March 10, 2026
Cutting it as a parent? Life as a surgeon, author and mother of four with Gabriel Weston
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Ask Rachel anything If you’ve ever lain awake at night wondering whether you’re getting this parenting thing horribly wrong, you need to hear this conversation with surgeon and author Gabriel Weston. Gabriel is a mother of four – including tween twins – a prize‑winning writer and a working surgeon. She talks with disarming honesty about: How she parents without pretending to be endlessly patient or perfectWhy it’s okay to have limits to how much joy you get from parentingThe very real ways sh...
If you’ve ever lain awake at night wondering whether you’re getting this parenting thing horribly wrong, you need to hear this conversation with surgeon and author Gabriel Weston.
Gabriel is a mother of four – including tween twins – a prize‑winning writer and a working surgeon. She talks with disarming honesty about:
- How she parents without pretending to be endlessly patient or perfect
- Why it’s okay to have limits to how much joy you get from parenting
- The very real ways she sometimes gets it wrong, and how her kids now call her out
- What her son’s life‑threatening brain condition and her own health scares have taught her about seeing all of us – including our teens – as “beautifully broken” humans
- How she and her husband navigate very different parenting styles, from strict boundaries to snacks and softness
What I love about Gabriel is that she says the quiet things out loud – the thoughts so many parents have but feel too guilty to admit. She’s funny, wise, and completely unpretentious, and by the end you may feel surprisingly lighter about your own “failings” as a parent.
If you’ve ever worried that you’re too controlling, not present enough, not soft enough, or simply not “motherly” in the way you think you’re supposed to be, this episode will help you see that you are probably doing far better than you think.
Find Gabriel here:
https://www.instagram.com/gabrielwestonalive/
Buy her books:
https://www.waterstones.com/author/gabriel-weston/6579
https://amzn.eu/d/0cGm5jnK
Please hit the follow button if you like the podcast, and share it with anyone who might benefit.
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Please don't hesitate to seek the advice of a specialist if you're not coping. There's no shame in reaching out for support. When you look after yourself your entire family benefits.
My email is teenagersuntangled@gmail.com
My website has a blog, searchable episodes, and ways to contact me:
www.teenagersuntangled.com
Find me on Substack: https://teenagersuntangled.substack.com/
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You can reach Susie at www.amindful-life.co.uk
00:00 - Meet Surgeon, Author & Mum of Four: Gabriel Weston on Teenagers & Anatomy
01:19 - A Love Story and a Heart Murmur: Gabriel Reads from Alive
02:39 - Bringing Anatomy to Life: Bodies, Feelings and a Feminist Lens on Medicine
05:39 - Are We ‘Too Emotional’? Teaching Teens That Feelings Are Allowed
05:39 - Performing Parenthood vs Being Real: Naked Trampolines and Daffodils
06:24 - Second‑Chance Parenting: What Gabriel Did Differently with Her Twins
08:08 - The Happiness Equation: Why Lower Expectations Can Make Families Happier
08:46 - The Truth About the Clitoris: What Doctors (and Teens) Need to Know
09:24 - Redrawing Female Anatomy: 3D Clitoris Models and Medical Bias
12:39 - Why Medicine Still Centres Men: Data Bias, Drugs and Women’s Bodies
13:26 - From English Literature to Surgery: How Gabriel Found a New Calling
17:03 - Compassion in the Operating Room: Patients as Equals, Not Cases
20:29 - When Your Child Nearly Dies: How a Brain Surgery Changed Everything
22:16 - Parenting After Trauma: Seeing Every Teen as ‘Beautifully Broken’
24:48 - What Serious Illness Taught Gabriel About Being a Better Doctor and Mum
26:24 - When Your Kids Hold Up a Mirror: Being Called Out by Teens
31:32 - Breaking Family Patterns: Owning Your ‘Stuff’ So You Don’t Pass It On
32:07 - Two Totally Different Parents: Negotiating Parenting Styles with Your Partner
33:17 - Is Love Acts of Service or Firm Boundaries? Rethinking ‘Good’ Parenting
34:05 - Teens Trashing Their Mums (Safely): Why That’s Actually Healthy
37:10 - Learning from Other Families: When Teens Compare Your Home to Their Friends’
38:03 - You Will Mess Them Up: Accepting Imperfection and Passing on the Good Bits
40:14 - Attachment Styles, Relationships and Owning What You Passed On
41:15 - From Millennials to Gen Alpha: Parenting Across Very Different Eras
41:55 - Phones, Porn & Body Image: Why Her Older Kids Say ‘No Smartphones’ Yet
44:56 - The One Rule She’d ‘Die On a Hill For’: No Screens in Bedrooms
46:14 - Sleep, Mental Health and Online Safety: The Simple Rule That Protects Teens
46:55 - Boredom, Masturbation and Books: What Teens Might Actually Do Without Phones
47:19 - The 30‑Minute Reading Habit: How Gabriel Gets Her Twins (and Herself) Off Screens
48:08 - Writing Before the World Wakes: Gabriel’s 45‑Minute Morning Routine
51:03 - Cold‑Water Kids and Laughing at Your Children (Kindly)
53:33 - When Teens Give Brutal Feedback: ‘You Make the Whole House Sad and Tidy’
54:56 - Teaching Conflict Skills: When Your Teen Won’t Let You Storm Off
55:15 - Mother’s Day, ADHD and Being Blunt About Needing a Card
57:44 - Why Gabriel Never Feels ‘Mum Guilt’ (and Why That Might Be Okay)
59:36 - Minimum Effort, Maximum Reward: Her ‘Lazy’ but Effective Mothering Hacks
01:01:58 - Letting Teens Grow Up: No Attachment Guilt and Radical Non‑Judgment
01:03:58 - Modelling Imperfection: Why Admitting Your Failings Helps Your Kids
01:05:18 - The String Game and Cheap Childhood Joy: Do Parties Need to Be Perfect?
01:07:36 - What Surgery Taught Her About Fear, Menopause and Doing Hard Things Anyway
01:08:03 - Too Hard or Too Soft? The Parenting Question We Never Stop Asking
01:10:41 - Sex, Masturbation and Honest Body Talk: Raising Shame‑Free Teens
01:12:09 - Being Authentically You: Why Teens Respond Better to Real Parents, Not Perfect Ones
01:13:13 - High Support, High Expectations: Getting the Balance (Imperfectly) Right
01:16:02 - Never Feeling ‘Enough’: Achievement, Comparison and Feeling Small on Purpose
WEBVTT
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Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the tween and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now today's a very special day for me, because my darling friend Gabriel Weston has come down to my home to spend time with me. She's a surgeon, prize winning author and mother of four, including tween twins. That's hard to say, right? She's also a highly accomplished broadcaster, having presented several TV series including, trust me, I'm a doctor, and she's one of my favorite people, so I want to share her with you and talk a bit about her latest book, alive, her unusual path to being a surgeon, and how that can help us think about what we say to our own kids, about their own careers, how she balances her career with family life, and I don't know everything else besides Gabriel, thanks for joining us. I'm so excited to be here, Rachel. I'm just hoping that you're not going to have to bleep out and edit out too much.
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We don't bleep, we don't bleep.
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We're raw. We're raw and ready, right? But I want to begin with your latest book. I've actually got, for those of you who are looking at this, I hope you start watching. I've got it on sub stack and YouTube. Here is her book. There's a hardback, and the paperback is out now, so if you haven't read it yet, Now's the chance I'd like to start with that it's an alternative anatomy, and if there's a piece in your book that I want you to read because it sets the scene so beautifully for our conversation, grab yourself your glasses. Sorry. I just sprung this on her. Could you read this bit? Because I absolutely love it.
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So this is right at the beginning of my book.
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We're first year medical students and testing our new stethoscopes. My boyfriend's is bright red and stands out like an artery against his immaculate white coat. We're by the window in his flat Sun flashing on the river, and when I lean in, though it's his heart I'm supposed to be listening to, it's really mine. I'm aware of racing and skipping the way it sometimes does, especially when I get this close to him, I try to concentrate, but I'm soon away again the nearness of his body, the amplified sound of his breaths and the clear, strong sound of his heart tempting me to wonder what might come next, not just this afternoon, but forever, when it's his Turn, he listens for ages, and his face is so wrapped when he looks up that for one foolish moment I expect romance. Instead, he says, I can hear a murmur.
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There's something wrong with your heart. Ah, I just think that's absolutely brilliant.
