Shawn Johnson East Is Basically The Gold Medal Version Of That Mom

If you’re a millennial like me, you are well-versed in all things Shawn Johnson East. First and foremost, you know her as a former Olympian who captivated our hearts at the 2008 Games, ultimately winning gold on the balance beam and silver in the team, all-around, and floor competitions. Or maybe you’re a Dancing with the Stars fan, where she has appeared not once but twice. Or perhaps you know her more recently from Special Forces, a military-ish training reality show. But if you’re a regular mom, you’re more likely to have seen her on Instagram, where she often posts funny videos alongside her husband, former NFL long snapper Andrew East.

The Nashville-based duo have three kids, ages 5 (nearly 6), 4, and 1 (nearly 2). She and East run a company called Family Made, and are gearing up to promote their first book, The Courage to Commit, which comes out next spring.

While she’s so much more than a funny mom on Instagram, I got the chance to talk with her via Zoom about her social media presence, her life as a mom of three, and parenting. She took the call from her office, where she has her leotards from the 2007 World Championships and the Olympics hanging above her desk. (Yes, I fangirled big time over it.)

Scary Mommy: Jumping right in: What has it been like going from one to two, then two to three kids?

Shawn Johnson East: Oh my God. Rocked my world. I feel like the hardest was zero to one for me, just because it was a massive life transition. I had never really babysat before. I had never changed a diaper, neither had my husband. We were very selfish individuals, being from professional athletics. Everything was about our routines and our sleep and our food. Going from that to having a baby, where it all revolves around baby — as it should — was a huge wake-up call. One to two was the easiest for me.

SM: Oh, interesting.

SJE: My first had some feeding troubles, and I had a very hard time with that. And I think the reason my second felt the easiest was, one, he was a 10-pound baby, so he came out sleeping, and two, he was the easiest eater.

I had so many people say going from two to three was easy. That was really, really hard on me. I felt like I had figured out how to parent and how to be a mom, and this little dude just did everything differently.

SM: Oh, really? How?

SJE: I thought I had a rough feeding experience with Drew, but he (Barrett) was the absolute hardest. His tongue tie kind of went undiagnosed for a while, so we didn't catch it until almost 10 weeks. And so for those 10 weeks, it was just a nightmare. We couldn't feed, we couldn't sleep, we couldn't do anything.

SM: And you had two toddlers at home, too.

SJE: Yeah, and it was the middle of the winter. He's a December baby. And it made me question if I was a good mom. It's all the mom stuff.

SM: All the stuff. Yeah.

SJE: I was like, I don't know how to do this. How do I do three now? I was really mourning this time with my other two, and because this little guy was just so difficult, it put the biggest strain on my marriage. It sent us to marriage counseling. It was just wild.

SM: How long did it take — if it’s happened yet — that you felt like yourself again postpartum?

SJE: It's just starting. I felt like it’s happened later and later with each kid. After my first, I got back into my groove, probably around the six-month mark, I was able to find a routine, which felt quick.

My first son probably around the year, and then third, we're almost two, and I'm finally feeling like I might have a handle on things.

SM: It throws you for a loop, that's for sure. And I know that you're an only child, right? I'm an only child too, and I have two boys. Has it been wild watching the sibling dynamic? Because it's been truly wild for me.

SJE: I don't understand it. It's all so new, and I'm so lucky. It's all new, but I will say, I mean ever since I started dating, I’ve gravitated towards big families. It has nothing to do with my upbringing; my parents and I are like my best friends. But I have felt lonely as an adult not having siblings and nieces and nephews and stuff. I love having married into that, and I wanted that for my children.

[Andrew is] one of five. So are his parents, and everyone has multiple children, so it's a very, very large, very chaotic family.

SM: You do get the sense of what is actually normal and what's not, because I'm the same way. I have to ask my husband — he's the middle of three — and I'll be like, "They're beating each other, like physically abusing each other, is this OK?" He's like, "Yeah, it's fine. They'll figure it out."

SJE: It's like, what's too much? Where do we draw the line on it? We're not there yet.

SM: You and your husband are obviously athletes. What is sports like in your house, and what's the thinking on sports and kids?

SJE: Sports is a very natural thing in our house, so it's not pushed on our kids at all. But I do think just by seeing what we're interested in, it's become a thing in our house. My husband is always watching sports. My husband works out every morning at 5 a.m. in our garage, and my 4-year-old, because he's just the outlier in everything, will wake up at 5 a.m. and go join my husband every single day.

SM: That is so dear.

SJE: It is dear. But he will not sleep past 5 a.m.

SM: Yeah, that's not dear at all.

SJE: So, I feel like sports is just kind of part of our life, and my kids are very, very active because of us. We're always going on family bike rides, or going for walks, or going on a hike, or playing on the playground. Our kids have already started sports. I will say the one thing that we try very, very hard to do is I have no biased interest in my kids being in gymnastics. My husband has no biased interest in them being in football. We just feel like sports was such a blessing to us academically, socially, physically, that I would love to see them find a passion somewhere, and I would love to help foster that for them. It might not be in sports. I'm fine with that. But I mean, they're very athletic children.

SM: I'm curious because there's been so much talk about parenting on the sidelines and that sort of stuff. You probably haven't seen it yet because they're still young, but...

SJE: Oh, I've seen it… And it's something.

SM: Yeah, it certainly is.

SJE: I feel very, very blessed having had my upbringing with my parents, who were the opposite of coaching or parenting on the sidelines ... they truly were hands-off, and they said, "Your coach is your coach and I'm your parent and we separate that, and no matter what, I'm going to be your biggest fan." And so with my children, I have just already seen so much. I also coached for a very long time, so I got to see it in the coaching world firsthand.

