Eps 191: Back to the Basics of Positive Discipline

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:04
Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for inspiration and information on the parenting journey. I'm your host, Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer, parent coach and mom of two teenagers of my own. I am honored to be a guide and a fellow traveler on the path of more connected and thoughtful parenting. Also wanting to remind you, you listeners, that come June 25 we will begin the 2019 summer series here on the podcast, a best of compilation of shows that focus on the tween and teen years. As a parent of teens myself, I am on a mission to fill what feels like a gap in the information for those of us who want to maintain a kind and firm relationship based style of parenting as our kids go through their own developmental era of pulling away and figuring out who they are. So this summer, while I take a break to prep a fantastic fall for all of you, you will get to revisit some of my favorite conversations about what is turning out to be the most challenging and most fun season of parenting yet. So excited, and please don't forget, if you love what you're hearing here, jump on over to iTunes and leave a review. This is how more people discover the show, and how we can work together to create a more connected and loving world, one family at a time, and now enjoy the episode.

Hey, friends, Hi, I'm back in the closet for a solo episode for you. I can't believe that we are nearly halfway through June. So crazy. How does that happen? I mean, I know how it happens. Okay, you smart asses out there who want to be like, yeah, one day at a time, I know how it happens, but it is. It's surprising, right? It's surprising sometimes in the, you know, spin out of the spring and we're looking ahead to the end of the school year and then finding yourself at the end of the school year, I don't know time is moving really fast. I had the book launch party a couple weeks ago. So great. So much fun. So honored to get to meet people that I haven't met before that follow my work, plus family and friends that showed up. So, so great. Big shout out to third place books and Lake Forest Park for hosting last weekend. Did you get in on the Instagram giveaway? So if you don't follow me on Instagram, do it. Do it right now. Jump into Instagram. Look for joyful. Underscore, courage and follow me, because I'm going to be doing giveaways pretty regularly as I continue to promote the book, and I have these cute little joyful courage mugs that say joyful courage, just like on the front cover of the book, and on the back side of the mug, it says breath, body balcony. And for those of you that have read the book, you know what that's all about. And for those of you that haven't read the book, get on it, head to Amazon, head to barnesandnoble.com or just go to my website, joyful courage.com and slash book, or click on book in the navigation and you'll find it so great. I also just wrapped up the joyful courage Academy parenting teens program with another amazing group of parents of teenagers. And I'm so just honored, really honored and grateful that I get to be in relationship with others that are on the teen journey, parenting teen journey, and supporting them and myself and all the things that show up with that journey. We do some mindset shifting and prompt some conversation and practice some tools, really, really powerful. Grateful that I get to do that. I'll be doing that again in October. So if you're interested in doing the academy program, I'm doing it in October, and so I'm also thinking pretty strongly about doing an academy program for parents of tweens and preteens. So like that 10 to 13 age group, and I'm thinking about doing that in September, so stay tuned. I'll let you know if that's a done deal. As of this recording, I just got home from Tucson, bear down. I went to college there, and I was there for a conference, and I covid. Facilitated a teaching parenting workshop with my colleague, Dodi Blomberg, who's amazing, and it was really fun, because I got to really dive into the principles behind positive discipline, and that's what's prompting the topic for this show. So really exciting. We're going to get back to basics today, just like I mentioned in the intro, this summer, I'm going to be rolling out some podcast episodes that are some of my favorites that focus on the tween and teen years. So that's exciting. Please continue to listen through the summer. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. We're moving. Oh my gosh. We got the house in Bellingham. My family's moving to Bellingham the end of the month, feeling really excited about that, really in the transition, you know, and noticing when the overwhelm shows up, and the like, oh my gosh, there's so much to do shows up, and grounding myself coming back to a place of and everything's figureoutable, and there's plenty of time and moving from that place. Because I don't know about you, but when my stress level goes up, my ability to be in relationship in a respectful way with my kids goes down. So I really get to recognize stress in my life and take care of myself and really nurture my mindset so that I'm coming from a place of curiosity and love and connection with my kids, instead of that frantic, urgent, oh my gosh, there's so much going on. Why can't you just do what I told you to do? Or sometimes it's even, why can't you just read my mind? Not a useful come from right? Okay, so today I want to get back to basics. Today, I'm getting back to the basics. I am a positive discipline trainer, right? And my recent time in Tucson at the conference I went to and in CO facilitating the