The Relational Parenting Podcast

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yeah you can't just cut off whatever's in the past
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pretend it's not there turn a blind eye and just push forward
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like you're going to carry whatever's back there is coming with you whether you choose to see it or not whether you
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are aware of it or not what you have experienced in the first 20 or 30 or 40
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Years of your life before you come become a parent follows you unless you turn around and
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face it and figure it out welcome to the relational parenting podcast I'm Jennifer Hayes a parent coach and
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20-year Child Care veteran each week I sit down with my own father Rick Hayes
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and discuss the complicated issues that parents face today as well as some of the oldest questions in the book from
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the latest research and the framework of my relational parenting method we offer thought-provoking solutions to your
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deepest parenting struggles or in other words how to parent your kids without losing your mind or traumatizing theirs
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added bonuses include intergenerational wounding discussions and guest Child
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Care Experts you will also start taking your parenting questions in episode 5 so
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be sure to comment with your biggest questions or email me directly at Jenny
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jennyb dot Co let's get started hello and welcome back to episode four
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of the relational parenting podcast I'm Jennifer Hayes and this week I wanted to
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take a step back and address a concept that has come to the Forefront of our
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Collective Consciousness in recent years generational trauma or generational
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Cycles the awareness and understanding of the existence of these patterns of
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behavior thinking and potentially abuse they get passed down through our familial lines is wonderful and I'm so
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excited that more and more people are becoming aware of it and making changes but I've also noticed that there is all
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this emphasis on changing the future and very little acknowledgment of healing
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the past so I wanted to dive into that with you and really explore what it takes to
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actually work with the generational Cycles in your own life in order to be the parent you want to be for your
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children this subject is not an easy one to Traverse and it naturally forced my dad
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and I to have some very honest hard and awkward conversations we dove into
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things that neither of us has ever discussed before and triggered some very deep Old Wounds
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the results of those conversations are here in this episode I can't wait to
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hear what you think what you learned and if you have more questions on this topic please comment or message me
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we've been talking in the last couple of episodes about how to parent differently
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we've been discussing relational parenting My Method and a
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couple of the tools and pillars of of my relational parenting
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method so we've talked about how to connect with your children how to lead with empathy and different tools for
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correction or finding cooperation instead of Shame using shame guilt and
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Punishment and this week I wanted to kind of pause
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on teaching more ways to shift your
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parenting and I wanted to take a step back and address something called generational trauma
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uh this is a big buzzword right now it seems to be everywhere in social media
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Etc therapy circles and has been for a
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couple of years now it plays generational trauma generational Cycles play a huge role in our ability or
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inability to make changes as a parent changes from how your parents parented
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changes from your own stuff
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your own way of showing up that you don't like as a parent and
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generational trauma is so influential on how you show up in your current everyday
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life whether you recognize it or not and it's going to be so much harder to put
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any new parenting practices into place without first having addressed your own
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wounds from your childhood and the reason that it will be harder
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is because you and your body are going to carry those wounds and you're going
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to carry that those emotions the the tension the difficulty that you
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experienced or the you know the automatic knee-jerk reaction that your
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parents did to you you're going to carry that into your parenting relationship as well and especially on your bad days or
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if you're tired or worn extra worn out or whatever it might be you those are
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that's when all that tension and suppressed emotion is going to come out it's going to explode and your kids are
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going to to feel that they're going to walk on eggshells or
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you know obviously like run away from you if you explode or not even it
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doesn't even need to be an explosion it doesn't need to be this like big obvious thing it could be passive aggressive
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comments made from an intention of Goodwill or even teaching
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uh you know there's these these suppressed emotions
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unexpressed unhealed wounds um or just patterns of behavior that
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we've picked up from from our parents they come out in small ways that we
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don't even recognize sometimes conscious sometimes yeah yeah and and
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not on purpose like you know I don't I don't think anyone I know is hurting their child on purpose now there are
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those people um but we're not talking about the extremes we're not talking about we're
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talking about the general population middle of the spectrum parenting
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um people who are trying to do the the best they can um inadvertent harm not not nobody
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intentionally doing anybody else any harm yeah but these the generational
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cycles that run in your family affect you whether you're aware of it or not and so becoming aware of them addressing
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any childhood wounds that you have and not just ignoring them or being like gosh it was fine I'm fine
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um because those things are going and are going to live inside of you and then they're going to come out
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and in your parenting towards your child and then your child is going to have to carry those things and
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who knows how long it will take for someone to wake up and become aware of
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the cycle and break it so let's do it now
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and that's really the meaning that's the meaning of generational trauma or or you
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know why are we trying to be better at parenting you know you have to you have to spot your stuff and deal with your
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stuff and uh even if it's not perfect if you feel a little better than your
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parents were or do it a little different or gentler or uh whatever the word is
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you can improve you know from generation to generation it doesn't have to be perfect but you gotta Somebody's gotta
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spot it and it might as well start with us this right this generation of parents
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well and and so the first thing I want to talk about is that simply doing
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things differently moving forward is not the only step in healing
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generational trauma so first you have to or simultaneously
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um you have to face your own wounds or
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anger from childhood if you have any grief or feelings of Injustice
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or betrayal or lack of safety towards your own parents
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even just things that you you know use can still look back as an adult or as an
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adult with children and go that was not okay that that was done to me I didn't
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deserve to be treated like that um looking back at those things and not
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brushing them aside not just saying well everybody up nobody's perfect
