!)

With these tips, I hope you have a fa-boo-lous 👻 Halloween week with your little goblins! 🎉🎃 

✨ #HalloweenHacks #ParentingMagic

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Transcript

Flora McCormick: [00:00:00] You're listening to episode 29 of the sustainable parenting podcast, two ways to have a way more enjoyable Halloween week with your kids. I know this can be stressful. I find parents coming to me like it's like panic on the night of going around all these places. If your kid isn't listening to you or you feel like they embarrass you being rude at the houses where they're going, or it's a chaotic place where you're at a big festival and your kid is the one melting down because they didn't get the thing that they wanted.

We don't want any of those things happening. And secondly, also the candy, the candy that comes home. I want to give you a solution for that. Um, there's a lot of key ideas out there, um, that can trade in the candy, but this, I'm going to tell you the truth is a way that I think is valuable. Even if you love to let your kids keep the candy.

So let's dive in.

INTRO: Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We [00:01:00] fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing. To parent with kindness and firmness at the same time. Um, and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective. And for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome.

First. I want to highlight our listener of the week, which was the FOSS fam who said this is easy to follow, supportive and kind. I've been following Flora's parenting advice for a long time and she never makes me feel like I've messed up. Even when I have. And she always has practical and specific advice for any situation.

I'm so glad she has a podcast now. It's just the balance parents need when we are overwhelmed friend, thank you so much for your kind review. And those of you that are watching and [00:02:00] listening, please do us a solid favor. Be sure you've subscribed and that you share this podcast with at least one person in your life who you think could benefit from some ideas on how to parent with more kindness and firmness at the same time.

All right, let's dive into what it is we can do to have a more successful Halloween week. I want to give you two quick ways to have a more successful Halloween week, and they involve the power of pause and a plan for the candy. Here we go, friends. The power of pause, first of all, is one of my favorite things to help parents with because it's the biggest thing that helped me more in parenting.

The power of pause, the power of pause. I want you right now to just stop and think about the last time you lost it at your kid. The last time that [00:03:00] you yelled and you got to this place where you had been maybe repeating yourself and getting a little bit more angry and a little bit more angry and then you just like screamed or you snapped in some way and you just like said a bunch of things that you regret or did some things you regret and then later thought, Oh, how did we get here?

I want you to think about that moment and imagine. If there had been just a small pause,

where would that pause have been most effective? Would it have been most effective once you started yelling? Would it have been most effective a little before that, after the sixth time you reminded them to do something? Or would it have been most effective after the first time you asked them to do something and they weren't listening?

What I see happen time and time again with [00:04:00] myself included and parents that I work with in parent coaching is that we, we tend to be a lot more able to pause and more effective with our pause if we do it sooner than later. A phrase I say a lot to my parents is if you keep finding yourself getting to the end of your rope, shorten your rope, which means let's have some sort of outcome, a way that this situation is going to stop sooner, not later.

So what I mean in terms of Halloween, I think of this amazing family that I worked with, Sean and Lauren, great parents, two boys and a girl, and they were between the ages of about four and nine, and they went out at Halloween and the kids were not listening. They just. Took off with the neighbors and they felt like all night long, they kept trying to pull things back in like you guys, hold on.

You need to wait for us. Hey, don't run across the street. [00:05:00] Hey, you can't go over there. You need to wait for us. And they kept repeating and repeating and just got to the end of the night and we're like, we're taking away all your candy. We are so pissed. And it would just mean a bummer of a night they really wanted to have be fun and special.

So when we talked about in process through, okay, what could have been done and where would it have been most effective to do that? We came up with the plan that, you know, if we had that first time that they jetted across the street without us, we said, Hey, hold on, come back here for a second. We need to talk and we'd put their hands in our hands and we'd look directly in their eyes and we'd just let the other families go to the next house and said, yeah, we're going to miss that house for just a minute because this is important.

