Parental Development

We cut last week's episode short, so we needed another one to finish our conversation about expectations. In last week's episode we talked about the need to lower expectations if our kids are showing us with their behavior that they can't do the task. But what if your kid has done it in the past and now all of a sudden they are refusing or saying they can't do something anymore? There is still a function behind this behavior, and I choose to see this behavior as a CAN'T do as opposed to a WON'T do. This helps me view them in a more loving, compassionate way, as opposed to simply getting frustrated about their behavior. We just CHOOSE to assume positive intent. This allows us to enjoy our kids as opposed to always being upset or believing such negative things about them and their behavior. It prevents us from having to chase their behavior and just look for ways to correct them on a regular basis. If you have a behavior you're trying to change or an issue you want to address, it is almost always helpful to include your child in this discussion and planning. You can communicate what you want to do and let them give ideas or communicate their thoughts and feelings about how things might be going. Be prepared to explain your reasoning, more than simply, 'because I said so.' Is there ever a time when digging in our heels to address a behavior is appropriate? For us, that is usually only appropriate if there's a safety issue. If you as the parent are digging in on other behaviors, that is almost always your stuff, your work to do, and your own history coming up within your relationship with your kids. Our kids are not responsible for our stuff or our work, and responding to them in ways that are out of proportion with behavior and issues, is not theirs to take. This is what breaking generational cycles is really about. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode talks through the expectations we have for our kids, how to make sure they're realistic and look at them differently, through this new parenting lens. Can we differentiate our DESIRES for our kids from the EXPECTATIONS of our kids. Expectations feel like boundaries or rules, which can lead to the punishment, control, shame, or coercion we're trying to change in this type of parenting. If we truly believe that "bad" behavior is a lack of a skill, lack of connection, etc. and that all behavior makes sense, then it's impossible to truly expect "good" behavior all the time. It is necessary to lower expectations if we truly believe they are always doing the best they can. Many times parents shift the way we're practicing parenting (gentle, conscious, respectful, etc.) but we haven't shifted expectations at the same time, which makes it hard to make those two line up, and can lead to more difficulties feeling good about this approach and staying in the new kind of interventions. Sometimes we come up with reasons for requiring kids to live up to our expectations when really it's more that we just want them to do what we say or think they should do. Our kids will tell us, with their behavior, about the expectations we have for them. It's on us to listen to them, get curious about their behavior, and try to determine why they might be struggling consistently to meet certain expectations or follow through with certain tasks. Bottom line: an expectation is unrealistic if their behavior tells us they can't do it. Because we drop the expectations, it allows us to stop chasing behaviors, because we no longer expect near perfection from our kids and can instead become more of a coach and supporter as opposed to a task driver. Instead of identifying expectations, which are usually an either/or situation, what if we looked at this as goals, which is something we work towards together. As long as we have expectations for other people's behavior will always leave you feeling disappointed. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

The moral of this week's episode: Nothing matters other than your relationship with your child! What doesn't matter: grades; behavior; attitude; sports What does matter: Our relationship My job as a parent isn't to control my kids' behavior, get them to act a certain way, make sure they're making other people comfortable. It's to show them love and acceptance and show them what a healthy, loving relationship is supposed to look like. So much pressure is put on parents to make sure our kids act a certain way and don't get in trouble, which can feel really lonely and overwhelming. Our kids are not equipped to handle responsibilities that were never meant to be theirs. They're not equipped to handle other people's emotions, behaviors, reactions, or expectations. They have their own stressors, challenges, and needs that might already be overwhelming to them, so adding anything to their plate is virtually impossible for them to manage on their own. If you have a kid who's struggling - stop focusing on the behavior; shift your focus on the relationship. It can start to feel like the entire relationship is focused on the negative, making it hard to even want to be around one another. If you can refocus on enjoying each other and improving the relationship, the rest will come. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

