Speaker 1: Apod Shape Production.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Am I A Bad Mom? Podcast?
Speaker 2: It's a question we continuously ask, am I a bad mum?
Speaker 1: Am I a bad mom? Dad? Parent? You know? The
Speaker 1: list goes on. There's so many cars out there. We're
Speaker 1: in this together. We are in this together, in this together.
Speaker 1: It's teamwork. Teamwork makes a dream work. Speaking of teamwork,
Speaker 1: I've solo parented all weekend this weekend, though I did
Speaker 1: feel like Katie I just filled the weekend with way
Speaker 1: too much. I felt a little bit like I've been
Speaker 1: not available for the last few weeks, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, Yep, yes we can, Yes, we'll go to
Speaker 1: the movies, Yes we'll do My God, I'm exhausted. And
Speaker 1: I actually have to take that back. I wasn't sober
Speaker 1: all weekend, I was gonna say, And she was sober
Speaker 1: for the whole weekend. Nah shit. Sunday afternoon, I had
Speaker 1: a cider, just one, just one.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Saturday night, though, I have to confess to this because
Speaker 1: it is what our parenting topic always tends to talk about.
Speaker 1: Was we were sitting at the movies. It was a
Speaker 1: six o'clock movie. We'd had a bite to eat before
Speaker 1: going in, and I was like saving some room for
Speaker 1: popcorn because I love popcorn. And I saw a lady
Speaker 1: walk into. We're just in Vmax, So I don't ever
Speaker 1: think about alcohol. Yeah, I think it's just gold class.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I don't know why. She was right
Speaker 1: in front of us, like rose in front of us,
Speaker 1: and she comes in with one glass of champagne and
Speaker 1: she sits down. I was like, I forgot about that,
Speaker 1: and then I went, no, Rachel, you sitting with your
Speaker 1: kids eating popcorn. You don't even need it. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: She went for three rounds.
Speaker 2: I had to see that three times, and did you
Speaker 2: still sit there just with popcorn?
Speaker 1: I still sat there with popcorn, just to beat myself
Speaker 1: up a little bit more. But I did look at
Speaker 1: it each time ago. That must taste nice.
Speaker 2: Why do we this is the thing. Why do we
Speaker 2: give ourselves such a hard time?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Why was that even a thing? That at you up? Going, No, Rachel,
Speaker 2: just to eat popcorn? You with your kids? Why not?
Speaker 2: Why not with my kids? We live once and bloody
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 1: I think by the third time, Katty, I was like,
Speaker 1: my mouth is like salmating. As I watched her sit
Speaker 1: down happily. Mind you, I don't know how she got home.
Speaker 2: I feel sad about that. I feel so sad about that.
Speaker 2: I feel like I want to pull you one now.
Speaker 2: Am I a bad mum for clam down on sleep?
Speaker 1: Sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So my kids are constantly pushing back, I think
Speaker 2: as everyone's in general, ah about why don't we have
Speaker 2: to get to bed so early? Then we're fifteen now,
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, you're still children. You have to have
Speaker 2: a bedtime. You still have to get up for school,
Speaker 2: you have to have a bedtime, like everyone has to
Speaker 2: sleep so important, it's so important. We were away on
Speaker 2: the weekend, and so it was one of those situations,
Speaker 2: and I know I've spoken about it before, but it's
Speaker 2: a difficult one because they are fifteen, so they can
Speaker 2: do stuff for themselves. However, they're still a bit too
Speaker 2: young to stay overnight on their own and they don't
Speaker 2: want to stay over.
Speaker 1: Say they don't want to either.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a difficult one because you can't have babysitters.
Speaker 2: Like a babysitter isn't the right option. It's more so
Speaker 2: someone to hang out and just sleep in the house
Speaker 2: to make sure you know everyone's.
Speaker 1: Safe, safe Yeah.
