School Holiday Survival And 2025 Goal Setting

I find myself in the thick of school holidays and I imagine many of you, much like myself, are navigating the highs and lows that accompany this somewhat haphazard time of year. Whether you have kids at home from primary school, kindy, daycare, or even boarding school, the change in routine can feel both liberating and overwhelming. Some days, it feels like we’re swimming in flexibility and fun, and other days, it feels as if our nerves are hanging by a thread.

It’s perfectly natural to experience a spectrum of feelings during the holidays. Some parents cherish every moment, while others find it a challenge—or perhaps you’re like me, somewhere in the middle. In this episode I take you through a few strategies that have helped me manage the holiday hustle with my sanity intact.

I think it’s important to remind yourself during this time that every parent’s journey through the holidays is unique. Allow yourself the grace to navigate these times in a way that best suits you and your family. If you feel like you need additional support to set your goals for 2025, I’ve created a comprehensive workbook available to you—just reach out via social media or email, and I’ll be glad to send it over.

Sending you love and wishes for beautiful, joyous holiday moments with your little ones. 

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining me for the second episode of Me Plus Motherhood for 2025. Can you believe it? It's the middle of January and as the title would have given away, this episode is about the school holidays and just a couple of things that might be supportive for you while you're navigating the school holidays, whether that's Kids home from primary school, kindy, daycare, boarding school, or maybe just extra people around and perhaps by this point you are starting to feel a lack of space. Perhaps you're not, perhaps you're loving the school holidays and either way it's totally okay, but I just wanted to share A couple of thoughts with you that might be beneficial. Also, some content in this episode about intentionality and goal setting for 2025. Nothing too hardcore, but just a couple of things to think about that might help to set you up for the year ahead at this point in time, or just to get you started to think about what you'd like to achieve for the 2025 year. the school holidays are an interesting thing. I think I've talked about them a little bit before at various times, and certainly more with my clients, my coaching clients in Illuminate and in my other programs in the past, I find it interesting that some people love the school holidays. Some moms love it. Others. detest it, or struggle with it. Maybe detest is a bit strong, but struggle with aspects of the school holidays. And there are those that sort of sit somewhere in the middle, and I'd say I'm in that camp, in the middle camp, that school holidays are wonderful, but also challenging. I love the beautiful things about the school holidays, like relaxed time frames, not making school lunches, not having to be anywhere, relaxed routine, spending more time with my boys, doing fun things, having more family time. Getting time and space to do things that we can't do during the school term. However, it does challenge my nervous system on the school holidays, and that's what I'd like to talk about on this podcast is surviving or thriving in the school holidays and how we can have an impact on that through our perception, our expectations, our attitude, and I think also. really knowing ourselves and what it is that we need in order to be at our best selves or just take care of our worst selves during the school holiday period. It's been a big learning curve for me over the years. So my eldest is going on 11 in in 2025. and I've had a lot of guilt over the years at times about not enjoying the holidays as much as some other mums. those mums who say, I love the school holidays, my favorite thing. And inside of me, I think, um, Well, I love parts of it, but I get very overwhelmed. And that can then impact on my kids. They feed off my energy, depending on how I'm coping, how I'm embracing the days, um, how I'm managing, managing day to day in the holidays. Um, what attitude I wake up with in the morning, how well I'm taking care of myself, how much space I'm getting. Again, every one of us will be different depending on your window of tolerance, your energy levels. your personality and what it is that you need in order to be your best self day in day out. even if you are a holiday person, there's a good chance that you might be at the point in the school holidays now where it's only a week or two until school starts again is that you have probably had a very full time leading up to the school holidays with end of year activities, end of the school year and then into the into Christmas or pre Christmas activities. Lots of things going on in business or community or events and then the Christmas time and holidays. It seems to be such an intense I don't know if it's getting more intense, uh, as our kids are getting older, but it certainly is very full and people get fatigued. It's busy. People are exhausted. They get fatigued and we seem to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. It seems to be