How do we treat our kids like full human people without treating them like adults and forcing them to grow up too quickly. Let's talk about it! Treating our kids like full people simply means that we welcome all of their humanness and don't try to minimize or talk them out of their experiences. It means that they deserve as much respect as any adult. There is not a topic that's off limits with my kids. There is a spectrum of the amount, intensity, and way information is shared. For hard topics: Tell the truth Follow their lead Share what's developmentally appropriate Welcome follow up conversations The amount of information we share with our kids grows with them as they age. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing the minute they become curious about a certain topic. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode finishes our conversation about bias, inclusion, and how our brains are wired for sameness , making these changes hard. In order to start to change our unconscious beliefs, we first have to bring it into our conscious awareness so we can then override those that are unhealthy, dangerous, wrong, etc. We have to consciously choose to access the parts of our brains that challenge our biases and help us develop new pathways regarding people and situations that are "other." Interactions with "others" gives opportunities to challenge our unconscious beliefs about them Our brains default to the easiest, fastest associations possible, to preserve energy. Sometimes this makes us rely on stereotypes and deny experiences that might challenge them. I want my kids' beliefs to be based on their actual experiences with people who are other than them instead of relying on the fear or discomfort associated with being near different people. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode talks about what can sometimes be a taboo or hard topic: bias, diversity, and race. We utilize science to talk through how our brains are wired for sameness and build bias into our system, in order to protect us. For more information about this topic, check out this book, that we used to start our conversation. Understanding the science can help take the shame and judgment out of this topic, which can then make it easier to have productive conversations. Our brains are designed to identify and empathize more with people who look like us. Our conscious beliefs and what we would say about people who are different than us, are often different from the unconscious signals our brains send us when we are exposed to differences. It's not possible to not have any biases; it's built into our brains! All of our experiences are either lessening or strengthening the biases we have naturally. As a parent, I want to pay attention to how I talk about "others," so my kids don't pick up on my biases and so it won't reinforce the differences their brain is recognizing. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

Guess who's back!!! We're slowly getting back into the swing of things with our first episode of the new year! This episode talks about several topics and situations we encountered over the last few weeks and different approaches and suggestions for dealing with them. Anxiety isn't something that we can simply overpower. It has to be managed and processed in a way that honors it, validates it, and teaches our kids ways to manage it on their own. Forcing kids to repair with their peers can teach them to ignore the fact that they were mistreated. This isn't the goal for parents, and we want our kids to avoid being hurt by their friends, but it's also important for them to learn how they should be treated, how to communicate that, how to take a break, and the importance of leaving relationships that aren't healthy. The abuse of children does not discriminate. It can reach every race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, and more. It's important that we as parents stay vigilant and do what we can to keep them safe and also develop relationships that are strong enough to combat any abuse that might happen to them. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

It's our last episode of 2023!! This one talks through various topics, including lying, managing big behaviors, and managing different opinions of family members. You can hear our episode on lying here and the episode when Lincoln had a hard interaction with his teacher here. Bottom line: Give people grace and approach behavior with curiosity. If you're looking for more information on parenting differences, that one can be found here. What are your non-negotiables? What is reasonable to expect from others? It's also important to remember the difference between boundaries and requests or demands. Boundaries are something I do, in response to something else. Requests or demands are things I ask of other people. Imposing a boundary requires nothing from the other person. Requests or demands expects others to change their behavior. In a perfect world, we would have an open dialogue full of information sharing and discussion of perspectives, in order to both feel comfortable parenting our kids. If it's not, we can set a boundary with other people. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

Last week was all about learning what our attachment style is, now this episode takes about what to do about it. We have no control over how our attachment is developed. We do have control over how we adjust moving forward. Attachment healing can only happen within relationship. To change attachment the patterns first have to come into our awareness. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode talks about adult attachmen styles, which is important for us to learn, so we can understand how we relate to others, including our children. We need to normalize all attachment styles, while also understanding that we can work toward being secure. Our comfort level with and willingness to allow closeness and intimacy determines our attachmen style in adulthood. Recognizing how our insecure attachment can be so easily passed down to our kids through our interactions, and deciding to try to do things differently even a little bit, is how generational cycles are broken and we actually achieve better for our kids. If you're interested in learning what your own attachmen style is, take this quiz here. If you're interested in more information about this topic, check out this episode here, here, here, and here. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode dives deeper into the relationship between parents and adult children. What do those relationships look like now? What if parents aren't able to do what you need? How do you know if you're ready to have hard conversations? For adult children, true healing can only come when we stop being dependent on our parents for our validation, regulation, and wellbeing. If our parents weren't able to meet those needs in our childhood, it's unlikely they'll be able to do it differently when we're adults. We're created to want connection with our attachment figures, even if that isn't terribly healthy, safe, or secure. As adult children, we can often see our parents' patterns and challenges more clearly, but that doesn't mean they can see it the same way. Seeing this clearly can make us more empathetic but can also increase our anger and misunderstanding because they're not doing what we think they should. For many parents, the thought of unpacking the generational components and trauma feels overwhelming, so it becomes easier to just avoid it completely. We have to get to a point where we believe: I don't need it; I'm not dependent on it; I will be ok without it; I will heal without it. When we feel ourselves slip into old, unhealthy attachment patterns, we need to be able to step away and return later. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode is a little bit of everything, all based on situations happening in Leah's house. How do we validate anxiety without contributing to it? How do we challenge unhealthy thoughts without being invalidating? How do we just sit in the discomfort with them? Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

