Eps 231: SOLO SHOW – Moving from Right/Wrong to Effective and Remembering that Self Regulation is Learned Over Time with PRACTICE

This last one is a big one. None of us want spoiled kids AND we all want to feel respected. So, letting go of their mischief when they are flipped is really challenging because this is when they are at their worst.

Let’s review the brain science

–       Brain in the palm of the hand review

–       THIS MEANS, they aren’t consciously aware of what they are doing/saying when the brain stem of the amygdala is in charge – NONE OF US ARE

–       YET, we get really worked up about how our kids treat us when they are flipped – I GET IT – I live here too, I have teenagers that are normal teens and they flip and get nasty to me – just as when I flip I tend to get nasty too.

–       We are taking it TOO DAMN PERSONAL when they behavior IS NOT ABOUT US – their behavior is their level of emotional response coupled with the tools they have at their disposal – and when we are flipped, we’ve pretty much lost the tool box that is so accessible when we are in our rational brain.

–       Imagine…… you’ve had a really tough day. You’ve really worked hard to get all that needs to be done complete, you’ve cooked for everyone AND taken care of paying the bills, your kids have been a pain, but you’ve kept it together. And then, you see your oldest picking on your youngest. You lose it. You come completely unglued on your oldest. Blah blah blah, you slide into your flipped lid and you shame and blame and basically let your emotions run the show – the emotional freight train has pulled in and picked you up….

o   Some time passes and you get yourself together. You realize that maybe you don’t know the whole story of what was happening with your kids and maybe your oldest didn’t need the wrath that you delivered. You acknowledge your mistake and the way you treated her. You reconnect and work to repair the relationship. You may even do some reflecting on how you can set yourself up for success the next time you are caught up in this type of challenge. You work on your own practice for learning more tools to stay peaceful and present even when it’s hard to do.

o   Do you need a punishment? A consequence so that you won’t act like that next time? NO, that never would occur to you as helpful, and yet, how often do we impose this on our children???

–       Most of us who get stuck here have childhood stories of parents who ruled with an iron fist, who “wouldn’t tolerate” back talk, disrespect, sassiness. That modeling became ingrained into us and now we are finding ourselves confronted by a child who is falling apart and it feels personal. Our experience gets wrapped up in the childhood experience of having to follow the demands of our parents or else, the unresolved hurts from that time are triggered and that’s deeply painful and we grasp for control which looks like yelling, intimidation and punishment….

–       If this sounds familiar to you – please go see a therapist, because this is going to keep coming up inside your relationships until you get it healed. And if you don’t you will be passing on these same triggers to your kids and THEY will need to go to therapy. Free them from your issues, PLEASE.

–       They are doing the best they can with the tools they have in the moment, I promise.

–       So, what TO DO?

o   Talk about how it feels to have a flipped lid

o   Begin to identify the feelings/experiences that take you or them there

o   Brainstorm things that make you feel BETTER when you are noticing your lid flipping

o   Come up with a plan of action the next time the train shows up

o   Practice

o   Have compassion because this is HARD WORK

o   Teach/model/practice repair and reconnection.

Circling back….  This is about being effective and helpful. Meltdowns are not a character flaw, they are an indication that something has happened that we, or our kids, don’t have the tools to navigate in the moment.

It’s not about you.

So, this week, when you have a meltdown and are an asshole to your kids, model what it looks like to own it, “Wow, I really lost it and treated you badly. My emotions got the better of me.” And make it right, “I am so sorry, and I am going to pay more attention to when I am getting close to flipping out, and take care of me when I feel that tightness in my body happening.” Then bring it back to the message of love, “I love you so much.”

And when THEY have a meltdown and are assholes to you, show a little grace. The uncertainty of the world is IN OUR FACE right now and they only have so much capacity for keeping it together. Remember that it’s not about you. Support them in calming down, and then LATER, have a conversation about the experience of the meltdown – guiding them to connect to themselves and to you, and ultimately giving them the tools they need to repair.

Love you. We’ve got this.

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Go. Welcome to joyful courage.