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um you'll we'll get there right you'll get to the acceptance part but before you can get to acceptance true
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acceptance you have to first feel those feelings you have to acknowledge that it happened
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and that you did not deserve it and you have to and grieve you have to
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grieve that that happened to you and that you did not deserve it come to
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terms with it and that's always fun coming to terms with feelings like that you know it's not comfortable grief is
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everyone's favorite yeah and uh you know you have to to for me maybe
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it's because I'm a guy or something uh I don't usually think of it as oh my
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parents did something to me here it's not subconscious for me it's like why am I upset you know this this thing my kid
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did or something whatever happened whatever circumstance I'm in I'm have
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I'm having an irrational uh subconscious or what a
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kind of reaction to it and it's sometimes you gotta go off and go why does that situation make me so
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uncomfortable yeah and and dig into it a little it requires a little digging
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because there's you know there's no manual for this you have to figure it out and so
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your own stuff is what's going to make space
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for you to make the changes and be the person who can
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bring in these new practices and be able to
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be accountable and and fully stand in your own power and your own capability
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to do things differently and to make the harder Choice when it comes to
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difficult moments with your children if whether it's their big emotions
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um or whatever it might be it's usually their big emotions is what's happening almost everything can be boiled down to
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that or an unmet need everything is either a big emotion or an unmet need of
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a child and neither of those things is that child's fault they are allowed to
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have big emotions if we all do and they have needs and they don't have you know
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small children don't have the ability to express those needs and if they were never taught then big children don't
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have the ability to express those needs either because they are not in tune with themselves so they don't deserve anything other than
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love and kindness as well um so it leaves in a stream they're just
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being carried on you know yeah until they learn how to deal with stuff
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well until they have the power and and ability to do it I mean we don't we
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don't let kids determine their course until they're of a certain age and the
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earlier that we can give them choices and freedom and the ability to problem
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solve and choose and mess up and get up and do it again and make another choice and like they won't develop
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good judgment if they aren't given the chance to develop it and practice so
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um anyway so we are feeling we're acknowledging our own hurt we're looking
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into the past looking at our relationship with our parents looking at the places we felt Injustice
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um and we're we're going to feel those feelings and we're going to grieve it and that's going to be a process it's
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not just going to happen once and you're going to be like all right cool and once
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you have grieved and felt all those feelings the next step is that you can
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start to choose forgiveness or at least understanding so forgiveness
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I think most people know by now is not for the other person forgiveness is for
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yourself and I say forgiveness or understanding
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because not everything and not everyone is ready
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or capable of forgiving or letting go and that's okay uh what I would urge
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people to strive for is to understand
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where your parent was coming from when that happened and not understand as
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in justify but understand as in oh a leads to B
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leads to C I see the chain of events that occurred to to bring that to fruition
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and whether that happens through a conversation with your parent whether that happens through you being an adult
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who can now look back at the past and see things more clearly and know where your parent was coming from what your
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parent had going on what your parent the knowledge that your parent did not have
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access to right because we're in an age now where we have the internet and we
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can learn all of these things and we can you know reach out and find support
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um in so many different ways and you know even 20 years ago that wasn't the case
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so much Google wasn't quite as as at your fingertips
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so there are millions of situations and millions of different pieces to
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everyone's puzzle but these are just kind of the first steps
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that I would give someone who is
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seeking to parent differently I would encourage you that Step Zero
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is you've got to face your own stuff first
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or at least simultaneously yeah and I agree there are more tools
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now you know you have to be mindful or intentional whatever to you
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want to call it to you know you have to be aware of your stuff you have to work on self-awareness I guess
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um to do this and then there are so many more resources the internet has has
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grown and gotten better and more effective at connectedness actual
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finding a group of people to chat with verbally or with a keyboard
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um you know there's all kinds of resources out there if you can if you have time to do that
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um petite makes it easier than it was years you know 20 years ago yeah and
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there's also like all this research the latest research
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a lot of these Studies have been being done for 10 20 or 30 years the things that the information that is
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available right now you know the study started a few years after I was born
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um so there's simply information that did not exist yet
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let alone was available to the masses
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that was one of the first purposes of the internet was sharing research and that kind of thing so that the internet
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really sped up the pace of all that you didn't have to get published in nature and peer reviewed and you know the
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velocity with which new studies could be looked at and have the next guy go oh
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here's the next question and start a study on that seem to pick up a little bit well and
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for the average American family to be
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buying published peer-reviewed medical journals like that
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nobody does that Nature's Exchange in fact if you hadn't gone to University
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and also studied in The Sciences to know
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that peer-reviewed articles are a thing that exists yeah how would you ever have
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access to that information other than big entities
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run by the government telling you what to do people working on this stuff and
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there's so much bad information out there too sometimes yeah well from from getting diluted
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from some of those entities that's not picking picking a good uh picking a good source that's a whole critical thinking
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that's a whole nother podcast I think so yes sourcing your information so
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I want to share a story um about
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some generational repair that has occurred
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um through the women in my family and how
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you know how that kind of brought me to where where I'm at today
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um yeah so I'm just gonna Dive Right into that so I so I was 26.
