0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to the your parenting mojo podcast today we're going to do something i've never done before in 150 plus episodes of the show which is that apart from this introduction i'm not in the show at all two listeners jenny and emma reached out to ask if they could record an episode about how their experience in parenting has shifted over the last year or so

0:30 and i gave a very cautious acceptance not really having much of an idea what they wanted to discuss i've interacted with each of them but not together and i don't know much about their relationship and i have to say it's a bit strange to say their names together because my full name is jenny and my sister's name is emma so this is like a different jenny and emma show and then when i listened to the recording of their conversation i

0:52 realized how close they've grown over the last year they both happen to be in the parenting membership and they're in the same action group which is a group of up to five parents who meet with an experienced peer leader and i think that many parents think that that experience isn't really going to be very useful especially when they're already pretty sick of being on zoom calls jenny and emma were in very different places in parenting when they joined the

1:15 membership emma's son was still pretty young and she and her husband thought well we're not really having any problems now so should we actually spend money on this and they eventually decided to do it because they wanted to be prepared for challenges that happened down the road and then challenges did come up and they felt prepared for them because they'd already been practicing the tools and when it turned out that some of their big challenges were actually in

1:38 communication between emma and her husband because he was agreeing to do things he didn't really want to do just so she would stop explaining we had a consult where we were able to identify some of those issues so they could really see what each other's needs were and how to communicate to meet each other's needs i've seen them both on coaching calls since that consult but i hadn't talked with them about that specific issue and i had no idea until i heard this

2:02 recording how transformational that experience had been and jenny sort of came into the membership with her hair on fire because she basically hadn't had a full night of sleep in over four years and she had very specific ideas about what parenting was going to look like and it was actually being in that group with emma and the other parents that gave her permission in a way to prioritize herself and take the actions that she needed to get sleep on the right track

2:28 which freed up her energy for other things which sounds so incredibly simple but she hadn't been able to actually do it without that extra support jenny tells us about a tool that she learned in the membership called radical listening and how such a simple yet profound practice has shifted how her child is able to be in their relationship and the side benefit is that his big expressions of anger that used to take 45 minutes to work through and really

2:52 interrupt their day are now over and done within 10 minutes and they move on with the rest of their day and now jenny and emma have grown so close they're invested in each other's success and they know they can show up in tears and looking a complete wreck and no they won't be judged and they can share their successes and no it won't be a competition about who's doing better than whom because they care about each

3:13 other so much emma certainly and probably jenny too figured that most of the value they were going to get in the membership would be in the materials that i produce and yes they've certainly learned things from that that have helped them but it's both humbling and wonderful for me to see how they've actually become skilled at using these ideas because of what they've learned from each other if you'd like to really feel like part of a

3:36 village and get this kind of support in your own parenting journey the parenting memberships open for enrollment right now until midnight pacific this coming wednesday may 25th sliding scale pricing is available and so is a money back guarantee you can find more information at your parentingmojo.com forward slash parenting membership and now let's hear from jenny and emma themselves i'm jenny i'm emma and you and i have known each other for about a year now through the parenting

4:06 membership um you and i are in an action group together and for people who don't know an action group is part of the parenting membership offer um i would describe it as a breakout group like four or five people who get together on zoom or whatever works for them on a weekly basis to talk with each other about the content in the module and figure out how to apply that content um to whatever is going on in their lives

4:34 and in our action group i feel like we really hit the ground running and got right into it and were addressing like the most pressing issues that we were each facing that particular week um so i feel like through that i know you really well even though we have met face to face but i'm excited that we get to talk today because we can yeah hear more of each other's back stories and and maybe get to things that we don't

5:04 normally get to fit in on our weekly call so we're going to be talking about our experiences with the parenting membership and just to give people some context like i said i'm jenny and i grew up in the u.s but now live in europe with my husband and we have a six-year-old son i'm emma and i have a nearly three-year-old and i live in the uk super

