How to make the sustainable change you want to see in your family

0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to the your parenting Mojo podcast if you've ever learned new parenting tools and they've worked for a while and then you forgot to use them or you forgot how to use them or if using them seemed really hard and that it wasn't really helping anyway then I want to share some important ideas with you today I'm going to share a framework that you can use to make sustainable

0:31 change in parenting not just short-term change where you look back a year from now and realize that things are not really so different except your children are a bit older and they aren't doing some of the things they used to do that annoy you but they have a lot of new annoying habits but to actually be with your children in an entirely different way not just for the short term but permanently the framework has five major

0:56 components and when they're all present you can make this sustainable change if even one of them is missing you end up in a much less satisfying often quite frustrating place so I'll tell you about each of those elements of the framework and how you can make this change for yourself or potentially get my help in doing it firstly I'd like to share a little bit from the parent I talked with who inspired this episode recently I

1:21 reached out to parent nilar about her experience in the setting loving and effective limits workshop last year I wanted to ask her permission to share a video that she had recorded that I used to check in with participants before and after the workshop she told me I don't normally like listening to recordings of myself but I did enjoy rewatching them it was a good reminder of what I've leared how far I've come but also how easy it is to slip she graciously gave

1:46 me permission to use one of her recordings and recorded a guide to pronouncing her name and concluded thanks for reaching out I might do the workshop again this year third time I responded to thank her but then I couldn't stop thinking about her I hadn't realized she'd taken the workshop twice already some folks ask questions in the community and I do get to know them a bit over the 10 days but other people prefer to lurk and so I don't

2:09 always know they're there a week after we had that initial exchange I went back and dug up the older videos she'd submitted and once again she kindly agreed to let me share those with you so let's go through this in the same order that Nar made them in April 2022 she signed up for the setting loving and effective limits workshop and she was getting over a cold at the time and she explained what she wanted to get out of

2:31 it I imagine that the at the end of the workshop um there will be a bit more peace in the house um less stress less um butting of heads or um strong Wheels I guess going against each other um and and I guess maybe my own needs I'm hoping my own needs will be met more often as well instead of me um maybe

3:01 sacrificing myself all the time um so that things go smoothly but but it things will go smoothly um not because of my efforts but because everyone is thinking of everyone else's needs okay and a couple of weeks later she shared what shifted for her through the workshop she typed her answers that time so I'll read what she wrote she said since starting this Workshop I've learned to really question my approach to setting limits in the last few days

3:30 I've been able to really think about the limmit I'm tempted to set before I set it I've also been able to think about my boundaries I'd started this work already after listening to the podcast but the workshop helped me to consolidate that thinking about the values of the family has helped to frame to to our child why we've set the limits that we do overall I think I've enjoyed the last few days more not dreading long periods of time

3:52 with my children it's still hard but I can be more deliberate with the boundaries and limits I set and yes I do think that when there's a limit that has been set that's based on my values I've been able to stick to it I feel like I can enjoy more interactions with my daughter without the anxiety of having to control her I got more out of this Workshop than I thought I would now I just need to continue to practice these

4:15 tools and then she came back for the April 2023 workshop and here she is explaining what she wants to get out of that okay so family life right now is challenging and intense um my four year-old is is very um very active and constantly challenging limits um and I have a one-year-old as well uh so I guess I want to learn about

4:47 how to to really work with my daughter and to support her in a way that we're not constantly having to argue about things like eat your breakfast come on do this do that like I um I guess a lot of trying to get her to do things um and it's exhausting at the end of the day just feeling quite exhausted so I want to be able to enjoy this time um more with my daughter without having

5:16 to almost dread spending lots of time with her and here's how things were a couple of weeks later at the end of her second go through the workshop I think there's just been more enjoyment of each other's time I've noticed um that I'm just able to be with my children without the normal anxiety that that brings up or or resentment that I you know I'm busy and I'm can't just I can't wait to just move on to the next next task that

5:48 I have um there's also more even when um things blow up and and my children do have a meltdown I feel that I'm Karma um that I have more of a process and more of an understanding so I don't get flustered um and and I'm I'm I kind of know what to do so I guess there there's a little bit more Harmony in the house I'm feeling a a lot happier um I'm

