Apod Shape Production. Welcome back to another episode of Am I A Bad Mum?
Podcast.
We really enjoy the memes that come through on our social media as well at am I A Bad Mum on Instagram?
Some good ones in there.
This one I liked so it says to all the teens who are being raised by eighties babies who barely survived the nineties because we didn't have curfews, cell phones and our parents couldn't spy on us on social media, how's life three sixty treating you?
Kids are kids? We go nowhere. We can track them wherever they're very.
Which is good for a safety thing, but terrible for Like when I think about the times that I pretended I was sleeping over at.
Emma's house and we were on the train to the city.
Oh my gosh, Mom.
Had no idea.
It kind of probably had an idea, don't you think, But they were just okay to just block it out because there was no way that they were going to track you or no. You know, deep down they probably knew, but they couldn't pin it on you.
Yeah.
Maybe I don't know. I feel like she just didn't know. I feel like maybe.
I came across a lot more put together honest than I was.
God, imagine revisiting that, like, imagine back then seeing yourself try and deliver those one liners of going yep, no, I'm definitely staying at Emma's tonight. Yeah, we're watching movies all night.
You'd be like, oh my god.
Emma's mom thought the same. She was saying at my house.
God knows where we stayed. I don't even know.
Imagine that actually is reminded me because it caught me out the other way round the other day, because the girls wanted to stay back after school and watch the netball. When I say they wanted to watch the netple rage, they had no interest in watching the netball, but I was like, who's playing? The boys from the local boys' school were also coming and they were watching the Network game.
So great.
Honestly, they took makeup with them to school to put on after school for watching the netball.
But still at school.
It was at school, Oh yeah, at yeah. So they said to me, can you pick us up after the net boar? I was like, yeah, yeah, no worries. What time.
When I was.
Thinking that's great, it was a Friday, I was like, I can get a bit of extra work done. And then also, so I've introduced a new rule on a Friday. And this is off the back of the fact that the last few weeks, I don't think I get home before seven pm. Oh well, Friday's work super hard every day. Every day, I was like, the amount of times I come home and I'm then I'm like, fuck, dinner, what are we gonna wait for dinner?
It's dark.
You're close enough to some takeaway Fridays surely could be your takeaway day.
Yeah, but reach can't have takeaway every I was like why.
I was like, okay, maybe it's a good thing that I don't have takeaway available every night near me.
Because then you'd also be like living in a tent because it's expensive.
So anyway, yeah, on a Friday.
Yes, So they wanted to watch it and I was like, okay, great, So what do you reckon like five point thirty or whatever. They're like, yeah, we think so we'll let you know, right, And so the new rule on the Friday. Jay and I obviously we work together and we own our own business, and we decided we're trying to leave at four pm on a Friday. Okay, moving forward. Yeah, because we're here for too long. And then we also spend because it's
our own business. People will know what that's like. You're doing stuff on the weekend as well, because shit, it needs to get done. It just doesn't stop. You never stopped thinking about it either. That was the first week and I was like, perfect, the kids want to stay at school till fi point thirty to watch the netball,
so we can leave it four go have a drink somewhere. Yeah, we did do that, right, And the girls hadn't told me what time they wanted me to pick them up, and so we hadn't fully confirmed, and so I texted them and just said, don't forget to let me know what time you want picking up.
We've then walked down.
Into the city from work and we've gone for a drink and we've got some little snacks, and I was like super excited. I was like, look at us at four pm on a Friday, like we literally never do this. Five o'clock comes and I get a phone call can you pick us up? I went, yeah, I can, but I thought five point thirty, like, you didn't confirm with me, So I was thinking in my mind five thirty and they were like, oh, no, everyone's leaving earlier, so can you like pick us up now? And I went, I
can't pick you up now. They were why not? I said, you can't just tell me? Can I just call me and say come now? Yeah, I'm working, working, I've got stuff to talk, like, let me get stuff finished and then I'll come and pick you up. Pick you up at five thirty, like I said, I was gonna pick you up five thirty. Oh. Then they've hung up, and then Amelia's text and where are you?
What did that work in the office? She went, no, you're not. I can see that you're not there.
Shit, shit five three sixty.
Why gosh? The other way around?
Exactly why me?
I would have been like, I can hear that you're not at work, and it sounds very busy in the background.
Of that restaurant. You're at the pub.
You're like, oh, sorry, yeah, be there still at five thirty?
Yeah, five thirty, Yeah.
Okay, I'm not coming here. Am I ready to leave yet?
Am I a bad mom for being a bad mum in general?
I don't know what you're about to say about this. I'm a bad mum for being a bad mum. In general. However, I will just remind you of what I just said, and that was that I picked the kids up late watching the netball game, pretending I was at work, but actually I was at the pub, and my crumb.
Dollars have just arrived.