Speaker 2: We were away for three nights. I had three different people,
Speaker 2: which is gonna be so much anxiety, you know when
Speaker 2: like because I was away with my husband, and you
Speaker 2: know when with husbands or I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is a male thing or not, but it's like we're
Speaker 2: going away. They book the trip away possibly or even
Speaker 2: just agree to you know those great dates yep, and
Speaker 2: then they go, Yeah, they don't think about all the
Speaker 2: shit that needs to be done before you leave. So
Speaker 2: sorting out where the kids are gonna go, sorting out
Speaker 2: what the kids are gonna eat, making sure there's food
Speaker 2: in the fridge, after school activities they've gone on, making
Speaker 2: sure they're gonna get there okay, and how that's gonna
Speaker 2: work out, even like making sure that the spare bedding
Speaker 2: is clean for the person that is going to sleep overnight,
Speaker 2: the pets have got the food that they need. Like
Speaker 2: I feel like all of that it is yours, it's mine, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it is, because it is. That's all my job.
Speaker 2: So I'd organized three different people because they could only
Speaker 2: do one day at a time. I had a girl
Speaker 2: stay over on on the first night, which was great.
Speaker 2: I had a lady stay over on the second night,
Speaker 2: and then the third night they were going to a
Speaker 2: friend's house for a sleepover, so that was all organized.
Speaker 2: The first night, Billie Eilish's album was dropping at midnight,
Speaker 2: and they are massive Billie Eilish fans, and they said
Speaker 2: to me, Mum, can we please please stay up to midnight?
Speaker 2: They were so excited they were literally counting down to
Speaker 2: when this album was going to drop. I don't know
Speaker 2: why she has to do it at midnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't understand why her audience is young.
Speaker 2: I'm dropping in at midnight.
Speaker 1: I was like, it's not going to change anything from
Speaker 1: midnight also to six am, when you can wake up
Speaker 1: and then download it at the hend, I was like,
Speaker 1: thanks Billy for.
Speaker 2: Nothing, I said, Because they had school the next day.
Speaker 2: My first thought is, no, you can't stay up till
Speaker 2: Midnight's the school night. Blah blah blah. My second thought was,
Speaker 2: you're not even going to be there, so do you care?
Speaker 1: Oh? Not only that you could set the rules, but
Speaker 1: are they going to you know exactly? You say absolutely not. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're not staying up until midnight. You're not there. No,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be ringing you to go.
Speaker 2: Hey, just let you know we're still up because we
Speaker 2: have a r all in our house where devices need
Speaker 2: to come down at a certain time in the evening,
Speaker 2: and then they go on charge downstairs because I want
Speaker 2: of them sat upstairs like on screens. My kids are
Speaker 2: still at the stage where they would literally never go
Speaker 2: to bed, like they would just stay up. They're not
Speaker 2: at the stage where they put themselves to bed because
Speaker 2: they're tired. They're never tired. My kids are still never
Speaker 2: tired in their minds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in their minds until they have the milk down.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they stayed up on the first night and
Speaker 2: I said to them, what time did you stay up to?
Speaker 1: And they said three am. I was like.
Speaker 2: Okay, because not only did they stay up till midnight
Speaker 2: for the album drop, they then listened to the album
Speaker 2: four times before they went to sleep.
Speaker 1: Wonderful Yeah, three am.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, whatever, I'm not there to
Speaker 2: see you bad mood tomorrow. I'm not also not there
Speaker 2: to try and get you up for school in the
Speaker 2: morning after four hours four hours sleep. So I was
Speaker 2: like whatever. Next night, they were so tired. They were
Speaker 2: so tired, and I had called to check in on
Speaker 2: them and Emelia was crying and I said, what's the matter,
Speaker 2: and she was like, Mary, who's the person that was
Speaker 2: coming over to look after them? Mary called and she
Speaker 2: said she's going to beat the horn at eight pm
Speaker 2: outside and she's gonna take us for an ice cream.
Speaker 2: And all I want to do is going to bend.
Speaker 2: I was like, that's really sweet. You can tell her,
Speaker 2: tell her that you really don't know. I don't want
Speaker 2: to make her feel bad. So she's doing the nice thing.