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Thank you. And I love it because it it
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really shows what a different book this is when it comes to anatomy, and I know that anatomy. And I know that all the way through it, you weave in your point, which is that all these anatomy books seem so desiccated. And yeah, so I
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really found, kind of at medical school, and definitely training as a surgeon as well, that for the first couple of decades, I'd say I was so busy kind of performing, being the kind of student and doctor that I thought I had to be, because I'd come from an unusual background in the arts, that I didn't sort of stop to think how odd it was that this thing that is just so fascinating, which is what our bodies are made of. As soon as you started having those conversations in a medical, surgical context, it was almost like all the life went out, yes, and it was really only I would say in the last sort of 10 years that I stopped to think and why I kind of came to write this book about how the way to sort of bring that passion back, I think, is to really alternate between seeing the bodies in a kind of objective, platonic sense, and then re breathing the life back into them by considering our own bodies and the way we experience, kind of the joys and pains of living in a physical self. And so I really wanted the book to be kind of constantly, in a way, these two voices sort of undermining and complementing each other. And I think that's also it's quite a feminist point, because I think that a lot of times, women have been sidelined because of our sort of inescapable physicality.
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It's almost like we can't be the thinkers and the talkers because we're too busy having periods, giving birth, raising children.
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And actually, you know what I now say to my husband is like, don't tell me that me being emotional means that I can't have a conversation. Or don't say I'll only talk to you when you stop crying. Like, no, you're gonna listen to me while I'm crying. Yeah, and you know, the brain and the heart are allowed to co exist. And I think that's something I'm really trying to say as well.
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I think it's a beautiful message, and it's funny when you say that, because my friend, who runs a company and has a lot of male employees, keeps saying to me, please keep me from the emotional men, because they they don't realize they're emotional. It's just that the only emotion they show is frustration or anger. And I.
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We're all, we all have emotions.
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Yeah, we
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just, and we're meant to we, that's right, it's like, I'm, you know, I'm always sort of trying to say that to my kids, like it's, you've been given all these emotions. And of course, we have to, we have to be careful that we don't let our emotions become scary or silencing of other people's experience. But it's okay to feel sad, and it's okay to show that and angry as well. I mean, a particularly fond of female rage. Personally, I think we need to encourage it more yes and not Yes. Like the men can kind of really, really, like, turn volume down on us. Yes, yeah, turn it right up. I think, yeah, yeah.
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And it's funny when you say that about anatomy and how you felt like when you first became a doctor, you had to be a certain thing. And do you know that rang bells with me in terms of parenting, because I felt like when I started out as a parent, I thought I need to be a certain thing. And I remember my daughters one time on Easter, someone coming up to me and saying, you know, your daughter's out there. I think you need to come and have a look. And I thought, Oh, God, what? And she was jumping on the trampoline, butt naked, and she'd covered the trampoline with daffodils that she'd got people to pick from the garden, so all my daffodils are gone.
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And I thought, What does a parent supposed to do? So I went, darling, that's really and I started doing the whole performative being a parent telling and I thought, I just want to be on the trampoline with you naked, yeah, and that's the difference.
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I love it, and I and I really agree with you, and I feel that. I mean, the nice thing for me is because my husband, I've got sort of two sets of children, so we've got, we've got a 22 year old and a 19 year old, and then we've got twin 12 year olds and and we've sort of been given this chance in a way, to do it again, like we've really messed it up with the first two, but now we kind of can go again. And I definitely feel that with this set, with our second chance, as it were, I'm much more bold now about thinking, thinking that like you say that I don't have to be this kind of paradigm of what a parent is meant to be.
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But also, I think bringing much more humor to it now than I did first time round. And you know, one of the things I mean, some of some of my older daughters, friends, parents have taken me to task on this one. But you know, I've had situations where there have been, you know, girls in the kitchen and they're sad because the boy they like doesn't like them back, or they've been to a party and they haven't got lucky with with the hot guy. And one of my special mantras now with my daughter's friends at this age group is you just got to lower the bar. You know, you don't get the guy you want. Lower your bar, and you might find that, you know, the second best guy likes you. And if that doesn't work, just lower it further. Actually. I think it's a good, I think it's actually quite a good mantra for life in general, you just keep lowering your expectations until the point where you can find the satisfaction you're looking for.
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Well, that's a very interesting one, because we did bring that up in our happiness episode, where you know, you know the equation for happiness. It's basically current situation minus your expectations. Yeah, so if your expectations are reduced, you're going to be very happy.
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And if you think about, you know, in terms of parenting, you know that feeling where you have a tiny baby in the house, and suddenly you realize that if your partner allows you to be the one that's going to go to the supermarket to pick up the milk by yourself, you are going to just be absolutely ecstatic. And I think that was my first sort of having small children. Was my first realization that actually my ability to be happy had suddenly become so much more available to me, because the background awfulness of having small children was, you know, so significant. Any moments without them just suddenly became really wonderful,
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brilliant point, I think we've always and then I, you know, coming back to the book, I one of my favorite bits, because there were lots of them, and I want, I'm not going to tell people all of them, because I think they should buy the book and read it for themselves. But I love the bit about the clitoris, and it's so funny, because you brought with you a model of the clitoris.
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Isn't that how we had not had this discussion that this was going to be one of the most interesting things to me. And one of the things I loved about it was the you basically explained that the clitoris, like is basically my mini penis, yeah. And ever since I read that, I just walk around thinking about my mini penis, and I feel very I feel a lot of ownership now. I know, in a way that I do.
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So when I was researching the chapter on the genitals in my book, I decided to put the whole thing together as one chapter. It was an incredible revelation to me, and I hadn't thought about it before. Despite being a surgeon, despite being at medical school, having had four kids, woman in my 50s, that when I started looking at the anatomy, that the way that we're taught the anatomy of the genitals, even now, is that men have a penis and we have a vagina. And reading the anatomy, it became clear to me that, of course, the vagina is not the counterpart of the penis, because the vagina.
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Is just a space. Yes, it's just a hole. It's where the tampon goes, or the penis, or where the baby comes out. And our actual kind of, you know, the corollary of the penis is actually the clitoris. And once I realized that, and then started to really look at the anatomy, which has mainly been rewritten by this incredible woman called Professor Helen O'Connell, who is an Australian urology surgeon, first female urology surgeon. I happened to be going to Australia for an eight month sabbatical, and I basically found where Helen O'Connell was at Fremantle Hospital in Melbourne. And I got in touch with her secretary, and I managed to go and meet her, which was, you know, one of those situations where I met someone who I am so full of admiration for, and she just told me the whole experience she had of being a junior urology surgeon and realizing that the anatomy She was learning to be able to actually do operations on the female pelvis was completely inadequate in terms of preserving nerve function in women, and so she kind of stepped out of her training and spent a really long time doing cadaveric dissections and looking at MRI scans of the female pelvis. And on the back of the work she's done really relatively recently, like in the last 20 years, Grey's Anatomy has now changed. What finally so it was a real meeting Helen and reading her work on the clitoris. And then she was the one, actually, who gave me this fantastic because my 3d printed, 3d printed clitoris from Helen O'Connell's. This is a pre menopausal, yes, right, I guess.
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So. Unfortunately, what's different about these bits, these lovely, chubby bits here, which sit on either side of basically within the vaginal canal, apparently, in the menopausal, post menopausal woman become somewhat retracted.
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I think that's the medical phrase, but, you know, essentially, a bit the whole thing gets a bit gnarly and not as luscious. But that is, that's a sort of, you know, young adult female clitoris, and it's just, you know, it's enormous, and it's just so fantastic. My poor twins. I mean, they just hear about clitoris all the time.
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And, I mean, it's quite funny, they say things like, Oh, God, were you talking about the clitoris again, as if they're using a word as familiar as you know, apple or orange or banana, which I feel very happy about, even though they're rejecting me talking about it. But the way they say it, it's like assimilated into their vocabulary and the correct anatomy. I love it, and that's one of the things that's come up a lot recently, is that an awful lot of medical information is inaccurate when it comes to women, because an awful lot of the information we've gained is been tested on men, because women are difficult to test drugs and things aren't just because of our cycles. Yeah, that's much more expensive. So they just go and forget that.
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It's just two men Exactly. So I think exactly. So I think Caroline criado Paris is the one who, kind of, she's written all sorts of amazing books that were kind of redressing that imbalance between all of our information and equipment and stuff being sort of tailored towards men instead of women.
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She's done lots of work, but you're right. It's becoming, it's sort of, you know, becoming something that's really entering the mainstream now that everything has been jigged towards men. Now you studied English literature to start with, which makes you very, very unusual. How did you make that transition from a background in literature to being a surgeon?
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Yeah. So, I mean, it's a funny one, isn't it, because I do think, even now, it's so common, I think for people who go into medical school to have someone in their family who was a doctor before them, it's almost as if that path has been laid out for them. And I came from a family where people had, you know, been to university and worked hard, but no one was a scientist or a doctor, and I was pretty terrible at science at school. I did, yeah, really, really, you know, did English, French and Latin a level. I only did biology o level. Gave the others up at the age of 13. And it was really when I was doing my English degree, which I loved, and I think I wanted to do that degree because I was kind of fascinated in life and death and sex and all those kind of essential subjects. I started noticing both a kind of slightly unhealthy fascination when other people injured themselves or became ill, I would be kind of unduly excited when someone was in a lot of pain or bleeding, and also started to visit my own GP with an alarming regularity.
