What would you tell your younger mom self?

In this deeply personal first episode, Eli sits down with **Babs Slaton, MA, LPC**—fellow therapist, colleague at the PASS Center, and the original cycle breaker in Eli's family. Babs was the first person in their family system to look around at the dysfunction and say, "This feels insecure. We need to figure something out."

Babs shares the five things she wishes someone had told her when she was a young mom in the trenches—wisdom refined through decades of parenting, therapy, and watching her grandchildren thrive.

I thought a lot about who I wanted to have on as my first guest at the How to Deal Podcast, and it became very clear, very quickly that the right person was gonna be my mom. Because my mom is the OG cycle breaker. She is the first one in my family system to take a look around at the dynamics and say, Hmm, this feels insecure and uncomfortable and unsafe.

I think we need to figure something out here. And I dunno where I would be had she not done that. She was also the first person in our family to go and get her master's in counseling. So, you know, if that hadn't happened, I sometimes wonder would I have ever seen this path and would I have ended up being the attachment nerd?

And y'all are gonna be blown away. They're beautiful, they're profound. This conversation was such a gift to me. I needed to hear a lot of it myself. I hope it is deeply impactful to your heart and helps you feel inspired to keep going and keep growing. Here we go, Bab Slaton, everybody.

I'm so thankful to get to share you with the world and your wisdom of nuggets that are hard won wisdoms of nuggets of wisdom.

go. Wasn't landing.

to help

this is number one, but these are in no particular order.

One of the things that I would say to me as a young mom was. You're doing great.

You're doing the

best you can, and it's just good enough.

So

stay in that place that you're okay. You're not totally messing up your kids. You're, loving you're doing your best.

you've had to process all of the things that we've come back and said weren't great,

Yes, exactly.

The certainty

that I was effing and help up.

Yeah.

Yeah. It would've been nice to hear somebody say you're a good mom.

You're being

a good mommy.

I really wish she could've too. Yeah.

That would've been huge, but it

would've been a different person.

So I think there's like a, there was like a module missing, Hey, this is a part of my role as a mom is to encourage my

And she had sisters who were also parenting at the same time,

they didn't share.

didn't

share the hard things or the good things, or they just,

I dunno what they did actually.

The

next one. Would be,

Just let it go. Should I sing it? It's very hard to do and I was not, I didn't do it. So you have to have done some work, I think, to be able to do that

Do you ignore judgment? I work at it.

I do a

lot better than I did before. Mom was, my mom was here until just a couple months ago and it went on till the very end, but I was better at it separating out from her and her judgment.

But as

a young mom with kids and parents who really thought children should be robots, was really tough.

Say she felt that till the very end, she felt that to the very end, the children should be a little robot sitting on the couch.

As she started to have dementia,

as she started to have dementia, it was almost like it was revealing this like other inner

She's having a lot more fun than we did.

And that was so shocking to hear her say that. And then the last time she saw my girls, they were being wild ruffians.

That's amusing. I'd like to have seen that.

Stuff,

is let your children be children. Let them be curious and playful and safe

I remember seeing

one of the grandkids. Obviously I've seen them all play and be silly and kids, and at one point I thought, oh my gosh, that's the way kids are supposed to be.

They're supposed to

be

silly and playful and feel

doing it and not be walking on eggshells because mom and

dad might explode.

I

wasn't very playful. I'm still

not very playful, but

I, I.

I don't feel like I did,

don't

I think I would've lo and taken joy in a lot of things that, a lot of

behaviors that I

guess I didn't feel like you were constantly correcting me, so there's that, but, okay. So, and that maybe that's the difference is like different dynamics with each

I also do remember you creating fun. I remember

There was

playfulness.

Which again, the, there's another one, actually I'm going over five, but one of them's

don't compare your parenting because you are different than I did have friends.

Who would crawl around on the floor and play elephants with their kids and

you, those kinds of things.

doing it right. But she did it differently. And fine. And

of

and that was and Ashley, she's a preschool teacher

now, and

That's, that was part of her gift.

so much.

do that for

I ask for

hours.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's so many

components

No

And don't compare

yourself and let others be the pieces that you aren't let them in. I think it, I always said this and I don't know that we provided it that well, but that kids need other adults in their lives besides their parents because

do. I mean, your parents as parents, you

can compliment each other, but also aunts and uncles and friends of the family

and people who can play elephants

with them. Yes. You can watch neighbors features all kinds of people,

meeting your children, each of your children in their uniqueness.

We're not gonna parent each of our children the same way. We're gonna

do the same basics. We're gonna do the

same loving and

providing

them that secure attachment as best we can,

but

He wanted to be up in the top of a tree. You have a daughter who wants to be in the top of

tree

and to not, to not squelch that.