Speaker 2: She's thinking, I'm going to go, you know, stay overnight.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get there at eight pm. That will
Speaker 2: be really nice. I'll take them for an ice cream.
Speaker 1: They were so tired, she was dying inside, going I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm going to make ice cream.
Speaker 2: So they stay up late again that night, and then
Speaker 2: that next night they going for a sleepover, so there's
Speaker 2: no sleep pad. So by the time Sunday night came around,
Speaker 2: we're home. Everything's great, And I say at seven forty five,
Speaker 2: I was like, I think you should brush your teeth
Speaker 2: and think about going to bed. Holly looks at me.
Speaker 2: The backlash that I got from her, We're not babies.
Speaker 2: Why do we have to have a bedtime? It's only
Speaker 2: seven forty five. I was like, it's seven forty five. Now,
Speaker 2: by the time you fucked around and brush your teeth,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be one pm. Yeah, But the amount of
Speaker 2: backlash I got over the bedtime I ended up saying
Speaker 2: to her, I thought I could go one of two
Speaker 2: ways here. I could either do the whole month thing
Speaker 2: of explaining, you know, it's healthy, you need your sleep,
Speaker 2: you've had late nights, you have to have a bedtime,
Speaker 2: you're still a child, blah blah, blah blah blah. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, that's not gonna work. Like she's
Speaker 2: gonna hear that. It's gonna go in one ear out
Speaker 2: the other. Eg she's not gonna understand it. She's not
Speaker 2: gonna give a shit. I thought to myself, the only
Speaker 2: way that she is really going to take this on
Speaker 2: board is if I play on the fact that she's
Speaker 2: still acting like a child and she's not acting older
Speaker 2: than she is. And I said, when you're older, it's
Speaker 2: kite patronizing or anything about it. When you're older and
Speaker 2: you're more mature, you'll understand that if you have late night,
Speaker 2: late night, late night, lack of sleep, Yeah, you need
Speaker 2: to catch up on that, so you'll get it when
Speaker 2: you're older, You're understand when you're a bit more mature,
Speaker 2: you'll understand the need for it. I said, look at
Speaker 2: me on a Monday night. I'm in bed at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2: Why am I in bed at eight o'clock on a
Speaker 2: Monday night? Usually because I've had a big weekend and
Speaker 2: I've stayed up late. Yeah, and I need to catch
Speaker 2: up on my sleep, and that's what happens.
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes you have to do that, like
Speaker 1: reverse it, because if one way that you've been doing
Speaker 1: isn't working, yeah, you clearly need to shake shit up.
Speaker 1: I totally agree with the sleep pattern because imagine if
Speaker 1: you just let them, the repercussions of that is also
Speaker 1: then on you because you've got to pick the pieces up.
Speaker 1: So you've got one. So Amelia she goes into tears,
Speaker 1: Holly's backlash and outburst towards you. It's just tiredness. And
Speaker 1: then old Loves over there just crying because she can't
Speaker 1: cope because that's the way that she manages when she's tired.
Speaker 1: I had the same thing with el so it was
Speaker 1: more around the whole slowly moving into winter, put a
Speaker 1: jumper on and something on your feet because you've slightly
Speaker 1: got a bit of a sniffle. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, darling, if you want to continue pushing
Speaker 1: the envelope on your body in the cold, you're going
Speaker 1: to get a cold. I'm not dealing with that because
Speaker 1: as a parent, we get the repercussions of them being
Speaker 1: run down yep, getting a cold, you know, being too
Speaker 1: fatigued that they can't do their schoolwork. Whatever the list
Speaker 1: is of symptoms that might come off the back of
Speaker 1: very late nights, no backing up of the body. And
Speaker 1: then I'm baddling the cold.
Speaker 2: And why is that such a battle? But why does
Speaker 2: that have to be such a battle?
Speaker 1: Put a juster on because you know cold? Because you
Speaker 1: know nothing, Katie. You know nothing. You have been doing
Speaker 1: this shit for forty years. You know fucking nothing. That
Speaker 1: is why I'm nine and I know everything.