C (11:26)

Family vacations over the summer can often feel, well, like the opposite of a vacation for parents. I mean, there's a lack of routine and new unfamiliar places. And your kid is sleeping in a new bed and. And it can just make kids feel out of control, which makes them act out of control, cue lots of meltdowns and a lot of frustration. One solution I found to making summer trips actually relaxing Airbnb. See, you can search for a place that's already set up for kids with toys and books and night lights. So it feels a lot more like.

A (12:03)

Home than a hotel.

C (12:05)

And have you ever thought that your home could be perfect for a family visiting your area? If you're traveling this summer, you can become an Airbnb host while you're away. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host.

A (12:26)

So the other day I went on Instagram and I just decided, hey, I want to ask you about your relationship with Mess. And I thought I knew what the poll responses would be, but I was kind of shocked. And so I'm going to give you a moment to think about. I'm going to read a question, I want you to think how you would answer it, and then I want you to think about kind of the responses in general. And then I promise you I won't make too long. I'll share the answers. Okay, here's the first question I asked. How important does it feel to have a clean house when visitors come over? This is a question I asked you, our amazing, good inside audience, and here are the choices I gave. Okay, first response critical. I immediately panic. Clean. 2. Very I don't feel okay unless the sink is empty. 3. Somewhat I tidy what they'll see. 4. Not really. I tell myself they'll get it. How important does it feel to have a clean house when visitors or friends come over? Here's the response. First of all, this was one of the most highly engaged polls I've ever put up, which lets me know this is a topic on so many people's minds. So again, you're not crazy. You're not alone if this is a thing for you. Only 2% of parents told me that having a clean house when visitors or friends come over is not that important because they'll assume they'll get it. 98% of parents know that this is a big topic for them. 28% said it's somewhat important. What that means is for 70% of the parents I asked, having a clean house feels very or critically important. If you want to know the split, very important was 32% critically important. I immediately panic. Clean was 39%. That basically means if there were a hundred of us in a room, 40 of them would say, I panic clean. This is critically important. And so please, I just want you to know you are not alone. This is not a sample size of 1 I know in your home. And sometimes it can feel like this. Our partner or our kids around, you're like, oh, my goodness, am I a monster for you? Just to know you're not the only one who panics in these situations. I just think it is so, so helpful. Now, here's the other important poll. I asked, where do you feel the most when your house is messy before people come over? My chest tightens, my brain spins. I feel shame. All of the above. One third of you, 33% say all of it. Your chest tightens, your brain spins, you feel shame. 30% said the biggest thing is shame. Which goes back to why this is triggering in the first place. The truth is, nothing ever really triggers us if it doesn't carry shame. Right? Shame is kind of this feeling of aloneness or badness, unworthiness, almost like this deep unconscious sense of unlovability. And to some degree, yes, going back to that Sunday night, I'm just a little bit late. But the 20 minutes coming home late feels like eternity. The Amazon box, the kind of unpack bag, the sunscreen, the water bottle. It feels like each of those things is saying to me, you are not good at being a mom. Other people do this better than you do. Other people have figured this out. This isn't that hard. You are broken. One of the things I just want to give you, knowing how much shame there is here, is to some degree, we feel shame when we haven't separated our behavior, what we do, or what's in front of us from our identity, who we are. See, that's what just happened, right when I was voicing it myself. My messy house is saying to me, I am a failure. I'm a monster. And so this mantra has really helped me. I'm not gonna lie. It doesn't help every time. Nothing helps every time. But it's helped me sometimes, and I think that's the best we get. My house is a mess. I am not a mess. My house is a mess. I am not a mess. I actually really want you to join me in saying it out loud. And maybe you're somewhere where that would be awkward, but just maybe embrace the awkwardness. I feel like someone might hear it and they'd be like, oh, Kind of what I needed to hear. Maybe I'll make a new friend. Okay, My house is a mess. I am not a mess. And if you can see Me, we have these two hands. My house is a mess. That's my house. It's a disaster. It's true. I am not a mess. I'm not a disaster. My house is a mess. I am not a mess. I want you to hear that as something I whisper to you as many times in a day as you need it. All right, I want to move on to some parent questions I got about this topic. So many of you asked such poignant questions. I'm just going to go