Episode 230: Finding Balance in the Sandwich Generation Journey with Dr. Shirley Davis

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In this week’s episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we’ll explore the realities of the sandwich generation—the unique challenge of caring for both children and aging parents at the same time. Joining me is Dr. Shirley Davis, a certified leadership coach and recognized authority on workplace culture transformation, who is also living through the sandwich generation. Having recently relocated her parents to live with her while supporting her daughter, Shirley shares practical insights and heartfelt advice on balancing caregiving responsibilities across generations.

Here’s a summary of what we discussed:

  • Understanding the sandwich generation and its struggles

  • Navigating the challenges of living with and caring for aging parents

  • How to navigate and communicate with aging parents when transitioning to living together as independent adults

  • How to balance caregiving responsibilities for both children and aging parents

  • Seeing aging parents as whole people and rebuilding compassionate adult relationships with them

  • Balancing forgiveness and realistic boundaries to care for aging parents while redefining the relationship to avoid regrets

Resources:

To learn more about Dr. Shirley, visit her website drshirleydavis.com and follow her on Instagram @shirleydavisphd, Facebook @drshirleythesuccessordoctor, LinkedIn @drshirleydavis and YouTube @drshirleydavis.

Remember, balancing care for both your children and aging parents is challenging, but also an opportunity to grow compassion and strengthen family bonds.

TRANSCRIPT

Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.

Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!

Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Dr. Laura Froyen, and on this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, we're going to be talking about something a little bit different. We're going to be talking about the sandwich generation. What that is, what it means to be in that place of life. I'm currently in it right now, and how to navigate it with grace and ease and compassion for ourselves, for our kids, and for the you know the previous generation that we're providing care for at times. So to help me with this conversation, I have Doctor Shirley Davis. Welcome to the show, Dr. Shirley, I'm so excited to have you and I'm so excited to talk about this topic, which has been coming up a lot in the membership that I run, a lot of folks, so I'm in my early 40s. I'm right at that age where we're starting to experience sandwich parenting. So can you tell us, well, first tell me a little bit more about who you are and what you do, and then we'll talk about what it means to be in the sandwich generation. 

Dr. Shirley: Yes, yes, thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here with you. Yes, talking about this important topic. It's one of our important life changes and it's certainly a part of my experience now, but I'm Doctor Shirley Davis and I am a 35+ year HR executive business mogul. I do a lot of LinkedIn learning courses, so I'm a facilitator, and author of a couple of bestselling books, one on Living Beyond What If and the other one on Reinvent Yourself, and I've also done a couple of the Dummies book series. So some leadership, yeah, inclusive leadership for Dummies, and I'm working on a brand new one that's gonna be coming out later this year called Leading High Performing Teams for Dummies. So I love, love, love being able to share some of those having worked in so many different corporations. A Fortune 50, Fortune 100 companies and now in this space and place in my life where I'm running my own global consulting, speaking and training business, but I'm also, now I just recently moved, relocated my parents from across the country to live with me and then my daughter who's in a millennial generation is also here in the Tampa Bay area and so I look forward to. Talking to you about those challenges, but also lots of the blessings that come with that. 

Laura: Okay. So what does it actually mean to be in this phase of, I, you know, I've heard it called sandwich parenting or being kind of in this sandwich phase of life. What does that actually mean? What are we talking about here? 

Dr. Shirley: You know, it's as simple as finding yourself as one who is both caring for your aging or elderly or maybe even disabled parents, but at the same time you're sandwiched in with your younger children as well. Maybe they're still at home or maybe you're still providing a good amount of support to them, so you're doing both and and so you're kind of sandwiched right there in the middle of both of those. 

Laura: And so, what are some of the struggles that you see families facing who are finding themselves in that sandwich? 

Dr. Shirley: It's a lot, so I'm gonna be able to speak for myself, but also because I've been in HR for as long as I have and you know it's now a part of like benefits packages of things that we offer some of our, you know, younger generation really expects it, but they want to be able to have, you know, parental care. 

Laura: They want to be able to go take care of their families, yeah.

Dr. Shirley: Exactly, to understand what they want. That flexibility, so that's a challenge, but it's now a great benefit that companies are offering. I also know too that it's just a challenge whenever you're trying to recruit that even talented, they are asking you about not only your benefits packages and your perks, but you know the the fact that they are in the middle of taking care of older elderly parents as well as younger parents and they want to know what kind of culture they would be working in. What's the demand for the work? What's the level of burnout and stress? But, you know, they're trying to listen here, is this going to be another added stress or is this gonna be a great company that, you know, supports and allows that flexibility? 