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and was talking to my grandma
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on the phone and she was telling me a story
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or the story of her a trip that she took where she had an experience of healing
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with her own mother who had actually passed on already
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um so she told me all the details of this story and meanwhile I was I was 26
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and I had just started kind of dabbling in the
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notion of generational trauma and generational healing and how things can
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be passed down through families and specifically in our family through the
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the female the women lineage of mothers to daughters and so when she was telling
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me this story I was kind of blown away because she had she had no idea that I
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had started exploring this topic and um was kind of digging into these things
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and just before that phone call like a month or two before that phone call I
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had actually written a letter an apology letter to my mom
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uh basically apologizing for what a jerk I was as a teenager
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to her and kind of into my 20s as well I had been harboring a lot of blame and
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anger towards her and
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for really no reason and I well for many reasons but none
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that were fair I will put it that way excellent
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distinction good distinction I had many reasons none of which were fair to her
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um and so I had written her this apology
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letter as I had had my own experience uh that made me see the past a little
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bit clearer and see where she was coming from with some of the choices that she made and
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so that I was on the phone with my grandma hearing this this story about her healing with her mom and I
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you know something clicked for me that day about the
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the healing that I felt was being sent backwards ancestrally and forwards
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um down to my me being the most recent generation living
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and and it was this crazy this vision of
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of a cord connecting from myself to my great grandmother so from me to Mom and
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from Mom to grandma and from Grandma to Great Grandma um and this this kind of like golden
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light just kind of being shot from from way back ancestrally down the line to me
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and how that had connected all of us and how when one of us chooses to heal
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um the other one's benefit and so fast forward a couple years as 28 or 29
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and I you know my mom had been coming to visit me in Colorado once or twice a
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year uh staying for a few days at a time and our
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pattern for those visits would be we would be so excited to see each other and so happy to hang out for a few days
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and about two days in to that we would start bickering or snapping at each
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other or whatever and I'm sure that this is not an uncommon experience for anyone
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and their parents especially mothers and daughters who are kind of famous for it but yeah right
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well in in so I was dating someone at the time and he had been hanging out
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with us for that few days and my mom left and he kind of he kind
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of looked at me and he he's like why do you talk to your mom like I was
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like was that I was like I don't know I was like I don't know why I do that every time she leaves I just I feel
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terrible and then like but when she's here I'm so I get so annoyed at her and but then she leaves and I'm like why did
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I talk to her like that and so it started a conversation with him
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and started a conversation inside of myself and we explored that a little bit
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and I realized that I was reverting to 16 year old
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Jenny when my mom came into town and 16 17 year old Jenny was the last time that
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I had lived full time you know daily interactions with my mom
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and there's a phenomenon and it applies
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especially between parents and their children but in almost any group
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anywhere um that you kind of you kind of revert to
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who you were when you met or established this group
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of people that you hang out with so whether that's your family or your college friends or whatever it might be
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you you know we are all multifaceted people
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we don't just have one thing that defines us and that's who we are we have many
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pieces to our personalities and so um you know I I realized that oh when I
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get on the phone or go home and visit my college friends like I kind of become College Jenny again and I realized that
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that's what was happening with my mom I was becoming 16 year old Jenny with my mom
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and even though I was in my late 20s and I had
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so much more clarity and and realizations and all of these things I
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had actually really only been in regular contact with my mom
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for the last three years other than when I was a teenager and so
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we were re-establishing our relationship we were you know healing and growing and re-establishing
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our relationship and I realized what was happening and and
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began to take responsibility for showing up in that relationship with
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my mom differently and showing up as the adult that I was
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walking around being the rest of the time you know I would go be a
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professional at my job and I would be a good friend and
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I would be understanding of my friends and who they are and there be accepting
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of their flaws or what I if I perceived them to be flaws or whatever it was
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just the way I would want to be treated and otherwise an adult yeah and I was like oh okay so I need to
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like stop seeing my mom as my mom just like this punching bag that I can be an