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So I don't think I knew in the early days that what I was experiencing was the kind of beginnings of a kind of vocation to do medicine or surgery, and it was really around the. Time I came away with my English degree, I happened to meet a man who was the father of a friend of mine who was a surgeon, and he started talking to me about surgery, and then invited me to spend time with Him in His operating theater. And that just changed everything. So I went into the operating theater and saw for the first time someone putting knife to skin, and the kind of incredible revelation of the inside of the human body.
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And really for me, I think that's kind of one of the most important moments in my life. I think that I just I had a kind of emotional and esthetic experience to seeing the inside of the body that made me realize I had to kind of completely change the direction of my life.
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Yeah. And I really now, I mean, even with my son, I remember going to his school when they were doing a talk about transitioning from GCSEs into a levels and all the different teachers and the different subjects had kind of set out their stall about, you know, why you should do economics, or why you should do classics or whatever. And I remember the chemistry teacher sort of really, in my opinion, misinforming the kids that they shouldn't even consider medicine unless chemistry was something that they really loved, and I was sitting there in the audience. I didn't want to embarrass my son, so I kept quiet. But I remember thinking I hated chemistry, even, you know, even the chemistry I had to do to get into medical school, I hated that subject. And actually, medicine is such a broad, broad profession with so much space for so many different kinds of people. And surgery, in particular, for me, I think has been a very artistic job rather than a scientific job. So I just get really cross when I hear young people who might actually love doing medicine being turned away from it because they don't like physics or chemistry or maths.
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I absolutely love that perspective, and that's one of the things I think you came in via a route which was looking at bringing people who have more compassion into surgery. Is that right?
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And I'm not sure I qualify as someone with more
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people have got more of a Nazi background.
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Yeah, I definitely, I think, and especially the older I get and the you know, the better I become as a doctor. And I definitely think I'm better than I used to be from the kind of personal point of view. I really think that that being a doctor and loving being a doctor is about putting yourself on a par with your patient. And of course, you have information that they might not have, and you have a sort of ability to help them navigate decisions that are very difficult for any of us to make, when it's our own bodies we're talking about. But I really, I feel that the joy of connecting with a patient and really having them feel that you are feeling something alongside them is something incredibly important, and it's not something I don't think it's something that I really gave much thought to, until one of my own children became really ill, and I noticed, you know, that my own heart condition was getting worse as well. And in a way, I feel it's a real failure of my own imagination that it has taken me having life experiences to kind of catch up with what I should have known in the first place, which is that medicine is and nursing. You know that it's about being a human being, kind of standing alongside other human beings and difficult points in their life. In that sense, I think it's very similar to art and poetry and philosophy and all these other things. So yes, I definitely remember being a junior doctor and I was so entranced with not just the glamor of the world that I had entered, but like the glamor of myself in that world. It was like I was entranced, yes, yes, like the way I was, you know, it was like I was watching myself, thinking, I can't believe this is me. Maybe because it was so surprising to me that I had been able to get having made that transition, you know, that imposter thing that we always talk about now. But I think also in some funny way that as a young doctor, a young surgeon, I think I did believe in some weird way that doing that as a profession was somehow going to protect me from the difficulties of life, the illness of life. I don't know. I mean, I don't think I can have believed that in a logical sense, but I think I did believe somehow that being on the right side of that line meant that maybe when difficult things came along, that I would be. Able to kind of sort them out myself, or protect myself, or soften the blows of those things. And I mean, I think Henry Marsh talks very honestly in his latest book about how shocked he felt as someone with cancer, that the people in the clinic looking after him weren't kind of rolling the red carpet out for him. He was just a patient with cancer like everyone else, and how humbling he found that. And I think I've really had that experience, you know?
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Well, you've, yeah, well, you've had, you've got your heart moment which needs work, and you've also had a son who it would that was a terrifying situation.
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Totally, yeah.
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So my eldest child had something called a cavernoma, which is it's a brain mass. It's not a tumor as such. But when he was 14, he was diagnosed with a four centimeter mass in his brain and needed emergency surgery. And it really was a four or five week period of time where we believed he was going to die. Well, you didn't know if it was cancer or something. No. I mean, in fact, we were told initially he was, he was, kind of, they thought it was something called a medulla blastoma, and that went on for a while. And then even when they got the diagnosis right, it was a very, I mean, he was very much on the edge of that being a life threatening thing. So that, I mean, I definitely think when I was saying earlier, I was talking about that moment of being in the operating theater as a student and wanting to do that myself being one of the defining moments of my life. But I've definitely said, and still really believe that my son's illness, I almost see it like my life is like a piece of paper that's folded in half, and that is the crease around which my life is folded. It's everything before. Then it's almost like if I made a movie out of my life.
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This says something about my kind of narcissistic, egotistical tendencies, that I even think this way, but, but the first bit before, before my son's illness would be, I don't know, like the lighting would be something bright and colorful and then afterwards, okay, or sepia,
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but that's beautiful. What an interesting way of looking at the world.
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Though I love that I need to have an idea of how my life works, but that's fascinating.
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So what do you mean by that, that it's different in that in a sepia way?
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I think now I I have this sense when I meet people, generally, but definitely when I meet patients.
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Of I kind of, on the one hand, I'm sitting in the room thinking I'm going to do an operation on this person. They need to know that I'm confident and that I know what I'm doing and I'm calm. And so I try and give that across, but I also this other part of me, the part that went through the situation with an ill child, sort of feels like this human being is coming into this room, probably terrified, sometimes hostile, because they're terrified, and they're containing all sorts of things in their lives that I'm probably never going to hear about. And I'm seeing that from a kind of broken place. I feel like and I feel like I'm like that with my kids now as well. I feel like I sometimes if I hear say one of my younger children saying something unkind about someone else, instead of maybe 10 years ago with my older kids, I would have said something like, oh, you know you mustn't be unkind.
00:23:21.240 --> 00:24:48.039
It's not nice to be unkind or whatever. Now, what I would say to them is something more like, we are all broken. We're human beings, and part of being a human being is being broken. So you might say something unkind about a girl in your class who's overweight or who has bad skin, or who's kind of struggling to fit in, and that's because you're seeing the way that that person is broken, but you're broken too, and so am I, and maybe you just haven't discovered what way you're broken in yet, or that hasn't happened to you yet. But I kind of I feel now as a doctor and as a mother and as a human being, that my ability to really, genuinely think that everyone else is exactly like me has been massively amplified by something having taken my legs out in a way, in a way that I'm never going to recover from. You know, it was like when I thought that he was gonna die, even though he didn't. The world never looked safe. It's never looked the same way to me. And so now I feel the the upside of that is that my capacity to kind of meet people where they are has changed, and I definitely find, like my interactions with patients, they're better, they're richer than they were before. So, and I love that,
00:24:48.039 --> 00:24:56.019
yes, Wow, that's fascinating. And you actually, before you wrote a live was direct read the one where you there was a bidding war
00:24:56.019 --> 00:27:55.180
over it, yes, because your brother saying to me, oh, you know. People's created this book and and then I heard all about the bidding war, and I was like, Go, girl, that's amazing, yeah, because it was such a book, it was such a thing. I mean, it's so funny because I was listening to this podcast. Yeah, there's an amazing podcast called The London writers salon, and it's one of many podcasts that are about writing that I just love listening to. And there was someone on there talking really amusingly, and it was really, I can't remember her name, but it was someone who'd struggled with traditional publishing, and she'd been incredibly resourceful and gone down the sort of independent publishing route. And she was talking about how, oh, debut writers, like publishers, love a debut, because it's like they've got no backstory. They've got no record of their writing having become an actual thing that people might not like or people might have mixed feelings about. And I was listening to this podcast and remembering those days of, you know, direct read where, yeah, it did. It was kind of fought over by lots of publishers, and it was really that story of being a person who had written something with no expectations, and suddenly, you know, I had a lot of hot air blown up my ass, and I was kind of really, really like given a lot of attention. And like so many writers, probably like the majority of writers, even in my fortunate position of being published and having wonderful publisher and, you know, publicity engine, you know, all trying to help me, I think certainly most writers that I know, apart from the you know, very, very lucky famous ones, have Experienced, you know, with every book a real kind of uncomfortable disconnection between your expectation of what that book might deliver for you and what it actually turns out to be. And it's such a good example, isn't it, of how, even as parents and even as adults well into life, that we're still having to learn all these lessons ourselves as well of kind of trying to reframe why you pursue something, what is important and meaningful for you about you know, for me writing this book, this particular one, took eight years, and so such an investment of time and work in it. It is definitely a part of my working life that I had not anticipated how much kind of emotional and psychological resilience is required for the ups and downs of being an author, you know, particularly at a time like now where you are expected to do a lot of the kind of you're in publicizing, you have to do a lot of that yourself. And it's good, you know, it's good to be someone who's prepared to do a bit of hustling and kind of get in there and get down and dirty.
