Hi.
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.
And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer, and course creator. 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 episode is airing in late April of twenty twenty five. Sarah is going to be interviewing another Sarah, Sarah Armstrong, who is a global marketing leader and author. She's the author of a book called The Art of the Juggling Act and she is also the author of a slightly older book called The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce, and that is a topic that Sarah and she will
be talking about in the course of this interview. And divorce is a topic we've actually had people request an episode on, and it's something we have not had close experience with obviously, and so we wanted to make sure that we could address that topic, and I know a number of listeners have dealt with in a way that would hopefully offer some strategies, some ways to think about
that are practical for navigating something complex like that. So, yeah, Sarah, I mean, it does seem like people are potentially more willing to talk about such things now than in the past. Yeah,
I was just thinking about it. I've definitely seen a lot of divorce related content out there recently, and I feel like other topics that previously just weren't talked about very much include things like metopause therapy and mental health issues, choosing to drink less alcohol or issues with alcohol, and then even like choices around personal finance.
I feel like just people are just getting a little more open about various things.
Probably some ups and to that.
You know, I see some things on social media I'm like, well, I'm really glad that I am not a family member of that person sharing, you know that the because it's something that involves the whole family, and so whether you want it to be or not, perhaps it's a child of somebody who's sharing broadly on social media, you will
wind up having it be known. But there's definitely a little bit more openness about a lot of things, and certainly with something like divorce being as common as it is, and people navigating life with like kids having two households and the logistics of co parenting and working things out with somebody that you are you know, no longer married to, or dealing with step parents, and all that I mean is there's so many logistics when their family is involved.
So it's good that people are out there talking about their strategies.
Yeah, I mean, I think it can be an area where someone might feel alone, and yet it's so common. I mean, that's same with all those things I just mentioned, like menopause, right, like you feel like you're the only one. But nowadays when it's people are talking about it more, I think there is solace and like, okay, other people have gotten through it, what has worked, what hasn't worked, And also there's a camaraderie there, like I'm not by myself.
Absolutely.
Well, let's hear what Sarah Armstrong has to say about this topic. Well, I am so excited to welcome Sarah Armstrong to Best of both worlds.
Sarah is an.
Author, a global marketing leader, and a mother, so she is a perfect fit for our show, and I'm so excited to have you on, Sarah to talk all things divorce and then also to talk a little bit about your newest work on the Juggling Act.
Oh great to be with you, Sarah, Really excited to be here today.
This episode is partly inspired by a listener who wrote in with a question about talking to friends or like, how friends could support another friend getting divorced, and Laura and I tried to answer this, but we didn't do a great job. Honestly, I don't think we did, and we got some feedback which was we like that you tried, but could you have some experts on the show to really talk about how to navigate this tricky territory well, since it's so common and so needed the support in
this area. So you were perfect, Sarah. You've written a book called The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce. Can you give us a little bit of your good divorce story before we get started?
Sure? Sure? You know what I like to start with, though, is you know, just for the record, I'm actually not an advocate for divorce, and an ideal world, couples that get married would stay happily married for the long term, but Unfortunately, as you mentioned, this is more common than ever,
it's not always the case that that's what happens. And so one of the things that I want reflect on with the topic of divorce is that no one gets married to get divorced, right, It's not like you plan that You're like, oh, okay, when I get married, and then I get divorced. And no one gets divorced for positive reasons.