Laura: And so, like, what are, I guess for you personally, what are some of the challenges you faced in navigating being sandwiched in this way? 

Dr. Shirley: Yeah, so I had my parents have the pleasure of living with me during the pandemic. I bought them here. I live in Tampa Bay. They're in the Washington, Washington DC area. We call it the DMV because they're in the middle of Maryland and DC and they were in the same house, living in the same home for almost 40 years. So you can imagine they had. They were tied there. That's all they knew, they were comfortable and they didn't necessarily entertain the fact that I was trying to get them to uproot and move here. I wasn't moving back to that area because this is a happy place here, it's by the ocean. It's a peaceful place, lower, you know, lower cost of living and two it is year-round warmer weather. And so I was trying to get them to come here. One of the challenges at first, I want people to think about this when you're talking to your parents.

My dad, you know, very prideful man and you know, he's still very mobile even though now he's 82 years old but at the time he was 79, but he was stuck in his ways and you know he had to think about don't want to live with my daughter under her roof, I'm not gonna now be the breadwinner or I won't necessarily be the one that can call all the shots. I've got, you know, all of this stuff here now and so I had mom at hello, but dad was a challenge of helping him to remove himself from that level of independence and now almost feeling like he had to be dependent on me. So one of the things I encourage people to think about is please be sensitive and be accommodating to your parents and the fact that they had a life and they had it for so many years that I had to be patient and I had to be flexible. and do it to where there's a compromise on what I needed from him but also what he needed from me.

So that was a challenge. And you know, the other thing too, Doctor Laura is just thinking about the healthcare changes that had to happen. They had to get new doctors, they had to find new hospitals that were nearby, and even as they thought about their transportation, they had to now get new driver's licenses and, and get their cars registered. That's a lot, especially when you're late. 70s and 80s and having to do that and I'm having to now, you know, my schedule. I'm still working full time running a business and having to be there, go to the doctors with them, help them explain certain things, help them to navigate around the area because they don't know this area and so it's it's a lot of those kinds of small things that we have to think about, let alone how do we get along? How do we learn to cohabitate together? How do we learn to manage each other's expectations but also set boundaries. You know, how do you make sure that they're not getting on your nerves and you're not getting on their nerves, right? You have space that you might need if you've been living like me away from my parents since I was 17 and now I'm in my 50s. I've never lived with my parents before. So we had to be reintroduced to each other. 

Laura: Yeah, and reintroduced to living together as adults. I'm you know, I'm thinking about some conversations I've had with my mom about her experience of this, cause this is not new, right? We adults have been doing this for like time immemorial, right? Like that this is what we do, right? We raise our kids and then our parents, you know, and then we, it just, it is a very intergenerational thing. And so I remember being a teenager and watching my mom. Drive, you know, up to her mom every other weekend she traded off with her sister. It was, you know, a 2 to 3 hour drive, having to navigate and balance that with all of my stuff when I was in high school, my dance competitions and my volleyball games and my tennis matches, you know, and I saw how thin she was stretched.

And I tried talking to my mom about like this conversation, you know, having this conversation, what are you going to want that to look like when we're there, when you're the one who needs support, and I'm the one who's got the kids in high school, cause she doesn't need as much now. But she's going to, or, you know, and my dad, he, they're going to, and they are fiercely independent. They are, you know, they don't want to give up that independence. They would never even consider coming to live with me, even though I kind of think that would be cool, that would never be. So I know I'm gonna be in a position where I'm doing some traveling to provide the support. I'm just kind of curious about like how, how do you suggest we go about having those conversations with our parents and helping, how can we approach it in a way that allows them to feel open and not defensive.

Dr. Shirley: Exactly. You know, for me, I got an opportunity to have a sneak preview of it, so I was mentioning that I had them come stay with me and snowbird, right? So snowbirding is when you come in November and you stay until like March. So I had them for those 5 months and it gave me a chance to see how we vibed, how we really got along, how we enjoyed each other's company and it got a gave me a chance to reintroduce myself. So in 2020 with the pandemic and we did it in ‘21 and ‘22 because everything was still kind of just getting back to normal, but it was a sneak preview to be able to see, hey. We made it work. We can do this. If we could do it for 5 months, we could do it for 10 months. We can do it for a year. So we actually eased into it, but I think it had a lot to do with me respecting the fact that they were still my parents, but also helping them to understand that I'm a grown woman, I'm an adult and I still am very independent and so I need my parents now not to parent me.

