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The Hidden Cost Of Keeping Kids Busy
5.7k Plays18 days ago
In this episode, Scott and Jess explore the importance of creativity and play - both for children and adults.
From strategies for protecting children’s creative spirits to understanding how play helps kids process their experiences to how they are beginning to rekindle their own sense of playfulness as busy parents, this episode is full of practical strategies and insights into the importance of play and creativity both for kids and adults.
Jess finishes off the episode with a guided mindfulness exercise, offering a moment of calm reflection on finding a balance between productivity and creative expression in today's fast-paced world.
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
We’d love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: [email protected].
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Transcript
Opening Question from Scott
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Robot Unicorn. We are so glad that you are here. As always, let's start the show with a question from Scott.
Child Creativity: A Parent's Pride
00:00:17
Speaker
All right, so we this past weekend noticed something in our oldest daughter. Well, actually in all of our daughters, but specifically our oldest did something kind of fun. I was proud of her for doing it. Okay. She had a whole bunch of things in her new room now that we've moved, had a whole bunch of things laid out and she had a notebook with her and a pen and she said, I want to invent something that nobody else has ever created before.
Sustaining Creativity into Adulthood
00:00:44
Speaker
And out of a bunch of random, like a string, some tape, tea lights, like battery powered ones, and I don't know, a bunch of random beads. And she just spent like, I don't know, a good hour trying to invent things. And she like had ah created a bill of materials in her book and all of the items that she had and how many, and then she started drawing the ways to put them all together to create something new.
00:01:07
Speaker
And we talked about that afterwards, how it's kind of fun and amazing to see how creative she was in that moment. And that's not a one-off thing for her or the other girls. They're all very creative. And that seems like a very childlike thing to be capable of. And as we get older, it seems like that's more challenging.
00:01:28
Speaker
So I guess the first part of my question is how do we help children keep that creativity for as long as possible or into adulthood? And the second part is how can we as adults become more creative? Because I feel like it's easy to get into these almost daily rituals and we don't want to get out of it. And then you sort of feel like every day just flows into the next.
00:01:51
Speaker
and it's the same thing and there's not really any spontaneity.
Reimagining Children's Messes
00:01:55
Speaker
So the second part is how can we as adults as parents be a little more spontaneous when it feels like we're trying to calm the chaos in our homes and trying to create order out of the chaos that our kids create. That was a big question. I think I'm always thinking about creativity because I see it in our kids. For example, when that happened with our daughter, I had just gotten out from putting our youngest down for a nap and then all of a sudden our oldest opens the door to her room and goes,
00:02:25
Speaker
Come in, come in, come in. And she was the one that showed me all the things on her dresser. She's like, look mom, I have four beads and I have three strings and I have one clamshell and I have two pieces of tape or whatever. And she's like, I just want to make an invention no one's ever seen. And I have my design notebook. So let's start, let's start planning it out. And I was the one sitting there with her and I basically just let her take the lead.
00:02:53
Speaker
I was just thinking the whole time, like, man, at what point do we lose this, right? This creativity. And I think that this is something that we can see in children as they get older and we stop giving them so many opportunities for free play.
Free Play vs. Imposed Order
00:03:08
Speaker
Or I was thinking in in a different world where she hadn't explained to me what she was going to do, I could have opened her room and seen all this random stuff on her dresser, right? And knowing me, I could get frustrated and be like, hey, Yeah, what a big mess. Why did you make such a mess on your dresser? Why is there four beads and two strings and two tea lights and a clamshell? This is such a mess. Clean it up. And I think as parents, we can do that so often and like it stifles their creativity because we see it as a mess and they see it as an opportunity for play. And I've been noticing something that I've been trying to do myself so that we can, to answer your question, keep their creativity, is before I clean up a big like a mess, something that I see as a mess, I've been trying to lay on the floor or like get down on my knees and look at it from their perspective and try and imagine if it's a mess or if it's a scene that they set up.
00:04:00
Speaker
Because a lot of the times what looks like a mess is actually like two Barbies over here and a little house over here and something else over here. Yeah, we definitely find that often where we come into an area and it looks like a mess but then all of a sudden if you really look at it, you can see that they've spent time creating ah an entire scene or scenario with their toys that they're playing through. Yeah, there's actually an intention behind it. Yeah. It's not a mess.
00:04:22
Speaker
So I think that when we start to see things from their perspective, it helps us slow down. Can you pause right there? yeah that I feel like seeing things from their perspective, that that sounds kind of, I don't know, that's a nothing statement, like a lot of things. I just feel like you have to explain that a bit more, seeing things from their perspective then.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's what I was just saying, like when you get on their level. For example, when I lay on the floor before cleaning something up and I see that there's a Barbie actually sitting on a chair and a little cow over here and it slows me down to be like, okay, instead of rage cleaning this whole scene up.
