Ever wondered how to maintain your sanity amidst the whirlwind of parenting? The latest episode of The Fire Inside Her brings host Diane Schroeder and seasoned parenting coach Kathy Bowers together to tackle some of the most pressing issues faced by modern families. Curious about how early childhood nutrition might be affecting your child's behavior? Or perhaps you’re navigating the shift from school routines to the chaos of summer break? This episode touches on all that and more, with Kathy sharing personal stories and hard-earned wisdom on maintaining grace under pressure and the importance of outside support. Join us for an enlightening conversation that’s sure to address and demystify your parenting concerns.

Kathy Bowers is a devoted parent and grandparent who has navigated the complexities of raising children of varying ages. Throughout her journey, she has faced the frustration of feeling overwhelmed and unheard as a parent. At times, she found herself repeating the same approaches without seeing improvements, leading to a household where communication and respect dwindled. Determined to create a better family environment, Kathy learned to adapt and seek new strategies, understanding the importance of evolving in her parenting methods to foster a happier, more harmonious home. Today, Kathy's experiences inspire others facing similar challenges, showing that persistence and flexibility can transform family dynamics.

How to connect with Kathy:

https://www.life-change-coaching.co.uk

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@kathybowers50  

Facebook -

@lifesoothe

LinkedIn-

www.linkedin.com/in/kathy-bowers-43555b176/ 

How to connect with Diane:

www.thefireinsideher.com 

Diane@Thefireinsideher.com 

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@TheRealFireInHer 

LinkedIn-

www.linkedin.com/in/dianeschroeder5/

Are you excited to get a copy of the Self Care Audio download that Diane mentioned?

You can get that HERE –TheFireInsideHer.com/audio

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Hi, friend. We are 2 weeks into summer break, and I seem to forget that every summer break brings bumps, chaos, and the challenge of fighting boredom while we transition into a new rhythm and schedule for a few months. Finding quiet moments can set you up for more patience, creativity, and sanity. Quiet moments look a little different for everyone. I like to start my days off slowly with a cup of coffee and quiet before anyone else. For you, it might be a walk in the middle of the day or going to bed early and taking some time to breathe and journal. Whatever works for you, do it. Even with the busy summer season and the demands of little humans or life or parents or whatever you have going on, prioritize time to just be still.

And if your mind starts to wander, that's okay. Tell her to pause and you'll return to the busy brain later. If you find these self care tools helpful, I would be truly grateful if you could subscribe to the Fire Inside Her podcast on your preferred platform. Your support means so much to me. And if you have a favorite episode, please share it with your friends and family who could benefit from our weekly content. Welcome to The Fire Inside Her, a brave space to share stories of navigating life transitions with authenticity, using our inner fire to light the way, and self care as our loyal travel companion. I'm your host, Diane Schroeder, and I'm so grateful you are here. This week, I'm excited to share a conversation that I had with Kathy Bowers, a parenting teen life coach from the UK.

This last year of parenting for me has been tough. The tween teen years are commonly challenging for all parents. This makes sense because I find myself apologizing to my mom after my little man and I have a bristly interaction. Middle school and high school were difficult 35 years ago before social media, the Internet, and a pandemic. Our kids today are growing up in a much different world, and I know that I lacked the tools to be successful in helping them navigate. Our kids today are growing up in a much different world, and I know that I personally needed to increase my toolbox to help navigate the world for my little man. In my conversation with Kathy, she provides powerful insight into parenting from her experience supporting families with all parenting behavioral difficulties for over 40 years. And for the last 20 years, she's worked directly within the family home, helping parents improve their communication and better understand their children.

Let's dive in. Hello, everyone listening. Today, we are gonna talk about something that has never been talked about on the show before, and I'm really Inside, and that is all things parenting. So welcome, Kathy Bowers, all the way from the UK. I'm really grateful that you are here today.

Thank you, Diane. It's nice that we're being able to do it eventually.

Yes. Yes. This is this is take 2 because, you know, Mercury retrograde, I'm gonna go with that, and your computer did not want us to chat last week. So to get things started, I would like to know if you are the person who, when you get back from a vacation, you unpack your suitcase immediately, or do you just put it off in the corner and get to it when you get to it?

Yeah. I just I chill out my leave it for a day or 2, and then I'll get around to it.

I'm exactly the opposite. I unload it right away and start laundry the next morning.