There's usually something that's triggered a divorce. But children who are part of a family that goes for divorce don't get to make the decision that their parents are going to get divorced in their lives are the most significantly impacted by this decision. So for my own journey is I was actually my daughter Grace, who's now twenty two
in Fairna. She's graduating from college this year. But when she was seven years old, we went through a divorce, and so she was in first grade and I was the first of my friends to go through divorce, and she was the first of her classmates and little friends in the neighborhood to go through it as well. So one of the things as we went through a divorce and I grew up with a very happily married couple
as my parents. They've been married fifty seven years this year, so I know which is amazing and just they are the true picture of partnership. And so I had a picture in mind of what marriage looked like. But I had also seen really ugly divorces growing up. Some of my parents' friends had gone through divorces that really stuck
with me. And so when we got to the point where my ex husband and I decided that we were no longer going to be together, I had said to him, I have to believe there's a better way to do it than what I watched growing up. And I don't want Grace to be collateral damage in this divorce. That was the whole thing, like what do we do so she is not cloudbal damage. So we took a very
conscious approach to our divorce process. And then what was interesting is over the years after a divorce, I had a number of girlfriends that would come to me and they had made the decision to go down that path. And I joke that the girl who never ever thought she would get a divorce became the poster child for
a good divorce. And so my friends were asking me for guidance, and so I'd sit down with them over a glass of wine in my living room and we'd talk through things, and at the end of each of their respective journeys, they'd say to me, you should really write this stuff down. And I said, well, I'm not a writer and I don't really think I'm ever going
to do that, but okay. But what happened was I was actually at a business dinner in Mexico City number of years ago, and I sat next to a colleague and friend of mine and he looked at me and he said, Sarah, you're so happy, and I said, well, yeah, I'm really happy. He goes, but you're divorced, and I said, well, getting divorce is not a death sentence. I said, I'm happy, Grace is happy, Max husband's happy. I'm like, you can be happy and be divorced. That those two are not
something that can't be in the same sense. And so I just think in our society there's not enough conversation about the topic of how to have a good divorce, Like, if you're going to go through on this process, go through the process and go down this path, why can't it be that the end of it you're happy, your children are happy, your expouse is happy. You can have a healthy relationship with your expouse regardless of what triggered the divorce, because so again, there's always going to be
a trigger. So I would really love to help kind of shift that societal perception that a good divorce isn't attainable.
Walk that makes so much sense. I mean, nobody goes into the idea of having a big change in their life if they weren't trying to be happier.
Well, and you know what, that's the funny thing that's there. I've had someone say to me that I make divorce look too good, and I've said, and anytime I mean that is said to me, I said, I'm just trying to be happy. You know, at the end of the day, that's what this is about. You're right, And so if you can't have that as a goal at the end of this, then you know, are you doing it so that you're not happy? That's you know, that doesn't make any sense. So you're right, that is a goal with
any major change. But it is interesting how people perceive divorce in the fact that because that is the action you've gone through, and that's why I say it is an action getting divorced. Action you get divorced. It does not need to be a scarlet letter that you and your children carry around with you for the rest of your lives.
That makes sense, and it's an active choice.
It is an active choice, absolutely.
So going back and you break the idea of a divorce into multiple phases, and maybe you can talk a little bit about your phases and then also the tips you kind of have for each of these phases. But you talk about preparing for the divorce. I don't know if part of that is also like the decision, Yes, the during the actual change and then post change and the year of first that ensues once you've made this big change in your life. Yes, beginning with the pre period.
Can you talk a little bit about your experience and then kind of your biggest tips for that phase.
Yes, yeah, So I think you know, when you're preparing for divorce or you're potentially considering it, one of the things that I think is most important is your mindset. And it goes back to what I just said that your mindset is essential. That you're going into this with putting your children first every step of the way, and that is sometimes one of the hardest things there for people to do, because emotions run so high during a divorce that sometimes the kids get lost, quite nicely, get
lost in the shuffle. And one of the things I've reflected on over the years is when you are a couple and you've decided to no longer be married, you've made that decision, and that's fine. But your children when they're in that situation with you and I say that, we put bike helmets on them, and we feed them organic milk, and we do all these things to make
them healthy and happy. But if you put them in a what I consider a toxic situation and you're not clear on how you want to protect your children through this process, they can sit in that negative, potentially toxic situation for months and even years, depending how long the process takes. And so the reason I think mindset's so essential is you have to from the very beginning, make a commitment that you're going to keep your children front and center and what is best for them at every
step of the way, every decision you make. And if you do that, I actually think it helps you to focus on what's most important at the end of this which is that your children will make it through be able to be confident in themselves, because I do think going back to the toxicity, if you don't it can have serious ramifications on how children view relationships, how they viewed their view on marriage, and actually even their own
happiness in life. I mean, I talked to friends whose parents got divorced in their forties and fifties, and they can still talk about what a dramatic impact it had on their lives, you know. And I wanted Grace to look back and have it as like a comment but not the focus. You know, me and my parents are divorced, but not yes, because my parents' divorce X, Y, and Z was how my life unfolded. So I think mindset,
sort of go back mindset is essential. It's one of the first things that I think you have to do. The second is really to think about how you want to put the process in place in terms of obviously your legal support and your financial view and all those things. Those are kind of the basics and you need to do that. But one of the things when I was preparing for the change, as I call it, was thinking about how we would manage Grace's life once the change happened.
