Exploring Boundary Settings and Women's Emotions with Malissa Crook

James Moffitt (00:01.248)
Hello and welcome to ABC's of Parenting Adult Children. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today we have Melissa Crook. She's our guest. How are you doing, Melissa?

Melissa Crook (00:14.444)
Good, James, how are you?

James Moffitt (00:16.794)
good. Good. Beautiful day here in South Carolina. So Melissa, do me a favor and introduce yourself to the listening audience.

Melissa Crook (00:20.334)
Very nice.

Melissa Crook (00:25.602)
Yeah, my name's Melissa Crook and I live in Fresno, California currently. Mom of three grown adult daughters, one married, one close to being engaged and one that just finished college. So we are fully empty nested. My husband Brady and I have been married for almost 32 years and I am just very passionate about women knowing their value.

at all the seasons in their lives and prioritizing their wellness and their care. And this is really important if you are a mom, if you're a career person, if you have both, if you're a partner, caretaker, all these seasons in places that we live in in our lives. And so I have a podcast called The Feel Podcast. I have a YouTube show with panels of women called Together We Feel. And we also have a book called Embracing Layers Unapologetically where

The framework that we use in our content is in book form and under the umbrella of the Embracing Layers Network. And I just want to connect with other women and have these conversations and share these resources so we can support each other in being the best versions of ourselves that we were created and designed to be.

James Moffitt (01:39.222)
Right. That sounds awesome. So, um, ABC is a parenting adult children. We have parents, um, with, uh, pre-teens, teenagers. So I think the Gambit runs between 12 and 40, uh, pretty much. And so, uh, uh, we have, um, our listening audience is primarily women. Uh, I want to say a good, probably 75 to 80 % of the listening audience are women.

Melissa Crook (01:52.536)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (02:00.91)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (02:07.976)
And the rest of them will be men, from, you know, United States primarily. And other, we have like 10 or 12 other countries that have a smidgen of exposure.

So,

on your profile it says, could explore the intersection of boundary setting and women's emotional intelligence with a focus on how learning these practices can aid parents of adult children in understanding and navigating their own emotional journey. So we have a private parenting support group on Facebook. We started it back in 2015. We started out with like 10 members. We had two teenagers at that time living in home.

Melissa Crook (02:39.726)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (02:54.71)
And, uh, today we have like 1.3 thousand members. And so I started this, I started this podcast in May of 2023 in hopes that it could augment or support, uh, the Facebook, um, support group. don't, I don't know if any of those people even listen to any of these podcast episodes, but it's my hope that while they're draft, you know, everybody loves to listen to podcasts and it, and when people are driving back and forth,

Melissa Crook (03:21.71)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (03:23.714)
to work or driving their kiddos to their different events or whatever. I wanted them to have something that they could tune into on Spotify or, or Apple podcast or iHeartRadio or wherever else that the, you know, the hosting providers are. So, so boundaries is a huge topic. Failure launch is a huge topic. Supporting moms who, who are

Melissa Crook (03:39.288)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (03:49.61)
Probably the primary caregiver in the relationship, in the home. Moms are more the emotional, nurturing, coddling type of personality. Moms and dads have different roles. And dads love their children too. And they are more geared towards preparing the child to face the real world, right? And to equip them with

what tools that they're going to need to be successful. Communication tools and things of that nature. Enforcing boundaries and other things, obviously. So I can speak to the dad's side of the house, but I'm not so much geared towards the mom's side of the house, which is why you're here.

Melissa Crook (04:39.374)
Well, great. Well, I appreciate being here. I think for me, this was a space I had to learn and grow in. would say, you know, I'm 55 years old now, grew up in the 70s and 80s, and there was not discussions about boundaries and emotional intelligence going on in that season of life.

James Moffitt (05:00.918)
Nope. Nope. Nope.