I only take a small one that I can put on the actual airplane. I don't you know, I just roll up stuff, and people say, how can you take all that stuff? And I said, well, just roll it up, and it seems to fit.

That is true. Well, thank you for sharing, and I guess let's just dive in. Why would a parent need a parenting coach?

When you're stuck, because you've as parents, I mean, I I'm a parent obviously, and they're all adults now, but I've got grandchildren. But you get to a stage sometimes Diane you try things and you find you're repeating yourself over and over again, you're getting frustrated, and the kids aren't listening to you. It's like they're running the house. They're making all the decisions, and it can be really overwhelming. It's bad enough if you've just got The child, but if you've got more than 1, they're different ages, it's really hard to manage. That's when you have to sometimes think, well, I've tried everything that I know. What can I do differently, or how do I respond in a different way? Because what I've been trying over and over again, maybe for a year or more, And it's just getting worse, and everyone's not communicating well, not respecting each The, and you just start waking up each morning thinking, is today gonna be like it was yesterday? And you you're not enjoying your family.

What you've described is the definition of insanity, expecting a same a different result by doing the same thing. I I guess if I asked that question, thank you for your answer, because I'm a parent. I have 1, and I have a bonus son as well. But I think for me as a parent, there's so much pride in being a parent that asking for help would almost be like, oh, that means I'm failing as a parent. And if I'm hearing you correctly, that's not the case at all. It just means, like you said, you're stuck.

Yeah. Parenting is it never comes with a manual, you know, and we don't really know what parenting is, do we, until we've had our children. And then we get so overwhelmed with all the different emotions from this once we're holding our little baby onwards. And every day is different. No 2 days are the same with parenting, and it's a 247 job. We're lucky if we've got a partner that sticks with us. We're lucky if we've got extended family that we can, you know, reach out to. I didn't have either in the end.

It ended up being a one parent family with 3 kids. And because I was adopted, I didn't have any other family or siblings around. I was adopted with her brother, but he lived the other other side of England, the UK. So he was so good. And he was also, you know, my age, and he had these same children going on and things like that. So it's very difficult when you're on your own struggling to do it, and I think it's hard. In some ways, it was good because when they were with me, they knew the rules and what I was expecting. But when they went to see the their father, they came back really distraught and took the pressure of what was going on testing me all the time because suppose they didn't think they thought maybe I was gonna leave them as well, so all sorts of things.

And, you know, you can talk to friends, you can talk to family, but your kids are your kids. So it's a different scenario, different personalities. And, yeah, advice helps. And once we have tried the advice and and we're still stuck, and we all get it, sometimes we get to a stage we think, I don't know what else to do. That's just time to speak to someone like me who's been in the well, from the age of 16 to age of 70, working with families and children 20 years within the families directly in their homes with the experience and knowledge that I can help them look at their situation, but in with fresh eyes and in a different way. You know, get rid of all the usual routines and come in from a different angle to look at your problem. And also see what's going on for you that could be affecting how you parent because that's where it starts really. And it's all very well as parents saying, oh, it's the kids.

They're the ones giving us the problem. No. The problem is something that's going on for us in our lives first that we have to regulate. And there's so many outside pressures now. Everyone has to work. You know, you can't just be a parent and Fire, The of you stay at home and if you're lucky, but not many of us can do that. So you've got the managing responsibility of being a parent 247 and having a full time job maybe or a part time job, but it's The pressure of that and what work and your bosses expect of you. So you've got that.

And then nowadays, you've got the time frame. You know, we've got maybe in financial problems, we've got all sorts of things going on. You might have poor health because you're so overworked and stressed that impacts on your well-being, your mental health, and your physical health. So you might have that. You might have other commitments like you're looking after maybe an elderly relative. You know? So it just also escalates, and you've got so much going on. And you can't beat yourself up about having The problems because that's normal life, unfortunately. You just wanna even track with your family, and enjoy being a parent again.

Thank you for sharing such a beautiful description as you're talking and I'm listening. I was a single mom for almost 9 years. My son was 2 when his dad and I separated, and it was a pretty messy, high conflict divorce. And I think, you know, that definitely impacted our relationship, but and I also worked shift work, so I was gone for 24 to 48 hours at a time, and he just kept going back like a ping pong. I felt so terrible for him that, eventually, he and I went through some parent child interaction therapy to just kind of work out some of the bumps that we've been through, and we did it together, and it was a game changer for our relationship. And, you know, now he's 12, so we're entering a different phase, in our life that is way more challenging than any phase so far.

