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Parenting Coach Ruth Taylor Talks the What, Why and How of our Parenting Coaching Cards with MBM CEO Darren A. Smith
In this exclusive discussion, Ruth touches on why her experience as a parent herself and her training as a soft skills facilitator makes her the perfect coach to have written our deck of 80 parenting coaching cards. Ruth and Darren cover the what, the why and the how of this deck of coaching cards, together with a few key pieces of advice and guidance that can be found in this brand new deck!
Read the Full Parenting Coaching Cards Podcast Transcript Below:
Darren A. Smith
Welcome to the world stickiest learning. My name is Darren Smith and more importantly, I’m here with Ruth Taylor. Ruth, how you doing?
Ruth Taylor
Pretty good today. Thank you. When I say today, for me it’s night time.
Darren A. Smith
Good.
It is. Where are you in the world?
Ruth Taylor
Well, I decided to move from the UK all the way to the other side of the world, so I’m currently in New Zealand.
Darren A. Smith
Right. OK. So it’s 9:00 AM here. It’s probably about 9:00 PM there, isn’t it?
Ruth Taylor
10:00.
Darren A. Smith
Oh, right. OK. Thank you very much for coming in. We’ve got 3 short questions for you about the cards that you created, which I can see on the right there. So the first question is: Why, in the nicest possible way, should we talk to you about parenting? What do you know about parenting?
Ruth Taylor
When I came to New Zealand, I had toddlers and now I have two adults who I’m very proud of. They’re in their 20s now. I was very fortunate. I did parenting courses before I had parents.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Ruth Taylor
Parents? before I had children.
Before I had children and that’s something that most people don’t get the chance to do. But I was trained as a parenting coach and a facilitator for courses by health promotion at the time to work with parents, and I thought this is awesome. I’ve got this and then what I found was the reality of having your own children is.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Not quite as simple as they made out.
But there were things which I was able to consider before having children, which maybe other people weren’t, because obviously having gone on the courses, there was things I could talk to my husband about going. Have you ever thought about this? It was like, no. So those questions where I was thinking, well, how can we encourage other people to be able to ask those questions either before they even think about getting pregnant, when they are pregnant.
And all that. So that’s really kind of where the coaching clads came from and also where the sort of sections of the the cards came from.
So and in my life I’m a facilitator. I I facilitate soft skill courses, communication skills, conflict management, leadership skills.
Emotional literacy. A lot of things like that. So I’ve worked in schools, I’ve worked in hospitals with leaders, with parents, with children. So I guess I have a different insight as well as.
How how we often think about children isn’t actually how children think, and sometimes we don’t think of the impact of our actions on our children.
And therefore having again having card which encourages to reflect before we open our mouths or before we make certain decisions means that hopefully we’ll get more of the behaviour we’re looking for.
Darren A. Smith
That that makes perfect sense. I know. When Gabby was born 25 years ago, these things don’t come with a manual and you come home and you go.
I have no idea what to do. My life has changed.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
The thing is, things change all the time, so these cards don’t say do this do that, they say have you considered or? Where would you go for this information? So it’s not a, not a guideline of saying, oh, you should pay it this way. And no, no, that’s wrong. It’s more case of well talk about it.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Decide as a couple because I don’t know about yourself, but when I was first going out with my husband, working out how we’re going to raise kids wasn’t the first thing on our minds making them. Maybe you know that’s that’s you get your priorities right. So it’s like well.
How do we how do you get to start these conversations?
Darren A. Smith
Very true. Yeah. Yeah. OK. All right, so you’ve got a lot of experience of parenting. You’ve done a lot of courses. You practise this, and then you created these cards. So what are these parenting coaching cards?
Ruth Taylor
Oh yeah.
So these are actually probably pretty much early on in the journey rather than later. Obviously, the journey up a parent is ever changing, engaging in fun and annoying and all the things it can be. So looking at the cards, we decided to actually go for kind of set of this 80 cards, something like that. But we broke it into five parts.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
And the reason for that was because, as I said, the whole preparation thing, there’s a lot of people.