Melissa Crook (05:04.108)
No, it just wasn't happening. So it was a little bit of a free for all and you were really left to kind of figure it out as you went along on your own. And so that ended up being my husband and I's journey as we were figuring out, these are the things we did not enjoy so much about our, know, when we were growing up, these are the things we think worked well between the two of us and we're gonna take those and start there. And what I learned was that,

through some hard knocks. And some of these things I didn't learn until our kids were well into teenagers and even into college was the importance of the balance of listening so that they felt seen, known and heard while also being a parent and requiring accountability and allowing space to be heard. also, okay, there's going to be, can't, you know, not going into save and rescue because I think some, there was a shift in parenting in the nineties and early two thousands where we went from

probably not enough, you know, probably over heavy-handed to under heavy-handed. And it's like, okay, we gotta have a balance here. Kids want to know that you care and that, whether they understand it or not, they want some boundaries. They want some acknowledgement expectations. It makes them feel like there's safety and there's a space for them to exist in. And so we had to figure that out along the way. And we figured out as we went along,

James Moffitt (06:09.867)
Right.

Melissa Crook (06:33.716)
that it was both important to listen really well and also give feedback and find that balance of yes, I hear you and understand you also within this, there's some things you just don't know about life yet. And so I'm gonna say yes or no to this based on I know what's coming. so, but if I found that we had a lot more success.

with that, then just say, no, I'm the parent and I said so, and you can't. And then that, if you felt like you created a space for their emotions, their space, and sometimes you'll learn to something, you got some insight, but it also created a space of safety of like, mom and dad love me. Regardless of what happens, I can come to them no matter what I do, not that they'll be happy about it.

but I can trust them and it feels safe. so creating that environment, and like I said, we had to learn this as we went on. I would say early on, was more of the, I'm the mom and I said so, because that's what I heard growing up. Whereas I grew into understanding over time that listening to them and that they had feelings and emotions too. And they had...

James Moffitt (07:42.185)
yeah.

Melissa Crook (07:51.47)
thoughts and it get, know, so opening that door, but it was something I learned. even as they got into young adults, my oldest daughter was the first one to officially introduce the word boundaries to us through an internship that she did through her FCA volleyball internship, fellowship of Christian athletes, internship that she did one summer where they talked a lot about, healthy boundaries and communicating your expectations and showing up.

well in your relationships by taking care of yourself first, filling your cups that you had energy to give to those spaces of relationships. And she brought that home to us and she explained how she really wanted us to think about the ways we communicated with each other because I'm very opinionated and passionate about what I believe. And I didn't have a barometer and grew up in a very emotionally volatile household with lots of screaming and yelling and loud.

and you just kept screaming and yelling until you felt like somebody heard you, realizing, no, everyone's just screaming and yelling over each other and nobody's listening to anybody. And also realizing that from an emotional standpoint, you get to a point where you shut down and you're not communicating effectively anymore. And so we had this conversation and it sounded really good until it got tested one day when her and I were having a conversation, I was getting more animated and she's like, I'm gonna...

I'm gonna put a stop to this conversation right now. And I'm gonna ask that we come back to it tomorrow when we've both had time to settle. And I'm like, I'm the mom and I'm not ready to stop. And we're gonna keep having this conversation. And she's like, no, we're not. And that was like, that's what she means. And so I had to really step back, take off the defensiveness and really learn to live in this arena of...

We did the best we could. And also there's some things that we did that weren't very healthy that we can now do better. And we've got the opportunity now to do that, to continue to learn even as parents of teenagers and young adults, we can still learn, we can still evolve and grow. And this is also gonna open the door for us to have healthier relationships with our adult children instead of them like.

Melissa Crook (10:09.358)
I'm gonna have to have some space with you because you are not willing and able to communicate with me in a healthy way versus, okay, I see some lessons we could learn here. So that was a big piece of it. I will tell you, my husband and I are not your traditional. He's definitely the, and he grew up in a household that prepared him better for this, but he's much more willing to sit down and listen.

I'm more of a let's get up and do and go. He's more patient. He's a little more diplomatic. And so we had to really like balance those roles of, you know, how we showed up and the temperaments of our three daughters, because that's the other thing that's, you know, different temperaments and different tools are necessary with your kids as they're growing up. But that also is the same as adult children. I think as they transitioned into adults, I thought

their communication would just be the same. Now they're adults, it'll be the same. No, they're still, they're unique individuals. So I don't know if that completely answers your question, but that was really the things that we learned about both boundaries and emotional agility as we learned to continue to grow as parents.