But you can communicate better with him because he's got an understanding, and he can now express how he feels to you, Whereas little ones can't, they'll do it in their actions. So at least you're vocalizing with him now.

Exactly. And he's very clear on his expression. And as you're also saying, what really resonated with me is how the parent and what space I was in because I was not in a great space for several years right after the divorce. I I was just everything had fallen apart, and it took me a long time. And I just remember putting that pressure on myself that I've gotta get this together for him, for him, for him. And it wasn't until probably 4 years after the divorce, my son and I were on a lake in Georgia with some family, and it was just the 2 of us. And I had this calming sensation come over me. And I was like, oh, it's gonna be okay.

And that's what I found, that it actually is okay, and I I think for those listening that are, like, parent coach, what I love about coaching in general is that you're also having someone, that outside perspective to help you get through things a little faster. It's not that you can't get through it without coaching, but is that correct? You can get through it just a little bit faster.

Also, you have that quality time that we don't make for ourselves normally, which is like an hour and a half with me of purely focused on what where you are and what direction you're going in. And you've got no other interactions, no one coming in and, you know, distracting you. So it's just solely for you, and that's quality time. And then you've got quality options that you everything you you find in the in the sessions, then you go and you put them into actions and and see where you go with them. So we don't get that chance. And it it seems when you think about it logically, you think that's such a logical thing The we don't do it. We don't make that nurturing space, that time for us to explore all different avenues of who we are that might make us where we are at the moment that we're struggling with. We don't look at things.

We we have blinkers, and we, you know, you have to remove those blinkers and not delve deep as it were. Some of the things can be quite painful, but you need to do that to understand where you're coming from so you don't repeat the bad mistakes again. You learn from them and you move forward. And it's because what you want to do is have an enriching relationship with all your children from when The now to adults and beyond with if they do choose to have, you know, children with your grandchildren.

Absolutely. What are some of the challenges that you see in families today with parenting that may not have been a challenge pre COVID?

I think there's always been difficulties with parenting, but I think the pre COVID was because everyone was put together. And if you haven't got a very good relationship with your other half, especially we have a lot of domestic abuse going on much higher when everyone was COVID because you were surrounded in an unnatural, unhealthy environment if that partner was impacting it. So that would impact on you as a parent and also your children, you know, because obviously you'll get the backlash. So you've got that that was affecting. Then you've got the again, it was a money problems that we didn't have before. We had money problems before, but then people couldn't go to work or they lost their jobs. So that was another thing that was going on. So then you've got the parenting.

If if you have maybe 2 parents, you've got The parent that seems to do more of the disciplining or the running of the home, which usually is a woman, not necessarily, but most of the time. But now you've got 2 people coming together who might be totally different in their parenting. So you've got clashes and, you know, expectations going on and mixed signals going on, and the kids are in the middle of it, so they don't know what's going on with it. And then communication because you're 247. Mhmm. No one's used to communicating 247 with everyone. You know, The person, if you've got a couple of kids and and 2 adults, that's a lot of time, and your tempers are gonna get frayed. So there's all sorts of things like that going on.

It's just a very unnatural environment. I mean, I know in some places, I remember Spain, Her friends out there, and they were allowed out. They were already strict for half an hour and then had to return for the 1st week. But they weren't allowed to take all the children. They were told what age group of child The person could take out for half an hour The bring back. And then maybe a couple of hours later, you could go out again, but not to where you've been Fire the the shop. You have to be somewhere else with another child, but you couldn't bring similar age groups out, which was just ridiculous.

Yes. And and, you know, I'm thinking back to that time on top of all of what you just described. It was this unknown thing that we just didn't have any answers to. I've noticed that 4 years later, my son is still I see it in school probably more than anything. Some of the challenges that he had specifically or is having, he's worked through a lot of them, is the you know, when he went back to school right after COVID, everyone kinda did their own thing, and there was not a lot of accountability and, like, everyone got a a pass, I guess, for lack of better terms. And now the world is very different. You have to do your homework. You have to be engaged, and everything's still on a screen and always staring at a computer all day long.

I feel like somehow that's impacted him, and I was just curious if I'm the only parent that thinks that.