through a couple that came up a lot. Okay. When my kid leaves their stuff everywhere, I feel like they don't respect me or they don't respect their possessions. How do I stop taking things so personally? Okay, first of all, I just think this is a beautiful question. Cause I know for me, when I'm spiraling, this is not the question I ask. My question sounds like this. So it's okay if your does. Why doesn't my kid respect me? Why doesn't my kid respect their belongings? I am not often so thoughtful as to say, how do I stop taking it personally? It just feels true. So if your house being left a mess, if your kid having their towel on the floor every time you see it makes you think that your kid is looking at you in the eye and saying, I don't respect you. I don't respect how hard you work to get me a nice towel. Like, I have been there myself where the towel feels like it's talking in a very, very attacking way to your soul. Now, this question has that layer of self reflection where there's an acknowledgement that, ooh, I'm taking it personally. So I'm gonna roll with this question because I know we are taking it personally in that moment. And I like this parent's kind of, you know, ability to think about it in that way. I think one of the things that has helped me in moments is always kind of going back to the difference between least generous interpretation and most generous interpretation. So this is new for you. Get ready. This is going to blow your mind and be helpful and literally every area of your whole life. Even that has nothing to do with parenting. When we get really upset, almost always we're using an lgi, least generous interpretation. And it is the easiest thing for our brain to come up with. For a lot of reasons. Most people in our life growing up used a least generous interpretation with us. And also our brain sees something annoying, it just short circuits to having a kind of this is annoying, someone is doing this to me interpretation. So let's take the towel on the floor or the fact that, you know, my kid's jacket is like I'm picturing my own house. It's like the jacket is right by the door. The Crocs are over here. The water bottle is here. The camp backpack. The towel somehow was somewhat out of the backpack, but as far away from the laundry as possible. It's like a trail. My kid doesn't respect me. My kid is spoiled, right? My kid thinks I'm just gonna pick up after them. Here's the thing about a least generous interpretation. It immediately puts us as kind of an enemy with our kid. I mean, if I start thinking that I really don't like my kid in that moment, it's the part of parenting we don't talk about enough. We interpret something our kid does in a way very frequently that, in that moment, just makes us not like our kid. And then you know what's gonna happen if I start seeing my kid as the enemy? I'm gonna act like an enemy right back. What is wrong with you? Did you not see the trail of shit you just left in the hallway? You think I'm gonna pick that up? I signed you up for this camp. The least you could do is pick up one thing. Okay. People often say to me, you are so good at acting. I always love this. I think that is the most creative interpretation. I think the most realistic interpretation is. I've obviously said that. Obviously, I'm human too. All of that is an lgi. So together, let's come up with an mgi. What is my most generous interpretation of why my child left a trail of items between our front door and their cubby where they could have put everything away in an organized fashion? Now, there's not one right answer, but here's it. MGI does. That is so powerful. It changes our perspective from this. Where my aperture, like a camera's aperture, is so narrow. My kid doesn't respect me. My kid thinks I'm gonna pick up their stuff to doing this. Hmm. Instead of being certain my kid is an awful kid, now I'm just wondering. And as soon as you wonder with a most generous lens, I promise you, good things happen. So what might be an mgi? My kid had to pee as soon as he came home and knew I wanted things out of the backpack, but just couldn't get together and ran to the bathroom. Now, I'm not even saying this is true, but as soon as I make up an mgi, you know what happens? First, I like my kid again. I also like myself Again, more than in that first moment I do another mgi, I have a much more sophisticated understanding of what coming in from camp and putting your stuff away looks like. Then my 7 year old son does, maybe even then my 13 year old son does. I can hold things in my head in sequence in a way my child can't see. What an MGI allows us is it allows us to like our kid, it allows us to not take it personally, and it allows us to approach our kid. And then. And there's so many ideas that now come to mind. There's so many things I could say to my son next that would actually help him build the skill of staying organized. None of which will happen if I intervene from that angry LGI perspective. I've been working on something behind the scenes, something I have personally pushed for because I believe in it so deeply.

B (22:59)

And I'm so excited that today is the day I get to tell you the news.

A (23:04)

Your good Inside membership might be eligible for HSAFSA reimbursement.