00:27:50.920 --> 00:31:21.799
But I, I've been a little bit shocked even, you know, even at this stage in my life, by having to kind of think to myself, if one of my kids tried really hard at something and actually did really well at it, but didn't maybe get first prize, or didn't get the gold medal, or didn't get into Oxford or Cambridge, I'd be really tough with them about like, the value of what they did, being in the thing itself and not being in the validation, yes, but I'm really, you know, I'm really you know, I'm really having to look at myself in that way too, and kind of, yeah, you know. And then it's, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I was thinking before coming to talk to you today, how I think one of the things I've really learned over time as a parent, and it's something I think I sort of got a little bit from Alan de boeton's idea of how when you're going into a romantic relationship, it's really helpful to know the ways that you're fucked up yourself, yes, so that you can almost bring that to the table with the person you're in love with, and you can kind of figure out what some of the pitfalls might be for you as a couple, given What you're both going to bring to the party, and I really feel now as a parent, I don't think I was capable of this when my big kids were little, but I think I am very capable of it with them now that I know what I have come from, and I know what the difficulties I think of my own family of origin have been and I'm old enough to know some of the ways they've played out in my life in unhelpful ways, and that I have a likelihood of bringing those problems forward into the way that I parent my own children. And I don't think my state of enlightenment is so good that that stops me doing those problematic things. But I do think it's taken me to a place where one of my older kids, for example, will say to me, you know, if I'm walking into a room looking like I've got a head of steam on and I just want someone to get. Angry with one of my older kids will literally raise their hand up and say, very calmly, Mom, do you actually want to say what you're about to say? Would you just like to take a little minute to think about it and maybe just leave my room? Yes and see you know. And sometimes I'll just be like, no, no, I really do know what I want to say, and this is what it is. But other times, I will walk away and have a think, and kind of think to myself, I'm like, wanting to sound off and kind of basically burn the house down, yeah, because I'm feeling anxious. And when I get anxious, I just want everything in order, and things are not in order, and now I'm just going to incinerate stuff now, you know? So I've and there's certain that's just one aspect of me not functioning properly. And there are lots of them, but they're in patterns, you know? And like, I I recognize them, so I think that's good. I don't think, like, right? Sometimes my kids say it's not enough, mom, like, it's not enough that you think you're in this state of, like, self knowledge Nirvana, yes, like, that does still, yeah, that doesn't, that still doesn't acquit you from repeatedly behaving in a controlling way or whatever, but it still feels like a big improvement.
00:31:22.099 --> 00:31:50.980
Well, I, you know, I love that you brought this up, because I think it's so so so, so important. And I think all of us struggle with these things, because we all come, in your terms, broken, we all will have had patterns that come from our childhood, the ways that our parents talk to us, that we will continue without really understanding. And the first step is understanding. That's the first step. Yeah, actually being able to manage something that's that's created become a pattern or become a stock response is another big ask.
00:31:51.039 --> 00:32:07.980
Yeah, and I think it always happens when we're under pressure that we don't manage that very well. So I love that you talked about that, because I think all of the all of my listeners, everybody can appreciate that, and we do things in different ways, so you have a husband who who's just different,
00:32:07.980 --> 00:32:11.819
so different, yeah, very odd. I mean, two of me would be just horrifying.
00:32:11.819 --> 00:32:53.859
And that's a great thing, because we, one of the things we need to accept is that a lot of parenting is about this haggle between two different ways of doing things and being able to have conversations about the different ways that you see things, because sometimes it's the combination is the good thing. And so you've got a husband who brings snacks and things, and yes, that you can't stand for him making breakfast for the children and doing all things. This is his way of showing love. And He came from a family that his father did this for him, yeah, and it felt really wonderful. And, and, yes, it's taking away ownership, but from teenagers who can, well, do it themselves. But I, personally, I think, think we should always prioritize love.
00:32:53.920 --> 00:33:03.720
If we have a way of showing love, actually being able to use that to show can be a really positive thing, yeah, but it's getting the balance between
00:33:03.720 --> 00:33:14.880
and you're right. So then you can have, you can be bilingual in the love language, can't you? Yeah? He's food love language, yeah. I mean, here I am just pausing, thinking, What is my love life?
00:33:11.940 --> 00:33:17.339
I mean, mine, I think is just being really mean, no, no.
00:33:17.460 --> 00:33:37.279
I think this is the really interesting thing, because I think there are a lot of people who think love is all about, you know, accommodation and and doing nice things for them. And I've had this conversation with Susie before where she said, You know, it's really nice to go and fold up all their clothes and put it on the bed. I'm like, No, I don't really like doing that. Yeah.
00:33:35.420 --> 00:34:05.940
And she said, Oh no, but you probably do. And I went, No, I really just don't. And I think there's another way of showing love, which is actually to do with creating boundaries where they feel safe because someone's in control, someone knows what's happening, because it's not comfortable when you've got two parents who don't have any kind of who just giving you everything, right? So that's a different way of Yes. And I have said I love that, yeah, my quote to my kids is, regularly, Isn't it awful that I love you enough to say no, isn't how? How awful
00:34:05.940 --> 00:36:11.219
for you? So funny, you've just reminded me of something actually, which was a really interesting experience for me this weekend. So my twins are 12, and their best friends are twins, and so we do a kind of, you know, one weekend they sleep over there, then the twins sleep over with us, and it's very cute, because when their twin friends are over with my twins, they go off in little sets of two so but never the same. But they kind of break off. They have little time in their twos, and they come together as a four. And it's just all lovely. Anyway, I was Sunday this weekend. I was upstairs reading, and they must have thought I'd gone out and one of my twins and one of the other twins were on the stairs, just one floor down from where I was reading my book with a bedroom door open, and I was quite into my book, but I couldn't help but hear, of course, yes, one of them, I think the friend twin, saying my mom. I kept hearing my mom. So I thought, first of all, I thought, I'm not going to get up and listen to that, because they're obviously having a conversation about their mothers and that probably they wouldn't want us to hear. And then I thought, I'll sod that, you know. So I crept to the top of my steps and very quietly, sat down, and what I witnessed was about 15 or 20 minutes of full on mother assassination, my daughter and one of her best friends, my mom, blah blah and blah, blah, blah, and then my daughter coming in, oh, God, You think that's bad? My mom, this, that or whatever. And lots of things struck me about this. One of them was that slightly psychopathically, I wasn't very bothered by it, and I thought, I don't know what that says about me, that I'm sort of sitting and having the only comment, actually that she made that annoyed me so much that I almost had to announce myself. Was my, my, my daughter said to her friend in one of the kind of backwards and forwards bitching session about mom. She went, Oh, God, You think that's bad? Like, my mom is like, Oh, she's so passive aggressive. And I felt like saying, No, I'm not. I'm aggressive. I'm just aggressive.
00:36:11.219 --> 00:37:10.139
I'm not passive aggressive. But, I mean, that was really, really interesting. But I also felt, and maybe this was me just trying to comfort myself, but I thought how lovely that my 12 year old is able to let rip and do whatever she's doing here, separating from me or defining herself against me. I don't even know what was going on there, but it, none of it felt very mean and, you know, and I didn't feel very bothered by, I mean, I struggled a bit about 15 minutes later when I was going to make them dinner, I noticed I was a bit like, So, how would you like your hamburgers? You know, do you want cheese on that? Well, I did. I did notice there was a bit of sort of weirdness coming out of me at that point. But generally, I sort of just told my husband about it, and we had a good old laugh. But I think that's something, needless to say, the fathers would were not featuring fathers did not come up in the conversation. No, no, it's just the mothers.
00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:12.900
Oh, well, yeah.
00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:48.460
And I think that is part of the separation thing, isn't it? And I think a lot of parents really struggle with that when they think, Oh, they don't like me and they don't want it, but, but it's part of they're looking separate, standing back and looking at you and thinking and comparing. Because I think what's fascinating about teenagers is that's when they start going to other people's houses and noticing so they used to go before, possibly, maybe not. But once they're teenagers, I've had kids coming home and saying, oh, such and such as has got so much beautiful art. I just love it. And I could feel myself inside thinking, well, we've got our and you can't help that sort of emotional response.
