Kristen: 0:02

Hi, I'm Kristen with an E, and this is Talk with Kristen with an e. A place to slow down. Be honest, without having all the answers and feel a little less alone together. Let's talk it out. Hey everybody. Welcome back. It's another day we have Alexis here and I'm so excited about this topic especially because of the take we're taking on it. But before we get into that, let's first say hi to Alexis. Hi Alexis.

Alexis: 0:35

Hello. It's good to be back. I'm excited about this topic too.

Kristen: 0:40

So today we are talking about boundaries and we have talked about boundaries on the podcast before, but it's kind of been in a business sense and kind of how you do it in a professional way. today we wanna talk about more about. Boundaries in personal life and parenting and kind of what that looks like and how it feels so to get us started, Alexis, since this was kind of your idea to talk about, why don't you give us a little summary or kind of what gave you the idea about this and kind of just where we can start the conversation.

Alexis: 1:13

I have five kids, so my life can be crazy and there is time for myself, but it can be very disjointed and everybody can be asking me 500 questions and sometimes it sounds like a lot, but it's really the truth. And so we also homeschool, so I'm not usually away from my family much. I just realized boundaries like in motherhood I think can be discussed more than they are. I know that this can be like a taboo topic, like we do everything for our kids and we always have to do that. But the reality is, as I personally know, you will burn out doing that and it's not sustainable. And I always wanna preface this by saying, you don't have to do what I do. What works for me is maybe not gonna work for you. And you might look at me and say, oh, that's a terrible idea, but there may be things that you do that I would look and say, I wouldn't do that. It's just what works for each family. If there's an emergency, the boundaries go out the window like emergencies. If kids truly need something, you don't have your boundaries. If you know it's common sense. It's not just a dogmatic, we don't do that because that's not life.

Kristen: 2:20

Right. No, and I, I think your disclaimer is so important because to add onto that, like these are just the personal opinions of me and Alexis, and like you said, Alexis, what works for one family may not work for somebody else, and there's no judgment towards anybody else of how they run their households or their families, or the personal boundaries they make on themselves.

Alexis: 2:41

Yeah.

Kristen: 2:41

and I, I love how you bring up about, putting the children first and having time for you, because I feel like there's different avenues the society kind of places, especially on mothers. And I'm sure I saw in dads too, although I do think it's a little bit different. We may touch on that later, but for mothers it's either do everything for your kids. Put your children first. Put your needs to the side because now that you have children, it is all about them and doing what's best for them. And then there's the opposite camp. That's like you do. You live your best life, make time for you. Self-care is important. Your kids will have their whole lives ahead of them. I think there's truth to both of those, but it is hard to find that balance when you are trying to be there for your kids and take care of them, but still take care of you because you know the age old saying if you're, you know, on the plane and the oxygen masks come down, you have to put yours on first.'cause you have to take care of you before you can take care of somebody else. And that's where kind of I feel the struggle is, am I doing enough and spending enough time with my child and I only have one, not five, but am I doing enough for him to give him the quality of life that he deserves? Or am I focused more on, I'm doing what I wanna do. This is my life. I'm taking care of me. So can you share maybe how you find that balance or if you found that balance or just how you, how you go forward with it?

