Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is going to be an all mail bag episode that Sarah and I are recording together here in Fort Laudererdale. I came down for a couple days. We've been recording, meeting and talking about the future of best of both worlds, having a grand old time looking at the water. I enjoy the water. Sarah's lesson to the beach, which is given that she loves here kind of funny. I'm like, I love the beach. But we want to share a couple questions from listeners. As always, we appreciate people sending it in questions. You can do it on my Instagram. The best of both worlds. Instagram, give them, you know, post us questions on our blogs, you can email either of us. All of those are great ways to reach us. So we will go ahead and dive right in all though, Sarah, do you want to say hi to everybody? Hi? Everybody? We are in Fort Lauderdale. It's beautiful. The ocean is outside. I'm not anti You're not anti oceans, okay, just anti pool right? Is it the pools that you're like? No? I like pools as long as like I'm not getting in with a bunch of children. Can't say, okay, different matter, all right? So first question, This listener is out on maternity leave and is a little bit anxious about her return because she received a fairly negative performance review as the one prior to her going out. She works in the technology industry, which has been going through layoffs, as everyone knows, so she's kind of anxious about what's going to happen. So she says, what happens when you are not achieving expectations in your core roles? Like does everything else have to take a back seat in life? How can she get to a place where she's less anxious about all this? So Sarah, what do you think? Yeah, super interesting question and definitely a tough time to be dealing with this. I mean, I obviously ideal you're coming back from Lee feeling like, oh, everyone's so happy to have me back, and you know, I can ease myself in, and it sounds like in this particular case, I see why it would be stressful. So I mean really thinking about like what are those expectations and actually asking if you've got a fairly negative review or even kind of like a neutral review, I would go to the person and say, like, Okay, what do you want me to focus on that would bring me to the next level? What are your expectations? What would you be excited about having me accomplished over the next X y Z months. And if their answer is something that seems doable and reasonable, then great. I think probably you're dub needs to have a little bit of extra focus because you want to be in a position where you are, you know, at least kind of above that lowest rung on the evaluations. However, if you visit with yourself and you hear what they're saying and those expectations do not align with what you want to be doing or what you feel are reasonable expectations, then that is the moment that it may be time to start looking for other jobs or other types of roles, or some kind of parallel move, maybe to another company. Yeah, I was thinking, I wonder if there are different roles within her organization that might be more in fitting with where you see your strengths. Maybe that's something you need to really think about, because you know, there's lots of jobs in the world, and we don't always wind up in a perfect job. And sometimes when are we, for whatever reason, aren't meeting the expectations, it's not because you're not a great worker or great at whatever. It's just that there's a mismatch with this job. I know I had a I haven't had that many jobs in my life, but I did have one back in the day. That was when I had kind of taken to pay the bills and I was really really bad at it and I like to think of myself as a hard worker and all that, but it was just not a good match. And so definitely look at your options. I'm not saying that people can't. You know, people don't get performance reviews of a certain kind just because your company's going through tough times and so they have to make sure people don't think they're going to get raises. And how do you do that You take everyone's performance reviews down a notch or two. It's kind of sad, but that is what people do, or you know, and it could be that your whole department's going to get laid off within two weeks of you coming back to like you just don't know. So I think if you're worried about your job, for anybody, you know, coming back from eternity leave or just in general, you want to be making sure that there are other options out there, so that you are looking at what other companies might be interested in your skills, you know, meeting with your network to figure out if that's something that you know you want to make a jump at some point, and you know, yeah, absolutely, you can do your best to work hard at whatever those expectations are, but no matter how anxious you are about it, that may not totally change the situation. So you know, want to make sure that you are taking care of yourself as well. Okay, I like it. I don't know how much we want to add, but this is a it's a tough industry. Right now. So, yeah, that is a really hard situation coming back from leave, and I hope you are able to find something that works and where they appreciate all of the things you have to offer. Yeah, because that is always the hard part. I many people, not everybody, but many people