B (23:10)

This is huge. This is proof of what honestly, we've known all along. But now we can state more clearly that parenting support is not a luxury. It's not extra fluff.

A (23:22)

It is actually the foundation of family health.

B (23:26)

So if good Inside membership is something you've been curious about, a little interested.

A (23:30)

In, it just hasn't come to the top of your list feel. First of all, that's okay.

B (23:34)

No guilt, no shame. It's not too late. In fact, it literally might be the perfect time to go so much deeper into the healing, growth and repair that we talk about on this podcast. To learn more about how to get your membership reimbursed, check out the link in our show notes or just go to goodinside.com and check out where we.

A (23:55)

Talk about HSAFSA reimbursement. I am seriously so excited for you to jump in. Okay, let's go to the next question. I grew up in a house where dishes were never left in the sink overnight. I'm immediately thinking of a story. I'll come back to it. But now sometimes I do it and it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Is this really bad? I just want to give you a hug as a first step. And there's so much wrapped up here. And I'll tell you a story from my own home and my own childhood that I hope starts to answer your question, you know, without even saying it directly. So I remember being at a boyfriend's house right when we were dating and waking up there. We were in college now my now husband, I was, you know, visiting him. And I remember getting coffee in the morning, okay. And the coffee thing was, like, almost empty. And so I was like, all right, let's make some new coffee. And I went to the filter, like, where the filter was, and all of the kind of wet coffee grinds from the previous pot were still there. I think I was like 20 at the time. I was beyond confused. I thought the coffee machine was broken. Okay. And then I realized in my house growing up, my dad would always make coffee. And immediately after making the coffee, before pouring the first cup, even for himself, he would take the filter, empty it out, wash it, and put it back clean. I kid you not, at age 20, I don't think I had ever seen a coffee filter that still had the grinds in it. And I felt. I felt really judgmental. Like, who doesn't do that? I mean, I later realized that my family was definitely in the minority. Most people just wait to do that because it's annoying. And you don't even know if you're gonna have a second pot or whoever's gonn. Second pot can do that themselves, whatever it is. And this became like, a thing for me where I then increasingly started making coffee on myself and I felt this deep internal conflict. Like, before I poured the first cup. Do I have to empty out the filter? Like, can I enjoy my cup of coffee while the coffee filter still has these wet grinds? Is that selfish? Is that bad? I think so many times in adulthood when we're saying, is this bad? Am I bad? We're kind of wrestling with a different question. Can I give myself permission to do something in my adult life that is just very different from how the adults in my life growing up did those things? And then we're not really even talking about coffee grinds or about stuff in the sink. I think we're talking about separation and figuring out what do we want to take from our family of origin. What values of our families are still values of ours? Like, yes, I want to carry that on. And what are values we have in adulthood that are different from what our parents had that become the ones we live by? And I know you might be thinking, so. So your value you want to pass on to your kid is about coffee grind. It's not like, if I actually think about what this question and my experience have in common is, is it okay to do something for myself before something else is cleaned up and tidy? Is it okay to engage in self care instead of house care? Is it okay to have a moment of pleasure before a moment of efficiency. Is rest a reward, or is rest a right? I don't want to pretend that I have the answers to those questions exactly. And if you've heard me say anything like this before, I actually think the power is actually always in asking ourselves a question, not coming up with a definitive answer. And so those are the sets of questions I'd even say to you. Hit back 30 seconds, just listen to the questions again, maybe do it again and again, and just see how the questions land. See if they do widen your aperture about what might be possible and what really feels important inside you. We covered a lot today, and I hope that even if mess still feels triggering to you, which it will, one thing doesn't make everything better, that you have a little less mess in your head in terms of understanding it. Sometimes having clarity in the things that are so confusing for us makes the thing just a little bit easier. I know talking about this with you today actually really helped me, and I'm hoping I had that impact on you. So, two things as we end. Number one, please know, even if right now or the moment you walk into your house today, it is a mess. You are not a mess. You are enough. And second, I love hearing from you about the podcast. I read every single thing you write, every email, and every single review. So if this episode or the podcast in general resonated, please take that moment to rate and review. Really means so much. I'll see you next time. I would like to thank great Wolf Lodge and Skylight for sponsoring this episode.