5:35 um i do have some questions just to help kick things off so i i'm gonna start asking you emma um what were your expectations of parenthood before becoming a parent and then once you got there what was the reality like i think um i think i expected parenting to be a lot easier um as as an overachiever in life i sort of thought well if i do enough learning um

6:06 in in life about it beforehand then i'll just breeze into it it'll be i don't think it would be a breeze but i thought it would be something um more straightforward than it actually is um yeah i'm i'm a teacher by trade so i felt that having the experience with children um would be beneficial and i think it has been in some way but it's been quite a journey actually separating the way that i want to interact with my

6:36 child from how i've been trained as a teacher because a school is a very specific setup where the needs are not necessarily looking at the child and it's not the focus isn't the relationship between the adults and the children it's about the academic achievements of the children um and as i've as i've been a parent for longer i have

7:06 realized that my values don't necessarily align that closely with the goals of the school system and so my parenting has diverged quite a lot from that as well um yeah and parenting is at the end of it really all about relationship right and that's a very different goal if you're looking to nurture relationship versus trying to get a room full of 20 students to learn the same thing yeah absolutely um i think a big shock for for us as

7:39 well my husband's a teacher as well and i think he has a similar feeling that he thought it was just something that it would be hard but we'd be okay and um he's he sort of said before that his uh white male privilege he sort of thought well yeah there's been lots of things in life that people say are hard but it's been okay and then i think parenting sort of hit him in the face like oh no wait

8:02 oh wait those things are easy because of my privilege this is this is just hard she figures just like um universally hard yeah how about you um i a lot of what you just said feels familiar to me um my background is really different i was in the corporate world um in finance and yeah kind of coming from my my upbringing um and and my work experience it was definitely this feeling of like if you work hard enough you're gonna be

8:35 able to achieve anything and of course that applies to parenting too and like yeah um for me i have a track record of when things get busy and the workload increases i just sleep less and i barrel through and i like depend on my stamina um and that set me up for a very unhealthy start with my child um i i thought to that yeah if you are prepared and you are serene and you

9:08 you kind of are bringing this calm energy to your pregnancy then you're gonna have a quote-unquote easy child and that an easy child is desirable there was a lot of talk within my family circle about that because there's been some easy kids and some not easy kids and all this value um wrapped up with having an easy baby um and then my kid arrived and didn't sleep through the night for four and a half years and

9:38 um was definitely not what i would qualify as the typical easy child and there was a lot of um shame for me in that like oh gosh i i must not have been calm enough or secure in my own like yeah approach to mothering or whatever whatever it is um and yeah i just i kind of set myself up for a fall with all of these ideas i had about parenting and then the reality

10:09 being so different i also just assumed that it being the 21st century like of course we're going to be smashing gender norms in our family and that very quickly fell absolutely down when my son was nursing and only wanted me and i ended up doing all the night feeds and all the night stuff and like just getting to the point where i was so exhausted i couldn't even articulate my frustration with that situation or do anything about

10:36 it um so yeah it was it was a pretty big wake-up call once my son was here yeah i think that was um something for me as well is i didn't i don't think i understood my values um and how much they conflicted before becoming a parent because you know similarly as a staunch feminist in the workplace um i had certain ideals uh and ideas about how i thought things would play out and

11:07 you know i thought i'd be back at work um oh yeah doing everything that i used to be that life wouldn't have much changed and actually the reality is that didn't work for us um and it's it's a difficult thing coming to terms with how much your identity has had to shift um [Music] and realizing that actually your order of priorities might might be

11:37 different to what you previously thought absolutely i had i don't know if you had some of this too but i also absolutely thought that i would be back to some sort of work within months um and just the total lack of sleep and constant nursing put an end to that thought really quickly and i found myself um actually grappling with some inner misogyny and like lots of this kind of yeah work and productivity above everything else training in me like i'd

12:09 be out at the playground with the the carriage with my son feeling like am i allowed to be here like shouldn't i be in an office earning money this feels really weird um feeling like i was playing hooky from life by being with my child and things like um we got into this very stereotypical situation where my husband has become the main breadwinner and for a while i couldn't work but then i was working