have trouble doing their absolute one hundred percent like work focused work for you know, the first six months or so back from leave, and it's just because there's less sleep. For instance. You know, if kids are starting daycare, they might get sick more frequently, and so you're dealing with that, and so just that because you have such this big thing in your personal life, sometimes it's harder to go over the top on work, not saying that you know people don't or that it's not something that could be done, or even that it's rational that people should expect it. But I guess you just have to make sure that everything's going well with how you want to be living your life, because I'm concerned that you'll feel when again, if the whole department is eliminated in six months, that this was just not the way you wanted to be spending that six months being anxious about it. I mean, I didn't have nearly that long of a lieve, But I will say when I got back, every time I was not able, I had no interest in quing over the top for at least a finite fear. And I think sleep. You nailed it. I mean, that's the number one thing. Your brain is just for many of us not firing on all cylinders. Maybe you're very lucky and maybe that sleeps all night, so this doesn't apply to you. But I didn't have any of those kind of babies, so yeah, something had to take a hit, and so this would have been really tough time, all right, Sympathie's definitely all right. Next question, so this one is TBT related, so I will read it so Laura can answer, And she writes, how do you balance having backup slots so that things actually happen in life gets in the way, but not letting the existence of said slot justify skipping the thing. And she gives an example where her friend and they try to have monthly lunches together but most of them haven't happened on the original scheduled time, and how to be canceled or rescheduled. She sent a calendar invites scheduling a second monthly lunch like as a backup, so that if they needed to cancel, they'd have another one soon and not have to reschedule, so they could decide whether to either skip it or have the extra time together. However, the friend says having too many scheduled will lessen the importance of the meeting and that it would make it more likely for them to cancel knowing that they have a backup. So I think in general what she has is a smart solution, right to have a backup, like if they want to have the lunch and it doesn't happen for crazy, out of the blue reasons. You know that they were both so regretful about that these things came up. You know, it is good to have the backup slot for that. Like, in general, that's the thing. But I had to say from the way that this question was phrased. I mean, first that most have not happened on the original scheduled time. It's like completely out of her control, as if the schedule just sort of appeared with no input from her. And I mean, I don't know, maybe she has a job where she has zero control, but then I don't know why she's scheduling lunches that doesn't even make sense. I mean, you know, if you have zero control, you should schedule things like a breakfast before you go to work, or you know, a happy hour afterwards, or something with your friend where you do have more control over the time. So that made me think that she's probably the one who's been camp and that's why her friend is offended and says, no, you're just canceling it and thinking you can go to the second time and it'll be fine. But I'm reading that as being disrespectful because you're canceling it flippantly. So I will say I when I look at this, I'm a little more neutral on who's canceling it. I can't. You may be right that the use of passive voice means that she's canceling it herself, but honestly, my initial interpretation was that the friend was canceling it. So okay, it's hard to tell. Well, maybe you guys don't want to do this, right. I mean, if it keeps getting canceled or rescheduled, that's generally a sign that it's not that important to either person. And obviously there are exceptions. I know, you know, if your friend is like got a child going through a significant medical crisis, like, Okay, the fact that she canceled on you probably doesn't mean that it's not something she wants to do. It's just also, this is a really rough time of life. But if we're talking about sort of normal daily excit distance and you keep not prioritizing it, maybe it's not something that you're both feeling equally strongly about. So you know, I don't know. I don't know what to do with that, But I don't think it's about the backup slot. I think generally when we want to do something, we do it more often than not, as opposed to having it be that most haven't happened on the original schedule. And maybe the friend maybe if it was the friend canceling, the friends like, not only do I not really feel like doing the lunches, but I certainly don't want to reserve two wednesdays a month for our lunches. Oh gosh, this sounds harsh, but that might be what's going on. Oh no, I feel about it. I'll have lunch with you, I know. Yeah, we've come to Florida. We're here haranging out in Fort LETARDA. Although we won't be when this saring, oh dear. All right, Well, so there you go. That's our take on that. All right. So the next question at what would we need to take an ad break. I'm going to