So it's thinking ahead, okay, and really thinking ahead. So the example I shares, we actually went to a therapist to talk to him before we were going to tell Grace that we were getting a divorce, and he sat us down and he looked at me to go, Sarah, do you travel? And I said, yeah, I actually travel internationally for my job. And he looks at Max's husband and he says, you travel and I said, yeah, I traveled, and he said, I travel domestically. He said, well, Grace
is about to become a professional traveler. She's going to travel every week for the next eleven years until she goes off to college, and she's going to have to pack a bag. And I burst into tears because I thought, that is not what I want for Grace's life. I don't want her to feel like she's traveling every week
and carrying a bag and all these things. So I walked out of that session Sarah, and I looked at Max's husband and I said, I don't know what this looks like, but I want to figure out how we avoid Grace feeling like she's a professional traveler every week. Super interesting, Yeah, and it's one of those things and so what we did, and I do appreciate some of the things. I'll share a bit have some socio economic considerations. But what we did try to do is that Grace
had all the basics at both homes. Okay, so when she went to school in first grade and she was going to either mom or Dad's house after school, she wasn't carrying an extra bag in the carpool line as the only kid in her class that had divorced parents, Like, why do you have that extra bag? What do you know? So I didn't want that for her, So we tried to have all the basics at both homes. Now I do joke that somehow all the socks got over to one house. I don't know how, I don't know how.
It was probably always the house, so she wasn't in.
Exact exactly there's socks, so something always migrated the other house. So what we did, and this is important at least from my standpoint, is we would have rebalancing days where I would text Mex husband say hey, I'm at a sox, I'm at a shorts, whatever the case was, and then it wasn't by the way, it wasn't up for Grace at age seven or eight or nine to go into her dresser and in her closets and figure out what
was supposed to be at one house to another. She did not choose to live across two homes, right, she didn't choose that. So it was up to us to go and to figure out what that was and then to rebounce. And then we would carry the little bag of things that we needed to take to their home, and when we transitioned, we'd handle it to the other parent and then I would go and put it back up in her dresser. Again, it wasn't like, hey, Grace, go put this away, and she shouldn't have to resort
her clothes because she lives across two homes. So it's a small thing, but it's all those signals to a child that they're not living exactly like all their friends are. So we just tried to minimize those things whenever we could.
That is a wonderful practical tip. We're going to take a quick break and we will be right back with maybe more about the during the change phase. All right, we are back. So I love that mindset preparation and the practical idea of making sure it's not moving from one world to the other, but that we have two homes, we have two worlds that we feel equally comfortable in. What else did you do or do you recommend doing during that change.