00:04:59
Speaker
I can remember that this is actually something
Screen Time and Creativity
00:05:01
Speaker
that they've set up. And a lot of the times when I do, and then I say, are you still playing with this? The kids will be like, yes, I am. And they can still clean it up when they're done. Right. So that's what I mean by seeing it from their perspective, instead of my adult towering over this living room perspective, where I just see it as mess or i just see my, our daughter's dresser. I think the biggest thing is asking them what they're doing with it. Yeah. Because I mean, sometimes they'll leave it there and then yeah, it is a mess, but they might want to come back to it later. There is a fine line between creating a mess that they're not going to clean up ever and creating a mess that they're actually playing in and experiencing and
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think being curious, even with our daughter, when she told me she wanted to invent something that no one's ever seen before, it's like, oh, why? Oh, well, I just i want to create something new and I want to design it myself and giving her the space to do that. As an engineer. Yeah, as an engineer. Well, yeah. And I'm sure that's a piece too. It's like her design notebook. I wonder where that was, where that came from. Yeah. yeah I mean, I have specific notebook. I like the dot matrix books because it allows for you to go outside of the bounds of the lines on a notebook. But like to bring it back to your original question, which is how do we keep their creativity, right? And how do we not stifle it?
00:06:19
Speaker
I think one of the key things that is so easy to stifle and that stops kids from being creative is removing the opportunity for them to have that open-ended play. yeah And it's easy to do that. like It's easy to fill time that would be spent inventing something new with screens, with homework, with going to school. And they do, like they do have to do those things, right? Like they do have to go to school, they do have to do their homework, maybe they're in an extracurricular, but if we're replacing all of their open-ended time with structured time, we can see that they start to lose the ability to be creative.
00:06:56
Speaker
Don't you think it's kind of both extremes though. It's structured time, but I think it's also like passive play where it's, they're just playing in a video game or they're just watching TV or something like that. They're not really, they don't need to use their imagination so much. It's more, I think doing something more passive. I think even in terms of, this is a whole other episode, but the screen time debate that's out there, right? It's screen time, bad or good. A lot of experts will say screen time, maybe it's not bad or good.
00:07:23
Speaker
but is it taking away from their opportunity to
Unstructured Play vs. Extracurriculars
00:07:26
Speaker
play? And I always think about screens for our kids. Like if they have had a day where we haven't really had much on the agenda, we've been home all day, they've been playing, they've been making worlds, they've been doing all the stuff that they should do, and then we want to watch an hour of screens like after lunch or something on a Saturday, and then they go back to play again, then I'm not that worried about screens. But if we're taking away a child's opportunity to play and have open-ended play all day. Every moment. Yeah. And replacing all that time with video games or screens, then it's going to be really challenging for your child and it's going to stifle their creativity. So I think that that's something just as parents that we need to be mindful of. Also just having that time to be lazy and be just at home and feel like they can play. Like I feel like when kids are so busy, which a lot of us are as families right now,
00:08:17
Speaker
that they don't have time to like feel rested enough that they can play, right? If they're at school and then you come home from school and then we race them out to an extracurricular and then we get home and then it's time for bath and bed. Like they just don't have that time built into
Choosing Open-Ended Toys
00:08:31
Speaker
their day. And I think when we never build in time for open-ended play, that can be really challenging for a child because it is how they learn and how they grow. And I feel like that's something that you and I have been very intentional about in our parenting. is seeing play as more important even than putting them in a ton of extracurriculars. And truthfully we don't have that many toys for them either because we also feel like what is it the fallacy of choice? Is that what it's called? I'm not sure. You know how like there was that study where they had a selection of jams at a grocery store and if they had
00:09:07
Speaker
I think it was like three or four people were more likely to choose one and purchase one versus if there was like 19 of them. Oh yes absolutely. Right so the the fewer choices you have the more likely you are to actually use the toys that we have the fewer toys that we have the more likely they are to play with those toys and have this open-ended play and get less bored.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yes. In terms of play, I think parents too can overthink what type of toys that kids have and there's so much selection. Like you go to any big box store and like there's thousands of choice to choose from and they're all more fancy than the next. But even the research on plays says that we want to choose open-ended toys for our kids and the most simple toys usually go the furthest.
00:09:50
Speaker
You mean like the cardboard box the toy comes in? Yes, like the cardboard box the toy comes in or the little car that you buy from the dollar store that has no lights or sounds, right? So even for us, I've even told grandparents and other people who might buy our kids gifts, which could be timely for you if you're, this is before the holiday season that you're listening to this, is that we don't want battery operated toys. Like we don't need toys that light up. That's for multiple reasons for you.
00:10:18
Speaker
That's for multiple reasons, including the overstimulation for me that comes with having a battery operated toy. But also you'll notice that when your child's playing with a battery operated toy, they play with it for a few minutes and then they get bored and they toss it to the side, right? Whereas if you have a toy, like a doll, like a simple doll that has nothing fancy, and that toy can turn into anything and they can play with it for hours and hours. Or you have blocks that can turn into any sort of tower, like Legos or cars.
00:10:47
Speaker
toys that are simple, that don't have a lot of sounds and lights, can really encourage that creativity.
Reflecting on Childhood Play
00:10:52
Speaker
Whereas when we buy them a battery-operated toy that has sounds and lights and songs, it actually takes away from their ability to be creative with it, because the toy is telling them how to play with it. So even that, like I think we over-complicate something as simple as toys, and that can take away from their creativity as well. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Do you remember being creative as a child?
