Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe problems big and small with you, our dear Reframeables.

Natalie
And why do we call you such a term of endearment?

Rebecca
Because we’re all in the process of reframing and being reframed as we reorient life through the stories we tell.

Natalie
Today we’re reframing the parental push. What does that mean again, Bec?

Rebecca
Well, I share a story of something I’m navigating with my eldest, who’s now in high school.

Natalie
And I offer some retrospective thoughts — wisdoms, even…

Rebecca
Very wise.

Natalie
…brought forward from my time as a high school teacher.

Rebecca
So let’s try it: reframing goal-setting for our children, or the parental push.

Ok, I have another tickle.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
Do you want to hear this one?

Natalie
Yeah, definitely.

Rebecca
This is a hard one, because I was even out for dinner last night with some friends, and it actually came up, and they are experiencing the same tickle. It’s particularly related to piano practicing, but we can take it bigger. Basically, Elsie was saying her piano teacher said she wanted her to take some space — like, don’t start doing the grade nine exam right away.

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
Or the grade ten — whatever, it doesn’t matter. Don’t start doing your next exam right away. Let’s just kind of, like, work on our musicianship and just… you know, she wanted her to play, like, a concerto. And Elsie said to me, she said to me crying, “What is the point if I’m not working towards a goal? What is the point of playing? I don’t want to do it just for fun.” Which, oh my God, I don’t know if there’s any other parents out there who can feel the pain of that, because it’s like, I so badly want her to do music just for fun, at some level. But in another tricky way, I’ve participated in this sort of Royal Conservatory goal-oriented route, because it’s almost like you can’t not in taking piano lessons — that seems to be the way we go. That’s how we teach.

Natalie
It’s very Canadian, yeah.

Rebecca
Yeah, it must be very Canadian. I wonder if it’s in the US, too, like what their approach is. You know, where you do exams. Teachers, that’s how they think, I think almost, or a lot of them do. But it made me so sad that she would need this goal and that she would consider that without the goal, there would be no point. And then the people we were with last night, the guy was saying that if his kids came to music and said, “You know what, I just want to write a song,” he would feel like he had triumphed. That was actually his experience — he had a more unique experience where he sort of picked up this love of playing the bass and developed it on his own. But then his partner was saying she went through the conservatory system. She was like, “I wouldn’t understand that.” But she went and got to her grade ten. So it’s like this divide. Is it very specific? I guess the larger question is, what do we do with our kids if they don’t… like, do they need a goal? School pushes us towards goals. Like, isn’t this an industrial society where we put them in and they know that you study because then you have to take a test. So it’s that big question of: is this sad?

Natalie
Is this sad?

Rebecca
Is this a very tragic part of being a parent, is witnessing this and realizing you’ve pushed them out of joy, almost, and creation into goal orientation? But then at the same time, what are you fighting? We’re fighting phones. We’re fighting the allure of social media, right? If she doesn’t have a goal, so if I said, “Ok, fine, just do it for fun, and then let’s see what happens,” is she going to do it? No — she’s going to go to her phone, because that’s the default. Like, don’t you fall to the… what is that thing in life where you fall and don’t rise?

Natalie
Oh, well, I don’t know.

Rebecca
It’s not gravity. It’s like…

Natalie
It is, actually, but…

Rebecca
It’s gravity. Ok, whatever. We’ll think of it later.

Natalie
I think this is really interesting — really interesting as an educator and also certainly one who’s been… like, right now I’m in the midst of teaching this assessment and evaluation course to this group of masters students, and…

Rebecca
Which I just have to say, Nat, that’s not a very interesting title for a course — assessment and evaluation.

Natalie
I know, but yet they all came into it with like, “I didn’t know it was going to be this.” So yeah, the title was misleading.

Rebecca
Oh, ok.

