In this episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast, Hilary Erickson dives into the scarcity mindset of parenting. She challenges the pervasive notion that parents only have 18 summers with their kids, advocating for a balanced approach that focuses on enjoying each day while maintaining self-care. Hilary shares personal anecdotes and insights on avoiding the pitfalls of scarcity-induced stress and embracing the present moments with our children. This episode is sponsored by Family Routines, ensuring you enjoy your kids more while prioritizing their learning needs.
Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts
Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — because you only have a few years to teach them what they need to know!
Timestamps:
00:00 Enjoying Disneyland with kids, teaching and parenting.
03:22 Parenting: Embrace each day with balance.
06:38 Next week: induction preparations and breaking routine.
Keypoints:
- Introduction to the scarcity mindset in parenting and its impact
- Critique of the “you only have 18 summers with your kids” concept
- Comparison between daily child development and daily parental aging
- Influence of marketing on creating a scarcity mindset, especially by companies like Disney
- Discussion on the real-life experience of repetitive, mundane tasks with children like feeding them Goldfish and chicken nuggets
- Balancing the need to cherish moments with realistic daily challenges of parenting
- Personal anecdote about pushing oneself despite exhaustion to fulfill perceived parenting duties
- Emphasis on the importance of self-care and recognizing limits in parenting
- Observations on social media and culture perpetuating scarcity beliefs in parenting
- Encouragement to find balance between routine and spontaneity in parenting while addressing the next podcast topics on induction preparation and the issue of being too tied to routine.
Producer: Drew Erickson
Transcript
[00:00:00.600] – Hilary Erickson
Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on episode 241, we are talking about the scarcity mindset of parenting. Let’s untangle it.
[00:00:10.830] – Hilary Erickson
Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the Pregnancy Nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, the Pulling Curls Podcast.
[00:00:38.890] – Hilary Erickson
This episode of the Pulling Curls Podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. If you want to enjoy your kids more, prioritize what your kids really need to learn, come join me in Family Routines, where we get you prepared to teach your kids and get them to help out more. Sounds pretty good, right?
[00:00:56.280] – Hilary Erickson
Okay, I want to know who started the whole, ‘you only have 18 summers with these kids’ thing. I see it all over the internet, and frankly, I think it was started by children because they’re like, You should let us do whatever the heck we want because you only have 18 summers with us, and you’re going to miss us when we’re gone.
[00:01:14.480] – Hilary Erickson
The reality of parenting is that you only have today with that particular child. Every day, they’re growing and changing. Every day, you are growing and changing. Do your kids ever look at you and think, I only have today with these young parents? No. No child is like, Well, my parents are getting older. Especially no young child. I’m thinking that. But young children are not thinking, Well, my parents are getting older. They’re not going to be able to run down the hill with me forever.
[00:01:40.230] – Hilary Erickson
No, because they’re just enjoying the day. And they’re also trying to get as much out of you as they can. They’re trying to push the boundaries. They’re trying to only eat goldfish for the rest of their lives. At least it seemed like that for me.
[00:01:54.260] – Hilary Erickson
Now, I want to say I do feel like this was started by people marketing. Disney is hard core on this. You only have a four-year-old once, and so you got to take them to Disneyland, right? And in some ways, that’s true. Every time we go to Disneyland, my kids experience it in a different way. I loved seeing our four-year-olds experience Disneyland. I’m not going to say that I didn’t, but my kids also loved going to the park, and I loved going to the park with four-year-olds, too. I love teaching four-year-olds how to read. I’m definitely not teaching my sophomore and high schooler how to read now.
[00:02:25.580] – Hilary Erickson
No one out there is marketing the scarcity of your kids are only going to want to eat goldfish for the rest of their lives. We think that that is going to last forever. When we’re in this tricky phase where kids don’t want to eat anything and they’re just like, No, I just want goldfish and chicken nuggets, we in our minds think this is going to last forever.
[00:02:43.600] – Hilary Erickson
We are never thinking, Oh, I only have 18 years of goldfish and chicken nuggets. We’re like, They’re going to act this way to forever. They’re never going to eat a salad at somebody’s house. They’re going to be on a date with their fiance and be like, Can I order chicken nuggets? We’re never thinking beyond today. Somehow we have to mesh those two feelings.
[00:03:04.140] – Hilary Erickson
I just want to say that there are plenty of times that I’ve looked at a summer and thought, Thank goodness, I only have 18 of these. Summer is tricky. It’s tricky because I worked. We were trying to do fun things, but all these kids were home. I felt like I was getting attacked by ducks. There were plenty of times I was really grateful that I was only going to have to experience that 18 times.