Yeah, So one of the other things that I think you have to realize, especially that first year post divorce, as I call it preparing for a year first. And there's going to be things that you go through, first birthdays, first clients, any of the holidays that you would normally go through, and you may have family traditions that you either have decided you want to try to continue or things you can't continue because of the change in structure
of the family. And so I say that you go through that year first, and after each of those first you need to evaluate did that work for you and for your kids, Like is it something you repeat next year in year two or did it have an impact in some way where we'd say, you know what, I'm not doing it again that way next year. And so that was something that that first year, I was very conscious of how we were all kind of adjusting to this new world and I call it the new normal
of being divorced. So I would say overall we had some great positives, but my first holiday without Grace was really hard, really hard. And I looked at it, and I looked at the dynamics around and I said, I'm not doing this again this next year, because we were alternating holidays, so I'd have her like for Thanksgiving, but
not for Christmas or vice versa. And so I made a decision that I would change my tradition the years that I didn't have her, and I would actually travel and not go and spend the holiday with my family, with my nieces and nephews and not have Grace there. It felt very strange to me. It's just like, this
doesn't feel right. So I think you have to evalue it for yourself what works, and then decide how you want to take those year first into the next year and which things you continue with, which things you don't. And then another thing that I think is a very practice but really an interesting moment that we had during our divorce era, I should say, is Grace was in sixth grades, so it was about five years after we
got divorced. And one of the things I find interesting is that I think Grace should always feel like her parents are both there for her whatever it is. So we were going to a parent teacher conference and in her school, the child actually goes in sixth grade, the child goes to the conference with the teachers and the parents.
So Grace and Max husband I show up and we go into the and sit down as a teacher and we're talking, and about almost nearer the end of the conference, the teacher stops and she looks as she goes, wait a minute, are you too divorced? And I looked and I said, yeah, we've been divorced for five years. She said, I had no idea. And I looked her and said, well, it didn't occur to me to come in here into Grace's parent teacher conference say hi, we're divorced. Can we
not talk about how Grace is doing in school? And she said, you know what's amazing is there so few parents they can come and sit in this office with me for one hour and talk about their child's education, being in the same room together. She was, it is very very rare.
You are right.
I'm a physician for kids, and there are a few. And I love it so much, and you're right, it does make me like, wow, they did this for the kid, like they may not be enjoying it. I can think of one family in particular, and they're obviously amicable and their focus is wholly on their kid. But it is absolutely the exception rather than the rule, which is really sad.
Isn't that crazy? Yeah? And that's it's exactly what the teacher she goes. It makes me really sad that that's the case. And I said to her, it makes me really sad, because what's more important than sitting down with a child and their teacher to hear how they're doing school? Probably the second second to going to the doctor and hearing that your child is healthy. Right, And so I think that's where again, this belief that you can't do that or that that's something you shouldn't be able to do.
I think we've got to change that because otherwise what happens that child has to go to two parent teacher conferences or by the way, and the teacher has to do two parent teacher conferences, And I think why, you know, why is that the norm versus the exception?
Yeah?
Right?
And the takeaways are like the nuance, isn't it's different when there's two because then they're not hearing the same message. People aren't able to like kind of come to a common understanding, you actually do lose. You lose a lot.
You lose a lot, you lose a lot. So that's again, these are just what I would say, examples of what we have to think through. And it's all the day to day Sarah, It's all the day to day moments that I think you have to think about. And my final probably example that I think I feel very strongly about is when you have a situation where maybe one parent might be staying in the home, like why Grace and I stayed in the home that we had been in and my ex husband moved to a different home.
And what I talk about is what I call minimizing the gaps. And we, for example, had a long hallway of family photos that was interspersed to my ex husband's family and there were black and white photos. This is montage I'd put together over the years, and I needed to give him his photos, his family photos. So I took it upon myself to get other photos framed. And one day I sent Grace down the street to a playdate and I took out this box and I took
down the photos of myx husband his family. I put up some other photos of us and I put it all away, and Grace came home an hour later, and I'm in the kitchen and I hear this little voice from how we go, Hey, Mommy, and I go, what Zachly, she goes, the wall has changed. And I stopped in my tracks and I said, well, what's changed? She said, there are more pictures of me up there. It looks great. And she ran upstairs to her room and I stood
there and took a deep breath. I was like, and the thing is, if I hadn't taken the time to put other photos up there, and I'd only taken the photos of my ex usband's family down and left those little hangers interspersed throughout the hallway, what Grace would be telling a therapist years later as my parents got divorced, and my mom took all the photos of my dad off the wall and left those little hangers.
And it's probably such a metaphor for other things too.