Natalie
Well, especially because I’m the person that’s, like, really anti-grades. I don’t actually find grades the way forward in terms of promoting and prompting innovation in education. I think there are other ways that we can try and do it, but it is fighting a losing battle in a system. And I experience this with my own students who are like, “Yeah, but…” And it’s always a “Yeah, but…” with them, because they’re teachers already working in a system where this is the only way that students have to pass on to the next grade. And we’ve got them all in, you know, silos of who learns what, and what then determines the next movement forward. And I mean, when I was teaching my grade twelves even, that group of students had a really hard time anytime something wasn’t worth something. They needed it to be worth a grade — like, I really fought them on that because I was like, “No, we’re doing this for the learning to get to the point where I’ll give you a grade if that’s what you so desperately want.” And that was a really challenging philosophical kind of pondering for me.

So I think that when you say, “Is this sad?” I mean, yeah, I think it’s a sad reality that is. You just named it, it’s what our whole society is built on, right? Like, school can’t even just be for school. School, for many people, is school equals job, right? If you do school, you get job. A liberal arts degree in years past was supposed to be just about pondering who you are as an individual. Who gets the opportunity to have that, who has the privilege to have that kind of time? I mean, there’s so many kinds of questions that are… the only word here, Becca, and you’re going to be annoyed with me, is ‘imbued’ in it. It’s just really that kind of quandary, that sort of a problem. And I would say from hearing you describe it, that first of all, I’m not sure why your piano teacher didn’t have that discussion with the three of you about taking a break before jumping on to ten, because that feels like, isn’t the parent part of this process? That’s just my question. Not trying to make you mad at someone, I’m just a little bit curious about that.

But the second part is I actually think that I think a goal is fine. If that’s the world that we live in, then I understand Elsie’s sense of wanting to have that goal. And that doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy it in the midst of doing it. Just because she needs a goal to work towards doesn’t mean she’s not enjoying the doing. Like, the notion of the art for art’s sake — I think I used to say that to myself as if that was a thing, until I now started living this life as an arts worker. And now I’m like, “No, I really want to have a place where I’m going to publish this thing to make the thing I just wrote feel like a product.”

Rebecca
I understand that impulse, too, but there is also… I mean, would we be striving for a better society if we didn’t always have to place it somewhere? And how would we be changed as people if we were doing more art for art’s sake?

Natalie
100%. Yeah, I mean, I think that that’s true, but goals also don’t have to be just… when I’m saying ‘places,’ it’s not like if I place it in my newsletter each week, I’m getting anything for that beyond that, like, now I have the documented space where I can say it lives.

Rebecca
Right.

Natalie
Like, I haven’t gained money. You know, many times, I haven’t gained followers, so therefore readers. I mean, sometimes it’s just, “Now it exists in that space, so at least it has a form,” as opposed to sitting — so maybe that.

Rebecca
So you’re saying giving it form, giving it…

Natalie
Some structure.

Rebecca
Some structure.

Natalie
I mean, our brains do do well with structure.

Rebecca
So maybe Elsie, who has, you know, grade nine now, and so… it’s like, how do you just… you say now, at grade nine, “Ok, don’t have a goal anymore.”

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Like, that’s too challenging for her brain — to say, “We’re taking away my goal now? Ten years in?”

Natalie
Yeah, it seems a bit strange to do that to her own brain. That would be like, “Wait a second. Everything that has made sense to me, that we’ve scaffolded up to here — now the world is just going to take away all that scaffolding? But how do I stay up here at the top of the structure without all of those things that built me up?”

Rebecca
Interesting to hear you say all that, Nat, because actually when it comes to Frankie, you’re super chill about his piano playing. So do tell, how do you balance what we’re talking about with goals and then the approach you actually take with your own son when it comes to piano?