the way society is. And I think something is important to be really aware of how we are playing the game over the, uh, holiday period,, are we doing what's best for our ourselves and what it is that we need? Or are we feeling pressured and people pleasing and doing what is expected of us? in any case, there's quite a big load on the mum. over this period, both parents really, but I, I just see the mental load more in the mothers that I work with because they're my key audience, uh, as well as this extra sensory overload element of the holidays, where you may have done some traveling, you may have been away, you might be in different environments surrounded by different people interacting with your family of origin more, which can be triggering. It might trigger stuff within you, Um, such as emotions, thoughts and feelings that may only come up once a year or a few times a year when you are around your family of origin, but nevertheless they do come up. So I suppose what I'm getting at is it can be normal to get to this point of the holidays and feel like Gosh, I don't even know if I've even had a break over these holidays or gosh, I'm starting to get irritable or just a bit twitchy and however you feel is really okay. And then you're kind of facing getting back to school, getting ready for the school year or the work year to begin. You might've already been back at work and juggling. I'm not intending for this podcast to all sound negative, but at all, because it's absolutely not negative. There's obviously lots of beautiful, joyful times over the holidays as well. But if you're feeling like you have been triggered and you haven't had the space that you want and you're feeling a little bit like, I just want everything to go back to a normal routine, just know that you're not the only one. It is normal to feel all sorts of feelings at once. It's healthy to be holding two different feelings at once. And everyone has different requirements of what they can handle and have different needs. Some of you will be extroverts. Some of you will be introverts and need more quiet space than others. We all have our different needs for space and we have different windows of tolerance for the amount of noise and activity that we can handle. You may have known from my previous podcast episodes or if you follow me on social media that sensory overload or sensory stimulation is a big thing that I have to manage where if I'm subjected to too much continuous noise in our home, which is pretty much all the time, uh, with four boys and things like devices or yelling and music and, you know, you know, just noise all the time. That can get really overwhelming. So I have to be deliberate about how I manage that for my nervous system. And you might experience the same thing. So knowing what the triggers are. deliberately building in space, whether that's getting up a little bit earlier and going for a walk or making sure there's space in the day where you can have some quiet time. Just knowing what it is that you need and understanding what irritates you or when you're starting to feel triggered so that you can put in a healthy coping strategy. Uh, the extra thing about holidays as well is when you're in other environments, such as when you're visiting relatives, You may need to take yourself away and have a moment in the bedroom or in the bathroom or find ways of having little pockets of respite where you can help regulate your nervous system. And that's okay. Again, you might need to take yourself off for a walk or not opt to do the thing that the rest of the family is doing and not feel bad about that because there are people who have energy types who can go and go and go all day and not feel any of that. But if you're highly sensitive to energy. You need some space, don't have that motor to keep going, then it's okay to, to know what it is you need and not feel bad about it. Some deep breathing before bedtime, , as I said, waking up a little bit earlier than everyone else and going for a walk or finding ways to put space between you and the constant sensory processing load. Also, if you have these feelings about the holidays being challenging and wishing things would go back to normal, even wishing that, you know, Oh gosh, I can't wait to get my kids back to school. Some of you might think that and be very vocal and verbal about it and be totally fine. Others of you might think it and feel horrible that you're thinking it. And for others, you might be thinking, I don't know what you're even talking about. It's the best time of the year. All of it is valid. I want you to know that it's normal and it's okay. so in terms of, Managing your nervous system and from now until when the kids do go back to school or whatever the normal routine is, is to really keep track of your expectations and to be kind to yourself. So put simply stress is the difference between expectations and reality. So what can you do about the stress of unmet expectations? Either you can change your reality or you can change your expectation. So start to notice if you are creating expectations of yourself or about how your children are going to behave or how an event is going to unfold, such as how long it's going to take to get in the car, how the day is going to play out. It's