The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Lorraine Candy on accepting that your children won't always be happy

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In this guest episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna chats to journalist, podcaster and author Lorraine Candy about the one thing that she'd share with all the mums.Lorraine draws on her decades of parenting four children and lets fellow parents know that they should learn to be comfortable with their children not always feeling happy.You can follow Lorraine on Instagram hereYou can pre-order/order Lorraine's brand new book: 'What's Wrong With Me? 101 Things Midlife Women Need to Know' hereYou can listen to Lorraine's podcast here

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist, mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. today I have with me, Lorraine Candy. Lorraine is a mum of four. She writes about parenting in so many different national publications. She is the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan,

Elle, and most recently Sunday Times style. She is a podcast host. She has an amazing podcast called Postcards from Midlife. She is an ambassador for women in sports. She works with an advisor charity called Their World, which is a global education charity helping all children under five get educated. She's also a published author of Times bestseller. Mom, What's Wrong with You? 101 things only the mothers of teenage girls know. That's one for me in the future. Definitely going to be on my reading list as my daughter grows up. She's got a new book coming out. It's called What's Wrong With Me? 101 things midlife women need to know. And that is just a fraction of all the incredible things that came up in my little bit of research that I did.

So you've been very busy, Lorraine. Thank you so much for making time for me this morning. How are you? Oh, I'm fine. It's a real pleasure to be on. I love spreading any information or advice that I can for mum's parents and caregivers because I think it's a really tough job. It's amazing and enjoyable, but it's tough.

So anything we can do to support others going through it, I think it's brilliant. Yeah, and yours. And how old are your kids now? Not so young anymore. Not so little. They are 20, 19, 16 and 11. I have three girls and a boy. Three girls and a boy. And what's your kind of main feeling when you look back at those kind of the young years? So my oldest is eight. My youngest is three. And yeah, when you just kind of look back, what's the main emotion that comes to mind? Well, I miss it terribly. I really, really miss it. I wasn't aware how much more, and I think you'll probably, you won't even believe it when I say is how much more difficult parenting teenagers is compared to toddlers. So I wish I'd been more joyful around the parenting of toddlers. We had 10 years, really, between I was 33 when I had my first child and 43 when I had my last child, so I had 10 years of very intense parenting. But I really miss everything about it and I always say that to women with younger children, in caregivers with younger children,

it is just, it goes so, so quickly. It's so boring to say that and everyone says it. I know your mum says at the moment you show them the baby, but it really, really does. And I just wish I'd spent more time slowing down and being around them. But I really loved that time. I love babies. I'm obsessed with babies. My mum always says that Anna, I've blinked annual 37. She says, what the heck. And yeah, it is a real encouragement, I think, just to slow down. And sometimes I like just looking at their little eyelashes and just thinking you've literally only been on this planet for three years or six years and just trying to slow down.

And it has to be a really conscious thing, isn't it? I think you have to be really mindful of it, really to sit in the moment and be present with them. I've got a 16-year-old son and he was off to do a shopping trip the other day on his own with his mates. And I was saying to him, look. when you cross the road and he was like, God's sake, I'm 16. But in my

head, I can still see him as that little tiny boy with the little pudgy hands and the messy hair crossing. And I still see him crossing the road on his own life. I don't see this enormous, nearly six foot teenager doing it. It's a really, your mind

is really trapped in the happiest days. And I think just to remember, these are the best of times. So whatever you're going through, and it is tough, and I know it's really tough for many parents, that these are the best of times. Today is the best of times for you. Today is the only time really, isn't it? It's the only time that we truly have is the moment. So such an encouragement. Thank you. Such an important reminder as we get bogged down

in the kind of day-to-day whizzing around as to slow down and think these are the best of times, whatever age your children are at. So, Luyn, I'm so intrigued with all that you've written about all that you've shared in your career so far so generously around parenting. I'm so intrigued to know what the one thing is that you would love to share with the mom's listening today. It sounds counterintuitive and I think it's perhaps particular to my generation. So I'm nearly 55. So I'm Gen X. But the one thing I've learned, and I have interviewed many, many parenting experts, many psychologists. I've interviewed people working on the front line of adolescent mental health. I've trained to work on a helpline for adolescent mental health. So the one thing that it was