00:37:48.460 --> 00:38:03.119
But at the same time, I was like, Well, great. So you're noticing things about somewhere else, and over this entire period of time, you're going to start from thinking, Well, I'd like to live in a house that's a bit like this, and I think as a parent, I'd be a bit like this, and maybe not make these mistakes, but I'll make my own ones.
00:38:03.119 --> 00:40:14.400
And exactly, I mean, I think that's such a good point as well, isn't it? Is the kind of, the absolute belief I have, like, I'm, I'm gonna mess my kids up. I mean, I am, apparently. So they're, they are not going to escape the thing that we all can't escape. So there are certain things that I have really tried to introduce or improve on from where I came from. But by the same token, I feel like my parents got a lot of stuff really right, and I'm trying to take those things forward. So you know, my mum, for example, was really big on theater. Always took us to the theater. And she always used to say to me, she had quite a problematic relationship with her mother, but she said the thing that her mom had done really, really well, that she always loved, was always to take them to the theater. So that feels like something that's kind of come down a couple of generations, but I think it's okay, isn't it, to kind of to know that there will be things that your kids struggle with. In fact, there was a time with my son about a year and a half ago when he was in a relationship with someone, and he was having some difficulties in in the relationship, and I remember saying to him, like, obviously, I'm not going to go into a lot of details about, you know me and your father, and how we interact in a kind of personal emotional space. But I think it's fair to say that both myself and my children's dad are probably in the kind of emotionally avoidant bracket, you know, rather than being in the kind of emotionally clingy bracket. And so I had this quite interesting conversation with my son, where I said, you know, it may be that this person you're in a relationship with who feels that you're not being affectionate enough, or that you don't need to call her as much as she wants you to like that might be something that Dad and I have kind of given you, and maybe it would be useful. For you just to think about saying to her, Look, in my family, my parents have quite a lot of time apart, and they sort of don't need to be in each other's pockets the whole time. And maybe that's kind of why I am the way I am. You know,
00:40:14.400 --> 00:41:15.119
yes, I love that. And I think just the awareness, the awareness is the first step. And after that, you can say, Does this need fixing, really. And also, I think that our kids are growing up in a distinctly different environment from the one we grew up in, so that, in itself, will make a change. And it's fascinating that you've got kids who are they're separate in ages, but not too separate. So my oldest are 31 and 28 big chunk of different, difference there, yeah. So one's a millennial maze, yes, and and then I've got two her Gen Z, and then yours are probably Gen A. So when they categorize, yeah, Gen eight, yeah, and so. And I think one of the big defining things has been how social media has come on during that time and all these other things. And so I think parenting has had to evolve in a really difficult six sort of bubble. Yeah. So how have you changed between your
00:41:15.119 --> 00:41:18.119
first in terms of phones and things like that?
00:41:18.179 --> 00:41:25.760
So interesting. So I actually asked my older two quite recently. So currently, our younger two are in year seven.
00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.000
They both have a Nokia flip.
00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:42.460
They don't have a smartphone. My daughter, you know, they use our smartphones when they're in the room with us to, you know, go on WhatsApp or what have you. But our older two, they each got a phone when they were 13. So they went to secondary school in year nine, and they got phones then.
00:41:43.000 --> 00:42:48.280
And we asked our older two recently, what would you advise us, you know, to kind of put your advice into the pot about your younger siblings. Both of the older two said, Whatever you do, don't give them a smartphone. And obviously one's a boy and one's a girl. So our son was all over the kind of very disturbing content that he'd been exposed to, even though they were in the early days of mobile phones. So that stuff he felt hadn't really come into his life till he was 15 or 16, rather than younger. And our daughter talked a lot about the kind of body image stuff that used to kind of just appear in her social media, even though she wasn't looking for it. I mean, I think the interesting thing, and there aren't many rules in our family, so I'm not overly worried. Well, I was going to say I'm not overly worried about sex. I probably am totally unhealthy about sex, because I get so excited when my children enter their kind of live sexual Yeah, well, we're very pro sex, actually, so a bit off the wall on that front.
00:42:48.340 --> 00:42:51.280
You're not in the center yet.
00:42:48.340 --> 00:43:30.559
I'm definitely because I just find it so wonderful. I get so excited. I want to hear all the details, which they obviously don't want to share with me, perfectly normal. But with the phones and the screens, with the older two, we had a rule where every weekday night, the computer and the phone has to come out of their bedroom and be pushed away. And we did that till they left school. There was quite a lot of fighting about it. So we'd have, you know, maybe every six weeks or eight weeks, there'd be a fight and some subterfuge. I mean, definitely with our son. He, at one point, he had a phone that was like a dead phone that went on the stairs, yeah, yeah. And there was a computer case that didn't have a computer in it.
00:43:27.619 --> 00:44:56.139
But I, but we generally, would kind of rumble the subterfuge, or I would, because my lovely husband, honestly was off snoring away. But I really feel I have said to the younger ones, even when the time comes that you get a proper phone, and I don't know when that's going to be, but it's not, it's not this year. We'll just do it on a year by year basis, the the screens in bedroom thing, I will die on that hill. Yeah, absolutely. You can bring your boyfriends home and go, or girlfriends, whatever, shag yourself senseless like all these things are up for discussion, but you having your screens in your bedroom at night is something that I'm never and why? Why specifically that? Well, I mean a wonderful example with my older daughter, which really kind of reminded me what a great rule it was was she had a boyfriend when she was 16, very intense, loving relationship and became quite controlling on his side, and the fact that she had to hand her phone over, 1617, 18 at 10pm I mean, I can't count the number of times that she'd come into our room and say, I am so relieved, yes, that we have this rule, because it means I can just say I can't talk anymore. And both of them later, not at the time, but now that they're older, and now that obviously they have complete jurisdiction over their own lives,
00:44:56.139 --> 00:44:59.920
have said that they slept all the way through their.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:46:14.159
Teams, and that they just never really had that feeling of needing to engage at night time, because they couldn't engage at night time. So I think they, they pushed back, and they felt, you know, they felt foolish in front of other people, and there was all that, but now they're really glad we did that. And, you know, even at the time, I just thought, yeah, I just want them to sleep. I think sleep such a major thing, and we're finding more and more issues where I think it's something like 76% of kids in secondary school in America, but it'll be here too. Are not, are not getting more than seven hours sleep a night, and of those, I think I read that 23% are getting less than five hours sleep a night regularly, and when they talk about mental health problems, I'm sorry if you want a mental health problem sleep, lack of sleep is going to do that for you. So let's just get that one thing right. But I also all the people I've spoken to who are experts in child sexual abuse, any of this predatory behavior. It's bathrooms and bedrooms. Yeah, that the stuff happens, yeah, because they need a space that's private, yeah? So if you keep those devices out of those places, you are doing so much to protect them. Yeah, it's actually the simple stuff.
00:46:14.219 --> 00:46:37.940
And also, I mean, it's funny, I've just thought this for the first time, that in that same way that we now are kind of encouraging our younger children to be bored, where we can get them bored, right, so that they can exercise their imaginations and what have you, it suddenly struck me for the first time now, as well, that if you remove screens from a teen's bedroom when they're 10, obviously they're not going to go sleep at 10, are they, but so what are they going to do?
00:46:38.119 --> 00:46:45.280
They're going to maybe lie in bed solving some of their problems by thinking about them.
00:46:41.619 --> 00:46:55.960
Maybe they're just gonna, like, masturbate, but hey, they might masturbate without having to look at something on their phone. That's good, yes, or, you know, just get bored, or just kind of roll around on the floor read a book. It's all too smart.
00:46:55.960 --> 00:47:15.539
I mean, that's what my daughter I mean, I don't know what else they're doing in there, but I always take the devices and I put them next to my bed. Yeah? I put my device outside them so they can see it's always there. They know where my devices are, but their device is coming to my room, because one of mine is quite sneaky, and I'm always reading a book, yeah? And that's the way that we set an example of that.
00:47:15.539 --> 00:47:19.440
You know, this is what you do, just because I find it's the best thing, yeah, for going to
00:47:19.440 --> 00:48:08.699
sleep, yeah. And it's funny, you say that about reading as well, because there aren't that many rules in our house. And our kids are at the local school. They're in year seven. They don't have very much homework at the moment, but since they started in year seven, the one thing I try and do consistently is every day say, right, we're reading for half an hour. I like that. And when they do it, I do it, and I'm reading for more than half an hour a day, but I always take that half hour with them to sit down. We set a timer. Obviously they forget. Usually by the time that, you know, they kind of rail against it a bit, but 10 minutes in, they're into their books properly. And I don't know how long I'll be able to do that, there'll come a point where one of them will just say, Great tip. I'm not doing that, no, but at least they're seeing me reading, and they're seeing me reading with pleasure, and it's not the same book that I was reading last month.
