Hello TeamConfessioners. As promised, this week I’m going to be sharing the wisdom of one of our fellow teammates, Brianna Scott. 

Brianna owns and operates a website design, creation, and hosting business with her husband Nic, called Creare Web Solutions. If your website is in need of some excellent direction, design or management, the link to Creare will be in the show notes. Brianna and Nic, like G-Man and I, also have four children. I wanted to share Brianna’s submission in September because it speaks to what we chatted about last week with the need to shift the parenting-pace.

Brianna’s submission is titled: It’s going to get easier

And Brianna writes…

Have you ever noticed at each stage of parenthood you think, when will this get easier? When will they sleep through the night? When will they not need you to sit with them to fall asleep? When can they tie their shoes on their own? If they could only do this one thing, it would get easier. 

My youngest is almost 5, and he’s headed to the Public Pre-K program at our local school this year. Finally, all 4 of my kids will be on the same school schedule! I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but then I start getting the emails about soccer, football, gymnastics, Girl Scouts, Taekwondo and I realize at this moment, it’s not any easier.

I think it may have gotten harder. 

Which gets me yearning for my childhood. The one where we played outside until dark, day in and day out. We took our bikes to the lake, the ball field, and spent lots of time with friends without parents hovering over us. 

Without technology, our parents were free from the constant worry about child trafficking and kidnaping. Yes, of course that was all still happening in the 80s. But with so much information today, it’s impossible to escape the negative stories, the bullies, the fear, and just let go.

Technology surrounds us 24/7 and both adults and kids can’t fully escape it.

Today I see my friends and I struggling to balance work and “momming.” We want our kids to have what we had as kids, but we can’t provide it. Most of the year I do enjoy working, but I wish I could take the summers off. Summer feels like the much needed break after a year of non-stop work. A pause for our hectic lives. I think the Europeans do something right taking the month off. 

As I reflect, I’m reminded each day, it hasn’t gotten easier. Life won’t ever get easier. It just changes. The problems are different. They aren’t necessarily harder, just different. Change happens, and that’s a good thing. What matters is how I approach these changes and challenges. 

So, this summer I did less work, learned how to cut out the technology more and planned more playdates. I let the kids go explore at the endless baseball games we attended, and I brought them to get ice cream. They still fought, they still snuck YouTube videos and I was still exhausted at the end of every day. But, when our teacher assignments came last week I was a little sad knowing the summer was coming to an end. It certainly wasn’t an easier summer, but I’ve learned, that’s okay—I don’t need it to be.

Thank you Brianna!

Now, my original plan was to spread out the submissions throughout the year, BUT Brianna’s cousin, my friend NiCole Schlagheck (also a mother of four) wrote in as well. Given that Brianna’s youngest and my youngest are a decade apart, we’re at different stages in the parenting-pace. NiCole and I are at the same stage of raising kids and I think her insights completely compliment her cousin’s. Next week, we’ll hear a fast-forwarded take on this subject. Please be sure to tune in to hear NiCole’s take on the “letting go” phase of parenting. Until then, thanks for listening!