[00:00:00] Mary Aldrich: Anytime you’re listening to other influences into your decision-making, to ask the question, “Does this person have the results I want?” Right off the bat, doesn’t it just knock a lot of people’s opinions right off the table?

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[00:00:23] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and I am so delighted to host Mary Aldrich today. I have waited a long time for this conversation, and we both have wildly busy schedules, and being able to share this conversation with you all is a very great privilege for me. I’ve known Mary for a couple of years now, and she’s just tremendous. You’re going to find that out as we have this conversation today. By way of introduction, I’m going to let Mary introduce herself, and then we’ll get started in earnest. Mary?

[00:01:02] Mary: Hi. I am so excited to be here. First of all, I’m a huge fan of Demme Learning, and I have enjoyed Math-U-See in my curriculum growing, and my kids growing up, and doing homeschooling and stuff, and it has just been, it’s been a staple for years in our house. A special love to you, and thank you for having me on the show. Yes, my name is Mary Aldrich. I am a mom of seven kids. They are currently 14 to 24. I have five boys and two girls. No twins. We often joke that we could– when we started having children, we decided that we could either keep kids, pets or plants alive, and we chose kids. Then when we got to 7 in 10 years, we were like, “Whoa, wait a minute, this is a lot of work.”

[00:02:07] Gretchen: I don’t know how you do that many. I have six, but I spread them over 20 years.

[00:02:17] Mary: My husband, Brandon and I, neither of us do anything small. We’re always very ambitious, and I think, this is no exception. Having that many kids in 10 years, that’s really where my journey began with the coaching aspect too, because my oldest was six when I had my fifth child. I was not only a mom at home, but my husband and I were working full time at a Bible school then, and I was running the kitchen for the main facility. We lived in the main building of the property, so there was a lot of feeling like I was on 24/7 kind of things.

As volunteer and outside work tends to go, I found that I was giving the best of my time to other people, and everybody at home got those scraps. One day after putting out fires for other people, I came in, and I don’t even remember what my oldest child was doing, Jonathan at the time was six, and I remember coming in, seeing him in the living room, I flew into a rage about whatever he did, and I threw him across the room, just threw him. He did land on a couch. That was not the intent when it happened. I feel like that was a day that we drew a line in the sand, and said, “We can either lose some of these jobs, get some help, or we can lose our children.”

I had just started homeschooling my kids, the older two, and so the plate was just too full in order to be able to parent well. I dropped a lot of the volunteer jobs I did, and that is when I got a life coach. I had a friend who had just started her business in life coaching, and I started coaching with her, and I didn’t really see how it was going to help. Because I grew up in a family of– a big family, oldest of eight, my family homeschooled. I had already changed as many diapers as somebody does in a lifetime by the time I was married, I had already made meals for 20-plus people on a regular basis.

For me to say I needed help, I’m not sure who else was out who’s going to help me, I already know all the things. It really was unaware– my thought was I need something different to do. I didn’t realize it was a thinking problem. I got help with a coach, and then, it changed everything so much that I then had more margin on the other side to do other things. I started a coaching business myself thinking, “Other people need to know that this is possible.” That’s how I got into it. I’ve been coaching now, my professional coaching business is about eight years old, but I was mentoring students long before that.

I’m a homeschool mom. I’ve homeschooled everybody the whole way through, except one year I put them in school to take a break. That was the year of COVID, and they came home anyway.

[00:06:11] Gretchen: [laughs] I’ve heard that story so many times from so many parents. I did that as well. In a 12-week period of time, I lost a baby, I lost my mom, and I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. My husband said to me, “I have fired the children.” We only had two in school at the time. I looked at him, and I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You have no margins. You must rest.” I’m an only child and the daughter of good German parents. Rest does not exist. That was crazy, but we did put them in. We agreed it was halfway through the year, so we were going to put them in school for the last semester. The three of us, the kids and I only lasted nine weeks, because there was so much crazy going on.