I think it does because, I mean, we're Inside technology or technological world now, but the kids are grown up from babies, aren't they, with everything around them and their little phones and things like that. But the way they communicate is all electronically. It's also I haven't learned the art of having a proper conversation with one another, never mind, a child and an adult. They don't know that the normal things that we would learn, you know, because we we didn't grow up in all this electronic stuff. And in COVID, I know lots of my families, the kids missed the interaction in the playground with their mates rubbing up, bouncing into each other, kicking a ball together. And they had all these conversations on The laptop, but that was restricted. But then they'd lost that that warmth and that sort of interaction. So when they went back to school, they were still separated in lots of ways.

Classes had to stay separate for quite a while, didn't they? I know in England they did. So only The class that you were with, but your friends might not be in that class. They might be same year, but didn't see them. So that had a hell of a lot of impact on them because they really felt isolated from each other.

Yes. Well and now I still see it. My son has a stronger connection when he plays his video games, and that's his social connection. They talk over their headsets, and he still doesn't have a lot of in person friendships. What are some communication tips that parents can use, like, at various stages? Say, like, there's the the grade school age, you know, then there's the middle school age and high school age. Is there a certain type of, like, tip or trick to offer to really kind of communicate and stay connected with your children at the various levels?

Well, the first tip really is to start as soon as they're babies. That's the first thing. So you're just you know, with play, you're on the floor with them or you're chatting and you're you're teaching them the colors, the different sounds. You're looking through a a board book with them, and you're giving them the very simple language. You're not giving long sentences. It's like a word, you know, like apple. Oh, look. The apple's green or and you can feed touchy feely books, you know, the textures of things like that.

And then you go on and when they get a little bit older, again, with play, very important. You engage in play with what they're doing, and again, you're teaching them very simple language that they understand. It's always child focused, and you let give them a chance for them to respond as well. And as they get older, obviously, your vocabulary they've learned a much better vocabulary because they're at school, and you still keep in the conversation communicating. But the main thing is, first one is you have to be consistent, have to do this every Diane, and you have to to keep it so it's in their interest. It's not good you're talking about something that you've seen on the TV. Politics or whatever's going on because they they don't wanna know. So you've got to really sort of tune into what they're interested in because, obviously, if they can tell you and talk to you about something they're interested in or they want to learn or do, that's where the conversation starts to flow and open up.

And you can always say, well, I don't know much about what you're telling me, so can you explain? Enlighten me because things are so different now. We might not know what I mean, these video games you're saying, I haven't got a clue about any of these video games, but they might want to. When I was in bed with a cold, he came Inside said, oh, you gotta play this game with us, mom. And he was just driving this car. Don't ask me how, but and he said, why are you driving the car? That's your car. Yeah. But why are you driving it backwards on the other side of the racetrack? And I said, I didn't even know I was doing it, but I was because I didn't know the controls. He thought it was hilarious, but I just said, but I don't play these games.

You know?

Right. That's such a good point because, yes, the video game world, not really my thing. But a few weeks ago, my son was like, hey, mom. Can I show you this game? Would you like to play with me? Can can I tell you all about it? And it like, a light bulb went off. We'd been arguing back and forth about it so many times, and finally, I felt like I was being invited into his inner world. I don't understand it. Not really my thing, but I felt like we connected in a really cool way over something that's important to him. And it reminded me that, oh, yeah.

This whole parenting thing just isn't about me as a parent. It's also about him as a child. I hear what you're saying. It just gets so easy to forget all of that.

It's a natural flow. Parenting should be a natural flow. It's like going around the river. You know? And you don't know when you're if you're in a boat on the river. You don't know if there's a bend coming up. You don't know if there's gonna be rapids on the other side, if the water's gonna change, and that's life. That's how it is. So it's Fire, as parents, we're trying to prepare our children for life, different sorts of events.

And the only way we can do that is if they know we've got their back, if we're reliable, if we're trustworthy, because we have to be that for them and if we're consistent. So, you know, if they know we've told them no or yes, they they know, oh, that's what mom and dad mean. They're consistent. And if they say maybe, they're thinking about it. You know? So they can rely on us, build their resilience in life, and let them know. It's fine teaching them through ball games and other games, you know, or riding a bike and falling off is fine to fall off. It's fine to you know, life is bumps ups and down and bumps. So you've got to get yourself up, pick yourself up, and try again.