James Moffitt (11:16.979)
Okay.

James Moffitt (11:26.836)
We just unpacked a whole bunch of stuff there and that's good.

Melissa Crook (11:28.974)
I'm

James Moffitt (11:31.924)
Well, if you think about boundaries, boundaries are kind of like, I don't know, geotagging, like a fence, right? We build fences or we geotag areas like businesses out in the world. They have geotagging now. It's all part of this GIS technology. And so...

Melissa Crook (11:39.798)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (11:56.63)
when you put up a fence or you create a, when you tag a, I'm looking for something other than boundary, but you're setting limits, right? You're setting a limit. saying it's not necessarily on or off. It's not necessarily yes or no. There may be some gray area, maybe a little bit of thought process and thinking and.

Melissa Crook (12:07.661)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (12:24.59)
And, and so your, your kids come to you, teenagers, teenagers are coming into their own and they're, they're transitioning from the teenage years and becoming an adults. And so they're, they're going to be more likely to give you pushback, especially if you tell them, Hey, I'm your dad. I said so. And so, you know, don't do as you don't do as I say, do as I don't do as I do do as I say. Right. And so I was, I was raised in the seventies and eighties and that's what I heard.

Melissa Crook (12:39.79)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Crook (12:48.93)
Yeah, he accepts.

Melissa Crook (12:53.486)
Hmm?

James Moffitt (12:54.326)
But the nice thing about moms and dads transitioning themselves as caregivers, as parents, when our teenagers are teenagers, we're still in the authoritative parent-child relationship. When the teenagers transition into the adult stage, 18 to 26, well, you're no longer

Melissa Crook (13:06.392)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (13:23.026)
an authoritarian figure in their life, even though they're living under your roof and you're still feeding them and putting a roof over their head and all this other stuff. Now you're a mentor. Now you're a support system. Right. And they, have, they hopefully between birth and 18 or 20 years of age, you've had enough time to implement your morals, your belief system. and you've been able to train them, in, know,

mentally, physically, psychologically, emotionally, all of those things that, come into play when we're raising our kids. Right. And so, so the, the, the nice thing, about, setting boundaries when they're teenagers, the nice thing about, the, the enhanced version, you know, the, like you said, the 1999 to 2010 enhanced version of setting boundaries is, okay, this is a boundary that I need to set.

Melissa Crook (13:58.477)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (14:20.106)
And you may not even use the word boundary. You may just go, Hey, I expect you to be at home by nine o'clock in the evening. And I need you the doors. You know, I told my kids when, when they were, you know, almost adults, they're, you know, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 years age, still living with us. said, your mother and I go to bed at 11 o'clock at night because we have to be at work at eight in the morning. And so I locked the doors. I turn on the alarm. And if you're not here.

Melissa Crook (14:22.221)
Yeah!

Melissa Crook (14:27.352)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Crook (14:43.726)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (14:48.564)
by 11 o'clock PM, just understand you're spending the night with your friends. You're to be sleeping on a couch somewhere because I don't want you, you know, I just, I don't want you setting off the alarm, scaring me. I don't want to be grabbing a gun. You know, I don't want to take a chance of, you know, harming one of my loved ones, you know, so just, just know that when the door is locked, you're on your own. And, and so, so we lay these.

Melissa Crook (15:08.675)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (15:17.076)
boundaries out and we explain our expectations. That's another good word. Instead of boundaries, you can say expectations. And so if you explain your expectation, if you explain the reason why, and you don't always have time to do that, if you have family time, if you eat supper at the dinner table, that's a wonderful time for people to go around the room and talk about their day and talk about what happened, the good stuff, the bad stuff.

Melissa Crook (15:22.989)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (15:46.09)
You know, and you can talk about expectations at the dinner table or whatever. everybody should find a comfortable time to do that. And that shouldn't be happening while you're screaming at each other on the way to the soccer field. Right. So, so it's, think it's, I think it's a, it's a, it's a

Melissa Crook (15:55.971)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (16:01.038)
Exactly.

