Welcome to Second Listen Saturday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share some
fun moments from a past episode for your weekend listening pleasure. Look for new
episodes every Monday through Friday. All those big and small things we do that
make our kids lives easier And guess what, do they even know that they're
happening? Do we get? Thanks? No? So, Nicole, you
this was you had felt like you did a lot to make your daughter's life
easier when she moved into her dormant. Yeah. I mean she has probably
more needs than most in terms of staying organized, because that's a skill that
she has a lot of support with. So I spent a lot of time
online, like researching you know, different storage solutions, UM cubes versus um
you know, underbred storage versus overhead storage versus like all kinds of different you
know, like command hooks and um, I don't know clips. And it's
just been endless And I'm not sure she understands how much ever went into that,
because I was trying to help her create a dorm room that she could
work efficiently in and and kind of stay organized in and and I know that's
not you know, Okay, I took over in that sense, and I
really shouldn't have. But if I had left it to her, you know,
I needed to model what set her up for success. That's set her
up for success. Yeah. When we were up back, he who here,
I'm packing, you know, and I'm pulling out all this stuff.
My husband was like, what the heck? She really? He couldn't believe
it. Did you bring a label maker? Oh gosh, I didn't.
I never even thought about that. Oh, how will she ever know where
things are? Now? I know, just get one print everything, print
all the labels his mail tour in an envelope, and then say you expect
to see the labeled things on social media? Right. Well, I just
kind of thought that might be a little bit like over. She could just
I did get a lot of the seat through Ikea storage. But storage storage
baskets are so set uptive, aren't they. You start looking at them and
you just need all of them everywhere. I know, And they look so
pretty too, too, and they matched her to bay Cover. They're irresistible.
I know. I love the idea of storage and organization. I am
super into buying things for storage or an organization. The actual storing and organizing
is my week point. Yeah, that's right. How about you guys.
What do you guys do for your kids behind the scenes. Well, things
like buy gift cards so that they'll have money for gas and to grab food
or whatever. What a good idea. Yeah, so that they don't need
a credit card. Yeah, I mean they have. They have debit cards
actually for just emergencies, but you know, for fundraising for our figure skating
club. One of the big things is script where you can buy you buy
a gift card for face for face value, and then you get money back
to your club. Right, can you like go online and find out where
that gift card has been spent and trace their movements that way? No,
okay, that like prepaid music cards. So I was just wondering about gift
card. Well, this is like I buy it for you know, the
gas come the gas station that we use or whatever. But you can't tell
like which of the many quick trips. That is a weakness we've been to.
But yeah, so I do that. I do things like, um,
you know, just putting things in place, like again organization storage,
like putting things where they will be seen or where they will be found when
they're needed. Um that kind has it set out and laid out for them
night. Um just I don't know. I feel like there's so many things
that I do with probably without even thinking that's right. That this has all
been reminding me about when my son started college. He had at that time
a cell phone, but it was one of the It was like a flip
phone, And I had this idea that I was going to enter all his
classes in there and set an alarm so that he would know all by himself
when it was time to get up and go to class. Because I was
I would drive him there and I would stay all day at the community college
and then drive him home and we would be hanging out in the cafeteria.
But I thought, you know what, he should have his own alarm.
I shouldn't have to be telling him. So I programmed everything in that stupid
flip phone with that. You know, you have to hit the number a
certain amount of times to get a letter. That is the reason my son
got a got an iPhone. It's like one semester of that and I'm I
forget that because it wasn't to make his life easier, it was to make
my life easier. This is ridiculous. Yeah, but I used to,
you know, in terms of you know, he never appreciated that particularly.
I don't know how much you even paid any attention to it, but it
was important to me. And I would, you know, all through school,
but even in college, I would, you know, put the names
of his classes on his folders. I would buy his folders. I would
buy his notebooks. I would put the names of his classes on them.
I would put his name. I would get everything all completely, you know,
put together, no thank you. You know, they would soon be
he would still forget them or not know which was which. I was so
careful. I would put labels on things. I would you know, everything
every textbook was, you know, put in his backpack on the right day.
You know. I did all of that stuff. I don't know if
he could have done it himself, but he certainly never had to. It's
let me do that for you, honey. You just focus on learning things,
and I will completely facilitate every other thing. I will select your classes
on the computer, I will buy your textbooks. I will do all of
this. And you know, yeah, I was. I was the administrative
assistant throughout his college years. This was my job, and and honestly,
you know, all through school pretty much, but the putting the things in
the backpack the night before was always a thing that I did. Yeah,
So I just would have checklists. I would used to eat checklists, you
know, and lay them out on the table and put her vitamins beside it.
Oh my gosh, my son was pretty good. I still have to
send him reminders that, Yeah, yeah, she was very She had a
lot of support. So well, I mean that's that's a legit thing for
moms to do. I think my you know, since my kids will have
disabilities, I probably take it a little too far, you know. I
just want to take all of that stuff off their plate because it's frustrating.
And my daughter, as she's gotten older, has taken over more and more
of that and I really appreciate that, and I really think that's great and
support her doing it and try not to nitpick that she's not doing anything.
I would do it, even though it's hard. Um, but my son
is like, oh fine, cool, I'm just through my life. You
take care of everything, will you? And uh, you know, I'm
kind of okay with that. Hot so you're giving me a purpose to live.
Yeah, thank you. But I recently, I mean his room was
sort of like something out of hoarders. So we recently did a cleanup and
he got rid of a bunch of old stuff and I bought because this is
what you do in these circumstances, lots and lots of storage bins. Right,
it's an opportunity to buy storage bins. Yeah, I know. We'll
put storage bins, honey, and then you'll still have it and you can
see it through the clear plastic of the storage bin, but it'll be up
off the floor. And he's like been extremely slow to take up the you
know, the challenge of filling said bin. I got him a whole bunch
of small ones because he has like these drawers and drawers full of keys.
He collects keys. And I thought, I know, we'll get little storage
bins and you can put some keys in each storage bin and you can sort
them and then you can see them and then you can play with them.
It'll be great. And he said, oh yeah, sure, they're empty.
So and the drawers still full of keys. So it's like, well,
it's at least out of sight. The stuff that was on the floor
is I in bins or gone you know I have to accept partial success,
right, Yeah. But every time I walk in his room and see those
empty bins, I want to fill them up so much. And I got
little I got little carabiners that he could hang individual keys on, and I
put them all over his bookshelves and they're empty mostly. And you know,
if I get a storage item and do not fill it, it's because I'm
busy and I have stuff to do, and you know, priorities. When
I buy things for him and he doesn't use them, what's the matter right
now? You can't possibly have anything more important than fil these up for me.
And the family pathology gets passed down from generation to generation. You know,
he bothers me when I don't feel stuff up. I still don't feel
it up, but it bothers me. Right now, it's not gonna bother
This is the essential difference.