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to and he'll love me anyway and I need to start treating her like a
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person that I care about because I do you know I'm not perfect and my mom and I still bicker sometimes but I don't I
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don't react or make shitty comments
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or I don't know just say like unnecessary things to her out of
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out of childish annoyance and I started to look at who my mom was
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and put the pieces of her life together and understand her as a human being and
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not just as my mom who I expect to be whatever I need her to be at
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whatever moment I want her to be that thing adult to adult not not parent child yeah
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and but I had to in order to to do that I there had to there were several years of
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work that led up to me being able to being capable of realizing that and there were
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several years of healing and looking at my childhood and putting
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the pieces of her life together to understand her better you know grieving and then accepting and understanding
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and once I could see her as a whole person not just as my mom
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I was able to let go of a lot of those things
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or talk to her about some of those things like move on with my life and and
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and not just like not just like carry those things buried inside of me that would come out at a moment's notice
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yeah well and it wasn't like it's important to know that for anyone listening that it wasn't just like one
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Fell Swoop and all of a sudden I was an angel to my mom like it took more visits
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and more self-awareness and more and apologies and conversations like it also
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allowed me to to be able to talk to her about things I had never about topics I had never
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approached before because I was stuck in this child parent Dynamic and but once I
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stepped into an adult adult Dynamic I was able to be like hey you know
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I'm going to set this boundary with you or hey when you did this when I was a kid that hurt or you know we were able
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to have some of these conversations and then there
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were also things that I didn't necessarily feel like I needed to approach with her because I could see
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who she was and what was happening back then and I could go oh okay I get why
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that happened or I get how that happened or and I was able to just do it on my own I
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was able to just see it for myself and let it you know either experience the
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emotion or grieve what happened or whatever it was and just let it go
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um maybe with the adult adult perspective you perspective you could
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you could see it you didn't have to have everything explained to you like a child right and and that comes with life
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experience too and so so the the point of telling this story is you know
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just to give an example of how one complicated and messy because that
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whole story spanned from like age 25 to now really it's still happening like my
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mother and I still discuss life and
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and whatnot and our relationship continues to grow and get better but
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um there was you know about five or six years there where we were
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kind of traversing a new version of our relationship as
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mother and daughter and so it's not when I talk about generational healing and I
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talk about um looking into your childhood or your
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feelings towards your parents and there might be feelings towards your parents from when you were a kid and there might
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be feelings that you've had as an adult towards your parent now and it may even
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be like as Grandparents you've struggled with your parents or
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explaining to your parents how you want them to treat your children you know because that's something I hear
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a lot about is you know I've told my a parent will come to me and say I've
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had this conversation with my parent 800 times and every time they come to visit and see the grandbabies she still says
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these things or she still does these things or Grandpa still you know won't
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you know tells my three-year-old to stop crying when he gets hurt and it's like
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and it's you know different generation yeah and and so there's also a level of
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parents adult you know parents of adult children have a responsibility to respect their
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adult children as adults and not as their children to not not the way I
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would do it but it's their kid just now right sure and and trusting that your child
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will do what's best and that there is new knowledge that you are not aware of and
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you know just because it's not how you did it is also not the other thing I've seen is
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grandparents taking it personally when their kid doesn't
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want to do things the way they did things and I'm sorry that it's been like that for
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centuries well the kids have always wanted to do something different than their the way their parents did it
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that's just another iteration of what you're talking about though is is that's
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the other side of the coin it sounds like of a grandparent looking at a kid as a kid not as an adult
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and if they're not having a meeting of minds and a sharing of opinions and
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here's here boundaries here's my here's the way I'm going to raise my kid it's not the way you did it
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but here's what I expect of you and yeah yeah it's all the it's all the same
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thing just from different perspectives interesting right and there so there's this there's this this visual that I get
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when I talk about this subject is there's in order to pass forward
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what we want to pass on to our children and parent differently and make change
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and and evolve there's in order to reach forward we
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must also we must reach back you can't just cut off
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whatever's in the past pretend it's not there turn a blind eye and just push forward