teaching parenting workshop, it really brought me back to the building blocks of positive discipline. Also, I'm finding myself on some exploratory calls with new clients who are eager to do one on one work with me, and are looking for resources to share what the philosophy of positive discipline is all about, what the joyful courage spin is and all that stuff. They want to be able to share it with their partners. They want to be able to share it with family members. And so I decided I was going to do a show about it, both as a resource, as something I can say, oh, here, just listen to this podcast. But also because, you know, it's, I just think it's exciting. It's exciting to look at, come back to the principles, right? I'm excited to share. And if you're someone, if you're listening, and you're someone who feels like you know all there is to know about positive discipline, and you're thinking, is this podcast episode for me, I'm going to invite you to listen from a place of curiosity and wonder, to catch yourself when you're thinking, Oh, I know all of this, and shift into what else is here for me to learn, right? Because one of my favorite things about this work is that there are so many layers, right when I think, oh, yeah, now I get it. Life throws me something new, or my kids step into a new place of development, or I just simply find myself back in my old ways of thinking because it's so darn familiar, and I realize yet again, that there is more to learn, there's more layers to peel back, there's more curiosity to take in, and that makes me really excited, and I hope it's exciting to you too. So a lot of people hear the words positive and discipline together and assume that it is all about being nice while we dole out consequences to our kids, or they get really stuck on the word positive and think that it's all about being permissive or letting our kids run the show. Some people mistakenly believe that positive discipline parents don't ever want their kids to feel bad, or perhaps lump positive discipline in with helicoptering or coddling or enabling our kids. This is totally not what positive discipline is all about, and I know if you're listening, you're curious and open to learning more. So to start one thing, I. Really appreciate about positive discipline, like capital P, positive capital D discipline is that it is a program that has its roots in Adlerian psychology, right? So, there's, there's, there's psychology, there's science, there's there's some foundation to this program, which I really appreciate. Alfred Adler was one of the first social psychologists. He worked with individuals and families, and found that time and time again, human behavior was motivated by an individual's sense of their own belonging and their own significance, he found that we were always moving towards that's that, that that desire, that sense, that need of connection and knowing that we matter. And when behavior starts to look like mischief or or misbehavior. It can be linked back to the individual's perception of belonging and significance.

And Jane Nelson, who I had the lucky opportunity to hang out with last weekend in Tucson, she's the author and co author of The Library of positive discipline books, she talks about belonging and significance as our longing for love and responsibility, right? So that's the first piece that I want to start with. Like, this isn't just somebody. This isn't just me saying, like, oh, just be nice to your kids and hold boundaries and good luck with that. You know, there's science behind this, there's, there's research and there's,

there's work that's been done with families and individuals that comes back time and time again to this idea that we are at our best and most socially useful when we have a healthy sense of belonging and we and knowing that we matter, right? And so when people step into positive discipline, that's an important mindset shift, because it's not the way many of us were raised, right? And it's not sugarcoating rewards and punishment. It's not catching them while they're good. It's a whole different mindset around behavior and being in relationship, right? And so I'm going to talk about just a couple of those principles that go along with it, right, that go along with this, which the first being that positive discipline is about being kind and firm, right? Kind and firm is about mutual respect and dignity for all. So being kind means I'm going to treat the person in front of me, whether it's my child or my partner or my coworker. I'm going to treat that person with respect and with dignity right, because they are a fellow human being, so I'm going to treat them with kindness, and I'm also going to be firm, which really goes back to I'm going to respect while I'm respecting the person in front of me in the way that I'm treating them and talking to them. I'm also going to respect myself and the situation at hand, and I'm going to respect others. So that is really where firmness is about holding boundaries, right? Firmness is about recognizing the environment, and you know, the rules, the guidelines that exist in that space, and holding those while also being respectful of the person in front of us, right? And it's not easy to do that because we are emotional beings, and often when our sense of being respect, we get into mischief, because we see mutual respect as well. When you respect me, I'll respect you, and if you're not respecting me, then I don't need to respect you, right? And so as parents, our little respect cord gets plucked by our kids, and we're like, Oh no, you don't, oh no, you won't talk to me like that. How dare you? Right? How dare you. And then we get all up in that emotional place and forget about dignity