We’re thinking about having children.
And this kind of like, well, what do you think about about having to what should I consider? I mean you’ve got the things like, can I afford it? I suppose that’s a basic one, but what other things have I got here? Who do you, who are your role model parents and it’s usual conversation to have with your partner, you know, who delaces good parents. Who do you see as good parents?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Ruth Taylor
Are you aware of the impact of technology on babies on the Super course of this one is what relationship do you currently have with your phone because that’s a challenge that people might not actually consider it’s like.
If you are someone who spends all your time on your mobile, on social media, your child is going to disturb you.
You’re not going to be able to do that.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, yeah. But we we see.
Ruth Taylor
I’m just going to push that. The cat is now meowing you can put.
Darren A. Smith
And it’s all right. We we can’t hear it. One of my my, my bugbears is when you go to a restaurant they have kids on a phone watching a film. You think. I don’t think that’s right for me as a parent but you know if they consider that I don’t know.
Ruth Taylor
You got here. Oh, I’m working.
In my in my day it was. Don’t put them in front of the television and I admit absolute you absolutely use the TV as a babysitter. But the thing about TV is you can walk in front of it, you can unplug it, you can turn it off.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Yes. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
The thing about the phone is you don’t know what they’re looking at. You can’t see what they’re looking at, and you try and take that on off them. I tell you, they’ve got a grip like a vice. They ain’t going to let go, and it’s much, much easier to refuse than it is to remove.
Darren A. Smith
OK, OK, alright.
Ruth Taylor
It does not hold a concept that however hard it is you think to resist your child’s desire to have one, trying to take it off of them afterwards. It’s a lot harder and you will get a lot more noise, but that’s that’s just kind of my personal opinion. But there is a lot of research, there is a lot of research coming out to support that view.
Darren A. Smith
I’ll get that. I’ll get that.
So so you created 80 questions, there’s five stages. Just tell us what those five stages were. Again, I know you showed us the card.
Ruth Taylor
I did and then I put it down and what did I do with it? Oh, here we go. So there’s preparation, which is you’re thinking of having kids, and you’re starting to talk about it. So how to start talk? There’s then pregnancy and people might think, well, what do I need to know and talk about? Pregnancy. Well, are you someone who is going to reveal the gender of your child?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
OK. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Do you want a gender of your party, or are you someone who’s going to wait until you have the Charter to get it named? It’s a little bit tense when you’re having that. The scan and your husband’s going. What’s accident? You go. No, I don’t want to know.
So it’s again, it’s having those conversations prior to that. Are you going to be OK with people coming up and touching your belly and or can I touch your belly? It’s kicking. So you won’t personal boundaries. And this is going to be different for everyone. So pregnancy.
Darren A. Smith
Up front, yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Are the vitamins you should be on. Are you doing any kind of lifestyle choices which maybe could harm your child? I mean, if you’re a drinker or a smoker, are you going to give that up? These are things to consider. I don’t know the answers.
The third section is parenting itself. So in that first 2-3 years, the first thousand days is very important. The child’s.
Development. Yeah. How? How do you see?
Darren A. Smith
Sometimes. Wow. Yep. OK. Have you heard of that?
Ruth Taylor
It working as far as who’s going to get up at night and how look after the kid. How are you looking to put in sort of rewards or sanctions or disciplining you know, what’s your thoughts on that? How are you going to cope if the house goes to pot you know there’s not it’s not going to be tidy as it is now because you’ve got things going on is is this understood?
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Let me talk about partnerships and people, which is really other people in your life who may be involved with helping you to parent. So this could be a wider family over New Zealand would say father, which is a Maori word for for your wider family.
Darren A. Smith
OK. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Are you looking to send your child to kindergarten or?
Nursery. There are different words.
