SYPM 012: From fear-filled conflict to parenting as a team

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

"You're doing it wrong! You're not asking for consent before changing the diaper!"

In this Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode we meet parent Nicole, who has core values related to being empathic, constantly learning, and upholding justice in the world. These awesome values came together in a difficult way when Nicole became a parent: she had a deep fear of not getting parenting right, so she was constantly reading and trying to find that one piece of information that would close the gap between her struggles and the kind of parent she wanted to be.

The stress of parenting an infant brought out a controlling side of her where she attempted to script every aspect of her (and her husband's) interactions with her child, thinking they had already screwed up parenting because he hadn't asked their child's consent before changing her diaper.

Nicole was raised by a single parent who had had a traumatic upbringing, and Nicole grew up sometimes feeling scared by her mother's oversized reactions to normal childhood behavior. She knew she wanted more for her children - but didn't know what to do. Over the last year she's been working on 'reparenting' herself so she doesn't have to parent from a place of fear any more, and can relax into understanding her children's feelings - and her own and her partner's feelings as well.

Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits Workshop

Do you have a child aged 1 - 10? Are they resisting, ignoring you, and talking back at every request you make? Do you often feel frustrated, annoyed, and even angry with them? Are you desperate for their cooperation - but don't know how to get it? If your children are constantly testing limits, the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you.

Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now to join the waitlist for the FREE workshop that will start on April 24, 2024. Click the banner to learn more:

Jump to highlights:

• (03:19) Nicole's background
• (04:36) Nicole's parenting beliefs and values
• (06:31) Teaching respect by giving respect
• (08:07) Fear and anxiety of not getting parenting right
• (09:32) How inter generational trauma show up in your family
• (11:37) The unexpected reparenting piece
• (13:35) How talking about death with children led Nicole to my work
• (15:13) Nicole's experience with the Parenting Membership
• (18:32) What shifted in Nicole's that made her decide to take the Membership
• (19:17) Realizing the most unconditional thing you can do for your kids
• (20:12) Relationships our complex yet we don't think that way when it comes to our relationship with our children
• (21:08) Nicole's incredible example of how she shows up for her children and handles things differently now compared to before
• (24:45) Becoming more confident in parenting
• (26:09) Having the language to talk about our needs
• (28:39) How Nicole and her husband wants to model conflict to their children
• (34:44) Wrapping up

Resource links:

• Setting Loving (& Effective) Limits Workshop
• The Parenting Membership

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen 00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide Called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You and What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Jen 00:59 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we welcome a special guest Nicole who has been working with me for over a year now. Nicole was raised by a single parent who had had a traumatic childhood herself, and who was young when Nicole was born. Nicole told me she didn't even realise that there were other ways to be a parent until she became one herself. She stumbled on Respectful Parenting and read a number of the popular books in the field and found my podcast when she was searching for resources beyond what the books could provide. She had previously worked in speech therapy practice and was accustomed to using evidence-based practices. Jen 01:32 So she realised that this approach fit well with her background. When the pandemic hit, she quickly saw she needed more help in figuring out solutions that would fit her family. She joined the Parenting Membership and I think it's fair to say she didn't really realise what she was getting into. She told me that through the membership, she's discovered concepts like Reparenting that she would never have known to seek out, and which have been difficult to process but have ultimately helped her to understand herself and connect with her children more effectively. She's very clear that she's not a perfect parent, but she's constantly working on applying what she's learned. She sees the guilt that she often feels as a parent and knows how to move through that now and show herself the compassion that she never learned up to this point. She has a plan. And it isn't something that requires her to do certain things in certain ways, but it's more of a North Star that guides her so the interactions that she has with her children, even on the difficult days are aligned with the deeply held values that she has as a parent and as a person. Jen 02:28 Many parents see they want to raise their children differently than the way they were raised, but need some support in figuring out not just what to do, but how to do it, and how to remember to do it so they can rewrite the script of childhood for their children. If you need some help leaving the old parenting script behind as well, I invite you to join us in the Parenting Membership. To learn more about it, go to YourParentingMojo.com/ParentingMembership. Jen 02:52 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we are here with Nicole who is going to tell us a little bit about her family and some of the changes that she's been making over the last year or so and how that's really affected her and her interactions with her family. So welcome, Nicole. I'm so glad you're here. Nicole 03:10 Thank you, Jen. It's so great to be here. Jen 03:12 So I wonder if you can maybe just start by telling us a bit about you and your family. Who are you? Where are you? Who else is with you? Nicole 03:19 Sure. I'm Nicole. I live outside of Philadelphia. And my past career, I was a Speech Therapist in the school settings and I work mostly in early childhood and preschool. And now I am home with my two very spirited and sensitive kiddos. I have a four year old son and a six year old daughter. And I also am supported by my very supportive husband, Jack. So yeah, we're all here together and I ended up leaving my job because I wanted to be the main influence for my kiddos while they were in their early childhood years since I'd spent so much time learning about it and working with other people's families. And now we are here and we are homeschooling and unschooling and I feel like the kids are doing really well considering the circumstances. Jen 04:17 Yeah, considering it has not been an easy year for anybody by any stretch of the imagination, Okay, awesome. So I'm wondering about I just want to get to know you a little bit more as a person and the beliefs and the values that really shape you can you can you tell us about that both on a personal level as a person but also as a parent? Nicole 04:36 Sure. So I I definitely have started identifying with being a very empathetic and sensitive person, which I used to think was problematic and maybe one of my weaknesses, but I'm thinking that it's driving the things that do make me who I am. So I have to always uphold, I guess, respect and justice. Those are things that when I see them violated I feel it, I feel it in my body. And it's kind of, it's really hard for me to, to see those things happening. So those are definitely big values for me. And I guess curiosity is big, I think I've always kind of sought to grow more as a person always find out more information. When I was working, I would be taking courses constantly, just because I wanted to know the most I could know about what I was doing. And that's also made me really value science, if science can be a value. It is to me. You know, some of the places I've worked, I've been surrounded by some really great clinicians that were always doing research and using evidence based practices to drive their therapy with the kiddos. And that inspired me. And also, I married into a family of PhDs and researchers and there's just people around me that are always looking for the why and the evidence. So to me, that is something that I, you know, hold very close to my... I guess yeah, that's one of my big values. Jen 06:08 And it seems as though that your values could potentially create problems for you as a parent, particularly around the idea of respect, where if you're coming from sort of the mainstream, not not a value that's primarily considered important in parenting. What was that shift like for you? Or was it a shift? Or how does that show up for you as a parent? Nicole 06:31 Well, I don't think kids are born knowing how to respect their parents. They're just going about and getting their needs met and doing that in whatever way they can. And it doesn't show up like respect. So is it our job as the parents to teach them respect? Is this something that we can say you need to do this? Or is this something that we show to them by, you know, living it and showing them respect and showing our partners and our family respect? So it definitely is something that I still think about now and notice if the kiddos aren't necessarily showing me respect, but it's also not my job to teach them how to do it or tell them to do it. I know that that's something that will come in time when I treat them with it. So Jen 07:14 Yeah, yeah. And