And those simple things that we do with them, teaching them how to use a scooter or Schroeder skate or anything like that or climb a tree or an apparatus. You know? It doesn't come easy at first, but you just show them. The more you practice, the easier it gets, and that's what life's about in every form of way. And never give up. You know, try keep on trying. And you might do a hobby for a while and you think, I wanna do this, and then you get there and you think, I don't like it. Doesn't mean you failed. It just means you've decided you don't like that.

So fine. At least you've tried it. Try something else. And it's it's just an experience that we have to put that into perspective for our children that the world is an enormous opportunity out there, and they should be able to allow to explore safely and try different things.

Yes. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that information. It's very, you know, it's just it's very timely and very genuine. And I guess I'd also love to know what words of wisdom would you give parents? I think sometimes as a parent, you just feel like I was a great parent until I had my own child. I could offer the best advice. I I was like, that's just a first time mom, and everything changed when I had one. So I feel like sometimes I don't give myself enough grace, and I'm sure I'm not alone in in thinking that.

So what advice would you offer parents who are in it with their children and really struggling and feeling like they're failing or overwhelmed, all the emotions that come with raising children.

Like yourself, I trained as a nursery nurse, and I worked in schools and nurseries and Fire years. So I work with 100 of children, 100 of different families Fire until I have mine, till I have my first one. And then I thought it was fine for a baby. I knew the rough things. When he got to 3, I thought, something's not quite right here, and he wasn't listening. It turned out he was hyperactive, but he suffered it from it was due to food allergies that was causing it, and it all started off when he was growing inside me because I had this thing when my pregnancy, all I wanted to eat was pizzas all the time. And then after, it was all sort of not particularly healthy food, and I was deseeding it. Of course, it was going into his development.

And then gave birth to him and had him. I was breastfeeding him, but I was unaware. I didn't think about it but I drank loads of black coffee. And during the Diane met packets of biscuits. It's all bad effects on my poor son. And I went along, and I was really concerned because I thought I can't take him in The shop without him trying to climb up the aisle and go over or run into a display. I thought, what is going on? I've never seen this. So I actually took myself off to social services and said, something's wrong here.

And they were saying, have you got relationship problems? Is your marriage breaking down? And at that time, it wasn't. It was good, and I went, no. And I just thought, these women, point, point, point, they're not actually looking at what I'm telling them or listening. So I suddenly said to them, I'm going to explore if food has something to do with his behavior because that's something that's in my back of my mind, and I'm not sure about it. So I contacted the thing called the high practice society in Britain, and they'd only been open for about 2 months. And they were brilliant. I mean, we I've got a very good relationship with them. And, yes, it was due lots of Diane and things, and they advised me.

So I found that food can really impact on what you give your children, you know, the colorings, the ease, and everything like that. I didn't realize that when we ate something I thought when we ate something, our digestion would practically empty it the next day. No. It can take 2 or 3 weeks to get certain things out of your bloodstream. And what was happening to him was, for example, wheat, it was stockpiling in his in his blood. When it got to too much for him, that's when he had all sorts of behavior responses and things like that. So if you've got problems with your children, look at what you're feeding them. That's one of the first things I suggest to parents.

Number 2, don't beat yourself up because parenting is such hard work. And as I said before, we are we're learning all the time. So just learn from your mistakes. Try and get calm. If something's really making you sort of irate, step back. Don't say anything from your mouth. That's a wrong time because all you're gonna get is an escalation. So step back and try and think and look.

You can make it a diary of things that are going well. How your day's been, which is really good because that can sometimes show you the triggers that might start off certain behaviors.

Okay.

So that's always handy just to look back. And also put in how you've been feeling that day because your trigger, you might be coming back so tense and not realizing, and you're giving off an sort of negative response, which your kids then will respond to. And not to compare yourself with other other people because we're all different.

So many great words of wisdom, especially not comparing yourself, which is really challenging in this day and age with social media and picture perfect families and, you know, if you're doomscrolling, I call it on the phone, and all of a sudden you see, you know, this mom and their kids are perfect, and everyone looks happy and so put together. I'm gonna throw the flag that's not true. Not no one has a picture perfect life. Everyone has life going on.

Well, look, when we turn the TV on and you see the adverts, you never see a child or a parent all disheveled, you know. They're always immaculate. They're clean. Their mom's got The full makeup on and The hair is the kids are in great clothes, really clean, pressed on, and they're all behaving well. No. That's not real life. But, you know, and they they don't show you reality. They should show you a mom or a dad has woken up with bags under the eyes from another sleepless night, which has gone on because they've had a baby that's been crying continuously.