And how are you going to pass on the message as to how you would like your child to be parented? I mean, there’s agreements there which we need to kind of work on, and the final one is personal, which is just about you. How do you chill? How do you relax? How do you recoup your energy when you’ve kind of got no energy left? You know, what do you need for your own self-care and that opportunity of how do you keep your relationship going with your other half?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
OK, so fabulous. We’ve got 5 stages. There’s probably about 15 questions in each to make 80.
Ruth Taylor
That’s something that I can’t actually remember the the exact number.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, my math is not great. Would you show us just a random example of a card so we can see the question what it looks like?
Ruth Taylor
So yes, if a pregnancy I’ve got.
Darren A. Smith
OK, So what can you do to prepare for the birth? OK. Fabulous. Got it. All right.
Ruth Taylor
Yeah, it’s always good to have that.
Yeah. Which what makes you feel safer? Having the child at hospital at home, or is there some other choice? Again, it’s just think about it. Suppose you make a wonderful parenting plan. It is something they will often make with you. Your midwife will make a parenting plan. But it’s also good to have that discussion already. I mean, parenting itself.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Ruth Taylor
What boundaries may you need to put in place?
Darren A. Smith
Do you need business post birth? OK. Yep, got it. Alright.
Ruth Taylor
So that’s first week or two when you’re just, well, I’ve got no energy. What do you say? Our relatives allowed to be there in laws you know. Are you going to cope with them? Can you name 3 strategies which you could use if your child has a tantrum?
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Nice.
I can’t 25 years later, but.
Ruth Taylor
Well, there’s quite a few out there, so it is that kind of thing, but.
The personal.
What is your strongest sense?
This the question now is if it was overwhelmed, what would you like to do? And that, I suppose is a bit of a nod to the the odd nappy which might happen or or the eardrums bursting due to the child screaming for an awful long time. So if you are someone who has particularly sensitive hearing, what can you maybe put in place to you have to keep yourself calm in those situations? And yeah, maybe they need the classic peg on your nose if you’re changing one of those *******.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
So.
Ruth Taylor
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
If we come to the why did you create them? I think we could. We’ve answered a lot of that, but if you were to put that in a succinct sentence, what problem do you think these cards solve? Why did you create them?
Ruth Taylor I found when I was learning about parenting and the work I was doing with mediation, which was conflict management communication. If you can solve communication at the source, make sure that you are communicating with your partner.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Ruth Taylor
And checking assumptions, you’ll be able to pair it together.
Because.
That that’s the benefit. Ask the question, find the answer. Then you can discuss it. Don’t find in the moment.
But you need to make a decision and you find that you want to make different ones. Then your child may well hear that you’ve got other people hearing and it doesn’t look professional. I suppose in some ways.
Not that we look tense. We want to look professional as a parenting couple, but it’s like.
We found we didn’t have time to Father Christmas’s job description, which is sounds really stupid, but we didn’t have one, so we’re doing something. Oh, Santa. Oh yes, Santa brings the stockings and he brings his toys. And you find that other people have different stories because our sister in Law’s was. Oh, no, Santa. Just bring stockings. No, no, no. Everyone else has toys. And we’re like, oh, oh, yes. Yeah.
So yeah, that was kind of.
Darren A. Smith
So it’s helping you to have those upfront conversations rather than having those conversations which are really important under pressure, I guess.
Ruth Taylor
Yes, yes, that would make good sense.
Darren A. Smith
OK, OK.
It’s early for me. You’re 12 hours ahead. So and if you want were to paint a picture, is it a case of couple of people go out for a drink, take a pack of cards and they go through all of them? Or how do you see it working?
Ruth Taylor
Well, how much of it working the other day, my daughter was sitting with her boyfriend on the sofa and I don’t know how it happened, but we were talking about children and possibilities of having them. I don’t don’t know where this came from and I said, well, I’ve got cards on there, she said. What? And she just got the cards and she went, Oh my God. And she just kind of read out a couple of cards and they just, like, talked about and had a bit of a laugh in the chat.
And she said, I’m going to put it back down now, she said, because it’s getting a bit real.