00:11:13
Speaker
Uh, yeah. I can't remember who gave me this gift, but I remember getting, well, a couple things. One, I had Lego, and for whatever reason back then there was like a Lego magazine, which I loved. think It was like a free magazine that you could get. So Lego I played with a lot, and then also I got this bin of army men.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yes. And like it came with helicopters and tanks and whatever and I remember we had a table in our basement and I would set up these huge scenes across the entire table with all the army men like the typical thing with toys like that creating a whole scene and then having one force attack the other. And you probably spent hours doing that. Oh yeah and I would get so upset when it was destroyed. Yeah. And I always think about that, about this generation of children. It's like, when do they have a chance to be lost in play for hours? I will say, when I was old enough and like I had a part-time job as a very young kid, I ended up buying myself a GameCube, like Nintendo GameCube. And then that took up more of my time then. Right. But that was when I was maybe, I don't know, 12 or something like that that I, maybe older. I can't remember. Anyways, that took away from like that open-ended play, I think, for me. Yeah. And I love that even as a child who was living in a home that was maybe unstable, like play was probably an escape for you. Yeah. I'd go outside and my brother and I would have like the little cap guns and we would play army outside. yeah We had a decent size property. So then we would be hiding on each other and going after each other. That it was fun.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, like play, not only is it important for encouraging creativity in children, but it also is an outlet to help them process their experiences, right? So as a child therapist, one thing that I would do with the kids that would come in is that we would do play, right? Like, so I would give them a chance to play. And I was always in the play, they're acting out the experiences that are going on in their real lives. And I've noticed that even with our own child. So if I think back to the pandemic, we had a three-year-old during the pandemic and I remember one time she had this whole scene laid out and it was little Barbies over here, like a gate over here, I don't know, like this whole scene. And I was just listening. And so another tip for parents is if you want to understand your child, listen to them play. Don't interrupt, just listen. So I was listening to her play and in the play it's like,
00:13:25
Speaker
No, and her best friend's name was Bella. No, Bella, you can't touch me. You can't come near me because you're going to get me sick and I'm going to die like that. It was so like, oh my goodness, this is her internal world coming out, right? Like when children play their internal world, everything they're thinking in their head, that comes out. So that's another reason it's so important to allow them to play. And so I see her doing this and I see her like acting out her friend and how they can't touch each other and how they're going to get each other sick. And it helped me understand maybe some of the fears and anxieties that were going on in her life that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to understand if I didn't observe her play. And then you can have that conversation with her afterward.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, and then later I can talk to her and be like, hey, I'm wondering how you're feeling about, you know, being with Bella or what's going on in the world right now. Like let's talk about it, right? And then maybe we color it out together and we talk about it through play. And I think and another thing back to your original question about how to continue to encourage creativity is not interrupting those scenes when that happens. So if your child is lost in play and you don't need to interrupt because you have to go somewhere,
00:14:31
Speaker
leave them. Never interrupt, never be like, hey, what are you playing? What are you doing? If they are lost in play, like that is the best state that they could be in, just step back. But maybe listen and you'll learn something about them. I mean, as a child therapist, like I just always find that fascinating how their internal world comes out through play. Oh, it's even like your hand puppets. Yeah. A lot of these things are kind of mind-blowing to me that they actually work. But like the hand puppets, you can have a full conversation with a child about their day at school, but they wouldn't tell you before if you asked them directly. All of a sudden, as soon as it's imagination land, then they'll actually have a conversation yeah what their thinking will come out.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's so beautiful to see how plays are language. Yeah, if you haven't listened to the episode where we talk about my hand puppets, we can link it in the show notes. It's a little bit cringy, so just ah a warning. But I have these hand puppets. I act out with the girls. We call it Sean based on a character from Bluey, but it's really evolved to this whole family of hand puppets. But if I want to have a conversation with the girls about something and they aren't ready to talk to mom about it, they'll often be ready to talk to Sean. So Sean will come out and start talking to them like, Hey, how was your day? How was the bus ride? How are you feeling about the new house or whatever it is? And they'll talk to Sean because all of a sudden now I'm entering into their world. We're doing it through imagination and it's perfect. The other thing about play. So not only is play important because of creativity, because it's a way to process the events that are going on in their real life. but it also gives them a chance to be a leader and practice leadership skills as well. Like for example, if you have multiple children that are playing at the same time, you'll notice that sometimes let's say one of them, like our kids like to play moms, right? Or moms and dads or whatever.
00:16:14
Speaker
So one of them is the mom and is telling the other kids what to do, right? And so that gives them an opportunity to have some power and some control and to pretend to be like they're in this position of leadership, which is actually great for them in developing their ability to be a leader. So there's a lot of skills that they can even practice through play. And if we don't give them the opportunity to play, then they don't get a chance to practice being a leader or to get that need for control met maybe through play. And I even remember being a kid and playing Barbies with my brothers on the floor for hours and hours and hours, and we'd pretend to be all sorts of characters. You know, you'd be President Barbie, you'd be Mom Barbie, you'd be a doctor, and you'd get a chance to be so
Structured Learning and Creativity
00:16:56
Speaker
many different people. And that's also the beauty of play. And I think that we, as a society, need to see that play is like a right of a child and make sure that we're building that into the day and making that as important Yeah. And specifically you're saying unstructured play. Yeah. I think parents can put so much pressure on their themselves because you see your, your other parent friends putting their kids into all different sports and different things. And those can all be valuable too. But if that takes away from like the one time a child has for unstructured play, then I think we need to look deeply and be like, Hey, when does my child have a chance to have unstructured play? The other thing, sorry, I know I'm like on this whole rant about play. It's like, that was kind of the point of this. Clearly I'm a child therapist. So I'm like, I got, I love play. And I just feel like we don't talk about how important it is enough. The other thing is if your child has a chance for unstructured play and to act out their internal world, we're also going to see less behavior because it's a way for them to process what's going on in their life. right It's their way of processing. They don't sit and go to the therapist and be like, hey, I'm having this in this experience. Or they don't have a friend that they can call up and say, blah, blah, blah is how I'm feeling today. For example, the global pandemic thing, you know, like my child who's three isn't going to say to Bella, hey, it's like really hard for me when I'm not allowed to hug you anymore. But she can say it in play and she can act it out in play. And it's a beautiful way for them to process what they're feeling so that we do see less challenging behavior.