But to support me and I need them to give me wisdom when I ask for it and I had to learn how to say things in a way that was disarming. So you know when mom tells you that you should do it this way, you should do it that way, it can come across as an order. So I learned how to say, mom, thank you. I said, but you know what, give me options and not orders, right? And so I would just kind of correct her. And I would say, you, your mom, you got great ideas, you have great ideas and I love your ideas, but I just wanna make sure that you understand that I might not do that because there are other things that I'm thinking about it that you may not know about. So it's a validation, but it's also a redirection at the same time. I was never negative. I never said, you know, you're so bossy or wait a minute, I'm the, you know, I'm an adult as well, but I would just say, you know what Mom, when you say it like this, it sounds so much like a mandate.

It sounds so much like you're telling me what to do and I said, I just want you to know you've done enough raising for me, you don't have to tell me what to do anymore. I said, I already know what to do now. So it's a, you hear, you hear how that spins. Instead of I'm grown, I got this. I'm like, Mom, you did such a great job. Dad, I really appreciated how you put so much in me. You taught me how to be resourceful. You taught me how to get out on my own and make my own decisions and make mistakes and bump my head. So you don't have to teach me that anymore. Now I want you to be my advisors, my friends, and my cheerleaders, and I corrected it and they go along with it now. 

Laura: Oh, I love that. I especially love that just that little language shift of gratitude and appreciation and honoring, which is something I think is needed in our relationships with the older generation that often gets left behind as we assert boundaries with them. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think that we are often so eager to assert ourselves as different, assert ourselves as adults, that we forget to, to give that honoring to them, because they do have a lot of experience and, and they did do their best, regardless of how many mistakes they made, cause we all do as parents, you know. 

Dr. Shirley: And I'm more conscientious to ask them their ideas and their opinions. When we moved in together, so I ended up buying a bigger home so that and this is so funny. Doctor Laura, when we were living together, I had a home that had like this open concept. It was a great idea when I was living by myself. But this open concept became an issue when we were living together because many of you all will appreciate this who have parents where they might have some hearing impairments and they have to have the TV turned up much louder and so even though I'm upstairs in the loft, I can still hear everything because he's got the westerns all up really loud, right? So it's like, you know what, this open concept thing is maybe not the best idea, so I learned that over the 3 years that they snowboarded with me, but that 3rd year I took them with me to go look for a larger home and I put the, you know, I allowed them to put their 2 cents in it.

What do you think about this? How would you feel comfortable here? Hey, I can see too that you know you can have your own end of the house and that would give you independence. My dad was leaving a 3 acre farm in the DC Maryland area and he's country boy, so he wanted to have land and he was like, you know what, these homes here in Florida, like they're so close you can pass a hot dog, you know, from your backyard grill to theirs. So he wanted to have a little bit more space in between the homes. So I took their interest. I took their needs and their requests under consideration and when I bought the home, I bought it with them in mind and they appreciated that.

Laura: Tell me a little bit about figuring out how to balance all the responsibilities that a person would have when they are in a situation where they are caring both for their kids and for their aging parents, and, and how to find a sense of I'm not just dropping the ball all the time. Cause I feel like when we, you know, when we are in those places, we, we have this sense of like, we're wearing lots of hats and we're failing at all of them. As opposed. So how can, like, how can we support ourselves in coming to this place of grace and compassion and balance with these priorities and responsibilities that pull us in different directions? 

Dr. Shirley: Yeah, you know, when we first moved together, I thought it's important to have that open line of communication. And have some honest conversations in a respectful way. And so we have home meetings, right? And so we got a chance to talk about some of the work and my parents saw me doing it all, right? They saw me being this, you know, and I'm an energizer bunny and I've got 50 things going on at one time and you know, but they, I also have a personal assistant that helps me because I run a corporation, so she helps me with a lot of the business stuff. That alleviates so much of that, you know, that heavy lift. But, with my parents, we were able to talk about some things that they could do around the home because they wanted to feel valued. They wanted to feel like they were doing their part. So dad loves to cut the grass, loves to cut the grass.