James Moffitt (16:10.166)
it's an enhanced way of getting across what the healthy boundaries are and why and why it applies to them, why it applies to you. And, the bottom line is we want everybody to be safe. want everybody to be as happy as possible. Right. And we also want to teach our, our children the reality of things. Right. We, we can't always just be happy. Right. And if they want, if they want, or if they have an unreasonable expectation for

Melissa Crook (16:26.104)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Crook (16:32.13)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Moffitt (16:40.308)
all of their boundaries to create this warm, fuzzy, sprinkly environment that they're just going to be happy all the time. No, that's not reality. You know, we have to go to work. We have to go to every, no, we have to go to work every day and do what the boss says. Right. He's, they have expectations, they have boundaries. And if we don't meet those expectations or boundaries, there's, there's consequences.

Melissa Crook (16:50.958)
Yeah, that's not how life works.

Melissa Crook (16:56.855)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (17:03.81)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think you said something. I mean, that communication piece is so key. My son-in-law likes to call them guardrails. And I think guardrails is a really effective word too. Yeah. And it's like, it's one of those things it's like, it's there for health and wellness intention, you know, communicating them well. So many times I think, you know, we grew up in a generation where it was just set, but there was no communication. And that communication piece is key and communicating clearly.

James Moffitt (17:12.215)
yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Crook (17:32.128)
And communicating doesn't mean everyone's going to agree at the end of it. Communicating doesn't mean things are necessarily going to shift, but it's going to be a place where at least you know that you've had a chance to be heard. And also it's like, okay, here are the, you you laid the alternative. If you're not home by 11, you're on your buddy's couch. You know, they can be like, okay, if you want this to shift, this has to shift also. This is, know, in just being able to continue to keep the conversations open.

but I think also to learning as they transition out of high school into college or trade school or jobs or whatever military, whatever path they choose. My daughter was home one summer. This was such an important lesson for me as a parent. She was home one summer. think she was, you she was 20 or 21. She was home on her summer break and she was talking to me about a particularly challenging scenario she had going on in her life. And I went into mom mode.

Here's my advice, here's how we fix it. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't need you to fix this. I'm not looking for you. I just am looking for a place to be heard and listen. this is helping me sort this out so I can come up with a solution. You've given me what I need to do that. You've raised me with the steps and the information.

I'm I don't need you to fix, I'm not 14. I don't need you to fix this anymore. And that was a great wake up call to me for how I was to approach conversations. I would then go into like, are you looking for my input? Are you, or you just need me to listen? Are you looking for some direction? Are you stuck? Or do you just need a place to be, you know, heard? And I think that's a big transition that can happen too.

James Moffitt (19:25.844)
Yeah, I think that it's good that, or let me rephrase this. As a parent, we would like to have the expectation that as our kids transition, our teenage transition into adulthood, we would like to have a good enough footing with them, and a good enough relationship with them that

One those that just whoops. And, we would like for them to feel comfortable to come to us and talk to us about whatever. mean, they're not going to tell us their deep dark secrets and we don't want to know their deep dark secrets, but, you know, as, as, as a mentor, as a support system for our teenagers transitioning into adulthood, we would hope that they would feel comfortable enough to talk to us and share these things so that it would become a trainable moment. Right. And that's, and that's, that's where.

Melissa Crook (20:02.328)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Melissa Crook (20:21.206)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (20:24.554)
During that trainable moment, you can be transparent with them and go, you know what? When I was 22 years old or 21 years old or however old you were, this is a situation I went through. This is what I was faced with. This is a decision that I made, and this is how it turned out. These were the consequences of that decision. And that's, that's one of the probably the most important things that my parents taught me when I was a kid. me and my sister, think before you act. They always taught us.

Melissa Crook (20:42.83)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (20:53.558)
Think about what you're fixing to do before you do it and think about what are the consequences going to be. And are you going to be able to live with those consequences for the rest of your life? Because sometimes consequences can last the rest of our life. If you get, if you get pulled over for DUI or you have a pot in your car or you do anything that breaks the law, you have an open container here in South Carolina, you're, you're in traffic and they stop you. And, for a traffic violation, you've got an open container.

or one your friends is in a car and they've got a pot on them or something worse, God forbid, then all of a sudden you might be looking at a felony, you know, might lose your driving privileges. There's so many things that you can just get into a world of trouble. and, and your young person is driving down the road and they're not thinking about those things, you know? So, so they need to learn, Hey, the friends that I keep, or the, or the people that I hang out with.

