5 Top Tips for Making Weekends Easier on Everyone

If all your weekend plans seem held hostage by your strong-willed child’s mood, you’re not alone.

In this episode, I name the extra challenges you face on the weekend and specific strategies to tackle them for good, unlocking actual freedom and possibilities to be spontaneous or just enjoy each other and relax!
 

IN THIS EPISODE I SHARED:

• Why what we think we want isn’t what we actually want
• Two goals to go into every weekend with
• How to stop power struggles before they start

DON'T MISS:

• Powerful realizations a client shared that transformed her mindset

// CONNECT WITH DANIELLE //
Website: parentingwholeheartedly.com
IG: @‌parent_wholeheartedly
APPLY: parentingwholeheartedly.com/apply

Transcript

Danielle Bettmann  0:04  
Ever feel like you suck at this job? Motherhood, I mean.  Have too much anxiety and not enough patience? Too much yelling, not enough play? There's no manual, no village, no guarantees. The stakes are high. We want so badly to get it right, but this is survival mode. We're just trying to make it to bedtime. So if you're full of mom guilt, your temper scares you, you feel like you're screwing everything up, and you're afraid to admit any of those things out loud - this podcast is for you. This is Failing Motherhood. I'm Danielle Bettmann, and each week we'll chat with a mom ready to be real, showing her insecurities, her fears, her failures, and her wins. We do not have it all figured out. That's not the goal. The goal is to remind you you are the mom your kids need. They need what you have. You are good enough, and you're not alone. I hope you pop in earbuds, somehow sneak away, and get ready to hear some hope from the trenches. You belong here, friend, we're so glad you're here.

Danielle Bettmann  1:14  
Hey, it's Danielle. Your Positive Discipline Certified Parenting Coach for strong-willed kids ages two to 10, I help defeated parents find validation, support, and proven techniques to parent their strong-willed kids with composure, connection, confidence, and cooperation through a four-month group coaching program based on the Wholehearted Framework I've developed over years of working with families one on one. If you just found the podcast, go to failingmotherhood.com to view a playlist of our most listened-to episodes, as well as where to start if you have a strong-willed child. 

Danielle Bettmann  1:44  
In this episode today, we will talk about why weekends are particularly hard to parent your strong-willed child, your two goals that you should go into each weekend with, and my five top tips for making weekends easier for everyone. So if weekends seem harder than weekdays at your house, you are not alone. This episode was actually inspired by a one-on-one conversation I had with a client yesterday, we broke this down, and it is so normal for weekends to be more challenging. Here are just a couple of reasons why. 

Danielle Bettmann  2:26  
Number one, you don't have the momentum of the obligations of school and work and the structure there cementing your certainty and your boundaries. You know that there are consequences for you as a parent if your child is truant, right? So it's easier to have complete confidence and certainty of the time you need to leave the house on a weekday, as opposed to the boundary of we need to leave to go get groceries on a Saturday, which feels harder to enforce. There's just a lot more ambiguity, and your child knows it too.

Danielle Bettmann  3:02  
Number two, weekends are hard because there are more challenging dynamics at play. During the week, you may pick up one child before the other. You may be parenting solo before the other parent gets home. On the weekends, typically, if you have another parent with you, then you are together trying to parent together on the weekends, or siblings are together much more often. So of course, that's going to be more opportunity for conflict. 

Danielle Bettmann  3:34  
And number three, weekends are more challenging because your child is without the structure they thrive with during the week, as much as they won't admit it, they really do prefer the momentum of one thing after another after another, and that order and that predictability. They really do love knowing what to expect and being able to wake up knowing that and on the weekends, they're typically much more unpredictable.

Danielle Bettmann  4:09  
So knowing that weekends are hard, right? I'm preaching to the choir. We don't need to go back anymore into that. You know, I know, we all know, right? Welcome to The Club. 

