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Good morning moms, today is Monday, January 5th, 2026. It is the start of your mom work week. It is the start of a brand new year. And this is our first meeting of the new year. If this is our first time meeting ever, or if you just need a little refresher catch up. This is The Modern Mom. My name is Caroline Dettman and we, whether or not we've met before,

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are mom coworkers. Before we had kids, we were connected women. We had friends, we had jobs outside of the home. We knew what the hot gossip was in the celebrity world.  And not only could we stay up late enough to watch our favorite TV shows,  but we had favorite TV shows. As moms, we often only have our kids to chat with during the day.  Our favorite song is probably Purple Monkey and a Bubble Gum Tree.

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And we've never even heard of the stars on Dancing with the Stars, or at least  I haven't.  The Modern Mom is our home for our mom coworkers to get caught up on the water cooler style chat that  we are so missing in stay at home mom life, but more importantly, so that we have something to bring up with the other moms at the playground  and be that missing community that we all  need. So without further ado,

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Here is this week's break room brief. This is what we would be talking about at the water cooler if we had one instead of just a diaper genie. Dancing with the Stars runner up Alex Earl was spotted on New Year's Eve with none other  than Tom Brady, know, little known football commentator.  I kid, I kid. The duo was looking pretty cozy in St. Barts  at a yacht party.  Now,

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Alex Earl is fresh off of a breakup with Braxton Barrios, current NFL player, and the 48-year-old Tom Brady split from his wife Giselle Bündchen in 2022. So next time your husband gives you a hard time for scrolling on your phone during football, you can just build the bridge and say that you're watching Tom Brady's maybe girlfriend, Alex Earl, since, you know, she's all over everyone's For You page these days. And if you're feeling a little bit left out,

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because you didn't get to attend a New Year's Eve party on a yacht in St. Barts, hopefully you are from Cabot, Arkansas and are the holder of a lucky Powerball ticket. On Christmas Eve, one single ticket sold in Cabot, Arkansas matched all six numbers drawn to win $1.8 billion, which has a cash option of a measly $834.9 million before taxes.

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And for a $2 investment, that's not a bad return.  Although it would probably  get you about  three Costco size containers of strawberries and maybe some organic blueberries.  You know, you could  maybe some private preschool, but 1.8 billion, that's not going to go far in the world of berries and tuition.  And you don't have to be a billionaire mom to know that the bulk

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of the mental load and invisible labor in any given household is shouldered by  none other than the mom,  the CEOs of the household, if you will. According to a report by health care platform ZocDoc, found that women are taking on the brunt of health care planning for their families, including themselves, their children, their parents,  and sometimes their husbands and their husband's parents as well.

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52 % of women manage someone else's healthcare when it comes to finding medical professionals, scheduling appointments and coordinating care. And another 29 % of women manage the healthcare of at least three or more other people.  And as being  one of those mothers who manages the healthcare of three or more other people,  yes, it's  a lot of mental load.

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When it comes to appointment scheduling,  76 % of all appointments booked for someone else were made by women, and 82 % of appointments booked for men by others were scheduled by women. When it comes to appointments for children under the age of 15,  only 6 % of those appointments were booked by a male caretaker. So next time you're in the pediatrician waiting office, which  with flu season here, you could be there right now.

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Look around the waiting room and take a look and see how many moms are in the waiting room with you. Not to knock dads. I'm not knocking dads at all. Dads are fantastic. Male partners, fathers of children, when they pull their weight, kudos to you. High five, gold star.  But  studies show  the statistics are not backing you up when it comes  to health keeping.  This would be a great conversation starter for a mom in the waiting room.

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and a good conversation starter for the people in your home, maybe as well put a little bug in their ear that maybe they could do a little bit of their own health keeping or maybe see a doctor at all because according to a recent study by the Cleveland Clinic, 60 % of men don't regularly see a doctor and only seek medical attention when they are ill, which means only one in five men goes for an annual physical, which means, and this should come at no surprise to you, women

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are a staggering 100 % better at screening and preventative care than men, according to the CDC. 100%, we cannot improve more than that, ladies. So high five for taking accountability for your own preventative care,  as well as the preventative care for perhaps three or more additional people.  You are doing a great job. Get yourself a sweet treat today.  Crack open that can of Coke because you've earned it.