A conscious parenting podcast, really a conscious human ing podcast, a place where we get real about the messiness of parenting and life. My name is Casey o'bordi. I am a positive discipline trainer, a parent coach, a wife and mom to two teenagers. I'm working every day to come from my most conscious and Mindful self in this age of quarantine and covid 19 that can feel really hard and inside of that, I'm also a mom holding the fort as our family navigates my husband's cancer diagnosis. So there's that too, and inside of all of it is my passion for bringing more lightness connection and love to my family and the world. I'm so glad that you've joined me here. Thanks for listening. If you find that you're loving the show, please know that we have amazing communities for parents on Facebook join us in the live in love with joyful courage group, or the joyful courage for parents of teens group for support and community with like minded parents walking this path with you. You can also find the joyful courage business pages on Facebook and Instagram and follow those too. And of course, all the joyful courage offerings, including my book courses that I'm teaching and coaching, can be found on my website, www.joyfulcourage.com, I hope you enjoy this week's show. Hi, hi, those of you that are new to the podcast, I want to give you a warm welcome. I'm so glad that you're here, as the longtime listeners know this show is part informative and educational, part deeply personal and always authentic and I hope, relatable. That's always my goal, because people we are on a collective journey. Yes, we are. And this week's solo show is going to be about just that some things that have come up lately with a couple of my coaching clients and, yeah, just conversations that I'm having that I'm noticing out in the world, and conversations that I'm having, we're holding this idea that there's a good way to parent and a bad way to parent. We're either good parents or we're bad parents. There's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. We're hashtag winning or hashtag mom failing, right? And these, these labels, have been bugging me lately. Lately, I don't like them. They don't feel useful, right? And so I was recently writing an email to one of my clients noticing this language, and I said, How about we start talking about what's effective and what's ineffective, right? When we think about because we all want to know what to do, right? That happens all the time in all the conversations I have with parents, especially initially, they want to tell me about their kids behavior, and they want to know, what do I do to change this, right? How do I change their behavior? What do I do? What's the right thing to do? And there is so there are so many dynamics and layers and information that goes into how to respond to that question, right? Our kids aren't robots. They are, you know, complicated human beings, as are we? We have been we've been affected by our conditioning, our life experience, the relationships that we've had. To have the audacity for me to say, Okay, here's three steps to make your kids stop lying, right? Would be like, that's just, you know, smoke and mirrors. That's not, that's not, there's no, there's no perfect answer to that, right? And so when we think about, okay, how can I be the most effective here, right? How can I try and what was what I tried effective? Or what is was it ineffective? I feel like those two words take the judgment out of the conversation. It allows us to know, to be in this, to let go of being in this role where we should know exactly what to do. Do you ever have that like, Well, I'm a mom or I'm a dad, I should know what to do. Like, parenting isn't that complicated, right? I should know what to do. I'm not going to take a class or read a book. I know what to do because I was parented. I mean, sorry, but for most of us, unless we had these amazingly stellar, conscious mind. Full self evolved parents, it's not enough, right? And when we think about effective versus ineffective, it shifts us out of this idea that there is one right thing to do, because it is all a grand experiment. My friends, it is. It's all a grand experiment. You know, even when I'm teaching parenting classes, which shout out to my new group of parents who are doing positive discipline with me through zoom, they're so yummy. I'm so excited to get to know all of those parents we began last week. But even when you know when I'm teaching positive disciplined parents. We positive discipline educators talk about, you know, we're going to build your toolbox, right? We're going to offer tools and strategies for supporting you in navigating this parenting journey. And the reason there isn't just one tool is because, like I said, kids are dynamic. Kids are different. Temperaments are different. We are all different. We're not all cut from the same thread. So having a whole bunch of different tools is going to support us in figuring out what's going to be the most effective thing that I can do in this moment, right? How can I be helpful right now. What is it that my child needs right now? And when I notice, when I teach groups, right whether it's live or online, I always encourage people to speak up. One of the first things that I say is we are co creating value here, and it's your responsibility to raise your hand and say, You know what, Casey, I don't really get what you're talking about here. Or I'm wondering what this is going to look like with my child. Or I'm not really buying it, right? I much rather people speak up than to sit back and spend the entire time thinking about how wrong I am, or how what positive discipline is won't fit into their life. And sometimes people speak up, and sometimes they don't. And the good news is I can read energy like even on Zoom calls, it's crazy. And so when I can feel that energy, even if it's not from the whole group, even if it's just from, you know, one person or a handful of people, when I can feel that, yeah, but energy show up. I speak up and I say, I wonder if you're feeling like, this is a load of crap, or I'm wondering if you're feeling like, Yeah, but this isn't going to work for my kids, right? And like I said, the common things that I hear from parents as they listen, especially if positive discipline and positive parenting is a new shift, or drastically different than how we were raised. The common things that I hear from parents are, well, this isn't going to work for my kid, like their kid is some special story with enough labels or enough diagnoses or enough fill in the blank that somehow this idea of being in relationship and teaching skills, which is what positive discipline is all about, won't work for that kid, right? Or I hear, and I I've heard from parents talking about, well, I'm not you like, I don't have the tools that you have, and like, I'm some special story, which I am not. I'm very much the same as every single one of you doing the work to get through the day feeling like I'm getting it wrong half the time and celebrating when I don't so throwing out that argument of like, oh, you're not me, so somehow you can't do positive discipline. Or when I work with parents who have older kids, you know, there's this idea that, well, it's too late, the window is closed, right? Or there's this like iron clad grip on this idea, this archaic idea that kids have to pay for their bad behavior or they'll turn into spoiled brats. Do?