Right, absolutely, And so I just think that it's something we have to be conscious of as our children notice everything. They notice everything. By the way, I thought that hallway was wallpaper. I mean, I didn't think she ever knew. I mean, and she ran up and down that hallway literally fifty times a day. It would not have been
something I thought she noticed. She noticed it instantly, and I thought, wow, okay, you know so I just think these are And again I go back to there's big things in those little things in life, but a lot of what happens in a divorce process and then ensuing days after that is the day to day of life, and you have to think about the impact those moments
have on your children. And really, I talk about taking the high road because it may not be what you would want, right, but quite honestly, it's not about you.
It doesn't matter.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's about how your kids are going to look back in this era, in this phase of life and say, you know what, my parents got a divorce, but they really always try to think about what was going to be best for me and my siblings if their siblings evolved. And I give them credit for doing that. I know it wasn't easy. I'm sure it wasn't easy, but that's what they did totally makes sense.
Well, I'm going to ask you one question which was inspired by that listener question we got, but we're going to take another really quick break and then we'll be right back. All right, we are back, And the question we had gotten from a listener was something like, my really good friend is getting divorced. How can I best supporter during this time?
So?
What works? What were the best types of supports that you received while you were going through this? And is there anything specifically not to do?
Oh it's a great question, you know. I think in terms of what to do, I think as a friend, I think just being there for your friend and saying, you know, I can be there for you know. I joke. The thing you might need is just a near like someone to talk to, But it might be a friend that says, you know what, if you can't pick up for carpool that day, call me in a heartbeat. It
depends on, you know, what that friendship looks like. But I think it's just being there and having that friend know that you're there for whatever they need as you're going through this. The other thing I'd say, and I tried to say this and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But I was not looking for to pick sides in the situation. Again. I wanted our friendships, whether they were with my ex husband, I as a couple situation, or you know, I wanted those friendships to be able
to continue in whatever form and fashion they should. So I really was like, this isn't about picking sides. It's like, I just want us all to be able to live this next phase of life and have the friendships we had before. So I think that's another thing to think about as a friend. And then the final thing is that understanding what your friend wants the messaging to be around their divorce and then just kind of stay true
to that and honor whatever that is. It may be that they say, you know what, I really don't want to get into the details. It's happened, it is what it is. Others they may want you to help them to message it into the world so that everyone understands they're going through this, They're going to be fine, the kids are gonna be fine, et cetera. So just appreciating that might be a role a friend asks you to play, and then just being really clear with each other and what that looks.
Like makes sense. All right, But we're going to take a quick pivot because you also released a book that's very very relevant to this audience. In fact, I have a quote from you which said, one of my goals in life is to show that you can have a family and a career, be happy in both aspects of your life, and enjoy each day to the fullest. And that is like our tagline as well. It's making work in life fit together and really enjoying both the best of both worlds. Is where our title comes from. So
clearly we see eye to eye on some of this. Yes, and this is actually your book that's out, like just came out, correct.
Yes, yes, it just came out. It's called The Art of a Juggling Act and it's a bite sized guide for working parents. And so it is as you said, and it is what your podcast is all about. Over the years, I've reflected in the fact that we learn about a lot of different topics in school. However, we do not learn about parenting in school, right, it's not a course you generally take. We also don't learn about
how to manage our career in school. We might learn about topics that we might want to do in our career, but how to manage your career. And then we don't learn about how to manage both of these aspects of our life in school, which are two of the most important things in life that we're going to do right and importantly trying to do them and be healthy and
happy while we're doing both. And so my goal is really to pay it forward to the next generation of working parents that I have the pleasure of working with every day, and I'm watching them try to figure out the juggling act, and so I just have decided I wanted to share some thoughts and shift. What I see is I see some parents kind of surviving the day to day, and I'd love to see them thriving as working parents and really enjoying this journey that you're on
as a working parent. But I know and I completely appreciate that that doesn't just happen, and it does take some intentional thought and really kind of actively thinking about how you want to show up both as a parent and in your work in the day to day in a way where you can try to do both well.
And your book has a manual feel to it to me, like it it's like, kind of honestly like it would be great to give someone when they're pregnant if they planning, because it's sort of like goes step by step everything from family traditions to setting boundaries to like all these things, and it is one take, like it's your take, but at the same time, like this is hard to find in the cultural geist. And I also like that you mentioned it is for parents. It's not for moms, it's us all parents.