do it after this, Okay, we'll do it after the sun, so we can't see our countdown clock in the way we're doing this. In one locations, we have our notes up on the same screen that our countdown clock is, so we don't have that or flying blind or flying blind people. All right, So this listener is her mother in law is moving to town and moving to a place that is twenty minutes away from them. There's a sort of side thing here of that the mother in law had been staying with them and is now getting their own place. But that's sort of a different matter. If you're having close extended family move to your town, what should you keep in mind? Are there good ways to manage this transition to make the most of the experience, to celebrate having people close by, while also make sure that everyone still has their own space. Yeah, So I would think this is one where it's great that you're asking this question because it means you're thinking about the situation ahead of time, which is going to make it much more likely that you can kind of manage your expectation. So first of all, I would manage your own expectations of what you expect that person to do in terms of helping you. I mean, you didn't specifically mention this, but sometimes there can be tension around, like you thinking a certain thing is going to happen, and then thinking a certain thing is going to happen. So I would go in with a clean slate on your end. So I would manage your own expectations of what that person is there to do, because sometimes there could be tension if you have the idea that they're going to help you out in some way and that's not what they had in mind. So thinking through what they are actually there to do and perhaps having a conversation about that, I think could really be helpful, just so that there are not misunderstandings about what that person is kind of there for, Yes, they maybe moved to be closer to you, but what does that mean for them is kind of up to them. And then the other thing I was thinking that might be helpful is to set up some kind of recurring get together on an interval that you feel is right. There's no answer to what that should be could be monthly, it could be weekly, it could be every other week, and it could be either at one of your homes or if for some reason that it's going to be more stressful, like a monthly outing to you know, a local thing that you guys get to explore together, like whatever you decide works. But by having a rotating thing that you know is coming, that might lessen pressure to feel like you're always supposed to be getting together with this person who is now much more accessible than they had been previously. Yeah, and then it also gives you a time to kind of make sure that you're catching up on all that you have going on in your life. So if you always are having say Sunday dinner together, you know you'll be able to see them at that and it takes away some of the pressure of feeling like you need to be actively managing how often you are getting together because obviously you can do more, but that kind of make sure that that space is there since it's hurt mother in law. I don't know if there's the question and people say, like you know, theirs spouse, like how the spouse is managing that as well? Because you know it's a joint relationship, but obviously your spouse is the one who had the relationship first, and so I think it's important that they have a conversation as well about what both are expecting this to look like. I will say that it's probably good that you know she's moving twenty minutes away as opposed to next door. There can be some upsides to having somebody next door. And I know some people love that it's wonderful or even you know, how people live with you long term. That can be great too, But if they didn't have that sort of relationship growing up, it canna be hard to have as an adult. I mean it's sort of like, why is your carent out in the driveway? Where did you go today? You know, Like I just sometimes there's an each other's space in a way that is harder as adults. So I have very positive feelings about that. I mean, one that she's thinking about it, that they're going to be together, but not immediately on top of each other. I think they're going to have a good time. Yeah. I could totally see doing that with my children someday. Yeah, twenty twenty minutes awesome. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and we will be right back with some more questions. Well, we are back doing an all mailbag episodes. Sarah and I are to gather here in Fort Lauderdale. If it sounds a little bit different, we're just recording on the laptop sitting here in our hotel rooms. We don't have our zoom rooms set up with pillows on the wall and things like that, but it's fun to be together, so we wanted to make sure we do this too. So another question from a listener, what do you want your daughters to take most from the way you live your lives? I mean, well, my first reaction to this question truly was like, huh, I never had like a different set of takeaways for my two girls versus my son, So I didn't ever thought of that specifically. I mean, I guess to some extent, maybe there are lessons that they could apply to themselves more easily. But I hope that Karen grows up to also like take anything I do and think about how that might apply to himself and or women