Mom waters all the plants and you know, she'll take care of some of the cooking because she's still able to do that. So they're helping me now with some of the chores and household responsibilities that I don't have to do so when that came off my plate, it allowed me to be able to do other things. I also encourage people to make sure that you take time for yourself so you can breathe, you can woosah, you can, you know, invest in yourself. I go get massages, I go out with my friends. Sometimes I'll go take weekend trips away even if it's just for the weekend and I'll go stay with them. My daughter or I'll go stay with girlfriends or I'll just go to the beach and you know just stay up at the beach area and that gives me a bit of balance. And then by the same token, I know some people have young children at home.

My daughter is older, she's in her 30s, but she has her own home, but she still is there helping to take care of my parents when I'm on the road or you know, if I need her to come by and check on me. Mom for something or take dad to the doctor or something like that. So she's helping. With the younger children, I think it's still important to give them some specific chores and make sure that they all know how to handle and take care of the responsibilities of the home and letting them know this is all about us, that we're all family. Everyone has to pitch in, everyone has to do their chores and when it's not working. You have to be honest enough to talk about it. You have to be able to call that out and not do it in a way that makes anyone feel minimized or devalued. 

Laura: Yeah. And I think, you know, just like you said that your parents want to feel like they are contributing, kids want to feel that way too, right? So creating that environment of, hey, in this family, we pitch in, in this family, we're a team, we help each other out, you know. Having that spirit all along the way can really be helpful and and understanding too that, you know, so I mean, if we're thinking and we're talking a little bit about some of the hiccups that could come along the way, like I can imagine my parents coming into my home and doing things really differently than how I've chosen to do them. And I mean, so at some point, like maybe you have to flex, maybe you have to be willing to flex, and they do too, you know. 

Dr. Shirley: So a lot. 

Laura: Yes, yeah, right? And I mean, and so it sounds to me too that for you, you've spent a lot of time making sure that your relationship with your parents is your priority. Right? It sounds like you're trying to be protective so that when you are setting a boundary or making decisions that the relationship is at the forefront of your mind. Is that true?

Dr. Shirley: That is so key and critical because I want to maintain a really good healthy relationship with them and I don't want them to feel like they are a burden on me. And so I'm always valid. them. I'm always thanking them and they thank me, we talk, we go out. I'll take them out to dinner, sometimes we'll just kinda go and take a drive out or, you know, we go to worship together and so we do things as a family. We have a family gathering every year, so now the boys, my brothers and their children, come down and we have a family reunion and they now do it at my home since mom and dad are there. So I think those pieces are important. There are times right when my mom sees something and she wants it to be over there. Well, it's my home and I don't like that over there and so I'll move it around.

But I don't always ask her. But then there are times like when we were decorating for the holidays. Hey mom, you take this room and then I'll take that room. So I let her, you know, have a room that she wanted to decorate and what she wanted that to look like. Dad takes care of the yard and he loves stuff like that, but I love it when he asks me what kind of flowers do you think we should plant. For this year or what do you think about putting down rocks over here or stuff like that so it becomes a team effort and a group discussion and it's not like they are, they respect me enough. They just don't just go out and change stuff and do stuff without asking me and I don't make them feel like they have to get my permission either, you know, so it's a give and a take and like I said, I'm always asking them for their ideas as well. But it's not always like, I'm gonna do everything you tell me to do. And yes, there are times I have to hold my peace.

There are times where some of their quirks and perks are things that I'm like, I don't want to hear that. You know, I'm not a, my dad is all into westerns. He loves the Gunsmokes and all of them, you know, the old, oh, I'm dating dad, right? He's in his 80s, but he loves stuff like that and he absolutely loves all things sports. So if it's got a ball, he's there watching it. And that's just not me. So I have acquiesced to the big TV in the family room. Guess who gets to have the TV? I'll walk away and let him have the family room and eat in front of the TV, you know, and sometimes I'll just go somewhere else. So I've learned how to allow them to have that space and not always feel like I got to be territorial. I want the big screen TV. 

Laura: Yeah, I feel like surely what you're you're hitting on here too is understanding that our parents are living of like have a full life. They are multidimensional people, and I think that it's hard for kids, like even adult children, to see their parents that way because they've occupied this very specific space in our lives where we really just see this one facet of who they are. And yet they've been living a full multifaceted life their whole life. And I feel like what you're, I'm hearing you say is part of something that's like a critical skill is learning to see your parents as a whole full person with a big life that they've lived and are continuing to live, even as they make changes and as they age. 