hard to distill it down, but the one thing that made absolute sense and gives parents a break, I think, in a sense of relief, your children cannot be happy all the time. So the one thing I've learned is it is okay for your children to feel sad, to feel lonely, to feel depressed sometimes. It's okay for them to be down and you do not have to fix every moment for them. I think that kind of, you know, to be clear about it, what I'm saying is you don't have to make them happy all the time. You don't have to be upset when you look at them and they're not happy. They are going to go through ups and downs and you need that comparative emotion. And I think when they're sad, they get this sense of hope. And hope is a really, you know, it's the alchemy of change,

isn't it? Many psychologists will say hope is the thing that tomorrow. will be better or that the next moment will better, that kind of keeps you going, particularly when you're an adult. So this sense that they don't have to be happy all the time is a really good benchmark, I think, for parents. We were certainly, as a generation of parents, very child-centred, so it was very much about children being happy, being good. You know, everything you did was to make it better. And I think, you know, I did particularly myself, was very, very stressed when my children weren't happy. Actually, it's perfectly normal for them not to be happy. It's perfectly normal for them to feel sad.

Ooh, it's challenging, isn't it? Because I think we yearn so much for our children to have a smooth, a smooth road. And I've heard lots of people say, you know, you're as happy as your, your unhappiest child. And I think it's a, it takes so much pressure off you when you think I, I can just be with them as they're feeling that. I don't have to fix it. I don't have to dig deep, say the right thing or just. cheer them up. But we're, this is an imperfect world and I think finding ways to support our children as they weather those storms rather than trying to remove the storm itself is almost a, a better way to to prepare them for the storms that they'll go through when we're not around to be that, be that comfort or be that support. I think it also you might think or that means what you're teaching them is to be strong and you're building the resilience muscle. You are doing a bit of that, but I don't think we need to focus on children being strong. Some children are stronger than others. Some children are neurologically much more fragile. So to expect them to be strong

and build that kind of resilient muscle is perhaps a little bit unrealistic. But what I'm saying is what you need to do is to be able to sit in the sadness with them. So you're not fixing it. You're allowing them to feel it. And once they felt it once, they know how it will feel another time. So they're less fearful of it. And I think it would be really, it's really, you know, everyone has a wobble. You know, children are going to go to school and encounter really tricky situations. That move from junior school to senior school is massive for kids around, you know, that 10, 11 year group. And it's really, really hard to go from a very small place where you looked after to a very big place and then not encounter sadness, not to be bullied in some way perhaps, not to find

that you're not completely accepted. You know, the breadth of difference of children in senior school is much bigger than in junior school and you won't have known all those children. So I think it helps prepare children not to be stronger because that isn't always the ultimate goal. It helps prepare them that it won't always be happy. What it does is manage expectations. So it's not about being stronger. It's more about managing expectations and letting your children learn that you can't always expect everything to work out. And if it's not okay, you'll be okay with it. Yeah. And actually, it strikes me that as we, if we approach it like this, it's not only taking pressure of ourselves to make it better, to make them happy, to remove whatever it is that is

causing that sadness and that desperation to kind of smooth that road for them. But actually, it's also taking pressure off our children, because if they get the sense that, Mommy wants me to be happy, I'm going to have to be happy, that's what makes her happy. If I'm happy, then it doesn't, instead of making them happy, what it often does is it teaches them to pretend that they're happy. So that gap between that whatever emotion is there and is valid and is being experienced, that that's still there. It's just then that pretending is also there as well. And I think we know what it feels like in our own lives where we pretend to be happy. We know that underneath it all maybe we're kind of journeying through some sadness or some

disappointment but it just it just drives a gap between that authentic experience and how we're kind of showing it to the outer world and and I think I've had to strip that away in my own life spent years kind of stripping it away and getting back to validating yeah validating that authentic experience rather than how I feel makes it easier for others to be around me or what I feel others expect from me or feel more comfortable if I'm happy. So it's taking the pressure off. Yeah, you remove the pressure and being able, for them to be able to say in front of their parents, I'm really unhappy today.