00:18:31
Speaker
Now, to fast forward to your other question. Wait, can we, can we stay on this topic though? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have more. Well, I found it very interesting because that one experience with our oldest trying to come up with her own unique invention just got me interested in the idea of creativity. And so I did a bit of a deep dive into research that's out there and I came across one article in particular from Dr. Kim. The article was called the creativity crisis in the, I think it's the journal of creativity or something like that.
00:19:04
Speaker
which I learned multiple things that that even exists, that journal even exists. But what she noted was that there is a measurable change in students or people's creativity pre-1990s, and then sometime in the 1990s, all of a sudden a decline started to occur.
00:19:24
Speaker
And then since then, it's been a relatively steady decline. Maybe steady is not the right word, but it's been declining ever since. And she has a few different interesting pieces of information. Like she talks about the fourth grade slump where all of a sudden creativity will often peak in early childhood, but then many children experience a decline around the age of nine.
00:19:45
Speaker
which is close to our oldest daughter's age. And then what she's saying is this slump aligns with the shift in schooling towards more structured learning rules and peer conformity. So I feel like part of that is say kids are trying to fit in with their peers. But then also schools are very much about standardized testing and trying to get kids to test well to get into college and university.
00:20:08
Speaker
afterwards So there seems to be a decline happening around that age, like the fourth grade. And there's a lot of different things, but I just found it interesting how there's been a noted decline since sometime in the nineties, but an increase in IQ. So this creativity, I think it's called the, what is it? The torrents tests of creative thinking. It's like the standard for testing creative thinking. It sounds like it's quite open-ended, but they can see a measurable difference since the 90s in people's ability to think outside the box. And now we're more like you pushed in to conform to think, yeah, inside the box, I guess. But we're getting apparently
00:20:48
Speaker
smarter. But if we're smarter and we're losing creativity, I fear for that for our generation of children, because yeah, we we can make them so smart. But if they don't have the ability to be creative and we have things like AI, you know, like I don't want kids to allow AI or technology to do all their thinking for them. yeah right I mean, we we'll talk about creativity in adults because creativity is a huge part of my life as someone who writes yeah for a living. So creativity is a topic that I personally am very interested in, invested in, but something that I've been thinking about and you're going to laugh about how I'm going to phrase this. I think you probably already know. is like the 1990s and up, right? Like you said that there's significant change in creativity from that time. And I keep thinking back to our childhood because we thankfully missed the smartphone generation and the generation of kids who like were really pushed super hard into like extracurriculars. and I didn't have a phone until university. Yeah, same. Like, and my first phone I got in university was a flip phone and like the T9. Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
I didn't even get to think what I had in the Blackberry until like the end of university and that was a big deal. What's the first one I had? Oh, I think it was like a slide up one. Oh, yeah, you had the slider. That was the coolest thing ever. So I didn't have to do T9. Oh, yeah, you had the keyboard. Yeah, no, I had the T9 with the simple flip. That's a whole other podcast on my phone. But I keep thinking to myself, like there is so much wisdom in the way that we grew up. And I think like if I think about There's so much for wisdom. There is wisdom to it. So let me explain what I'm going to say. All right. I just have been like, my brain is stuck. You know how sometimes my brain gets stuck on a topic. I just keep thinking about it. So I have to get this word vomit out, but I keep thinking back to like my childhood, right? So also different childhood than you, because I had a safe and loving home to come to. I get home from school off the bus. We have a snack. And then maybe if there's a little bit of homework to do, we do it.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then we have time to just play. The TV is not on. There's no option for gaming, anything like that. And we just play. And sometimes my mom just sends us outside, right? There's a lot of outdoor time and she says, okay, go play. There's not toys. There's nothing to do. Like, but we make up worlds, my brothers and I. Or we are sent to the basement and in the basement there's some toys, there's some cars and there's some Barbies and you have to just play. And then my mom would have structured time that we watch TV. So in hindsight, this is very wise. While she's making dinner, we get to watch TV.
00:23:17
Speaker
And so it's maybe 40 minutes or something like that. And we get to watch one show. And then it's dinner time. And at dinner, we all sit down together and we have a meal. We share a meal at the same table. Everybody's checked in on. We all talk about it. And dinner's over. We all clean it up together. And then we have to play again until bed.
00:23:36
Speaker
It's so simple, right? You say it and you're like, yeah, okay, that sounds like a basic night in a home. And like we barely did anything at night. Like that's pretty much what we did every single night. And I know that that was such a privilege to be able to be home every single night and like have that type of structure and routine.