Alexis: 4:06

Yeah. So, I do think, being a parent in general. This isn't just for mothers in this regard, but when you have a kid, you have to give up yourself. Like that's just, the calling and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think that we as humans are better when we're not necessarily serving ourself all the time and we're taking care of other people and our focus is on other people rather than me, me, me. Because that just creates. Selfishness. Now obviously we can go the opposite direction and you're putting so much into your kid that your kids become, dare I say, selfish, spoiled brats. And that's, that can be a problem too. So there is a balance and when I had my kids, obviously when they're babies, this is different. It's when they start getting older. This is gonna sound, people will probably think I'm crazy for this, but my kids go to bed at eight o'clock. My 16-year-old goes to bed at eight o'clock. He doesn't have to go to bed. That's not the point. The point is he goes to his room and at eight o'clock I have time to breathe, to just give myself time to whether I am reading, baking, whatever. I don't have the mental load of somebody interrupting. My tasks that I'm doing every five minutes, which does happen, and I don't have to think about it. I can just think about the things that I wanna focus on. Now, we are moving into a different season in my life and I'm not sure that I love it, but my teens wanna stay up and talk and we're at a different point where I have little girls that cannot be up. They can't be there for those adult style conversation. I mean, they can, but they're not appropriate in some aspects. And I am enjoying that time. So two days this week, I had teens that were up until 10 o'clock with me, which doesn't sound bad. I mean a lot of families do that, but for me, oh, it was a stretch. I, the next day I am like, okay, go to bed eight o'clock, go to bed. And I don't mean for that to sound like, oh, it's about me, but my brain needs that reset. So that's, that is one example I can think of off the top of my head for sure.

Kristen: 6:11

And I think that's a great example too, because you still need to have that time for you. And because it's structured the way it is, there's no surprises. And like everybody knows at eight o'clock I go to my room whether I'm going to sleep or I'm just going there for activity, quiet time, whatever. That's the rule. And I think doing something like that actually does well because it does provide that structure. And like you said, there's times for it to kind of, flex a little bit when it needs to be, and I think that's what makes it so usable. Now, do you spend that, so the eight o'clock time, is that just you time, is that you and your husband time, or is it just whatever happens of the day?

Alexis: 6:51

It kind of is whatever happens. And I will be honest, as they've gotten older, sometimes it's eight 30 and I'm like, alright, it's bedtime. And I have to sometimes remind my husband like, listen, I need, you know, this time. For that time. My brain needs that and because my kids are early risers, they are not kids that sleep in.

Kristen: 7:10

Yeah.

Alexis: 7:10

idea of getting up early before your kids does not work in my house.

Kristen: 7:14

I love the idea of having kind of that schedule. Ours isn't so much that, but I do wanna go back to something you'd said earlier too about how, you know, you've got teenagers now and things do change because I think that's an important. to bring up also in the seasons because when your children are little, they do need so much more time and you're spending time with'em. Like I remember when my son was little, we would spend time together all the time. We were

Alexis: 7:38

Yeah.

Kristen: 7:39

library. We were going to the playground. We would get up early on Sundays and watch like Mickey Mouse clubhouse and just play in the living room. And we were always doing things together and I didn't need time away from him'cause I would go to work and like the time we had was so special. And now that we're in the season where he's nearly 13 and he's spending a lot more time on his own or with his friends, like he's in his room playing video games, or he is in his room talking with his friends and they're playing video games, it's almost harder to get him to do activities with me. And so I've been trying to, deal with as he's kind of using his own boundaries to have his space, his time is like, well, where do I fit into his life? Like, how am I still spending time with him? So what we do. Is I do drop off in the morning, so he and I have, you know, 15 minute car rides in the morning where we'll talk about what's going on that day, things that's going on, or we'll listen to music. And I always let him pick the music, which drives my husband crazy. I enjoy it because I get to see what he's into. I get to kind of learn more about his interest, why he likes certain songs or musical artists or whatever. So it sets our time there. And then at night we always have family dinner together. Now, it's not always at a table like, it's not like old school family dinners where we're serving. Everybody gets themselves a plate. We sit in front of the TV and we'll watch like YouTube videos together, like funny ones or, you know, something that kind of, which I know isn't necessarily family time, but it's like an activity that we all kind of enjoy and can talk about. So we kind of do things like that. So I'm not as structured with you as like the clean bedtime. Like he has a time where he's supposed to be in bed and should be going to sleep, but, it's not as structured as yours.

