114. Mindset Mini: Co-Parenting Math Problems
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NOTE: Following transcript is not edited.
Math problems
[00:00:00] Hello friends and welcome back to the podcast. I was reflecting this week on how often I do math problems with my clients. I often joke that I got my undergraduate degree in environmental [00:01:00] engineering and I honestly never really felt like an engineer, through my life. I never really identified as one and yet I always find myself doing math problems with my clients and I love doing it and I'm so glad my brain works in that way to see where there's a math problem that could be calculated to just make things easier.
[00:01:27] And perhaps you're thinking, oh, like, what kind of math comes up in co parenting? Well, it turns out there's quite a lot. , I wanted to share a couple examples with you today, just in case it's helpful for you to find where there might be a math problem that You could solve right now, because what's beautiful about finding a math problem is that so often our brain is telling us we have a personality problem, or we have a communication [00:02:00] problem, or we have some sort of big, tangled, drama filled problem with our co parent, when really we might just have a math problem.
[00:02:10] And if we get our numbers and do some calculations, we might have a solution there. So let me tell you about the first one. I had a client who really wanted to send her kiddo to private school. And the co parent agreed to it, but did not want to pay for private school , and so my client is really stuck in this space of trying to figure out how can I convince them to pay for it.
[00:02:42] And, you know, , they could go through mediation, they could try, you know, a whole bunch of different stuff. But in the end, after talking about it for a while, I suggested to my client, Well, what if you just paid for it? And to them, , [00:03:00] that first question was overwhelming. Well, I don't know if I can afford it. . All on my own. And I was like, well, let's do the math. Let's calculate it out. Let's see what it actually would cost and see if there's a way for you to do it.
[00:03:15] And when they did calculate it out, it was clear it wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't something that they could just, you know, reach into their pocketbook and pay for. But then the challenge became, well, how could we, like, what, what is the next math problem that we could do to figure out how to generate
[00:03:35] the tuition money to be able to do this if we really wanted to do it. And what I noticed with her as she was doing these problems was how empowering it felt. Oh, I can just solve this. I can figure out how to solve it. Maybe it's going to take a lot of creativity. It's going to take resourcefulness.
[00:03:56] It's going to take me stretching outside of my comfort zone, [00:04:00] but it's all stuff that is in my control versus what my co parent decides to do is in their control. So that's one example of a math problem.
[00:04:11] Another example I often come up on is having a stay at home parent who's now thinking about going back to work and balancing, taking care of kiddos and working and feeling like, well, how am I going to earn how much I need to earn to be able to maintain my household. And there's a lot of fear around it until we start getting into the numbers
[00:04:38] and until we start seeing, okay, these are the days of the week that you want to work. These are the hours of the day you want to work. This is how much you need to earn each month to take care of everything you want to take care of, put money away into retirement, whatever your goals are. And so here's what your hourly rate would need to be.
[00:04:58] To be able to do that, [00:05:00] and once we have that broken down into these numbers, it suddenly becomes something like, Oh, okay, so then I just start looking for jobs that fit that, or I'm going to create a business, and this is what my goal is going to be. But until we start writing down numbers, there's just a whole lot of drama and emotion that's tied up in it.
[00:05:24] Here's one more math problem. Say you are going away on a business trip and you need coverage for your kiddos while you're traveling and your co parent does not want them during the time that you need to be gone. So your math problem has to do with hours and days. And, you know, how many hours on Monday do I need?
[00:05:50] How many hours on Tuesday? How many hours on Wednesday? And then maybe there's financial piece in there as well, right? Who can I ask for [00:06:00] coverage that might be family or friends where they're just helping me out? Who might I ask for coverage that I'm paying as a babysitter or a nanny? What is, what is the calculation?
[00:06:11] How do I put this all together? These pieces. To cover what I need instead of being tied up in this idea that my co-parent needs to support me during this time, which feels very out of my control. I can't make them do that, but when I can take the math problem, okay, I have three days and I need coverage for my kiddos during these hours, suddenly just turns into something that is in my control.
[00:06:44] And I'm much more empowered and I feel capable of solving this math problem. So that's my challenge for you. See where you might have some math problems that you could solve. Can you simplify something that feels really [00:07:00] big and ungainly and complicated and maybe dependent on your co parent for some sort of support?
[00:07:09] Can you simplify it down to a math problem that you can have full control over? Experiment, see what you can find. All right, y'all. That's what I have for you this week. You take care. Have a good one. [00:08:00]
What if just a bit of math could improve how you feel about co-parenting?
From figuring out school costs to planning a return to work, I'll show you how simple math can make big challenges feel more manageable, and make co-parenting feel a little bit easier.
So, grab your calculator and tune in to discover the power of trading math for struggle in your co-parenting problems!
