Welcome to the Real Moms Playbook, where balance becomes a lifestyle. Brought to you by our premier sponsor, The Breakfast Club Coffee Co. In season three, we are building good foundations with your Monday morning wake up. So fill your cup, grab a notebook, and let's get going. Welcome to episode 10 of the Real Moms Playbook.
I'm your host, Lisa Autry. Today is all about the power that comes with holding your kids accountable within the family dynamic. Let's start this episode by thanking our premier sponsor, the Breakfast Club Coffee Co. I personally love the Breakfast Club Coffee Co because these ladies pour their heart and soul into their products and their brand.
Not only do you get high quality coffee, but each order is personally prayed over by these amazing ladies. In my cup today, I'm drinking my personal favorite, the Highlander Grog. I love it for its creamy caramel flavor with hints of vanilla. My girls always do mine with a little bit of sweet cream and a dash of cinnamon.
It's my absolute favorite. Make sure you head on over to the links in the show notes to grab yours. I personally love the whole foundation series because you get to try it. Every single coffee that I mentioned in the series today, I want to get into the impact of holding your kids accountable and the positive changes it can make in not only your relationship within the family unit, but also how smoothly your life can run.
As moms, we are the nurturers, the educators, and the support system. We not only carry the mental load for our family, but also most of the time, the physical and invisible load. I'm pretty sure most of our families think that there's a tiny little fairy that does all of the things in our house magically, but nope, it's just us carrying the full load and then some.
As women, we are truly amazing. God gifted us with the ability to carry so much, and that's why he meets us where we are at. He knows we are tired. He knows we have so much to do, and He also provides us with support through His grace and through our family unit when we work together as a unified team. When we release some of the burden of the mental load, something powerful happens to us as moms. We start to feel lighter, more focused and less stressed. We get back precious time to truly connect with our families Enjoy the little moments and focus on what matters most. By sharing some of the responsibilities, We invite our family into a team mindset where everyone has a role. It's a shift that not only brings us more peace, but also strengthens our family bonds.
When we bring the three pillars of success, the home, the routine, and the finances into our children's roles and teach them, we take some of the burden off of us in a healthy and age appropriate way. What's the end result for our kids when we begin holding them more accountable?
Children who are dependable and know what we expect from them. The home is the first place where we teach our children to be proud of the work they put in, whether it's chores or keeping the room picked up. Showing your children that they are a valuable member of the family unit by giving them responsibilities leaves a lasting effect on their work ethic, reliability, and feeling important in their family.
Also sharing what's going to be accomplished in the day helps them feel a part of the day versus just tagging along. It gives your children comfort knowing what's coming next.
And lastly, having your children be a part of the family dynamic gives them ownership and an understanding of how money works and revolves in your family.
The transparency is crucial. Holding your children accountable gives you more time in the long run. Look at each teaching moment as a building of your children's foundation, knowing that it will pay dividends in the future as you lessen your workload.
Even young children want to feel important and be of help. Lean into that and guide them through in that. Now that we know why it's important, And how we can look at it within the three pillars of success, let's reflect on us to start establishing what needs to be done.
My goal for you is to set you up to begin taking action. So step one, reflect on your daily life. I want you to answer this question. What do I need to do on a daily basis?
List out everything you can think of from making beds, prepping meals, and cleaning the kitchen to making appointments, picking up toys, getting the kids ready for bed, and even paying bills.
This was truly eye opening for me because I didn't realize how much I did every single day until I started listing it out. It helps bring the invisible load to the forefront and say, Hey, How can I delegate and help others pick up some slack? I want you to ask yourself what really is on your plate every single day.
So list out literally everything so you can visually see the things that someone needs to do. I want you to track over a couple of days or even a whole week to find the small tasks that you might have even forgotten about. The results may surprise you. And like I said, they did for me, especially if you don't feel like you accomplish much during the day, every little task gets listed because this is your starting point to see where you can ultimately, you know, delegate or what you can ultimately remove from your plate.