Natalie
Well, the goal, I think in my little household, is the song. So the grade thing hasn’t really come up with some big deal, because I don’t think he has the same goal-oriented nature that perhaps his mother does. So I’m not going to push something, at this point, that is me on him. Whereas in your situation, I don’t see you pushing anything. I think that that is just recognizing who your kid is — she’s a very goal-oriented kid, so that just makes sense. And also, but with Frankie, it’s definitely about if we’ve started a song, we’re now going to finish this song. So we have our goals, but they’re in-house. They’re like in-house goals, as opposed to external goals — but they’re still goals.

Rebecca
Well, they’re in-house, but it’s really sweet because they’re in-house but I just find that you bring a sense of chill to the piano that I’ve never been able to bring. But also you did just quit in grade eight. You were like, “Ah, I think I’m done, sort of. Fuck it.” You remember?

Natalie
Yeah — no, I did. I did. I walked off that stage and said, “Never again.”

Rebecca
“I’m done.” So I guess you’re bringing that same relaxed…

Natalie
I did my part. Yeah. I don’t know.

Rebecca
Would you have a general recommendation for parents in how they approach music? Would you like to take it bigger, Nat?

Natalie
Yeah, I mean I guess, just from where I sit, stand, whatever… as somebody who has spent a long time in an education system where very specifically kind of constructed goals are so valued, but often not valued by the educators — you know what I mean? There are other people like me in the system who are going, “Oh my gosh, guys. We don’t need to be spending so much time…” — and by ‘guys,’ I’m actually talking to the community, to the parents. You’ll get a whole bunch of parent types coming in going, “I need my kid to have this and this and this,” and I’m looking at them saying, “I know what things are like on the other side at the university registrar’s office, and I know what’s being looked at and what isn’t, and it’s not all as clear cut as everybody seems to think it is.”

So I think the goals from the inside looking out can be a little bit more flexible, and even amorphous at times. Which then, just from my perspective, allows us to sort of look at the kid — to look at the child and go, “What does this child actually benefit from?” And my specific kid seems to deal really well with very tangible small-scale goals that will build to something. That’s what I see in him, and I would have said that for a number of my students over the years. Whereas in this story, I see someone like Elsie as having long-term vision — like, she really can sort of set something far ahead and work towards that. I say, why not honour that for her? That’s my perspective, simply because that’s just recognizing who she is — which you’ve always done, so…

Rebecca
And you’re fine that he’s not going to be a pianist.

Natalie
No, he’s not going to be some stellar pianist in the end of this. Because you can’t, if you’re not doing all of the work with sort of a rigid schedule of sorts.

Rebecca
But you’re saying to be a pianist, he would need to be a different character.

Natalie
I think so.

Rebecca
And you don’t see that character in him. You see, “I have to nurture other parts of him.”

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
“That part isn’t there. I’d be forcing it.”

Natalie
Yeah, like it was so… you know what? It’s very interesting. I didn’t know that my kid was going to be the kid who actually wanted to do cross country practices, which meant that he and I had to leave the house at 7:45 — like, I don’t like waking up early like that, and I was somehow walking to these practices and sitting cold on a bench, watching him run laps of this field so happily. And I’m like, “Ok.” So I learned something of him. But then his comment to me at the end was like, “I don’t want to come in first, mama. I don’t even want to come in second. I’m happy to come in fourth, because then I don’t have to do another one of these races.” So I think he came in, like, fiftieth — who knows? We have no idea. Like, 50th. He was in the middle of a pack of, like, a hundred kids, but he was just so happy to be doing the thing. And for him, it was about the social.

Rebecca
Oh, right, and then he said to me — he said, “I fell in the middle. I fell down a hill and then up a hill. Then I got back up, then I kept running.” I just loved it, that that’s the part he was recounting. So I’m like, “Yes, Frankie. That’s part of the story I would tell, too.”

Natalie
And it was like, that’s it — for him, I think it’s about… is it, actually did you just hit on it? I think for him, it’s about the story. Like, it’s the story of the experience.

Rebecca
Yeah. The journey of…

Natalie
Yeah. So I don’t know, as we all kind of learn the stories of our kids, and then have to interact as the stories of ourselves.

