Sustainable Parenting

92. 3 Habits for more JOY & EASE in 2025

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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Do you wish family life felt more connected and calm as you step into 2025?

This episode explores 3 simple habits that can bring more joy and ease to your days: hosting family meetings, encouraging independence, and using AI as a helpful tool.

After listening, you’ll discover:
• How family meetings can help everyone feel heard and appreciated. (ps.  Here is more info on family meetings- from Positive Discipline)
• Gentle ways to support your child’s growing independence
• Creative ideas for using AI to make parenting tasks a little lighter

We’ll talk about how small changes can create meaningful shifts and how reflection and connection can bring out the best in everyone. Join us for a conversation filled with ideas to inspire and support your family journey this year!

✨Want more?

1) Use this link for a FREE 20 min clarity call with Sustainable Parenting.

2) Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen.

3) Buy a 3 session Coaching Bundle (saving you $100) - for THREE 30-min sessions 1:1 with ME, where we get right to the heart of your challenges, and give you small, powerful shifts that make a huge difference fast.

Speaker 1:

Hey friends, you're listening to episode 92 of the Sustainable Parenting Podcast with me, Flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach and early childhood mental health consultant, and today we're talking about three habits for just an awesome 2025. I'm excited to share these three suggestions I have for you, all of which have truly helped my family, and I've heard help some families that I work with, so I hope they help you as well. One key highlight I want to make is that, as a testimonial from this week that I think summarizes sustainable parenting for you, a dad in my coaching program said to another parent you know, what I'm noticing is I'm just so calm and it's like this style of parenting from Flora is calm parenting without being gentle parenting, and there's a lot more to unpack there, but what we mean is that we're not in this overly gentle style that is giving in and feeling exhausted and overly validating when we feel pushed way beyond our limits and then end up blowing up. It's the style of parenting to help you have balance. So thanks for that feedback, Adam. Really appreciate you.

Speaker 1:

Hello, and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time 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, Now let's talk about three habits to help you this this year. The first is family meetings. The second is teach your kids that next step of how to be more independent. And the third is use AI to your advantage. Oh, can't wait to get to that third one especially, but let's go through these three. First one family meetings. This is a concept from many evidence-based practices, but I especially like the model that comes from positive discipline created by Jane Nelson and Lynn Lott. Jane Nelson was on this podcast, so be sure to check out her episodes that we put it into a three-part series and those were episodes 57, 58, and 59. Okay and 59. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Family meetings the basic structure is that I really love is start with a compliment appreciation circle, Middle is solve a family problem and end is do something fun. So the first part in terms of compliment circle or appreciations. I find, like I've told you before, we got to really script things for our kids. They don't always understand what we're talking about with our words. If we say, say an appreciation, they might be like I like your hair or something like that. My daughter at first was like I think you're a great mom and yes, that is a lovely compliment. I appreciated her saying that. But also in part of this is to teach what an appreciation really sounds like. So we script it as I appreciated or I enjoyed. So I appreciated this thing that you did for me, or I enjoyed this thing we did together.

Speaker 1:

That's how we structure it in our house and it starts with anyone. Let's say it starts with sister and everyone gives an appreciation to sister, then brother, everyone gives an appreciation, then dad, then mom or whoever is in the family. Everyone gives a compliment or appreciation to that person. I appreciate or appreciated or enjoyed this thing about you in the last week or month, whatever the period has been since you had your last meeting. And now let me say with great humility that this is something I have known about for 14 years and it took me till my kids were finally eight and 10 to start doing it and gosh, I wish I'd started sooner. I mean the recommendation is, once kids are four and older, you can start doing this. It's, it's, it's um, developmentally appropriate, they can participate. But somehow it took me till now to finally find the right rhythm, the right kind of day. And let me just tell you some of the positive results. First of all, my kids look forward to it and they keep us on track for doing it, so it's not just us dragging them to the table. They enjoy it so much and I think that's because of the compliment part, especially, like that feels so good to them to get a compliment from their parents and also from their siblings. That leads into part two is that I've seen these amazing subtle changes in my kids' sibling relationships because of it. Like just two weeks ago my son started prompting at bedtime to just call out I love you, sister, like across the divide between their rooms. I used to like have to keep prompting and sort of making them say goodnight and I love you to each other, and now it's just happening. Naturally I'm seeing more spontaneous hugs, connections, positive things that they say to each other, ways they're encouraging each other, Like I mean there's no other way to explain it except nothing else has shifted except this family meeting being started and it's a direct correlation time of when many things started improving in their relationship. So family meetings super highly recommend it. If you have not started yet and if you want any more information about that, I will put a link in the show notes to the information from Positive Discipline about it. Okay, Part two is encourage your kids to be as independent as possible.