Alexis: 9:19

I love that you guys sit and eat together because that is like a non-negotiable in our house. Granted, my oldest is working now and things are a little different, but it's always kind of been if you're home, you're at the table eating with us also. This is one thing that's changed. Like we used to have a boundaries of no screens and for my kids, my kids didn't have stuff, but they rely on some stuff for online now. And of course they found YouTube. So some of our favorite things to do now is sit and watch like videos with them. I don't always love it. I don't think it's the best thing, but that's where society is. And I'm not saying that like, oh, you have to follow what society says. But I also want my kids to be literate in what's going on, and they're not like out in the world and just like, what's this? You know, because we do homeschool, so they don't see a lot of everything at school. So I love that you guys do that, because I think that that's just kind of normal, but also you have the boundary of you're doing it together, you know?

Kristen: 10:22

Yeah. And I do, you know, you mentioned how, you know your teens wanted to stay up and talk late. And my son had done that a week or so ago. My husband was in the shower and I was in the living room, I think reading. And he came out and just started talking with me. Like it wasn't anything formal. Like he just sat there and he is like, Hey mom, so this happened at school. And so I put my Kindle down and he had my, you know, a hundred percent undivided attention and my husband told me later,'cause you know, the bathroom is kind of. On the other side of the living room and he's like, guys like, you know, I heard you guys talking, so I just didn't come back out. He's like,'cause I know you need that time because again, like my son talks to me and we have a good relationship, but it's still kind of on his time. So a lot of that is just kind of having those boundaries flex. And I do wanna. Also clarify something I said, we eat together every night. We do every night that we're home, like you pointed out.

Alexis: 11:11

Yes.

Kristen: 11:12

time kind of comes in. I do once a month, and I think I've mentioned this before, once a month I go to Sushi Squad with a couple of my girlfriends. Sometimes it's on the weekends, sometimes it's after work one night. So I'm not with them for dinner because that's my time to go see my girlfriends and kind of catch up. it's a recurring thing. Everybody knows that one night a week I am going to be at Sushi squad. And there's sometimes other things like that. My friend Karen and I will often go to author events there's times like that where I'll go for dinner and an author event. I think you have some things like that too, it's not like I'm abandoning my family they're planned. They're on our family calendar. There's no surprises, but that's kind of where I still have the me time do you have things like that too where there's things that just you do so that you have your own personal or your own social time?

Alexis: 12:01

Yeah, so, and this is where it's kind of been hard because I haven't always had that, when we lived. In Michigan and Anthony was working like he would work and had a three hours total in drive time for a commute. So it was, and if there was snow, it was a lot more. I didn't always have that ability because getting a babysitter just, it was not worth that. But I, at the time, in the weekends, I had my photography business and so that was an outlet as far as that nowadays. I kind of just go when I want. And that sounds terrible, but it's not because my teen, like my kids are old enough to stay by themselves and my husband works from home. So the reality is I can come and go as I please. But we do have a, I have a homeschool moms that I try to do once a month. And so I will miss dinner for that. The other thing, during the afternoon I go in my room or I will leave sometimes, and I either read, sometimes I have to take a nap. After teaching five kids, all of their stuff, my brain just needs like a total reset. So that is kind of a non-negotiable too in my house is that's my time. And to be honest, sometimes I would rather do that is just sit and read and work on stuff, whether it's journaling or other things or just taking a nap. Those are kind of those things that I do.

Kristen: 13:20

Well, and here's another question, if we can talk about mom guilt for a moment.'cause I have a lot of thoughts on this, but, as you talk about, you know, just kind of going away and taking a nap and doing your activities, do you have mom guilt over that or are you like, whatever, this is my time, leave me alone.

Alexis: 13:37

I've had to really think about this and think, is this the best use of my time with my kids? Because there is that mom guilt. But for a large part, that is what I do and it, it really is. When I was getting up very early. I, I had to, or I could not. I'd get to four o'clock and five o'clock and my brain was so foggy. But, i'm a better mom for it in the evening and I can put more into it rather than just like I'm sitting on the couch and I'm not, you know, talking to you guys'cause I'm just so tired. Which sounds ridiculous. But that's, that is kind of, especially when I had nursing babies, when my babies were nursing, there was no way I could get through a day without a nap. So,'cause my kids are like up every two hours when they're babies,

Kristen: 14:23

Oh my.

