Valentine's Day is a great way to show love towards your children and significant other. Lacey helps us see why those little efforts make a big difference in our families, couple relationship, Just another way to strengthen our families.
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Jen: Hello and welcome to the Parents Place, a podcast put out by the Family Place for parents to develop skills that will strengthen families and provide tools that will help each of us in our parenting effort. No matter our skills, we can always use reminders that help us work towards a safer, happier home. I'm your host, Jennifer Daly, the education director at the Family Place and my co-host is Sara Hendricks, a family educator at the Family Place. Every week, we will interview professionals that will provide valuable information that will make a difference when you apply it directly to your life. Thank you for joining us. Now, let's get started with today's episode.
Hi and welcome to the Parents Place podcast! I'm your host, Jennifer Daly,
Sara: and I'm your co-host Sara Hendricks.
Jen: Valentine's is just around the corner. The important part of strengthening our families is making sure we have a strong and healthy relationship with our partners. We are lucky to have Lacey Bryce with us today who is going to give us great ideas on how to do just that. Lacey, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Lacey: Hi, I am so excited to be here! Thank you for inviting me! So, a little bit about me. My name is Lacey. I live in Safford, Arizona, super, super small town on my own salon, and I've been a hairdresser for the last 10 years. And I'm also a women's health coach and I enjoy helping women with their lives. I have three kids and I will have been married 12 years this month.
Sara: Well, welcome, Lacey. We're so excited for you to be here. I feel extra excited because it hasn't been mentioned yet, but Lacey is my sister. And even though we have a two-year age gap between us and I am the older one, I don't like to admit that sometimes. But she and I, our whole lives have been asked if we were twins, even though we have that two-year age gap. So, I don't know if it's going to affect this podcast, if it's going to feel like Jen is just talking with the same person the whole time. If our voices sound the same. I don't know. So hopefully there will be enough distinction between the two of us that our listeners can tell us apart. But we're excited to have you, Lacey, and we're excited about this topic of keeping the spark alive. Perfect for Valentine's Day! So, we'll just jump right into our first question. What would you say to parents who feel embarrassed to show romantic gestures in front of their kids? Is it OK for kids to see parents kissing, writing love notes anything along those lines of showing affection?
Lacey: I love this question! I've been asked it before and I have very strong opinions about it. I think that it is crucial for parents to show PDA in front of their children. When you think about it, as the parent, you are modeling what a marriage should be for your kids. They are going to find spouses that are somewhat similar to what they've seen in their home lives. And so, if you never show any affection towards your spouse, then in turn your child is going to think that that is what's normal in a marriage. And so, I am very adamant with my own children to make sure that my husband and I tastefully show displays of affection. So, I mean, he comes home from work, and the first thing that he does is hug me and give me a kiss. And sometimes our kids get a little frustrated because he'll, you know, he'll walk right past them and come straight for me. Like they know that I'm the priority at that moment. But they've learned that's just dad's way of making sure that mom knows that she is important to him. Like, usually in the middle of cooking dinner when he comes home. And so, he'll put his arms around my waist and snuggle my neck and ask me how my day was and whatever. Like we, we do stuff like that all the time. And then recently, there's been a lot of instances where like, I'm having a really bad day and my son just got a phone and he has started texting my husband and he's like, “Dad, mom, struggling. She needs you. Like, what do I do? She needs your help, man”. And next thing I know, like my husband will come into the kitchen and he'll turn music on, and then we'll start dancing because he knows that that like will smooth whatever anxiety I was feeling in that moment or whatever. Recently I was, I was canning stuff and I couldn't figure out the canner and I was frustrated and that story took place and then my son just couldn't help himself. And a couple of minutes later, after my husband had gone back into his office to continue working, my son was like, “Mom, I did that. I told dad, you needed him”, and he was just the funniest thing. So, I think it's super important that children learn that marriages should be happy and affection is normal in a marriage.
Jen: It's funny you say that, Lacey. I remember back from when I was a kid, and one thing that we all thought was just crazy was for some reason, it always happened in front of the kitchen sink. But my dad would go over and give my mom a hug and they would kiss. And we're like, “What is going on? Is there a music coming out of the sink or what?” Because it was always in front of the kitchen sink. But looking back on that, that's one of my favorite memories of knowing my parents loved each other. And it's so important for kids to see that affection. If you're in a step family, that might be a little bit harder in the beginning, just getting used to that new relationship. But definitely, I know I'm in a step family and my step daughters have mentioned a couple of times that they love to see the fact that their dad and I show affection to one another. Because that hasn't been a part of his previous marriages, so we were saying in the opening Valentine's Day is just around the corner and it is super nice to be able to get away with your partner and go on a special date or whatever. But sometimes that's just not a reality. So, what are some ideas and dates to do at home? Or dates that may have to include the kids?
