Ep 69: Happier Parenting

KJ Dell’Antonia, author of How to Be a Happier Parent, joins Andy
for a look at how to get happier while parenting. It’s time for
parents to stop thinking about their kids so much and get back to
what makes them happy!


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Full show notes


Remember the days when you’d lose your mind over kids drawing on
the walls or refusing to eat the dinner you prepared for them?
You might still experience the same headache with your teenager.
But you put up with it because parenting is about loving your
children, no matter what wild rides they put you through!
However, parents so often put themselves before their children,
but they can unintentionally neglect their own happiness.


I don’t think parents should have to sacrifice their own
happiness in order to be a successful parent and raise good kids.
I think there’s a trick to simple happy parenting, and the best
way to uncover it is to talk to the pros.


In order to figure out the tricks to happy parenting, I called up
KJ Dell’Antonia. KJ has been a parenting expert for the better
part of a decade, and she has a wealth of knowledge about happy
parenting. KJ is an accomplished author, having written first for
Slate and then the New York Times. She hosts a parenting podcast
with Jessica Lahey, and she is also about to publish her first
novel!


In addition to her personal career, KJ is an accomplished parent.
She has raised four kids, and much of her parenting experience
has fed her career as a writer. Her most recent book on
parenting, How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a
Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute of It, is an awesome
resource that I myself love. This week, KJ helps me investigate
methods to happier parenting.


The Situation


It’s a hectic Sunday afternoon. You’ve been running around all
weekend, going from activity to activity. Two of your teens have
soccer tournaments, and both are inconveniently located on
opposite sides of town. If either one goes to overtime, you’ll be
late to your third teen’s spring musical at the high school
theater. You’re exhausted, and you still need to figure out
dinner.


In the attempt to keep up with all of your teen’s activities, you
hardly had a moment to catch your breath. In these moments of
exhaustion, it can be so easy to feel discouraged when facing the
world. But what strategies can you use to achieve simple happy
parenting?


While she was editor for the New York Times, she wanted to share
a piece on simple happy parenting. She decided to come up with a
list of solutions that would make her feel happier as a parent.
However, she quickly realized that she did not have enough time
in the day to invest in “happy parenting” methods and needed to
pivot her approach.


Instead of adding new activities to boost happiness like yoga,
2-hour runs, or hot stone massages, she needed to be taking stuff
off her plate. Parenting is crazy enough, so reducing her hectic
schedule is what helped KJ unlock the trick to happy parenting.


The key to happy parenting is finding ways to make
parenting less stressful.


This proves to be a beneficial strategy, and sparked inspiration
for How to Be a Happier Parent.


The “Ground Rule” Solution


KJ decided that the easiest way to make parenting less stressful
was to create ground rules for certain parts of family life. This
made expectations clear for everyone, and in turn reduced the
general chaos of family life. One solution KJ created was a set
of five ground rules for dinner because she found it difficult to
make a meal without one of her children complaining. Here’s one
in action:





Rule #1:





At KJ’s table, everyone in her family has to accept everything on
their plate. Before this rule, it was relatively common for one
of her children to reject the food presented to them outright. In
response, KJ said that everyone had to accept the food that is
given to them. Whether or not everyone likes the food is up to
them, but her teens can’t ask for a whole ‘nother meal to be made
especially for them. Implementing this rule was great, KJ says,
because it helped reduce her stress at the end of long days.


As she implemented this strategy of creating simple ground rules,
KJ quickly found that this strategy wouldn’t work in every
situation.


Another example she mentioned to me was getting dirty dishes in
the dishwasher. One of her daughters would put her dishes in the
dishwasher every time, and never needed a parent to stand over
her shoulder to make sure things got in place.


Contrarily, KJ’s other daughter would chronically forget that the
dishwasher ever existed. She would leave dirty dishes around all
the time, and rarely get them in the dishwasher unless KJ was on
her case about it.


In situations like these, KJ told me that sometimes there is
nothing you can do to create happy parenting.


Ultimately, the trick for parents is that they need to be
resilient about asking teens to complete tasks. It is a great
help when they are done correctly, and these skills are things
they will remember for the rest of their lives. Some teens will
have no problem following rules, but others might need to be
reminded on a daily basis. It might take a year of moving your
kid’s dirty dishes to their bedroom for them to actually remember
to clean them on their own!


But, don’t give up hope. You can’t expect teens to be perfect
because progress doesn’t happen overnight. However, with the
right guidance, the “ground rule” solution will help good
behaviors become muscle memory to them.


Over-Involvement


Another strategy for simple happy parenting that KJ mentions is
to avoid getting over-involved with your kids’ lives.
Surprisingly, over-involvement is a common issue among fathers
who fixate on their teenagers’ performance in sports. It is easy
for these parents to get carried away with their teens’ lives
because they want to be supportive and helpful, but it can be
harmful for both the parent and the teen. Unfortunately,
over-involvement in cheering for your teen has negative
side-effects.


One downside to over-involvement is that parents can lose sight
of themselves. If parents lose sight of themselves, they might
also lose sight of happy parenting. It is important that parents
make sacrifices for their kids, but not to the extent that they
are constantly unhappy or unable to focus on themselves.


When you lose focus on yourself, your happiness can become
dependent on what you are focusing on. If a father is constantly
focused on his teen’s high school batting average, the teen might
think Dad’s happiness is based on athletic performance. On one
hand, it puts extra pressure on the teenager. On the other,
basing a father-son relationship on something as insignificant as
a high school batting average is unhealthy for everyone. It
doesn’t make sense for a father (or anyone) to be happy only when
their son is having a good day on the field. Teenagers should not
be expected to bear the brunt of someone else’s happiness!


Parents can avoi...