Alexis: 14:24

Sometimes I feel guilty because the time that I do spend with them in the morning is, we're doing school. It's not like we're playing games. I mean, sometimes we play games for school, but it's very much a different, it's not like a parent child relationship. It's a teacher, parent, child relationship.

Kristen: 14:40

Feel like I struggle with it sometimes, and it may not be in the moment, and sometimes it's after because my son's 12, almost 13, so I've had 12 years with him. But realistically. only have less than six more if he leaves after high school. And I look at it and I'm like, did I spend enough time with him when he was little? Like I didn't realize that I wasn't gonna have as much time with him now and am I making the most of the time? So then when, there are times when I'm doing things myself, like if I'm sitting on the couch and whether I'm reading or watching a show or doing something and he's in his room playing video games, which again is what he wants to be doing. I struggle with like, well, should I be spending time with him? Should I make him come out here and spend time with him? Like, that's like, I don't know if it's necessarily guilt or fear or a combination of them, but I really struggle with that because then like at the end of the day when I'm in bed, I'm like, I didn't spend any time with him today. Or did I get to talk to him enough? Like, does he know I love him? Does he know I care? All these things that like, don't know. There were different fears when he was little and they've changed now. And I don't know, like I just feel like I'm not doing enough sometimes. Perimenopause really kind of messes with me. It makes me more

Alexis: 15:52

Yes.

Kristen: 15:53

than usual. And there are times where he drives me nuts or he will come out to the living room and he'll just say stupid stuff and I'm like, just go away. Like, I don't even wanna talk to you because this attitude you have or the dumb stuff you're saying. And then I feel like a bad mom. So it just, it's so bad, but like, I need that time, like my quiet time at night, whether I'm reading or scrolling on my phone, which has been limited. You know, or watching a show with my husband or something, or realistically falling asleep while my husband's watching a show. That's, that's still stuff that I need from me. So, I don't know. Help me, Alexis.

Alexis: 16:31

I have talked a little bit about my son is he'll be 17. In March, we have one more year, and this past summer was incredibly difficult for me. Keep in mind, my kids have always homeschooled, so I've never sent them away like they have been with me all the time. And this past summer he got a job, so he was working five days a week all day. My other son, who is the middle kid, he was working and my daughter worked a little bit. But everybody was gone, and my husband and I both remarked how, this is weird. We don't like it. In June, I said, I don't know what to do with myself. Like. I don't know what to do. I have so much time because school was done at this point and I didn't have all the kids. We weren't doing stuff. We weren't, you know, because they were working or they were off doing things, which is good. Like these are important things, but I didn't know what to do with myself. Of course, I should have just relaxed because after that, like it just got crazy. I am. Struggling with the fact that he is going to be 18 and we already don't see him a lot. And he is also a self-starter for homeschool. He does not want me to teach him. I would, we tried at the beginning and he's like, I don't wanna do this, I just wanna do it on my own. And he can do it on his own, so he does. So I think that's very normal. But it doesn't negate the fact that you still need your boundaries. Like sometimes they just annoy you. Like, my kids are loud. They're so loud, and I'm just like, can you be quiet? Can we please be quiet?

Kristen: 18:04

Or he'll always, like he's, he's in like the, the, he's in junior high, but still like the middle school thing. Like he wants to jump and like hit every door frame he goes through. I am constantly hearing his foam basketball bouncing off the hoop in his room over and over and over and over and over, and like I love that he loves. But there's sometimes where's gonna be like, stop, can we please just stop? Like, please, please. But yeah, it's, I think you're right. And you know, because I can never go a whole episode without bringing this up. I think social media plays into this too, because how many times are we seeing our peers or other people sharing like, oh, look at all these activities I'm doing

Alexis: 18:42

Mm-hmm.