Look at me, guys, we are not going to be able to do trick or treating if you are running and not listening. We have to be safe. We need to be listening. [00:06:00] That's important and let me be clear if I see again, a moment comes up where I have said, hey, we're going here and you just jet and leave and with another group and I can't find you when I do find you, we're going to be going straight home and we'll just be done with this process.

They said, if we had done that, I bet the whole rest of the night would have been better. We just didn't think to like, you know, we just wanted it to be fun. So we wanted to just kind of try this reminder, that reminder, this reminder, and tell we had just overflowed. But yeah, if we had just really reined it in and had a really big clear statement early in the night, I bet it would have gone better.

And even I said, what if one kid had had that and the others were doing well, well, we were both out there together. We could have divided and conquered like the, the parent with the kid, not listening, could have gone home and the other two could have kept trick or treating. All right. Great [00:07:00] plan. Same thing.

I want to suggest to you guys, if you are in a situation like going to a festival and you feel like they're crying because they didn't get the right spider out of the bucket that they were drawing a toy from, or they didn't get something, you know, they don't win a game correctly, how they want it. Pull them aside.

The power of pause is incredible. The ability to say, I notice I'm getting frustrated with my kid and I'm not going to just keep letting that boil and roll my eyes and be annoyed and repeat again and nag again and repeat again. I'm going to stop both of us. Pull him aside or her aside and say, Hey, let me be clear.

Those are like typically my keywords to like tune myself into setting parameters and being clear with my kids. Let me be clear. You know, we're here to have fun. And if we have a meltdown about another game, not being exactly what you wanted or a toy, not being exactly what you wanted, we are going to leave.

Or we're going to take a break over here, or we're going to give that toy to someone else who can [00:08:00] appreciate it that's standing next to us, whatever parameters make sense for you. Okay, so the first thing is the power of pause. The second key thing that can help you help you have a better Halloween week is make a plan for that candy.

Make this plan in advance, not after you see how much candy they got, you know, they're stoked that they have like 50 pounds of candy and then you're like, okay, hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think it's better to do it in advance. Like I'm always telling you, I love plans in advance. So I want to encourage you to think of saying guys, here's going to be the plan for Halloween candy today.

Um, this year we are going to enjoy trick or treating and loving it. And then we're going to have this plan, like every. Pound of candy is a dollar that you get, and when you trade it with me, then you get that many dollars. We'll go to Target and we'll buy you something else if you're anti candy family.

If you're a candy family like mine, even though we have a dentist in the family, we, um, we [00:09:00] let the kids have the candy, but our thing is. We're not going to debate every single day. Can I have a piece? Can I have a piece? Can I have another piece? Mom, can I have a piece? Uh, we make a plan that is like you get, I don't know why we picked this number, but it was like, you get seven pieces and that's it.

Seven pieces a day. Don't ask me if you, you know, have had your seven pieces, then we're going to just move on and you'll have, you can have more tomorrow. And generally, if you have a child that you're not sure you could trust, to be honest about those seven pieces, you might do something like have them choose seven pieces in the morning, set it in a pile.

There's their pile to eat when and when you want, or you might be, we're just going to have a couple pieces after lunch or after dinner, whatever you want to do, make that plan in advance. So you don't have to constantly be the, like making the debate with yourself. Should I give him another piece? Did he already have 10 pieces?

I don't know. Is this too much? Well, yesterday, I let him have 20 pieces. Maybe today I want zero pieces to make up [00:10:00] for it. That gets really sticky and more likely we're going to have an upset and a power struggle. So make an agreement in advance of what is your strategy for that candy. And I think you're going to have a much more enjoyable Halloween week.

Alright friends, great to connect with you again. Please, please know that if you are in a space where you'd like to have more support, you can check us out in YouTube and in our Facebook group. And I would love to connect directly with you and support you as a parenting coach as well. Alright, as always, this is another week to be able to use tools for kindness and firmness at the same time, so that parenting can finally feel sustainable.