00:48:08.699 --> 00:48:16.199
Yes, yes, I love that. Actually, I did that with the kids when they were little. I'd be like, right? It's reading time. And I say, I don't care what you look at. You can just look at books.
00:48:16.199 --> 00:48:23.239
But I give me a break. I know I would sit there for half an hour. Think I know. So good.
00:48:18.960 --> 00:48:23.239
When do you get time to write?
00:48:23.360 --> 00:48:48.880
Al, that's a good question. So at the moment, I'm doing a lot more surgery. There's less writing time. But I mean, I can write on the days that I'm not operating. My favorite, favorite time for writing, actually, is first thing in the morning. I've got a tease made. So I always have. I have. I've always it's my third tease made in my life.
00:48:45.099 --> 00:49:15.179
I've had a tease made since I was about 13, so the first one lasted me through school, and I've had this one for about 10 years. And every single night, I fill up the little tank and I bring up my tea and my milk, and my husband is up at about 515 every morning and off at the gym. That's just his particular brand of madness. And my very favorite time for reading or writing, I try and make it so that it's not a pressure point.
00:49:11.400 --> 00:49:18.300
So if I wake up and the day before has been awful or stressful, that I'll just read.
00:49:18.300 --> 00:50:50.679
But basically between six and 645, which is when I get the girls up, I have my computer next to me, so that if I want to wake up and write for 45 minutes, I'll do it then, and then on the days that I do manage to do that, it's quite interesting that whatever writing happens more officially later is much more relaxed. It's almost as if the exercise of having done the 45 minutes in the morning. That might literally be me just saying, you know, yesterday I went and did this, operating this, there was this interesting patient, or it might be something where I'm trying to be a bit more kind of creative in a formal sense. But if I've had that 45 minutes of just telling. Ping away any old words. Then when I come to sit down and try and do something better, I've kind of removed the block, like the roadblocks out the way, because that's a real thing. Like it. I really fight with that, that that resistance to writing. Even though I want to write, I kind of also don't want to write. And one of the other things you do is you like cold water swimming, which I just find shocking, because I can't do it, and I know lots of people love it. And I remember us talking when your kids were young, and you said, Oh, they are very happy in cold water because you have a place by the ocean. Yes, and if you are not a UK person, I just want to explain that being by the ocean in the UK is very different to being by the ocean, yes, in Thailand, yeah, somewhere. So it's very beautiful where it is, but it's cold, very, very cold.
00:50:51.039 --> 00:51:03.900
And I remember you saying that when the twins were little, you used to take one in the water until their lips were a bit blue, and then you hug them up and leave them on the beach and then get the other one out and particularly make them hardy.
00:51:03.900 --> 00:51:22.460
Yeah, they're pretty hardy. Yes, I wouldn't say, like, Now probably the twins, they wouldn't volunteer to go. I mean, my son, honestly, he'll do anything for a fiver. So if I'm bored down, down at the beach and the weather's awful, I'll say to him, I'll just go on.
00:51:20.219 --> 00:51:33.440
Will he ever swim? And he'll say, we give me a fiver. I'm like, yeah. And he'll just go in. I laugh at him, because that's the other thing. I mean, this sounds terrible, but I do increasingly believe that our children are also there for our entertainment. Yeah, of course.
00:51:33.440 --> 00:52:51.099
I mean, we've got four kids, and my husband and I sometimes we just sit down and we just run through them one by one, and we just have a good old laugh at their expense. You know, we just do, just call them names. We tell each other to fund Yes, yes. We do really, you know, like, it's really just because it gives you a release. And I suppose the whole thing, it's also that thing that, you know, as a parent, we do worry about our kids, don't we like we love them? Yes, we really worry about them. And you know, sometimes when you see one of your kids through the eyes of a person who might not know them, and you just think, oh my god. Imagine, imagine how they might come across to someone who doesn't know them. So I think it's also the release, the humor of sharing those details where we've observed one of them in a situation where we just, it's just really funny, because we're seeing them almost unfiltered for a moment. You know, yes, you've got also, but they're really mean about us. You know, right? The kids are, they are vicious, particularly the older ones. But the younger ones are, you know, they're being trained in the dojo. Let me tell you the older ones. So I do feel a bit like, hey, you know, I'm not gonna, not gonna actually give it back to you, because it's gonna be too much for you. My ammo, my son, is equal to me.
00:52:51.099 --> 00:53:33.559
Now we can, we can definitely spa on an equal level, but the others are just too nice and too sweet and too little. But I can do that with my husband, and we really do find it funny. We were talking before about how you have conversations with your kids, and you said that they do give you some quite, quite direct feedback at times. Yeah, and, and I, we were talking about that, and I think actually, that's a super healthy thing, that if your kids feel first of all, able to tell you that something bothers them about you, it can be quite hard, because I think we grew up in an era where the adults knew what they were doing and they needed to be respected, and the kids did what they were told, whereas I think it's actually much healthier.
00:53:33.619 --> 00:54:11.760
I think it's really good. I mean, it's uncomfortable, Isn't it uncomfortable? Yeah. I mean, one of the things that they accuse me of, where I know they're right is that I get very anxious, and then I become very kind of controlling and rigid and just make everyone else feel really sad. And my husband says that, you know, great. He's just kind of like, Oh, wow. Like we were all in this house, just like, eating crisps, watching TV, lying around in our pajamas, and then you came home and it's like, suddenly, everything's really tidy and everyone's really sad, you know, eating Ed and I'll be beans like, well done. That was an achievement.
00:54:09.059 --> 00:54:17.579
The whole house is now really sad, eating really healthy food.
00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:45.039
So I have learned because that to me, that criticism, I know it's true, because it reminds me of things in my own childhood, yeah. And I also kind of know that when I get anxious, I just want to make everything really orderly. So now I might, like one of my kids, might say something like, let me get you a box of Lego, and you can just go into a different room and sort it out into different colors, you know. But can you just let us keep eating pork scratchings with dad and watching that's smart, though,
00:54:45.039 --> 00:54:46.599
isn't it?
00:54:45.039 --> 00:54:56.019
Because actually, in a way, we could say this is terribly toxic, and these poor kids are in a house with you, and they can't change the situation. But at the same time, what you're doing is you're teaching them skills for managing difficult people.
00:54:56.380 --> 00:55:01.800
Yeah, right, because yes, and also to say it's not okay, because actually.
00:54:58.420 --> 00:55:13.320
They're telling me, yes, what you are doing, like, it's making us feel sad. And I am listening to them. I mean, it makes me feel a little bit sad, then telling you that I'm making them sad, but I do, like, I do believe them. I believe them.
00:55:13.500 --> 00:55:21.679
And that's and, you know, my daughter's brilliant at resolving problems with me, and what she'll do is she'll say, if I'm if I'm annoyed with her quite often.
00:55:21.679 --> 00:55:31.400
I'll just want to go away and just, you know, scream into a pillow or something, and she will follow me, and she'll say, we need to have a conversation.
00:55:28.159 --> 00:55:51.579
And let's, you know, here's what I didn't like, here's what you do. And we are, we've become really quite equal at being able to have these conversations. But she is the person who chases me down. It's really good, and I think it's so healthy. And I look at her and I'm so proud, yeah, that she's developed this because these are the things that we need in this day and age in particular. Yeah, so it's not a bad thing. Yeah, no. But having your husband
00:55:51.579 --> 00:56:18.059
this morning, actually, when you were getting the setup, and I was just looking, I was checking my phone and on my way here on the train, I had said to my husband, have you told the kids that it's Mother's Day this weekend? Oh yeah, because only my little ones are going to be around. My husband's not around. The big two kids are not around. And he said, Yes, I actually have told them that. But then I looked on our family Whatsapp group, and I felt that he told them in a very, not a very emphatic way.
00:56:13.980 --> 00:57:11.039
And I thought, because that's not emphatic enough, the message is not going to get through the older two have ADHD, I'm not going to get my Mother's Day card, and if I don't get my Mother's Day card, I'm going to feel really rejected. And so I need to let them know. I need to be more emphatic. So I sent a message on the train saying something like, Dad's been very subtle. Can I just now, kids be really unsubtle. It's Mother's Day this Sunday. Please send me a card, because if I don't get one, I'm gonna feel awful. And then I when I was you were setting up, I got a message from my son that just said, Oh, Mom, you know, it would be so nice if you hadn't sent that. Because now, the thing that I planned, the thing that I've already planned for you now looks like it's in response to you being the Ayatollah, you know. So that's just another it's just, then I just went back saying, Sorry, my bad, you know. So that's happening all the time.
00:57:11.159 --> 00:57:28.159
But there also, there was some party we went to recently that was some friends of ours, and the son, who's my son's age, you know, he plays in a band. He's amazing. And I made us all go way too early, and my family kept saying, like, can't turn up. It's like, it's in a bar.