It's a really good thing. It means you can either step in, you say, do you want me to solve this? Do you want me to listen to you? Do you want me to just be with you? Particularly older children, it's more useful if they can get their feelings out as well, or they can write them down, or they know they can recognize sadness, trying to constantly show that you're happy and show that you're, show your parents that you're happy,

particularly actually for teenagers going through exams as they are at the moment while we're talking. It's just, it's really unrealistic. And obviously, I do come from a generation that was very much stiff upper lip where you couldn't say, you know, how unhappy you were if you were. I mean, it's good to talk about it, I think, and to understand that you all feel bad things

as well as you all feel good things. And you just need to be able to sort of rationalise that, not be strong and overcome it or beat it or, you know, follow any of those ridiculous mantras just to deal with that feeling that you're sitting with at the moment, all feelings as they come and go. Yeah, absolutely. And I work with a lot of clients and I have been this person myself who have almost become so fearful of some of these emotions of disappointment and unhappiness and often kind of using that toxic positivity. to beat themselves over the bottom and, you know, think, be, be grateful, be grateful. And actually there's, there's value in the, in the both. You know, there's value in that, in that gratitude and there's value in that moving through that disappointment. And it is something we move through. And I think if we just constantly avoid it in ourselves, and this is, this is the other challenge, isn't it? Is that if we're going to support our children through all of those different emotions and sit

with them, we have to get to a point where we can start sitting with them ourselves. Did you find that? That's the hard bit. that challenge? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, parenting can make you feel like the most failure in the whole of the world. You know, you've got this one job and you might have a day where you think I've got one job and I've just messed, completely messed it up. I've done it all wrong all day. But I think it makes you realize, when you realize they can deal with bad feelings and you can deal with bad feelings, it makes you evolve as a human yourself. You start to kind of think, well, why am I feeling that? Why is it particularly upsetting me that my child is

upset about that. What is it sparking in me? What's the background feeling that I'm dealing with here? And I think you take yourself out of it. I mean, one of the other mantras I have is, you know, put your own oxygen mask on first. You cannot deal with all the ups and downs of parenting is if you hadn't had enough sleep, if you're not eating well, if you're not rested, if you're full of stress, if you're jangly from your day. If you haven't looked after you, you can't possibly look after someone else. And the other thing I notice, particularly when your children get older, role modelling really bad traits if you, you know, if you aren't eating properly, you're not sleeping and you're saying, I'm just going to deal with, you know, I'm going to be here for the moment

for my children, even though I'm absolutely exhausted and I probably need 10 minutes to walk around the block to decompress. That's not great role modelling. That's showing children that you can push your feelings down again. And what I learned with dealing with sad feelings is it's okay to show that I'm sad in front of my children. It's okay for me to say that out loud. And I think it's really important with girls because actually our teenage boys, many of us have been taught not to show our emotions and that it's not great to talk about them. And if you're not doing it and you don't learn to do it as a parent, then women who are often much quieter in rooms where, you know, especially in powerful rooms, we don't have that voice. We don't have that voice to talk about

money. We don't have that voice to talk about careers. They've not seen it at home. So important things need to be talked about out loud. And I learned that, you know, I couldn't. I read a parenting book when I have my first child saying that every time baby looks at you, you must be smiling. And I thought, oh, I must be smiling. And I obviously, for about six months, I looked like a crazed lunatic smiling at this baby every time. And that's mad. You know, that isn't mad.

You don't have to keep presenting this positive front all the time. I mean, clearly you've got to be responsible because you're the adult in the domestic situation. But you cannot always be happy. And it's not bad to not always be happy. So being able to show that in front of your children, I think, is going to role modelling. Yeah, to show them that you might feel unhappy or sad one moment, but actually, you know, a few hours later you're in a different place

and they can then witness that transition. And I, you know, I think sometimes it can be incredibly confusing in those moments I've done that Mary Poppins thing of kind of smiling and slightly high-pitched voice of, you know, oh, it's all fine. Everything's fine. And I do feel like my children can sense that my body and my body, and my nervous system, you know, on that other level of communication that we're doing all the time. We sense in someone if they're not okay. We sense in someone if they're frustrated or

angry. And then if what's coming out of their mouth and what is plastered on their face is a totally different story, we feel confused. Well, there's a little lost of trust, I think, as well, is she really telling me? I mean, I always talk about boundaries, particularly with older children. If you, there is a tendency as kids get older and they're more engaging with you to try and be best friends. If you don't set boundaries, they feel very unsafe. They think, how can this person care about me? She's not that worried about what time I get back. She's not that worried if I don't do my homework.

She's not that worried if I, you know, she's the person setting the boundaries and caring for me. If I'm not setting them, you know, if this person is showing one thing and clearly her body is saying a different thing, I'm confused. but I'm also fearful of the safety. Is she there to protect me because she doesn't seem, I don't quite know what's going on there? I mean, you can overthink it. But I think the other thing is the rupture and repair element.

You know, you have a bad day. It's a terrible day. Everyone's a bit sad. There's a lot of shouting. Everyone goes to bed a bit cross. But that's not the important part. The important part is the next day when you can say sorry, perhaps.