Dr. Shirley: That part, I mean, you're, you're totally you're right on it, is that part of me was reintroducing myself to them as a grown adult woman because I left at 17 to go to college and never went back home. My parents are reintroducing themselves in their older age, but yet still mobile, still able to get around, still want to contribute in all of those things. So yes, it's a both and and not an either or. Or it's not either my way or their way, but it's our way now and I've learned how to integrate them into my life and they've allowed me to integrate, they've integrated me into theirs, but we still respect each other's space, which I appreciate and I'm even learning more about some of their habits and their thinking styles and I probably feel like I do more of the flexing and adjusting. And you know what, because I'm like they're on their last chapter of life, right? They're in their 80s. So I want to feel like, I told them I said come here and live with me in paradise and live your best life until you go on to your next life, right? So I want to have this fulfillment in my heart to say I enjoyed my parents, I gave them the best life. We got along and when it's their time to go and transition that I will have no regrets. 

Laura: There can be peace with that. 

Dr. Shirley: Yes, I'm so at peace with it and I'm, I have wielded my heart. I'm gonna enjoy my parents. We're gonna make it work and we're making it work. We're in year 2 now and we've not had one like blow up. It's been conversations and sometimes I've walked away and said, okay, we're gonna agree to disagree, but then you know what, I'll come back an hour or two later and it's like, okay, what we eating for dinner? And so I just don't allow things to fester, we just keep moving. 

Laura: Yeah. Oh, I like that too. I like that kind of that assertion within yourself. I'm going to enjoy my parents. I think, you know, so often we have kids during a highly stressful time in our lives where we're establishing careers. We are, you know, figuring out who we are, you know, so if we have our kids in our mid to late twenties, like we still don't even know who we are, right? So we have, we have our kids doing this really. This time it's just laden with stressors, and we're not necessarily our full or best selves with them all the time, right? What a beautiful opportunity to even shift and think about, okay, so maybe I didn't get my parents' best version of themselves when I was little. They had stuff going on that I had no idea about, you know. But now they are relatively unburdened by a lot of those stressors.

Dr. Shirley: They're not working anymore. 

Laura: You know, they, I don't know, as I've hit my 40s, you know, that I feel like I'm in the 40s. I give, I give, you know, I just don't care as much, you know, and if they're in their 70s, like, oh my God, like they're so they can be so zen about things, they're so enjoyable to be around. I love that as an opportunity even you know, in this podcast we talk a lot about inner child healing. And one of the biggest barriers for folks can be that they aren't, they feel like they aren't able to go back in time and have that different experience with their parent, the experience that they were so hungry for. And what you're saying right now is that perhaps we have that opportunity, because now we have a parent who perhaps isn't as burdened with stress and isn't, is more able to be more emotionally regulated and more flexible and and present with us in a way that, you know, we were hungry for then but couldn't have, you know. 

Dr. Shirley: Yeah, and I think we have to, a lot of times now that we're parents, like I'm a parent now, so I understand when they were young and they had kids younger than we did, right, when my parents had me at 19 and 20 years old. And so I recognize that it is a lot of stress and pressure to work a job. to manage a home, to pay all your bills and then you got young kids as well and I had 3 other brothers that came after me. So I'm going to cut my parents some slack and for those out there who may not have had really good experiences with their parents or they may not be close or they may even be a bit strained. I hope in my prayer for you is that you will cut them some slack, slack and recognize that when we're younger, a lot of times we're immature, we haven't lived long enough and we're figuring things out, whereas your parents get older, a lot of times it's our opportunity to maybe redirect and redirect some of those feelings that we might have had that they weren't there.

Enjoy them now and now re-establish Introduce and I think reposition your relationship that we're now in our adult years, we're gonna be adulting together and we're gonna learn how to, you know, to live together in our older age in our more mature stage and so we have to forgive and we have to enjoy and I don't want anyone to have regrets that they did not seize the moment of taking care of their parents cause, you know, I do a lot of work in the community. I do a lot of work with older seniors and it's so many parents that are isolated and insulated. The children don't come to see them. They're older, even in my neighborhood when we had Hurricane Helene, some of the older people couldn't get out because they didn't have anywhere to go, and their children didn't come and check on them and that's a sad reality is that they're strained and now their parents are in their 70s and 80s. And the children aren't taking care of their parents, and that's just not the way I was raised, but I do think we have a 2nd and sometimes a 3rd chance to get it right and to let it go and not have any regrets when they pass on from this life. 