One of the things I most vividly remember is my eldest son had very asynchronous development. He would have been a third grader. He had just turned eight years old, but he had a very late birthday, but he was reading at the college level. Because of that, they expected him to be able to perform at the college level, but he was still just a young eight-year old. That dichotomy just didn’t compute with the school system, and he was just lost. That lasted a scant nine weeks, and I needed the break, but I felt guilty for the break, and that was really hard. I think often, particularly those of us in the homeschool sphere feel guilty when we don’t feel like we are pouring everything into our children.

[00:08:05] Mary: Oh, 100%. Yes. I can agree with that. I think the reason we put our kids in school that year was because, we had moved away from our job. We had moved in, and it was a mission-oriented position that we were in. When we moved, we didn’t have equity in a home. We didn’t have savings. There was nothing. My husband and I and our seven children moved back in with my parents when I was 40 years old, so that we could get our feet under us, and do something else. By the time that process was over and we were in our own house and my husband had a job, I was whipped. So, yes, we put them in school, and it was a break that I needed in that moment.

I noticed one person asked, “Is it okay to put my kid in school while I’m tired or whatever? Everybody else thinks that it’s a bad idea.” I don’t think that there’s one answer for everybody. I think the other thing is, if it’s nagging at you, go try it. It’s not a permanent thing. We put them in school. I got a little bit of a break in the first semester that I desperately needed. It was absolutely the right thing to do. Then the second semester I learned real quick that I didn’t want to leave them there. We brought them back home, it did good things for my kids at the same time.

I’m a huge homeschool fan. I think it’s the best thing out there. I also think that part of rest looks like taking advantage of some of the resources that we have in timely ways.

[00:10:03] Gretchen: My husband and I always said that we would do for each child what was best for them. My four kids were homeschooled all the way through high school. Then kid number five said after his freshman year of high school, “I want to go to high school next year.” I needed a 12-step program, but it was the right thing to do for that child. He thrived in a high school environment. My youngest went to public school at middle school, and it was the right thing to do for that child. I also know that my four oldest kids would not have thrived in public school. Three out of four of them are twice exceptional, and they needed the latitude that homeschooling provides.

[00:10:51] Mary: Right, yes. Don’t you think, Gretchen, it goes into the college years too, right? It’s like, if we can just carry that idea on out, I’m watching that with my older kids now. I’ve got one son that went directly into the workforce, another son who wanted to work part-time and write a novel, one child who wanted to go to a Bible school, and then a daughter that’s doing– she just finished her sophomore year at Liberty University in Virginia. Then I’ve got a daughter that’s hoping to go down a medical track.

We’ve spanned the gamut of, how do you do post high school years as well? You’re right, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. I’m so thankful that we have so many options. That is part of what makes it restful, is recognizing there’s way more options than we realize.

[00:11:53] Gretchen: Mary, how do we figure out? Sometimes we are surrounded by a community that thinks that the only option is to homeschool.

[00:12:04] Mary: Yes.

[00:12:06] Gretchen: How do you get the families you coach to open up their minds enough to recognize sometimes that rest is a higher requirement than the academics of a particular year?

[00:12:21] Mary: One of the things that we talk about right out of the gate is, anytime you’re listening to other influences into your decision-making, to ask the question, “Does this person have the results I want? In their own parenting, in their own experience with this type of thing, do they have results I’m after?”

[00:12:50] Gretchen: I love that. That is a really powerful question in a lot of guises.

[00:12:54] Mary: Oh, absolutely. In so many areas. Right off the bat, doesn’t it just knock a lot of people’s opinions right off the table? It just does. It doesn’t mean we don’t love them. They can be family members, and we love them dearly. It could be my own mom. If she doesn’t have the results that I’m looking for in that particular area, then why would I seek out her recommendations for what we ought to do? That’s probably the top thing right there.

[00:13:28] Gretchen: Mary, tell me about your journey in this coaching business, because I have seen some results that you have done. One of your mentees, I think is the term I want to use, is a good personal friend of mine. I had not seen her in about six months. When I saw her, it took me less than two minutes to say, “What has changed with you?” Then I found out it was you. Tell me about this.