I wish like I actually love both scenarios, but the other sud to it if you lead with that honesty of it. Sorry, can't pick you up right now. My crumb dollars have just arrived. I've got half a pie sitting in front of me, but I'll be there at five thirty.
Yeah, thanks for calling.
Yeah, I had a Cosmopolitan waiting to be drunk.
Yeah.
No, that takes ages to make. Yeah, I waited for that. We're not going to be there right now, too, busy, FYI. Mine was just mine sort of tape is into that. I just was just explaining to you before we started, which was just had a weekend of it. Do you ever just have just a couple of days of consecutive parenting that just really gets under your goat that you sort of go, I don't want.
To do this any more.
I don't want to do this anymore.
And you said, I don't want to collapse Okay, yes, I could be pre or post period.
Maybe, like I could be in that where.
Life feels way too hard for everyone and everything. Yeah, but I just had a weekend of it, Katie, and I just got to the end of the weekend and was like, this is truly fucked.
Is this what I signed up for?
Is this the rest of my life?
Like?
Why do you keep fighting everything?
I was chatting to an Uber driver the other day and he was talking about how his kids are in their twenties.
He was like, oh, you wait, it gets more expensive.
I was like, what, it gets more expensive? No, I'm not giving them money in the twenties. No, Like I feel like I've tapped out by then, and I'm like, eighteen.
You can drive me around with your petrol and pay for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think just at the moment, I think you go through those stages and ages, and I just am having to reevaluate my own parenting and the way that I show.
Up with my daughters because.
Maybe the way that I have handled and shown up with them younger has just slightly shifted.
Does that make sense to you? So let me just explain it a bit more.
Obviously, Gracie is eleven and the way that I've always been able to sort of manage is not the right word, but like relate and respond and has shifted because she's shifted so something. You know, she's grown up a little bit more, and now she doesn't quite respond the same way like you know, just using when they babies, for instance,
that point of distraction. You know, when you used to be like they'd be screaming and you go, look, oh my god, there's a possum and they go and they stop and they look for the possum and they.
Like my three year old nephew. That still works.
Now, Gracie has shifted again with the way that I respond to things, and I've got to sort of take myself off the edge of sort of caring about every eye roll that she gives me.
Does that make sense?
And it's for me to do This is not for her, right, She's just learning how to be eleven and hormones and all of that running through her body. But at the same time, like I have to adapt as much as she does.
Yeah, because you take that stuff personally too. I went through a stage of also being a bit like that every time I was hit with an eye roll.
Or a horrible comment or an insult.
Yeah, like I took I take it personally.
Yeah, mine is just about heated situations that her and I get into and me not knowing how to respond right at the moment for her and for her I So then instead of looking to blame her, I've just sort of gone inwards and gone, why am I reacting like this? What's the work that I need to do in it to sort of learn and grow and evolve as a parent into the next stage and slash age of teenagers. But then you start digging that up, Katie, and it's shit.
Hard. It is okay to have like a weekend or a couple of days where you just think parenting's fucked, because it can be. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and so they've got a four or five year old and a newborn. They're really struggling, and they said that they literally got to the stage where they were like, this is absolutely fucked.
We are so tired.
We're getting at each other, we're arguing ourselves.
They've got a new.
Rule now where they send the other one into the bedroom. They get an hour and they go do whatever you want. In that hour, go to sleep, watch Netflix so that they can just get swap over. But they also were like, we love our kids. However, if we were going to go back and know what we knew now, we might not.
Have chosen to have with That's what they said.
I was like, Wow, that's really honest. I've been being so honest and there's nothing to do with how much you love your kids.
No, you're in the depths hard sometimes.
Yeah, you're just in the depths of it, which is we can say and think that, but in the reality of it, like I say, I want to tap out for at least six months, Like I need a holiday for six months.
It is fucking unrealistic, Katie.
That's just me.
That's you're an idiot for thinking that, because I know that, say give me, I don't know, I'm going to be really rash and say I'd take three months, and I would be just petrified that they've forgotten me.
I reckon, if you had a week or even a weekend, knowing how you're feeling right now, say three nights away.
Yeah, but limited phone.
So that's that's the thing you need to not because they can't be texting you every five minutes, so you feel like you may as well still be there cleaning up the ship.
Where's my shoes? Where are you? She's done this?
Like you can't have that three nights, don't don't take your phone or don't you know whatever you need to do? Switch off, last stop stop sup.
So I reckon you'd feel completely different.
Yeah, maybe that's what it is.
So like, whilst I appreciate you six months.
That you just need three days, Oh my gosh, I just need Yeah. Maybe, And we're coming to the end of another term. I think this happens to me every term. I get to like week eight, week nine, and I start to just go, this.
Is fucking fucked. Yeah, but then you've got holidays.
Holidays, we don't have to do lunchboxes and the brigmarole and dance and da da da.
Here, but it comes with the same challenges and we feel the days. Now you feel the days, and then you've got the arguing for all day long.
So just live in the dream.