Ep30. Calm Summer Series Part 1: Juggling Work and Play, with Sarah Thomson

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Welcome to Part 1 of the Calm Summer Series - a three-part journey to help you feel calmer, lighter, and more prepared for the school holidays.

In part one, Nina is joined by digital business coach Sarah Thomson, founder of Online Social Butterfly, to explore how parents can juggle work and family during the holidays without losing their calm.

Together, they dive into what it really takes to stay productive and present - from setting realistic expectations to giving yourself grace when things don’t go as planned. You’ll hear relatable stories, practical advice, and gentle reminders that calm and connection don’t come from doing it all - they come from doing what matters most.

If you’ve ever tried to answer emails while the kids ask for snacks or felt torn between your business and your family, this episode will feel like a breath of fresh air.

You’ll Learn:

• Why planning around your real capacity (not your ideal one) changes everything

• How to blend structure and flexibility when routines disappear

• Simple boundaries that help kids respect your work time

• Practical ways to share the load - from swaps to saying yes to help

• One small shift that creates a big impact for working parents

Why This Episode Matters

As the school holidays approach, many parents find themselves stretched thin - trying to be a present, patient parent and keep up with work or business demands.

This episode is your gentle reminder that balance doesn’t mean doing everything at once. It means giving yourself permission to slow down, plan with compassion, and let some things go.

It’s the first step in creating a calmer, more connected summer - one that feels good for you and your kids.

Take Home Action

Take a mindful moment each morning to set the tone for the day. Over breakfast, invite your kids into a short “morning check-in.” Ask, “Does everyone want to know what’s happening today?”

Then clearly share what’s ahead:

🕘 “Mum’s working from 9 to 11.”

🥬 “After that, we’ll go to the park.”

🎮 “Nintendo time after lunch.”

For younger kids, make it visual - draw or write the plan together.

When everyone knows what’s coming, there are fewer meltdowns, fewer “Can I…?” questions, and a lot more calm.

It’s a simple daily habit that turns chaos into connection and helps your family move through the day with ease.

About the Calm Summer Series

This three-part mini-series leads into Nina’s upcoming Calm Summer Blueprint Masterclass on 3 December, designed to help parents plan a holiday season that feels more joyful, less frantic, and deeply aligned with their family values.

• Part 1: Juggling Work and Play — with Sarah Thomson

• Part 2: Imperfect Art and Creative Joy — finding calm through creativity and play

• Part 3: Caring for You — self-care, flow, and connection for a calmer family rhythm

Early-bird tickets for the Calm Summer Blueprint Masterclass are available until 27 November.

Take the Next Step

Join Nina for the Calm Summer Blueprint Masterclass on 3 December - your go-to session for planning a summer that feels lighter, calmer, and more connected.

Early-bird tickets available until 27 November.

Register here.

Links and Resources

• Check out Sarah Thomson's website — Online Social Butterfly

• Follow Sarah on social media:

  • Instagram

  • Facebook

• Listen to Sarah's Podcast - The Social Circus

• Register for Your Calm Summer Blueprint   

Let’s Connect

• Follow Nina on Instagram

• Website: mindfulparentinglifestyle.com.au

• Email: nina@mindfulparentinglifestyle.com.au

About the Hosts

Nina Visic

Nina is a mindful parenting coach and host of Your Calm Parenting Path. She helps parents create homes filled with more calm, connection, and confidence through mindfulness and practical, heart-led tools.

In this episode, she reminds us that it’s possible to stay productive without losing sight of what truly matters - presence, patience, and family.

Sarah Thomson

Sarah is the founder of Online Social Butterfly, a digital business coach and mentor who helps women build flexible, heart-centred businesses that align with their families and values.

Drawing on two decades of marketing experience and her own journey of raising two boys while growing her business, Sarah teaches that success doesn’t have to come at the cost of calm.

Transcript

This transcript was created using Headliner. It has been copied and pasted but not proofread or edited, so it may contain errors or inaccuracies.

Nina: You're listening to youo Calm Parenting Path. I'm your host, Nina, a mindful parenting coach and mum m here to help you go from overwhelmed and reactive to calm, confident and connected with your kids. This show is for parents who want to raise their children with more patience, less stress, and a whole lot more joy. Because small shifts make a big impact and you can build the parenting life you've always wanted. If you want to see what I'm up to, follow me on Instagram indfulparentinglifestyle and don't forget to hit, follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let's get started.