Danielle Bettmann  4:20  
What are the two goals that you should go into every weekend with? The first goal: tackle the unpredictability, because in your child's mind, sometimes we stay home in our pajamas until noon, and sometimes we have to wake up early and rush out to sports. Sometimes we have to go shopping, then we come home, and then we go back out shopping again. And in their mind, they always have questions, the question of, when do I get to watch screens? When do I get to play what I want to play? When do I get to go see my friend? Right? The problem is when they don't know the answer or don't even have maybe the expressive vocabulary to ask it or know that that's why they're kind of antsy, then they will make their favorite answer their reality, which is now and forever and always, right? So that welcomes resistance and the lack of cooperation because they have set out it is their mission to create the answers they want to see in the world. They have a lot of initiative, which is great, and they have a lot of persistence and determination and strong opinions, and we either get to work with that or against that. So when it feels like you're working against that, because you have different answers of when they actually get screens and get to play and see their friend, etc, during the weekend, because you woke up with completely different plans than the expectations that they woke up with, which might be completely unrealistic, but no one told them that, and you can't read their mind, you're set up to fail before you even wake up. Right? So the first goal - tackle the unpredictability. 

Danielle Bettmann  6:11  
The second goal on weekends: add a loose structure that sets some terms and conditions so everyone is not held hostage, and freedom and flexibility on the weekends are possible. Now hear me say, just because you have a strong-willed child, you do not need strict and rigid monotony having every weekend the same, but you do need to be set up for success. Clearly communicate your expectations when you know them, and be able to have some predictability set by a loose structure that puts everyone at ease because life makes sense and they know what's coming.

Danielle Bettmann  7:09  
The first is always going to be mindset. Now my clients know we don't get into strategies until you have the right mindset and the headspace and the capacity to actually understand the deeper root of the problem, actually be able to kind of calibrate yourself to being able to have a different reaction and different approach possible, and give you the tools to then assimilate that new information in a way that feels feasible, and have the ability to implement it.

Danielle Bettmann  7:49  
What I talked to my client about yesterday is she kind of had a realization in real-time while documenting how weekends currently go, and she was saying, "On school mornings, I'm typically solo, focused on getting them ready first, and then I get myself ready and I completely embrace and kind of radically accept the idea that they really need and work well when body doubled. So that might look like me staying in their room, helping them walk them through the choices of what to get dressed with, inviting them to bring their clothes into my room, or brushing their teeth with me in my bathroom. And that really expedites things and gets them down into more independent tasks like breakfast. On the weekends, I'm typically multitasking. I'm trying to get to all the things that I typically don't have time for on the weekend, maybe cleaning, maybe some computer tasks, whatever that might look like. I'm expecting them to get dressed on their own to get themselves ready at the same time that I might be getting myself ready, and it doesn't work, right? It blows up in my face. It takes 100 times longer, and in worst cases, it ends up being a meltdown, drag-out power struggle that makes us two hours late for whatever event we were trying to go to."

Danielle Bettmann  9:25  
So how does mindset come into this situation? Well, we talked about why weekends are objectively more challenging, and a lot of that was the circumstances surrounding how it feels different to your child. But how are you a different parent on the weekends versus the parent you are on weekdays? You likely also thrive off of the momentum of the structure and the expectations set before you. You also are able to be more in tune and present and connected to your child on maybe a weekday morning than on the weekend, when your brain is in 1000 different places. Neither of those objective facts is wrong or bad, they're just observations, and it's important to actually audit and get a true look at what's going on so that you can make the right next decision and be an actually good, wise leader in your house, right? 

Danielle Bettmann  10:29  
So what this parent recognized was she had a completely different approach on the weekends versus the weekdays. So it's really not that surprising that her child had a different behavior and reaction to that approach on the weekends versus the weekdays. And so we talked about how to manage that, knowing that without it being this huge, all-or-nothing shift, and that incorporates a couple of the other tips that we're going to be talking through, but the first piece of mindset is to ask yourself that question, how are you a different parent on the weekends? And another thing that this parent realized is, well, I seem to expect more out of the weekends, right? More independence, more kind of autonomy and understanding of time, and being able to transition. Because I mean, truly, I'm not asking for a lot. I'm giving you a lot of freedom. There's not a lot expected of you. So when I do ask you something, I expect you to do it. I feel like the bar is lower, so I'm expecting more, and that is not wrong again, but it's worth considering if that truly makes sense in a way that translates to that intention and that message actually being what your child experiences and makes sense to them.

Danielle Bettmann  12:03  
I would recommend thinking through yes, there are fewer expectations, but that also means that they're not longer set up to cooperate with those expectations. The number of expectations doesn't set the bar for how cooperative your child is going to be asking less of them does not equate to a more cooperative child. Sometimes that can actually backfire and create more bad habits toward permissive parenting and resentment between your relationship and that child not being able to take accountability and understand the consequences of their actions. So that intention of wanting to give them more freedom on the weekends might actually be making things worse, and that doesn't mean you need to bust them around and make their weekends like they are. You know, the house cleaner of your house, but it's worth considering, where are you at in that balance? 