Kristen: 18:43

Oh, I love my child. So much, and I'm like, should I be doing that with my child? Like I'm not, you know, doing all these arts and crafts with him again, mostly because he won't. And it shouldn't matter what anybody else is doing with their kids. And it shouldn't matter what anybody else thinks about what I'm doing with my kid. But that's still one of those things that plays in the back of my mind of like, am I a bad mom?

Alexis: 19:04

So here's the other thing I wanna kind of point out, and this kind of goes maybe towards kids' boundaries. My oldest does not like to do like family stuff. He hates it. He does not wanna be any part of it. And in the past year or so, we've kind of just. Picked and choose what we make him do because he is turning into an adult, and I think it's important to voice like, I don't wanna do that. Because the reality is when they're watching a show that. I don't wanna watch. I will say I'm not watching that. I don't wanna watch it and I go do my own thing. So I do think that's important. But you know, my other four kids love to be together and they love to do that kind of stuff, which is funny to me.

Kristen: 19:39

Mm-hmm.

Alexis: 19:40

My other son is super, he just loves to be with. Everybody. And he wants to, sometimes he doesn't want to if like, it's really girly. But even the other night we were watching the parent trap, and I was like, oh, we need to watch this. And Ari's like, he looks at me like, and I'm like, come on, you'll like it. You will like it. So then. He's complaining about it. But you know what? He came and joined us. I would never make my oldest come and do that because he wouldn't want to. But we have been making him watch Beast Games with us because that's our like family show that we're watching right now. So I sometimes think that it's good to respect their boundaries and not wanting to do that, but also there is a time for family time, and we all just do that because we're a family unit.

Kristen: 20:26

No, and I think you make a really good point because there are things we still do as a family, and there are shared activities that we have. So we all, my husband, my son and I all love antiquing. Thrifting, and that's something we'll do. Like we'll take a Saturday and we'll go to all the different thrift stores in the area and find different things. And it's kind of like a thing we do together. So there are things, and I think you're right, it's all about what they wanna do too, and kind of respecting their boundaries. You know, we are not gonna force them to do something,

Alexis: 20:54

Yes.

Kristen: 20:54

We do want him to have a say in it and kind of have agency over what we do as a family unit too. Like sometimes we'll all say, you know, what movie are we gonna watch as a family? Usually my husband picks because, you know, he's the dad, he controls the remote, whatever. But like on times where we can pick something else, we all get kind of a say in it, and it's really good for that too. So I do think you're right that it's about kind of the. Picking how much you want to force them, and also respecting their boundaries as they become kind of adults and allowing them to have that freedom and express themselves.

Alexis: 21:29

Yeah. And I think that's important so it's a delicate balance and sometimes you get it wrong and sometimes you get it right.

Kristen: 21:34

Mm-hmm.

Alexis: 21:35

So I have a question. Are you, in your family, do you limit the amount of activities that your son does?

Kristen: 21:42

So we only have one child, and this was one of the reasons why we only chose to have one child. Because even before I got pregnant, I had friends that had children. Multiple children, it would be like, oh, we've gotta take Johnny to soccer and Mary has to go to ballet, and how are we gonna be in both of them? And then they have, swimming lessons and I'm like, this is exhausting. Like, how, how do you

Alexis: 22:03

Hmm.

Kristen: 22:04

life if you are just. Carting your kids around everywhere. So I was like, that's it. We're gonna have just one child.'cause I never want to say no to him. And I felt like if he had siblings it would be like, oh, you can't do that'cause your sister's doing this or you can't do that'cause your brother's doing that. Because if we did have more, that is what we would, we would do. Like there would have to be limits both financially, time, all the things. So because we only have one, pretty much free to do whatever he wants. With activities

Alexis: 22:32

you mean.