It's for all parents. Yes, it's for all parents. And actually both of my books are written in a very specific way Sarah's. They're called guides for a reason that they're in bite sized pieces and every topic is a
paragraph for a page. So in the Juggling Act book, I have one hundred and forty topics outlined in the Mom's Guide for a Good Divorce of one hundred and eighty five, and the table of contents is outlined topic by topic, So if you just want to go in and look for the topic that might be something you're thinking through, you can just read that page. One of the things that I say in general is as working parents,
we don't have time to really read a book. Let's be clear, like that is not something that is generally.
Laura might push back on that a little bit.
She might look back again. I know, well, I appreciate that. But here's the thing I think that some parents do prioritize it. Some it's just it's the thing that falls off to life.
Some prefer not to or they like to do it.
These things they like to or they might want to listen to something right or take in podcasts, different ways of getting information. So the reason I wrote the book in this way is for it to be bite sized for you to take and not to feel like you have to read it cover to cover. It is a guide. It's meant to be with you along your journey and not be something that you just read once and put away on the shelf.
So and it does.
It covers everything from how to set and protect your boundaries in the day to day, which I think is one of the most important things we can do as parents, is really figuring out what boundaries we want to put in place, both for our personal life and for our family, but also professionally. And I generally say that you need to also share those boundaries with the people around you, because if you don't share the boundaries that you set for yourself, people will walk all over them in a heartbeat.
And the only way they can respect boundaries is if they do about them. It's one of those important.
Things I found that It had a very like and I liked this a lot, like an unapologetic tone, like, you know, we're doing this and we're going to have to think through it, and we should try to not go down the guilt road because there's not really a reason or role for that, and here are lots of ways in which you can make it work.
Absolutely, yeah, and it is. It's meant to be very practical. And you're right, a bit of unapologetic.
That's right, you know, a good way, in a good way.
Yeah. One of my favorite sayings to Grace as she was growing up is Mom's doing the best I can, you know, doing the best I can. And so that was like my little mantra that I would say to her because there were days that things weren't going quite as planned, and I'd say, in any given week, there's things that don't go quite as planned. And so the ability to flex and say, you know what, we did the best we could in that moment is I think
something that's really important. And sometimes I think we all have set such a high bar for ourselves in terms of how everything is supposed to go and how everything is supposed to look and how and I think it is a matter of us giving ourselves the race to know that we're doing the best we can as we're trying to manage to struggling at.
I love that that ending sentence, especially because your daughter's name is great. Yes, and we always do. Sorry I didn't even warn you about this, but we always have a segment in each episode called Love of the Week where you share something that is bringing you joy. It can be anything off the top of the head. It can be a product that you bought. It can be a scent that you smelled outside, it can be anything. Okay, I can go first, just to just to give you
a minute. My love of the week is that I got a new laptop after six years of having one. It was a MacBook Pro and I really loved that machine except the keyboard never actually worked, or maybe it worked in the very beginning, but the key is stuck and I just dealt with it for year after year after year, and honestly, it's not until I have this new one that I'm like, Wow, typing's really easy. It was like introducing typos where there weren't any, and I
just put up with it. So loving my new MacBook Air that seems to not have the same keyboard at all.
I love that.
Okay, I might take a slightly different angle, but a love for me this week is Grace and I were just talking the other night. She is graduating from college, which is a very very big deal, and she is, you know, embarking on this process of interviewing for jobs and finding her path. And I think the love for me is just hearing her so excited and confident about
heading out into the world. And I've always said I've raised her for her wings to fly, and I'm seeing the wings fly, and so I think for me that's
been That was we talked on. She's in college, so we talk on Sunday nights and kind of catch up, and so we had a great discussion last night on how she's thinking about things, and you know, and it's at a different stage of parenting life when you're kind of listening and you're giving some commentary, but it's her life, and so I just love that she's at that stage and that we're able to kind of talk through things
as she's thinking through it. So I'd say that's that's my love of the week was our conversation about kind of this next phase and all that she's thinking through.
