Comedy Through The Chaos: Parenting Edition

Good morning. Hello. And Happy Saturday to you. If you're joining me on Saturday, if you're joining me on another day, happy whatever day it is to you in the future, I presume it's not in the past because we haven't figured out how to do that yet. There's some things I would get off my to do list post emptively if I could go to the past, but we can't do that yet. So wherever you are listening, thank you for joining us. I hope that you are well. Just to bring you up to speed, I am Ms. Shannon Paul.

I am a comedian, corporate speaker, voice actor, event MC and benefit auctioneer here. Hello, hello, hello, hello. Doctor. Dr. Teresa. Good to see you. Cheers. Happy Saturday morning to you. I hope that you are doing well wherever you are. I'm Ms. Shannon and I picked this view. Oh, he just does. Jc, my love. Hello. There is snow happening behind me in that window back there. For today's edition of Comedy through the Chaos. Hello, Jules. Happy Saturday and cheers to you as well. I'm so surprised.

I don't have any music. Alexa, shuffle my likes on Amazon Music. It's too quiet and it's jc, you reminded me. Like, there's always music playing in the background. There's. It's too quiet and I'm not used to quiet because quiet doesn't happen between me and my kid. Which brings us to today's edition. My likes on Amazon Music took them a long time. Why are they. I could write a record for the network. Alexa, turn it down, please. That works as well. All right. You guys are not surprised that there's Chaos happening in my house.

That's the name of this whole segment. Comedy through the Chaos. That's what we do. An artist named nf. I really like him even though he has some struggles. But part of the reason I like him is his honest. I know my honest. His honest journey with his anxiety and perfectionism because he has OCD and he works on that. How many times I was told things wouldn't work out, but worked out. And he talks about his cold feet. You can look up nf. You can do that. I know how that works. We'll just vibe for a minute while everybody catches up.

I know I probably threw off everybody's house. That happens to us too. So, Jules, I would apologize, but, hey, maybe you needed some music in your house as well. The universe just knew that you needed some tunes this morning, so it needed me to just burst into your Alexa as well. To bring us to today's edition of Comedy through the Chaos, our parenting edition. My adorable 17 year old son is over there. He is chilling. So far this morning, we are in the midst of a snowy day here in the city of Crystal, Minnesota, where I am.

I need to turn it out a little bit more because I'm shouting at you, Alexa, turn it down by 10%. There we go. So the other thing that is going on right now as we are wrapping up the month of November here in the Cadre sphere, is that we are talking about the concept. What I wanted to talk about today is the concept of rest, which is something that I'm continually practicing because I am one of those human beings who is continually in motion just because of a variety of ways that I was raised and some other things.

I've always looked at rest as something that is suspicious in nature, that rest has to be earned and if you are resting, you're actually being lazy. So I've had to really work on my relationship with the concept of rest. And this time of year I think it's really interesting for us to talk about where in the winter we kind of talk about this. Moving into a hibernation season. Maybe we're moving into a more restful period of time, or at least that's what society kind of tells us that we're gonna start to do.

Even though it layers on all of these expectations of bustling and shopping and doing all these other things, it still says, but Thenris also is a slower season. And I don't know about your house, maybe that's not true, because in my house it's not necessarily true. It's not like all of a sudden there's a finger snap and my kid goes, no, we're moving into the restful time period. I'm a slow down as well. He doesn't know that, nor does he care that there is an expectation that there should be peace for all and good tidings and all of these things.

He doesn't know that. And I think a lot of kids don't really get that. There's this expectation that things should be more peaceful and restful this time of year, that there is this concept of when winter starts to happen, we slow down. Maybe that happened back in the olden days when you had no choice except to hole up in your cabin. But us. There's still lots of things that are going on. I went and parked plugged in my vehicle last night in case I need to leave the house. I might have a show later today.

He still has to go back to school on Monday. So that concept of inherent rest and slowing down into winter, I kind of think that's a fallacy these days. So what I encourage all of us to do is to look at rest from the position of we can go ahead and make that definition of what rest is. We can make that definition of rest. And it doesn't have to be this grandiose trip off to some warmer clients. If you live in wintry locations like I do, it doesn't have to be this. I took this huge vacation, I shut down, I turned everything away, and I put my device in a box.

But you can create those moments of rest, and that is something that we definitely need. So even if you start with 20 seconds here, 60 seconds of I locked the bathroom door so they couldn't come in and ask me questions, I do that sometimes. Maybe it's a couple of minutes of you went out to the garage and you sat in your car because you knew that your kids were happy and safe and eating their chicken nuggets, and you just needed a couple of minutes. The other thing I want to let you know is that rest in peace can be something that you augment.

This little tiny thing that says loop. And what these are, are little tiny ear. You know, like when you go to a concert, maybe you don't do this if you're supposed. You're supposed to wear those little earplugs so that things aren't so loud around you. So what I realized in my house is that sometimes my kid is most joyful when he is loud and he's making happy noises, but it's still a lot. And so what I got is I got these. And so what they are is that they're little loop earrings. I mean, that earrings, earbuds, they are not noise canceling, but they are noise quieting.