Lacey: So, this year, we've never gone away for Valentine's Day. Our anniversary is a couple of weeks later, and so Valentine's Day is just another day in our house, but it's a day where we try to make love the priority. I guess this year I bought a sugar cookie decorating kit to do with my kids. So, we're going to do that and then I usually try to do like a nice dinner. I usually will like marinate steaks and do baked potatoes or whatever, just something that we don't normally eat very often because that is a special night. Typically, we'll do a movie night. We'll pick something that maybe they haven't seen before, and we'll just do an early movie night with the kids and then we'll put the kids to bed. And then my husband and I will do a date night after the kids have gone to bed where we'll watch a movie or ice cream and whatever like that. But we try to make it where, yeah, we spend some time with the kids until it's time for the kids to go to bed. And then after the kids have gone to bed, we make sure that we've spent some time together. And I mean, every once in a while, if we can find a babysitter, then sure, we'll go out on a date and go to dinner and do that for Valentine's Day. But we typically don't do huge vacations or anything for Valentine's Day. We just try to keep it simple, but enough that we know that the day is special and that the other person is the priority. This year, also, I'm going to try something new. I've heard a lot of people have done it and I haven't tried it yet, so I'm curious to see how it works with my own kids. But with the pandemic and everything that's happened and we haven't been able to enjoy this year as much as we would have liked to, and my children have been suffering with some depression because of it. And so, this year on their bedroom doors, I'm going to put saying reasons why I love you. And then every single day for February, I'm going to heart attack their door and put a heart on there. And every day will be a new heart and it'll give a reason for why I love that child. So, every one of my children will have a separate heart for them personally. So, I'm excited to see how they react to that.
Sara: I love I have a friend that has done that where starting February 1st, up until the 14th, so it's 14 hearts that they get total one a day that is heart attacking their door gradually every day. And those sweet little messages that just help our kids know that we love them or thinking of them, and we're making this extra effort to show it. We also have a tradition of heart attacking some neighbors and writing messages on hearts and sneaking over in the evening after the Sun's gone down and putting them all over their door. My kids love that to feel like they're doing something sneaky. It causes me some stress that we're going to get caught because they're not very quiet, but it's still fun to do. I love those other ideas that you shared when you mentioned doing a nice dinner. It reminded me that I have a tradition where we do something festive for dinner every Valentine's Day. It's always the same meal. I make crepes because I think it is super easy to make festive because you can go with chocolate and you can go with pink and white for the table to be decorated and the food to feel festive with it. And so, with crepes, we do fruit that can have strawberries and bananas, and then the filling can be a chocolate mousse or vanilla mousse. It's not the healthiest meal in the world, but it's a one time a year that we do this every Valentine's Day as our dinner. And then it can be chocolate milk or strawberry milk or plain milk. You know, just everything is centered around those colors and that festive feeling. I like to take those conversation hearts because they're cheap and decorate the table by just sprinkling them on the table. So, it's just something fun for us that includes our kids and makes the holiday a little more fun. It's also a tradition that my husband for Valentine's Day, that he buys the girls a Valentine, that he's in charge of Valentine's Day and making it special for our kids in that regard. So, he goes to the store and he picks out what he's going to give them, usually a small, little stuffed animal and a dollar box of chocolates, you know, like nothing big and extreme, but they look forward to it and knowing it's coming from dad, where I feel like probably for a lot of families, traditionally, mom takes care of the holidays. And so, I love that we've set this up where this is dad's holiday to make sure that our kids feel loved. Now it's also, no secret that Valentine's Day is not my favorite holiday, I'm actually kind of anti-Valentine’s Day before we had kids. I feel like there are plenty of opportunities to fight in a marriage that for me, eliminating these expectations around holidays helped eliminate some of that fighting. Like, I expect my husband to plan the date and make all these sweet gestures and everything, and it doesn't go that way. And so, it just leaves room for fighting. And so, to eliminate those expectations has really helped for me. I know that's not the case for everybody, but when it comes to Valentine's Day, that's my own personal feelings. And so, we don't have big traditions that we do, just the two of us. We include our kids for the dinner. And that is about the extent of it.
Jen: I think in my what is now four years of marriage now, I think we've only done something once and that was I was in charge of the dinner and he was in charge of the activity and we actually went to a Ben Folds concert because luckiest is our song. And so, we wanted to go see it in person. And sadly, Ben Folds did not sing that song. We wanted our concert, but it was a fun night. But we are the same. We kind of just because just the time to where we just stay home and we're together.
Sara: And so, and I think someday I think it's OK to do what works for you. You know, you don't have to keep up with everybody else because you see what they're posting on social media and then you're mad at your spouse. Why didn't you do that for me? Like, no, we don't need to compare ourselves. We need to figure out what works for us in our marriage and do that.
