Navigating sick kids in a two-career home

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:00]:How do you work asynchronously? How do you get ahead of things? How do you take parts of your calendar when you can do it on your time and it doesn't necessarily happen during the day. Be smart and flexible and creative in the way that you keep things moving. And this is not to be like a psychopath that you can never take a day off. But what I have found is like, the cost of getting caught up was so great that pulling myself totally out of pocket was a very expensive price that I was going to need to pay later.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:30]:I'm a small town kid born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago, I founded a marketing consultancy, and ever since, my husband, junior and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline. Yep, that means four kids, three businesses, two careers, all building towards one life we love. When I discovered that I could purposefully embrace all of these ands in my life, it unlocked my world. And I want that for you, too. Im Tiffany Sauder and this is scared confident.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:13]:So were going to talk about what to do when kids are sick. So this topic came to me because in the life of Ant academy, we have these like weekly sessions with the participants. They can come in and just ask questions. It's been a really great way of, I think, just normalizing what we're all dealing with and like day trading different hacks and tips that are working for different kinds of families. But one of the questions that was brought up was, how do you handle it when your kids are sick? Tiffany and we had a really great discussion about it, and she's like, you need to make a podcast episode about this. So thank you, Melissa. We're doing that. And I thought I would just export a little bit what I do, what that looks like, and like everything else that we're working on in our lives, we don't want to be reactive to that moment.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:55]:We know with certainty if you are going to choose to have kids and they are going to live in your house for 18 ish years, that there is going to be a time when they're sick. And so how do you not be reactive to that? How do you proactively put together a plan as high achievers? It's like if the plan isn't going perfectly, then what plan are we running? Like, oh, no, everything is imploding. And so I've been practicing this for a bit, been a working mom for 15 years, and so I'll share some of the things that I do. Let's talk about maybe some constructs and then I'll go into, like, really specific tips. One is this is an environment where minimums become really important. Minimums become really important. So we talked about minimum is what you can do on your worst week. And usually when the kids are sick, it's like coupled with one of your worst weeks.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:44]:It is sweet to sit with them. It is sweet to be able to, like, console them. But it also is like very messy when you're not sleeping. The hours get weird. They may not be going to school, all those kinds of things. So this is where minimums become really important. And that grit and fortitude to hang tight to your minimums no matter what, are going to be tested and challenged on these weeks when your kids are sick. So I'm just like, buck up, buttercup to myself this week.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:12]:So these next few days are going to be kind of hard. They're going to take a lot from you and you can take a nap on Saturday or whenever that day comes when everybody's back to healthy. So minimums become really important. The second is I kind of opened with this, but we've got to define the system of what happens way before you need it. Because when you wake up and you realize, hey, we thought this was going to be a normal morning. My kid has 103 degree temperature, no monoprophy. Is going to get this down before the bus comes. We've all done it one time.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:44]:Not recommended, I know, but I'm being a little bit late. Define the system before you need it, because when you need it, it's like you're panicking, things are kind of a mess. It's emotionally charged. If there's something important in your day, it's just like you're solving in stress and duress and that's not what we want to be doing. We want to get ahead of it. So we're going to talk about how do you set up a system? And then the third is just remember, don't take your stress on the people around you. It is not going to be better if you bark in the face of your spouse. It's not going to be better if you bark at your kids.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:13]:It's just like not going to be better. And so for me, I have to be like, just cool your jets. You're having a bad day. It's kind of a lot. You want to scream and cry, but it's not going to fix anything, actually. And I don't scream and cry rationally, just like into the wind. I do it at some people, you know, like somebody. And that's not fair.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:29]:So anyways, that's my thing. Don't take the stress on the people around you. It's not going to fix it. The other, I think, just caveat I want to put on this episode is this is very much for those of us who have the luck event of having otherwise healthy kids. If you are dealing with something chronic, a child that has really special needs physically, this episode is going to feel very lightweight and probably irrelevant to you. This is about, again, if you have that luck event of otherwise having healthy kids that you send to school and it's like they're just getting sick with the normal things like ear infections and so strep throat and things like that, that go around. That's really what I mean. If you're working in a place where this is not episodic and this is chronic, you're solving for that in a totally different way.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:12]:So anyway, I just want to put that caveat out there that this is going to probably feel annoyingly lightweight if you're dealing with something much bigger. Okay, so the first is about getting clear on what is going to happen when somebody's sick. Because when somebody's sick, the system breaks. That's actually what's happening that causes this downstream effect. So I think one is to sit down and say, what are we going to do as a family when somebody's sick? If, again, I predominantly talk to two career families, like, is it always going to be one spouse that is the primary hate? The default is I'm going to be the one who solves for the day. Are we going to take turns? Our first kid was sick in January and I took it. Our second kid was sick in February. You're going to take it like, are you going to go back and forth? Are you going to look at whose day is more flexible that day? How are you going to decide who is all of a sudden the primary solver for this problem? I see that as, like, issue number one.