Nina: Hello and welcome back to your calm parenting Path. Today I'm joined by someone who truly gets it. Sarah Thompson is the founder of Online Social Butterfly, a heart centred digital business coach who who started her business when her boys were just three and five. She's lived through many school holidays trying to balance work and family life and now helps other women build flexible, ease filled businesses that align with their values. Now, this is the first episode in a special series all based around getting you ready, both physically and mentally, for the school holidays. In this episode, we're diving into what it really takes to stay productive and realistic during the holidays and how to bring more calm, compassion and connection into that juggle. Sarah, thank you so much for being here today.

Sarah: Thank you, Nina. I am so looking forward to our conversation. I'm, um, thrilled that you invited me on.

Nina: Uh, I couldn't have not asked you because I mentioned in the intro you started when they were three and five and they're big teenagers now, so it's been a while.

Sarah: Oh, they're kind of baby adults actually, because My oldest is 20, so he's definitely baby adulting. And my baby is 17 and he turns 18 next year. So. Really young men. Yes. Yeah.

Nina: Wow. Okay, so you started your business when they were young. What did those early school holidays look like for you as a working mum? Um, trying to do it all.

Sarah: Well, I guess I should probably start by saying my business then is not my business now. Okay. So excellent. When my children very young. I have a big business now with, you know, I have team and things like that. When I first left the corporate world and started my business, it was just me and my business, in truth was a part time business.

Nina: Right.

Sarah: So I want to be really honest about that and say if you look at me now, I was not doing that when I had little children. And I should also say, um, my son James, who's my baby, he didn't sleep through the night when I started my business. Uh.

Nina: Oh, no.

Sarah: Yes. So I was still juggling the sleep deprivation kind of having a child in school and a child starting kindy and all of those things. And so I, I admire women who say that they're full time in their business because I don't think I had the bandwidth when my children were young. I worked around them and the school holidays are, uh, always difficult. I want to be really honest about that. There's no perfect solution because particularly, um, in Australia with our eight week summer holidays, things can go well and then they're like, I don't want to do that today. And you're like, no, we've been loving that. Yeah.

Nina: Why?

Sarah: Yeah, there's no one answer that I can give you that that's going to be a magic wand to solve all of your school holiday problems.

Nina: M thank you for that caveat at the start.

Sarah: Good to know. Yeah, absolutely.

Nina: So you've supported a lot of women to build flexible, family friendly businesses like you did for yourself. Have you seen any patterns or challenges come up around the school holidays? Some more so than others.

Sarah: I think the biggest pattern that I see is people not taking into consideration their capacity. So just kind of going, oh, it's just school holidays. And I can keep doing this and not having any allowance for what that looks like. And I want to be really clear and say this because we have been doing this for years. The school holidays in my calendar have been blocked out for years since they were small for myself and my husband, because my husband works in the business. And the reason that I want to say that isn't it, uh, I did not have the luxury of not working for however many weeks. Is it like 16 weeks? It wasn't that I wasn't working, it was to signal to myself. And then when I had a team, to my team, I'm not available to show up on screen. Yes. So I would still work school holidays, but I wouldn't be running workshops and I wouldn't be online. So the biggest problem I see with people who have a business and work during school holidays is they don't make any allowance for it and so they just think it's business as usual. And we tell ourselves this because by and large, women who run businesses are often overachievers. Well, I can do this. I can get up at five.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: And I can do

00:05:00

Sarah: two hours of work and then I can do with my. And we completely overestimate what we want to do. And the reason we get to the end of the school holidays. Absolutely exhausted is you have tried to do too much. Instead of saying, actually, I should probably allow like I used to. I'm not going to show up face to face because that involves me doing a whole lot of hair and makeup that I don't want to do in school holiday. It also in my business, because I work at home, meant that my children had to be very quiet in a house. And as a mum of boys, Nina, I know you guess. Yes. How hard that is. So they can be good to a point, but they'll never be good the minute you want them to be good. So, you know, giving myself that compassion of saying, oh, I'm not gonna run workshops during the school holidays. Cause that's just awful for everybody. Um, I intentionally built my business so the school holidays were lighter.