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And the hot new parenting trend that could boost their self-esteem  is the 5 to 1 rule. Basically, the 5 to 1 rule means for every  one  negative thing you have to say to your child, bolster their self-worth and their confidence by also giving them five positive things.  Not like all at once. Don't say like, stop pushing your sister, but also you  are smart and wonderful. m

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You just want to make sure that there are roughly five positive interactions between you and your child  for every potentially negative interaction. This specific rule originates from psychologist John Gottman, PhD, who actually did this research on  marriages, long lasting happy marriages,  which, you know, if you are in a marriage, this is a great tip for you as well. Children as well as spouses thrive when warm encouragement and connection

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far outweigh their criticism and punishment. When parents apply the five to one rule consistently,  they model emotional regulation and can help reduce family stress and also build trust and resilience in their children. And who doesn't want that? Even if maintaining a ratio feels  awkward or forced, the benefits far outweigh  any silliness that you might feel about practicing it. So over the next few days,

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Every time you have to have a potentially negative interaction with your child, start a little mental tally and try to  say five positive things about your child to help nurture your relationship. The brain has a natural negativity bias, meaning like we will  naturally remember the negative things that people say about us more than the positive things that people say about us,  obvious with exceptions, but the five to one ratio ensures that some of your positive interactions

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make their way into your child's memory about themselves as well. You want the positive interactions with your children to not be overshadows by your moments of correction because it has been a long  winter break for everybody. I know that today is the first day of school for most of us and our homes are being restored to some semblance of order today, hopefully. It's possible. It's possible.

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that over the long winter break, things may have gotten a little bit tense in your household.  know, temperatures are cold. It's probably snowy where you are. Kids were inside for a lot of time with you  when they're usually at school.  You may have been trying to work while they were home.  You may have more than one child and they may have been getting on each other's nerves.  So kudos to all of us for surviving winter break, first of all.  And second of all, if you

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are in the business of restoring your home to a calm baseline right now,  now that your kids are back in school.  On my Instagram, I am running a 10 day home reset challenge.  And the best part about it is that it is as challenging as you want to make it.  So starting today for the next 10 days,  we are focusing on a different area of our home. And I've written the challenge so that there's three different levels of commitment for each day.

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there are instructions for  a 15 minute reset, a 30 minute reset,  and then a full commitment 60 minute plus reset as well for each area of our home or our life that we are tackling on that day. So if you work outside of the home, if something's going on where you don't have as much time that day,  if your kid decides to not nap, whatever it is, and you only have 15 minutes to devote to a reset, there are still

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tasks that you can do to restore calm and order to your home, which may have kind of gone out the window after an extended winter break. It's the beginning of a new year. It's the beginning of our kids being back at school since the holidays.  This is a great time to kind of grab the bull by the horns and organize your life in your house. And I know that a lot of us are feeling that pull right now to kind of  start fresh. And I'm not saying that you need to throw everything away.

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or devote hours of time to sorting through every piece of your belongings. As much as you may want to do that kind of commitment, you probably don't have that kind of time.  That's something that has taken me a long time to realize about myself is that  even if I want to have that kind of time and commitment, I just don't.  I don't have the time to pull everything out of my closet at one time and sort through piece by piece because I will invariably be.

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interrupted and then I will lose track of time and I will never circle back and finish the job I started.  So choose your level of commitment in the home, reset wisely,  set a timer for yourself and complete the tasks for each day.  If you are interested in participating in the challenge, you don't have to start today, even though that's the day that I started on Instagram.  You can start it tomorrow on day one, you can start it next Monday on day one. It's an undated challenge.