Rebecca
That’s the hard part, yeah.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
One of the harder parts is thinking, like, “Why is this touching me so hard? What do I want them to do that I didn’t do?” I mean, all those things — you know, those things we know are happening in our parenting, but there’s some discomfort when you see it, and you realize you’re enacting your own story in a way, or your own unfulfilled story.

Natalie
Right, yeah — your own sort of personal, if we want to call them limitations, or whatever, sort of show up in a space where you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know I was going to have to face this again.” But I mean, that is very human. And so we’re just reframing community again and again.

Rebecca
Bring your love.

Natalie
Bring your love. You obviously got something out of that conversation with those people last night — even if it was just like a shared sense of, “Ok, I’m not the only one here.”

Rebecca
Who experiences this dilemma. Yeah.

Natalie
And so honouring that the dilemma exists must be part of the reframing project. You can’t reframe something you haven’t actually acknowledged.

Rebecca
Nope.

Natalie
So there you go.

Rebecca
Hey Reframeables: a little housekeeping. Don’t forget to rate, review, or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts if you like what we’re doing here on Reframeables. Your feedback really supports this reframing project of ours. Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter, which comes with a free delicious recipe from Nat. Check us out over on Patreon too, where we do mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. On Patreon, you can become a monthly donor for as little as $2 a month, or you could even tip us on our new Ko-fi account. Lastly, tell us what you like and what you want to hear more of. We love feedback and getting to know you, our listeners. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Reframeables.

Natalie
And now for a sneak peek of what a $6 Patreon subscriber gets access to twice a month — and honestly, given inflation, that’s the price of a latte. So just consider us your caffeine boost.

Rebecca
Exactly. Every other week, we put out a list of our five Reframeables life hacks and enhancers in a week. These are the things that we do or buy or read or watch that we really feel enhance our day to day. Nat, you’re so good at these lists. We share them with each other and our Patreon friends because that’s what Reframeables is all about — caring for ourselves and community in all the ways we know how or are learning about.

Natalie
We hope you enjoy.

Hey Bec.

Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
I’ve got five life hacks and enhancers for you.

Rebecca
You have them all for me?

Natalie
I do. For you and for our loyal listeners.

Rebecca
I love it when they come from you, because I like to learn from you.

Natalie
Aww. Well, I’m excited about these because they have all sort of played into my week — and it’s Thursday, and I’ve needed a lot of help to get through this week. So the first one: walking meetings. I have learned that walking meetings for my body are more efficient, and I love efficiency, so I’m really going for that one. And I’m not the only one that’s doing this. Like, the Harvard Business Review is writing about this stuff too. So I am not alone in my feeling that there’s something good about the efficiency of what can be accomplished when one walks and talks.

Rebecca
But is it also more fun?

Natalie
Well, for me, I love walking — so yeah, I love it.

Rebecca
Because I honestly wouldn’t think that you even need to be more efficient.

Natalie
Ok, fair enough.

Rebecca
But you might need to have more fun.

Natalie
Yeah, and maybe it just makes me feel like I’m not sitting, and my butt’s hurting or my leg’s hurting or any of those things. But I kind of like knowing that it’s been studied out there that walking meetings are a thing to do. So I’m just adding myself to the list of people who are doing that.

Rebecca
Yeah, I should do that more, walking. Any of my meetings, let’s do it walking.

Natalie
I’m into it. I’m here for it. Ok, the second one, a definite life enhancer, is in my family, we eat a lot of what we call ‘egg toast,’ which is just really eggs on toast. It’s really not that complicated. But I’m trying to find ways to amp it up a little bit when I’m not really feeling like that’s exciting enough. And I’ve found that pesto on Dimpflmeier’s kind of hard, slightly boring spelt bread (the yeast-free stuff), spread with pesto and then a couple pieces of goat cheese, hard cheddar, and then an egg on top is, like, the most amazing little mini-lunch. It’s got everything covered.