Nina: Yes.

Sarah: And if I could give one piece of advice to anybody who's trying to work around children, it's to give yourself the grace of saying, this is not going to work. If I do this full time.

Nina: I'd love that, Sarah.

Sarah: Unless you put your kids in full time school holiday care, sure, you can do that. But I don't think that's what any of us started our business to do.

Nina: Exactly. Yeah. I really love that. And I think giving us that grace to not have as big an expectation of what we can achieve is such good advice. I had a session with you this morning and we talked about blocking out some days off during the school holidays and deliberately putting those dates in our calendar so that we're not even tempted to do a little bit of email checking here or there. We know that the emails will come back later on at the end, you know, once we've had a good week or so off, especially over Christmas and New Year's.

Sarah: Oh, thank you. I'm glad that you like that, because that's something that, um, how I teach and how I coach and how I mentor is how I treat myself. So when I talk, you know, when we do our goal setting every month and I say, what capacity do we have? It's always been based very much on my own personal experience of knowing capacities change. And like I said, now having baby adults, as I call them, um, you know, that, that need. What they need now is they need me to be a guide, rally my husband to be a guide.

Nina: Ral.

Sarah: We just need to keep them on track. Yeah. We're not keeping anybody alive. We're not necessarily feeding anybody because they're growing up. It's a very different proposition. But we're still here and we're still present.

Nina: Yes.

Sarah: And so how I parent now looks different to how I parented two years ago. Two years ago my boys were in school and 10 years ago when they were saying primary school. Yeah. And allowing, uh, yourself the, the changes as they come up.

Nina: Yes, definitely. And I think you also talk about being realistic about what we can achieve with those changes. So when my boys are young, I can maybe watch something, do some work while they watch a movie, but that's it. Because they want my time because they're so young and they, and I'm home and they want my attention. They want to play football, they want to play cricket. And so how do you support busy working mums to let go that expectation that they need to do it all and they need to continue doing it all during the school holidays?

Sarah: I hope that I have embodied it. I hope that people look at me and I hope that people think she's doing a really great job, but she's very human and I hope that people see that.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: And, um, I. So I just live in a normal home, a busy home full of boys and cats and dogs and, you know, all that kind of thing. And lots of, like you say, cricket balls through the house and all of those things that we get very used to. And I think what we need to be really honest about is why are we doing what we're doing. Like, I think most women who have a family started a business because they wanted to be more present with their children.

Nina: 100%.

Sarah: And that was absolutely why I left corporate marketing, uh, every day of the week and twice on Sundays. It was not a family friendly role. And so, um, I knew that that was a big no on what I didn't want. And what I did want was to be present for my children. And so from the very first, you know, meeting that I ever had in my business, I built my business around my family. So I had, uh, had time blocked out. So my kids always had assembly on a Wednesday. So Wednesday mornings were always blocked out. Didn't mean I went. Meant that if one of them got an award, which you only get a wee bit of notice about.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: Or, you know, something came up, that space was blocked out and both my husband and I could go to it. So if you build your business with intention and say, right, like the schools are great now, they put out the calendar for the whole year. You know when the swimming carnival is.

Nina: Yes.

Sarah: Or those go in the diary. The school holidays go in the diary. Everything is built in. And then my business got built around that and look, I could have scaled a lot faster if I had been in my business as much as I am now, but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be present with my children. And I feel like

00:10:00

Sarah: now that they are baby adulting, I, uh, look back and my husband and I can both say, we did, we did what we wanted to do. And we, we said we were going to be walking them to school and picking them up. We said we would do this and we'd do that, and we did.

Nina: Fantastic.

Sarah: And. But it took intention and it, if you don't give it that intention and say, oh, uh, next semester, I'm totally going to do that. You have to do it now and you have to put it in your diary. That's the only way it can happen.

Nina: Yeah, I think it's a great reminder to anyone listening to really take the time, jot down. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to start your own business? And just as you said, reflect back on it because it really. That helps to reduce the guilt that so many of us feel when we try to balance the work and the family and spending time and, you know, if we're on our phones a lot and so thinking about why we're doing it, I think that's a really great advice. So thank you, Sarah. Awesome.

Sarah: No worries.

Nina: We'll put some little prompting questions in the show notes for you, listener.