Danielle Bettmann  13:13  
The last piece I'll say on mindset is when we think about weekends, sometimes our expectations are unrealistic. What I mean by that is the idea of not having a strict schedule on the weekend, not having to go from here to here to here to here like we do on the weekdays. Sounds nice. Sounds freeing. Sounds like exactly what we need. But is it nice and freeing and exactly what you need if the actual reality of the weekend is met with constant resistance, argument, conflict, sibling rivalry, resentment in your relationship, burnout, and no one's tanks being refilled? Probably not. So we have to find a balance. It's not an all or nothing, we just get to abandon all of our structure and all of our tools on the weekend, just so that we feel like there are no things expected of us that will never go away as a parent and sometimes that actually does make our lived reality worse, we're not any happier. So that's just some food for thought on the mindset piece. 

Danielle Bettmann  14:24  
Now let's move into Tip Two: make one guarantee. Make one guarantee, like, if your goal is to tackle the unpredictability and answer that question your child is likely asking, like, when do I get to play with my friend? When do I get to have screens, etc? Answer that question upfront so that you don't invite all of the behavior that they jump to the conclusion that is. Necessary to be able to answer that question. So that might look like saying, our one guarantee, no matter what our plans are for the weekend, is you always will have an extra hour of screen time, right? So that might look like saying, depending on our plans, it's either an extra hour on Saturday morning or Saturday night. And then on Friday you check in with them and say, okay, we have basketball Saturday morning, so your extra hour screens will be after dinner Saturday night. You don't know how many power struggles you just nipped in the bud by being one step ahead of them and letting them know that plan, especially a whole day ahead of time. Now, of course, age is going to play into this. There is a lot of nuance with strategy, and I always give that disclaimer, but guarantees, nonnegotiable. Guarantees help free up the uncertainty, the energy in your child's head that is spent needing and wanting to and feeling justified to push for more of what they want when they don't feel like there's a clear, concrete answer. And again, we feel like we shouldn't have to have these more firm boundaries on the weekends. We would love for it to be laissez-faire, do whatever, but that's not actually fun when it's lived out. Right? We just established that with the mindset piece. So make one guarantee that still is flexible. It can ebb and flow with your plans for the weekend. It doesn't lock you in to always have to be home until noon on Saturdays, but you're answering the question before it's asked, eliminating problem behaviors before they start. That's Tip Two. 

Danielle Bettmann  16:50  
Tip three. When it's not working, the plan's got to change. What that looks like is if, typically, on weekdays, your family rule is that your kids have to get dressed before they come down the stairs for breakfast. That's kind of the typical expectation, and it works. On the weekends, maybe you don't enforce that boundary so they come downstairs, and they may wake up early. They hang out on the couch, watch some Saturday morning cartoons, and then, typically, you want to leave the house around 11 am, and then asking them to change out of their pajamas at 10:30 becomes an issue. And not only is it an issue on Saturday, but every single Saturday, then you have full permission to step back and recognize that pattern and put a stop to it, because otherwise it's the definition of insanity, right? You want to maybe give your child that freedom, but if it's not working, it's not working, and you need to be able to say, maybe even outside of that, you know, heated moment be able to just say, hey, this isn't working. I can't let you stay in your pajamas until 10:30 anymore on Saturday mornings, because we have a really hard time stopping what you're doing and doing it before we have to leave the house. And it is changing our plans, and it is affecting everyone in the house, and it's putting us all in bad moods, and I don't like fighting with you, so just like school days, I have no choice but to insist that you still get dressed before coming downstairs, even if we're not sure what our plans are, because if and when we need to leave the house, we will be able to without fighting. I want that for us. You could still provide some compromise or ability to negotiate within that. It doesn't have to be exactly that script. I'm only illustrating it so that you feel like you understand what that looks like. But you need to be able to find patterns and think strategically and get ahead of solving a problem, instead of playing out insanity, thinking, surely this Saturday will be different. Okay, so that's step number three. 