Laura: Yeah, you know, I mean, I definitely don't want to come from a place of excusing or you know, you just kind of rolling over and things that were really hard and and just kind of seeing there being an opportunity for, for a clearance. And of course you have to have parents who are willing to go there with you, who are willing to step into forgiveness with you, right? And that is, I mean, that's obviously something that you've had, that's a privilege I have with my family. That not all, you know, not everybody has, but even just thinking about the like the being open to the idea that yes, there were realities in my early years that were not okay, and I'm not, maybe I'm not even ready to like necessarily say that I'm over those things, and that both and, and I wanna at least for this this last portion of my you know, of my parents' life and, you know, for my kids too, to be able to hold space for a possibility of something different with them, you know. 

Dr. Shirley: You know, too, because your children are seeing now how you treat your parents, and I believe it too, but I believe that when you know when you put things out there, you sew things in the ground, things come back. So if I'm taking really good care of my parents, I hope that my daughter sees that and will take really good care of me. And I know too that when we've had experiences and sometimes they may not be the most positive ones, sometimes maybe even you came from an abusive parent, right? I understand those things, but, and we don't live in denial and like you said, we're not dismissing any of the hurt and the pains, but maybe there comes a time when you can, you know, talk about those, communicate openly about them, and then learn how to forgive and move forward with now maybe just redefine what that relationship looks like. I've got some people too, Doctor Laura.

They can't live with their parents, even love them, love them, love them to life, but can't live under the same. Proof and I get that because I told my parents, I said if this had not worked out during the times when we were snowbirding, I totally would not have asked you to come live with me. I would have done something different, but I do think that we all have an obligation, you know, to take care of those who gave us life, right, our parents, and to do some modicum of care even if that is putting them in, you know, what we call now here they're called senior resorts. Right, so you, you know, they come live in condos or townhomes or, you know, back in the days they used to be called nursing homes, but now they're called senior resorts, but those are places where they can, you know, be adults, you can go visit them and have, you know, time with them, but in some ways, at least I think we have to kind of have a relationship with our parents. I'd rather have the relationship than have regrets. 

Laura: Yeah, absolutely, and at the end of the day, that's a gift to you, not just to them too, right?

Dr. Shirley: It is a beautiful will that we can control that, you know, we can say, you know, I can love you up close, but I can also love you from a distance. So it depends on where people are. But you know, it does more for me to extend that love and appreciation of my parents. And I'm sure they appreciate it as well, but I just don't want to live a life of regrets that I didn't do something to make it right and to treat them right. Yeah. 

Laura: Yeah. And I, you know, I think too, when we're coming from a place that, from that place, it's easier to not slip into resentment and burden. You know, when we're coming from the place of that this is a gift, not just to them, but to me, you know. That's right, that's right, absolutely. Beautiful. Well, Doctor Shirley Davis, thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I love getting to talk with you and, you know, I feel like you have taken so much of your experience and business and leadership, and you're putting those skills to work in, in your family, and I appreciate you sharing those with us. Thank you. 

Dr. Shirley: Yeah, that is, that's important. I appreciate you saying that because I've had to learn this like the skills I talk about to my clients and that I teach and speak about all the time. I'm finding myself doing the same. Same thing like, you know, assume positive intent and always be willing to have an open door policy and make sure you're flexible. The same stuff I'm teaching them, I have to also incorporate that in my life and that's made it fulfilling, it's made it rewarding, it's made it doable, and now I'm really at this place where I see, you know, our relationship has just gotten closer and closer together. So it, you know, I think at the end of the day we can all be balanced life when you make some of those decisions. 

Laura: Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing that with pleasure. 

Dr. Shirley: Thank you too. Have a wonderful day and please I invite everyone to join me on my website at Dr. Shirley Davis.com and thanks again, Doctor Laura, for having me and for this important conversation. 

Laura: Oh, I appreciate it so much. Yes, all of your links will be in the show notes. So it was lovely to connect with you. Thank you. 

Dr. Shirley: All right. Take care. Bye bye.

Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from. 

And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too. 

All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!