I mean that, you know, that's their adventurous part and they're happy. So not to say no, you

do that at

a wedding and a running reception outside. Stay out of the tree, honey. But again, that's letting them be kids, but in their way, in their interests and not expect them

to really

have your expectations. Not be about you, about, but about what gives them joy. Ugh. It's so hard. It's so hard because you have to go.

That's right. And it's,

that's a big stretch.

And

to help you get there

talking

about the village,

I think we, as

young moms, once I was a young mom need our own village. We need to have people around us who we can turn to,

who we can share

The joys and the hard things. Who

listen and who we can listen

to. so that we're not just doing this without support.

When our family

give us support, then we reach

outside of the family. Which I did not do enough of. I had,

community, but not to

any depth.

And I think

that would've been, I watch you and your community of gals and I think it's,

it's just awesome

how you can support each

And

that doesn't mean it's always a beautiful rainbow thing,

but you work through those tough

times and you're still there.

and

sharing.

labor, and I feel like my

Survival has been having other people who then regulate me and I regulate them, and we regulate each other so

because we can't turn to

our kids to fuel us,

even though that happens sometimes.

But that's not ideal. That's not what we want. We want to be fueling ourselves so that then we can turn and give to our kids.

I think of it as kids are always gonna be a part of what fills us up.

hard.

And,

but so important.

I just think we don't give up our lives as individual women.

We tend to,

it's easy to do, but it's better if we don't, if we. Have still that individual sense of self in the midst of raising children and giving them the best that we can give them.

They matter and we matter. And for the five men who are listening to this, you matter too.

Yes. At we

and sometimes that's locking ourselves in the bathroom for five minutes just to breathe and remind our bodies that we are not punching bags or jungle gyms or whatever the thing is.

us. Yeah. And conundrum and that, and it becomes about us instead of about our kids because we are.

I

think when we are

empty

or getting close to empty, we tend to take things more personally. It hurts more instead of realizing and

the interesting piece

of this

too is, punching bags or dumping grounds, it changes over the

years and becomes more, more of an emotional experience.

And so you really, you have to be built up emotionally to be able to. To not take

personally, to be

able to reflect that this

my

kids' thing and I need to be there they need me.

It's too late, whatever. And he just melted down oh, and melted down, for another hour or so. And at some point was telling me I didn't love him.

And I, think that

Fall over in martyrdom

could you say

But

And he's I don't know. I said, ah. I said, okay, I'm gonna come hold you. And I just wrapped my arms around him and held him and he fell asleep in my arms.

But it's still there. It's just like they need us to be able to be sturdy enough.

Yeah.

That they can be their authentic selves and we can help them learn how to cope with all of the crazy emotions that come with being a human. That's the key of what you're saying. It's if you don't take care of yourself, you can't be sturdy.

And if you can't be sturdy, then what happens is your kids start taking care of you, right? And backwards. The kids backwards. And I think the words you use is really appropriate stamina, because we run out of stamina as the day goes on. As the weeks go on,

if we aren't making sure to

keep ourselves. Refilled at least to a,

You, you just

was them.

that you're a young mother, that you're doing well you're loving your kids, you're letting them know, and you are, you're doing a good job and you're doing the best you can.

And that is great.

And keep going

and keep growing. Keep

learning to do.

Don't let

judgment of others get to You

Remember that? That's about them.

It's not, and as you said earlier too, it,

and

my mother's judgment of the kids was probably more about her missing out on that than it was about anything else.

Let

your children be children curious, playful, and.

safe.

A lot of times we get so stuck in, I've gotta raise this into a

human

they

get adulting and they

I don't wanna do that anymore.

Meet each of your children in their uniqueness.

Our

basic parenting standards can be similar, but each child needs different things from us.

We can't

just say, I'm gonna, and I'm just gonna throw this

there. When I worked in adoption

and families that already had children had a strong expectation

their adopted

children would fit in line with the way they raise their other children, which is,

foolish.

And it's foolish to think each of our children

needs

same thing from

us.

And create and maintain and prioritize a community

that supports

you. And

I've put a community of

women 'cause

it would be typically, but sometimes men step in there and do

Our great part of the village as well.

you,

mom.

You

Helps me do that for myself and yeah, it's such a gift. And that's not easy, so keep doing it. Yeah. Well thank you for having me and, and I hope that it's helpful to somebody somewhere and it was helpful to you. So to me that's good

So that's a treat to have you here today. If you've got something out of today's episode, would you please do me a humongous, ginormous, fantastically impactful thing and go subscribe to how to do a podcast and leave a five star rating and a review sharing what it was that you found helpful? Because the more reviews we have, the more we get out to the world, the more lives are impacted.