Comedy Through The Chaos: Parenting Edition

Happy Saturday, Cadre Sphere. So good to see you. Although I am late, I apologize. It has been a complex morning. You can tell from my hair how complex it is. So just bringing you up to speed. I am Ms. Shannon. Welcome to the Saturday edition of Comedy. Hello, Speak Wonder. I'll explain while I'm late in a second. I am Ms. Shannon. Welcome to the Saturday edition of Comedy through the Chaos, the parenting edition where we talk about a variety of things that hopefully will help you find laughter in the complexities that we have in life.

I am A. Wright. Hello, Luke. Good to see your name in the chat. So today, before I get to the topic for today, what I was doing, the reason I'm late is that I many of you have heard my machinations about the woodpeckers in my neighborhood. And so the woodpeckers are back. So I have the pest control person out to help me come up with some things about the woodpeckers so that they do not eat my house again. It was. Thank you so much, Luke. I appreciate you. Thank you. That was a wonderful event. Which brings me to today's edition of Comedy through the Chaos as we are talking about harvesting things.

So what I want to encourage us to do. Hello, C. Meyer, thank you for joining as well. What I want to encourage us to do is to actually sow the seeds that we need in order to be able to harvest later. And so the seeds that I want to suggest that we sow are the seeds of support. And as parents, I think we often go, I have to do it all myself. And what Shluke can contest to. Last evening, I was fortunate enough to be part of an event for the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery. It's an organization here in the Twin Cities that supports, usually moms, supports parents that are in crisis with kids who are birthed to six years old.

And so what happens if you are in the midst and you just have no other support? You can drop your kid off at the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery and your kid will be cared for and loved on and supported for up to 48 hours while you have time to sometimes rest, sometimes manage whatever mental wellness challenges you might be having. Sometimes, you know, you hear stories about people who are, I just needed to, to go to this job interview and I didn't have the support. So whatever it is that you need to do in order to build people in and scaffold them while they go and they get these things taken care of.

And so the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery has been around for over two decades and done really great work in this area. And I was happy to be able to support them last night and to bring us to what we talk about here is that being able to reap the benefits of having support in your life sometimes takes work on our. And especially like for me, it was not only going, okay, who in my circle can I trust and train to be able to help me care for my son? But also, who in my circle can I be vulnerable enough with to sit there and go, yeah, I can't do this all myself, and then to actually back up and go, not only do I need to trust this person, but I need to be able to sit there and go, and here's what I need you to do.

Here's how I would like you to do it, and here's how we can take the time that we need to build in those layers of support. Thank you. Speak wonder. That's why I call it the scaffolding, because that's what we're doing is we're layering the support for everyone so that you can eventually harvest that support. And for me, it's been, you know, a journey of a few years of being able to go, all right, I have my sister involved. I have another, a PCA personal care assistant that I hired recently. And, you know, recently, it feels like it.

It's been a year now. But slowly being able to build his skill set, to be able to help build his rapport with my kid, to be able to build their trust with one another so that I can harvest the benefit of being able to leave and feel like everybody's going to be okay and to be able to extend my tether as a parent, to be able to go, I'm going to take a little bit of time off, work on something else. And that has been a lot on my side as well of being able to go, I think I can do this all myself to the mental shift of I know that I need a team to be able to support us all as a unit.

And I want to encourage you as a parent to take a step back and go, who else can support you when you need that? If you're in a co parenting situation, I think sometimes we rest too much in the. Well, we're always a team. It'll be fine. I encourage you to slowly start building what does that look like outside of your situation? Because things change. You know, systems change, those things. So it really is important to start being able to sow those seeds slowly so that you can water them, so that you can make sure they're getting the proper sunlight, so you can add in a little bit of, you know, plant food and some nourishment if you need to as you're waiting for them to come in there.

Good morning, Andy. I was late, too. Don't worry about it. Hosta Day it is. Trying to get the Oregon people to get rid of Woodpecker Day here in my house. So good to see you. So I understand that all of these things take time, and that's why I want to encourage us to start thinking about them now. Because sometimes the thing that takes the most time is getting your head right to go. I'm going to start building in these systems. There was a long period of time where I should have been working on building in support systems for me and my kiddos on our whole.

Our whole unit. But I kept saying, I'll get to it or it's too hard or I don't want to bother people. All of these excuses why I didn't actually do it. And finally it was, no, I'm going to take the time to create an ad to find a PCA for him. I'm going to figure out how to rearrange my resources so that I can hire somebody to do some of these things. And I'm going to be intentional about the things that I have to do as a parent and as I have to do as a caregiver, and then be intentional about the things that I keep saying I have to be the one to do it.

But really, that's the thing you can roll off. For instance, the Woodpecker situation. That's something that normally I'd go, power through it, do it all yourself. Now I'm like, you know, maybe I should bring in an expert, and I'll spend the time trying to make sure that my kiddo takes a shower. That's what I'll do, is I'll be intentional about what I do do with my time. It's, as I mentioned before, building in the time to get supports. Because what you don't want to have happen is what we have organizations like the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery.

For now, you're in crisis and there's no one else to call. So I encourage us take a step back, start working on finding out who those resources are so that you can have them in place in an appropriate way before it becomes a crisis. And unfortunately, we are always a half a step from a crisis sometimes, and we don't even know it. And then something happens. You're like, oh, but now I don't know what to do. For those supports. So I encourage us to start working on that while we have the time to continue to build them and appropriately so you have a strong foundation, friends of those people who know enough about your situation as a parent so that they can step in.

And if it happens, if it happens, if you're like, you know what? Today is the day that I'm just feeling a little broken and I need somebody just come hang out and support me for a while. That's okay. It's okay. It's hard to admit, but it is okay. And it happens to the best of us. So I am going to spend the day doing two things. I'm going to spend the day figuring out. I have some lovely reflective owl shaped things that I'm going to put on the outside of my home to try and discourage the woodpeckers from continuing to snack on my shingles.

On the, the shakes. I think they're shakes. I don't think they're shingles. I think they're shakes. I think the, if you put them on the side of your house, I think they call them shakes, not shingles. I don't care whatever the woodpeckers are eating them. But I'll google it because now it's gonna bother me. But good luck throughout the day on whatever projects you have going on. I hope that they treat you well, Andy, that your pairing of the hostas goes well for you today. Speak wonder. It's always good to see you as well and I'm, I'm glad that you're doing okay after your experiences over the last couple of weeks.

And Luke, good luck on your walk. Enjoy that. Go back there and you're doing great work going out there, literally logging miles on behalf of all of us. So if I missed anybody in the chat, I appreciate you. I will be back here on Thursday for the next edition of Comedy through the Chaos and we will talk about some other varieties of harvesting things in your life. I just want to remind you all that I appreciate you. We appreciate all of the information. Yeah. Pom poms, huh? Interesting. Not bad.

I will show you. I will put in a little video into the Cadre community that talks about the reflective surfaces that I'm putting up. So we'll see how that goes and we will, we will workshop together how to solve this problem. That is one of the best things that we get to do is realize that we don't always have all the solutions, but if we talk amongst each other, somebody will suggest something and some pom pom. So I hope the day treats you well, everybody. If it doesn't, shame on it. Not shame on you.

And I'll see you back here on Thursday.