Lacey: Definitely. Well, I think not having expectations for Valentine's Day is super important because, like Sara said, it's going to be a letdown when those expectations aren't met. We every year different. We never do the same thing. So, I mean, sometimes we go out to dinner, sometimes we don't. Sometimes you know, he'll buy me jewelry if he's feeling festive that year, or sometimes it's flowers. Sometimes it's a balloon. This year, he found this website where you upload your pictures and it turns you into cartoon characters, and the book is 10 reasons why I love you. And the reason that I already have it is because we cannot keep secrets! Like every year it doesn't matter if it's our birthday or Christmas or Valentine's Day. We give it to each other early because we get so excited that we have something for the other person that we can't wait until Valentine's Day. So, we gave it to me a couple of days ago and it was just the cutest thing. And it was unexpected, and that's why it was awesome. And I was actually a little bit like, “Oh crap”, because I thought for sure that I had one upped him this year for lack of a better phrase. Just because my husband is the best gift giver ever. He's one of those that, like will have listen to me all year long and remembered something nice had six months ago and surprised me with it. And I'm over here like, here's some money, like because I'm just not thoughtful and he knows I'm not thoughtful and he loves me anyway, and it's fine. So, but this year, I'm so excited because I think I think I have him beat a little bit. I mean, the book was phenomenal. Don't get me wrong, but for the last 12 years, I have listened to him talk about this high school girlfriend and her sugar cookies and how they were the best sugar cookies that he has ever had. And he didn't get the recipe and their relationships and end on good terms, so he never got the recipe can ask her. And unfortunately, this this lady, her mom died and it was her mom's recipe, and he was afraid that the recipe had died with her mom. And I just happened to be doing a client's hair like a week ago, and we were joking around about it. And I'm like now, and I wish I could find this recipe. And she's like, Is it this person? And I'm like, Yeah, and she's like, “My son is best friends with her brother. I bet I can get that”. And so next thing I know she's on the phone calling your son and they have this elaborate plan to get this recipe. So, by the end of the day, I have this sugar cookie recipe, and so I'm going to surprise him for Valentine's Day and make him these sugar cookies. And so, I mean, I didn't spend any money other than what it would cost to make the sugar cookies, but I know he's going to be so excited. I'm just hoping that I can do these cookies justice and that it'll be how he remembers them, and it won't be a letdown. But I'm super excited to have a thoughtful gift because he's super thoughtful, so I'm really excited for this Valentine's Day.
Sara: I think that is amazing, and you'll have to let me know how it goes. I also had the privilege of seeing this book that he made you. She showed me through Marco Polo the other day, and it is amazing and I want to make one of these books. It's such a cute idea to upload your picture and. Turn yourself into a cartoon, it's adorable, so props to you guys for being so on top of your gift giving. That is awesome. Now this question is a little bit different. We had a parent ask us this question and I want to get your thoughts on how you would respond to this. So, this parent said that having kids has put a strain on their relationship because she no longer feels confident in her body anymore since having those babies and her body changing so much. So how can she regain that confidence and put the spark back in her marriage?
Lacey: I love this question. She's probably not going to love my answer because it's a little frank. But in beauty school, one of the very first things that you learn is fake it until you make it. You have to show your client that you are confident or they're never going to want to come to you. And I feel like it is the same thing in this regard of “Yes, you've had babies and your body is different and you're probably uncomfortable with the new you, pretend that you are”. And I know that that sounds ridiculous, and a lot of people are like, Oh, yeah, that's real. But honestly, that's what I do. My husband and I like it neither one of us are perfect by any means. I mean, we're both heavier than we would like to be. I mean, they're stretch marks, there's whatever. But we know that the other person loves us, and that's enough. Like, we don't have to pretend or pray that we're going to be any different than we actually are. And so, I have made it a point in our marriage not to hide those things from each other like it. It is what it is. And so, and I think we love each other more because we are so comfortable with each other. And so, I just feel like for that night, if that's what you're worried about, convince yourself that you know what? It's OK and they love me and take a couple of deep breaths and give yourself a pep talk and choose not to worry about it. And I think you would be really surprised about how relieving that actually is.
Jen: I'm also thinking, I mean, for women, this is something that I'm sure men deal with too, but mostly women. And I think if you can get something that makes you feel pretty. Not necessarily for him, but what makes you feel pretty? You're going to be that much more comfortable in that situation.
Sara: I was also thinking, right now, Jen and I are taking a mindfulness course online, and as you were talking, I was just thinking like, get out of your head, like, it's OK for those negative thoughts to come in, but let them come in and let them float right back out because chances are you're being way harder on yourself than your spouse's thinking or feeling. And so it's OK that those thoughts came in, but let them go and get out of your head and be more in the moment with your partner than inside your head, feeling all of the stress and concern and worry?