12:39 just part-time and me really thinking of it in terms of the financial side of things valuing his time valuing his sleep and feeling like the work that i did do the the sleep that i got none of it was as important as him and having a lot of anger about that but that wasn't what he was saying that's not how he was acting but it was all this internal process within me that felt like okay now that i'm just

13:06 a mother i'm worthless um which i could see it and i could feel that it was not a productive thought to be having but i couldn't stop it for a while like i was just kind of seeing it rise up in me and realize like oh gosh what do i what does this say about my beliefs about women about caretaking about my own mother um and it took me a long time to kind of yeah get through just the the negative

13:36 feelings about it to somebody said i could think about it more objectively and yeah change my perspective a bit but that was also something i never expected to have to to confront in the role as parent was that something um how long was that going on before you joined the membership was that was that's what triggered it or that's um it was something that i was dealing with for quite a lot of the time and it was

14:02 compounded i think also just by exhaustion um but that's not what triggered me joining the membership that was actually i came to the membership relatively late my son had just started kindergarten and we were going through an acute phase of big feelings i had another mother warn me that when my child goes to kindergarten like the first couple months you're not going to recognize your kid because it's such a big transition for them they're going to

14:32 come home and just have horrendous behavior because it's just how they process and she said but like just hang in there and after a couple months it's all going to even out we were four or five months in and it was just getting more and more intense my son would come home at lunchtime every day and i felt like the smallest thing would set him off he would color outside the lines and there would be an explosion of anger

15:01 pointed at me um sometimes he would get physical it would take us like a half an hour 40 minutes 45 minutes to get through like where he could get past the anger and we could reconnect and be okay for half an hour an hour until the next thing would set him off and it was like this every day and i knew enough from the parenting content that i'd read about or listened to um that

15:32 emotions and and big behavior like that it's communication it's your child letting them or letting you know that they're not okay and i got that with my head but even though i wouldn't show it to my son i was really struggling not to feel angry back at him um anger is a really tough emotion for me historically i have never felt it and suddenly i was feeling it every day but swallowing it um and it was freaking exhausting

16:05 and yeah i was trying different things but nothing was really working and yeah just all this swallowing of my own emotion and all this frustration and all like seeing him struggle and being in so much emotional discomfort um that was going on along with me also having some personal um issues i was kind of having a bit of a burnout at the same period so i was basically a mess when i joined the parenting membership

16:37 how about you um our story was quite different um so our little one was still quite young he was i don't know 18 months ish um and we were about a year into lockdown um and i mean obviously it hadn't been a full lockdown for the entire time but um we'd sort of got used to this idea of things being remote and i think if it weren't for that i wouldn't have

17:07 taken membership so seriously i wouldn't have really thought an online course was for me but um i'd doubled with a couple of other non-parenting related courses that i'd actually really enjoyed online in that bubble of being away from everyone else and and it made me think that actually i could get a lot of value from something online and yeah so we weren't having any particular problems at the time um there were there were a couple little

17:36 things i think like cutting nails was not i remember that we talked about that a lot in the first month yeah it was not always easy but it wasn't a huge deal i was just not 100 happy with how i was doing it but it was it wasn't a huge deal but um yeah we did the setting loving limits workshop um and that's what kind of sold it to me i got a lot of value from that and felt

18:00 that actually i could get a lot more from it and we had a conversation with my husband about well we're not having problems yet is it should we just wait another year and join the membership then and we just kind of decide look if we're going to if we're going to join anyway we might as well get ahead of the curve and um yeah i'm really really glad we did because in the past year there's been so

18:21 much value i've gained from it um yeah so many so many things that have happened the little one's gone through a lot of changes and a lot of traumatic um traumatic things um well i say a lot of traumatic things the big thing was starting child care and i relate a lot to your story not the same but it was didn't recognise him yeah we had a lot of difficulties and a lot to work through um