That's a big learning curve. I've had as a parent being able to say sorry for things when I've got it wrong to my children, to my teenagers. So the next day, the repair is really, really important. So showing that the next day, I am happy and everything's going to be okay. And today is a good day. I think that's often a lesson that you learn in retrospect as a parent. So taking that responsibility and showing them that we can mess up and then we can take responsibility and we can work to repair whatever was damaged or broken or just, you know, just, oh, shaking a little bit. And as you were talking about

boundaries, my brain hop back to something that Zoe Blaskey said on her mother kind podcast, which stuck with me. And it said, you know, when we go, she said, when we go on the roller coaster and we rattle the bar, you know, our hope is that it will stay still. You know, our hope is that it will show that it's truly locked. We're not shaking it in the hopes that it will fling open because actually we will feel incredibly unsafe. And I think that's often what our children do is they shake those boundaries, but they need to know that actually they're locked in.

That's what makes them feel safer. The more they shake them and then if our boundaries are to kind of just, you know, just totally flattened and let them run right, then actually that's the unsafe feeling. We know that in ourselves as well. So, yeah, I love that little metaphor

It's very hard for them if they can't work out whether you're going to be there or not and you say we're best friends. They tell me everything. They're forming their identity. They shouldn't be telling you everything and you shouldn't be best friends. You should be holding the bar type for them. That's what you should be doing. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. I have got some quick fire questions to finish off. Lorraine, I'd love to hear what's a motherhood high for you? I think my motherhood highs are in the tiny rituals. So for us, it's playing monopoly, which is a game I hate,

but it's the only game all four of my children will play together. So even now, if you can keep that monopoly ritual going right the way through till they're 20, which we've managed to do on a holiday recently, that was such a high for me to just look around the table and think, we're all together again, all six of us playing Monopoly, which we've done since they were so tiny, that was a big high for me. Well, I'm 37, and that's a thing in our house that is still going. Yes.

So there's, you know, there's longevity in that one. And what's a motherhood low for you? I think the lows have been when, and this will seem a thousand years away for you, when my eldest, I mean, it even makes me sad thinking about her when she left home. that was, it was just, I completely underestimated the impact it would have on me because you are still mothering, obviously, but the hole in your home is so big. It's just, it's like, it's like layers upon layers of tissue paper of memories. And suddenly that person that was, you're, you still feel umbilically attached to is not there. And everyone had said to me and I'd written pieces on it before that it will have a bigger impact than you think. It was the, it's probably the most transformative, life-changing thing that's happened to me, my eldest leaving home.

It was a real low. It was very sad for a long time. I still am two years later. I think there's a grief, you know, there's a grief in that of what was and what is different and what will always be different

from then on. It's amazing seeing them go off into the world, but it's a real living loss, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But what's one thing that makes you feel good? I have one thing I've done which I discovered in midlife which I've written about which I think you don't have to be brilliant at it to do it is I swim in cold water and I think they call it

wild swimming now I've been doing it about eight years but it really you know I swim head in fast sometimes I swim with my bobble hat on just put putling around dipping sometimes but being out in nature being among a community of similar like-minded women there's a lot of mid-life women around the edge of pools and parents and just being in the water. There's something about the water. It's an absolute non-negotiable for me. I have to do it at least once a week. I have to swim somewhere outside or be in nature. The endorphins, hey, that come from that cold water as well. It is the endorphins. Set you up, don't they? So finally, how would you describe motherhood in three words, Lorraine? Oh, it's hard to put it in three words. I would say it's a shock.

it's very, very, very good fun. I've had the best laughs. So it's shocking. It's fun-filled. And it's forever. It never stops. Yeah. Shocking. Fun-filled and forever. Thank you so much for your wisdom today and all the other wisdom that you put so generously out there. So I encourage people to go and check out your new book. What's Wrong With Me? 101 things, Midlife Women. need to know whether you're, you count yourself as in midlife or whether you're moving towards it. I just know that it's going to be full of just brilliant insight and warm wisdom. So check that out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Lorraine. Thank you for your time today. It's been lovely chatting with you. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a moment to subscribe, rate and review as it really helps get these words out to benefit more juggling parents like us. and head to annamartha.com to find my resources on everything from health anxiety to people pleasing, starting at only 20 pounds. And finally, don't forget to pre-order my new book, Raising a Happier Mother, How to Find Balance, Feel Good and See Your Children Flourish as a result. I can't wait for you to have that. Take care and we'll chat soon.