You left it there, but yeah, it doesn’t have to be heavy. Sit down. Let’s go through all the cards. ’cause, there are a lot there. The the reason they are kind of chunked into those five areas is so you can take the area out that you need kind of now and she was definitely looking at the the kind of preparation stuff because it’s like, oh, no, I haven’t thought about that. We’ll talk about that one later kind of thing.
Darren A. Smith
How can?
I.
Yes.
That’s good. OK.
Ruth Taylor
I mean or you can have a coach. I guess if there’s someone you trust or someone you go to, coaches could use these things with people who are.
Doing the host life choice a lot of life coaches out there isn’t there, and sometimes we don’t know the kind of questions to ask. I mean, the pregnancy ones. I actually use my colleague to help put those together because she had just gone through pregnancy.
Darren A. Smith
OK. That’s good. I like that.
Ruth Taylor
So it was absolutely on the ball for her because she said, Oh my God, I just couldn’t believe it. How many people just wanted to touch my bum? But it’s like, really what? I didn’t expect that. And I didn’t know how to respond. And I said, well, have a question about that show. You know what? What’s what’s your response to people? Want to touch your child when it’s then buggy. You know, all that sort of stuff. So yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, yeah.
It’s a great question because that happened to me as the man of a wife who was pregnant and people are touching a bump and it was very odd. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was strange because it almost was. You’ve got a bump. I can now touch you, whoever, whoever I am. That’s a weird phenomenon. I never understood that.
Ruth Taylor
Yes, yes. And if you’ve had because it throws you, you’re not in the right frame of mind to answer. But if you’ve already pre discussed, then obviously you can do that.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
All right. And the final part, you’ve got some books out, are they still available?
Ruth Taylor
They are still available on Amazon. I’m actually going to be working with the book coach hopefully shortly to do a bit more updating on them because they followed my journey with my children so they spent the last kind of 20 years and yeah, they go all the way from years one and I’m about to launch book four. Hopefully the end of this year. That will be out there, which goes all the way up to 16 and it’s more for you as an adult than it is for your child.
Which is kind of like the sort of stuff that we find ourselves going through at those times our kids, to be honest, I’ve got. I’ve got this.
Darren A. Smith
OK. Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Now, as long as I’ve been fed, watered and have somewhere safe to come back to and look after themselves, the challenge is us because we’re reliving our life through them and we stress for them and we worry for them. They don’t have any of that. We take it on. So the books really are about how do we structure, how we talk to them and how do we think about it and how do we support them to make good decisions in their lives because we’re not going to be there. I mean, my kids now are 21 of mine is now living in the UK with her grandfather.
Darren A. Smith
Oh oh.
Ruth Taylor
So that’s a fair distance away right now, but.
So we have to have trust. You have to have faith that you’ve put the the groundwork in. And yeah, then then they can spread their wings. I’m not saying everyone’s going to lose their child to the other side of the world, but you never know. You never know.
Darren A. Smith
And and just tell me the title of your book so we can go and search for it on Amazon.
Ruth Taylor
Right. So the first one’s called parenting gets personal, so it’s ages 1 to formal. And that’s because even if you know the stuff when it’s your own kid, completely different journey, then we have parenting moves. People 4 to 8, which is when we move to New Zealand. So it’s all about actually moving to a new country support networks. We also lost my mother. Unfortunately at that time. So the books suddenly got a dual purpose.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Ruth Taylor
Of being a memory for garden for my children as well As for other people.
And then we have painting requires perseverance, which I think all parents can definitely attain to when the 8 to 12 year olds where suddenly they’re starting to be their own kind of person and the 4th one, which I haven’t quite put out there yet, is parenting takes presence, which is even though they’re now kind of 12 to 16 year age, they still need you around. No, they might not be quite so pleasant in their.