and respect for the other person, we're in our emotions and not having the greatest parenting moment, right? So this is a really different come from. This is, you know, having the feelings that we have, while also respecting our kids and saying, like, wow, you're having a hard time, and I can tell by the way that you're treating me. Okay, and so I'm gonna take care of myself so that I can show up for you while you have a hard time. Or, you know what? Let's solve this later. Or, yeah, you know, I know that you don't like this rule or this guideline, and it remains right. It's tricky, but it's important, and it's really, it's one of the principles of positive discipline is kindness and firmness as well as mutual respect. And I think that sometimes we get tripped up by the word kind, in kind and firm, and it starts to sound be interpreted as, Oh, you just have to be really nice while you're you know, getting your kids to do what you want, and that is a misinterpretation. Kindness is really about being connected, right? Being connected to the human in front of us, not connecting so much with their behavior, right? Because I think that's the tip of the iceberg. When we are really connected and attached to behavior, we tend to lose the human being that's in front of us. Not lose them like we lose sight of they're a human having a hard time, and instead, we get drawn into the behavior and how it's affecting us. So positive discipline is really working on leaning towards recognizing the human in front of us, while holding boundaries, while respecting ourselves. And that's a big ask, right? That's where the joyful courage spin shows up. And it's a conversation around, how do we stay mindful? How do we stay conscious? How do we stay grounded, right? How do we stay in what Abraham Hicks calls the vortex, right? That that centered, connected place while, you know, childhood, teenage angst, while all the things are happening around us, kindness and firmness another, and it's hard, and I talk about it, remember I wrote a book. That's what the book's all about. You guys, do you know that you have I sent that message loud and clear. That's what the book's all about. It's about how to maintain that grounded, connected, centered nature while our kids go through what they grow through, grow through what they go through, right? So that we can be available, so we can hold the space for them. That's what it's all about. So another principle of positive discipline and ad leery in theory is the idea of encouragement, being encouraging, right? And this plays right into what we were just talking about what's the hidden word and encouragement, courage, right? Courage, being courageous, holding space for our kids to be courageous. And encouragement is not the same thing as praise. This is something we dig into in positive discipline classes. Praise is about pleasing me and doing what I think you should do. Encouragement is about recognizing and seeing the qualities that already exist in our kids and helping them to see those qualities as well, and helping them to see how they can access those qualities and use those qualities to create their best life. Right when we feel encouraged, we show up as our best, right? And that really requires us as adults to be the holders of encouragement, to be the holders of the space when our kids are having a hard time, to remind them, yeah, but you know what? You've had this problem before, it looked a little different, and remember, you you were able to solve it by doing X, Y and Z. That took a lot of resiliency. That just took hard work. You made it to the other side, and I bet you can do that here. That's encouragement. Saying, Oh, you'll you're so smart. Or, you know, I'm so proud of you. Or, you know you, you're always great. You know that that's praise. That's more empty, right? I can't think of good praise comments right now because my mind's in encouragement, but just noticing the way that we use language with our kids and the underlying message, right? We want to raise kids that can make it out into the world and have an internal sense of of worthiness versus that external need to hear from others. How am I doing? How am I performing? What do you think about me? Because that's going to fuel how I think about myself. And I know I'm not alone in saying, you know that approval junkie mindset absolutely lives inside of me. You know, it's part of my own personal work to grow that internal sense of validation. And I know that there's a lot of people that feel that way. And so let's do our kids a favor, and let's support them now in growing that. Ability to find internal validation so that they don't have to be adults doing this kind of work, right? So encouragement is a big piece of the positive discipline, Adlerian theory, principles and mindset. The other thing is so Adler, Alfred Adler coined a term. He was German, so he coined this phrase, and it's gemeinschaftska fuel. That's all one word. It's got like 100 letters. Gemeinschaftska fuel means social interest, and Adler talks about an in positive discipline. We talk about that our sense of belonging and significance increases when we've got a stake in the game, when we are a part of the community, when we are making contributions in the home and at school, and when we are in support of others, right, and the shared wholeness of who we all are as a community, as a species, even right? When that social interest piece comes into play, human beings tend to show up well, show up better. So creating opportunities for our kids to contribute meaningfully, right, meaningfully looking for opportunities in the community to be in contribution, as a family, as an individual, being a model for contribution.