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I will leave a link to sign up  in the show notes. You can also find it as the link in my bio on Instagram, where you can find me as caroline underscore detman. And I am looking forward to hearing from you how the reset was able to benefit your home and your family and most of all  yourself. And while we're on the topic of recovering from a holiday break and  recovering from the holidays in.

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general.  This week's routine rundown is something that is going to be super easy that you can knock out right now,  but it's going to be super important for you and  your routines moving forward. And that is to  make a note  of the things that worked and didn't work in the holiday season for you and your family this year. Now, my  mother-in-law has like binders for

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each thing, like she has a binder for like when my family visits, like the things that we did and what works and like lessons learned.  You don't have to go that far if you don't want to. And now I also have a binder because I keep like recipes and stuff in there from the holidays that I want to repeat,  but it can be as simple  as  a note on your phone. You can just  type it out while you're waiting in the car at pickup today. The important thing is that you get it down while it's all fresh in your mind.

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So for me, some of the lessons learned this year, uh first of all, I made way too many cookies,  much to the delight and detriment  of my family.  We've been eating cookies forever and I think we're about to run out. I still have some fudge, but I think that that might be past its uh usable timeline. em I made way too many cookies. We gave cookies to the...

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paraprofessionals at my kids' schools and also to like our mailman and trash collector and stuff, but I made way too many of them.  And I relied on my family to eat too many of them when we don't generally eat a lot of sweets. So that was  something I can cut back on next year. And  also  when we're talking cookies, my kids love to help me in the kitchen. ah Their help is not always the most helpful and

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Sometimes that's the whole point. It forces you to slow down and enjoy the moment with them.  But  I  make these chocolate crinkle cookies and the dough is really sticky and you're supposed to roll the dough in your hand and then  roll them in powdered sugar.  And I thought, oh, the kids would love to help with that. They love  rolling play dough in their hands and they would probably love to dunk them in the powdered sugar.  They did, they did. It was exceedingly messy though.

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It was messier than when I make them by myself by like a factor of 10.  So  incredibly messy  to the point where like I had them each make a tray of the cookies.  And when I put them in the oven, I told them that we were done.  And then I finished making the batch by myself. um Next year they can help me with any cookies except for the crinkle cookies.  I will pick something that's more their speed to help with.

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I also picked up this tip from a mom that I follow on Instagram,  and that is to have a separate hamper for Christmas and holiday-themed clothes so that they get washed more often.  My kids don't have a whole lot of holiday-themed clothes, and I generally try to stay away from them because it's kind of like a waste of drawer space, or like now I have to store these clothes.  But  I personally have enough holiday clothes now where  I can,  you know, have a bin of holiday-themed clothes and...

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have my kids PJs and clothing in there too.  But it would be super helpful to have them clean more often so that we're not limited to just  one wearing per week.  So I put that into my notes so that I can repeat that practice again next year. I also put a huge emphasis on being done with our shopping, our holiday shopping early this year so that I could actually enjoy the season  leading up to Christmas. I could actually enjoy December.

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instead of spending my evenings wrapping presents or trying to find gifts or  our extended family lives halfway across the country. And I didn't want to have to be bound by shipping deadlines and  obsessively tracking packages to make sure that they got there on time.  So I set a deadline for myself like I do every year, but I usually fail to meet the deadline. uh This year I did not fail. Pat myself on the back. I put that in my notes.  Did not fail this year and it was glorious.

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I had all of my Christmas shopping done for our extended family, wrapped, packed, shipped by December 1st. That was the biggest weight off my shoulders. Now you might not have a situation like that where you need to be done  so far in advance to ship presents. So the other deadline that I gave myself  this year  was to be done with my immediate family's shopping by Black Friday. If there were things that I needed to get on  sale,

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These days, most retailers start their Black Friday sales like the day after Halloween,  but you can hold out until the traditional Black Friday date to knock out most of your gift list.  The important part was  that Black Friday was my finish line instead of my starting line. then, know, presents were able to trickle in. I wasn't obsessively tracking packages to make sure that things got here on time.  When they arrived, I was able to open them.