Darren A. Smith
That’s true. Loving the titles. I like that. So you’ve got four books, the 4th one’s coming out, each with about 3 words by Ruth Taylor. All right, they were on Amazon. Ruth. Thank you very much. And thank you for creating a product which I don’t think any other products solves the problem of helping us to think about parenting before time, prodding and poking our brains there. What about that? How about that? Should we think about that? So thank you for doing that.
Ruth Taylor
Yes.
You’re welcome.
Darren A. Smith
We’re gonna leave you to your evening down under and we hope to see you again soon.
Ruth Taylor
Thank you very much.
Darren A. Smith 18:27
Here is OK.
Ruth Taylor
I really do hope you did in the background have constant splatting that door and meowing cat ’cause. She is an annoying little rat that when she wants to be.
Darren A. Smith
Awesome.
No, no, we couldn’t hear any of that. No, that was fabulous. Thank you. What we’ll do is we’ll chop that up, take the front and end bit off. I’ll send you a link when it’s available, and let’s see if it does something. It might do. It might not. But thank you for your time anyway.
Ruth Taylor
No, that’s all I’m aware that I haven’t done a fat lot of.
Self promotion. Recently I I did it for a while and then I got a new job and and this job has been so up and bloody down. I’m I’m I’m seriously waiting to the end of the month to find out what I want to do with us and then kind of go right. Well what do I do so I am.
Now my children have actually survived adulthood. We start to feel a little bit more kind of justified in what you say because all the way through there’s been this kind of, like, ever what if, what if?
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Ruth Taylor
So as far as impostor syndrome goes, I’m I’m almost over that now. Almost. And you never know. My name may appear more often. Let’s see what happens.
Darren A. Smith
Well, I hope so. I mean, the book, the books sound fabulous. I haven’t read them, but they sound fabulous.
Let’s see, maybe the cards will help promote that and the book will promote that and let’s see if it does something it might do.
Ruth Taylor
This is out there. Yeah, the books probably need. They do need an external point of view, so I’m I am collaborating with a local lady who were just trying to discuss exactly what it looks like. I just know it’s going to take a lot of effort to re edit. And I mean, there’s 20 years worth of stuff there. It’s not something which is going to happen in the short period of time. So anyway, yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Now I’m just. I’m trying to work with a Kindle KDP, Kindle Direct publishing coach to try and beef up my Amazon presence. God, it’s bloody hard, really hard. It’s all about keywords, SCO and La La la.
Ruth Taylor
Well, that’s.
What’s that? So I’ve got SEO going on in my website and stuff and I actually do get people dropping in there, but I really need to do a significant investment in the sense of putting my books on my own website and things like that. But I’m not that technically savvy and I’ve never actually put a **** load of money into the business because it’s been my time. So when you have to front of 10 grammes for something which is so far probably only earned me a couple of $100.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
You know, it’s so, yeah, so yes.
Darren A. Smith
I know, I know that. I know it’s a it’s a big pump, it’s like.
Ruth Taylor
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Big pump to get a big return.
Ruth Taylor
I think it’s in your posts and I do keep seeing you got more cards come in and as you say, I think having a good array available is a good thing.
Darren A. Smith
I I have. It’s just I’ll give you an example. I’ve got someone employed full time just to manage Amazon. That’s the problem. Amazon’s horrible.
Ruth Taylor
But but.
Darren A. Smith
And there was a moment about a month ago, and I just thought this is not worth it because all we do is sell these to try and sell training courses, but we just it takes so much effort to get Amazon’s optimised listings optimised, they keep changing the rules and the blah blah blah and you think, can I be asked?
Ruth Taylor
Yeah, well, yeah, it’s it’s. It is one of those hamster wheel moments, isn’t certainly. Certainly is the pool of social media is so big now.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
And I I I managed to sign into threads the other day and it’s confusing the hell out me. I can’t see any difference between threads and Instagram. I mean what’s what’s the difference? It’s also connected every time I post on Instagram it posts on threads and I thought well this threads mean I can just keep a thread going of a particular comment, no, it just seems to look like freaking and I’m like.
Darren A. Smith
Oh no, I know.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
We’ll get into all of the ship.