All parents desperately want to protect their kids, which is a great and noble goal. At the same time, overly protecting our kids in certain areas can stunt their growth and development in important ways. Many times the concept of protection allows us to control behaviors in ways that make us feel more justified. Areas in which we protect our kids in inappropriate ways: PhysicalSocialInformation - Emotions - Problems & Consequences - Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This one is for parents of adult children, who might be learning about this type of parenting and information for the first time. How do you talk about what you wish you'd done differently? How do you repair what you now see as ruptures? Ultimately, everyone wants to be validated, which is not the same as acceptance. We all have our own experience, and just because it's different than your experience, doesn't mean it's wrong. 1. Validate 2. Listen to understand 3. Guard against defensiveness 4. Apologize when appropriate These conversations can be really healing if both parties come to the table with positive intent. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

Adoption is beautiful, necessary, and important. It's also hard and often misunderstood. This episode talks about some important ways adoption is misunderstood and how to think about it in a way that might be helpful. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

In this episode, we FINALLY talk about attachment, Leah's first love and truly what guides everything she does as a parent and a person. Attachment is a reciprocal relationship between people and begins to develop in utero and continues throughout childhood, but particularly in the first three years of life. As we respond to our babies in distress, we start to hardwire their thoughts and beliefs about themselves, other people, and the world around them. Over time, our responses to our babies change, largely when they become mobile and develop language but remain incredibly important to continue to teach them that they are safe, people will take care of them and protect them, and the world is a safe place in which they can develop, explore, and grow. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

This episode talks about consequences, which usually means punishment and often doesn't address the actual problem or behavior. People use these words interchangeably, but they actually are very different. Many people only know two ways to change or manage behavior: rewards or punishment. We believe that misbehavior is a sign of a need or a missing skill or a desire for connection, which means imposed consequences are not effective in actually fixing any of those problems. Attempting to impose consequences can very often create a power struggle, because we can only "force" our kids to follow through by using fear, threats, or manipulation. It's important to avoid putting yourself in a position where you can't guarantee cooperation or follow through. If your goal for imposing consequences is truly to TEACH your kids how to do better, think about how you would teach them to read. If you wouldn't do it to teach them academically, then it probably isn't actually going to teach them how to have better behavior. There seems to be a group of parents who either think kids always know how to do the right thing, so the consequence has to hurt, which doesn't truly take child development into account. Demanding our kids behave in ways they're not developmentally able to and then punishing them for falling short leads to shame, low self-esteem, guilt, and increased bad behavior. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

Last week we talked about what zaps our resources, and this week we build on that conversation talking about how to build resources and think of resourcing as a verb. In the therapy world, resourcing someone means we're giving people tools to be able to manage the stress and dysregulation that often comes from stres and trauma. Effectively, we want to do the same thing with our kids, giving them tools to know how to handle the stress they experience, even if we don't understand or agree with the stress. If our kids don't have the resources to cope with certain situations, then it's our job to help them build those. To help kids build their resources, we can help them recognize when they're overwhelmed or dysregulated. Then, give them some options of things to try to help them feel better. Ask them again how they feel and if the tool they used helped them recover. Once you have something that works, prompt them when they start to get overwhelmed so they can learn to use those tools on their own. Ways to replenish resources: Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

We all know when our kids are out of resources and can't handle anything. It can be challenging though to know how to respond in those situations. Things that zap our resources: Hunger Fatigue Pain Decision making Heavy effort Punishment Lack of connection It's ok to lower demands and expectations when you see your kids are out of resources. When they're out of resources, we want our kids to learn how to: Recognize what's happening Communicate that to their people Regulate their behavior Replenish their resources Removing demands when our kids are struggling is one of the best ways to take care of them. Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram

One of the most important skills our kids can learn is problem solving! Lots of research has shown it leads to better academic performance, self-esteem, and social skills. This episode talks through this information and gives ideas for how to develop this skill in our kids. Problem solving comes from the prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of our brain to develop. But when we're in a stress response, that part of our brain is not working as well as it can, making problem solving hard. This process happens outside of our awareness and is largely not in our control. As adults, we learn different tips and tricks to remind ourselves of different things and make sure our problem solving and decision making are functioning. Our kids don't have those skills...yet. So, we should expect that our kids will forget almost everything and screw up when they're trying every new thing. The mistake we make as parents is TELLING them how to fix something or do it better, instead of letting them figure out, "What do you want to do differently." Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!! Facebook Instagram