Melissa Crook (21:30.54)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (21:43.042)
No, no.

Melissa Crook (21:49.603)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (21:52.182)
Well, you know, they say birds of a feather flock together. And so if you're, if you're hanging out with somebody that's a known drug dealer or a troublemaker or a law breaker or whatever, then you're, you, you are going to be labeled. Whether it's right or not, you're going to be labeled as that type of a person. Right. And so, so we have to, we have to teach our young people, choose your friends wisely. And that's part of our communication. Those parents is, Hey, I see you're hanging out with little Johnny over here.

Melissa Crook (22:09.666)
Yeah. Yep.

James Moffitt (22:21.79)
And I have heard some things about little Johnny, for multiple sources. Right. And so, you know what, you know what they say when they're smoked, there's there, when they're smoked, there's usually a fire somewhere, right? Everything, every, every rumor you hear about somebody is not necessarily correct, but if you hear enough rumors over a long period of time, something's going on there and that's, that's our, our job as parents is to provide a guard rail for them and say, Hey, if you get too close to that guard rail, you might get burned.

Melissa Crook (22:27.15)
Mm-hmm.

There's fire. Yeah.

Melissa Crook (22:46.702)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (22:51.422)
Right. All right. So, so let's talk about emotional intelligence, women's emotional intelligence. What does that mean?

Melissa Crook (22:51.468)
Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Crook (23:00.526)
For me, the emotional intelligence is allowing yourself the space to feel all of your emotions. We tend to want to call, consider, and label emotions. that's a bad one. That's a good one. I have learned, and this has come through a lot of years of learning and therapy and just my own journey, that all emotions are clues. They're clues to what's going on in your life. They're clues of things that might need to be dealt with.

and processed and moved through. And if you don't allow them the space to do that, they may bubble up later in a not so healthy way. And this can bubble up in an explosion or an argument or yelling or screaming. It can manifest itself physically as some sort of physical health condition, anxiety, stress, all kinds of depression. This is linked to all kinds of different things. And so I think we hear a lot about

gratitude journals and focusing on the positive and I'm like, yes and also making space to feel and process and teaching your kids to do that as well and part of teaching your kids to do that is helping them know that their emotions and feelings are both valid and necessary to be felt and processed but also to do that in a healthy way. So instead of

I'm yelling and screaming and hitting your sister. I'm not okay. All right, hold on here. What are we so upset about and how do we get here and what is a healthy way that we can process and move through that emotion? Maybe instead of screaming and yelling and hitting your sister, you say, hey, mom, I've had a rough day at school. This thing happened. I got so-and-so pushed me on the playground and it made me really mad or they punched me in the nose or they copied my homework, whatever it is.

and talk through that and talk through what happened and how we can resolve this in a healthy way. kids, will, you said this earlier, do, you know, it's that do as I say, not as I do. They'll pick up on that and they will do as they see. So it becomes incumbent upon us as parents to be modeling this kind of behavior ourselves. And so it's that, you know, and learning to...

Melissa Crook (25:25.55)
process through your own emotions in a healthy way and make space for all of them so you can organically feel that gratitude but not stuff that other thing, that other clue that needs to be dealt with. And then your kids are gonna see you do that. They're gonna pick up on that. So when you go back to talk to them about not hitting your sister, they won't be, well, I saw you scream at daddy last week when you had a bad day at work and we're like, you're right. I did that.

And also, but those can also be learning moments because we're not perfect. And so I think the other part of that is it's important for kids. If you mess up as a parent, it's okay to apologize to your kid. Hey, I don't like the way I responded earlier. I would have preferred that I respond this way. This can be a teachable moment for them that parents aren't perfect and kids aren't perfect and that we can go back and apologize and correct.

James Moffitt (26:12.822)
Sure, sure.

Melissa Crook (26:19.318)
So I think for emotional intelligence, it's really that acknowledgement and let's change the language around how we see our emotions. Let's see them as clues rather than things to either celebrate when they're fun or ignore and stuff away when they're not so fun.