Kristen: 22:34

In the past, like when he was younger, things didn't really overlap. Like he would do soccer in the spring and fall. He would do basketball in the winter, and then summers were basically off. Now that he's gotten into more organized sports, he is doing a few more things. He's on his quiz bowl team at school. He's in dance. He's been dancing, I wanna say this is maybe his sixth year of dance now. So he's in a couple dance classes now this spring he's going to be, trying out flag football and doing track.

Alexis: 23:00

Okay.

Kristen: 23:00

This is gonna be our heaviest time ever. But we're gonna try it out because he is getting older and if you listen to my episode about resilience, what he really wanted to do was make the basketball team, and he didn't. So because he'd had kind of all his eggs in that one basket and it didn't work out, we're at a point now where he's kind of trying a couple other things. Like, okay, he's not gonna be a basketball player. What can he. So that's kind of where we do that. And right now everything kind of has worked out. Everything's on specific days, so we still have days that are free, like quiz bowl and dance are both on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So now I think you do limit activities for your kids, right?

Alexis: 23:38

So we, I love that they kind of get two different perspectives because we have a big family. But for the majority of America and people listening, two kids is probably like your average four kids is pushing it. Five kids is a lot of kids.

Kristen: 23:52

Yeah, that's just crazy.

Alexis: 23:53

Hey, I walked in and I got double when I had my twins.

Kristen: 23:57

For four,

Alexis: 23:57

No, really I wanted six, but my pregnancies are not great. So that's a whole nother topic. But, we do, but part of ours, first of all is financially because we've chosen to homeschool, we have typically been a one income family. Now I've done other stuff, but it's not enough to provide that. Our oldest has never wanted to do sports. Like we tried to get him to do basketball and stuff. He never wanted do it, so we didn't really, but then my daughter came along and she wanted to do soccer, and at the time, my twins were like six or seven months, and I just remember trying to cart everybody to soccer and I just, I couldn't do it. I finally had to be like, I can't do this. And my husband had to do it because it was just so much we don't eat out a lot because five kids.

Kristen: 24:44

Right,

Alexis: 24:44

always just trying to keep everything going in that. So we do now kind of limit what they do. They don't have a limit typically on youth group activities. So there's always a lot of youth group activities that, and that takes up Sunday night, Wednesday night. The youngest four do TaeKwonDo. And they probably could do other stuff, but we've also added choir on Thursdays, which is good. That's like their school stuff. It's not, that is more school. It's not an extracurricular activity in my mind.'cause they need, they're doing their music, it's their music credits. So, we have that, but. TaeKwonDo can get to be a lot. I mean, they have been practicing for a tournament and we are all tired because they have had four practices a week and

Kristen: 25:27

that's a lot.

Alexis: 25:28

But here's where my boundary comes in. They can do that. My husband is, as long as my husband's willing to take them and he likes to drive and run, I am not that person. So I don't, in fact, he takes'em to TaeKwonDo practice, but when he can't, we've had many times I take them or if he's busy doing other stuff and I always show up for their belt tests and things like that. So it's not that I'm not there, but we definitely. I personally cannot be gone all the time because I have a home to run. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's my job. And so I have to be here to get my job done. Or you're not gonna have laundry and you're not gonna have like food. And yes, they could do it, but also they have school, which takes up a lot of time and things like that. So yeah, I think, we haven't delved too much into it'cause there hasn't been a lot of other stuff that they wanna try. So I don't know. We're kind of at that. We haven't necessarily made it, but financially probably it would be because everything is so expensive.

Kristen: 26:29

Oh yeah. And then every activity you need cleats, you need jerseys, you need all this stuff.

Alexis: 26:35

I have to say that the reason that we have done TaeKwonDo for years is it's$25 a month per kid for two practices a week. That's like, it just can't be B. It's so good. And I think we pay for some of it with our taxes because it's at a rec center, but honestly, I don't care. But like armor, they all wanted. They've been saving for that themselves. And that's, they had armor available to them through the rec center that they could use, but they all want their own armor. So they have been saving and, but I did spend money on armor this week for their tournament.