Darren A. Smith
That’s right. I’m getting two off the ship and there’s so much buying for our attention now. You think? Really. Can I make my way in amongst a million things going? Look at me. Look at me. I don’t know.
Ruth Taylor
Oh yeah, make little videos. I did make videos for a while ’cause I’m afraid that’s how you should make videos. I said I have my videos. Oh, but you’re not on Instagram making videos, right? So I made about 5 videos. They were kind of fun and it’s like, how can you make a point in like less than 330 seconds? The average watch time for my videos was 3 seconds.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah. Stop.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Ruth Taylor
And it’s like, how can I deliver a message in 20 to 30 that they may potentially actually?
And they’re not going to watch because it’s not fun. They want to watch funny stuff. They don’t actually want to watch. You need to. You should do this. I think most popular was one where I was standing there and a fire engine went behind the side. What would you do in an emergency? It’s like we were playing golf at the time. And I said they went, oh, that’s fire. Come on.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
None.
Ruth Taylor
What would you do in an emergency? That was probably one of the most popular ones, but yeah, it’s have constantly having the ideas constantly having the energy to try and do it, and then you think.
Darren A. Smith
It’s tough.
Ruth Taylor
Is anyone? Is anyone even given a down?
Darren A. Smith
Is anyone asked? Are they watching this? My mate runs lanzarotti information biggest Lanzarote website. His most viral video was the one when it where it was 50° at Lanzarote and he said let’s see if we can fry an egg on the pavement went viral and he just went. This is stupid.
He said I’ve got videos of restaurants, fine wines, C’s said. No, it’s the egg.
Ruth Taylor
Yeah, people aren’t interested in the the, the everyday they they get that at home. Yeah. And they want answers to a problem that’s like, actually, I don’t have the answer to your problem because I don’t understand your problem and I don’t dare give you an answer which I can’t stand behind. And that’s that’s why I fail because I’m not going to go. This is your answer.
Darren A. Smith
None.
Ruth Taylor
Oh, it doesn’t work with me. I’m all these other people. Go. All you need to do. It’s like diets, isn’t it? Just do this. And I’m like, ********. ********. Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Yeah, just stop eating.
Ruth Taylor
I have too too much integrity for that. Yeah, yeah. Which is why these. Yeah, this why I quite actually enjoyed making the cards because it works in my way that I’m not telling people what to do.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah. And I like that coat. I like coaching, not telling.
Ruth Taylor
Yeah, I was generating the question. They can come up with their answer. I can ask more questions or I think that making a stupid decision. But you know it’s theirs to make. But yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Yes, yes, they all right. Thank you very much. It’s late there. I wish you well. With job from headache.
Ruth Taylor
Yes, it will be what it is and yeah, good luck with the continuing endeavours.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
We should keep trying and see God loves a trial and I keep trying.
Ruth Taylor
I was going to say if as long as you’re breaking even, mate you, if you if you can do that. But that is the one benefit working with someone else. You just have to worry about that ****. Which.
Darren A. Smith
No.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went self-employed 23 years ago and every day I think I shouldn’t have.
Ruth Taylor
Well, I said some people thrive and it’s other people don’t and it’s like.
I mean, we’d be OK at the moment not knowing from one week to the next if I’d got any work because my husband has been working in the same job for about 18 years, whereas I’ve bounced from pillar to post from last 18. But every single time I’ve kind of tried to make this work.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Yeah.
Ruth Taylor
Either we didn’t really have very much money and then I got offered a job, so I took it. So that was when I first tried. Second time was just as COVID was finishing because that’s when I was made redundant. And it wasn’t the right time to get out there. I wasn’t feeling it.
Someone else is feeling it and yeah, and now just absolutely been through the ringer with this constant change process and you just.
But anyway, I’m just going to go strangle the cat.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
All right, you have a good rest of your evening. Take care.
Ruth Taylor
Thank you. Now bye, bye.
Darren A. Smith
Bye bye.