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like you're going to carry whatever's back there is coming with you whether you choose to see it or not whether you
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are aware of it or not what you have experienced in the first 20 or 30 or 40
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Years of your life before you become a parent follows you unless you turn around and
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face it and figure it out yeah and if you have your parents around and they
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are grandparents to your your children and you have a diet you know you have this three generation Dynamic occurring
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for visits or in your household or whatever it might be like that Dynamic is going to play out
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all of the time and until you address those things it's going to affect your
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children no matter what kind of change you try to make
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um yeah that's an interesting thought I mean the the the the
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community parents communicating to grandparents maybe why they're doing not
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that that's required but to get grandparents on board the grandparents
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have to be ready to receive and the parents need to communicate why this is different
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um and grandparents especially it makes me think of a I think it's a Japanese concept new mind beginner's mind
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where you can't go into it you can't think you know it all shoshin
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I think so it's s-h-o -s-h-i-n
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someone correct me if that's wrong or I'll Google it later and correct it in the show notes but it's show Shin is
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beginner's mind learner's mind but that's the you know that's the idea of you the old dogs new tricks that kind of
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thing grandparents can't go in thinking they have all the answers uh and even if they do the kids might want to do it
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different and so then there's communication must ensue to uh uh
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[Music] come to agreement on a change and push
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comes to shove grandparents need to back off it's your kid's kids it's reminding me
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of something we talked about in one of the earlier episodes of this leveling the playing field so there's this
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hierarchy of parent to child that is very very common and
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I talked about leveling the playing field as a parent so that you can be the adult
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and you know what's safe and you you know there there are some hard
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boundaries but in general leveling the playing field letting your child have an
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opinion have a choice be involved in problem solving and not minimizing their
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emotions right it's so important that we empathize and we validate their emotions and their experience even though they're
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tiny and you know that everything's going to be okay they don't and so you
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just telling them it's going to be okay is like oh well I'm must be crazy for feeling this way right meeting them
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where they're at yeah yeah meeting our job as parents is to meet our children where they're at and care for them there
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and not to stand up here and look down at them and be like no it's this way no it's this way of course this way and so
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if we level the playing field between parent and you know underage child
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the same concept applies to grandparent adult child
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right so grandparent can't be up here parent
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with child you can't have grandparent going no this is how I parented so this is how you should parent and this is how
38:34
it was when I was parent taken so this is how you should do it and if you don't then that's I'm offended because
38:40
uh you're telling me I didn't do it right and I said no that's not what we're saying you had the information
38:46
that you had when you were parenting yeah thank you and I love you
38:51
I've learned this thing called relational parenting you gotta learn about it
38:56
my dad forever forever uh marketing for me
39:03
well it's just I mean that's what we're doing and yeah I mean the parent-child thing you see that everywhere in nature
39:09
it's not just human beings and uh but it it doesn't really go above that I mean
39:15
there's a parent-child thing with parents in their and their parents you know the grandparents but grandparents
39:22
are removed from the child per se you know there's they don't get to they don't get
39:29
to mess with the parent child stuff too much well no but it's I think it's really important for grandparents to
39:37
not see themselves as older and wiser than parent than their adult child who
39:44
is now a parent I think it's really important that grandparents
39:50
Trust and believe that their child who is now
39:56
an adult having children knows what's best for them for those children with the new
40:03
information available and also refrain from
40:10
taking it personally because it's not about you your kid grew up witnessing
40:16
you as a parent and there are some things they're going to disagree with you about and everyone is human and
40:22
makes mistakes and there's no reason for you to fall into a pit of Shame for that and I know we did an episode on shame
40:28
we're gonna do another one by the way because I have a lot more to say but shame is so deeply rooted
40:35
in who we are and how we handle ourselves and our emotions and how we reflect on the world that this is this
40:42
is what's at play when someone when anyone takes anything personally it is rooted in shame oh well you must you
40:50
must be saying that I did something wrong or bad and because if you're not
40:55
going to do it the way I did it then then you're saying that I was wrong or bad and that's just not true there's new
41:03
information when we know better we do better Maya Angelou I know Maya Angelou sorry I've learned since that many years
41:11
ago that that I was pronouncing her name wrong um I was thinking of The Four Agreements
41:17
by Carlo something or other but a similar kind of thing yeah it is you know better you do better yeah you gotta
41:24
trust the kids you wanna I wanted to say we want to raise kids that you trust you
41:30
know when you're raising your kids you want to make sure you're raising kids that you trust with this job not yeah
41:36
you can do it for them forever right yes so you so the same trust and and
41:43
um freedom and trial and error that we are giving from parent to child you know
41:51
our grandparent to adult parent or to adult child needs to be happening as well and if it happened earlier then it
41:58
would naturally happen when you're a grandparent you wouldn't be micromanaging your child who is now
42:03
having children of their own and I remember the story The quick snippet I wanted to to tell you I think I was
42:10
think I was in college like late College
42:15
is either late college or very shortly after college I we had had a phone call
42:22
and you said something to me and you know I was updating you on my
42:27
life and all the mistakes I was making and you weren't
42:34
telling me what to do about it you like you were not correcting me you were not
42:40
giving me a solution about it wow that doesn't sound like me it was me this is
42:46
going to lead us into our final our final story about you that wasn't me yeah well so okay that's why it was so
42:54
memorable core memory right because my dad wasn't like giving me the solution
42:59
or telling me what I should or shouldn't do and I was like 22 23 ish and
43:06
um you said that at this point in my in parenting