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:05]:Whose job is it to fix it? In this stage of our life, it would very much be my job to fix it, unless I'm not home. And then junior, it would be his job to fix it. But who fixes it is, I think, actually the first thing that needs to be pre decided, or at least the way that you're going to decide. Which parent's job is it today to solve for the fact that we now have some gaps that need to be covered. The other thing that I have learned, it's like a simple little hack, is I try to cut everything in my day in half on a day when a kid is sick. So if I have a 1 hour one to one, I'll try to do it in 30 minutes. If I have a 90 minutes client meeting, I'll see if I can do it in 45. If I had a 1 hour podcast recording that I was going to do, I'll just do a shorter episode.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:46]:So how do I take everything I was going to do from a work perspective and just make it 50%? That creates capacity right there, but it doesn't take take the train off the tracks. If you are in a high capacity role inside of your work life to totally extract yourself for who knows how many days, like one to five days because a kid is sick, the like, cars keep coming, and then not only are you tired, are you depleted, you are way behind at work. And there's like finding the capacity then and like the next week to figure out how you're going to get all caught up, I think just prolongs the suckiness of the whole thing. So I try to keep as much as I can the things still moving. Even if I did it at 70% as well as I could have done if everything was running perfectly. Some progress is better than no progress. In almost every situation. People have a tremendous amount of grace with that, like, hey, I have a sick kid right now, can we take this to 30 minutes and just hit the high points on this one to one? I want to be sure that we unstuck anything that's really going on, or a client that I need to do a presentation for.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:56]:I may say, hey, I'm going to record a loom for 20 minutes of the presentation. I'd love for you to watch it beforehand. And we can spend just 45 minutes talking through questions and getting more clarity, like, how do you work asynchronously? How do you get ahead of things? How do you take parts of your calendar when you can do it on your time and it doesn't necessarily happen during the day. Be smart and flexible and creative in the way that you keep things moving. And this is not to be like a psychopath that you can never take a day off. But what I have found is like, the cost of getting caught up was so great that pulling myself totally out of pocket was a very expensive price that I was going to need to pay later. So what do you do instead? So there's probably one of two scenarios there in I'll say like, school and daycare kind of the same thing. Just because this is like care outside of the house, if they're in school or daycare, what I like to have is some backup plan of somebody who can watch them, be with them, come to our home, or I can take my kid there for a couple of hours, and I'm looking for like 4 hours of coverage.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:01]:Usually, you know, you could move it around, but I find from like ten to two on any given day, where could your kid go? Or who could come over and stay with them for a few hours? And maybe you're also home or you're out at a few meetings, whatever needs to happen. But I find in the morning is when the kid is like the most needy because they're surprised, frustrated, scared, whatever it is that they're not feeling well, you give them a chance to get a little food in their stomach, get some medicine started so that the pain starts to ease or the fever goes down, get them settled where they can sleep, where they're in their environment, where they've got their clean jammies on, or they've had a bath, or they're watching a movie, getting them settled. For me, that's a mom moment, and I want to be able to be there for that. But then they're kind of like chilling for a few hours, you know, for 4 hours. It's two movies, one dose of ibuprofen. It's like I got a little bit of Runway where they're comfortable and I maybe can go get some things done. So I will use a grandparent for that. I'll use a close friend.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:02]:Samantha, who you hear on this sometimes, has been the one who's needed to stay with our kids for a few hours while I go get some things done. People from church, carpool moms who I know stay home that, like, love our family and care about us. Like, literally working, like, reaching into those, extending into those friendships and relationships and saying like, hey, could you just come sit with my kid for a few hours? They know you. They trust you. There's not a lot to do. I need to go get some stuff done, and then I'll be right back. So I've done that. That would be the thing.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:31]:So my kid is out of the house. That's what I would do, is have a group of people who know, hey, if I have sick kids, you just know you're going to be on one of my text message of like, hey, anybody have some flexibility today to be able to hang out with my little person while I keep some things moving in my work day. So again, I'm looking for like 4 hours of support, 3 hours of support to try to get my six to ten hour day done, or at least as much moving as I can where the high points were able to keep going. And then if you have a nanny or somebody inside of your home taking care of your kids moms, I'm going to tell you, I think we have to be willing to let those people who care for our kids be there, even in those moments where the kids aren't feeling well. And for me, I think it can be like when a kid is sick, it's like the overdrive of motherhood kind of kicks in, and this like, protectionist. And I want to be there, and I want to give every snuggle and wipe every nose, make sure that they are like, maximum consoled. And what I've observed, I should count, we've probably had eight nannies over the 15 years. Some long time, some short time, is allowing my kids to be held, consoled, loved, rubbed, sang to by people other than me begins to teach them that there are other people that can support you when you need help.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:53]:Help. It's not just your mom and it's not just your dad. And as I, like, roll forward into their actual lives, they're going to need to learn how to rely on people when they need help. They're going to need to be able to trust people when they're in a place where they're, like, not feeling great or a little bit vulnerable. So I think it can take some getting used to, to like, walk by the couch and see somebody else, like, really snuggling and loving your kid. I have come to a place where I really love that part of our lives. Sometimes the best thing I can do for them is to take some portion of my day, get as much done as I possibly can, so that I am very available for them. When I am sitting beside them, I do have the capacity to be there.