Rebecca
Which he made for me today — though I don’t know if I tasted the cheddar.

Natalie
Oh, it was in there. So it melted into your egg.

Rebecca
Oh, it was delicious.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Let’s go make another one.

Natalie
We’re out of cheddar, and we’re out of that bread. All we have are eggs right now.

Rebecca
Eggs and pesto.

Natalie
Nope — pesto’s gone, too. So actually, it’s just egg. But I’m glad you liked it, because I felt like that was like a real elevated egg toast.

Rebecca
Yeah, it was delicious.

Natalie
Ok, so pesto with your eggs — definitely a win.

Rebecca
I’d like to introduce that to Elsie, because she really likes pesto, and I feel like that might help her like eggs more.

Natalie
Does she not like eggs?

Rebecca
Well, she only likes carbs. I did something wrong as a mother. We’ve made too many noodles in our life, and that’s all they like.

Natalie
I celebrate that she likes carbs because that means she’s not dealing with, like, what… what is it?

Rebecca
Celiac?

Natalie
Well, yeah, that first of all, but also those who are just, like, so anti-carb — which you’ve sometimes teased and accused me of. That’s not actually it. I like certain kinds of carbs. But…

Rebecca
Yeah, the one time you talked about, somewhere… on some TikTok, podcast, something, you talked about loving the ‘butter croissant.’ Do you remember that?

Natalie
And how excited I was about it?

Rebecca
Yeah, and you kept saying ‘croissant’ or something. I was like, “That girl hasn’t said that word enough. That croissant is too foreign to her,” because it sounded foreign.

Natalie
Wait, how would you have said it?

Rebecca
I don’t know. “Croissant?”

Natalie
Really?

Rebecca
I would have, like, super… I don’t know. I’m not saying that’s better. I’m just saying I’d just be like, “Croissant.” “Anyone want a croissant?” and someone will run to Mabel’s. It’s almost just saying, like, “Who needs water?”

Natalie
No. Ok, well, my croissant…

Rebecca
See? You say it weird, Nat.

Natalie
…is like a real experience. So you know what? You’re right. I don’t do it very often. So, out of carbs, back to pesto and eggs. The next thing is the rebounder — so I forget if I have talked about the rebounder on here, but I’m having a renewed excitement for my rebounder, which is essentially just like a little mini-trampoline. So I don’t know why the kids all get to just have the fun on the trampoline, so I bought myself a mini one. And it is the most amazing kind of exercise. Because for my leg, supposedly it’s really good for blood flow and all that kind of stuff. So that’s really good for blood clots, which is my issue. But also, there are hilarious rebounder workouts on TikTok. Like, I thought it was just only on YouTube, available to me to kind of go look at exercise workouts, but there are things on TikTok that are so funny. And so if I can work out and laugh at the same time because people are being so funny… anyways, I encourage, whether you have one or not, go…

Rebecca
And the workout is good? Funny and good?

Natalie
Well, because it only lasts, like, a second. Now you just have to go do that move. But every time you’re doing the move, you think of how funny it was when you just watched it. To me, that’s a win.

Rebecca
That sounds like so much joy in your life, Nat. I love it.

Natalie
So rebounder workouts are new and big for me, and you don’t have to do very long. Like, I think some people would think you’d have to bounce for, like, an hour. Not when you do what these guys are doing. Like, five minutes and you’re done.

Rebecca
I like that.

Natalie
My body is sore from having done what I did.

Rebecca
The only problem in my house is that I’d have to put the rebounder in the living room, because the basement ceilings are too short.

Natalie
Yeah, I moved it up to the kitchen. It’s really not that big of an object, so you just move it around.

Rebecca
And you just bounce in the kitchen?

Natalie
I just bounce in the kitchen.

Rebecca
Nice.