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make sure that everything was okay, I got the right items and then wrap them because I have found that it is much easier to hide gifts  when they're wrapped. I can hide them in plain sight. I had them literally in a couple boxes in the basement that were open and nobody bothered them. If they were unwrapped gifts, however, that would have ruined the entire surprise.  And my kids are getting to the point now where they're independent and they're going to find their own things.

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the risk of them finding an unwrapped gift for themselves is very high. So I added that to my list too, that it was very helpful for me to wrap the gifts as they arrived,  all the way down to putting a bow on and the name label,  because then it was done. And I had everything completed the first week of December, and I didn't have to worry about it again. So take some time today,  reflect about what worked for you this holiday season and what didn't work for you,  and write it down.

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give the note in your phone a good searchable title like holidays 2026 so that you can reference it when the holidays roll around next year and you  will be ahead of the game. You're not stuck learning the same lesson over and over again. And another lesson learned lately is my mom hack Monday this week  as the official curator of my family's Christmas lists.  I stocked them  full  of screen free entertainment this year.

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and that paid  huge dividends for the second week of Christmas vacation this year. So my mom hack Monday for today is that if your kids are also of the age where they allow you to curate their Christmas list or birthday list, whatever gifting list  you're looking at, screen free activities. I think my kids asked to watch TV maybe once  during the two weeks of the Christmas break. um They don't.

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watch a whole lot of TV anyways,  but can  you imagine what that must've felt like for me?  Being  one time, having to tell them maybe later, or I actually allowed them to watch it because they never, they didn't ask. So  why not say yes?  It's the holidays, you can watch a movie,  but the holidays might be over, but the  winter  and the  long days of playing inside, especially on the weekends,

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not over. So make sure you are well stocked on screen free activities.  this is a big if,  if limiting screen time is something that you prioritize in your house. If you  are a screen time mom,  go for it.  Go for it girl.  I  am not going to tell you what works best for your family or your home. If that's what works for you, go with it, run with it.  In my house, in my family and

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For a lot of people I know, limiting screen time is a priority.  So  this lesson is for us. And if you're wondering what those screen free activities were that my kids were so in love with,  I'm so glad you asked. That brings us to today's Mom Hall of Fame,  a fantasy style draft of my favorites in a category and that today are these screen free activities that my kids did over the break. My first round draft pick would be a good old fashioned craft kit.  I'm sitting here at my desk looking at a

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foil art picture that my kids made for me uh of just a few days ago.  It's a Dan and Darcy brand, but I think Skillmatics makes  a  different price point kit that does the same thing.  It's essentially just some colored foil and some adhesive backed foam.  And they pull the adhesive off and stick the foil onto it and voila, they've made foil art.

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but it's really good for their hand-eye coordination. It takes a lot of attention and skill,  but it's exciting for them and it's not challenging.  So my kids did it all together. They're two, four and six,  and all of them enjoyed it together. Fantastic. You can't ask for more. A good craft kit cannot be beat. If you are shopping on Amazon for a craft kit for your kids,  I do like the Dan and Darcy brand. I do also like the Skillmatics brand.

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and also the Creativity for Kids brand. Those three companies I've found make top notch crafting kits. My second round draft pick would be a card game. We started playing card games in the fall with Uno. My first grader played Uno at school and I didn't realize that he was of the age where he could be playing card games and that just opened a whole new world to me. So on his gift list this year, I put a

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six-in-one card game pack. I think it's the company Hoyle that makes it. I'll link it in the show notes, but  I suggested to the gift giver that they pair it with  a, it's called a card holder. Instead of having them struggle to make the card fan in their hand,  it's just like a little  holder that they hold and they can put the cards in in a fan  instead of trying to figure it out themselves.  It's easier for small hands playing card games, but it makes a really good,

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gift to gift the card holder with the card game.  So the  like six and one game combo that we got has like old maid,  crazy eights, it has like a memory match game, just those card games that you probably remember playing growing up and it really kind of jogs your memory like, yeah, you know,  I liked playing old maid growing up.  I can't tell you how to play it, but I'm sure there's an instructions inside. So let's get it open.