And that's what I'm going to focus on today in this solo show, is this idea that when kids make mistakes, when they have meltdowns, when they get into mischief, the only way that they will learn that it's not okay for them to act like that is in some way, create a punishment or a consequence so that they really, really know, right? It's big, right? And guess what? None of us want spoiled kids. There's entire books about how to not raise entitled, spoiled kids and we adults, we parents, we want to feel respected. They need to respect us. They cannot be disrespectful. It's so interesting how many of us cling to this idea of. Of our kids have to be respectful, and they have to respect us. Now I'm not saying that that isn't a life skill that I wholeheartedly want my kids to learn to embody. Yes, of course, we want to raise respectful kids, but demanding this idea of respect, which a lot of times what respect means to us, isn't even on our kids radar. It gets in the way, right, and when kids, you know, when we bring the brain development in, because an eight year old does not have the same skills as a 38 year old, they just don't, they don't have the brain development, and they don't have the experiences that allow them to learn the skills that they need to navigate the emotional experience of being a human so what happens is we're moving along and our kids, whether they're eight or 14 or two or whatever, they have an emotional experience they bump up against they get slammed into disappointment or slammed into discomfort, and they flip their lid, and that is really challenging for us, because typically when they flip their lid, that's when they're at their worst behavior. So let's just do a little brain science review, right? And for those of you that have heard this before, I just invite you to think, Oh, great review. Maybe there's something new I can learn here. Okay, because I've talked about this. I've talked about this many times on the podcast, but it's really important, brain in the palm of the hand. Thank you. Dan Siegel, right, so if you whatever you're doing right now, if you can, I want you to hold up your hand and make a fist, and I want you to tuck your thumb into, like into your palm, and wrap your wrap your fingers around your thumb. Now, if you're looking at your hand right now, this is the hand model of the brain. So your wrist is in. The bottom of your palm is your brain stem. The job of the brainstem is to keep us safe. And the tools of the brainstem are those survival tools, the survival instincts, freeze, fight, flight or faint, right? That's another one, or fawn, I think is the other word they use for that. So those are the tools we have in the brain stem, the thumb tucked in behind our fingers that represents the limbic system. The limbic system is where we store all of our emotions, trauma lives in the limbic system. The amygdala is there, which is our safety radar, right? How am I feeling? How am I feeling? That's what we're like, really dialing into in our limbic system. And then we wrap our fingers around the thumb. This is the cortex. This is where all of our thinking happens. This is where our five senses come and give us information about how our body's feeling and what we're experiencing in the world, and then our fingernails right? Our fingernails represent the prefrontal cortex, which is the main switchboard of the brain. It's where all of our higher executive functioning lives. It's where we have communication skills, problem solving skills, perspective, right. Control of the nervous system starts in the in the prefrontal cortex. Being able to have emotional regulation starts in the prefrontal cortex, right? Feeling remorse, prefrontal cortex, right? You know how long it takes? I know you do because you listen to the podcast. It takes us over 25 years to fully develop this brain. And it starts with the brainstem and slowly moves to the prefrontal cortex, so that part of the brain actually is the last part to be fully developed, okay? And what happens is, you know, keeping that fist. When things are going well, everything's functioning. We have access to our toolbox. We can handle some, you know, disappointment. We can course correct. We can find flexibility. But then when something bigger happens and we become triggered, right, emotionally triggered, we hit the wall. We now, I want you to raise up all your fingers so that your thumb is exposed. We flip our lid right? We lose all of those tools of the of the cortex and the prefrontal cortex, and all we have is our limbic system and our brain stem. We have our emotional brain, and we have our survival skills, right? And when we think about, when you think about the last time your kids lost it and had a huge meltdown. Were they using their communication skills? Were there? Were they, you know, thinking about problem solving? No, they were irrational, illogical, emotional, fighting or fleeing or withdrawing, right when? We lose our prefrontal cortex and our cortex when we flip our lid, we aren't consciously aware with the same kind of awareness when we're integrated of what we're doing or saying, because the brainstem and the amygdala is in charge, right? And we know how this feels, too as adults, right? When we've lost it, and I'm going to talk more about that, and we're super emotional, we say and do things that later we regret, right? Yet, yet, when our kids flip their lids, we get really worked up about how they treat us. I get it. I live here too. I have teenagers that are normal teenagers, and they flip their lids and they get nasty to me, and they say things that are hurtful or disrespectful, which often invites me into flipping my lid. Because, guess what, when I flip my lid, when I've totally lost it, I get nasty too, and we take everything too darn personally, right? When their behavior is not about us, their behavior is their level of emotional response to the world, to whatever is going down, coupled with the tools they have at their disposal in the moment, right? So those things come together when we're flipped, we've pretty much lost the toolbox that is accessible when we're in our rational brain. So they and maybe they're responding to us, maybe they are responding to us. Maybe we've gotten mad at them about something, or we've told them they have to get off their screens, or whatever we might have been the triggers. And then they flip their lid, they're in this crazy, emotional place, they've lost it, and they're not treating us well, and then now we're mad at them for the way they're treating us, right? So I want you to just imagine this. And this might sound familiar, imagine you. You've had a really tough day, you've worked really hard in this quarantine to get all that needs to be done completed. You've cooked for everyone, and perhaps you've taken care of paying some bills, while pushing aside any worries that you have about money that is not coming in because maybe somebody's been laid off. Your kids maybe have been difficult, but you have kept it together. You have used your tools, you've managed the day. And then getting to be closer to bedtime, you notice your oldest not being super nice to your youngest, and that's it. That's what sends you over the edge. You completely lose it. You come completely unglued on your oldest

