How Whitney Experiments–Spring 2022

This year we army crawled across the finish line to the last day of school. Dragging kids out of bed, scrounging for clean uniforms…and where did all of the socks go?

We packed way too much into this Spring. In fact, if there’s an overall theme to my experiments this Spring, it was excess. Looking back, it seems like an attempt to equilibrate from the last two years of cancellations. Travel, school events, concerts, plays etc. I learned from both, and hopefully this year of excess has brought me back to balance and taught me more than a few things for next Spring.

Paris

It has been a spring full of experiments, including one of the biggest experiments for me—a girl’s trip to Paris. Maybe it’s weird to call this trip an experiment, but it really was for me. When my friend Molly floated the idea that I come along on her daughter’s 16-year-old trip, my first instinct was to laugh. Yeah right. How could I just take off to Paris for a week? What would my family do? I didn’t really even consider it. But then I kept thinking about it. And then, I decided to just see if my in-laws would be willing to come help before and after school. They said yes. And I, feeling wild and crazy, said yes too.

And I went to Paris. And it was amazing. We packed so much into that trip, and I even discovered that although I don’t usually like shopping, I like shopping in Paris.

The biggest thing that I learned from that experience, besides so much gratitude for my in-laws, is that the world goes on turning without me around. It’s ok to step back once in a while, do something crazy and awesome, and ask someone else to be in charge.

Of course, this is much easier in the season I am in now, with my youngest almost seven. It’s so exciting to embrace this new season!

New York

Our next big family experiment also involved travel—just two weeks later. We sent our youngest two kids to Utah to stay with my parents and then we took just our oldest three boys, 12, 14, and 16 to Washington D.C. and New York. This was the trip that we cancelled in 2020, the very week that the country shut down for COVID. Back then we just planned on taking two teens, but now that our third son was 12, we decided to bring him along. It was so fun travelling with just the bigs. A lot less whining, for one. And a lot more stamina. We were able to ride bikes around the national mall, explore Mt. Vernon, visit museum after museum, and just enjoy each other’s company.

Then we took a train to New York, where we were immediately initiated with the man right next to us peeing on the floor of our subway train and then seeing cat-sized rats on the tracks. We visited all the major sites, on foot, by boat, and by bicycle, and we even got to see The Music Man with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.

It was one of the best family trips we’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to do it again when the littles get old enough for their turn. I highly recommend taking a teen trip, even if it means leaving part of the family behind. It just gave the trip such a different vibe and made them feel important. Plus, the littles had a lot of fun too, with grandparents and cousins, much more fun than they would have had traipsing around with us.

One of my favorite things about the trip (besides that play, oh man was it amazing) was the urgency with which all three boys ran to their instruments when we got home. I love to see how much they missed playing music. I think it shocked them a little.

Busy Season

As you can see in this video, I clearly overloaded my spring schedule this year. But even though I had to let a lot of other things (i.e. my house), I don’t regret taking on both the school and church talent show. The big thing I learned there is that I need to be more proactive about timing. Running a show is in my wheelhouse and a great way to contribute and build community—all that vulnerability and encouragement—I just love it. Plus, I’ve kind of got the system down now.

But what I learned is, not to do both in the same month again. And the earlier in the year, the better.

Maybe talent shows aren’t your thing, but when you’re trying to figure out how to serve in your community, think about your own strengths. I realized very quickly that the talent show would be my school contribution. And I also realized that I would be a horrible room mom and I will never put together a bulletin board. But there are so many moms who excel at that sort of thing.

The highlight of all those talent shows for me, and one of the biggest reasons I do them, is working with my kids to put songs together. My 9-year-old daughter played This Girl Is On Fire on the piano while she and four of her friends sang, and it was fantastic. My 12-year-old played his first violin solo, and our family put a song together with all of us playing instruments and singing. This has been my dream for so long, and it was the first time we really pulled it together with everyone participating—even my husband on the harmonica.

Career Day

Another thing I’m not sorry I said yes to, even though I didn’t have time, was participating in career day at the school for the first time. I had two unpaid jobs to choose from—managing my home and family and running How She Moms. I ended up kind of talking about both, plus my pre-kid career as a magazine editor, because I think it’s good for kids to see how careers change and evolve as your priorities and stage in life evolve. It was really fun to meet the two other women on my panel and see the different paths we all took. The kids asked really great questions. And kudos to our wonderful PTO president, because after the fact, I found out that she asked a friend of mine, who was in a different panel group, to come specifically to talk about her career choice to be a stay-at-home mom. So great to legitimize and represent so many different career paths.

Bedtime/Morning

With so much going on, I was even worse at bedtime routines than I usually am, and therefore, morning routines were really rough. I had several standoffs with my first grader when he just wouldn’t get out of the car once we got to school. One time I sat in the car from 8:00 to 9:30 with him, because I said he had to go to school, even if we didn’t go into the building. I just sat there getting work done on my phone, making all my phone calls, etc. He eventually got bored enough to go in.