Lacey: Definitely. Because when you're lost in your head, you're losing some of those best moments. You're not enjoying them and therefore not connecting with your partner as much as you could be. And Jen had mentioned that, you know, your partner is probably feeling the same way that you are. I guarantee you they are. My husband has insecurities about his body just as much as I have insecurities about mine, and we've had open conversations about it. And I know what his insecurities are and he knows what mine are. And so, for me, I try to make it a point to be like, “Oh my gosh, I love this about you. I love you, whatever.” And I compliment not necessarily those areas, because then he's just going to think that I'm doing it to make him feel better, you know? But I try to be more mindful about complimenting him on his body or whatever, because I know that he needs that just as much as I need that. And so, you know, I'll just random things like, “Oh my gosh, you look so handsome today? Or, Oh, you know, those pants just look fantastic on you”. Like, men need that just as much as women need that. And I think that women don't do that enough for their spouses. I think we get so focused on, “Oh, they need to compliment us” that we forget to compliment them. And I think in a marriage, it is crucial that you compliment each other and it is crucial that you keep flirting with each other. Even when you've been married for 12 years, because that's what keeps the spark alive. If you're not making an effort to engage with your spouse through flirting or texting or whatever like, then you can expect to have a playful atmosphere later on or date nights or whatever.
Jen: You said that you communicate with one another. I think that's a huge, important thing that we need to remember within our relationships is to have that, that open communication of, you know, I really like this about you. You do this for me and what not. But I also think it's great to when you can say, you know, I need a little bit more of this or vice versa, and so having that open communication is important. I just think back on my education in classes and conferences that I attended and just the importance of that relationship between partners that really creates your foundation for your family. And so, making sure that that is strong is super important. So, the next question Lacey is, is sometimes we feel like Valentine's Day is forced or that our partner is requiring us to do something. How can we get past that?
Lacey: I know a lot of people feel like Valentine's Day is just a hallmark holiday. Or, you know, they had Sara had mentioned earlier, why do we need to spend this? Take this one day and show affection for that one day? Why can't we show affection for every single day? And I totally understand those was. I think those are valid points, but I personally feel that this one day I get to go a little bit above and beyond to make my spouse feel a little bit more special. And I think that that's important. And I mean, sure. Yeah, it's Valentine's Day and you could do it any day of the week if you really wanted to. But for me, because I own my own business and I'm super busy and I have three kids like for me, this one day I know, OK, I'm going to do this and I can plan for it instead of having good intentions that I never follow through on. And so, I like that there's this day that I can target for my spouse, and he needs it. I mean, he needs to feel special and validated just as much as I do. And so, I personally find it fun to think of ways to surprise him for Valentine's Day or just something that will make him happy. And I mean, it doesn't have to be anything crazy. Like, I mean, I make me sugar cookies, and that is his Valentine's Day present. But I know that this is going to be a big deal for him.
Sara: Well Lacey this was an awesome episode. I don't know how anybody else feels because I feel pretty connected to who are interviewing right now, but I thought it was super fun to get to catch up this morning, and I feel like the information that you shared is super positive and good, and it makes me feel a little more excited for Valentine's Day. As we mentioned, it's not my favorite holiday, but I do try to make it fun and memorable for my children, and maybe I need to focus a little more on making it fun and memorable for my spouse. Lacey has given us a lot of fun ideas, and she's actually sent me some resources that I'm going to include in the show notes that talk more about gift giving ideas and some date night ideas, and so be sure to check those out for some resources. Thank you, Lacey, so much for joining us and sharing your knowledge in this area. You and your husband really are a great example of showing affection towards each other and making sure that you are communicating and on the same page. I love that about your relationship, so thank you for coming on this show today. We want to thank our listeners. If you want to reach out to Jen or me, you can email us at parents@thefamilyplaceUtah.org or find us on social media. Jen Daly Dash the Family Place, Sara Hendricks, Dash, the Family Place, and before we go, I'm going to give everybody a challenge from listening to this episode. Your challenge is to ask your partner to be your Valentine.
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Subject Resources: - Gift ideas: https://buzz.pureromance.com/2021/01/three-amazing-valentines-day-gifts-that-dont-cost-a-thing/?bizname=LaceyBryce?bizname=LaceyBryce - Staycation: https://buzz.pureromance.com/2021/01/sexy-staycation/?bizname=LaceyBryce?bizname=LaceyBryce - Sensuality Post-Baby: https://buzz.pureromance.com/2020/11/back-to-basics-how-to-feel-sensual-post-baby/
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