that he works with or loves or lives with or whatever. So I don't know, that's an interesting question. I guess I think It's important that my kids can look back and say, like, my mom was really, really there for me, and she was a model for somebody that had her own passions and enjoyed life both with us and outside of us. I hope my kids can have that perspective that even though I am one percent invested in being their mother and love that part of my life, that like, I know, they're not going to live with me forever, so I need to cultivate other parts of my marriage and myself as well, even during these, you know, very busy years. And I definitely want everyone to learn how to plan well. And it looks like you're already doing that, right. I didn't your daughter lead like a planning workshop at her school? Am I remembering that correctly? Yes? She did, and I was super proud. Obviously, I don't necessarily think everybody, including my children, has to plan exactly like me, but if they recognize the value of planning and reflection in life, to me, I feel like I'm winning. Yeah, I don't know. I mean what. I want my daughter to be happy in life, and she may decide that she wants to have a life that looks nothing like mine, and that is her call and or there may be things that she does that are influenced by me. But you know, we often say on this show that kids are their own people, right, They are not reflections completely of us. There are things we can do to help shape their lives, and probably just by being who we are, our daughters and our sons see certain things, but that doesn't mean that they're going to want to pursue lives that look exactly the same, nor should they want to. So I hope she is happy with whatever she winds up doing. But you know, I certainly, for the perspective of this podcast, we would like them to think that they want to have a big career and a happy family. Those are not at odds, and they should absolutely feel like they could do both and still, you know, have a lot of time for fun as well. Yes, and I'm assuming you want everybody else in your family also to embody. Absolutely, my sons should be talking about the best of both worlds that they have created for themselves, and maybe they'll have a podcast some day talking about it. Wouldn't that be cool? It would be it would be all right. Next question, I don't have experience with this, but you have a little bit maybe to share, so any considerations to take into account if you have a childcare provider, such as a nanny bringing their own child similar age to your kids to work, Yeah, I think this can work. And many people are like, oh, that's kind of you know, might think that sounded a little strange. But if you think about a lot of people run like in home daycares that are very small that they have you know, three other kids addition to their own kid there during the day. And I don't know how many listeners have used that as a form of childcare, but that's certainly one of the most common forms of childcare that's out there. Is you know, people have a neighbor or friend who runs a small in home daycare and it is in fact that they are caring for their child and yours. It's just more in their own home versus and yours. I think it can work really well. I think you just sort of you know, need to and it opens up a pool of people that would not be available to you if you don't allow that to be an option. Now, obviously you have to make sure that it's going to work for supporting you and your partner in your getting your work done. So if it's you know, if your own kid, it's hard to manage like that they stay out of your office. Maybe taking more than one kid to stay out of your office it might be harder. I don't know, it might be allowed, so maybe they need to do more outings or something like that. But on the other hand, maybe the kids will entertain each other too, which, especially once the kids are old enough to interact with each other, can be kind of cool, right because they're playmates, and they're regular playmates that get the experience of having a sibling who would be close in age to you know, whether you have that or not, And so that could be an upside. You know, like anything else, you want to make sure that the person has the capacity to do it. So, you know, if it's taking one child with her to work at your house, that's one thing. If she's taking three, that might be harder to manage. If you also have three children, let's say, so you know, in a situation where you probably wouldn't have one person caring for six small children simultaneously, you might need to take that through. But on the on the smaller side, it would probably for the most part work. Just make sure you have good communication open about like what is okay, because the person obviously has their own ways of parenting their children and maybe that's slightly different from how you would parent your kids, and so you definitely need to have those conversations about what happens while you're at the house. But I think if you keep the lines of communication open, it could be an upside of opening up the pool of people. And then you know, especially if you have an only child, having somebody that they can play with quite regularly. Yeah, I mean when you think of like the village raising a child, this is kind of like an example of that, right, Like