18:51 thankfully we got through that and i'm so grateful for the group um because you guys were just my support through all of that and uh yeah continue to be um a lot it's it's so great having having some people that i trust um even if we are parenting in slightly different ways that we have complete respect for each other and we're just able to hold space for each other and hear each other and um

19:25 there's so much value in that whenever i talk to people in real life i thought it's it's very difficult to find people that don't immediately want to jump in with oh this is what you should do without any consideration of why there's a problem i think having a having a group of people who are familiar with problem solving and and identifying needs just means no one does that and you actually get to process things

19:58 and and actually work out what the root of the difficulties that you're having are and therefore actually find some solutions that might work rather than just get i don't know i don't know if it's the same for you but i find when i talk to people and they just go oh you should do this i just get aggravated and i end up just not wanting to talk about these things from people because i just it just winds me up more because

20:23 i feel like i'm not being heard what you're saying is making me think of so many different things um if i can kind of try to tie it all together but um yeah this this for me has been one place where i was really doubtful about the parenting membership and has been just such a gift because yeah you you go into the parenting membership and they talk about this action group thing where you're gonna get on yet another zoom call with a

20:49 bunch of people that you've never met before and like oh gosh is it gonna just be this total time waste um and because i mean this has been our experience i assume it's probably like this for other people too but i think because everyone in our group is so committed to parenting in a more intentional way and has been learning these sorts of tools like the problem-solving type of conversation where you are looking for the bigger story before

21:21 finding solutions um that gives us tools as parents but it also gives us tools as the group that we are where we can hold space for each other so much differently and the the level of intimacy and support and and yeah just being held in such a compassionate and genuinely supportive way within our action group has been something i never

21:52 would have expected we talk once a week um and the bunch of you are a lifeline for me like that that one conversation per week gives me a foundation for the rest of my week to do things more intentionally um and yeah it's just so valuable to me and that's been such a wonderful surprise coming out of the team membership i don't know about you but it wasn't something that i think i'd probably seen when i signed

22:23 up that it was something that was available and i knew i was going to sign up to one but it wasn't something that i thought was going to be oh that's the thing that i'm going to gain from it i think when i joined the membership i was the things that i was expecting was oh i'm going to get all this information and a sort of structure as to how to put it into practice because i've been

22:40 listening to the podcast since i was pregnant so i'd been listening to a lot of materials and been trying to put it into practice and successfully with some of it but um i the structure of the membership of having you know this month you're going to do this this month you're going to do this that appealed to me of it being more step by step rather than a mishmash of here is all of the information on

23:00 parenting which is what i was doing let's try to do all of it now um so that's what i thought i was going to get from it but then actually the action group has has been the bit there's the extra piece of the puzzle between here's the information to focus on but actually there are other things going on in my life that i might want to focus on as well and it helps sort of mesh those all together because

23:22 we're all looking at the same content but then it helps you to apply it to what's actually going on now because you can talk about what's actually going on now for you um yeah can can you give an example of um some place where the the things you were learning did help you in a situation with your son um well i think nail cutting we've also already mentioned that um i think when we first came to

23:54 trying to problem solve with it it wasn't actually a huge problem the thing that i didn't like about it was the way that we were getting the nail cutting done was by it felt like bribery with like screen time um and um yeah so i used the problem-solving method which is the um the first module but it was quite difficult because he was so young um so i tried drawing pictures with it and that didn't really work and actually

24:22 what i found worked in the end was me just going through that process but without him and trying to sort of hypothesize what he was what he was thinking and what was going on for him um and i realized that actually what what was difficult for him was he was pulling away he was finding the cutting uncomfortable so we went through a few iterations of trying different things and trying cutting after being in the bath and stuff but

24:49 actually it wasn't just the discomfort it was also the fact that he was associating the nail scissors with discomfort so even if it wasn't actually going to be uncomfortable he already didn't like that so we wind up on a solution which wouldn't work for most people i imagine but um we're still doing we've been doing it for months now um where we we do still have some screen time um and i filed his nails while while we're