6:19 feeling um like I'm enjoying the presence of my children more and and even I'm am taking more joy in their personalities and their thoughts um and I'm able to observe them more as who they are and that's that's been that's wonderful so it it does feel a bit liberating from that sense um and hopeful yes it feels hopeful that um

6:51 that I'm able to and me and my husband are able to um problem solve and address many different situations we we have um a line of action that we can follow it's it's not like what do we do what do we do which it may have felt like that a few weeks ago that we just um like what do we do like is it just going to we just got to wait till they get older but of course there's just

7:17 going to be other challenges so um we need to enjoy this this time at this age um and and not just be feeling sorry for ourselves all the time so yeah that hopefully this feeling will will stay and will only further get stronger and of course I was really glad to see the changes that nilar had been able to make over the course of the short workshop and I hope they stick for her and I also

7:45 had to wonder why is she thinking about coming back for a third time I know that people take the taming or triggers Workshop multiple times because they get something deeper out of it each time but that's a very different animal that's 10 weeks of processing in community with others where you might not have been ready to take on more the first time and your capacity to grow shifts as you get to know the other people in the workshop

8:07 and learn alongside them but I felt worried when I watched nar's videos because I saw stress in her 2022 signup video that stress was relieved a bit at the end of the workshop but it was back in 2023 and if she's thinking about taking it again in 2024 I'm worried she's still feeling stressed and exhausted and the anxiety and resentment that she felt less of at the end of last year's Workshop might be back and then I realized I wished for

8:34 her that she wasn't going to take the workshop for a third time because she'd been able to leave all that stress behind I want to be clear I don't think neaar is doing anything wrong here she's obviously an awesome parent and I wish she had more support so she could get out of this stressed State my parenting membership has been running for five years now which is kind of hard for me to believe but when I

8:56 look at the progress that people have made in it it feels amazing to me and to them it's not that if you join the membership you never feel stressed anymore but rather than being in a cycle of things getting better and then going back to how they were before if you've been in the membership for a while the cycle is more of an upward spiral you still get stressed but you'll also see so much change and progress along the

9:18 way a few longtime members were kind enough to record some Reflections for me on the biggest things they've learned and shifts that they've made over that time and I'd like to share some of those with you to illustrate some of the concepts that we're going to think through today so here's parent Lucinda hi my name is Lucinda and I am one of the founding members of the parenting membership and I and my family have been doing this work with Jen and the

9:44 community for five years now so thinking about how this experience this process has um affected us I really can't even really narrow it down um I will give it a try but I I just I can't even imagine what our current lives would be like if I hadn't joined the membership five years ago um one of the biggest things that I have noticed the biggest shifts um and Jen likes to

10:18 talk about non-cognitive shifts so shifts that aren't just in my head um is just my whole awareness of my own body um of the messages that my body is telling me in terms of my own needs in terms of feeling triggered in terms of um how I'm feeling um you know when I need to set a boundary when I need to

10:48 ground myself I mean just my own connection with my own body is just hands down the biggest change for me and that has rippled out into all different areas um yeah just just such a profound impact from the modules and um and the community um and the encouragement from others to

11:19 really listen to my body and and you know see what it's telling me um another huge one is seeing all Behavior even adult Behavior or even my own as an expression of needs um of course it's shifted how I view my children and you know when their behavior is really difficult for me to cope with um just coming back to that time and time again what are they trying to tell me that they need what are they trying to tell

11:50 others that they need um but it also like when I you know see an email on a neighborhood list serve and maybe in the past I might have judged someone for what you know the sharpness of their tone or or the language they're using or you know I don't know something like that I'm able to just pause and offer them some compassion in that moment and think what is this person trying to you know say on a deeper level what is their

12:20 need um and it just I it just really really shifts your relationships with everyone not just your children it's just really really gratifying um so I'm so grateful to the community that Jen has created and that all of these members participate in and I'm extra extra grateful for my action groups that I'm a part of um having that through micro Community as well to meet with every week and to share your wins and

12:51 your struggles and to have people really ground you in your values and and say yeah I see you I hear you I'm I'm with you um I just like I said at the beginning I just cannot imagine where we would be without this membership this community um and all of the work that we've put in together um and I really do see it as affecting others you know I the way that I show up in my job has