I love that.
So tell our listeners where they can find you.
Great. So yeah, So I have actually have two websites from my respective books. So the Juggling Act dot Com is for the parenting book, and then the Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce is on Good Divorce dot guide. And you can also find both of my books on Amazon, and actually the Mom's Guide to Good Divorces in paperback, ebook, iBook, kindlenook all those as well as an audiobook, and The Juggling Act is in paperback and ebook I book. I have not yet gone into the studio to do the audio.
I will do that, I haven't done it quite yet. And then also you can reach out to me on LinkedIn is probably the best way to connect with me, and also have my contact information on both of my websites.
So awesome, and we will put your sites on the show notes as well.
Great.
Great, Thank you so much for coming on, Sarah.
Thank you so much for having me. Great to spend time with you.
Well, we are back. That was a great interview. Sarah talking with Sarah Armstrong, the author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce along with the Art of the juggling act, lots of tips and strategies. So today's question Sarah ideas for what to have thirteen to fourteen year olds do over the summer if they are aged out of day camp or at least don't want to go to it.
So question for Sarah, because Sarah wrote the question, wrote the question.
Sometimes these questions are our questions that forced us to think about what we're saying.
Well, what's your situation here?
Yeah, so it's always been easy to find various summer activities for the kids. I feel like we've generally tried to choose specialty camps based on their interest, just because especially in the older elementary school and beyond years, I feel like that's been more of a draw. And then there's been some weeks of sleep away. But I just feel like this is the first year where there's not a lot of offerings. A lot of camps go to twelve,
and not a lot of them go beyond that. I mean, overnight camps do, but my kids have not had interested a traditional overnight camp. I guess I could have done like two full sessions of the Monday to Friday camp for six weeks, but that just sort of felt like a little bit of overkill. Plus she has other sports and stuff, so yeah, I mean, I'm sort of like wondering if doing a few hours of gymnastics practices three
days a week will be enough. But the unfortunate thing is that those practices are at like four not it'd be wonderful if they written noon, that would be plenty, but like at four, I don't know.
So she's not waking up before noon.
No, she won't. She'll She'll probably start waking up at two, and then you've got like a lot of late night Hours's totally different.
She'll be nocturnal the rest of you, because eight hours before.
Two pm is six am.
I can hardly imagine like I'm getting up and she's going to bed. So yeah, trying to avoid that, and just I want to make sure that nobody gets too bored. So I don't know. For me, I was always like a cit so counselor and training. I feel like she would actually love that. So I'm going to try to see if I can find anything. But I think some of the programs these days kind of start a little bit older, so we're in this weird gray zone.
Yeah, yeah, it is a weird gray zone.
So my kid in that age range has one week of sleepaway camp, one week helping out with our church's Bible camp, two weeks of theater camp, hoping she'll be able to get together with a cousin for a week. There might be some friends stuff going on as well, with friends going places and taking her along, but you know, there might also be some downtime. My other kid, who's probably too young to really well, he could get a job, the fifteen year old, but he's taking two online courses
as a summer thing. But I think we're gonna have to enforce a certain hours work hours thing with that, because yeah, there will be a lot of sleeping until noon two four two. I think you know, we could say, like get yourself up by ten. That seems reasonable to be working at ten thirty or eleven, do four hours of work or five with a break, and then you can go hang out with friends, do video games until
ridiculous hours. But people are busy during the school year, so I gain it's not the worst thing in the world to have some downtime. But yeah, we've sent kids in that age range to there's some like like CTY has three weeks summer academic camps.
That's been something people have done.
Some of the universities have pre college programs that if you're a freshman or above, you could go to so a little bit older fourteen fifteen, but that could still work for some kids in that age.
Cool.
All right, well, listeners, you can feel free to weigh on on this one as well. Let us know what you've done, what has worked, or feel free to just commisserate.
Yes, exactly, all right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. Sarah was interviewing Sarah Armstrong, author of The Mom's Guide to a Good Divorce. We will 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.