25:20 watching something but the difference is it's something that um it doesn't feel like bribery because it's what i was doing before was i was putting something on on the tv and then pausing it whenever he pulled away and then pressing play again when he was willing to let me cut his nails whereas now it's just a let's just hear it that's just our sort of distraction and entertainment whilst i do something that actually is fine um i mean it takes a

25:52 long time because i'm filing his nails rather than cutting them and it really wouldn't work for most people but it's actually a bit of down time in our day and i don't really mind the programs that you watch and i find interesting anyway like i don't know if you've come across number blocks and yeah from an educational perspective i find them interesting so i don't mind watching them with them um i i think this is something that

26:15 i'm still kind of coming to grips with and starting to benefit more from from this sort of technique with the parenting membership and with the problem solving conversation having come into parenting with all these shoulds how you should do it this is the right way this is what i want to do and everything how how prescriptive it is and how limiting it can be and when you start to look at it not from from this kind of external perspective

26:42 of this is what you should do like screen time or no screen time or sugar or no sugar or whatever the parenting question is you if you move away from the shoulds and look at the needs of the people involved it starts opening up possibilities that you might not have otherwise thought of and really the creative ways to get everybody's needs met and like we struggle a lot with sleep um we have struggled a lot with sleep and i

27:13 was as i said coming into the parenting membership absolutely exhausted had not slept through the night in like four and a half years um and was not even knowing how exhausted i was anymore but there was this feeling that i had that like you put your child to bed they sleep and then you go off and have your evening as an adult with your husband right and i was so and like or have your down time and i was so

27:39 um stuck in that idea or like i would work at night i would get work done um that i it would take an hour and a half for my son to fall asleep and then i would come out of his room at like ten o'clock and would get all riled up because this is my time and then i wouldn't fall asleep till one o'clock or two o'clock and then he'd come at three and like oh my gosh it was ridiculous and

28:01 this is it's not something that i did necessarily with my son but looking at it like what if i take the shoulds out is there are there changes i can make that will set me up that i have a better chance of getting more sleep and the the membership and especially the action group helped me with that so much in the beginning because i was too tired to even think and i knew like okay let's let's work on

28:23 sleep and there were it was simple things like cutting off my phone time because yeah scrolling on facebook felt like leisure but it was actually like exhausting emotionally because we were in the middle of the elections in the states and so it was just stress and doom scrolling um and not sleeping and so yeah cutting off my screen time getting ready when my son gets ready for bed so that if when i inevitably fall asleep because

28:50 he takes so long to put to bed and like i'm lying next to him so he can sleep and i'll fall asleep then i when i get up and go to my bed i don't get woken up because i still have to go brush my teeth just things like that um where i was like no you know what i'm i'm gonna prioritize my sleep there is no should it's perfectly all right if i go to bed at night because my son's

29:11 waking up at three so then that means i will get like six solid hours of sleep which was so much better than what had been happening but i've been so fixated on that should um and so yeah with the problem-solving approach i think it it really helps to open things up that alternatives can be found and the shoulds can be sidestepped in a really effective way and yeah needs can actually get met and that for me was one of like the the first

29:41 things i did with the parenting membership that has been just transformational just getting decent sleep but i had not been able to put anything in place prior to the membership to make it happen and it was really with your like our group's loving encouragement and accountability that i could make it happen [Music] and i just want to say as well on the problem-solving because i think it's just it's so it seems so simple it is so simple but

30:09 it's so profound and um and that's something that i've had um i've had so much success with my husband um with with the problem solving and i think partly because my little one is still so little i think he's only just getting to the stage where i'm starting to be able to actually engage him in the problem-solving process rather than just hypothesizing um

30:41 but with my husband this is more than just problem-solving this is with that whole membership that the second module we had on parenting as a team and um we were talking about it the other day actually when when we joined the membership he was really skeptical and he was supported because it was something that i wanted to do and that he could see it was really important to me but he didn't think we were going to