00:23:51
Speaker
But I think a lot of why I'm able to be creative now is because I i had so much time for creativity, even into my teens. Like that didn't change yeah when I became a teenager. And when I got older, the play would look different. But I remember often, like we weren't allowed to watch TV until this certain time. Like I think it hit 5.15 or something and we could watch TV. So between 3.30 to 5.15, like we just had to have free time. And I remember I would just like lay on my bed and get bored and be like, hmm, I guess I'll journal. And I have journals still now dating back to when I was they're quite hilarious. And they're really funny. It's like, I hate my brothers are so annoying, like something like that. Yeah. But I had the time to journal, I had the time to write, and I think I developed my ability and my love for writing and creativity at that age. And if all of that was replaced by being on a screen or all these things that it could be replaced like hours of homework, I think I would not have had the chance to learn how to be creative and learn that I even liked that.
00:24:55
Speaker
It sounds like the most simple thing, but I think that these rhythms and these routines that we can put for our kids can be very, very powerful. Notice I didn't say profound. Yeah, but you just did now. I know, but I tried to not. You had to make sure it was inserted somehow. Yes, yes. Well, while you're saying that, I'm just thinking that must be very challenging, though, to determine what is the right level of creativity and, quote unquote, and intelligence, like to become Like the whole point of school is to teach kids the building blocks, like the knowledge to actually be able to do things in society. Maybe it's to be productive if you want to have a negative view on it, like be productive in society or help others in society is maybe the better way to look at it. But how do you determine what the right level of creativity and intelligence is then?
00:25:46
Speaker
Because it seems like they're sort of opposing slightly. And maybe I have the wrong view on that and they're not, but Dr. Kim's, some of her work I was looking into and she suggests there's very little linking creativity and intelligence. They're not hand in hand. No. If you increase someone's IQ, their creativity does not necessarily increase and sometimes it can even yourself decline with an increase in knowledge and intelligence.
Creativity in Adult Life and Burnout
00:26:11
Speaker
Right. So it seems as though you kind of have to choose. And maybe this is like zero, so like I'm thinking it's a zero sum game where like you have to choose one or the other, but you can't have both. Yeah. How do you know what's the right amount of creativity? And cause as adults and maybe it's because that's lost. I feel like there's less room for us to be creative because we have certain expectations of us to whatever work a nine to five and make enough money to afford.
00:26:39
Speaker
house and the bills and extracurriculars for the kids. and Yeah, we can't say creativity is the only thing that's important. You have to have some sort of intelligence in order to like work and make a living, and but also creativity can also help you work and make a living, right? so But if you're only creative and not intelligent, does that mean that you can't? I don't know. I'll just say what I think. This is not based on any certain fact, but What I think is like, if we send our kids to school all day and they're learning at school, right? That's the structure. That's the structure. Right. So I do think that that's important. They have to learn these things. So I think that they have that, but I think what can be the problem is then if they get home and we just are like, keep learning, keep learning, keep learning. yeah And their brain never has a chance to just rest and process their day and have that creative time. I think that's when you can really stifle and pretty much push the creativity out of a child. I kind of get that because even thinking about like this past month, I've spent a lot of my time outside of work scheduling and figuring things out for moving to our new house. It's felt very exhausting not having any break whatsoever. And you are actually a creative person who likes to have your creative outlets. Yeah. And I have not had time to do that for at least a month, maybe maybe a month and a half.
00:27:54
Speaker
I was thinking that actually on my drive in today. It's like, when's the last time Scott's had time for like play, you know, like creativity. Yeah. Cause like playing, let's say Mario Kart with our oldest is not, that's fun because I get to hang out with her and I get to do that together with her and we get, have laughs and I enjoy that. But I feel like there's always a part of me that wants to build something, to create something, to 3d print, to design.
00:28:18
Speaker
And I wonder if I think about all the times in your life when you have been in the worst mood or you've been the most tired, it's when you don't have your outlets for creativity. Well, yeah. But do you think that's, I'm feeling that way because I'm not doing those things or because I don't have enough time. So my days, it's all joined together. Yeah. I think it's like a chicken and egg situation where it's actually because they don't have any time, but I can't do those creative. So it's like amplifying because of both.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yeah. You don't have enough time. So you're not doing your creative things and then you're not doing your creative things. And it's just making you feel exhausted because you don't have those outlets and it just becomes this cycle of frustration. And the reason I like doing those things is because it takes my mind off of. all of the things that I've been working on in that day. And it's allowing me to think about something totally different. And then I'll randomly have a thought that I'll come to you excited about some idea for work, about how we can improve something or do this new thing. But I don't think I have that as often if I'm busy and don't have that space to just kind of zone out and do that design, that 3D printing stuff.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah. I think the times of your life when you've been the most stressed out, that will be an outlet that's helpful for you. But to get back to doing that outlet, it's hard. And I actually think. Well, I even notice I take notes on my phone. I noticed that the past like two months I've had, I have fewer notes too. Cause that's how I, I just have an inbox in my, on my phone where I write down things that I'm thinking about and just put it in there and then I'll organize it later. But I've had almost nothing the past month and a half.
00:29:54
Speaker
I remember a therapist once saying that to me. I was really burnt out by something. I've had multiple periods of burnout in my life. And they said, Jess, what's the last time you just played? I'm like, what do you mean, play? Like I'm an adult. And they were like, well, what did you enjoy about play as a child? Right? What kind of things did you like to do? So I shared with the therapist. I liked to write. I liked to journal. I liked to swim. I liked to be outside. I liked to kind of make up my own stories in my own world.
00:30:25
Speaker
Okay, well, when's the last time you did that? I have no idea. And this was in parenthood already when I had this therapist appointment. And she said, if you want to get out of your burnout, you need to make room for play. And I was like, I don't know how the heck I'm supposed to make room for play. But it was true. And through Nurtured First, I write a lot.