Speaker 1:

Take that next step Now. This was one of the hardest parts for me in parenting. From the start, I started the relationship just meeting all of your needs, literally with my body. I'm supposed to help you when you cry, feed you when you're hungry, put you to sleep when you're tired, and yet then you're also supposed to progressively be working at ways to work yourself out of a job, to make them more and more able to care for themselves. And I don't know why, but if that is true for you too, it's like it just was hard for me. It feels like that needle is always moving. It's one of these challenges in parenting, like they're developmentally always to the next thing. So I encourage you to keep moving that needle though.

Speaker 1:

So if you have a two or three year old and you are regularly getting a cup for them for water, it's time. Can we get a little stool? Can we make a little drawer that has cups at their level. Can we teach them how to be able to turn the faucet on on their own? Um, you know, if they are five and set to seven, can we teach them how to make their lunch? Are they getting involved on how to do that? They're seven to eight. Are we getting them trained up in how to have a list for themselves of what to pack for gymnastics or basketball? Um, if they are eight through 10, are we practicing how they can start cooking dinners? This is one thing that we just started in our family, and I'm over the holiday break and I'm just so excited about it.

Speaker 1:

It adds to a child's sense of competency and friends. Competency leads to confidence. Competence equals confidence. Confidence is not just hey, I think I'm pretty or I think I'm good enough. That's kind of too nebulous. Much research shows that when we feel capable capable to manage our feelings, capable to manage the world we feel confident. So continuously guiding your child to more independence is going to help their confidence and, secondly, it's also going to help your relationship with them.

Speaker 1:

I think of a family whose mom I'll name Maria, who I've been working with recently, and about four months ago they were talking about how whiny and demanding their four-year-old was, and as we dug into it, it was like, yeah, because she asks for this, and then if we get her that it's the wrong one. Or then she asked for the next thing and the next thing and it's just like I feel ordered all day, ordered around constantly, and it's like, well, wait a minute, hold on how many of those things could be things you'd say you could equip her to do for herself. So then, if she's like I'm thirsty, you're like great, Can't wait to see what cup you chose, you choose, Can't wait to see how you take care of that, you know and equipping her obviously ahead of time, not just throwing that out of nowhere, but being like, hey, let's teach you. Here's a new area where your cups are, here's the stepping stool so you can reach the sink and just from now on, when you're thirsty, go ahead and help yourself. So equipping your children can also help your relationship with them. In any of that kind of demanding, whining behavior. This could be a solution you haven't considered All right.

Speaker 1:

Part three to have an awesome new 2025 year is use AI. Oh my gosh, friends, I just can't believe the ways that AI has potential to solve so many challenges and I'll just share a few of them that I've learned through friends that relate to parenthood. So there is an app, there are apps about chat, GPT and you can get them. They're basically like Google on steroids because it turns the process not into just a list of answers, but if you ask it a question, it's like a conversation and you can follow up with like well you know, more clarifying questions and it'll get more and more detailed and it's just it's like a little bot question answer assistant on hand 24-7. I just can't believe it.

Speaker 1:

So here are some of the ways you can use AI. One is to solve your cooking questions. I just discovered this recently. You can put into AI in my fridge I have X Y Z ingredients. What's something I could make for dinner? Boom, oh my gosh, it will give you an answer. Or I've got X Y Z in my freezer and X Y Z in my fridge what could I make for dinner? It will give you an answer Amazing.

Speaker 1:

Second key thing that AI can help you with is, you know, any sort of developmental question that you're wondering, If you're like, is this normal, Is this something common? Whether it's about sleep training or your child, you know, having an obsession around picking their nails or a challenge with friends. I mean, oh my gosh, there are a lot of questions that you can ask there about developmentally normal questions. And, third of all, it can help with like letter writing.

Speaker 1:

I had a friend I was on a trip with recently and she needed to send a thank you to her au pair. They were having this, like you know, during Thanksgiving. Let's send letters of gratitude and we're going to post them and send them to all of your au pairs. It was through the company she had hired her au pair and it's like, oh gosh, I'm just not good at what do I say. And so she put in a chat GPT, like her kids' ages and the au pair's name and a couple keywords of things she likes about the au pair and said help me turn this into a thank you letter. Oh my gosh, it was like, so like down to earth, but also concise and eloquent and authentic. And of course she personalized. From there I don't think that's inauthentic to have some help.

Speaker 1:

And then she tweaked and added some details that made sure that it was personal but just takes the exhaustion out of processes like writing a thank you note to your child's teacher, or if you're like, you know how do I approach a challenging situation with my mother-in-law or with a friend Like you, can use it like a ask, referral source for help and with writing letters or starting difficult conversations. So, friend, I hope these three things are things that help you have such an easier, more wonderful, more connected 2025. And if, in addition, you're looking for parenting support and finding ways that a real person can quickly get you into having more joy and ease each day, being more on the same page with your partner, with kind and firm parenting, let's connect. There's a link in the comments of the show notes of this episode, the description below, and I'd love to talk with you. All right, friend, See you soon.