31:00 get much value from it but when we did the second module um we we were on a group coaching call and um and we had a bit of a conversation with jen about about our communication on hot topics basically and um and sort of saw the pattern that um he was stonewalling because he just didn't want to go there um and would sort of agree to whatever but actually just wasn't

31:31 engaging with the process and um just wanted the conversation to end whereas because i felt like it wasn't resolved i then keep prodding and prodding and prodding and we'd just um yeah we just get nowhere and make things worse so there were certain hot topics that were just really tense about um i want to say most of most conversations we had really great communication with um and so it didn't seem like a huge deal but actually

32:00 tackling that and then being able to use the problem-solving methods to kind of hear each other better and slow those conversations down understanding how each other's feeling and what we actually need from a certain situation and really being able to hear each other rather than hearing what the we think the other person saying um over the past year has completely changed the way that we communicate around difficult emotive um topics like that and i don't

32:32 really feel like we have the same avoidance um [Music] of topics we might have avoidance at certain times if we're really tired and it's just not the right time but that's fine that's it's not okay we're not going to get to these topics and and it's something we're still working on but that has been the most profound change and not something that i thought i was signing up for um it's a really really happy benefit there and that's going to be you

33:01 know that's that's not separate from parenting obviously that's something that is is great for our partnership and and our relationship but that in turn is then great for our son because he's then seeing that modeled um so hopefully he'll he'll learn how to do that without us even having to actively teach it because he'll see us doing it so that's i just wanted to say that's been such a profound thing i had two have noticed um

33:30 much less tension and resentment on my part um where yeah like i had mentioned before i had kind of all of these these um negative internal emotions coming up and like feeling like things were not fair in the division of labor in the household and things like that and and i don't want to put this on my husband at all because he he is super supportive he is super kind but i was so exhausted and and

33:57 so lacking capacity but also lacking the tools to articulate and advocate for myself um and and to do it in a productive way because i would i'd swallow it all down swallow it all down and just be like no no it's fine and then build up ahead of steve and kind of explode but not in a way that we could have a productive conversation and then the cycle would start again where i would just be like no no it's fine

34:22 um and start building up that head of steam until it would come out again um because i didn't feel like i my needs were valid and so being able to take the charge out of the situations by saying like oh you know this is about resource we we only have so much resource to go around his needs are valid but so our mind let's talk about it in a less charged way

34:53 where we are focusing on solutions that work for everybody um just made it possible for me to come into these conversations with so much less tension and then yeah we are on each other's side and and we could meet each other more effectively and i everything feels lighter and that too was a huge unexpected benefit for me just being able to apply these techniques not only with my child but in this broader context and specifically

35:25 with my husband as well he's not as involved with the parenting membership but i did ask him like a week or two ago like do you notice a difference between me from a year and a half ago and me now and and yeah he absolutely does and it's been a wonderful surprise coming out of this it's such a nice thing to hear such a nice thing to experience yeah yeah yeah totally yeah so

35:55 to bring it back a little to the membership i feel like the structure of this parenting membership is i don't know if it's unique but for me it feels special because it's something that's happening in community and it's something that's happening over time so we get a new module every month and like i said you and i have been in it for over a year now um and for me i know i find that the fact that

36:20 it's ongoing is really helpful but what's that experience for you like emma what does it mean to you i think there's so much to dismantle in the culture that we've grown up in and the society that we've spent our whole lives living in that doesn't align with my values that's so hard to do it just it is ongoing work so i think having that continuous support

36:50 is so valuable um and like you say having new material each month there's so many more things that i can see it to come that uh you know we've scratched the surface so far of how i want it how i want to change things how i want to improve things to just live the best family life that we can so i think i think that's what it means to me is it it's something that is never going to end really this work

37:18 so being part of the membership helps keep focus on that i think um having that external trigger of this is what's happening this month this is what's happening this month and having those weekly meetings to sort of remind you to keep focused on something because for me this is one of the most important things i've ever done is being a parent and probably the most important thing that i'll ever do so i want to i want to do it as as well as i can but