Natalie
Really nice tall ceilings. Yeah, because down here, we’re taping in my basement, folks, and my ceiling is not very high, so I could bonk myself if I really got excited.

Rebecca
Ok, now that I know that you just carry it around with you — wherever you want to bounce, you do.

Natalie
Yeah, just move it. So that’s that. Ok, another one (and I was actually inspired by you, but Clifford and I were doing it, too) was a midweek beer. Now, some people do this all the time, but I think it’s maybe more exciting because we don’t do it all the time. And so this midweek beer was a celebration. It was kind of just us looking at each other and going, “Let’s high five each other with a beer.” So we went to our local brewery, to the Indie, and bought a really good beer and then shared it together. And then I went on Instagram and saw that you and Simon were doing the same thing. You were having a little beer together. And I thought, “Ok, this is a thing.” A life enhancer is to have a midweek celebratory… what you called, “Thread the needle between piano lessons beer,” with your loved one.

Rebecca
Yes. We’ve been taking to doing that. We drop Violet off, then we run to the brewery… which now I’m forgetting the name of where we run to. That’s not important though.

Natalie
Indie? It’s not Indie?

Rebecca
No, it’s at… because she’s at Lansdowne and Bloor. It’s the one there — Bandit.

Natalie
Oh, you go to Bandit. That’s so cute.

Rebecca
I get a cherry beer. Simon gets… whatever Simon gets. We scarf it or drink it really fast.

Natalie
Gulp it down.

Rebecca
So that’s also fun.

Natalie
So then you’re hammered, and then you run back and pick her up.

Rebecca
Exactly. That’s fun.

Natalie
Oh, I think that’s really sweet. I love that.

Rebecca
So threading the needle. Threading the needle beer.

Natalie
Yeah — midweek celebratory beer.

Rebecca
With someone fun.

Natalie
Yup — with someone that you will enjoy doing a quick one with like that.

Rebecca
Yeah, so no big talks. We have no big talks.

Natalie
No. You’re too busy gulping. That’s what’s happening there. And then this last one (and you literally just did this, Rebecca, but I totally agree with it, and I think it’s full on both a life hack and enhancer together) is service compliments. And what I mean by that is somebody who has served you, be it that beer or what just happened when we were having tech issues and you had to contact our tech people…

Rebecca
Squadcast. Let’s just call them out. Squadcast, that’s who we record with.

Natalie
Squadcast. So you get on your little WhatsAppy message thing with them, and they responded so fast — like, the only option here is to snap, because it was that fast, and…

Rebecca
Yeah — actually, in this case, the owner of the company was like, “How can I help?”

Natalie
And that’s amazing.

Rebecca
Yeah. It was really nice.

Natalie
And they were so fast. But then you complimented them. Like you said, “They’re practically high-fiving each other in the chat.” And you know what? They deserve to, because that’s brilliant that they were able to provide that service. But I really think we don’t do enough in terms of our own enhancing of our lives when service is involved. We don’t do enough of the thanking, and then we get grumpy when the interactions aren’t perfect. So I say I think there’s a life hack in there — that you start the process towards good by starting with a compliment.

Rebecca
Yeah. Don’t hold back the compliment.

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Give them.

Natalie
Give them all the love.

Rebecca
Give them freely.

Natalie
Yeah. Which actually I could extend to my own interactions on, like, Facebook and Twitter. I think I’ve even said on here before that I’m a little bit… I withhold from the like button. Like, I don’t like everything.

Rebecca
Although cut yourself some huge slack there, Nat, because you’re always going on Twitter and…

Natalie
Trying to engage.

Rebecca
Engaging in boosting people, lifting people up. So if you hold back the odd like, that’s…

Natalie
That’s ok.

Rebecca
Boundaries.

Natalie
Ok, boundaries.

Rebecca
So whatever your boundaries are.

Natalie
But service industry, let’s not hold back. Let’s share with the love.

Rebecca
High five the people who solve your tech problems.