very normal to create pictures in our mind, and I do this so much, of how I perceive a scenario playing out. We set these ideas up in our mind, and then when reality doesn't match our expectations, that's when stress enters. So how can you start to notice this and start to let go or lower your expectations, and actually be present in the reality. Again, the difference between expectations and realities equals stress. When we're living in expectation, we're living in the future focused way of thinking, , and the image we're creating in our mind of how something, expect something will go, which is actually not being present. So if we can learn to be present in that moment of reality with our children, with our loved ones, in the home, wherever it is, whatever we're doing, then and continually reminding ourselves to stay present in the moment, in the reality, then the gap between our expectations and our reality starts to close, or it starts to become smaller. I know it's easier said than done, but when I can feel myself starting to get irritated or triggered about something, it could be simple as the boys pouring milk into their cereal, or me expecting that it's going to take us three minutes to get in the car to get somewhere on time. And it takes 10 because someone's forgotten their shoes or someone can't find something, or someone's having a meltdown and me being annoyed by that because it's not how I expected it to go. But every time I get annoyed, , I'm just living in expectation of with a picture in my mind of how I thought it would go instead of what the actual reality of it is. So we create undue stress through these unnecessarily high expectations of how things are going. And all we do is really hurt ourselves in doing that. So I want to talk a little bit about choosing your attitude. in relation to the school holidays and the remaining days. it's a big one for me on the holidays. I find particularly when I'm having a lot of time with our kids and they're feeding off my energy and what I'm putting out, the days unfold differently depending on the attitude that I'm adopting. So our attitude is a composite of our thoughts, feelings, and our actions expressed in one energy. I know that if I have a shitty attitude and I'm putting out a shitty energy, I'm going to get shitty results and I'm going to get shitty feedback from the people around me. Because they are going to feel, I don't even have to say anything, but they're going to feel the energy from me. You know how when you're around someone and you can just sense that they're just in its shitty energy and you might not want to be around them. You might be feeling, , repelled without even knowing really why. They don't even have to speak. It can just be bodily, body language. Maybe it is tone of voice. kids are the same. Now, I don't want this to be about being a perfect parent and Everyone has responsibility for their attitude, including our children. it's just a reminder that the days can play out very differently when we're aware of our attitude. Again, when I have a shitty attitude, things feel annoying, everything irritates me, it feels like hard work, I can hear my tone of voice being the person I don't want to be, being the mother I don't want to be. Compared to, if I get up and I check in with my attitude, I do something to raise my vibration, vibration. or how I feel, such as going for a walk, doing some gratitude, doing some journaling, doing something that takes care of me, , and I'm intentional about my attitude for the day, then it just is amazing how it can impact on the day. So if I have a great attitude, I'm putting out a positive energy, things flow, things feel easier, and I have more perspective and enjoyment. I've had days where my attitude has been poor and it just, oh gosh, it just can snowball throughout the day. Usually those days that you want to forget. we're always in control of our attitude and my attitude can get influenced by, if I haven't had a lot of personal or if again, things aren't going to how I expected them to. So I find that I have to particularly in the school holidays. I have to choose my attitude when I wake up and continue to choose it over and over again during the day. with the kids because whatever I express, they feel it and they will react to it. So I'm not, I'm not saying that we always have to be positive or that we have to be perfect. And it's not about being unrealistic, about being fake, pretending to be positive when we're not, and it's not about being inauthentic. It's just about being aware of our attitude and being mindful of it. deliberately choosing it or striving to deliberately choose it as best that we can. Uh, so creating space for you is important in whatever way that looks like. And that might be, , and I am such an advocate for creativity and doing something creative or something that just fills your cup or brings you joy, whether that's calling someone or , doing whatever your thing is, dancing, singing, riding a horse, doing some journaling, going for a run, Doing some work, if that's your thing, whatever it is that you love, ringing a friend find what those pockets of respite are and communicating to the people around you when it is that you need a boundary. So telling your kids or your partner