37:51 i i think um i think the big shift from when i was first a parent to now is understanding that i get to define what that means it's not going back to what you're saying about the shoulds it's not someone else saying you should do this you should do that and that's what being the best parent and having the you know the best family life you can is it's it's having that intentionality about what what is the best from family lifestyle

38:20 for us what does being the best parent mean for me um and yeah having that opportunity to keep working in community with that i think makes so much difference and makes it so much more manageable because especially because it's it's not the norm it's not it's not what you see around you day to day and it's not um

38:53 it's not easy sometimes going against the shoulds so having that support is is just so helpful um yeah how about for you you in this for the long haul oh yeah definitely i i so feel everything you just shared and i i still get amazed at like things that sometimes will come out of my mouth in moments um where i'm less conscious about it

39:24 like being protective of my son or just saying something it's a throwaway comment that i've heard you know on television or seen other parents using wait a second that's not how i want a parent but it's it's modeled so widely that it's it's in us whether we mean to use it or not and i i fully agree with what you said about the the dismantling of this programming being something that is ongoing um and and for me as i said if i'm not thinking

39:56 about it it's so easy to fall back on on those cultural norms without even noticing it sometimes and so having the membership help me keep more clear about my goals and as you so beautifully put like having it be on your own terms and and based on your own values is super helpful um one thing that's been really striking for me um is also how we do also revisit content and how because of the

40:27 the benefit of having ample time to look at this stuff i'm able to understand these techniques and and these ideas much more deeply i can give an example uh just with the situation i was sharing about my son and his big emotions coming home from kindergarten um i did start to meet him differently um using what i was learning there's this technique that i yeah found out about through the parenting membership that i will tell everybody

40:57 about called deep listening i know you've heard me bring it up once or twice which is all about being able to listen to somebody with real presence and without an agenda um and acting as though there's no place you'd rather be embodying also that intention of there's no place else i'd rather be but just listening to what you have to say and i i don't have anything that i'm going to come back and try to force on you in

41:27 response um and so last year i started using that with my son um when he would have these moments of intense anger and frustration and i found that that really helped us to get through that in the initial emotion much more quickly um and i think because i wasn't meeting him with my own anger i wasn't meeting him with my own resistance

41:58 um and i i could do a mental shift so i wasn't sitting in my own anger and swallowing it down i was like no no let me let me use this as a chance to get curious and really listen to him the he could move through those big emotions much more quickly and often he would get to the other side and there'd be tears so like underneath the anger was always sadness um and so that already was a big shift

42:23 because yeah it was it was going from 45 minutes of being in this uh stress and anger and everything to like ten minutes and that felt like huge progress um but when i first learned about the problem-solving conversations i got it intellectually but i've just in the past month like really really gotten it on a heart level and um the one of the first principles of this structure is that you

42:56 are checking in with your emotions and checking in with the other person's emotions before you do anything and um i have a dynamic with my son where he wants something a certain way and he will come to me and say make this specific thing and sometimes that involves bending the laws of physics and time and i'll say no and he gets really angry um and sometimes it's things that i can do so i'm like okay he's come to me with a

43:25 need a request let me meet this need by you know conjuring up this perfect craft that he's requested or whatever it is um and it always feels like kind of his high pressure situation because if i if i get it right he's going to be good and if not there's going to be more of these big feelings and this is a dynamic that we've been having come up again and again for a long time now and i was always

43:51 thinking about his requests as needs and when i recently um was looking again at problem solving connect conversations i thought wait a second what if what if it's not actually a need here can i try and show up a bit differently and i had revisited the material i was thinking about it a lot when we had this instance where he had built a pillow fort on the couch and had agreed with my husband that we will

44:22 not clean it up at bedtime we're going to leave it so you can play with it the next day and um then at some point during the night when my son and i were both asleep my husband had fallen asleep on the couch on the pillow fort um so when we got up the next morning things were not exactly as they had been and he came to me he said mama put it back exactly the way it was

