When making purchases for our children, it can be easy to be tempted and hard to stay strong.  This episode discusses some ways to avoid purchases that you’ll later regret!

Transcript:
This is Decoding Learning Differences with Kimberlynn Lavelle. This episode is all about balance, balance word that gets used all the time and means different things to different people. I have one friend who talks about, it's not about balance because nothing can ever be balanced and you don't want it to be balanced. But in her mind, if you balance things, then you're giving the same amount of time,

energy focus to everything. And that, to me, isn't what balance is about. It's about finding where I myself am able to balance and put weight where it needs to be to balance. So I really think about like in yoga, it's not about symmetry when you're balancing necessarily or might be about finding symmetry, but in unsymmetrical ways. So if you're intrigued pose,

both sides of your body are not doing the same thing, but you're able to find balance with little shifts. And if you are familiar with yoga, you might know what I'm talking about. If not picture any yoga posts and you'll figure it out. So some questions for you, some things to think about is the first thing I want you to think about is balancing your energy.

So again, this to me is not about spending an equal amount of energy everywhere, but on what feels right for me, that I giving enough energy to everything that it feels imbalanced for me, for me personally, if I spend up to four hours working on something, I can feel good about the amount of time I spent working. If I spend four hours with my kids,

I can feel really good about the time I've spent with them. If I spend that, I also sometimes have to work longer and sometimes don't get as much time with them, but I can balance it by making sure that when I listen, I am with them. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. This is kind of got more into time than energy.

So if I'm balancing my energy, I'm thinking about the amount of energy that I have available to me and where I need to spend it. I need a certain amount of energy to make it through the day with my kids. And if I stay up late, I won't have enough energy for my kids. And then everyone's miserable. If I don't exercise my body,

I won't have enough energy, even though it takes energy, it also gives energy. So if I don't exercise my body, I won't have enough energy to get through my days. And then if I'm putting too much mental energy or physical energy on something, it can SAP something else. So I have to be careful about my, the energy that I use in trying,

trying to I'm thinking about all these things all at the same time. So if I'm trying to research something, if for the benefit of my family, I be careful that I'm not putting so much energy into that, that I'm not also able to attune to my family. If I'm putting energy into keeping the house clean, I have to make sure that it's not at the cost of depleting my energy to where I can interact with my family.

So it's really just balancing the energy and feeling like how much can I give of my energy to this task and have enough for the things that matter the most to me and not just seeing what's left, right? It's, it's about having that vision of how do I want to spend my energy? Where does my priority, and kind of planning that out first,

instead of just giving what too often, what we do is give what's left to our families. And usually our families are our biggest priority. So we need to act like it. And even if it's, even if we don't have as much time, we want to make sure that we have the energy with them when we're with them. So I kind of jumped to time earlier because it's so connected,

right? But it's not exactly the same. Like I might have to be working for nine hours and it takes a lot of time, but I can be careful that I save enough energy by choosing how I spend my time and making sure that I'm sleeping while eating, while exercising, that when I get with my family, I can give them a lot of energy still.

But I also want to make sure that I'm allocating time in a reasonable way. I, on the, on the phone, the, they have that screen time app or notification or whatever on the apple phone. I don't know what often that's happened, but so every week it tells me what my average for the day was of screen time. And I'm like,

oh no, sometimes I know that it's high because I was using it to do a lot of research and like actually read through things while doing, while I had to be doing something else or in downtime where I couldn't really be doing much else. So sometimes it's basically I'm using it as a book. And then I know, okay, it's okay for me this week,

that it's, that the screen time is high. So I can see where it got used, but sometimes it's high. And I know I was just on my phone. Like, I was just like this app, this app. And I'm like, just entertain me. Right? I'm like looking for entertainment and that's sapping my energy and my time, I'm not focusing my energy on where I want to be with my family.

I'm not focusing. And then I'm wasting the time that I have with them. So, so these definitely go the energy time, definitely go hand in hand. And with that also goes focus. Am I focusing my time and energy where I want to focus my time and energy. I want to focus my time and energy on my family, but do actually do that when I can,

not all the time, I definitely can do better. I'm working on it. This is definitely an episode that is for me and something that I will be listening to again and again, to remind myself my own beliefs, but I hope it also resonates with you. So we've kind of talked about that focus, that time, that energy, and finding a balance for each of those,

making sure that we spend as much time as we want with our families. And also enough time for ourselves that we're taking enough time, energy, and focus on our own personal needs and watch out for those. Those sucks. Definitely the phone is a huge suck of time, energy focus, and it's not helpful. It's not beneficial most of the time.