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And that's what we did yesterday. And we played, I kid you not, like five games in a row of old maid. And it was a lot of fun.  And in the third round, I am  drafting a specific  magnetic building block. Now for Christmas, my oldest kid got Minecraft on his iPad  because he's been asking to play the actual video game of Minecraft,  which he did.  He did play it on his iPad for one day.

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Not long, because then he opened this  magnetic block set  where the blocks look like Minecraft. They're square blocks and  some of them look like water, some of them look like dirt, some of them look like brick.  And you can build with your two hands  in this  universe structures, worlds that look like Minecraft. They're Minecraft blocks. uh My kids,

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are going wild for them and  nobody,  nobody has mentioned the actual Minecraft video game to me since opening this,  which is wild. Who would have thought children prefer real life experiences?  And in the fourth round, which doesn't adequately express how much my children enjoy this screen free gift  is the Tony box.  This was probably the biggest hit of Christmas.  My two girls who are two in

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got their own Tony boxes for Christmas. We've never had a Tony before. I know a lot of you have probably had Tonys for like four or five years, but we've never had them. We had a Yodo box and I probably should have waited on the Yodo for a few years. Like my oldest is now  getting to the point where he would use and enjoy a Yodo. um The Tony is great. The Tony is great for  the preschool, kindergarten years.

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not only because it is screen free,  but because it incorporates a lot of the characters that they see on the screen into a screen free activity.  So nobody asks me to watch Daniel Tiger anymore because they have Daniel Tiger and the Jodie Platypus Tony. So they have lots of Daniel Tiger themed entertainment without actually watching the TV. Now there are Tonys for literally everything that you can think of.

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There's Disney Tonys, you can get StoryBots, you can get like Danny Goh Tonys that like  do a movement break with them.  But the important thing is that it's not only screen free, but it can be passive. My kids can listen to the Elsa Tony while they're building something. They're not just sitting on the couch, loafing,  watching Frozen.  They can listen to the song and enjoy the story that's told on the Tony.

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while doing something active, using their brains, using their hands, making art, doing a craft kit. And even better is that I found a library in my library system that has a lending library of Tony's. It's a little bit further of a drive. My kids, my kids love a library. I love a library. We live in a very robust library system and we are very blessed to have that as a resource to us. Our local library does not have

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Tonys for lending,  but this library is in our library network. So I can use our regular library card  there  to borrow the Tonys. So not only did we get a special outing to go look at the Tonys that they had to borrow,  they were each able to bring  one home and have that experience of now listening to them  without the added expense of purchasing another Tony. But also there were so  many  new  games, activities,

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books  that they hadn't seen before at this library, we could have spent hours there. had to,  we of course had to come back for lunch and nap,  but we could have been there for the entire day had I planned ahead. So as a honorable mention to our fantasy draft today,  going to the library, checking out your own town's public library, but also seeing what  resources there are to you in your library network.

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going to a neighboring town's library if you've exhausted the activities at your own library, which I think is pretty impossible. We went to the library probably every day over the break and they had a different  activity or craft or story time or celebration probably every day at our library. And if you  are a public librarian listening to this, bless you,  bless you for the free  entertainment  that you

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put on to enrich the lives of children in your town and surrounding area,  bless you.  And I think that just about wraps it up for us here today.  If you are a mom with two children, congratulations, it is your turn today to leave us a five star rating wherever you are listening. And if you have any thoughts or questions about the show or that you want answered on the show,  you can DM me on Instagram, I am at Caroline underscore Detman.

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or at the Modern Mom pod,  or you can also send me a text. At the top of today's show notes, there will be a link that says send us a text.  You tap that and it opens in your messaging app and that will go directly from your phone to mine. Send me your thoughts and questions and I would love to answer them on a future episode.  And I think that wraps our Monday meeting for today. Until next week, I am Caroline Dettman.  This is the Modern Mom. Have a great work week.