[00:14:00] Mary: I didn’t actually know I had started a coaching business, to begin with. I didn’t just set out to become an entrepreneur, and then suddenly build a company. I decided that I wanted to help women and moms love their role. Like, “This is my purpose, and how can I enjoy this purpose that I have?” I saw that that was possible, and so I started a book club. It was an on-the-telephone book club. We’d do a conference call, and read a chapter, and chat. Then I had enough people sign up that were actually paying to be a part of the group.

I went to a conference to get some more encouragement for myself, and it happened to be more business-y than I thought. Somebody said, “How many of you are entrepreneurs?” Everybody in the room raised their hand except me, and the person next to me was like, “You have a business. Put your hand in the air.” I kind of did the things to hang up my shingles, so to speak, of, “Hey, I actually am a coach.” Got some additional training as that went on. I joined a program called the Covenant Coaching Academy, where they marry coaching principles with biblical training to get those two together.

Yes, just have been growing and learning ever since myself. I did one-on-one stuff first, having one client at a time, but as I kept going, I really noticed that the book club aspect of being in community together brought a special– it brought connection for the people in the group, as well as what I found is that people would bring up something that helped somebody else. The other person didn’t necessarily know the question to even ask, but having it come up in the conversation like, “Oh, that’s the answer that I was looking for, but I wouldn’t have even been able to articulate it.”

That group setting just really appealed to me. I started Supermom School for that reason, and we coach every week. We have little small groups that get together every week, and we do some goal setting that is very unconventional. It’s not the same as like your New Year’s resolutions, but we really dig into what thoughts are driving the decisions that we’re making. I like to call them strategic formulas for decision-making. If we have math formulas, that we apply different ways. If we can come up with strategic formulas in our thinking for different decisions, then it takes the pressure off of some of the decisions.

For instance, I’ll give you an example. It’s easy for people to figure like, “I’ve got a thousand things to do today, how do I pick? It’s not all going to get done. How do I pick?” One of our formulas for that is, what are your two things and what’s for dinner? Bringing it back to what I call a minimum viable product, the very minimum that you might get done today. If you got one thing done in the morning and you got one thing done in the afternoon, what are the two things you want to have gotten done by the end of that day? It helps focus in on the priorities, right?

Then, of course, dinner, because none of us ever remember to get the meat out of the freezer until 30 minutes before it’s supposed to be on the table. That’s part of that. “What’s for dinner?” “Oh, yes.”

[00:18:12] Gretchen: I have often talked about how the world is divided into two ways. Those of us who are fond of lists and fond of planning, and those of us who absolutely hate lists and hate planning, and usually we marry each other.

[00:18:26] Mary: Yes. [laughter] We talk about how this is about your thinking too. If you get your two things done that you set out to do, then you feel like, “Hey, I accomplished something that day. I actually did what I set out to do,” which is not a feeling that we as moms have very often. We made the list of 20,000 things, which is why people don’t like lists. No matter how fast and how hard I work, I failed by the end of the day, because it’s not all done, but a list of two things is accomplishable. When you build a pattern of that over days and days and days, you build evidence that you are succeeding every single day. You feel differently when you wake up, because you have a habit of doing what you said you were going to do, and that feels so much better.

[00:19:22] Gretchen: That actually speaks to the question of the mom who said, “How can I make time stand still so I can catch up?” It doesn’t stand still, and in your kid’s world, it moves even faster.

[00:19:34] Mary: It does.

[00:19:35] Gretchen: She was humorous. She said, “LOL,” but there is an element of real honest truth in that statement.

[00:19:42] Mary: Yes, it really is. I think the other thing about that statement is, catch up to what? I want to make time stand still so I can catch up. A lot of times we don’t identify, what does catch up look like? If I was sitting in the state of being caught up, how would that feel? What would that look like?

[00:20:06] Gretchen: It wouldn’t last very long for me.