00:57:25.760 --> 00:57:41.260
Like, it's a cool place, Mom, we can't turn up on time. Yeah, but we did get there too early, and I was very excited. And then my friend, the mom, was on the other side of the room, and I was going, hi, hi. And then Sam was like, Oh my God, you're such a pygmy.
00:57:44.619 --> 00:57:51.460
Believe that my kids are actually calling me a pygmy picnic. We us, pick me.
00:57:46.840 --> 00:58:32.059
And actually, I just like to point out here, this is a really interesting one. I remember being at a party with you many, many years ago, and this guy sidled up to us. I'm not going to say who it was. You may remember he was sort of cupping a glass of wine, looking very pleased with himself, and started explaining to us about this very important members club that he belonged to, and how there were all these very famous people there who were very special and very important. And he would get us in there. And you waited for him to you just looked at him blankly, waited for him to finish. And then you finish, and then you said, I can't think of anything worse.
00:58:24.440 --> 00:58:34.039
That's my girl. I love it because you're not so that you're definitely,
00:58:34.340 --> 00:58:38.780
but that's, that's what that one, I was just like, I'm not having that. No, I'm sorry. I'm not having that.
00:58:38.780 --> 00:58:40.480
No, you're not calling me a Pitney, no.
00:58:41.860 --> 00:59:36.260
It was very funny for him, because obviously he knows that would be, like, my idea of like, that's the criticism we'll not have from you. Yes, that's so funny. So when it comes to being a surgeon and a writer and things like that, have you ever found suspect, I know the answer. Have you ever felt mum guilt, like you know, your sort of career has taken you away from spending time with your kids or paid attention. Explain this, because I know that there are a lot of parents who really struggle with this, yeah, um, I have never felt mum guilt. I mean, I think partly because I went part time and was around quite a lot, okay, but having said that, I have been I don't have any friends from the playground because I was mainly not in the playground. I mean, I think feminism has helped me a lot. I think every time I saw my husband being made a great big fuss of because he turned up once in a time. Oh, my goodness.
00:59:36.260 --> 01:00:09.840
Up. That reminded me how much we women do that we're not given credit for, but that, I think that's a small point. I think, honestly, I just don't think I'm a very guilty person, and I just am not very ashamed, and I just I know that I am limited in what I can do, and I've always had, like, a real limit. Imitation in how much joy I get from being a mother, ie only a certain amount. It is not like a limitlessly joyful experience.
01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:37.460
For me, I have a certain amount to give, which is probably would have been about enough for about a quarter of a child in an ideal world, yeah, and I'm quite canny. There are things that I do to compensate that are basically things that get me quite a lot of reward. So I'm quite a good baker, so I'm sort of domestically absent, but I do purchase cake, right? Yes, quite regular. That's a really useful thing to Yeah, and at birthdays.
01:00:37.460 --> 01:03:46.179
Okay, really good, fancy cakes that with lots of photos of caves so you can show them the case. Yeah, yeah. So I kind of, I feel like I really go in for the kind of minimum effort, maximum reward, domestic mothering thing. And also, the other thing that I've really noticed as my children have got older is the really lovely mothers who have been present all the time and really patient and really gentle and soft. And I know those women, and I love them, and I have never been one of them. They struggle a bit when their kids grow up and want to leave, of course, and I think that can be difficult for older children, yes. So my big strength is because I was terrible at all that, and I didn't like having sort of, I was about to say things children hanging off me, right, sort of breastfeeding and wanting to make stacks of bricks and things like that, because I wasn't very good at that, and I was always desperate to get away from it. I am quite good at recognizing my children's independence as as people and their autonomy, and I don't, I don't think any of my kids are ever going to feel guilty. Well, apart from if they don't send me a Mother's Day cold, they're gonna really suffer. But I don't, I don't think I bring any kind of attachment problems to them. So I like to think that, you know, the things that we're not so good at. And for me, it was definitely the kind of always being there, always being patient, always being loving, that was hard for me. I'm I'm really okay with my kids telling me things in their lives that are not perfect. I'm okay with hearing things that I think other parents might find quite shocking. I think I'm quite un judgmental. I mean, I'm just, I'm just imagining my big kids in the room, thinking, would they be laughing their heads off? So I don't think I'm very judgmental about the choices they make and the mistakes they make. And so I think that is an asset. I think it's a massive asset. And actually, I'm quite similar like I just find there's a limit to how much joy I can get from just the parenting aspect of things, which is one of the reasons why I like doing this podcast, because I get to learn a lot of stuff outside, and it takes me away from domesticity. Yeah, and you know, I've got, you know, three out of my four kids are girls, and I hope, I mean, I honestly, I don't have any preconceived ideas about what they should do with their lives. I really don't whether they want to be stay at home moms or go out or have a bit of a mixture of those things, but I don't want any of them to feel that it's their job primarily to be looking after other people's feelings. Yeah, I don't want them, and I don't think even if like, they're sweeter and nicer than I am, I like to think that they at least have had an example of someone I'm not like. I don't care about how I look I'm not ashamed of my body. I don't care what I eat. I don't care who sees me naked.
01:03:46.719 --> 01:03:58.840
I'm not worried about being fat or ugly or old or having wrinkles. Those are good things, yes, but that kind of toughness comes with some other problems, yeah, and they probably will feel the impact of that.
01:03:58.838 --> 01:04:03.778
Coming back to the fact it's a haggle. It's a haggle. Life is a haggle.
01:04:01.318 --> 01:04:36.259
Parenting is a haggle. And actually, my girls regularly tell me that one of the best things about my my parenting is that I am very clear and honest about my failings, and that gives them permission to be not perfect themselves. And I think, I think one of the things about the world that I've noticed is that I think it's much more glossy and perfect than anything we grew up. That I think sure, you know, you look back at the birthday parties kids used to have when we were younger, and they were everything was a bit shit, everything, everything.
01:04:31.759 --> 01:04:59.498
And now, if you it's right, and I just think that it's really important for our kids to have a model of what it is to not be great. You just reminded me that one of my dad's favorite party games, I haven't thought of this for 40 years, tell me, was cutting a ball of string into lots to lots of different pieces, long and short, and then he'd hide them around the house.
01:04:55.838 --> 01:05:18.478
No and the kids. The game was five. Find the pieces of string, tie them together, and whoever's got the longest ones, the winner. I love that. Can you imagine if you did that now for a child's birthday? Let's reload. Let's play the string game. Although, you know what hasn't ever gone out of passion, sardines.
01:05:18.719 --> 01:05:22.099
No sardines. But that's that's different, that's got the promise. Yeah, that's
01:05:23.360 --> 01:05:34.639
a really, really popular so what do you think surgery has taught you that you have brought out of being in the operating theater?
01:05:36.079 --> 01:05:41.500
Wow, it's such a it's such an extreme environment surgery and or
01:05:42.519 --> 01:05:44.679
is it just a nice way to get away? It's
01:05:44.739 --> 01:07:13.320
definitely a nice way to get away. And I love, I mean, I love the order of it. I love the fact that there is a very clear job that needs to be done there, yes, and everything else has to be shut out. My husband would say, I mean, if he was here, he'd be like, You love that you get to just put your hand out and someone put something in it. You have to remind me in the kitchen, no, no, you can't just do like, put your hand out and me just pour the wine into it or whatever. When I hit menopause, I became more scared in the operating theater than I had been previously. I don't like the risk and the danger as much as I used to, and the surgery I do is smaller now, and I don't want it to be bigger again. And I have an anxious response, but I cannot escape from the situation if I just say to myself, you've got this you're feeling scared, you're feeling anxious because you're a menopausal woman, and your estrogen is in your boots or whatever. Boots or whatever, you're totally capable of solving this problem, and also, like, just quietly, you have to, yeah, yeah, no one's coming to a man a few minutes later. I'm on the other side of that, and that is a really good lesson, I think, for this time in life. I don't think I needed that lesson when I was younger, because I wasn't a scaredy cat when I was younger. It's kind of a later life thing. So I think it's a very good place for being required to sort your shit out.
01:07:13.500 --> 01:07:48.340
And actually, with my kids, I am all over them, having their feelings. I really am like, I say to them all the time, you know, you come home from being with a friend or with a boyfriend or girlfriend or anything that's making you sad or angry or disappointed, and I want to hear about it. And also I want to, like, have your emotions in any way you need to have them. But there is also a time and place for that and to function in life. I do you think we need to learn how to kind of manage our feelings?
01:07:48.400 --> 01:08:02.699
Are there things that you wish you'd known with your first kids? Because I remember you saying that you'd actually gone to some of those parenting classes and that you said, Yeah. And they say, this, this, this, and this. And then there's my son. Are there things now that you think, Oh, God, if only I'd known that.