it doesn't it's it's there's a little bit more of like a family or community feel to it. With the idea that like her kid's there with your kid. I kind of like the idea of it. I think from a practical standpoint, my mind goes straight to like, you know, different rivalry dynamics and like making sure that you're provided. And again I haven't actually dealt with this, but these are all just theoretical like making sure there's no like favoritism shown to the person's own kid versus your kid because it is their kid, and like you know when your kid takes her kid's toy, like it's so weird. I don't know, Like I think somebody's a professional, they're not. Yes, no, you're right, you're right, gonna be an issue, but you're right. But usually like teachers don't have their own kid in the class. So I just I just think there could be complexities to navigate and as long as you yes, communications can be really really important, being thoughtful about it and just like monitoring how it's going because you're right, maybe they're best friends, like it could work out beautifully. And I would also say if it and I don't know what the situation is with this listener, Rohood's in, but if there's somebody who actually really want to hire and they happen to have their own kid that's the same age as of yours and bring in I mean a consideration, they're going to be a lot more flexible if they can bring their kid. I mean, they may not take the job if they can't, like so put that out there, but they'll be a lot more flexible if they can have their kid there versus if they can't, because then they have to, you know, make sure that they're coordinating. If they have a partner with that person's schedule or some other care for that part you know. It just it makes it a lot easier to sort of work more full time hours if that's a possibility. And obviously it's a great arrangement for the childcare provider. So they're going to be excited for this job and hopefully want to stay a long time. Yeah, exactly, all right, So here's a question that both of us sometimes have dealt with. This listener says, I work from home and struggle to carve out a solid forty hours when my job truly does demand that amount of time. Right, So how do you ensure that you have enough time to get your work done when you are the more flexible parent and therefore seem to be the first one asked to shorten your days or allow for interruptions. So, I mean, obviously, your clinical days, Sarah, they are what they are. You're in the office seeing patients. But now you're experiencing more of this as you are working from home doing sort of more malleable things a couple days a week. It's very challenging. I haven't mastered it yet. I still feel like I'm new at it. I will say. If I have specific things that are deadline driven that I know I need to get done, I'm much better about like telling my kids like, no, I cannot drop you off of gen Massics, but I will pick you up when it ends at six pm so that I can preserve my afternoon of working time. If I don't have as many deadlines and everything seems wishy washing and I can push it forward, then I am guilty as being like, not guilty, It's probably not the right word, but I'm much more likely to be like, Okay, fine, whatever, And maybe there's an element of me feeling like, well, I'm done. I've done enough anyway, so I can move on. That said, I think this is like a learning curve for me, and I think figuring out how many hours is the right amount of hours for me, because I mean, I want to produce a lot, but I also do want to have some flexibility or like be able to use some of that time for my own relaxation time or kid one on one time, et cetera. And I think if I've looked at the week ahead of time, thought about what I want to get done, thought about what the hours are most likely to make sense, to get that done, then I'm likely to, I guess, make my days fit what I want, rather then have them kind of pushed around. Yeah, I think it's the pushing around that sort of gets you. So one thing I have started doing when I am crafting the family schedule for the week is writing out a list of l v's work hours. And this is the concentrated hours that I have where I will most likely not being interrupted and I'm not responsible for dealing with little kids who are going to want things from me. And you know, the problem is, especially during the week, usually that time needs to include any exercise I'm going to do too, so I do need to keep that into account. But what this has allowed me to do is to be a little bit more proactive about when kids can get picked up from activities. For instance, you know, I have one kid who stays late for something, but it doesn't have a strip in time. There's often some flexibility about when it is, so I say, well, you know, you could get a ride at this time, or you could take the activity bus that's earlier than that if you want to get home before that. But having that conversation as opposed to just knowing that I'm going to get a text sometime between three and five pm saying can you come pick me up? And then I'll have to make a decision, right, so making sure that I have already claimed those hours and then asking people if they could be around at and you know, they might be able to text another parent or text a their their nanny for a ride at other points in there. But that would