Because when our communities are thriving, individuals thrive, right? This is so important. And I could go off on tangents here, but it's just, you know, we we have to be in this for everyone. We got it. We're all in this together, right? And I think that when, well, I know that when we have that mindset and that attitude as we raise kids, we're going to pass that on to them, and they're going to have that really deep feeling of love and responsibility, and what an amazing world. Right? It would be if one generation of children was raised understanding the social interest piece and really moved towards how can I be my best inside of my community so that my community can thrive. Another piece of positive discipline is the importance of taking time for training. I think that we adults forget that how many steps there are in learning how to do laundry or learning how to self regulate. Even we are quick to tell our kids, use your words, calm down, clean your room, you know, do your homework. We're quick to tell them what to do, and we forget that sometimes the steps involved in doing those things haven't necessarily been taught and practiced and laid out for them. So sometimes I love this, because sometimes when there's a, you know, something that's a challenge that's showing up time and time and time again, and we want to get under the surface, this is a great place, a lens, right? Really, a lens to look out of, which is, okay, I know what I want, I know what I'm expecting, and my child is not meeting that expectation. You know, we can think they're just unruly, they're just defiant, okay, that's an option. Or we could get really curious about it and think like, Hmm, what are their missing skills? Where can I take time for training? How can I support them with this outside of the moment that the challenge shows up, right? So taking time for training is so so key. And finally, one of the things that Alfred Adler brought and as a part of positive discipline, is the idea that if we're going to step into this work, if we're going to move towards positive discipline, we have to have the courage to be imperfect. Because I don't know anyone who has mastered the art of kind and firm parenting all the time, conscious parenting all the time, positive discipline all the time. I know a lot of people who are pretty good at it, pretty skilled at it, and even they will tell me, yeah, and when I'm stressed or overwhelmed, it becomes more challenging. But again, we've got this great opportunity to clean up our mess when we don't show up well for someone else or our kids, we get to go back and we get to make amends, which is a gift, right? So we have to be courageous enough to say, Yes, I'm going to try this. And when it kind of slides, or we get out of the practice, or we're in the. Above the ebb and flow, we are courageous enough to say, Oh yeah, of course, of course, I'm making mistakes. I get to reset. I'm going to try again, right? Because mistakes are opportunities to learn, and that goes for us. That goes for our kids. Mistakes are opportunities to learn. I can't tell you how often I need to hear that, right? Because even me, I mean, I talk about it, I teach about it, I coach on it, I'm fully immersed in this work. And when it comes to my own relationships with my own kids, you know, there's I'm just like you, right? I mean, it's challenging. I am an emotional being, having an emotional experience, bumping up against my own conditioning, and my kids keep me humble when they're not driving me crazy. And that finally takes me to this idea that we always have a choice, right? We might not have a choice around the external events and experiences that are happening, but we absolutely choose how we're going to make sense of it, the meaning that we're going to make, how we're going to respond, right? And sometimes I get it, it feels like there's the event or the experience or the challenge, and then you're completely flipped and yelling and not the parent that you want to be. I understand that it can feel like there is no choice. They there is no time. And I challenge you with that, and I'm challenging you to say there is always a choice in how we respond.

Now, those of you out there that are like, Well, what about when my toddler's running out in the road? There's no time for choice. Well, yeah, okay, great, yes, please go get them. I think I've said that before on this podcast, and and and and and and we always have a choice in how we respond, and specifically you parents of teenagers that are listening, things get scary, and that feeling of lack of control is overwhelming. And a lot of times we move from a place of fear, because it does feel like the only possible outcome is dead in a ditch. And I want to tell you that responding from a place of fear is not useful. Is not useful ever. So let's get really clear about that, and let's really practice noticing when fear is in the room. When fear is present. It's an opportunity for us. It's that. It's that little indicator light that says, take a moment. Take a breath, find your feet. What's happening here? And it may be your intuition saying like you got to do something. It may be your baggage, right? Your own experience of being a teenager. It may be your you know, the ridiculous amount of articles that we read on social media telling us about worst case scenario for every teen behavior, right? So we gotta, we get to get really clear on our fear, and if it's an intuition thing like, I want you to trust your gut. Of course, trust your gut, and sometimes it's not necessarily our gut talking. So let's take a minute and recognize where is this coming from, and do I need to pause right here? Because remember when our lid is flipped, this is not when we can solve problems. This is not when we're having powerful conversations with our kids. This is when we need to go take care of ourselves. Okay? It's when we need to go take care of ourselves, and that's