you slide into your flipped lid, you shame them, you blame them. You're probably using a lot of Why do you always have to Why do you never kind of language? And basically, your emotions are running the show. All the emotions that you've been navigating all day long come up and out of your body, and you're throwing them all at your child, right? I call this the emotional freight train. You've heard me call it that the emotional freight train is pulled in, picked you up. You are just in it for the ride, right? You know I'm talking about, I know you do. After a little while, some time passes, you get yourself together, right? Maybe you realize that, gosh, you might not have known the whole story of what was happening with your kids, or maybe you did, but for sure, your oldest child did not need the wrath that you delivered. It wasn't kind, and it probably wasn't useful. You acknowledge your mistake and the way you treated that child right. You reconnect and work to repair the relationship. You might even do some reflecting on how you can set yourself up for success. The next time you're caught up in this type of challenge, you work on your own practice of self care and your own practice of learning more tools to stay peaceful and present even when it's hard to do. Do you think you need a punishment on top of it, to do better for next time? Maybe a consequence so that you won't act like that later on. No, it would never occur to you as helpful to be punished for how you just treated your child. And yet, how often do we impose that on our kids?

Most of us who get stuck here in this like respect conversation, and they have to learn and they need to pay most of us who get stuck in that have childhood stories of parents who ruled with an iron fist, parents who wouldn't tolerate back talk, who wouldn't tolerate disrespect or sassiness. Maybe, you know, I remember my mom had a look man, and she could just stop us in our tracks with that look, that modeling became ingrained into us, and now we are finding ourselves confronted by a child, perhaps, who is falling apart, and it feels personal. Our experience in the present moment gets wrapped up in the childhood experience of having to follow the demands of our parents or else, and that unresolved hurt from that time, those unresolved hurts from that time are triggered, and that's deeply painful, and we grasp for control, which looks like yelling, intimidating and punishment. And I want to talk a little bit more about that, because have you ever noticed that what triggers you like, what behaviors trigger you might be different than what behaviors trigger your friends or your siblings? Like the things that bother you might be behaviors that other people it just rolls off their back, and that's because it's not the behavior that's triggering you, it's what it's bringing up from your past, right? If this sounds familiar to you, or if you're like, Hmm, I want to know more, please go see a therapist. Please go see a therapist, because this is going to keep coming up inside of your relationships with your kids until you get it healed, and if you don't want to pass on the same triggers that you have to your kids, then you've got to get it together, free them from your issues by taking care of your issues, they are doing the best they can with the tools they have in the moment, I promise it's not about you, It's not about respect. It's about helping them be with the emotional experience that they're having in a way that's helpful and not hurtful. So what do you do? Right? What do you do? Well, you talk to your kids about how it feels to have a flip lid. So if there is a specific example of them flipping their lids recently, you can say, Oh, wow, it was rough this morning. Tell me about how you feel. Not tell me the story of the injustice or the experience you had that made you freak out. Talk to me about how your body felt when you were so angry this morning or so frustrated this morning or so sad this morning,