So now that we have that step two, I want you to ask yourself, how can your kids fit into your day and help? So how could your life and home operate more smoothly with your kids? Your children are not a burden. God has gifted them to us to teach and nurture and grow them up into their roles someday. So I want you to look at what you wrote down and ask yourself, what can I teach my children and give them ownership over?
Ownership is a really crucial word here because it's not a dictatorship, it's not just yelling at them and nagging them, it's giving them that ownership. When we give that over to them, that's theirs to hold and bestow and take accountability over. So what does this look like for you? Every family is different and look at each of your children, their ages and their capabilities and see what they can rise to.
So, my son who is now 18 months old, he loves to dust and vacuum. This is something he has watched ever since he was little and now since he's really mobile. He wants to help do it every single time I get the vacuum out or every single time I have the duster out. So I give him a little tiny duster and let him go along and help and he feels so proud.
He just, his little face is beaming. And then like my girls, they fight over who's going to mop the floor. This week, or who's going to spray down the counters. So I give each member of the family, a piece to own so that we can work on getting the job of cleaning done sooner and faster so that we can move on and do other things.
You know, my kids love crafts. They always want to do things and it's like. Hey, we need to get these objectives done in the house so we have time to do that. And that is really giving ownership and helping the family unit understand, Oh, we are all valuable members in this family. I also like to ask myself, what do I not love doing and how can I get my family to help get it done faster?
So I personally just detest laundry in my soul. I really, like when I know it's laundry day, it's like, Oh, like it's on a system. So I don't have to worry about it all the time. But on laundry day, I'm just like, Oh, it's like grumbling throughout the house. It's like laundry day. And so what I started doing is I get my girls to help.
They help fold their clothes. I talk to them. them the KonMari fold and they help by folding and they put away their clothes. And now my son is even carrying his socks to his drawer to put away. Is it perfect? No, but they're a piece of the family and they are taking ownership over their clothes and putting them back. I really challenge you make it fun. This is a relationship building experience and a chance to connect with them and teach them. Can you make a fun family challenge by giving everyone a task and see how they can finish it together? Can this come with a reward at the end of the week?
So like if we do everything on this list throughout the week, guys, on Saturday, I'm taking you to ice cream, right? You can make up anything. You could be like, I'm going to take you to Hobby Lobby and we're going to get a Christmas craft or something like pick something that you can reward them with.
And it could even be, hey, Friday night, if we do everything we need to, we're going to do Pizza and movie night. And one of my clients, she started implementing that, she does her tidies before bed and she's like, guys, if we hit it every single night of the week on Friday, it's pizza and movie night.
And I thought that was really fun because it incentivizes them and it makes it a fun challenge. Like let's hit all of the boxes. Let's do everything we need to do. So when we think about this, household chores are just a piece of the accountability we give to our children because we can also implement routine and finances.
How can we give them a piece of ownership and understanding what they're going to do throughout the day and understanding how they can be a part of the financial family dynamic. But it's important to start with the chore aspect and how they can have ownership within the home. So that's a place where we start.
Next, we're going to move to step three, grab accountability with kids and start implementing. So if you want more support with this, I challenge you to grab my accountability with kids audio course and workbook. I help with the implementation strategy behind these ideas.
So accountability with kids dives deep into how to involve your children and share responsibilities across all three pillars of success that I teach the home, the routine, and the finances. It goes way beyond simply assigning chores and instead gives you a repeatable framework designed to infuse harmony, responsibility, and teamwork into your family life.
It's a resource you can use again and again as your kids grow and dynamics shift.
If you're ready to actively involve your kids in a meaningful way in your household, this is your perfect next step. And if you're loving this topic, make sure you stay tuned for the next episode as we discover practical ways to bring more harmony into your home. See you next episode. I'm Lisa Autry, and this is The Real Moms Playbook. Thank you for joining me for The Real Moms Playbook, which was made possible by our amazing sponsor, The Breakfast Club Coffee Co. Make sure you check the show notes for links and access to the resources from today's episode. If you love this podcast, make sure you subscribe, rate, and share.
See you next time. I'm Lisa Autry.