43:14
it was your job to you had taught me what you could
43:20
teach me and it was NE it was now your job to sit
43:27
back and watch oh my and I must have been on drugs was I I
43:33
don't get high but you said it much more elegantly than that and and much less of
43:38
like like much less much less detached than that but I think I I was telling
43:44
you all these telling you this or telling you a certain situation and and you were just kind of like being
43:50
supportive and whatever and I was you know I was made a joke about oh you're
43:56
not you're not giving me the answers you're not telling me what I should do and you said and you said something to the
44:02
effect of you know I've realized that you're an adult and you are
44:08
capable and smart and my job at this point is to be here when you need me and
44:15
otherwise I'm I sit back and watch and just watch you become who you're gonna be and I remember oh God I was so sassy
44:24
back then because I would never say this now I remember telling you to grab a bowl of popcorn
44:31
you know that sounds familiar I think I might remember a scrap of this I think I
44:37
even posted it on Facebook or something some version of that quote popcorn hits
44:42
a bell because like well then I said strapping and grab a bowl of popcorn dad
44:48
he's coming back there it was a very dramatic point in my life yeah where I
44:55
was kind of like really experiencing the pitfalls of adulthood and the
45:00
choices that I make yeah and I've been out and it's beyond my it was probably
45:06
beyond my power to really fix it was like you know well if you
45:12
and you you know do you need me to send in the SWAT team or something I don't
45:17
know what it was but uh that's good and I've been so proud of you guys you and
45:23
you and your brothers too when you get to those points where it's we talk about things but it's like you know and you
45:30
know a minute ago you were talking about you know stuff's all learned parent child parent grandparent uh it's all
45:39
learned it's all figured out it's not learned it's figured out uh the hard way
45:44
and uh you know that's and that's good that everybody you never stop figuring things
45:50
out um I'm very proud of you guys because you all you all
45:56
matured and are good at figuring things out I trust you guys
46:02
I'd forgotten about that well so I want to you know part of this
46:09
doing this podcast with you is us being able to
46:17
you and I have these conversations um about
46:25
you know intergenerational like I'm the child you're the parent Etc but also exploring then even further
46:33
back so your parents you know how are you affected by how you were parented
46:40
um and so you were telling me in when we were discussing this episode and this
46:45
topic that you felt that you were not that you weren't
46:53
parented very much that you kind of parented yourself growing up you were
46:59
the fifth of five children and that you
47:05
remember you know by the fifth child your parents were just kind of like all right well
47:11
there's another one it's not gonna kill him no but none of the other Fork died when they went down
47:17
to the river he can go down to the river and so that led to you when you
47:24
um entered Parenthood you were very like gung-ho I'm gonna teach my kids
47:30
everything and I'm gonna you know you were very intentional about like I'm gonna tell them all about the world and teach
47:36
them everything and um and and you had that wonderful intention
47:43
of like I'm not gonna I'm gonna do it differently than my parents were because I feel like I grew up kind of without
47:48
Parents Without a lot of guidance and you and I touched on how
47:56
it led to over teaching over explaining
48:02
um to the point where we and I and I won't I I won't say we me
48:09
um I felt inadequate or incapable sometimes
48:15
of finding my own solutions to things I remember I remember you finally saying
48:20
that out loud to me at some point in the back seat and feeling very small it's
48:26
like no no no I'm not trying to make you feel incompetent I'm trying to brain
48:31
dump on you before I die and right you know what wisdom I have put at your
48:37
disposal so you can use that to grow and it just you know we screw up our kids
48:42
whether we even with good intentions we screw up our kids we do things wrong and
48:47
I shouldn't say screw up kids and so yeah no I very I very vividly remember a
48:53
a couple of times somebody's from the back seat saying something and me going oh crap that's that was not the effect I
49:01
was looking for at all do you remember how old I was you're pretty young you were much
49:08
younger really sure calling you out as a like a teenager
49:14
how young were we I would say 13 14 15 maybe it would have been it would have
49:19
been I'm thinking middle school or uh early High School yeah
49:27
yeah I remember we would tell you know 12 to 16 or something like that one of
49:32
us myself for brothers would tell you
49:37
something a situation that was going on at school or a problem we were having or whatever
49:43
and you would kind of Dive Right In with like how to fix it or how to do it here's how you handle it like this and
49:51
yeah it was like I I I already had a plan
49:56
I was just kind of I was getting there but you just kind of cut you know either you cut me off or
50:02
like I wasn't I was just venting because I have feelings I didn't want I don't
50:07
need a solution I wasn't asking your opinion I was just needed you to hear my
50:13
feelings I was not good at that one either
50:19
um yeah no that's and that's another good example of I think you guys probably
50:26
said that to me more than once a piece before I finally figured it out
50:32
you know because I would like because I would do that and I know I would launch off in a lecture I would brain dump on
50:39
you and uh apparently you survived it but I'm sure it wasn't much I'm sure the
50:45
next five or ten minutes were not always the most fun well in the effect so the the lecture
50:53
wasn't necessarily the problem I I loved
50:58
learning I loved being taught like I always liked school I always you know as
51:04
an adult I've always pursued experiences and learning new things and
51:10
cultures and you know all kinds of stuff so it wasn't the lecture that bothered
51:15
me it was it was that I that's not what I needed and sometimes
51:23
the lecture instead of helping me problem solve it myself
51:29
you just gave me the answer yeah I was trying to dump the answer on you the effect that that can like the intention
51:35
is wonderful but the effect is that your child then feels like you don't think
51:42
they're capable or smart or whatever
51:47
and they also don't get to practice those problem-solving skills and they
51:53
don't get to like bring you like oh look I solved this problem this is how I handled it and then you get to be like
52:00
oh wow that's awesome or whatever and I'm not like yeah you didn't do that all the time every
52:06
single time but there were definitely times where we'd be like Dad like stop
52:12
telling me the answer like stop telling me what to do fire hose too many answers too many
52:18
answers well and I think if I had it to do over again I would choose to check me
52:24
on this approach uh would be to ask questions would be to do more of a motivational interview or a well what do
52:31
you think about that and and golly how'd that happen and how do you find yourself
52:37
in your situation would be to respond more with questions and let you walk yourself through it
52:43
yeah with a minimum of guidance would be how I would do that now with someone
52:49
yeah not a child not my own child yeah well
52:56
and that's especially if your kid comes to you obviously depending on age Etc comes to
53:04
you and asks for your help it is especially effective to ask
53:10
questions to help guide them into problem solving it themselves if a child
53:15
comes to you with feelings with struggle with this thing is happening and and
53:23
they're you know upset or sad or hurt or whatever it might be
53:29
then just focus on the feelings first
53:34
and because then the kid is once once you say I hear that you're feeling
53:40
really frustrated I hear that you're feeling really hurt by what your friend said to you at school I I hear that oh
53:47
that's so hard I remember that happening to me when I was a kid and it felt like this and blah blah like just empathizing
53:55
and normalizing and validating their feelings that's hard I'm sorry
54:01
and then your child will naturally lead you
54:06
into okay now I want to problem solve this what do I do what do I do with this
54:12
talk about reframing or yeah um hey you're good at this
54:17
thanks so so just to just to wrap up your
54:24
childhood stuff and studied that into parent your parenting and with with the greatest of intentions
