Hey everyone, and welcome too. Parenting beyond the headlines. I'm Sarah Cody
on the East Coast along with my friend Amy Alamar who's all the way over
on the West coast. Amy, we are balancing the pandemic in our own
ways from different sides of the country, and I got to say getting old.
But luckily we are joined here today by Stephanie Rondo, who's an athletic
trainer and wellness coach, and I am hoping that she can give us some
tips on kind of keeping our sanity, keeping our wellness and checks. So
Stephanie, thank you for joining us. Welcome, Thank you so much.
I'm so happy to be here today. You know, Stephanie, I'm a
journalist. I've done a lot of stories about supporting kids during this time,
which is extremely important teens. But an expert recently said to me, we
also have to focus on parent self care because if the parent doesn't fill their
own bucket during this tough time, they're not going to be able to help
their family fill their buckets either. So let's just dive into that topic.
Are you seeing in your wellness career? Are you seeing parents sort of struggle
to make time for themselves to practice that necessary self care. Yeah, so
this is a really big issue right now, not only in terms of my
clients, but also in terms of you know, I'm in a mom's group
for each of my children, one who's seventeen months old and one who's four,
and moms of you know, kids of both these ages. Everyone that
I know is really having a hard time making time for themselves, Struggling a
lot with mental health. They're feeling a lot of this burden of you know,
juggling child's care, school, and then also work and finding time for
themselves. You know, possibly they're really ship with their partner and then figuring
out how that all comes together. And it's like there's not enough time in
anyone's day right now, and you know, there are certain things that get
left off the to do list, and those, unfortunately usually end up being
the self care items. So it's I think a really really common struggle right
now. And I hear you, and it does seem like there's not enough
time in the day, and then some days seem to just go on forever,
even if we are busy, I feel like there's so much time that
we're desperate to fill, right like that that's the age old saying about parents
in general, right, that the days are long and the years are fast,
you know what I mean, Like we do. I'm here at the
house during the pandemic, maybe, but I don't know about you. I
feel I have teen boys, Stephanie, so we're going through food like crazy,
Like I am eating that kitchen and cooking that food like nobody's business.
Grocery shopping all the time. Like at the house is dirtier because we're here,
because I'm cleaning all the time. So I don't know. Even though
I'm here more, I don't feel like life is easier. No, definitely
not easier. Noah, yeah, absolutely. And I actually read there was
a quote. There was a There's been so many articles about this lately that
I've read. There was one that there was a quote from a mom that
really stuck out to me, and she said something along the lines of,
you know, some days go by so fast that I'm not even sure that
they happened. And I think that, you know, I feel that,
and I know other moms that feel that. You know, you get through
a twenty four hour period and you think I did all this stuff right.
I never stopped moving I never sat down and just thought for a second.
But I still don't know what happened today, you know what I mean,
It just disappears. It's the lack of structure too. Like, so I've
been working on Mondays and Tuesdays from home, but I went into the office
last week because I'm working on this giant project and I got sort of sucked
into the giant project and wasn't even thinking about the kids at home, And
all of a sudden, like around one or two, I'm like, jeez,
the kids are at home virtual learning. I should check in with them.
Their teens are fine, but I should take to make sure they eat.
But then I was like, at a regular year, I wouldn't have
to check in with them. They would just be at school and I would
just be at work. Like there's such this lack of structure that's unsettling too,
right, I think when you don't have that separation, everything is blending
together. You know, housework is blending with work, is blending with childcare,
is blending with schoolwork. So there's no step. You know, there's
no structure, but there's also no separation at all. Every you know,
you see these stories of I'm very fortunate to work outside of the house,
and I do y. I feel very strongly that I'm fortunate to be able
to do that because I'm not having to juggle work in childcare at the same
you know, at the same time. But there you see, you know
these moms right now that are struggling to be on a work call while cooking
dinner, while helping their children with a zoom class, And it's just everything
is blended together, and how do you focus on one and do an adequate
job at one when you're trying to do them all at the same time all
day long. It's exhausting. I did a story a few months ago about
women's statistics of drinking rising in this time, and one of the reasons the
expert gave me was because it's all blending together, so that glass of wine
at the end of the day is more of a separation, like, ah,
this is a minute for me, Ah, this is evening. This
is some sort of a difference. So yeah, I think you're right,
so jump into giving us advice, you know, I mean, I think
for me, it's been a time when I have focused on starting you know,
I think some people are eating more, sitting around more other people are
jumping into an exercise routine because we might have more time around the house than
we would normally. So what do you suggest to people? Do you suggest
they begin that that walk that they've been meaning to take, they they get
out. The fresh air is important, isn't it. Oh? Yeah,
fresh air is absolutely important for so many reasons. You know, it helps
our health and boosts our mental health in so many different ways. It can
even help with you know, hormonal health and our endocrine system. So fresh
air is definitely a positive, and it's there's a lot of pieces to this,
because yes, it's important that people can try to find little ways to
you know, perform self care and get physical activity in and get some leisure