00:30:46
Speaker
I love that. That's one of my favorite things to do is to write. But it was starting to feel like a chore, like I had to write. And it was because it was just another thing on my to-do list yeah and my days were so full of meetings and all this stuff that was draining me that now the one thing that I enjoyed was becoming something I didn't want to do. And it was showing, right? Like my writing wasn't as good. And I learned that I have to have those spaces for myself to play and whatever that looks like now. And that was really healing to me to get out of burnout. Was it even play though? Or is it more just not having the crushing weight of responsibility? All of these responsibilities and having no real time to do that writing because, oh, I should actually be doing this first because this person needs me to meet with them about this. Yeah.
00:31:32
Speaker
I have to meet with this person about this other thing. and I mean, yeah, it was multifaceted, I think. yeah But yes, I had in that period of burnout, which was like basically last year at this time, that was probably the worst burnout I've ever
Creative Outlets as Self-Care
00:31:44
Speaker
experienced. yeah And I think it was also, yeah, the crushing weight of everybody needing me all the time and never Like I literally felt like I could visualize, like I was stretched so thin, I had nothing left. But the idea of bringing in some things that I enjoyed that were just fun. So now like I even will do things that are just fun. Yeah, that's true. Not for the sake of work or for the sake of doing something productive. And I think you and I, outside of this move and the last month, you have not been so good at that. But we've been- It's just a season. It's just a season. But we've been finding ways to have fun, right? What's something fun that you've done recently?
00:32:20
Speaker
that I've done recently. Yeah. Do you have something in mind that I'm supposed to say? I was thinking about when we went to the concert. Oh yeah. That was a fun night. That was fun. Scott and I went to a concert and we went out with friends. We had dinner before. Yeah. You had a meeting earlier in the day. So we went to Toronto and you had some time in the, at the beginning of the day that you had a meeting and then I just kind of wandered around. Yeah, you wandered around. Ended up in this like very old school looking Irish pub and I don't know, it was kind of fun. It was cool.
00:32:49
Speaker
Yeah. And then I feel like then we went out with our friends and we had some really good laughs. Then we went to the concert and I know for me, I love to go to concerts. I love to dance at the concert. So just kind of, I don't remember the last, what did we go to last?
00:33:03
Speaker
I don't know the last concert you went to. We used to. So again, we used to. We used to go to concerts back when we were younger and more carefree. When we were young. Who back? Back in the good old days when we were young. No responsibilities. But that was a fun night where I think we got home, we were like, man, we just laughed. We just had fun. And it was not productive.
00:33:24
Speaker
in terms of work and I feel like as adults it's like how can we find those tiny opportunities to like have fun again. It doesn't have to be going to a concert but maybe for you it's like when you 3D print like I think you have fun. That definitely is. Even honestly it's just finding random things that there's like an issue with the handle in the house so then I take the handle and I design something to cover over the whole like get a nice cover for it and everything.
00:33:49
Speaker
Like we did that at the place we were renting and it was just, I don't know, it's so satisfying to fix these little problems with and come up with my own solutions to them. It's kind of the same thing though, that we were just talking about with kids where if we put them in so much extracurriculars and things that then they don't have room to be creative and play, it's the exact same thing for us as adults, right? Like we put so much on our plates. Sometimes you have to seasons, like we were just saying that we don't have room to be creative and play. And that comes out in our behavior and our mood and our burnout and all of that kind of stuff as well. And so sometimes it's like, okay, actually we put play as like, a bottom priority for us as parents and as adults, but maybe it needs to be a little bit further up in the list of priorities so that we can have the energy to do all these other things that are important to us. I will say until this morning, I've had very little energy. And now all of a sudden this morning, it was a little bit better. But I mean, yeah, it's a month and a half. And basically my dad and I moved pretty much our entire house on our own to our new place. Yeah. Scott's been a busy boy.
00:34:55
Speaker
So it's probably physical and mental tiredness trying to get that all set up and yeah you know, you've been carrying the mental load to moving and all of that stuff. And the kids haven't been sleeping and just physical load of actually moving stuff. Yeah, we have some heavy things. Uh, yeah. So maybe you can start to find some room for play again and even making that a priority. I did say to you, I will know that we feel pretty moved in the first time I 3D print something. I know. And I think this weekend probably will be the first time that I do it. And I think knowing that about yourself shows how much you've learned about yourself too, right? Like I think there are seasons of our lives where we didn't realize how important having that downtime was to us. And we'd wonder why we felt so drained or burned out. But I think as we've learned more about ourselves, we've realized that having our own play, you know, quote unquote, whatever that looks like for you actually is really important to help us function and not
Mindfulness and Creativity
00:35:52
Speaker
get burned out. You know what I find for me, and I think I can say this for both of us, when we are tired and ah mentally drained, our first thought is to turn on the TV and start watching a show or a movie or something like that. I want to numb out rot, as I sometimes say. Yeah, rot. Yeah.
00:36:11
Speaker
But I will say the times that we decide, you know what, let's turn off the TV or read a book or something like that when we're feeling that drained. I'll be at quarter after eight. Wow, I'm exhausted right now. I should really just go to bed. And by 8 30 sometimes I'm going to bed. And I feel like the TV is often it's on and then you don't actually realize how tired you truly are. It's a crutch for us too, as much as it is for our kids.