or whoever it is, a family, if you're staying with someone or the people staying with you that you just, this is just, this is how I'm feeling and this is what I need. And I've, for example, with my boys, I say, Mommy's just going into the office for 10 minutes. Please. I'm going to shut the door.. Can you leave mommy while I do this? I'll set a timer and let them know that I'll be coming back to them. I know this is tricky when you have little ones, totally get it that it's much harder when they're little, but consciously creating space and giving yourself permission and knowing you're worthy of it so that you can continue to move through the day with an attitude that you want to. And sometimes I might have to check in with myself so many times a day. How's my attitude? How am I going? And my body will always give it away. I can feel it before I need to think it of, uh, I can, I just feel so triggered, stressed, irritated, overwhelmed, whatever it might be. and it's observing yourself and going, oh, I'm feeling this trying to understand why, or if you can't figure out why, just, just focusing on some better feeling thoughts and some better feeling action. Something that, you know, gets you feeling good. Another one is to practice gratitude. And if you've ever been a client of mine, you'll know that I'm very passionate about the practice of gratitude. And it's called practicing gratitude for a reason, because just thinking about gratitude is great, but practicing it is where you'll get the results. And I'll never overstate how impactful and powerful it is to wake up feeling grateful and going to bed feeling grateful. So I have some gratitude practices. writing out 10 things in the morning that I'm grateful for. And sometimes I'll write things out at night as well, but mostly as I'm going to sleep, I'll think about maybe three things I'm grateful for, or at the very least what the best thing was that happened for me that day. So gratitude is the highest frequency energy. And so putting yourself on that energy plane, when you wake and when you fall asleep at night is one of the best things you can do to live a life of abundance and to attract to you more good things. The more you give thanks, the more you practice gratitude, the more you attract abundance. It's just a beautiful way to live. obviously planning and preparation is also another thing in the school holidays that I find helpful. And although the holidays are more fluid, any sort of planning is still, I find, a helpful thing. Because if your kids are like mine, they still just like to know what's going on and it helps me. and my state if I have a little bit of planning, whether that's just some meal planning or making some advanced decisions that help the holidays to flow a little bit more loosely. I can kind of get resentful about that sometimes, like I don't want to think about anything or organize anything, really help. I hope that's helpful and supportive, even if just not to know that you're not on your own. Thinking about intentions and goals for 2025, it can be challenging to find the headspace for this when you haven't had much space for yourself, particularly in the holidays. So I just want to say to really take the pressure off yourself about this, if it's not coming easily at this time of the year. If you're feeling energized and in the headspace of goals, definitely start to write down what it is that you would love to achieve , or who you would like to become. But if you're not there yet, start to think about intentions instead. feels like a little bit gentler. And if you would like to have some prompts around this, what you can do is divide a blank piece of paper into four. So into four quadrants In those quadrants, write B, so in the 1, 2, 3, 4, B, do, give and have as the titles one of those, in each of the quadrants allow your mind to wander and start to feel into those. You might even like to set a timer or put a song on and have a think about what you want to be saying about 2025 on the 31st day of December of this year. Who did you become? What did you do? What did you give? And what do you have at the end of 2025? This can be just a nice kind of gentle ease into some more serious goal setting down the track. And you're writing it as if you're telling me what you accomplished and how you've grown and what's come to fruition in 2025. If you want to go deeper, I have got a great workbook that I'm very happy to give you for 2025 for making it your best year yet. Send me a DM through Instagram or Facebook, my handle's at BenitaBench, or send me an email, benita at benitabench. com, and I will be very happy to send you a workbook that you can work through for 2025 to help you start to think about your goals, what it is that you'd like to achieve, who it is that you want to be, what your rhythms might be for the year, what your ideal day might look like, what you'd like to let go of, what you want more of, all those sorts of things. I hope that's helpful. Enjoy the rest of the holidays. Best wishes with getting little people sorted for the rest of the holidays and getting ready for the year to kick off completely in February with school and those sorts of things, or end of January. Sending you lots of love and I'll catch you on the next episode. Bye.