[00:20:07] Mary: It doesn’t last very long. No, and also, I would propose that we get squirmy when it does, because the truth is most of us are very much satisfied when we’re living in our purpose. Our purpose is not to like sit down for a long period of time and just chill. That’s, we get squirmy in those moments. If you’ve ever been a mom that’s like, you’ve got a day off and it’s been three months, and you’re like, “I don’t know what to do with myself. How do I–”

[00:20:43] Gretchen: In these last couple of minutes, what did I not ask you that I should have asked you?

[00:20:49] Mary: One of the key things that we talk about that I think if I could say is an overarching principle to this whole conversation that we’re having is the idea of, I am a human being, not a human doing. It helps drive my decisions all day to practice thinking about myself as being versus doing. I like to think of it like, people talk about like I’m a thermostat and I’m not a thermometer. I decide where my values and what I’m committed to in my character, and who I want to be that day. Then that determines what else happens during the day, versus I need to micromanage all the different ups and downs and things like that.

Much like a thermometer just responds to what temperature is in the room. That way of being is something we focus pretty heavily on. Every single week in our Supermom School, we talk about, “Who do you want to be this month for your kids?” Sometimes people will say, “I want to be kindness,” or, “I want to be restful,” or things like that. Then when you say, “Okay, I need to crank out school today,” what does it look like to “crank out school” from a restful place, if I’ve decided I’m choosing rest? I think I saw one comment, somebody asked, “How do you get all the daily tasks done calmly?”

What I would say is you’ve got to decide which is more important. Is the calmly more important, or are the tasks more important? Because when the pressure starts to rise, you will put one of them over the other, and you have to decide ahead of time, which is it going to be? Like, “No, I’m going to get the tasks done, and that means in order to do that, I’m going to be angry dragon mom to get it done.” Or, “I’m going to choose calmness and peaceful communication even if not everything does get done.” That I’m choosing to be calm helps create the life that we want over a period of time rather than if we choose the daily tasks we’re doing in order to get there.

Another way of looking at it is like, it’d be the difference between telling an artist to paint a landscape, and they’re going to go in there, they’ve got specific brushstrokes, and the paint goes in specific places, but they’re not doing a paint by number. Paint by number is like the doing. “I’m going to fill in this spot and this spot and this spot and this spot.” An artist says, “I’m seeing the whole picture, I’m painting a landscape.” It’s less about the exact preciseness of the brushstroke, and more about, “At the end of the day, this is the picture I want to create.”

[00:24:16] Gretchen: I have to be honest. I discovered that I was probably in my 40s before that even entered my stream of consciousness. I find that sometimes I get jerked back into that because habits don’t always leave us. Particularly if the opposition would like us to have a habit that keeps us from peace. It’s even going to follow you around. Yes.

[00:24:44] Mary: Yes, definitely. It is a concept worth practicing every day, even if we’re not good at it. It’s a skill to live that way. That does help iron out everything else in life when we choose it. Yes.

[00:25:01] Gretchen: I use a little planner app that asks me on every Sunday, “What’s the one thing you want to focus on this week?” It will say things like sleep, nutrition, rest, calmness, productivity. It gives you a wide variety of choices. Sometimes it doesn’t give me enough because it gives me all those prompts and I have a different idea. I do find that that has been really helpful because without that question of the one thing, I’d be picking 10 of them. Because when you’re a type A personality, you’re just a type A personality.

[crosstalk]

[00:25:44] Mary: Going to pick them all.

[00:25:45] Gretchen: Yes. Why not? Why can’t we have it all? We can with his grace, but not always in our own strength. Mary, I want to thank you for this time. We will have to do this again. This has been so valuable, and will be so valuable for so many moms. I’m sitting here thinking of so many homeschool moms with whom I have the privilege to interact who need to hear what you had to say today.

[00:26:15] Mary: Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful. I look forward to chatting again sometime.

[00:26:21] Gretchen: Yes, let’s do it. Mary, thank you so much. Thank you to our audience today for allowing us to come into your living rooms. We don’t take that privilege lightly, and I love the fact that you all enjoy the things that we serve up. I know this one was an extra special one, and I’ll look forward to having a conversation with you all again soon. Take care, everyone. Have a great afternoon. Bye-bye.

[00:26:45] Speaker 3: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show, or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.