Kristen: 27:05

That's fine.

Alexis: 27:06

close to like$400.

Kristen: 27:09

I think this was a good way to bring up,'cause you know, when we first started talking, I was thinking boundaries as kind of like the time bound ones like you talked about, like the eight o'clock bedtime or like I talked about having the my time kind of thing. But I think you're right, there's also the financial boundaries and the child's personal boundaries. Like there's a lot of different boundaries that kind of go into. Functioning in a healthy way so that everybody gets what they need. So I appreciate how we've been able to pull all that out,

Alexis: 27:38

yeah, it's kind of,

Kristen: 27:39

boundaries?

Alexis: 27:39

It's just interesting how the dynamics in each family, like we didn't necessarily think about activities. So I think it's so interesting. Probably in hindsight, I might have, and we might have stopped earlier, but maybe not.

Kristen: 27:54

You wouldn't have.

Alexis: 27:55

I always wanted a lot of kids, so I don't know that we would've, but I think it's funny and there are times I'll be honest, when this past week was crazy, we had dentist appointments, eye appointments, choir, TaeKwonDo at practice and. It was all in one week, plus trying to get school done and everything else. And I said, I don't know what I was thinking, having this many kids, because it's a lot, well, we made it.

Kristen: 28:20

Oh,

Alexis: 28:20

hours in the car and I'm just so done.

Kristen: 28:23

right.

Alexis: 28:24

had eye appointments in the morning and then I was in the car for three hours and I just said, oh, I'm so done. I'm so ready to be home. I also had to recognize the fact that I was just overwhelmed and I needed to figure out how to deal with that. So that's where boundaries can come in, you just get overwhelmed and you have to think about it.

Kristen: 28:42

Well, I think that's when you kind of know where you need to, and I don't, you almost need to tag out and not completely, but just like, Hey, I am realizing that I'm reaching my point and I need to kind of step back and make some time for me. And I think that happens in the professional world or the personal world. There's only so much you have a capacity to take, you know? Mentally and emotionally, and that

Alexis: 29:04

Yeah.

Kristen: 29:04

important for you to take that step back and focus on you before you know you blow up at a kid or something. So I think it's important that you kind of can sense that about you and kind of know where your limits are.

Alexis: 29:18

Yeah, and I think as I've gotten older, I've been able to recognize that more when you're in the thick of it, it is hard to recognize.

Kristen: 29:25

But I do think it's important to make time for yourself. And like I said earlier, I think the mom guilt is still a legit thing. But it's important to know that taking care of you first will help you be a better mom and take care of your kids more. you know, kids are resilient and they don't need to be coddled and it's important for them to have their own space and time and friends and activities and that that's how they're gonna learn and grow. And that sometimes we just need to let go a little bit and let them have that space just as they allow us to have our space.

Alexis: 30:00

There is no way I'm entertaining my kids at this point, and that sounds terrible, but it's true.

Kristen: 30:07

Right. Well, Alexis, in closing, is there any final thought that you would share with our listeners or anything you would wanna challenge people as they go forward looking at how they deal with boundaries and parenting or just being a parent in general?

Alexis: 30:23

Children are such a blessing and it's really okay to take time for yourself so you can be the best parent that you can for them. That doesn't mean you have to spend every waking moment coddling their needs and you know, keeping track of them.

Kristen: 30:42

I would agree. Make the time for you. Make time for them and just find something that works for you and your family. All right, Alexis. Well, I appreciate your time and you know, I'm sure that you'll be back and we'll talk about more things on here again soon.

Alexis: 30:57

Thank you.

Kristen: 31:02

Thanks for spending this time with me. I hope this conversation made you feel a little less alone. Take care of yourself and I'll talk with you soon.