James Moffitt (26:36.086)
Yeah, I remember in my childhood, you know, I was raised in the seventies and eighties and uh, my dad was a drill instructor for 26 years in army. And, he, he dealt with recruits all day long out on the PT field or wherever, know, whatever he was doing. And so, uh, you know, there was lots of yelling and screaming and belittling and name calling and

Melissa Crook (26:51.074)
Mmm. Yeah.

James Moffitt (27:01.542)
using of the boots and you know, God knows what goes on and I've never been in a boot camp, but I can, you know, I've seen a lot of stuff on TV. So I can only imagine what the mindset is for a drill instructor. and so when he came home from the, from the, from work, he was, kind of like that with me and my sister. You know, I think he, he had a, he had a hard time compartmentalizing the fact that

Melissa Crook (27:07.405)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (27:12.205)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (27:24.171)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (27:29.6)
hey, this is work and this is what I'm expected to do, but now I'm at home and I have children and a wife and they're not my recruits and I shouldn't be treating them the same way. And I think all of us, when we look back at our childhood and we look at our parents and how they raised us or didn't raise us or incorrectly raised us, we like to say that, hey, you know, I think they did the best they could with what they had, you know? And so I think the...

Melissa Crook (27:39.106)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (27:54.392)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (27:58.88)
thing about emotional intelligence is that it's incumbent upon us parents to have a grasp on our emotions and not react angrily or not to burst out into some kind of tirade. And your child comes home and says, hey, I'm gay. And the dad's going.

Melissa Crook (28:18.274)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (28:25.086)
What the hell are you talking about? What? No, you're not gay, you know, and you can just imagine the conversation back in the seventies or eighties. just wasn't even that wasn't even talked about, but, but you can imagine, you know, for straight parents that don't know anything about that lifestyle per se, you know, if they're, know, any, could be, it could be the daughter coming home and say, mom, I'm pregnant. What you're pregnant, you know, and off, off to the races you go, you know, because it's a very.

Melissa Crook (28:32.627)
Absolutely. No.

James Moffitt (28:54.582)
emotionally charged subject, right? And so before we get into those types of situations, potentially volatile situations, it's important that we practice what we call self-care and that we have boundaries of our own, guardrails of our own, that we can practice self-care, get off by ourselves, pray, meditate, go for a walk.

Melissa Crook (28:57.184)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (29:07.715)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (29:24.118)
Read a book, go have a drink, you know, however you decompress. It's important that, that, we tell people we tell, we tell parents on this podcast episode and our parents support group, have to practice self care because parenting is probably the toughest job that any of us could ever have. Right. And it, and it, and it, it's, it's not easy and it's, it's, know, it's, and it doesn't end, it doesn't start at 8 AM and end at 5 PM.

Melissa Crook (29:37.58)
Yes.

Melissa Crook (29:43.084)
Yes.

Melissa Crook (29:47.031)
No.

James Moffitt (29:52.982)
It starts when you wake up and it ends when everybody goes to sleep and sometimes beyond that. Right. Especially if you get phone calls in the middle of the night from your young adult going, Oh, I'm in, I'm in jail. Can you come pick me up or, or I'm in the, I'm in the emergency room because I had an accident. I need your help, you know, and, and of course we're there for them, but parenting never ends. Even after your kids are, you you know, I'm 63, you know, my kids are, you know, almost 40, you know,

Melissa Crook (29:53.173)
That's true.

Melissa Crook (29:58.089)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (30:05.614)
Exactly.

Melissa Crook (30:10.883)
Yeah.

Melissa Crook (30:21.187)
Mm-hmm.

James Moffitt (30:22.036)
I don't care how old your children are, they're still your children, you know? And we always want to be here for them.

Melissa Crook (30:26.274)
Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Crook (30:31.446)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they, and they need just need us in different ways. I think that's what I've learned too. They need us in different ways, but you said something so important there about that self-care piece. I want to sit with that for a minute because so many times I hear from parents, I don't have time. like, okay, we're to stop and look at your calendar because you have time. You don't realize we're just going to shift how you're using it. Let's talk about that. That time you're waiting for them to pick them up from soccer. Maybe you listen to some ocean sounds, a favorite podcast, your favorite music.