Yes.

Children have been getting up backwards and forwards, you know, all all through the night. They don't show you that.

No. And I don't think they really talk about it. You know, I I joke if parents were you know, we had sex education in high school, and why not getting pregnant at a young age? But I I think it's also it's not just when they're small. It's as they get older and the challenges become real and more challenging. My son's aging me in dog years at this point, dog years, so it's a lot of pressure. So my next question then would be, how is the best way to handle conflict with your kids? Because we argue. I mean, I think parents may not talk about it or talk about it out loud, but I know I've had arguments with my child that I feel really bad about, just like I've had arguments with my partner. And how is conflict part of life, and is there a better way than some to navigate it with your children?

Conflict's a natural part of life. We all do The. It's frustrations and The how we're coming back. We have to look at when we think of what's going on, when we put in our boundaries and our routines with our kids, which we all agree to, agree to have a time out space when one of us feels triggered and you know? And it's great for children to know that they can go to their bedroom, take themselves off just to calm down, to put some music on, headphones on, listen, do what it calms them down. And same with us as parents, we can go into another room. We can go maybe in the kitchen, shut the door, make a coffee, or whatever we feel like doing because it takes 2 to have a fight because I've got 3 kids, and I learned after a while. It's no good me fighting with them because what happens is they gang up. They gang up on you.

All of a sudden, you're arguing you with 1, and next, you've got the other 2 joining, and you think, hold on a minute. You weren't even involved in this argument. So I learned after a while that when you feel like that and you can see it going, you can see it's gonna escalate, that's when you have to zip up your mouth and step back because it's a wrong Fire, because things are gonna be said. You'd scream at each other. No one's gonna hear what the other one's saying. And when you think about it, you've forgotten what it was about, how it started. So if you can, you know, get one of them to suggest they go to the room or you go off or whatever it is, and then the next day or later on that evening, when everyone's calm, you can just sort of think, well, what the hell was all that about? You know, what can we do better and involve everyone again? It's not pointing fingers of accusations at each other because sometimes when we talk to teenagers in particular, we say things in a way that they can interpret completely different. And we don't check-in with them.

Have they understood us? And they certainly don't check-in with us. Have you understood what I've said? And that's when you can get a lot of animosity and conflict going on. So it's very important when you have a time, you know, when everyone's calmed down, simmer down, to actually say, apologize. Say it doesn't matter who says sorry because unless you want to completely rip the family apart, then you don't apologize. But it really doesn't matter who started the Fire, who apologizes. It doesn't matter. If the person started the fight, they might not want to apologize. Fine.

Then you say it. It doesn't matter. You know, it's so important just to keep it level again.

Yes. And and I think also, it's really important to demonstrate for your children and your family unit to really understand that you can have hard conversations, you can have disagreements and conflict, and you can get through that on the other side. And it's actually a beautiful gift to give your children moving forward so that when they grow up, they don't avoid it. They don't, you know, become passive aggressive, and they're not scared.

Yeah. Because lots of families that I came across, but because things weren't resolved within the family or no one took the time to explain or calm things down, and their relationships when they became adults and I was dealing with their children, they used to say, we thought when someone blew up in our family, that was the end of it. So when my relationship with my partner blew up, I thought he or she was gonna walk out and leave us. But luckily, their partners had a better relationship in their family, so they they would say, no. I'm not leaving you. This is just a normal argument. We're just venting off our different views and opinions. But some children don't have that luxury, that experience to realize.

So they're on tandhooks all the time when there's an argument going on. And that's why sometimes some people rather The avoid that, become yes, sir, no, sir, pleases all the time. And they they don't develop their personality because they're so needy. That child hasn't been met. They're so needy. And that's how they can get abused. They get involved in the wrong relationships because they get people who can think, okay. I can control this one.

Yep. Absolutely. We could talk for hours about that. But I wanna transition really quick for a moment, and you mentioned you have grandkids. How is that transition like, and do you have any advice or words of wisdom that you could offer my listeners who are grandparents or who are going to be grandparents to help them navigate not just being a parent, but being a grandparent kind of knowing where their lane is as a grandparent.