make sure that I have sort of protected hours to work. And I can also see certain weeks where it's gotten a lot shorter for one week reason or another. If I have a lot of commitments on that are pushing in on the hours or you know, during the day appointments, because that's you know what I tend to do. I tend to schedule them during the day because you can. And you know, that's something you have to learn. If working from home is you know, you don't have to take the eleven am appointment just because that's the one you're off. But if it is a week where a lot of that has gotten crunched in, I might need to do some night or weekend work. And that doesn't mean that things are horribly out of control. It means that home life has encroached on my work hours, and so work correspondingly can be in what would normally be considered personal and family hours. And that's not a sign as something went wrong, it's just balancing it. It is true balance as opposed to something else. And I know people don't normally think of that, like, oh, working on weekends is like tragic or something, or you know, it's signed that your life is out of balance. But in many cases, if you are working from home and you are a parent who has a more flexible schedule, and you wind up covering a reasonable amount of kids stuff, that is what it's going to take to get you to forty. And you have a couple of choices. You can be cool with that, which I normally am, or you can push further back on what you're willing to do during your work hours, and then you need to not allow yourself the flexibility that you could have. So that's kind of the choice. If you want to draw strict boundaries around nights and weekends, then you need to make sure you're drawing stricter boundaries around work hours. If you are going to be more malleable about work hours, then you can also be more malleable about the rest of time. Yeah, that makes sense, and I would encourage people to think beyond, you know, the idea that you're working all weekend or every night. You know, there can be you can get a lot done, and like in staying late one day for let's say three hours, or like just spending a few afternoon hours while your kids are on devices on a Sunday. It doesn't necessarily have to be like minute per minute necessarily, but if that trade off is worth it for you, then then it makes sense. And yes, the value judgment of like not working on weekends, that is also morally neutral. It's when you catch right morally neutral exactly, you know. And unless you have a religion that requires you to not work on a particular day, although you know, interesting they always seem to you know, caregiving work is still generally done, and medical care and medical care. So there you go. Okay, So next question. If I'm trying to get my kids to spend less time on screens that perpetual quest, and I am willing to invest in this time, money, and or effort, what would you recommend I do. While we've done various versions of this and other than concrete suggestions of activities. I do think getting a little bit of buy in from the kids and treating it like something like that's a fun experiment to the extent that that's possible. I get it that most fourteen year olds might not see that, but I don't know if you kind of like treat it as like, look, these screens are taking so many hours from you. What do you think you could do if you actually like give yourself two weeks or a week or a month or whatever it is, to like dedicate yourself to other things, then they might actually be excited about this. So at least try to give it a positive angle and maybe not cold turkey like it could be minimized. I mean, I don't think of a fourteen year old who that's the only way they communicate with their friends, is not going to give up their phone. But maybe you could say, like, what if we decided that, you know, we weren't going to do screens after seven pm? Or what would it you know, if we decided that we were going to do you know, we'd have some screen time on weekends during these hours, but we were going to put our phones away and the rest of the time. I don't know, like a screen free Saturday afternoon or something. Yeah, yeah, it could be finite, can be specific, and they may find that they find more activities that they enjoy that then lead to more time screen free, or maybe they won't, but at least getting their buy and I think it's important. And then there's lots of you know, activities and money you can throw at this issue. I always think of books as the first one, which is like, certain of my kids really enjoy graphic novels, and when they have a fresh graphic novel that they're interested in that series, they sometimes will choose that over a screen, which is like amazing. Yeah, And it turns out there are a reasonable number of series. I mean I didn't know. I mean I see like the you know, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the dog Man or the Cat Kid Comic Clubs. It was sort of the Dave Pilky universe kind of gone through all of it. But you know, you talk to your local librarian, your school library and get some names of other series. We just found The Investigators. I didn't know about that one. It's but the Alligators who are private detectives or whatever. The Warriors series is big I don't know. Those dragon ones, I forget what they're called. There's like a