when we give ourselves space to decide, how am I going to respond here? Right? So for those of you that are new to positive discipline. I'm really interested in knowing what your questions are about all of this. This is a big mindset shift, and I'm not here to say, you know what's right, what's wrong, or to make anybody else wrong. I am just super jazzed about this work, and I'm really grateful that I found positive discipline when I did, and that I raised my kids with positive discipline, and I really believe that the most powerful tool we have for influencing behavior is the relationship that we build with our kids. Yeah, and for me, positive discipline has been the program that has supported me the most in really living up to that statement and building relationship, you know. And when our kids are young, it's really, you know, one of the things that I've recently spoken about with clients is when it when it feels like, well, they won't take no for an answer. And we're really bumping up against the meltdowns and the Tantrums, which, by the way, is not only the toddler and preschooler years. Spoiler alert, we get to also recognize that there's some opportunity for us as the adult to validate where our kids are at like, even when it feels like, oh my gosh, this is totally unreasonable or doesn't make sense. It makes sense to them. So part of that kindness and firmness, part of that developing belonging and significance is supporting our kids and see being seen, feeling seen, feeling felt. That's something that Dan Siegel talks about, feeling felt. So really being able to take a take a moment, and we want to be able to work on seeing out of our kids shoes, right? And that really requires us to get curious. Don't assume that you know what the world looks like out of your kid's eyes. Be curious. Tell me about that. Seems like you're really having a hard time with that. And I'm just curious how you're experiencing it. Will you tell me a little bit about it, you know? And then we open this really lovely safe space to then bring up our fears, right, our concerns, and then together moving in the direction of finding solutions, right? So I love positive discipline. I'm so stoked that I get to support people. And if you're listening to this and it's your first time, maybe you don't know, but I am a parent coach, and one of often, I will have parents who listen to the podcast or see me speak live, and they're thinking, this is what I want to do, and I just want some support in the mindset shift, because that's probably the biggest hurdle, right so often, so many of us have been raised with, well, when you do the wrong thing, there's a consequence imposed, and when you do the right thing, there's a reward given. And so this idea that we can manipulate our kids' behavior and keep them from doing anything wrong by making sure they know there's going to be a consequence and letting them know that they'll get a reward if they do the right thing, like somehow, if we narrow the path with those two sides that they're going to have the skills that they need to do the best that they can and They just don't right. We're emotional human beings, and when we're flipped, we're not thinking, what's the consequence here, right? Or we're just in our emotion. So I got lots of podcasts about that and teasing apart some of these principles specifically, so you can peruse all the podcasts for that, but I just wanted to do kind of a dive in to an overview. And even that, I'm thinking to myself, Oh my God, there's a million things that I'm not saying, but I wanted to give a little bit of an overview and just reminding you all where this work comes from, and the pieces of the puzzle. And I just hope that that's really useful to you. I hope that's useful um. Next week, I have a guest coming on. She's going to talk about um, sensory stuff, so it'll be the last show that's geared more towards younger kids. I am moving the podcast towards the pre teen and teen conversation moving forward. So I just wanted to give you a heads up on that we'll be rolling out again the the summer series, which will be a revisit of some of my shows for tweens and teens and their parents, but yeah, looking forward to next week. Looking forward to hearing back from you. What are your takeaways? What are you thinking about with everything that I've shared today? Don't forget you can get my book. Get the book. Joyful courage.com/book. Just really grateful. Grateful for you. Thank you for listening. Share the podcast, peeps. Let's get more and more people listening. That's how we can work together to make the world a better place. Have a beautiful week. Enjoy those last days of school, if you're still in school, and I will see you soon. You. Chris, joyful courage community, thank you so much for tuning in each and every week. Big thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper. Be sure to join the discussion over at the live and love with joyful courage group page, as well as the joyful courage, business pages on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play. I Heart Radio, really, anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. Also, I mentioned Patreon at the beginning of the show. Check it out, www.patreon.com/joyful courage. This is where you can contribute to the show and take advantage of patron perks like content rich monthly webinars and deeper discussions about what's being shared on the podcast. You will like it. Www. Dot P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful. Courage, any comments or feedback about this show or any others can be sent to Casey at joyful courage.com I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way so reach out. You can also sign up for my bi weekly newsletter at joyful courage.com just go to the website. Sign up for that. Take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay. Big Love to each and every one of you have a beautiful rest of your day.