Okay. Okay. Another aspect of balance that I could do a whole episode on, but I'm throwing it in here is a very, it's a different balance. This balance that I want to talk about is accepting who your child is, is with encouraging and supporting progress. We have to be careful that when we are, that we don't go to any extremes with this,

our children are who they are. They're amazing and perfect. Right? Many of your children may be diagnosed or identified as having a disability. As we've talked about many times, you can see it as a disability. You can also see it as a differently wired brain, or it might be a physical impairment, but it's a different body, right? It's a difference.

And that's why I don't say Decoding Learning disabilities or anything like that. This, this is Decoding Learning Differences, understanding the differences that differently wired brains are not deficient. They're just different. And then we can celebrate those differences. We can accept our children for exactly who they are, love them for exactly who they are, encourage them to be exactly who they are.

But part of that is in loving them and accepting them for who they are as also seeing and supporting them as they progress. So we have to be careful that we don't get afraid to encourage the progress and go, oh, well, if I, if I tell them that they need to do something, then it will seem like I don't accept them for who they are.

We can do both. We can accept them and love them for who they are and encourage them to be who they are to their full potential. Right? We can foster that potential. So it becomes down to a lot of what I've talked about multiple times of finding their interests and supporting their interests to drive their education, finding their strengths and using their strengths to foster and grow their education.

It's about looking for who is my child and how do I help them grow as that Person, not, not based On any set curriculum or homeschooling philosophy or school curriculum, school philosophy, or developmental charts or standards lists or whatever else, or then comparing to the neighbor next door or to their older sibling or to their younger sibling. Right? It's not about any of that.

It's about who is my child right now in this moment? What are their current skills? What skills are we fostering now? What are we working on now? And this can be taking those. My child has dyslexia and cannot read, Okay. I love them. I accept them for who they are. And I'm going to celebrate that differently wired brain and all of the things that it's going to accomplish in life because of the way it's wired.

But I'm also going to recognize that my child will benefit from knowing how to read. And I'm going to support my child in learning how to read through a program that is designed to work with their dyslexic brain and help them to be successful. So I definitely want to encourage you to, to find that balance except who your child is exactly and help them grow.

It's definitely never about, if you don't start breathing, then you're any of that. You're not accepting at that moment. If you're telling them they have to do something, or if they don't do it, then this is going to happen to them. You've stopped accepting, and you started just worrying so much for them and being so stressed out that you're trying to control the thing that's scaring you.

And I get it. We have to go back to accepting and loving who they are and looking at where they can go and how we can support them to get there. And a very loving and supportive way. Anytime that they're feeling stressed from us, I can't believe you can't or if they hear us, if you could hear that he still can't read is 10 years old and he still can't read.

We might, our kid is knowing that we are stressed about it. They're going to feel stressed about it. They're going to start feeling badly about themselves, about it, and then feel that there's something wrong with them. And then if they are 10 years old and can't read, we might want to have that conversation with them about the way that their brain is wired,

that it has prevented them from learning how to read so far, but that there are ways to learn how to read a 10 years old and still be very successful in life. And then finding those that'll work for them. And of course, if you need help with any of that, reach out to me and let me know, and I will support you as much as I can.

Okay. So I want you to really check in with yourself constantly in all of these different ways of balance, check in with yourself and know that you are amazing. Check in with yourself and know, and, and look at how is my energy and how am I spending my energy? How has my focus and how am I spending my focus? How is my time and how am I spending my time?

And remember that those are three separate things that are interconnected, but are not, they're not like exact where if you spend two hours with your kids, you spent, you know, two hours worth of energy with them. And two hours with a focus with them, you can be with them and spend almost no energy and almost no focus. So, and maybe sometimes you need to,

if you were a stay at home, mom or dad, and you were with your kids, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you may need to physically be with them and mentally energetically, be listening to this podcast or your favorite audio book. You may need to balance things that way, because maybe you're spending so much time with them and you don't right now have the ability to not be with them very much,

but also start looking for opportunities to have some time away because you also need time for yourself and for your interests. So demonstrating that healthy balance. So check in with yourself constantly, how am I doing? How is my energy? How is my balance with my husband, focus and time? How am I balancing all of that? Do I feel balanced?

And then also checking in with, how am I feeling about my child right now? Am I accepting them for exactly who they are truly accepting them and celebrating them for exactly who they are. And am I supporting them in a meaningful and beneficial way?<inaudible> This Episode has been pretty deep. So take some time, really think about it. So your takeaway is to balance your time,

your energy, your focus, and also balance your acceptance and encouragement of your kids. And talk to me, email me. I really love hearing from people, email me. What helps you feel balanced? What, what are you feeling right now around your child's education? Do you feel like you're balancing acceptance and support? Do you need support with being able to balance that again?

Email me Kimberlynn@DecodingLearningDifferences.com. I really look forward to hearing from you. I will talk to you again soon.