54:32
right you there's no malicious intent um there's nothing but love and value
54:40
that you wanted to add to our lives and all of that to say I really wanted you
54:45
to tell that story because I just wanted to kind of paint the
54:51
picture of how over compensating for doing things differently
54:58
to do the things my parents did yeah or I'm going to do it this way
55:05
over compensating can be just as detrimental as under compensating yeah
55:12
and being aware that you want something different but still
55:18
just making it up as you go right doesn't always run into the best
55:23
results you know it's good to do a little learning here I am at 60 something and it's like going yeah that
55:31
you know that didn't that wasn't the best I could have done that a little better and nobody died but
55:38
you know I would do that different now that's uh it's good to have a conversation once in
55:46
a while with somebody and figure that out sooner rather than later well in the the example it is better to
55:55
figure that out sooner rather than later but in the in the example that is wildly
56:02
common and is also the authority
56:08
of authoritarian authoritarian parenting Styles
56:15
um argument against the this parenting Revolution right the
56:20
gentle parenting conscious parenting peaceful parenting relational parenting
56:25
um Revolution is that we're just gonna coddle all of
56:32
these children and they never do anything wrong and everything is always okay and your feelings are always the
56:38
only thing that matter and everything is rainbows and sunshine and that is also an over compensation
56:46
from the authoritarian parenting that is has been very common for anyone born in
56:53
the 80s and before and authoritarian thing too is also kind of
57:00
I don't know not wanting to discuss feelings yeah what you're saying there
57:05
right it reminds me of the you have to deal with your own crap and so one way to not deal with your own crap if you're
57:12
reluctant to deal with your own stuff is is shut it down you know yeah well and
57:17
yeah and shut down any of the children's feelings and yeah yeah I can't if you
57:22
can't deal with your own stuff you're not going to be able to deal with this tiny human running around
57:28
in front of you either because they're going to have all their own stuff but yeah so the overcompensation from from
57:37
authoritarian parent is up here child is down here parenting to to this where
57:44
we're catering to the child constantly and whatever the child wants the child gets and you never say no and you
57:51
validate all their feelings no matter what's going on like well that's you know that whole thing is I'm not I'm not
57:59
averse to being authoritarian sometimes I think it has to do with age you know
58:04
it's like put on your coat we're going to the store I'm in a hurry to a two-year-old is different than to a 22
58:11
year old you know well an authoritative so there's you have to adjust for the
58:18
age so yes adjusting for the age too and like and being authoritative sometimes
58:25
is necessary you are the parent this is not safe
58:31
it's over or whatever you know whatever whatever the situation is yeah right and
58:36
there there's a time and a place and that's what I'm saying is going from authoritarian to passive parenting is
58:43
also not the answer and so with relational parenting and gentle
58:49
parenting and peaceful parenting we're trying to go from this from this authoritative Spectrum over here side of the spectrum
58:57
and the passive just do whatever the child wants child runs the household over here and and
59:05
come in this middle area where we actually have we have connection and and
59:11
healthy emotional responsiveness to our child and
59:17
we are authoritative when we need to be and there are boundaries and there are
59:24
there's structure and we teach and you know all of those things come together
59:30
to make a healthy whole person but if we go back to my pyramid that I described
59:39
in the first episode and we go from meeting physical needs and we skip over
59:46
emotional needs and go straight to rules and boundaries and cognitive learning and hug your grandpa and be a social
59:53
person if we skip these emotional and mental needs on this second layer of our
1:00:00
pyramid then our child will then either operate
1:00:06
out of fear and be constantly in a state of fight or flight and high cortisol levels and all
1:00:13
of that um and Excel anyway but in an extremely
1:00:19
unhealthy state in the nervous system and they will end up with anxiety and depression and all kinds of in
1:00:25
their 20s or they won't be able to function in those
1:00:31
situations and they'll be considered you know they'll be called all kinds of
1:00:37
things or diagnosed with all kinds of things or they'll need special help with all kinds of things and so we can't skip
1:00:43
we cannot skip this emotional mental health needs um and that's where relational parenting
1:00:50
comes in and we we focus on that we focus on meeting those needs and then
1:00:56
establishing the structure and the boundaries and the the um
1:01:02
you know the respect for I don't even want to say respect for
1:01:09
authority um well respect for others respect foreign
1:01:18
if you want respect you need to treat others with respect you have no right to expect anything from other people that
1:01:26
you're not willing to do yourself you know that's leadership That's the basis of all kinds of stuff
1:01:32
structure requires a why you know I don't know it's time for bed why it's uh
1:01:38
don't run out in the street why um you know which is more rational and
1:01:43
you have to if you end if you end up with disconnect between the emotional and the structure side of things then
1:01:51
that's that's where you get confusion you end up with kids that have so much going on in their head busy you know
1:01:57
becomes depression paralysis can't make decisions don't function as well you
1:02:03
know if things are not sort of kind of resolved you know the degree to which the the internal Machinery mental
1:02:11
Machinery Works smoothly kind of has a has a determining effect on how well you
1:02:17
function in society and deal with resilience and then deal with uh life
1:02:23
you know because it's varied yeah well in the in that you mentioned
1:02:28
that understanding so here's the boundary
1:02:34
and here's why here's why because if you
1:02:39
just make a rule or you just set a boundary or you just whatever and tell
1:02:46
your kid they can't do something or they have to do something or this that or the other they're going they are not going
1:02:53
to care about what that rule is or why it's
1:02:58
there and they're not going to respect it at the level you want them to until
1:03:03
you fully teach them why we do things and in really young kids
1:03:10
you're gonna have to teach them 600 times before it clicks for a while it's
1:03:15
because I said so no but that's but that's a horrible reason yes it's not because I said so
1:03:22
that's never a reason no matter what age they are not even for one-year-olds
1:03:27
two-year-olds yeah
1:03:33
[Music] we oversimplify the way we explain
1:03:38
things to kids and we do not need to and it actually inhibits their ability to understand so when you don't stay down
1:03:46
stop dumbing things down even for a two-year-old I'm telling you they get it
1:03:52
and they learn language that you teach them so if you teach them you know to say bum instead of butt or you teach
1:04:00
them to call something whatever like I don't even know I don't even have an example right now but if
1:04:07
you say to your two-year-old all right it's bedtime why I don't want to go to bed I'm not tired uh
1:04:13
okay well Let's either we could do an exercise with them where we feel into
1:04:19
our bodies and see if we're actually tired or why when they say why do I have
1:04:25
to go to bed you say well everybody goes to bed we all have to sleep as human beings if
1:04:31
you don't sleep you're not going to say this to your children but if you don't sleep you die and so
1:04:38
you're go you're going to explain for a two-year-old you're gonna die if you don't they don't know what dying is you
1:04:44
can't explain it to them they cannot conceptualize it and so you'll just confuse them further please don't watch
1:04:50
your four-year-olds watch this but you you explain that to them not well if you
1:04:58
don't sleep you're going to be tired your kid cannot also conceptualize what being tired in the future is too far
1:05:04
away they don't get it yeah okay so
1:05:09
you can even ask questions so I remember with one of my families one of my nanny
1:05:15
families there was a child who didn't want to go to bed ever at bedtime and they would always say why do I have to
1:05:21
go to bed I'm not tired I'm not tired well you know what's really important is