Sarah: I want to. The other thing I want to say about my home life is that I'm fortunately and not a person that has to have an immaculate home and that people walk in and it's beautiful and tidy. And, um, I'm okay with mess, which is a, um, great blessing when you have young boys. I'm okay with mess. And I'm okay. Like my children. I've always batch cooked. I hate cooking every night. It's just awful. So my children are very used to pulling something out the freezer that I've cooked on the weekend. And that's what you're having for dinner. Because for many years both my boys were competitive swimmers and there was. We all had different dinner times. So I created routines and structures that worked specifically for my family and I didn't care what other people thought. Like, it's very acceptable now to batch cook and it's very acceptable not to sit and eat as a family. But when my kids were younger, my mum especially quite frowned upon that. She's like, you should all be sitting down to dinner. I'm like, yeah, tell me how that works. Like, I can't See how that works. One of my boys swims five days a week. Like, tell me how that works. So I let go of a lot of things and my kids will still parrot this back to me and say, well, nobody died. Because that's what I'll say. Like, if we didn't do the washing, nobody would die. And if you don't, like, I, uh, know we don't live in chaos. And it's not that. It's just that I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I feel like Instagram and that kind of projection that people put out is so unrealistic. Nobody's living like that. Nobody has all of that. And so I think when we approach ourselves with kindness and just say, I can't be like that. I can't do all the things. I let so many things go that if I asked my children, they would have no idea that that was even a thing, because they'd be like, well, why did that matter in the long run?

Nina: Why does it matter?

Sarah: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And I'm really glad that I did that. And I guess I was raised. My mum was a single mom and my dad was not present in my life, so she was 100% single mom. And so she let a lot of things go because she worked full time and she also studied and we lived in a happy, functional home. And so I had a very good role model to say, it doesn't all matter. Like, doesn't matter how the washing's pegged on the line, these things don't matter. Those things you can let go of. I loved that that was my role model. And so I kind of just went, can someone do this? Can this happen? And so I didn't put myself under pressure to be this. And, um, what we imagine, this mum. Working mums are. They're not real, by the way. They don't exist.

Nina: Yeah, I really can relate to that because when I became a mum, one of my rules I made for myself is that I'm never apologising for a messy house. So if someone comes over and there's stuff everywhere, all over the floor, I will not apologise. I might comment on the fact that it's messy, but I will not apologise to someone else for the state of my house.

Sarah: Oh, I love that.

Nina: And it's a big shift and it took a while to kind of train myself to not apologise. Um, but it's really empowering because it's like they say, where your energy goes, your energy flows, or Whatever that quote is.

Sarah: Oh, I love that. Can I, can I tell you my, my spin on that, Nina? Because I used to say to people, I would apologise for my home looking like this, but that would set an expectation. It might be different next time and it's probably not going to be. So I used to make a joke of it. It's like, no, this is what it looks like. It will always look like this if you want it to be different. If I, if I apologise, you think what, it's still messy. Yeah. So I, I, I'm a bit the same as you. I used to have a big joke about that.

Nina: Yeah. I think embrace it and you focus on what's really important, you know, and whether that's batch cooking, whether it's that making sure the washing is always ready to go or that, you know, some people like to make sure the beds are made every morning. I like to have a clean benchtop in my kitchen and that's as far as I go. And maybe I can sit on the couch without having toys on it, but I don't focus on every minute of every day having to be tidy because that takes away, A, from energy I'm spending with my children, B, energy I'm spending on my business, and C, it doesn't bother me. So if it doesn't bother me, why let it start to bother me? Anyway, that's a bit of a side, um, tangent

00:15:00

Nina: that you went on, but I think it's really important because in school holidays we try to do it all and if we can let some things go, it's going to make everything easier for everybody. So. Thanks. Love it.

Sarah: No worries.

Nina: Let's get practical now, though. Do you have any practical strategies that have helped you balance productivity and presence when your kids are at home?

Sarah: Oh, absolutely. And I think the main one comes back to a little bit of energetics, if that's okay, and knowing who you are. So I am and my husband, I joke about this. I am such a, such a morning bird. He's such a night owl. So for me, being able to get up in the morning at 5:00am oh, no, I'm sorry. Um, and being able to do my Sarah things like my little morning routines and then being able to work, that's peak Sarah.