and relaxation time and time to kind of you know, let your mind recharge
as well as your body recharge. But it's finding the time to do these
things and balancing them as well. So I do want people to feel encouraged
to get outside and get moving, But at the same time, you don't
want to turn that into another added added stress and added piece of pressure that
people think, oh my god, I'm doing all this and now I need
to go outside and take a walk, like, where am I going to
find that time? So I think it really needs to be you know,
looking at your life and your schedule right now and whatever little pieces of time
that you can control. Some really great things to try are getting outside and
get moving the fresh air, even if it's a ten minute walk. You
know, right now, the sidewalks around where I live aren't great. And
my daughter loves to ride her scooter, but she can't really ride her scooter
in the snow. So her and I have been walking up and down just
our street, you know, down to the bottom and back and it's not
a lot, takes maybe ten minutes, but it's something and it gets us
both some fresh air. And so I think, you know, thinking about
little kind of micro you know, microactivities like that where it doesn't have to
be a huge time commitment every single time. And then there are also things
like meditation. I think that that can be something that's really helpful for a
lot of people, whether it's a structured formal meditation you know, using an
app, or whether it's just something where you sit and focus on your breathing
for five minutes, you know, and you can speaking of those microactivities,
you can do that in very small amounts of time, a few minutes at
a time. If you have a little bit of you know, a tiny
bit of quiet time throughout your day, that can be very helpful. And
I think another big thing that that can really be helpful, especially for mental
health during this time and wellness, is looking at activities and hobbies that give
you joy. So if it's something that you've loved in the past, maybe
knitting, or maybe it's just you know, reading, or maybe it's writing
something yourself, you know, finding little bits of time that you can kind
of work on those things to feel like you're making some sort of progress for
yourself outside of just the go, go go, you know, the grind
of your day. That's what I would love to learn more about to get
your opinion on. You know, my my youngest really likes team sports,
and so getting out and moving is not something you know, that that he's
keen to do. You know, he'll certainly play along if we do it.
We ended up ordering spike Ball to get ourselves out and we have the
luxury, yes, and we have the luxury of outdoor you know, all
year round, which is nice. But I'd love more strategies on getting the
family moving. Even though we're talking about sort of self care. I tend
to go on my runs and you know, I'll walk with a friend.
But I feel like, how can we stimulate that with our kids who aren't
naturally wanting to get physical. Yeah, I think it can be tough,
especially if you have kids who aren't really loving you know, aren't really loving
the idea, especially as they get a little bit older and have more independence.
You know. I think some things we can encourage are there's always family
walks that if you have areas around you that you can kind of explore and
turn it into more of an adventure and exploration like a hiding trail or like
a walk around a pond or you know, we're really fortunate to live in
an area where there is a lot of natural reservation area, so we have
lots of trails that we can walk on and stuff and it turns into really
fun exploration time for the kids. There are also things like, you know,
depending on the age of your kids and how competitive you all are as
a family, you can always set up you mentioned spike ball, you can
do other types of outdoor games, you know, races again, we race
up and down our street. I run and my daughter ride computer and I
can tell you she's four and she beats me every time on that s food.
So you know, things like that if you don't even if you don't
call it physical activity and don't call it exercise, just getting out and getting
moving. There's some really fun ideas of people I've seen of people setting up,
especially if you are able to get outside right now, extreme hopscotch horses,
where essentially you take like your whole driveway or your whole you know,
the sidewalk in front of you know, your house and in your next door
aghbor's house, and you set up all these different stations where you have different
physical activities and you can vary the difficulty depending on how old your kids are,
and make it a fun family competition. You know. I think we're
a kind of a competitive family, so that kind of stuff works for us.
But then also, you know, just the adventures, the walks,
the exploring and finding different, you know, things to feel and smell and
talk about. Those can be really helpful too. I think bringing the dog
along is always fun. And you know, like you were saying, we're
lucky to have a lot of places to hike in Connecticut and you know,
but lots of states do you can geocash do things like that. Yeah,
yeah, I find that online. It's fun. You know. Another piece
to please have you touch on is a part of self care is keeping connections
too. I mean, I think women are missing their book clubs, they're
missing their Wednesday wine night with the girls, you know, stuff like that.
So it is important that even if it's over zoom or a phone call,
we keep those connections. Yeah, I agree. I really think that
connections are especially important right now. I find that for a lot of people
because we're so busy and because we're so we're in this kind of weird limbo
state right where we don't know exactly how long this is going to last.
I feel like some people are kind of like shrinking into this in our home
bubble where you don't tend to reach out as much. And I think it's
really important for people to keep making those connections, whether it's over zoom.
You know, we've we've moved my book club to zoom and it's been you
know, it's not the same, but it's good to chat with people,
you know, if you have any place outside where you can get together with
a couple of friends and stay distance. That's always a great thing too.