right? Tell them about experiences that you've had. Maybe there's one that they remember when your lid is flipped. And really talk about and identifying, identify the feelings and the experiences that take you to that place of fall apart, of tantrum, right? And then together, brainstorm things that make you feel better when you're noticing your lid is flipped. Help them brainstorm things like when you do feel really mad, or you do feel really sad, you don't stay there forever. So what helps

and then come up with a plan of action the next time that train shows up, the next time they're having a meltdown, and I don't mean like so that they don't have the meltdown. I mean, come up with a plan of action that they can take while they're having the meltdown, that's going to help them reintegrate their brain, that's going to help them calm down, that helps them feel safe and secure. Because I promise you, when they are having a meltdown, when they're falling apart, they do not feel safe, they do not feel secure, and that is deeply unsettling, which is only fueling that out of control behavior, right? And then you gotta practice the plan, right? Practice it. Let's pretend, right? Let's create something that's going to help you remember that this is what's useful. And then have compassion, because this is really hard work. It's hard work for our kids to learn. It's hard work for us to learn, right? It's hard work for us to let it go when it's our kids that are having a hard time. It's hard work for us to be in our own practice of self regulation, and it's definitely hard for our kids. So the other thing that we've got to get much better at is teaching modeling and practicing that repair piece and that reconnection, right? So when you're the one whose lid is. Flipped. When you're the one whose lid is flipped, you get to be the model of what it looks like to repair, right? You get to be the model of what it looks like to repair and reconnect. So circling back, where is this about being effective and helpful? This is not about being perfect. This isn't about being right. This isn't about being a good parent. This isn't about winning. This is about being effective and being helpful. Meltdowns are not a character flaw. They're an indication that something has happened that we or our kids don't have the tools to navigate in the moment. That's it. It's not about you. It's not about respect. So this week, when you have a meltdown and are an asshole to your kids, model what it looks like to own it, which could sound like I really lost it today and treated you bad. My emotions got the better of me, and then you make it right. Could sound like I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, and I'm going to pay more attention to when I'm getting close to flipping out, and I'm going to take care of myself when I feel that tightness in my body happening, and then bring it back to the message of love. I love you so much. You matter so much to me, I'm going to do better. And when they have a meltdown and our assholes to you show a little grace, the uncertainty of the world is in our face right now, and they only have so much capacity for keeping it together, even in the best of times, remember that it's not about you support them in calming down right and then later, have A conversation about the experience of the meltdown, guiding them to connect to themselves and to you, and ultimately giving them the tools they need to repair. I have a lot of podcasts that talk about this. One that comes to mind is the show I did with Dan Siegel and Tina Bryson. They talk about the four S's, which I can't think of right now, but I will put that interview in the show notes. Actually, you know what I'll do? I will look it up.

Episode. Yeah,

episode 215 it's called The Power of showing up with Dan Siegel and Tina Bryson. It's from January 7. I encourage you to listen to it. I encourage you to listen to it because it's really powerful, and it's all about this. We have to show up for our kids, especially when they're having a hard time like that's the time for us to really kick it into gear. All right. Kick it into gear. Love you. We've got this. We've got this, all right. I really hope this was a powerful use of your time. Thank you again for being here with me. Big thanks to Chris Mann from pod shaper for making the show sound so good each and every week. If you loved this show, will you do me a favor? Will you take a screenshot and post it on your social media so that others can see what you're listening to and finding value in tag me too, so I can celebrate your love, or feel free to head over to iTunes and leave a review. This helps others find me and follow the show. Thank you. And as you head into the rest of your day, remember, find your breath, follow it into your body, lift up and out to the balcony seat for a broader perspective and know that everything is going to be okay. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next week.

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