Nina: Awesome.

Sarah: That is my best self and it took me a long time and it's actually funny enough working with my husband, who's very inflow with his energy. He will sit and, like, game or play around till 11am and he used to really Annoy me because I'm like when he's starting working, um, and he just knew that because he's creative, I'm not ready yet. And as soon as he was ready he would go. And if we can listen to our own energy and understand when are we at our optimal, especially for work, make that your work time. Like for me early morning's work time, I can't really work after 3pm Right. I'm done, I'm tapped out. So knowing that to be true, there's no way I would say to myself, oh, just work evenings because that is never going to happen. I've got nothing left in the tank. So if you can understand your own energy and when you work best and you ring fence that time, whatever that looks like for two or three hours you will get. Most of us can work in three hours and do if we were super productive and get that work done. So knowing your own energy is probably my first piece of advice. Great. And the other kind of practical things I would say is if you don't have the luxury of having lots of family around who will help and support you, you need to make some friends and you need to make some school mum friends who will do swaps with you. So I'll have their children for a day, they will have my children for a. And it really helps because if you can get a whole day to yourself and work, you can probably get two or three days work done in that. So kind of finding those people. And I also used school, um, holiday like vacation care. So where I live our ah, council runs vacation care and they would put out the whole roster for summer holidays. One of the days they'd take them to Adventure World and I'm like well sign them up for that.

Nina: Brilliant.

Sarah: So nuts. You know putting them in for occasional vacation care is nice for them, it's nice for you but kind of getting support And I think one of the things I wish I'd done more of when they were younger is say yes to more offers of help because I kind of felt like I'd made a choice while I'm working for myself. So it's my choice, I need to work this out when really lots of people do want to help that love in surround you and I think we often push them away because we're a bit like well no, I'm, I've got this and I kind of regret that now if I'm honest. Like that's probably one of my big regrets if I, if I look back and think I wish I just Said yes. And my mum was amazing. She had my boys a lot. They. They would be as comfortable in her house as mine, so they would spend a lot of school holidays with her and they'd ring and go, but I don't want to come home. And I used to be really sad and I used to. Should have been thinking, brilliant. I've got. So, yeah, saying yes to any and all offers of help is. And can I. Can I tell you all this? And I really want everyone to hear this. Um, when we allow other people to help and support us, we're actually allowing them to do something that feels really good. So if you're a person like me, I'm a really generous person that will do a lot for people. I actually love it. Like, if I say to someone, can I cook you a meal? You're not going really well. And they say, yes. I'm like, oh, yay. I feel like I can do something practical. And so please remember, on the flip side of someone's offer of help, they're doing that because they want to and they love us. And I think if we all were a bit more open to receiving, we would probably make our lives easier.

Nina: Yeah, that's so right. Because it does feel so good to offer to help someone. And especially when you're talking about swapping, like, that's such a great idea, because you get that feeling of, um, contentment or satisfaction from helping the other parent go through what she needs to do and just have a break. One thing I like to do in the school holidays is invite a friend over for one of the boys, because then instead of having three, I've got a two and a two. And I find that they actually play really well together. And I can be a lot more productive than if it was just the three of them at home at the same time. And I actually am quite happy to sit there with my headphones on and edit a podcast while they're around because the noise doesn't distract me. I can work with a lot of noise around me.

Sarah: Brilliant.

Nina: I grew up with brothers as well as having lots of boys, so I've always been surrounded by lots of noise. So,

00:20:00

Nina: yeah, that's something that I find quite helpful, is to just have one friend over for one of them. And that really helps as well.

Sarah: Oh, I love that.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: And another thing I would say, and this became noticeable as my boys got older, you are allowed to say, I need you to be quiet and give Mummy, like, half an hour, an hour to work. Okay. Because what we're teaching Our children is really important. It teaches them that you're not the main character every minute of every day. Sometimes I have to do other things, which is good for kids, learning where they fit. And it also teaches them to entertain and amuse themselves. And it's funny because, uh, Grant and I, my husband, I have worked at home all of my kids life. They, as they got older, understood like if they got home and the office door, which is our fourth bedroom was closed, they knew that that meant I wasn't to be disturbed and I needed quiet time. And so what you're teaching your children is boundaries of like this house isn't a zoo every minute of every day. It's a zoo a lot of the time. But there are times when it's not. And so you can still say, I need just some quiet time. I need to do this in focus. Like you might need to send an email or do something so you are allowed to work. We don't have to be present every minute of every day. I don't want you to think that, but exactly. Putting in, putting in a little bit of boundaries and obviously age appropriate, like a two year old's not going to respond to that. But as they get older they will do better with that. And so mine and I noticed as my boys got older and say they had friends come over after school, they'd be like, mum's working. Shh. And they knew the signals and I was like, oh. They were very respectful.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: And even now they'll, they can see if I'm working or if they can come in. And I've set boundaries in place that allow my children to behave really well and to be respectful of me working at home.