Maybe you take a walk around the soccer field. Maybe you just sit quietly and lean the chair back and close your eyes for 20 minutes. What is a way you can refill your cup so that you can show up as your healthiest, clear-minded self so you can take space to sit back and take something in and not just respond. And because the more tired we are, the more worn out we are, the more burned out we are, the quicker...

and more reactive our emotional responses are and they're usually not done in a way that's gonna be helpful to the situation. So it's, if we cannot expect ourselves to show up healthy and well for ourselves or those who are in relationship with our kids, our work, all of our spaces, if we're not taking time to fill that up, it's that old attitude you cannot give from an empty cup. So I'm so glad you mentioned the value and importance so we can be ready for those hard conversations.

because there's no necessarily a warning light going off to let you know they're coming. So it's just that being ready at all times to be there, to be the parent, to love them unconditionally as we were charged with when we had these kids and became their parents.

James Moffitt (32:01.098)
No. No.

James Moffitt (32:16.896)
Good stuff. So here's a question you have on your profile. How do how do societal expectations shape parental roles in your view?

Melissa Crook (32:28.558)
Well, I think that's a really important question. And I think there's a lot of societal expectations. And I think we get these scripts very early on in our lives and we kind of follow these scripts, but we don't necessarily stop and ask if that script is current or healthy for your situation. all kids, you go back to the example, oh, we have three daughters. They're all natured very differently. They require a different way for us to show up.

They've been that way from the day they were born. And so I can't just use the same approach with each of them in given situations because they won't necessarily respond the same. Our oldest was she came out of the womb very emotionally astute, kind of an old soul, like from the get go. She...

She's kind of your classic oldest. She adapted early. She learned to tie her shoes on her own. She read early and she was a pretty chill kid other than being really feisty between three and four. Other than that, she was a pretty chill kid. And then our middle one came along and she had different needs. She had different physical needs. She was not, she had some things that she was born with that we took more time and patience with us.

she didn't do things as quickly, but yet she was a lot more calm. Like she did not have the three to four year old feistyness. She was just kind of rolled with the punches. And so how I addressed her, even all, both of them, and then our youngest came along with just a pistol Pete from the get go. And so, but then you grew up and became more of an introvert in a very extroverted family. So I had, you know, I, you know, couldn't just use the same script for all of that.

And so was very important. like, okay, how do I meet this child? What are their needs? What are their emotional needs? Where are they really? Do they feel really successful and confident? Where do they not? And how can I best parent them through that and teach them how to navigate that? And so, yeah, I think it's really important to go back to just being very specific and we live in a different time. So this script that maybe you got from your parents, it may not apply now.

Melissa Crook (34:52.222)
We live in a different time. There's a different space. There was no technology that existed when we were growing up that exists for our kids now. So there's different things that have to be addressed. You're not sent, your kids aren't going out at as soon as breakfast is over in the summertime and playing in the street all day with all their buddies and coming back in at dinnertime. That world doesn't mostly exist anymore. So what worked then isn't necessarily going to work now. So I think just making sure the

in the narratives that are there, do they apply to your family and your scenario that you're in and your character traits of each of your children and you and your partner?

James Moffitt (35:36.534)
stuff. All right, so I'm going to give you five minutes for an elevator speech so you can talk to moms. would you tell... what's the most important thing you could tell moms at this point?

Melissa Crook (35:41.536)
Okay. Okay.

Melissa Crook (35:48.29)
Self-care is not selfish. Do not believe that self-care is selfish. It's actually beneficial for everybody in your life. So do not feel like you must show up for everything all the time with no boundaries around your time or space for yourself. And I think that is something that we and the mom guilt is real. So if you all of sudden you're showing up and you are you are at every classroom field trip.

for every kid, you're working full time, you're making cookies for everything. mean, I'm using myself as an example because I used to be this mom. You're gonna wear yourself out at some point. So think about what are those activities that nourish you? Where are they in the calendar? Are there things in your calendar, in your space that don't really align with who you are? There's always somebody else out there to fill a space. It is not your responsibility to fill all the spaces and be all the things.