million of them. There's there's a lot, and there's a lot for every taste. And if your kids aren't as excited about quote unquote chapter books, they may really enjoy graphic novels. I guess it's kind of like it is sort of like the screen, almost a screen on page. Yeah, you're just controlling it by turning the page instead of or comic books. I mean, so you know, there's there's comic bookstores, like, you know, really fun to go look through the stacks there, especially if they have like the vintage ones and things like that. But you know, if you think about comic books that you might have enjoyed, like Calvin and Hobbs or something like that, we've gotten back into those of kids who are into the far side. You know, they're quick reads, but the things to do, but you can get those at the library. I'm willing to buy books, I feel like, you know, if I am trying to reduce the lure of screens, being willing to buy a book that a kid wants is something I can do in that. But you know, for those who do go through a lot of books the library, getting that on a good rotation and using the whole system because they may not have the latest Diary of the Whippy Kid there because the other people have. But you put in a hole, no come in eventually, and then they can get excited about that trip to the library knowing they're going to get the book they really want. We do trips to the craft store that is a common one, like going to Michael's and telling the kids they can spend eight dollars or something and see what they come up with. You know, it could take them a long time to do that paint by number, duck or whatever random thing Michaels has chosen to stock a particular week. Yeah, baking or cooking. You put this as an example, but do you guys do a lot of that in your house. We're doing more and more of it. We actually have Knabe gets like a crate from the Kiwi Crate company that's like a cooking crate. So that has led to a lot of like excitement around making the various recipes that they have. And then actually the library is a great place to get like kids recipe books are kids cookbooks because like they're more like browser, but then they get inspired by that and then they want to do stuff and no, that's just a great like analog activity that they think is really really fun. Now, whether what they create is great can vary. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's good. Yeah, yeah, I know. I've Rith's really been mastering her dairy free chocolate chip cookie recipees. Nice. She made it in different iterations. It was often as cookies, but then it came as a cookie bar the other weekend that she was doing that. You know, you can try to have a lot of art supplies just of available, because then they're more likely to use them if you have good stuff. You know that you have the good like pipe cleaners and crans and markers and paper and I don't know, stickers or glitter or whatever else. Maybe not glitter. I hate glitter. Not glitter. Okay. I also hate Plato, but now I'm doing Plato. I also hate kinetic sand. Oh I hate write no kinetic sand get on the screens rather than have the kinetic sands. I will say if you if your child is obsessed with kinetic sand, they can do it out. It's be an outdoor sort of activity. That is true. That is true. And with any of this, Like, it's more fun to do crafts if you have a cool spot to do it that's kind of organized and like a place you can sit and it's well lit and they you know, the stuff is right there, like you don't have to leave to go find a glue stick. So if this person is willing to invest time, money and effort, like creating a little craft corner somewhere might be a good IDEA little cozy crafting corner with a sign on it. Yeah, it has to all be Kase cozy crafting corner. Oh my god, this is the kind of stuff we can't do on the video because we would be like interrupting each other. And we should basically just move somewhere in between Florida and Pennsylvania, like North Carolina, and then we start us throwing North Carolina. She has Ulterio mtow. She wants to move there anyway, I know. So anyway, okay, So outings is my next thing. Like the more stuff that you are going out and doing, the less time you are on screens. I mean that is probably our primary thing to do on most weekends, and we try to kind of push off the start of screen time as long as possible by like going out and do something, going to the kids museum, going to the zoo, going to like some garden, going to find some trail, going to ran and playground, playing start like whatever, like figuring out outings and if your kids are having trouble deciding what to do, maybe making it fun, like putting a bunch of stuff in a hat and you pick one out, or having them create like a bucket list for the season of things to do, like so you build that up a little bit rather than just being like, oh, what do we do today, because in the moment they may not be as excited, but if they kind of see it as a bigger project that might get you some bye. Well, yeah, I'm letting them know ahead of time. Like nobody likes to wake up in the morning and be told like, yeah, you're clothes on, you're going to this right now. You know, that's maybe not the way people want to spend their saturdays. So, you know, planning out ahead of time so people can manage their energy toward doing it and letting them pick, or letting