Nina: And now it's the normal.

Sarah: Yes.

Nina: And it's not even a thing. Right. They just, they know that and it's, it's not something you have to thank them for every single day because they made an effort. It's just like ingrained into them. They know what they need to do.

Sarah: Yeah.

Nina: That's awesome.

Sarah: Yes.

Nina: I love that.

Sarah: So, you know, we don't have to be. I come back to this expectation. I sometimes feel like we think we have to be these perfect mothers who are present and loving every moment. It's like. But that's not realistic. We have to work and we have to do things. Um, but finding that balance is the key.

Nina: One thing that I find helps with that is to actually block out the time. So we might say I'm going to be working from 7 till 8 o', clock, then I'M going to have an hour with my kids, phone, laptop away. We're going to do something fun together. But then after lunch I'll be doing another two hours and setting the expectation from the start of the day. So they know. Yeah, particularly my boys who just got a Nintendo last Christmas. They know when their Nintendo time is so they don't have to ask me every 20 minutes when they get to play Nintendo. Because we've decided at the start of the day when it's going to be.

Sarah: I love that and I love a structured day. Um, which would be no surprise to anyone who knows me. And uh, I would be very much of the early mornings is my time get organised and then I would say so we would always plan our days. So if we were doing activities and going out. But I always found, particularly when they were younger, high energy would go out in the morning and do whatever they needed to do and then we'd come home, have lunch and then it would be quiet time so they could watch a movie and I would often be sitting on my laptop watching the movie with them. Um, a sense of like. But you know, knowing that once they've been out running for a few hours, you know you're going to get some quiet time. That's very realistic. So you know, uh, this is again working exactly in with not only my energy but my kids energy.

Nina: Yeah, perfect.

Sarah: Instead of trying to, you're like, gosh, it drives me insane. They're just running around the house like lunatics. Like no, because we need to go out and lose some of that and then come home. And so I think you can set yourself up for success and you can say my kids are full of energy in the mornings or they're like this or you know, like those witching hours. Witching hours exist for a very long time in childhood. I think even like late primary school it's still quite hectic. So you know, listening to what the rhythm of your family is and being, being really thoughtful to that will help everybody. Like um, my, my oldest one loves sleep and even now as a 20 year old he'll still sleep 8, 9, 10 hours. So happily. And he doesn't like being tired and grumpy and so he doesn't want to do stuff when he's tired. So he is very, he listens to himself really well. My other one's like, he'll have FOMO if he miss out anything. He'll stay up all night with his eyes hanging out.

Nina: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: So you know, knowing the personalities and knowing what your home is like, I think we can just be more mindful of everybody. And it's, it's all a lot easier if we're trying to get everyone to work to their strengths instead of forcing, this is how we're doing things. And um, if you have different personalities in your home, which we often do, you'll still find natural rhythms where everyone's like, oh, like an early afternoon was.

Nina: Always a quiet time.

Sarah: In our family. We are born to be Europeans that take siestas. Like, I swear.

Nina: Yeah, I think that's really great. And it kind of comes back to my next question, which is when things are starting to feel chaotic. So maybe you haven't set that time aside in the morning. Mhm. Do you have any mindset or routines that help you

00:25:00

Nina: return to that calm and focus to get back into working mode? In air quotes.

Sarah: Oh, I was like a transition.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: Because. And I'm a, I'm a lover, cup of tea, love a cup of coffee kind of person. And I like the ritual of making it and sitting and having it. And so if, if we've been out and it'd been crazy, I'm like, we're going to come home and we're going to do something to bring it down and then I'm going to switch into work mode. Because it's, it is very hard for your brain to go crazy quiet. Like it. Yeah. And so I always use like a tea or a coffee time as a transition time.

