Arianna Taboada of The Expecting Entrepreneur: How Extremely Busy Leaders Make Time to be Great Parents
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Have one-on-one time with your child. This can be challenging if you have multiple children or are trying to fit a lot of family activities into weekends, but it is worth the challenge! Having moments, however infrequent, where they feel like they have 100% of your attention is so special.
As a part of my series about “How extremely busy executives make time to be great parents” I had the pleasure to interview Arianna Taboada.
Arianna Taboada, MSW, MSPH, is the founder of The Expecting Entrepreneur™, a consulting firm that helps entrepreneurs design parental leave plans that meet their business model and personal needs. Prior to her consulting practice, Arianna worked on maternal health issues for over a decade as a health educator, social work trainee, reproductive health researcher, and yoga therapist. Learn more at www.theexpectingentrepreneur.com.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us your “childhood backstory”?
I’m proudly from an immigrant family, and spent many of my formative years navigating life between the US and Mexico as part of a bi-lingual, bi-cultural, and bi-national family. I’ve always read a lot, and been quiet but curious, traits that I still identify with today!
Can you share the story about what brought you to this specific point in your career?
I’m a public health social worker by training, and originally worked in health care in a more traditional way, providing care to un- and under-insured populations. When I realized I would burn out if I saw patients all day every day, I transitioned into entrepreneurship, still in the health care sector, by going into private practice as well as consulting for health systems. I’ve been iterating on my business model and core services ever since, and since 2013 have run a consultancy helping entrepreneurs design a parental leave plan that meets their business model and personal needs.
Can you tell us a bit more about what your day to day schedule looks like?
Like many parents, I have a pretty full life. I work full time during the day, book-ended by family life before and after. In my 1:1 work with business owners who are growing their families and preparing for parental leave, I act as a strategic sounding board and advisor, as well as provide coaching through the immense transformation that is involved in becoming a parent. Much of the foundational work I do with clients is about looking at the core business functions and thinking about the arc of going on and returning from parental leave and what systems and processes will make that possible.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the core of our discussion. This is probably intuitive to many, but it would be beneficial to spell it out. Based on your experience or research, can you flesh out why not spending time with your children can be detrimental to their development?
I can share 2 powerful reasons for spending time with our children: brain development, and secure attachment. Particularly during early childhood, children’s brains are extremely neuroplastic, meaning they are changing and growing rapidly. Spending time with children talking, reading, singing, or engaging in simple activities supports that brain development. In terms of attachment, children are also developing a sense of who they are in relation to others, and parents and other caregivers are a key part of that identity development and secure attachment. We do not have to be doing elaborate activities for hours and hours with our children for them to experience these benefits. Consistent presence and quality attention, even for short amounts of time, is powerful.
On the flip side, can you give a few reasons or examples about why it is so important to make time to spend with your children?
Ha! I suppose as a health professional who focuses on strength-based approaches, I inadvertently took the previous question and flipped it. Honestly, one of my core values as a professional is to not use scientific evidence to scare or shame!
According to this study cited in the Washington Post, the quality of time spent with children is more important than the quantity of time. Can you give a 3–5 stories or examples from your own life about what you do to spend quality time with your children?
First, I’ll share that my own child is in school and after-care, so my reality (as is true for many parents) is that my time with my child during the week is limited. That means there are often just 1 or 2 meaningful ways to spend time with them in the midst of the dinner-bath-bedtime routine. One thing that I consistently do is keep new library books in rotation, and my child will pick the 2 they want to read.
On weekends, there is a bit more flexibility and time. We love going on “dates,” where it’s just a parent-child outing where we do something a bit more adventurous and exciting than regular family outings. We’ve gone fishing, rented a paddle boat, or ridden a train together. Small experiential things that my child really enjoys!
We all live in a world with many deadlines and incessant demands for our time and attention. That inevitably makes us feel rushed and we may feel that we can’t spare the time to be “fully present” with our children. Can you share with our readers 5 strategies about how we can create more space in our lives in order to give our children more quality attention? Please include examples or stories for each, if you can.
I find that strategies that generally help us be more present and embodied with ourselves translate to being able to be more present in our parenting and with our children.
- Find micro-moments of pause or reflection. Sometimes this might be taking a breath in between meetings, of staying in the car a few minutes solo before child care pick up
- Schedule white space on your calendar. It can be easy to have back to back duties, which inevitably leads to feeling frazzled. Keeping protected time on our calendar to do nothing is one way to have a bit more spaciousness.
- Have one-on-one time with your child. This can be challenging if you have multiple children or are trying to fit a lot of family activities into weekends, but it is worth the challenge! Having moments, however infrequent, where they feel like they have 100% of your attention is so special.
- Notice your own emotions and reactions. Just like kids, how we feel is often tied up with the people and environments around us. Checking in with yourself emotionally and self-regulating helps us model that for our children.
- Take time off. We all need breaks and time to be cared for if we are expected to care for others.
How do you define a “good parent”? Can you give an example or story?
Hmm, this is a good, but hard question! And my answer could honestly sound different depending on what day or mood you catch me in! Today, I’ll say that a “good parent” is being able to balance your own needs with your child needs and skillfully finding ways to tend to both, even (or especially) when there might be tension between the needs, or even feel like competing needs. For me, weekends are an example of this. It is when I have the most time to spend with my child, but also when I potentially have some precious downtime for myself, or an opportunity to connect with my partner. So, I try and make plans that allow me to do both.
How do you inspire your child to “dream big”? Can you give an example or story?
We watch a lot of shows and read books about other places in the world, other families, and other species (aquatic life is a favorite!) I started doing this with a desire to help my child understand what a vast universe we live in and how many different truths and realities exist simultaneously. To be honest I often find that my child ends up asking questions or making comments that actually push me to dream a bit bigger.
How do you, a person who masterfully straddles the worlds of career and family, define “success”?
These days, having time and energy at the end of the day to do a bit of reflection feels like a success. Having some quiet time to think about the small moments of joy, challenges that arose, and my own emotions and thoughts feels like a win! Having a practice of reflection also allows me to think strategically about some of the bigger goals or milestones I have for myself.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that inspire you to be a better parent? Can you explain why you like them?
I find that the things that help me feel like a more whole human help me be a better parent. Two experiences from this year that have done that are a course called Criándome, Cuidándome from Latinx Parenting, led by Leslie Priscilla Arreola-Hillenbrand, and Embodiment Basics from The Embodiment Institute, led by Prentis Hemphill. There are also 3 books centering mothers of color that I have found deeply resonant and inspirational: 1) Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, 2) The Chicana Motherwork Anthology, and 3) We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
These past few years I have been developing my identity and craft as an author, and dealing with a lot of self doubt. Words by the prolific writer Gloria Anzaldúa have been a lifeline. This quote from her essay “Speaking in Tongues” stick out in particular as a balm to the nerves I often feel when writing:
“What validates us as human beings validates us as writers. What matters to us is the relationships that are important to us whether with our self or others. We must use what is important to us to get to the writing. No topic is too trivial”
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
This movement is already well underway, and being part of the fight for paid family and medical leave is deeply important to me. At one point or another in life we all are in the role of providing care for another person or needing care ourselves, and I want to see that care work be honored and compensated in my lifetime.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Arianna Taboada of The Expecting Entrepreneur: How Extremely Busy Leaders Make Time to be Great… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.