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, so it's all of a sudden I'm like, i I'm laying there. We're sitting there watching the TV and it'll be like 10.30 and I'll think, wow, I was already exhausted at eight o'clock and I lasted until 10.30. Maybe I should have actually just gone to bed at 8.30 instead and and tried to get a couple extra hours so that tomorrow I feel more energetic and ready for the day. Because I feel like most of the time, like we're both quite energetic.
00:37:01
Speaker
We're both early risers. We go to bed relatively early, but then sometimes when we're most exhausted, we end up watching TV and then we go to bed later. We feel our own exhaustion. We go to bed later then, but that's not necessarily helping us. And I just think that also comes at the expense of our creative thinking and ability to imagine things. Because for our work, we have to be creative. Yeah. And I wanted to talk about that too, right? Like you and I both have to be creative because, well, as you can see, if you listen to this podcast or you follow Nurtured First, like a lot of the content we do is creative and it involves thinking, like even this podcast, we have to really think about the episodes before we come here. And like, I know we jokes. Yeah, we tried winging some of them, but. I know we joke sometimes like, oh, I don't know what the episode's on. But Scott and I, yes, we don't have the conversation before, but we both have to have time and space to think about what we're going to say. And the same for the posts that I do. Like those are in the moment. Like I don't, I don't know if people know that, but most of the time when I am writing that post, I am laying on the couch in the dark trying to think. And that is why the posts are as good as they are a lot of the times because I have that creative space to think. And for me, just so there's something practical for people listening and maybe you won't find this practical, so I'll see what you say. But I, every day I wake up and I set one small promise to myself of a way that I am going to take care of myself or nurture myself or give myself space for play that day. And I do my very, very best to keep that promise.
00:38:32
Speaker
And sometimes the promise is very simple. It's like tonight I'm going to leave my phone in the bedroom and I'm going to have a cup of tea before I start working again. And I'm just going to sit for 30 minutes and have my cup of tea and just give myself a break from being on my phone because often I'll work all day, put the kids to bed, and then I'll work for a couple hours at night. So sometimes it's that simple. Other times, like last night, my promise to myself is I was going to go to yoga. I find yoga for me is very restful. It's a lot of mindfulness. It gives me a lot of space for thinking. So that was my promise to myself last night. It was maybe a bit of a bigger promise, but the house was chaotic. Everything was, it was a bit of a disaster. It sure was. We turned it around, but it was a bit of a rough night. That could be a whole other episode.
00:39:16
Speaker
I had told Scott earlier in the day, like, Hey, is it okay with you? Like if I do my yoga class tonight at eight, we had agreed to it at seven. I was like, Oh my goodness. Like I really don't feel like going, you know, you seem to be looking for excuses to stay home last night. Yeah. And I could have easily been like, I'm not going to do it. But I had made the promise to myself, just keep the promises you make to yourself. So I went and I felt so much better after we were better after it was a good break for everybody. So my encouragement would be to parents. It's like, try and keep those little promises that you make to yourself and make them realistic. Like don't promise yourself you're going to do yoga seven times a week because you probably won't keep that promise. But if you make little promises to yourself, that can be really healing too and a way to take care of yourself and your inner child as well. What do you think about that?
00:40:07
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. Well, this is sort of related, sort of tangential from the conversation, but I was, I've been thinking recently that I kind of want to get back on the mindfulness practice train because I feel like that would be helpful for me. You know me. I get distracted very easily with what's that called a monkey mind or something? Mindfulness wouldn't hurt you.
00:40:28
Speaker
I'll be working on something and then be like, oh, that reminds me of this thing. And then I'll have like this web of different ideas that are all kind
Modern Distractions and Mindfulness
00:40:37
Speaker
of related. And but sometimes I just need to bring it all back and calm my mind a little bit. So I was thinking that maybe that's a promise I should give myself outside of like the 3d printing and design stuff, maybe just doing five to 10 minutes of that every day.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, just a little promise like that, right? Like maybe you. It's not the worst idea. You do what I do. So when I am putting the kids to bed, often what I'll do is like, I'll go then sit on our bed for five minutes, just in the dark and silence, just to give myself some time with my thoughts.
00:41:07
Speaker
I guarantee you I would fall asleep. Yeah, you would fall asleep. So maybe not there. Maybe you find the chair in the house and you put in your earphones and you just do like five minutes of mindfulness or something like that. Some sort of like small promise to yourself as a way to take care of yourself so that you can feel good for the rest of the night. And maybe we should think about creating a mindfulness app for parents.
00:41:28
Speaker
I would love that. Do you all want to listen to my voice on a mindfulness app? We actually have not created this, just saying, like, this is not like a soft launch. We've talked about it for a long time. We have talked about it, but this is not a soft launch for some app. We also know that we would benefit from it, so. Yeah. I would love that. I'm like, I'm very into, into that type of thing. Maybe it's like mindfulness.