all the time. So give yourself a break and start each day with something that nourishes you. It might be a five minute song or meditation or journaling time or quiet time or prayer time, or it might be, you know, two hours where you work out and you do all these things. You have to decide where it is in your calendar and then make space throughout the day. Again, meet yourself at lunchtime. How are you feeling?

have kind of a menu of things to pull from. I always say, go back to those things that nourish you. What are activities that nourish you that you can pull from, that you can breathe for five minutes? We don't breathe. We just run around in circles all the time, keep going, going, doing it. We don't realize how shallow our breathing is or how stressed we get. something, another activity that's really helpful is every hour, set your alarm on your phone or a clock, every hour stop.

and just breathe like deep breathing. I use a box breathing method where I do that for two to three minutes. Stop every hour just to reset your nervous system. Check yourself. And then I would say, you you have to decide where this fits in. But right now today, find sign of this week, look at your calendar. Which thing makes you feel like, my gosh, I can't believe I have to do this. And which thing are you excited about?

Melissa Crook (38:12.19)
If there are too many, my goshes, I can't believe I have to do this. Do you have to do it? Is there a new boundary that needs to put in there? Is that something that maybe someone else can do or maybe isn't in alignment with who you are? Because the more of those, my gosh, things you have, the more irritable you're gonna become, the more short-tempered you're gonna become. So being mindful of those spaces and places and you're modeling that to your children.

Your children are learning that it's okay for mom to take care of herself and that I can do that when I'm older too. I don't have to run myself into the ground. You're also showing up better for them. You're clear minded. You're fully present. You want to be there with them because you're not worn out and exhausted from being everywhere all the time. So be very intentional about this and just remember.

So when moms and women take care of themselves, everybody wins. Everybody wins. We are better as ourselves and in all of our relationships and spaces. That is my biggest thing that I think. And if the mom guilt is there, it'll go away over time. And where is that voice coming from? Is it coming from an old narrative? Because a lot of times we have to unpack old narratives that we've seen.

modeled most of our moms did not know how to take care of themselves very well. Most of our moms were running themselves into the wall and that did not and we can identify all kinds of ways that didn't work for them. And so remember your kids are going to see that in you as well and we always want better for our children. But yeah it starts with those simple and it can be those little places you already have space and room those drives to and from work and school that time you get home

James Moffitt (39:38.293)
Right.

Melissa Crook (40:02.478)
And you've got, you take 15 minutes to feed yourself before you go into the evening. Those are the big things I would say.

James Moffitt (40:13.928)
Melissa, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast episode today. I think we had a wonderful conversation and we unpacked a lot of good stuff and things for people to consider and to maybe start practicing. you can, to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. you can listen to this podcast episode on Spotify, Amazon music, Apple podcasts, I heart radio and public radio.

You can actually see the video portion of this podcast on Spotify. We have a website, it's parentingadultchildren.org. Parentingadultchildren.org. If you go to the website, can see I have a blog there and I showcase different episodes and different speakers and authors. And we have people that are addiction counselors and all sorts of cool people that are on our episodes. And so I try to put a lot of...

blog posts in there with resources that you can look at on your own. the website provides contact information for me. can leave me at, you can click on an email link or you can leave me a voicemail and I'll get back with you. you can see the upcoming show schedule. I just put the March and April episodes that are going to be released. so that way you'll know what's coming. I also try to add video clips, to Instagram. So if you follow me on Instagram, that's a chief propeller head 125.

That's my user ID, chief propeller head 125. And I upload all the video clips from all the different podcasts episodes, or I try to anyway, I don't do it all the time, but I'm making more of a point doing that. you can also click on the review tab at the top and you can live or leave a review. If you listen to one of the podcast episodes, you liked it, didn't like it, whatever, you know, just leave a comment and say, you know, and if you have, suggestions for topics that you would like to hear.

Let me know and we'll see what we can do about doing that as well. I release a new episode every Friday morning at 8 AM. Melissa, thank you again for being here and yeah, everybody have a wonderful day. Thanks for being here and I'll talk to you later.

Melissa Crook (42:19.65)
Thanks so much, James.