them alternate aulternate pinning and picking. Yeah, I've been joking about this, but I'm hoping to institute as after the time change it will finally be light after dinner, to institute time outside after dinner, which Ruth noted, as I said it that way, She's like toad, toad, it's toad time. So we may be having toad time in our family, time outside after dinner, but you know, just twenty thirty minutes outside running around after dinner, like get a little bit more fresh air, and then you know, you've just pushed forward the start of the screens or anything else. And especially in our family, given that it's strictly limited to stop at a certain time, you know, an hour before the kids go to bed, then it compresses the available space. And it's it's not bad to have, you know, an hour or to a screen time, you know, in the day. It's just you don't want it to be all the time that the child is not not in school. And then finally, one other suggestion, if this person is truly willing to put money into this, is hire a young, energetic babysitter. They don't have to be young, they just have to be energetic to fill some of those hours. Right, So, especially if you have a kid who's like six or whatever that they could entertain themselves, but it's kind of hard. You are getting them off screens, means you are going to wind up doing a lot of the directing of this and that can be exhausting, which is why people wind up back on the screens. But if you have the relief pitcher coming in, you know, you might be able to make it more through the nine innings of the weekend. And I think the reason I said young was not because that's part of the job description, is because this isn't for you to go out necessarily, So this could be more of a mother's helper thing, and it might be fun to find some eager eleven or twelve year old in your neighborhood. That's like, I just want you to come and like play games with my kid for two hours, like either in the yard or do crafts with them. Like I just need like an entertainer. I don't even need like childcare. And that might be more readily available depending on who lives in your neighborhood. Yeah, that could be a good job for a teenager in your neighborhood. So, yeah, we've been doing all mailbag. This is all the questions. I guess we have our love of the week, right, we got to come up with that one. Oh well, no, I've already talked about the screen time widget. I think so the screen time widget. Oh on your talking about how much time you spend on Well, I like the widget specific so maybe I didn't. Maybe why didn't? We can do it again whatever. I want you to do it for you since since I'm here, but they can't see it. So I'm filling dead air here while she's pulling out her phone. But I'll be able to describe it. Okay, I have two because my phone just inspired me. Number one and maybe I've used this before too, but refreshing my backgrounds monthly to reflect the season makes me so happy. So I have like clovers for March, and then like a flower. And then I love the little screen time widget. You can put on your homescreen and see exactly how many minutes you've used throughout the day. And you know what, today is a testament in me being busy with fun things. So I've barely been on my phone. Look, only forty one minutes as a two pm. Pretty good. That's that's awesome. I feel like I tend to spend a lot but oh well, it just kind of happens sometime. But I will say that I've really been enjoying reading magazines. I have gone in and out of doing this at various points in my life, but because they keep disappearing, like that's the problem, I will subscribe to something like I had Martha Stewart Living, and oh the Oprah Magazine and all these other ones. It was like, really exciting to have all these magazines show up and then inevitably they stop publishing, and then you know, you have a couple still going. But I've been reading Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, HGTV. Those are a couple of them that I've really been getting into it. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. And the Southern Living one was kind of random because I mean, I do not live in the South, but it's really kind of like a lifestyle magazine with a lot of home and travel and food. It just that everything they're writing about is Maryland or South, right, you know, But you could you could have chosen anything, right, you could write about like lifestyle that only happens in Michigan. But you could still if you had good reporters out looking for stuff, get a full magazine out of it. I have read a lot of Southern Living in my time because my aunt is born and raised in New Orleans and they always had tons of issues of that all over their house. Yeah we did. Yeah, So I'll just throw a plug out there for magazines, especially if you're getting yourself off screens right that you know you can. They're a fun, low brow, not too intense reading experience, so you know it's it fills that same time, that same niche of time when you would have needed something a little bit non intense. So look at photos of cakes and Southern living. I love it all right. Well, this has been best of Both Worlds and all Mailbag episode recorded together here in Fort Lauderdaleier. We'll be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of Both Worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.