Tiffany Sauder [00:12:35]:So I don't know, I hope that makes sense as I'm just speaking this into the microphone and trying to paint a picture for kind of how I do this. So one is decide in advance who it is it's going to solve for the day and how you're going to determine that between you and your other grown up in the house. The other is make everything on your calendar 50% less if you can, so that you keep things moving. Still, I like to contain the work I need to do into the smallest amount of kind of connected time so that I can get some support, somebody who can step in, a mother in law, a mom, a neighbor, whatever it looks like, to come in and help and give you a little capacity to keep your work life moving so that you can be available as your kids, like, continue to need you and get sick. If you have not figured out how to use your health insurance telehealth function, it is life giving. It's like available 24 hours, I think for the most part. Like, go log into your insurance portal, figure out where the button is, put your insurance, go figure out how to use that before you need it. Because when you know it's strep throat, you can even get.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:40]:My brother has gotten one of these, like, ear scope things that you can look inside of ears and see if there's an ear infection off of Amazon. It's crazy. So get a good thermometer, get your telehealth set up, because it is like when your kid is sick, you don't necessarily also have time to go to the doctor, sit in the waiting room, do all the stuff. To me, that's like 400% of effort for like, a thing that actually is not going to take that long to diagnose, especially if you start to know what your kid, like, what they get and what causes problems for them. I've got a couple of kids who, their chests get tight. I know what we need for that. And so the telehealth model is like such a great thing. So figure out how to use that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:22]:I feel like it was weird and scary and felt like back to the future or something when I first did it, but it is amazing. I really, really, really love it. So figure out how to use telehealth. Telemedicine, almost all insurance have an option for that. You, like, go into an online waiting room. You can pick which doctors look best to you. They're reviewed, shows you their credentials if they have, like, pediatrician in their background. So that to me is a game changer.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:48]:And know where you're going to go in advance if, like, a kid falls and needs stitches, all that, like, figure it out and ahead. Like, where are we going to drive? Because when you're just panicking, you like, drive to the ER and it's going to be $12,000. So find a great urgent care center, find some great resources in your local area and get ahead of it. Ask neighbors where they go. Take their kids. So helpful. So, all right. I think those are the things that I do when your kids are sick.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:13]:It doesn't have to put everything off the rails. It can be a sweet time where you, like, get to just sit and be with them and rub them and console them and, you know, it's like you don't want it to be forever, but it's kind of sweet sometimes when there's a little bit of pause put on life. So I have found if I proactively have a plan that we can clip into the plan, I know the playbook to pick up, and we just start running that one. Oh, the last thing I want to say is, for you, whoever's the primary caregiver we're going to be, it is not your sick day. So I have also found when I, like, never get out of my sweats, when I still have my slippers on, when I never, like, I usually brush my teeth, but, you know, like, when you didn't, like, get yourself put together a little bit. Like, that also pushes me way off center. So when I talked about maintaining your minimums, you don't have to do a 60 minutes workout that morning, but get dressed, brush your teeth, put on some real clothes, put on some mascara. Don't eat pop tarts and potato chips all day long.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:18]:Like, eat some. Order a rotisserie chicken and a packet of rice and some broccoli. It's not your sick day. And I think it can sometimes be like, oh, they're sick. I'm gonna be in my sweats. We're gonna snuggle. I'm gonna, like, just. And it's like, no, that doesn't work.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:34]:So I don't know. Do you? You get to do this however you want to. But I found when I'm like, I'm not the sick one, they're the sick one. But somehow I was also dragging my leg through the house, like, I'm also sick or something. It's like, no, get your act together, Tiffany. You need to be on your a game. There's a lot to do, and I need to fly between being a mom caregiver and being able to get some things done. And so when I'm physically put together, it's much easier for me to flip into that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:01]:It's like, no. I'm, like, here and ready to go. So. Okay, maybe a tangent may be helpful. You guys get to decide. So thanks for listening in. Again, continue to ask you, the best way for the show to grow is for you guys to share it with the people in your lives and your communities, your neighbors that, you know, are dealing with the exact same thing. So if you would find your favorite episode and text your best friend your episode and share the show with them.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:25]:I would be eternally grateful. So remember, this is where we tell fear you will not decide what happens to my life. I will and we will live great audacious lives of and thanks for listening.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:39]:Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared confident. Until next time, keep telling fear you will not decide what happens in my life. I will.

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