00:41:48
Speaker
Remember when you did mindfulness with our oldest when she was struggling to sleep? That was really beautiful. Yeah, I made it up myself in the moment and helped her and she had a terrible cough and couldn't fall asleep. So then what I would do is for, I don't know, almost a week, every night she'd ask me, dad, can you, can you do that mindfulness thing again? Yeah. I'm like, sure. Okay. And then I would, with a really gentle voice would guide her through feeling the sensation from her toes all the way up to the top of her head and then focus on her breathing. And like, it would take 15, 20 minutes each time. Yeah. And by the end, she's breathing heavily and asleep beside me. Yeah, just to bring it back to play. But that's another way play can be so helpful when you have that open-ended time and you're not distracted by anything. Like again, with us watching TV at night, it's like we're distracted from the fact that we're tired, right? And it makes us stay up later and we're not actually taking care of ourselves. And when our kids are able to just play or were able to play with without the distractions, we can actually tune in with our body and be like, oh,
00:42:48
Speaker
I'm really clenching my jaw right now or my shoulders are like up and they're tense. And we can only notice that when we have time for that openness or we're not doing anything. And so it really can actually help us get to a more rested and less stressed out state as well.
00:43:06
Speaker
The only thing I will say is that I think it's a little easy for us to talk about this now that we're out of the infant and baby stage now that our kids absolutely sleep relatively well at night. Not always, but for the most part, they sleep pretty well at night. We're not in the thick of it. Our youngest is two and a half. yeah It's a little bit, I would say, a little bit easy for us to say this now because we don't have an infant at home.
00:43:31
Speaker
I will say even in terms of the like mindfulness and bringing myself back to like being rested, even when I had an infant, I would try and use some of these tools. So like I would do something I call the 54321, but basically like five things that you can see, four things that you can hear, three things that you can touch, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste.
00:43:53
Speaker
And even if I was holding my baby and I noticed that my thoughts were racing and things were kind of getting out of control, I would try to bring myself back to my senses. So I would go through those things. And I would also still do a lot of mindfulness, but even while I just had the kids with me. So, I mean, mindfulness is a whole other episode that's outside of play, but I think they are connected.
00:44:14
Speaker
But there are certain things that you can do like that, like just trying to bring yourself back to the present that you can do even while your kids are there, just to bring your body back to more of that rested state. It's much harder when you have a baby who's screaming at you, but trying to just center yourself and bring yourself back into your body. It's like we talked about a lot of these things that distract us, that make us busy. They take us out of our body and we don't even realize that we've been clenching our jaw all day or tensing our shoulders all day. So that can be helpful too.
00:44:43
Speaker
I'm just thinking about there's so many things now and maybe it's always been the case but it feels like more and more the world is well I'm sure this is a fact but anecdotally it seems like the world is trying to do everything it can to distract us which is incredibly challenging because if everything's trying to distract us like it's on us as individuals to get out of that state of distraction Yeah, we're trying to be distracted and it's hard to think. Like I remember in like my biggest state of burnout be like, I'm supposed to think and I don't even know how to think cause I'm too busy to think. And it brings us out of awareness of our bodies. We stop realizing even food, like I was talking about the wisdom of childhood and how we would like sit down as a family and eat dinner together. And now like, if you're eating dinner, always in front of a screen or in front of the TV, like,
00:45:33
Speaker
we even lose the ability to like notice the way food makes us feel or tastes or comes from because everything's fast and we're busy all the time. And I think that we're just doing such a disservice to ourselves and our own bodies and to our children when we can never just slow down and do something without
Mindfulness Exercise
00:45:51
Speaker
a screen there. and And we talked a lot about screens. I don't think screens are the worst thing at all, but I think if they're always replacing being present and in the moment, then they're just a giant distraction from how we truly think and feel. And I would hate to see like some of the most beautiful things that have ever been creative have been done by these creative minds. And I would hate to see that we lose that because we're too distracted to ever like tune in.
00:46:16
Speaker
Should we end this podcast on like a little impromptu mindfulness? I kind of want to do one. You go right ahead. Okay. Okay. This is gonna, we'll see. I'm winging this really based on nothing. Okay. All right. Wherever you are, just take a deep breath in all the way through your nose. See if you can bring in just a little bit more air.
00:46:41
Speaker
the biggest breath you've taken all day. And now I want you to release that breath through your mouth. All right, let's do it one more time. Take a big breath in through your nose. See if you can take a little bit more of a sip of air and now release it through your mouth. Now I just want you to notice if you're carrying any tension in your shoulders, see if you can relax your shoulders a little bit.
00:47:13
Speaker
See if you can unclench your jaw. See if you can notice your surroundings. What's one thing that you can see?
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:47:24
Speaker
One thing you can hear? One thing you can touch? One thing you can smell? Is there anything that you can taste? All right, one more big breath.
00:47:43
Speaker
Okay. Well, I hope that helped you end this podcast episode. It's got smiling at me in the corner as I'm doing this mindfulness smirking smirking. One thing that many of you have mentioned is that when I talk about my gifts or the wisdom or the mindfulness and you have, sometimes you can access that in your most difficult moments.
00:48:07
Speaker
And sometimes you try and access the tools that I'm giving you. And when it doesn't work, you just have Scott's voice, Scott's laughter in your head. And then sometimes Scott's laughter will be enough to kind of bring you back to his center. So I had ah a mom message me because on one episode I was saying how I try and think of things that the kids do as a gift.
00:48:26
Speaker
And I had a mom message me saying, I tried to think of it as a gift and then I couldn't, but I did remember Scott making fun of you and laughing about how you thought cleaning off the carpet was a gift. And then I just laughed and that brought me back to a state of being happy. So I like that. Perfect. At least one of our perspectives helped, you know? Anyway, thank you for joining us today. Take a deep breath, tune in with yourself and go play.
00:48:55
Speaker
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We are glad that you are here. If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review. Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all. A five star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there. Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next time.