13:22 shifted the way that I'm able to show up in my relationships with other adults and other kids um my relationship to myself all of those have been impacted by these values and by these practices so thank you so much it's been such an honor to work with Lucinda over the last five years and I want to show you some of these tools that Lucinda and parents like her have used to make this kind of shift I know this is a bit of an unusual

13:49 approach to this kind of topic but I'm using a variation of a model of sustainable change that was developed by Management Consultant Dr Mary lipet and later adapted by Timothy Noster and I have to thank member Anne for introducing me to this particular model and we'll hear from her later so this is one of those things that's easier to grasp visually so there will be a copy of this available on the page for this episode at your parenting mojo.com

14:12 sustainable change the basic equation is that if you have Vision Plus skills and motivation and resources and a plan then you can create sustainable change in any aspect of your life or work not just in your parenting so let me repeat that just in casee you're not looking at it right now to make sure you got all the elements of it so Vision Plus skills plus motivation plus resources plus a plan equals sustainable change so I'm going to

14:43 Define each of those terms and I'm also going to show you what happens when each one of those elements is missing from the equation so we start with your vision and in the parenting membership we actually don't start with creating your vision because most parents aren't at a place in their lives where that's what they want to focus on when they first join when most parents join a membership to help them figure out what's going on with their children's

15:04 Behavior the first thing they want to figure out is what's going on with their children's Behavior not developing their Family Vision so we start with figuring out what's going on with their children's behavior and making that a bit less struggl and then many parents who have kids with difficult Behavior are also having a lot of disagreements about how to handle that behavior so we work on that next I mentioned in the recent podcast episode on how to get on

15:28 the same page as your parenting partner that I've completed levels one and two of the three levels of Gutman method training by doctors John and Julie Gutman it's the only research-based approach to couples therapy out there and while I'm not a therapist or a licensed clinical social worker so it is not appropriate for me to work with couples who are experiencing serious challenges like infidelity or if one or both of them is considering ending the relationship I can help couples with

15:53 mild to medium struggles to make pretty dramatic improvements to their communication if you have a parenting partner and you're having disagreements about how you approach things like discipline which basically underpins all the daily struggles like how to get them out the door in the morning and come to the table for dinner and brush their teeth at night then you need those modules of content and then once you're ready we help you develop your vision for your family which is going to be

16:16 based on your values you can't really figure out your vision and values when you're hyper stressed and it's also pretty hard to do when you can't communicate with the other person in your life who's invested in your parenting and of course if you aren't in a relationship ship right now we do tend to see that our communication patterns follow us from one relationship to the next so when you're between relationships is actually a good time to

16:37 work on this so once you have that underway then you can start developing your vision and your values for your family and here we're not talking about those posters you can buy that say in this family we are kind we use our manners we are honest and so on the problem with those posters is they really aren't Family Values they are expectations that parents have for the children's behavior and they're actions that parents don't always display toward

17:03 their children they're more like instructions than values and you may perhaps have a sense of where this is going instructions flow from a person who has more power to a person who has less power so when we impose these instructions on our children we're saying that their behavior has to match our expectations and we don't care why they're not being kind or using Their Manners or not telling the truth all we care about is that they perform

17:28 according to the instructions yes obviously ideally we want to be in a family where most of the time we are kind to each other we use whatever manners we consider to be important and if you remember way back to episode 42 on how to teach a child to use manners you'll know this is very culturally dependent and we want to be honest with each other but when that breaks down what do we do do we use our power to get

17:51 them to be kind to use their manners and to be honest if we imagine that it isn't them but it's us that's having a hard time and maybe we're feeling feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and perhaps even resentful at something our partner is doing we might not well act in a way that others would describe as kind or exhibiting the best manners and perhaps not even completely honest especially if our partner asks how we're doing and we

18:13 tell them everything's fine what would we want someone to do for us in that situation chances are we'd like them to be compassionate towards us and try to understand why we were behaving in that way and see if they could help us and our children want exactly the same thing so we'll help you to understand what values are really important to you and your family so you can know where you want ahead once you're clear on that

18:39 everything else gets a lot easier because suddenly you know whether a particular issue is something you're going to really stand up for or if it's something you're going to let go so there's your vision and our model says that if you have skills motivation resources and a plan but no vision you end up confused you don't know what you're aiming for and you might make a plan and execute that plan and end end up somewhere entirely differently than