I think where parents go wrong is, like, if you want it more than your child, it will never happen. Ever. And if your child feels like they're adding value to themselves as a child of yours because of the activity they're doing, it will hurt them. My husband and I value so much being our kid's biggest fans, and making sure that we instill character and morals, but keep that separation... It is wild what I've heard and seen.

SM: How do you make time for yourself? What do you do in your maybe-not-so-ample free time?

SJE: Workout. That's my sanity. Every Sunday night, my husband and I sit down after the kids go to bed, and we look over our next week's schedule and, like at a very micro-macro level, go hour-by-hour every day to kind of find the pieces of time where Andrew will say, I need 5 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday, Friday for workouts. And I'm like, great. That means if a child wakes up at 5 a.m., it's my responsibility and not yours. It's just your time.

So we go through every single day for the whole week and put our times in, and then work backwards from there. Filling in work, filling in kids' schedules, who's doing drop-offs, who's doing pickups, and making sure that we protect those windows. We're better parents if we do it. We're better spouses if we do it.

Today was my first day working out in I think a week and a half because we went to Disney World and did all this stuff for fall break, which is incredible, but wow, that's a lot. And I feel like a better mom already.

SM: That's smart. I know you covered the Olympics last year and took your whole family. What was the highlight for you? What's the best family memory that came out of that?

SJE: Paris was absolutely incredible. Being able to take my daughter with my mom to gymnastics was really special. So it was my mom, my daughter, and me, and we got to watch the All-Around and watch Simone win was an iconic moment.

But my favorite memory, I don't know why, because we could do this here, but after Paris, we went to Italy just to kind of decompress and truly have a vacation with all of us. We rented this little Airbnb, and it was on top of a hill. The house overlooked the sea, and at sunset one night we were just playing tag, like family tag. And our kids were just so happy and so content. They were halfway across the world, so fully immersed in the culture and the atmosphere. It was the most beautiful experience. We travel so much with our children and they do so well, but it was just this family moment that I think of so often.

SM: That's lovely. The little moments that just peek through. OK, switching gears a second. Dancing with the Stars is on. Are you watching, and who are you rooting for?

SJE: Absolutely. I just binge-watched the past three episodes last night. Jordan Chiles, she's crushing it. I am rooting for Jordan. I have to root for Mark Ballas because he was my partner, and Whitney. And then obviously Robert Irwin because he's just a national treasure.

SM: He's not even our national treasure, but he kind of is and I'll take it.

SJE: But I'll take him. What is he, like, 20? He's a child.

SM: He's a baby. But it must be a lot of work.

SJE: Yeah, it's a lot… I was really lucky. The first time I was a minor, I was 16, so I had child labor laws to where I was protected to only work a few hours a day. So it really wasn't a lot the first time. But the second time I went back I was 19, and I mean, we were doing 12-hour days. It was wild.

SM: Wow, that's bonkers. So the internet of it all. You do so many funny challenges with and without your husband. Is there ever a red line where he's like, I'm not doing that challenge, that's too insane?

SJE: So the funny part is it's flip-flopped. My husband comes up with everything.

SM: Is he just chronically online watching stuff and saying we should do this?

SJE: He's just a creative guy. I'm his biggest fan. He comes up with all these quirky ideas, and he doesn't consume a lot of social media at all. So a lot of it's his ideas, but I'm always the red line. I'm the party pooper.

SM: That's so funny.

SJE: He will do absolutely anything.

SM: So, is your issue with keeping your personal life separate, or is it a myriad of things?

SJE: It's a bunch of things. My husband and I have such a fun relationship and poke fun at each other a lot and can play a lot of jokes, but our biggest priority is our marriage. And we always want to showcase marriage in such a beautiful light because we think it's such a great thing. I'm always the red line because I'm like, oh, someone might not understand that joke and might take it seriously. Or people are always getting a glimpse, they're not seeing the full picture. I feel like I play PR.

SM: Because you're so PR-minded in that regard, when you do get trolls or obnoxious people coming out of the woodwork, how do you handle it?

SJE: I am a really big critic of myself, and I'm a people pleaser by nature, so I have a really hard time with comments. I am very human that way. I try to say I have thick skin, but I don't. I could read 1,000 nice comments, but only remember the one negative one.

I'm always wanting to do good things — be a good person and be portrayed in a good light and influence people in a decent way. So yeah, it always gets under my skin.

SM: I get that. You spend a lot of time with him, between marriage and filming Special Forces. How do you separate work from marriage?

SJE: We've been doing it for so long that it's become second nature. We have a lot of unwritten rules that have just become routine that protect that. If someone's in the office, they're working. So they're no longer husband or wife, but they're business-minded. You actually have to book time with husband and wife if you need it. We don't work past 5 because it's time for kids and family. We don't talk about work after 5. A bunch of different little things that.

Doing the show and stuff together was great for us because it's very natural for us to be working and together, and we are so used to each other's competitive side. We knew how to support each other. Andrew's the fun, boisterous, loud, energetic, golden retriever running around, and I just go cold and shut down, internalizing everything.

And it works for us. We both know that about each other, and we know how we need to support each other.

SM: I have to ask: Where are your medals?

SJE: Tucked away in some drawer somewhere.

SM: Oh my God. No.

SJE: I overthink things too much. I don't ever want my children to feel like they're growing up in the shadow of our titles. I want them to feel like they have a clean path. And so I'm like, yeah, it's not about us. It's about our children now. It's their art, their things hanging up. It's not our stuff.

SM: Well, that's probably the smarter way to parent. I'd probably hang them up.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.