The first thing I learned, which was difficult because obviously being The nursery nurse Inside, seeing certain things, I thought, right, I'll have to zip The. I'm going to say it. Because I've got to think to myself, right, my children have got relationships happily. They're both adults, and they've chosen to have children and invite me into their world as grandma or or nana as I call myself. And so I have to, you know, accept. They are the ones who are now the parents, so I take the lead from them. If they want to ask me anything, that's different. But I won't direct them and show them because even though I might not not do it that way, they know their children very well, and it's working out brilliant.

I mean, they've got lovely 2 boys in different families, got grandsons. And, one's 18 months now, and the other one will be 8 this year. You know, they're just so beautiful. But what's nice is I'm seeing my grandchildren without any pressure, You know, watching them develop and all the pleasure that they're giving me and seeing mom and dad and the the enrichness that they're giving to them. I'm thinking, oh, I've got I did get something right because I can see my son doing things which I had done with him. So it's passed on, which is lovely. So I thought, oh, you know, because you do wonder if you if you got it right. You don't necessarily know.

It's just a privilege because they live quite far from me, so I haven't gotten to stay over. My house at the moment isn't really child friendly for little ones. You know? I go over monthly to see them. It's great because it's easier to be in their environment and they take things out. There's no pressure. There's no pressure on me to have to be 247 with the child. So I just get the enrichment, the right times. Grandma number 2 is better because she takes one of them from the nursery.

So she sees him every every Monday to Friday and maybe sometimes on the weekends as well. It's lovely because, they're a Vietnamese family, so he's learning dual language, which is brilliant. My daughter-in-law, they recently got married a couple of weekends ago. So it was beautiful seeing that, the Vietnamese wedding, and my little grandson in the middle of all his cousins running around and dancing. It was just so nice, you know, just to be part of that.

Well, congratulations on all of those exciting blessings. Watching my son with his 2 grandmothers is really special because they have such a special relationship with both of them. They're different, both of the his grandmas, and their core foundational memories. And I know that the relationship that I had with my grandmothers was you know, especially The she retired when I was born, was just very special. And so I asked that because, obviously, I'm not a grandparent. I just know how wonderful it is to be a grandparent by the people I do know that are, and just, yeah, the no pressure. How exciting. Well, Kathy, thank you so much.

I just have a 2 part question before we wrap things up, and that is, number 1, when does parenting ever stop? And number 2, how has the transition from with your children in your relationship as they've now become adults and parents of their own, like, how does that transition from parent to go?

Right. Parenting as far as I'm concerned doesn't stop. I mean, my eldest is 44, but it's still my baby. When my mom was alive, she was 98 by when she Diane, 2017, but I was still her baby and my brother was still her baby, you know, so it's really strange. And I think sometimes when you get to that age, you become the parent rather than, you know, The child sort of thing when because of my mom being that old. And I couldn't understand why as my children got older, I realized they still don't know me as much as my friends do about who I am. And for ages, I was thinking, why why is this? And The suddenly they realize, no. I'll always be their mom first.

So they see me through their eyes as their mom. They're not interested in what makes the whole person. They're not interested in that because I could say, well, what do you know about me? And they'll say stuff and I think, that's totally wrong. That's not me. So they see it through I am their mom. And so I'm never gonna be their friend. They know I'm there for The, and I love them, but as their mom.

I love that. I love those words. I think that's so wise and just great to remember. So, Kathy, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom, and I will put all of your contact information in the show notes, but if you don't mind, if you would like to share with my listeners a little bit more about what you do and how they can find you, please do.

Yes. Thank you. I support parents online individually because, obviously, 2 parents can't come on because you've got different opinions. And it's through our coaching sessions of 6 sessions spread over 3 months. And my website is life-change-coaching.co.uk. And as you can say, I'm in the UK. So, you know, if you need me, you have to sort of marry up the the timeline as it were. I offer a free exploratory session, which you can book through my website on Zoom with me for 30 minutes.

So you can tell me what's going on for you, and I can see if I can help, if coaching can help you, and we'll just take it from there. And I'm very approachable. I love people, and I think parenting is Diane amazing thing that we do as parents. We wanna get it right. So I'm just here to help you.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and all that you bring and offer, and it's just a lot of wisdom and a lot of gold nuggets of parenting tips. So, Kathy, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Another great conversation. Thank you for giving the valuable gift of your time and listening to The Fire Inside Her podcast. Speaking of value, one of the most common potholes we fall into on the journey to authenticity is not recognizing our value. So I created a workbook. It's all about value. Head on over to thefireinsideher.com/value to get your free workbook that will help you remember your value. Until next time, my friend.