[00:03:22.130] – Hilary Erickson
Here is a news flash. I’m still experiencing that. After college, the kids would come home. There were great parts about it. I would try to remind myself to enjoy it because there were also times that it was miserable and they couldn’t agree, and they started fighting just like they did when they were seven and eight, right?
[00:03:37.880] – Hilary Erickson
Once again, it comes back to the myth of control. The reality is we don’t actually know how many summers we get with these kids, and so we have to enjoy each day while also not taking the scarcity mindset of, I only have 18 summers with these kids. I’ve got to live my very best life with them.
[00:03:54.060] – Hilary Erickson
We have to take a balance of taking care of ourselves while also taking of the kids.
[00:04:00.790] – Hilary Erickson
I remember when I was pregnant with my last baby, my kids desperately wanted to go over to our friend’s pool, and I was so tired. I was just right at that part where it’s just draining everything out of your body, and I was like, No, I’ve got to take these kids to the pool. We only have 18 summers together. We can’t just miss a summer because I’m pregnant, which I should have.
[00:04:21.070] – Hilary Erickson
I was so tired. We were backed out of the driveway, and I ran into somebody on the street. I just didn’t look well enough. He was coming down the street. I didn’t see him coming. I had checked before. Anyway, I ran into him. And afterwards, I was like, Why did I do that?
[00:04:34.150] – Hilary Erickson
I was not taking care of myself. I could have fallen asleep with the wheel just backing out. I was so tired, but I was pushing myself because I felt like those kids deserved to go to the pool that day, when in reality, we could have gone to the pool another day. I could have called them and said, I’m just too tired.
[00:04:50.180] – Hilary Erickson
In fact, the person we were going to the pool with may have actually even come and picked up my kids and taken them to the pool for me. But instead, I was like, No, I want to be there to experience it. I have this scarcity mindset of these little boys are only going to be little ones, right? Smart? No, it wasn’t smart.
[00:05:05.730] – Hilary Erickson
Now, I really try to notice when scarcity comes up in my life. This is probably why I’m noticing it with parenting. I’m seeing a lot of people with back to school posts or whatnot right now talking about how they’re going to miss their kids at college. I think a lot of it is put through marketing people. They’re saying, You got to set your kids up for the dorm right.
[00:05:24.950] – Hilary Erickson
They don’t want to be lacking anything. That’s not true. I want my kids to understand how to be scrappy and make things do. My kids need to understand what lack looks like so that they can manage that as an adult. I have to be really careful with my dollar bills if I’m using scarcity to spend them when in reality, maybe scarcity could be helpful in some instances.
[00:05:47.920] – Hilary Erickson
That being said, it does remind me to say yes more often, unless it involves glitter. No glitter. But it reminds me to say yes more often. I think that can be really awesome, especially in the summer It can feel like, I said before, you’re just getting attacked by ducks and you just want to be like, No, no, we’re just sticking to the routine, guys. We are just reading our books.
[00:06:09.690] – Hilary Erickson
But I think it’s really important to sometimes get out of that routine and do the fun things. It’s always a balance of that. But I think, especially this time of year, as I’m seeing lots of kids going off to college and everyone, Oh, they grow up so fast. Yes, they do grow up so fast, but they also grow up real slow, and we got to take care of ourselves, too.
[00:06:26.870] – Hilary Erickson
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. It’s just something I’ve been noticing a lot lately. Come find us over on Instagram where we’re going to talk about where you see the scarcity mindset of parenting, where you found it helpful or haven’t found it helpful.
[00:06:38.610] – Hilary Erickson
Stay tuned. Next week, we’re talking about what to do the day before your induction. And the next week, we’re actually talking about being too tied to routine. So it’s on the same topic. So we will see you then.
[00:06:49.960] – Hilary Erickson
Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls Podcast today. If you liked today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you.
Keywords:
pulling curls podcast, scarcity mindset, parenting, Hilary Erickson, Family Routines, kids learning, 18 summers, parenting reality, children growing, marketing to parents, Disney, Disneyland experience, summer challenges, kids’ food preferences, Goldfish and chicken nuggets, scarcity and parenting, pregnant parenting challenges, self care in parenting, back to school, college kids, dorm setup, scrappy kids, financial scarcity, saying yes to kids, balance in parenting, children growing up, social media and parenting, fun activities with kids, summer routine, attacking ducks, parenting myths
Leave a Reply