The same son who I talked about in the winter experiments episode still had trouble waking up, but we did come up with a strategy together that made a difference. It was as simple of moving his daily shower from before bed to the morning. This kid adores showers, so he was more likely to get up on time when he knew he’d miss his shower if he didn’t. All bets were off by the last couple weeks of school, though. I just took the other kids to school on time and came back for him. I just couldn’t fight that battle. Although I did still charge him a $5 Uber fee for the extra trips, just to show him my time is valuable.

Reading

One of the best parts of this Spring was actually kind of related to bedtime routines, though. I decided my daughter was finally old enough to fully appreciate the wonders of one of the most influential books in my life—Anne of Green Gables. To use a word from Anne’s effusive vocabulary, it was rapturous. We laughed together, we cried together, and most importantly, she adored it as much as I did my first time through. It was so interesting to read it as an adult and realize first, how well it holds up; second, how influential it really was to the way I see the world, from friendship to nature to adoring big words; and third, how avant-garde this book, written in 1908, is about the inner life of women, the importance of education, and the contribution women can, do, and should make to the world. I love Anne even more now that I got to share her with my daughter.

The next book we decided to read was another first, because we decided my youngest was old enough to join us. We read another of my all-time favorites, The Trumpet of the Swan, by E. B. White. They both loved it, and it was fun to reminisce about reading it aloud to my own brother and sister when I was a teenager.

And now we’ve just started reading The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. Another top tier read-aloud. The puns and wordplay in that book just never get old. Sharing books I adore with my kids will always be one of my absolute favorite things about motherhood. It’s also why I never let them choose our main read-alouds. I have a long list of required reads! I’ll share more of them this week on Instagram.

The Consequences

My decision to overload my schedule had some consequences. I thought I was skating by when all my kids and husband got sick. But after they were all done with it, I got hit, recovered enough to go to the Mom 2.0 conference in LA, and then relapsed with a vengeance when I got home. Another lesson learned the hard way.

How She Moms

As for How She Moms experiments, I tried cutting back to two episodes a month for one month, and it was awesome and so much more realistic. But then I just had so much great content to share that I just had to go back to once a week.

Luckily, I learned from last year that I really do need to take the summer off—even though March Whitney tried hard to convince me to go straight through–so I’ll be taking a break for July and August. If you miss me there is now so much content, I’m sure you can find new-to-you episodes to listen to!

The other experiment was the conference I mentioned, Mom 2.0 for mom content creators and marketers. I really thought about cancelling it with everything I had going on. (I had booked it way back in the fall.) But, again with the help of my saintly in-laws, I decided to go. And oh boy, I’m so glad I did. And you will be too. I met so many great people who you will also get to meet as guests on the show, and I got so many great ideas for the future of How She Moms. These women are doing such great things in their families and in the world. I came back so energized and excited about the power moms have when we work together. Now I just have to make the time to implement all these new great ideas. I learned that if possible I need to add a day to the conference next time to just spend a day in the hotel room alone making a plan for how to apply everything I’ve learned.

Jonas Driving

One of our biggest new experiments this Spring was adding a driver, my oldest son. We’re easing into this new stage because we’re still sharing two cars for three drivers, but we’ve decided that by the end of the summer we’ll cave and get another car and designate our minivan as the teen car. I fought this for a while, because it seems ridiculous to own three cars when they will all spend most of their time three miles apart, but with another teen driver starting driver’s ed by the end of this year, our oldest getting a job, and the convenience of him being able to share the chauffeuring and errand load for those nights I’m supposed to be in two places at once, I’m giving in. We’re blessed that he’s proving to be a pretty good driver, besides one notable incident, and it’s been pretty nice to let him drive himself around, especially driving home from his late-night teen adventures. Still feels pretty crazy to be in this stage!

Tech

An experiment episode wouldn’t be complete without an update on the ongoing struggle to manage screentime. For me it encapsulates the hardest thing for me about motherhood—figuring out the balance of agency and control. We’ve done enough experiments with tech free-for-alls to know that the kids aren’t ready to manage screentime totally on their own. But I tend to go a little too far to the controlling side, which isn’t good for me or them. It takes so much work to be on top of it all.

Then sometimes I go even more extreme, and threaten to get rid of video games, and computers for the whole summer. But that doesn’t feel right either, because I do want them to start developing the skill of self regulation and making their own choices about how to spend their time.

Lately, I’ve just realized that my biggest problem has been trying to figure out a one-size-fits all system when my kids are very different sizes and temperaments. How many times and in how many situations am I going to have to learn this lesson?

So I’ve been talking to each kid individually, trying to figure out a way, especially during the summer to allow them some screen time without letting it take over. It takes a lot of time, but we’ve been doing weekly tech check-ins to track how much time their spending on phones and video games, discussing how they want to prioritize their time, coaching them, etc.

My dream of an easy, one-size-fits-all answer for tech or anything else for that matter, is not happening any time soon, but nor should it. That’s not how any of us learn.