Nina: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. That's good. Uh, in the holidays, I set my laptop up in the kitchen so in the, like the family area so I can sit with the boys. But it's always like moving the table into the spot where I can plug it in. I feel like that's the start of my work day. And then when I finished, I move it back into where the we sit around the table as a family.

Sarah: You do want to get an extension cord?

Nina: I never even thought about getting an extension cord. I just moved the table. It's very light. I love that.

Sarah: But that's your ritual to get into your work mode.

Nina: That's my ritual. Yeah. And that means when the table's set up like that, we can't sit around it and have lunch. So then I have to move it back so we can have lunch together. So it separates.

Sarah: Oh, uh, perfect.

Nina: From kind of work and family mode.

Sarah: So you're creating those transitions.

Nina: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, so as we come to the end of our chat today, Sarah, can you suggest one small shift for a big Impact for parents who have to work through these upcoming school holidays.

Sarah: I would say. And Nina, you did already mention that you do this in terms of setting expectations for everyone about this is what the day is going to look like. Uh, because it's that mindful moment of you might even be just doing it over breakfast. Does everyone want to know what today is happening? Yes.

Nina: Yes.

Sarah: And then you say really clearly Mummy's going to be working from 9 till 11. And then we're doing this. And then we have Nintendo after lunch. And so if you can take that moment to set expectations, it removes all of the meltdowns. I wanted to do this today and we didn't do it. And it removes that. Can I go on the Nintendo now?

Nina: Yes.

Sarah: And you can create really nice mindful moments around this. So we used to do. This would be no shock to anyone. We used to do little calendars and even when they couldn't write, they would draw what we were going to do each day.

Nina: Yeah.

Sarah: And so then we knew like what was on for the week ahead, like if they had a friend coming over or what was happening. Because then kids like to plan too and like to get excited if things are coming up. So having everyone knowing what's happening each day and maybe up to five days in advance, having everyone clear on that, that will take away all of that I wanted to do this day. I didn't get to do this. That. That kind of angst that can come up and cause that kind of friction in your day.

Nina: M. Yes, Great advice. Thank you. I think I'm going to try that. So finally, Sarah, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about the beautiful work that you do through online Social Butterfly?

Sarah: Oh yes. So I am literally online social butterfly. Everywhere online. My. One of my favourite places to hang out is Instagram, but I have to say this year I've been having a kind of a love affair with substack. So I've kind of got back to writing and kind of sharing some of my thoughts on writing. So if you're interested in that, that's sort of my long form content. And then I have a podcast, the Social Circus as well, if you want to listen to more of me.

Nina: Fantastic. Is there anything else, Sarah, that you'd like to add?

Sarah: I think we mentioned this, but I wanted to say it again. Nothing works perfectly. Uh, a day go might go really well and you might do all the same things and then it doesn't work that day. So if we kind of approach things with a bit of flexibility and kind of a bit of compassion. I think if we were all kinder to ourselves, life would be a whole lot easier.

Nina: Yes, let's be kind to ourselves, people. We can do it.

Sarah: Yes, yes, absolutely.

Nina: Well Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing such honest, practical insights. I really love that reminder that it's not about doing it all, it's about doing what matters most with presence and intention. So thank you so much.

Sarah: My pleasure.

Nina: If you'd like to connect with Sarah and learn more about her work, you'll find all her links in the show notes. And if today's conversation has you thinking, yes, I want to feel calmer and more organised this year, then make sure you join me for my upcoming Calm Summer blueprint masterclass on 3rd December. This is your go to session to help you plan for the school holidays with confidence, ease and a little bit of excitement too. Early bird tickets are now available, but only until the 27th of November, so be sure to grab your spot. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time on your calm Parenting path.

Nina: Thanks for Listening to youo Calm Parenting Path. I am so glad you're here and I hope this episode gave you something useful to take into your parenting journey. If you'd like to dive deeper, sign up to my mailing list@mindfulparentinglifestyle.com

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Nina: for more tips and insights. Or book a free chat to learn how we can work together. And don't forget to hit, follow or subscribe so you never miss miss an episode. I look forward to speaking with you next time on your calm parenting path.

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