But I think that you know, as much as you can do on your
own and with your own family, there is so much value to connecting with
other people and really trying to maintain your relationships because and not only for the
social factor, but also for the support factor. You know, you have
people families that are probably going through struggles that are very similar to you,
and it can be really helpful just to air that out and talk it out
with someone else sometimes instead of just kind of, you know, shrinking into
your own struggles and not having anywhere to vent it too. Yeah, there
was an interesting article noting that, you know, your nuclear family simply doesn't
take the place of your friendships. And that's something that we've you know,
while we've had extra time with our nuclear family, which is lovely, we
are missing out on those connections as well. Am I allowed to get weirdly
personal? Yes, always, So you jump back five seven minutes. You
were talking about finding a hobby, find something for you, and I had
this weird idea about a month ago to get my childhood dollhouse out of the
attic, which has been in the attic for somebody's attic for decades pretty much,
and to do like, you know, a rehab of my dollhouse as
a pandemic project. And my family thinks it's the weirdest thing. Like my
son said to me the other day, Mom, when we said get a
hobby, this isn't what we meant. But I'm having so much fun paint
in the whole thing. I'm wallpapering it, and I look forward to it
and it's creative. And that was the kind of thing you were talking about.
Even if it's a weird, creepy dollhouse project, if it brings you
joy in this time, do it exactly. I love I love that so
much. I you know, no matter what, no matter how weird somebody
else tells you something is exactly, if it brings you joy, do it
and own it. You know, this is the this is the time in
our lives when we're going to be able to do that stuff because otherwise we're
so busy with things out of the house. So if you find that time
and you have it, do it. Um. I you know, I
personally have had a children's book kind of um you know, blowing around in
my head for a couple of years now and I'm now working on it,
and I'm and I have a draft, and i'm you know, I have
a manuscript, and i'm you know, shopping around and it's it's just it's
it's bringing me a lot of joy just to be working on it, even
though it hasn't gone anywhere yet. You know. It's just something to keep
my mind busy and to you know, give me something to look forward to.
So things like that are really helpful. I want to have like a
sassy grandma name, like I want to be like Mimi or Gig or something.
So my son was like, what are you going to do with this
thing? Mom? And I'm like, I'm gonna save it for your kids
and Gig will play with them and it will be like a family story,
like Gig did this during the pandemic. They're like, but it's been super
fun. So if everyone can find their inner dollhouse, you know, I
recommend it. It's been great. I like that inner dollhouse. Everyone try
to find it. Well, tell us a little bit more about you and
where people can learn more about you and catch up with you as we wind
down here. So again, I'm a health coach and athletic trainer in the
Boston area. I work with health coaching clients. I do a fair amount
of freelance writing and freelance kind of presenting. I do some wellness webinar classes
with Peace at Home Parenting, which is a Connecticut based company, and I
mostly the classes that I teach are are based around parenting where it intersects with
wellness. And then you can find me on my own website at Stephanie Rondo
dot com. You know, we can. I have a blog that I
write a lot on there, and I also write a lot for medium as
well, a lot in the health and wellness realm. My passion and my
biggest thing is really trying to empower women and help them to find themselves and
you know, find peace in their bodies and love themselves and really empower to
ditch the scale and the you know, societal you know, things that everybody
wants us to look like and wants us to do. So, you know,
that kind of goes into this pandemic where this is a time again where
we can start to work on those things. And so I've found that there
are a lot of women who are even though we're busy, and even though
we're kind of drowning in life right now, there are a lot of women
that are really also trying to better themselves and to kind of find their happy
play and whether it be working on fitness or nutrition or just kind of a
general, you know, wellness state in their lives. I think this is
this is something that people are trying to focus on because they're seeing that,
you know, things aren't always going to be perfect, things aren't going to
be status quo. So I think I've had a lot of exports stay to
me in my work in the last couple of months, like women should love
themselves in this time and be gentle on themselves, and you know, our
best is good enough or whatever the expression is. You know that trying as
hard as we can right now is good enough. It doesn't have to be
perfect, and we can't be hard on ourselves about everything. It's too hard
right now. Anyway. Yeah, right, Do you have any zoom seminars
or anything like that coming up that people could take part in if they were
feeling this need to center and focus on wellness. So I do have one.
I actually just had a wellness talk on piece at home parenting and that
was just this past week. Actually, I've one coming up in March.
It's it's called Wellness on the Run and it's really just some kind of quick
tips to help busy parents, you know, find the different pieces of wellness
in their life that they can hold on too. So that I'm actually unsure
of the date at the moment, but if you go to peace at Home
Parenting dot com and look up wellness on the Run, that is my next
one coming up. Awesome, Well, thank you so much. That's fantastic
information. I'm gonna take those tips personally myself, and thank you for joining
us today, and thank you listener for joining us. We're so happy to
have you with us. Please be in touch with us at Parenting Beyond the
Headlines dot com and you can find us on social media. I met Amy,
Alamar and Sarah. You're at Sarah Cody Media. Yeah, you got
it. Forward to getting any or all suggestions, pandemic related or otherwise.
We really appreciate you joining us here for this time. We hope it was
helpful and we will spend time with you again. Take care,