then the other thing he said was, as you were talking about science, but to me, I was thinking it's sort of a thirst for knowledge, as you mentioned, as well and in your work, and that can be paralysing as a parent where we feel like, oh, if I just had this one piece of knowledge that everything would click, and all of the struggles I'm having with my child wouldn't be struggles anymore. Does that resonate? Nicole 07:36 Yes. When I started out parenting, I didn't really know what I was doing, like most parents. And I did think that if I read every book that kind of aligned with my values, that I could just figure it out and get the recipe for how to parent and how to get kids that turn out great and yeah, it didn't really work like that. Jen 08:03 Tell me more. What what was what didn't work? Nicole 08:07 I think that there was just this fear and anxiety of not getting it right. So if I didn't follow the book to the tee, that I would somehow screw up the kids, and that if my partner didn't follow my instructions, he would then screw up our kids. So, you know, it turned into this controlling thing where I was trying to control him, I was trying to control the situation. I remember shouting to him in the other room during diaper changes and saying, well, you're not letting them know what what you're doing first. You're not asking for consent to change the diaper and just thinking, well, this is the end of the world and we've already screwed them up. So yeah, I was definitely you know, it brought out this perfectionist side in me that we just had to get it right. And we had to do with the book said, and yeah, it caused a lot more fear and anxiety than I probably would have liked. Jen 09:03 Yeah, I can imagine. And I'm wondering if that fear and anxiety ultimately comes from a place related to intergenerational trauma where the relationship that you may have had with your parent may have been one that you're sort of looking at and thinking, hey, it's in some ways, I see that she did the best that she could and in other ways, I want something different. How does that show up in your relationship with your kids? Nicole 09:32 Probably the drive to know more and do better came from knowing that there was this possibility of intergenerational trauma. I know my mother's upbringing was not so easy for her and she didn't have a lot of support from her mother. And, you know, when my mother had me, she was really young and she was a single mom, and we didn't have a lot of money. She was working two jobs a lot. So, she showed up for me the best that she could. And a lot of times, you know, she would be triggered, and she would have her big feelings, and then I too would have my big feelings. So I guess I didn't always feel safe to share my big feelings with her. And I didn't want that for my kids, I knew that that was an important piece of having a relationship with someone to be able to say, hey, this isn't working for me or this upset me, or I'm just feeling this way and know that that would be received by the other person in a safe way. But I had to be really sensitive around my sensitive mother and make sure that I didn't upset her because I'd feel really guilty for that, because she was doing the best she could. And yeah, it was also a bit scary, right? It's a bit scary when your parents yell at you. So I really didn't want that for my kids. And I read all the books, and I would be able to just stop the intergenerational trauma. Jen 10:58 Yeah. And there's so much more to it than that, isn't there? Yeah. So is there a real sense that it feel it feels like you're reparenting yourself and trying to give yourself some of the things that she may have tried to do and just wasn't able to meet your needs wasn't able to see that you were a person who had needs as well, at the same time as you're learning how to do this for children as well - for your own children? Nicole 11:24 Yeah, I think so. When I joined the Membership, I thought we'd be getting lots of information and lots of support, which we did, and... Jen 11:32 The right piece of information that will unlock everything. Nicole 11:37 But I didn't expect the reparenting piece. I think that was something that I know was something that I had never heard of, but it was something that caught me by surprise. And it was really powerful for me, just to kind of go back and talk to that younger person, who I never knew was still in there, but she is and just let her know that your feelings are important. And you don't have to be scared to voice your feelings and you're safe in all situations. And you're doing okay. So yeah, that piece was... Whoo. Jen 12:17 I will never forget that honestly. And and for people who are watching this was a module of content in the Membership, and Nicole gamely volunteered to be coached in front of a small intimate group of people that she knew fairly well by then and, and to just kind of go back to what it was like to be that young person who had these needs that weren't met. And I mean, yeah, that gave me the chills as well. And seeing the shift that happened in you to be able to say, Yeah, I had needs. And I wasn't asking for the world. I just needed to be heard and for somebody to understand or try and try and understand trying to empathise with me. And to be able to say that, yes, those were valid and also, okay, now I can start to see how I can do that for my own children as well. I mean, it's, it was it was amazing to see you go through that. Nicole 13:18 I felt really lucky that I had the chance to go through a reparenting coaching session. Jen 13:25 And so I actually don't know the answer to this question. How did you find my work in the first place? Nicole 13:33 I guess someone had given me Magda Gerber's book when I first started, Yeah, I became a new parent and it was someone I worked with, and I trusted her and I thought, okay, I'll look at this respectful based parenting being child-led, and I really liked it. I thought, oh, gosh, this isn't something that anyone really does. So I really liked exploring that. And then I found Janet Lansbury's work but this RIE Parenting only takes you to about three years old, you know, that toddler years. And then, you know, as more complicated topics come up, I didn't really know where to look. And my three year old was asking a lot the time she was three now she's six, but where we are before we are born, and where do we go after we die? And I didn't feel prepared to answer that at three years old. And I'm not religious, but I don't want to close the door of religion to my kids with my own beliefs. So I started looking for research based podcasts on death. So that is how I found...