1:05:26
that we go to bed before we actually feel tired because what happens when you
1:05:33
feel tired they go and if you've had this conversation before they might be able
1:05:38
to answer if you have never had this conversation before you still ask that question and when they go I got a
1:05:44
reminder yeah I don't know then you tell them what you witness when they get really tired you say well I've I've
1:05:51
noticed when you get really tired you start to rub your eyes a lot and you
1:05:57
start to kind of throw your body around the room and sometimes you get hurt when
1:06:02
you do that and if you don't do that I've noticed that you cry a lot and you
1:06:08
get really sad when you're getting happy yeah and they go oh and whether they remember
1:06:15
it or not they're gonna they're gonna like kind of like take that in and think about it and if this is like the 50th
1:06:22
time you've had this conversation with them then they're gonna go oh yeah yeah I better go to bed or they're gonna
1:06:28
argue with you a little bit more who knows but the point is like you can explain things to a toddler you can
1:06:38
explain things even to a six-month-old baby who doesn't want their diaper
1:06:43
changed I verbally explain to them what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and
1:06:49
why it needs to happen like I'm so sorry babe I know this is so hard you don't like laying on your back or you don't
1:06:56
feel good today and getting your diaper changed is so hard and I empathize with
1:07:01
that child even though they are not capable of verbalizing back to me that six-month-old can feel what I'm saying
1:07:09
and they are starting to understand it yeah they do they're starting to
1:07:14
understand language and they can hear my tone and they can feel the vibration of
1:07:21
the words that I'm saying and even if they don't stop crying or they continue to be upset and mad that you're changing
1:07:28
their diaper you're at least not causing emotional harm and disconnect
1:07:35
to that baby yeah you still have to do you still have to change the poopy diaper because otherwise they could get
1:07:42
an infection or whatever sorry yeah it's gonna happen but you are you are maintaining the relationship and the
1:07:49
connection to them and their experience and their feelings so that they feel
1:07:54
safe and heard and they can still be upset but they feel safe
1:08:00
yeah so it can happen at six months old at five years old at 18 years old but we
1:08:08
need to be explaining the why and the real why not mixed signals not yeah not
1:08:16
not dumb made up reasons or yeah just laid out yeah I like that I like that as a
1:08:23
teaching uh thing back to teaching and and uh
1:08:29
now I'm having trouble with words authenticity and stuff you know getting getting the real message across
1:08:36
making making rules and either not explaining them
1:08:43
and just saying because I said so or that's the way it is your child is going to get a very skewed
1:08:50
inaccurate way of how the world works and they're going to be very lost when they go out into that world and there
1:08:57
are no rules and there's no like there are there are very few rules and they
1:09:04
are going to be lost without reasons and actual like meaningful structure
1:09:11
um that they can then go recreate in their own lives and there are there are you're also giving them a skill there
1:09:19
are more and less useful approaches to dealing with other people as you get older and just going into a
1:09:27
room full of people and saying here's what we're going to do and without with making no pretense of hey I'm the boss
1:09:35
and this is just going to happen and get out of here is oftentimes less effective
1:09:40
than angling a little bit and explaining and you know letting people when people
1:09:46
feel bought in I guess is the word that's popping into my head if you can get a kid to buy into the idea of it
1:09:54
sounds kind of salient raising children as it comes out of my mouth but getting to buy into the
1:10:01
decision to go to bed wow then you know Chuck that problem off pretty much
1:10:09
forever and move on you know that's uh onto the on to the next real problem
1:10:15
yeah that would be great that'd be a great skill to teach a kid and then they see it and then next thing you know when
1:10:22
they're 50 they're using it themselves you know because it's part of their DNA practically well it's true I remember
1:10:29
I've worked at so you know multiple companies and the companies I stayed at were the ones that
1:10:35
were transparent and honest and told us why things were happening the way they were or what you know new rules or
1:10:43
whatever were being put into place and the places who were just who just treated us like foot soldiers and told
1:10:49
us what to do and if we didn't do it on command then we were reprimanded like
1:10:54
replaceable Parts it was like all right Deuces I'm out like you don't get to treat me like this or
1:11:00
I'm not this is miserable I don't want to come to work so there's a whole there's a whole other
1:11:06
movement now in the workforce metaphor in different companies of like treating
1:11:12
people like people like these same Concepts these same like being in relationship with your employees a
1:11:20
relationship yeah not just a transaction but like people spend
1:11:27
more of their lives at work than they do in their own homes sometimes as a rule
1:11:33
yeah so you have to make it a place that people want to go like it's simple well you get more you
1:11:41
get more work you get more cooperation you know I hate to see people that come to a meeting they bring a laptop and
1:11:47
they crack a laptop and they're not paying any attention to what's going on in the meeting they're not engaged you
1:11:53
know and you get more in you know if people are engaged whether it's a two-year-old going to bed or a bunch of
1:12:01
people at work you know it's more productive more fun for everybody yeah you know less less friction less
1:12:08
excitement less drama yeah it's a good thing usually
1:12:14
all right I think once again we have veered off topic enough for one day
1:12:21
we uh we're gonna Circle back in and close this down to
1:12:29
um how to heal generational trauma we cannot we cannot just
1:12:38
move forward and execute we
1:12:43
there is if there is generational trauma or generational Cycles or pain and
1:12:49
wounding from your own childhood that has not been addressed yet the stepping forward into the kind of parent you want
1:12:56
to be or the changes that you want to make is going to be so much more effective and so much easier if you
1:13:03
do that healing inside of yourself and you have to acknowledge that the hurt
1:13:09
happened you have to feel those terrible feelings and grieve what happened to you
1:13:17
in childhood and then move into forgiveness acceptance or understanding
1:13:24
um and then and then once you have done that you become capable of taking radical
1:13:32
accountability of your own choices and life and what you want to
1:13:40
make of it and what kind of parent you want to be and that gives you all of your power back
1:13:46
yeah and you get you can you can literally do anything you want with that power so yeah making choices yeah
1:13:53
yeah all right yeah good deal good stuff you bet thank
1:13:59
you sweetie I learned a thing or two tonight oh good
1:14:04
all right bye everybody if someone came to mind while you were listening to this
1:14:10
episode or you are wishing you had a friend to digest it with I would be so
1:14:15
honored if you shared this link from this episode with them I myself have always benefited from
1:14:21
community and sharing and I truly believe that it takes a village to raise
1:14:27
a child our society has become so independent from one another and parenting these
1:14:34
days is often a lonely Journey but it doesn't have to be that way
1:14:40
that's why I'm here if you have been seeking a more intentional approach to
1:14:45
Parenting but you aren't sure where to start I would love to hear from you you
1:14:51
can find me and all of my offerings at www.jennyb.com
1:14:57
and come follow me on all major social media platforms it fills my heart to
1:15:03
hear your stories where you come from and your big goals for raising the Next
1:15:08
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1:15:14
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1:15:19
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I am so grateful that you are here and always remember you are never alone
1:15:33
I'll see you next week this show is intended for education and
1:15:38
entertainment purposes only we will discuss things like mental health abuse PTSD and other potentially triggering
1:15:46
subjects please listen at your own discretion and this podcast is not intended for anyone under the age of 18.