44:44 he was really angry um and it had been one of those days where there had been already like a few instances of big emotions and i was starting to get a little agitated with it um and i could feel myself like coming to him first with solutions like you know you don't know how the pillow fort had been i don't know how the pillow fort was so why don't we just start fresh um he was not having it he was getting

45:08 more angry and i could feel my own temperature rising i was like okay no let me stop and do this differently i'm gonna apply what i learned and it said to him i'm feeling frustrated i'm gonna take a second and breathe and i put my hand on my heart this is something i've been practicing with him at bedtime during our quiet time just breathed like breathing deep into my heart just for a few seconds breathing trying

45:35 to regulate myself and just create a little bit of space and he was quiet and then he was gearing up again and after that moment he said like papa slept on my fort and he broke it and i had just a little bit more space and a little bit more perception because of having taken that pause i could hear a little crack of emotion underneath the anger and a light bulb went off for me and i

46:02 said oh gosh like this is this is not a problem to fix this is a loss to grieve and just spontaneously this wasn't calculated but i just reflected back to him you really loved that fort and papa fell asleep on it and he broke it like just feeling his sadness and his little face crumpled and he just burst into tears for like two minutes crying so so hard um and then he finished and he crawled over

46:31 the pillows and melted into my arms and then it was fine he moved on there was nothing to fix and all this time i have been seeing these sort of incest instances and seeing like okay now i need to fix it i need to make it better for him and all he needed was the emotion acknowledged and like i said a year ago when i first learned about problem solving i thought okay like feelings first before you problem solve

47:03 means okay you're angry about this but like let's talk about all these ideas i have for how we can make it better and and as we've revisited it i got this deeper sense and now i'm practicing it with my son that like he just needs acknowledgement and and i get it like if i am distraught and my husband comes at me with solutions i get angry and frustrated look at him it's such a human need just to have this

47:28 acknowledgement and and like this meeting and this compassion and i didn't get it but i i'm starting to now i think that comes back to what um we're saying that we need as well in and that we get from our group is that it's that need to be heard to be validated yeah and actually and that's all we need the emotions you know it's not that it's about trying to get rid of bad emotions that's not the

47:54 aim but that is what happens when your need is met and so often the need is just to be heard to be validated and when when that's happened then it melts away and you move on and yeah i think that's so profound recognizing that in in our children and in ourselves yeah well it's amazing that's such a lovely story it was a really lovely moment and i never ever yeah would have

48:25 gotten there i think without this work that i've been doing um i just i can't emphasize enough how much i'm learning and unable to shift with with your help and you've seen such a profound change in him right from a year ago as in you've said that there's been a profound change in you but there's been a profound change in your son as well for sure i mean we we still absolutely have our moments and there's a lot of

48:50 areas that we have work to do but like after we had this moment the other week um there was such uh emotional relief i think like he everything was easy breezy for days like things that i normally would have been like oh gosh what's coming is it going to get upset about this or about said about that he's like no like it's it's fine it's fine that that didn't work out or it's okay that the store doesn't have

49:14 this thing that i want he was just he had so much more ease about him um and and i think like i also i have i've been doing the work and his anger when it does come up because it still does come up does not hit the way it did like i can see it in such a bigger context so i i feel i feel like the shift for my son has been big and profound i feel

49:39 like the shift for me has been seismic and huge and life-changing who wouldn't want that [Laughter] so yeah i think on that note is there anything else that you want to share before we wrap up i feel complete me too thanks so much for chatting with me and i am excited that i get to see you again on our weekly call very soon

50:14 love you bye bye when i saw how they signed off the episode my heart was so full because this is exactly what i want this membership to be like it's a small community of intentional parents who were all at different places on their journey with some looking for new tools others needing urgent help but what unites them is they want to be in real relationships with each other we can do this because you're not one of thousands

50:39 here when you participate i get to know you and your family and recommend ideas to help based on what we've talked about in all of our conversations over your journey if you'd like to join us just visit your parentingmojo.com forward slash parenting membership before midnight pacific this coming wednesday may 25th jenny and emma and i and all the other parents can't wait to meet you [Music]