Danielle Bettmann  19:17  
Top Tip number four, make time, to make a plan. You do not have to have your complete weekend ironed out on Friday night and be able to communicate the whole thing to your child with time stamps and everything. That's unrealistic and I don't think that's actually even necessary or fair to anyone. I would love for you to wake up on Saturday and then be inspired by maybe a yard work project that you want to do, or something that you haven't gotten to, that you forgot about, that you want to then work on, or whatever that looks like at your house that weekend. The problem is all of that stuff that's in your head, isn't clearly communicated to your child. So of course, at some point, their expectations and your expectations are going to come crashing together and directly compete and then create a conflict, meltdown, disaster, fiasco, drama. Okay, so if and when you don't have plans for the weekend, and there is a lot of ambiguity around maybe the one event you have on your calendar. Then set an expectation that at 11 am you're going to set up your plan for the day. So that might look like everyone rolling out of bed on their own time, turning on the TV, staying in pajamas, etc, etc. At 11, there's an understanding that was set way beforehand where everyone in your family knows by 11 am we all meet at the dinner table and make a quick plan for the day. You, as the leader of your house, are going to literally sit there with some paper and say, what do we need to do? What would we like to do? And that's when you can share, here's what needs to get done, or here's what I would like to do today. And that can even be the plan if we're not going anywhere, right? We're all staying home today. Stay in your pajamas. We don't need to go anywhere, or someone's sick, we're staying home. But if that's still not communicated all day, you don't understand the level of uncertainty that is driving your child's behavior that entire day. So you're allowed to not have one, then have that opportunity to set one, and then that sets your expectations accordingly for the rest of the day. So that might look like saying, all right, we're gonna need to get groceries at Costco today. I'd like to go around one o'clock. It's now 11. I need everyone ready by 1230 I'm gonna start making lunch at 12. Okay, great. That helps so much to get ahead of any issues that were going to come up at 12:45, when you sprung it on them, right, they had already set in place a whole battle with their video game friends, right? Don't underestimate just how much that front loading and setting a plan before things become an issue can create so much more freedom for you. So that's number four, make a plan. 

Danielle Bettmann  22:32  
And number five, have a weekly check-in with your partner. Now, if you are parenting on the weekends and you experience a lot more stress of trying to parent on the same page or trying to not undermine each other, or knowing that your child reacts differently when you're both in the room, then you need to be able to plan around that, work with it, and get ahead of that. Actually, address it. Stop perpetuating that weekend after weekend after weekend surprised every time it happens again, right? So you need to be able to have a one-time outlet each week that you treat your family like you would the minimum on a business and have an agenda that's running throughout the week, maybe on a Notes app on your phone, on the fridge, or in your head of things to check in with your partner with. That might give you the freedom to not address something, correct them, criticize them at the moment, but put it on the agenda to say, hey, when we talk on Friday night, I'm gonna make sure to bring that up and explain to them why I handled that behavior in this way, or why, you know, we need to do this differently on the weekend, why we need a new bedtime routine, whatever that looks like. And then you can also, at that point, manage each other's expectations for the weekend or week ahead. What do we need to get done? What do we have to do? What would we like to do? Being able to again, have that outlet where you feel heard. They feel heard. You don't know how many potential conflicts and fires you just put out before they started. And now you can go into the weekend with a united front and more confidence and certainty while you parent in the moment, knowing with ESP where the other parent are already at and what they're expecting or where they want to be.

Danielle Bettmann  24:31  
Those are my five Top Tips. Check your mindset. Make one guarantee. Change it if it's not working, make time to make a plan, and have a weekly check-in with your partner.  That will help you with those two goals of tackling the unpredictability of weekends and adding in a loose structure that actually unlocks the freedom you're looking for. I hope this helps.

Danielle Bettmann  25:00  
I'm so glad you're here, and if you haven't yet, make sure you check out my free master class, Calm and Confident on my website, parentingwholeheartedly.com,  where you can master the kind, and firm approach to your strong, willed child needs without crushing their spirit or walking on eggshells and be sure to watch it with your partner, as they'll be able to identify themselves as one of the three types of parents of a strong-willed child and unlock an entirely new understanding of how to work with the way your child is wired. I believe in you and I'm cheering you on. Have a great weekend. 

Danielle Bettmann  25:37  
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Failing Motherhood. Your kids are so lucky to have you. If you loved this episode, take a screenshot right now share it in your Instagram stories, and tag me. If you love the podcast, be sure that you've subscribed and leave a review so we can help more moms know they are not alone if they feel like they're failing motherhood daily, and if you're ready to transform your relationship with your strong-willed child and invest in the support you need to make it happen, schedule your free consultation using the link in the show notes. I can't wait to meet you. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. I believe in you and I'm cheering you on.