01:08:03.059 --> 01:08:45.520
Yeah, you know, it's so interesting, isn't it? I feel like the great parenting dilemma for me, and maybe for everyone I don't know, is, am I being too hard or too soft, and in pretty much every situation that my husband and I find ourselves in when we're a bit confused about how to, like navigate through with what we do with the kids. It boils down to, did we just in the last year behave in a way that was too tough? Should we be softer now, or have we been too soft? Should we be a bit tougher now? Yes, and it's almost like the great, unsolvable problem. And so now what I try and do is just break it down to a scenario and think there's not a global response.
01:08:45.760 --> 01:09:21.560
What do we need to do in this situation? I think when our first child was born, and he is someone with an enormous personality, and also with ADHD, and also because I was a first parent who had come from a family where there was an enormous amount of control. I think my response to what I perceived as the kind of unmanageable, kind of bubbly effusiveness of who my child was was to be quite controlling interesting, and I'm not sure that that was the wrong thing.
01:09:21.560 --> 01:10:15.119
When I look back and when I talk to my husband about it, and he says, honestly, we weren't that controlling. We just had really steady boundaries around food and sleep and kind of needing to get away. Sometimes I wonder if it might have been better for my son to have someone less controlling, but you but I don't think that person could have been me. I don't think I would be capable of I think we because he was such a life force and so inexhaustible, and therefore so exhausting, we had to be really clear that 7pm was bedtime, in a way that with our. Twins, we didn't need to be so rigid, because it just was easier to say, okay, maybe tonight, bedtime is nine, and they would still go to bed. So I definitely think, I don't know, I don't know if I would have done it differently.
01:10:15.119 --> 01:10:29.720
And you say that it's really interesting, because I remember, before you redid your house, Sam's bedroom wall was absolutely covered in graffiti, yeah, and this is an interesting one, because we've talked about this before in terms of, like, tidy bedrooms.
01:10:27.020 --> 01:10:41.380
And you know, what does, what do you allow your child to have in their bedroom? And the whole having a wall where he can do what he wants, yeah? Is, is actually, in many ways, a very, a much more loose thing, a much less contrasting.
01:10:41.380 --> 01:11:28.039
The funny thing, though, maybe this is, in a way, maybe this is what I find so interesting about parenting and who we are as people, is there is no doubt that as a parent, I am, in some regards, completely permissive. I mean, more than especially, you know, on the sex side, I kind of took the view, and my husband was very happy to kind of fall in with it, that when you're 16, your body's your own, like if you want to have sex at home when you're 16, talk about contraception, but I just that's not a thing for me. So it's funny, isn't it, that you were talking earlier about values and what your values are, and I think you know, honesty, kindness, hard work, yeah, those things are values that are really kind of important to me.
01:11:28.520 --> 01:11:47.800
I love the human body so much in all of its failings and all of its kind of foolishness and all of its passions and so that is a side of kind of, I've really wanted to give that to my kids, like pleasure, take pleasure.
01:11:44.439 --> 01:11:52.600
You know, if you want to have a chocolate mousse, have one. And if you want to, you know, go off and masturbate. I mean, not that they're ever asking permission.
01:11:53.920 --> 01:12:08.939
When they were young. I was saying to them, when they were very young, you guys masturbating, just because I wanted to actually introduce an option as something that you know, I wanted to say that with my son and daughter in the room, so that my daughter would think, Oh my gosh, is that a thing for me?
01:12:09.000 --> 01:12:12.000
Too little her micro penis?
01:12:12.060 --> 01:13:07.380
Yes, exactly, exactly. So I So, I think, I think we are contradictions, aren't we, as parents and as people? Yes. And I remember one time when I was a, you know, doing a year off, and I was kind of a teacher assistant in a school in South Africa, and I remember this guy saying to me before I went into the classroom, the key to the kids not walking all over you, is not shouting at them, and it's not being authoritarian. It is being authentic. So if you and you give them who you actually are, they'll listen to you. And I've never forgotten it. And I think being a parent is the same. I think my kids have got used to my idiosyncrasies. They know that certain things will not bother me, so, yeah, like with the graffiti wall. I mean, my God, I couldn't care less. I mean, when they hit 13, it literally like, I'm not going to go in and tidy anything in there. Of they want things rotting in there. That's fine.
01:13:03.479 --> 01:13:13.260
Other things I really mind about, like, you know, I mind about music practice, but I don't care about what's on the wall, see, that's the thing.
01:13:13.319 --> 01:13:57.100
So I think we have to figure out our values, and they will be different from other people's values, and that's okay, yeah, but we have to understand what they are and be had be able to have conversations in our own houses about it. And when it comes to the I think getting that balance right, I love that you raise that because that's actually at the core of what David Jaeger talks about in 10 to 25 motivating kids. And it's, it's basically that balance between high support, high expectations, he uses high in both of those things, and you are never going to get it right all the time. No one is he says Most parents, when he sees there's a problem, it's either that they've dropped on the support or they've dropped on the expectations. And all you have to do is just raise the bar on one of those sides.
01:13:53.380 --> 01:14:06.539
But I think the hardest thing is just, you know, from one kid to the next, because kids are different, oh yes, as well as just overall, trying to get that balance right, that's of course.
01:14:03.840 --> 01:14:54.399
But I think as well, like, You've been saying that it's also okay for your kids to be in dialog with you and say it's okay for my kids to say, like, why are you so insistent on me doing music practice every other day, but you don't care about what I'm wearing when I go out, or would I, I mean, it's okay for them to ask you to make sense of that. And some of it isn't sensible. Some of it might be. I was told as a kid that it was really important that I look smart for certain occasions. And I hated that. I hated it. And I decided when I was maybe 14 or something, apart from wearing clean clothes. Yes, I'm never going to police what my kids wear out of the house. And I never have like because it really bought and I don't know why it bothered me so much. And so I don't know why that's become I've got one of those.
01:14:54.460 --> 01:15:00.779
I've got a child that will, will fight back, push back hard if anybody tells her what she should. Shouldn't be wearing.
01:15:00.779 --> 01:15:02.880
Yeah, it's very interesting.
01:15:00.779 --> 01:15:06.000
Yeah, I think there are certain characters that are more like that. Yes, I think that's true.
01:15:06.000 --> 01:16:02.640
Yeah, okay. Gabriel's been absolutely brilliant. I want to just come back to alive, because I think this book's absolutely incredible. It covers like the breast, lung, skin, uterus, fascinating bit and and the heart. And I think there are so many chapters in this that, well, that bit you read at the start really show the sort of writing, the quality of the writing, the reason why somebody would find this a really beautiful book to read. So I'd love if other people would actually like to buy it. Well, I would love that too much cheaper in paperback. Yeah. And thank you so much for for talking to us about your life and what it's like being a parent and a surgeon and an author, because that's a huge amount to cram into one life, and I think a lot of us struggle with some of the things that you don't seem to find that difficult, so it's really helpful to hear about them. Is there anything else you'd like to add that we haven't covered No.
01:16:02.639 --> 01:16:48.578
I mean, I think, I think the only thing, because you're saying that sort of lovely, you know, that lovely finale, is I really struggle, like so many of us do, with not feeling that I've done enough stuff to validate myself, in my own eyes, interesting. And I just think that's a useful thing to say no that I think, I think we all struggle a bit as parents, but also as people in the world, kind of always feeling like we're chasing our own shadow and that we're never there. And I definitely still feel that way, too. And so I think I sort of try to remind myself, when I'm comparing myself with other people in the world that I think somehow have kind of answered all the questions, or have done it all, or are doing it better than me.
01:16:45.399 --> 01:16:55.719
But it is just part of the human condition, isn't it? It feels right small, and actually feeling small is better than feeling big. I mean, look what happens when people feel too big.
01:16:55.719 --> 01:17:09.538
So yeah, and my mantra you're doing better than you think you are. Because I think often we hold up the best of other people exactly, try and compare ourselves to that. So true, and that's not who we are.
01:17:06.118 --> 01:17:13.378
So true, right? Brilliant. All right, if you want to get hold of Gabriel, how would they what's the best way?
01:17:13.439 --> 01:17:23.420
I'm currently Instagram, which is at Gabriel Western alive, and hopefully on substack soon? If I yes, if I can understand the tech well enough,
01:17:23.420 --> 01:17:57.579
been pushing her to be on substack, because I love substack, and I think you, your writing is just perfect for substack. For me, it's teenagersuntangled@gmail.com you can find me on substack@teenagersuntangled.substack.com or my website, which is also teenagersuntangled.com and you can press the button at the in the kind of notes part of this podcast, and just ask me anything as well, and I read everything. So please send messages. Let us know what you thought of the interview, and that's it for this week. Have a big hug from me. Bye, bye. You.
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