So if I remember correctly, they bring everything down about 20 decibels. And so. And you can see they're not gonna get stuck in your ears. And they're not as uncomfortable as if you had, like, those Styrofoam. Not Styrofoam, those foam earrings. I'm sorry, foam. Foam earplugs that you would put in. But what I notice is that for me, when I want things to be calm or quiet or a little less just to take out one of those sensory inputs where I know he's doing his thing, I still have to do some stuff.

Even these. This. These little $20 loop earrings that I'm putting in, I can still parent. I can still have him Doing what he's doing, playing his videos, making his joyful noises, doing all of his stuff. But it just able to like bring my sensory input down just a little bit as a parent. And that has been really great. And so my fur children, they're happy when their rest is. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And it's putting holes in the. Oh yeah, I got you. C. so I'll let you know. I did that whole. I don't know if you saw, but my kid went through a kicking holes in the wall phase.

And not even intentionally kicking holes in the wall, just kicking the wall because he liked the booming of what it sounded and the way that it kind of shook the house, which eventually, because he's a big kiddo, put holes in the wall. And so I got really good at replacing sheetrock, but that wasn't enough. So eventually I reinforced it some and I put up acoustic tiles because they were not cost prohibitive to buy and were easy to put up in his room. And I didn't want his room to look like a mini asylum.

I wanted to still look kind of cool. You gonna shut the door? I'd show you, but then I'd break the spell of being able to talk to you without him coming here. Trying to take my phone. So. So even something like this where you'll still be able to go. I am fully involved with what is going on, but it's just brought down to a manageable decibel. Hello. Welcome to the Conversation. He's here. The cat is here. There's the cat. I'm glad our cat is fast. Come on. The cat and I will both move. Say hello to mom's friends.

No. Hello, mom's friends. That's his foot. Welcome to the conversation. Dominic's feet. So since I'm up, I'll show you his room because he's not in it. So these are acoustic tiles and a wire enforced wall. And then I put some industrial strength Velcro on the wall so I can put these. Those are gym mats that now instead of kicking the wall, which may not work for your fur babies because they aren't going to be as emotionally deterred by knowing that now they can do something else. Now he's as interested in being able to take the mats off the wall and put them on the floor as he is with kicking the wall.

So I took care of my kicking the wall problem. So that is what I encourage you to do over the next week or so is instead of saying, this is the definition that society has made for me regarding rest. Make your own definition, friends. Figure out a way that you can go, all right, for the next two minutes, here's what I'm going to do that is restful. Here's what I'm going to do that brings me some peace. Here's what I'm going to do that makes my life a little bit more easy for me to exhale. And that is my suggestion.

Would you like breakfast? No. Like breakfast? No, like breakfast. Some days we just don't like stuff. All right, but it is snowing for you. So literally taking this by I and I have lots of suggestions. I have lots of suggestions. There's also a thing called puck board if it gets serious. And puck board is basically that the stuff that you see in, that they put up around hockey rinks and you can get that. Oh, you would like breakfast. All right, well, look in the refrigerator and pick a breakfast.

Pick a breakfast. You pick a breakfast. I will talk to my friends. Look, we matched today. Look, blue shirt, blue shirt. Pick a breakfast and I will make it. You don't need my phone, so you're not using my phone. I am using my phone. All right, friends, I'm going to go cook with my backpack. Five minutes. Get out. I'mma make him some food. So as you can see, I have become very accomplished at finding moments of peace. Because if I was trying to have this whole mom related spa day, I don't know, I would spend my whole time being disappointed because I had this concept of what peace was when for me just being able to go, all right, I successfully walked away calmly.

That works for me for right now. We'll figure it all out. Oh yeah, he's a good kid. He's a lot. So if you happen to be living with a lot, regardless of how and what it is that is causing a lot in your life, find those little moments where you can go, okay, here's a little less. Maybe it's locking your cat out of the room at 3am so that you can actually sleep without them jumping on your head. I'm glad my cat doesn't do that. So find that throughout the week and then next week as we move into December.

I'm very excited because a lot of us will be focusing on the concept of gratitude and those things. And I'm very excited to talk about gratitude because that is something that has been very transformational in my life, like adding in my variety of gratitude practices. And those things really has made a huge difference for me in my life. So I am happy to share a variety of that information with you. I don't even know what song this is, but dance party, everybody. So be kind to yourself. If nothing else, that's what we hope that we can do throughout the day.

If you're someplace where it is snowy, be safe out there. I know that there are certain places that are getting hit aggressively right now, so we will see if the snow maintains its fluffy nature here in our part of Minnesota. And please remember this, I hope that the day treats you well. If it doesn't, shame on it. Not shame on you. I will see all of you back here on Thursday at 2pm Central. And JC, I'm sure I'll see you throughout the week. So be safe, love. So everybody take care of yourselves.

Jules, Dr. Teresa, everybody. I appreciate all of you. It's always good to see you in the chat. Be safe and I'll see you back here soon. I go hard with it, no matter how dark it is. But on my toes, I could keep the world balanced on my nose.