19:02 you intended you might have some idea in the back of your mind about going to the top of a mountain someday but without a vision you're just as likely to end up somewhere entirely different than you intended here's what parent Sarah said about how understanding her values has helped her in addition to learning how to listen to her children and her partner but also to herself uh one of the most important skills for me has been the work we've done on defining our

19:27 values because this is is not like tips and tricks or the one right way to parent it's figuring out really thinking about what matters to you and what do you want for your life and what do you want your relationship for your kids to look with your kids to look like and taking that longer term view is really important because then once you understand that you can decide you even in the moment when you're late for

19:50 school and and you're trying to Wrangle kids into strollers and eat breakfast and get dressed well what do I do in that moment and once you're clear on your values then you can make those decisions and what's right for you um and another important skill has been to listen um I'm learning to listen to myself um and realizing that I've been on autopilot realize that I've been on autopilot for decades and that my body

20:22 and my mind had been trying to tell me things and then I'd just been suppressing it and then I wondered why I was depressed all the time not realizing that was the consequence um and then learning to listen to my child to have that more harmonious deeper relationship and to other people as well I listening better to my partner and making a better relationship with him um and and I can

20:52 use that in my work and in my volunteer work as well um so is carried across to my to every aspect of my life and fundamentally changed how how I show up in the world even if you I'm still a beginner at this so there's a lot more to learn so once you have your values in place the next component you need is skills we're obviously been talking about that already when we learn how to navigate

21:18 our children's behavior and develop stronger communication with our partners those are pretty big skills that are going to carry us a really long way and then we look at what we want to do about screen time and raising healthy eaters and how to raise siblings who love each other and get along and there's a lot of skill development there all the while we're developing our knowledge and our skills and also our community because we're getting you ready to dig deep in

21:41 the last three months of your first year we look at self-compassion which many parents have an incredibly hard time with we can extend compassion towards others even to our children when they're having a hard time and still have trouble directing compassion to ourselves and once we've done that we can go even deeper and look at the shame that we feel that shows up in our parenting many of us grow up being told either implicitly or explicitly that we

22:07 weren't good enough and that we had to hide parts of ourselves that weren't acceptable to our parents and those are the things we end feeling Shame about now we learn a method of beginning to heal shame so it doesn't control us as much as it used to and then we wrap up our first year by learning how to use less shame in our relationships with our children so those are just a few of the skills you're going to learn in your

22:30 just your first year in the parenting membership when you have a vision and motivation and resources and a plan but no skills you feel anxious you know where you want to go and how you want to get there and all the outside pieces are in place to help you do it and you certainly know what you don't want to do but you don't actually know what to do skills get you out of that spin your wheel's anxious place so you can start

22:54 making progress toward where you want to go the motivation to make change comes from being encouraged to see what's possible and how you can make it happen we have a whole community of parents who have been in the membership for between a year and 5 years longer than you when you join and that means you get a picture of what things would be like in a little while both because your children will grow out of whatever phase

23:15 that's driving you up the wall right now and into the next fun phase and they'll get to give you a preview of that so you can see that whatever struggle you're in right now is not going to last forever and you will get through it they'll also be able to share the things they've learned along the way both from me and from other reading and listening and learning they've done here's what member Anne said about her experience in the

23:34 community hi I'm an Hamlin my family life um before joining um was was extremely stressful um I've learned uh from tamy triggers that I was pretty much in a disregulated state like this catatonic uh State for the majority of my time um it was very very difficult in my son's early days um and yeah now I couldn't be more

24:07 different I have just such a wonderful joyfill relationship with my son we have so much fun together um and it just keeps improving all the time um my favorite thing about the membership is the community um just being in community with a people that want to make positive changes you know based on their values for their family and helping all of us helping each other brainstorm ways to do

24:38 that in specific situations um is is really really beautiful um it's such a gift and it's such a a wonderful resource that I'm so glad that I have it's made all the difference um my action group has been meeting for years now um and we're we're fantastic friends um and we all love coming to the call every week um and catching up with each other and and helping each other um with

25:11 our with our approach um so yeah my message for Jen is thank you thank you for cultivating this community around to these ideas the work you're doing is so impactful um and you know even however many years in I'm still learning and improving all the time it just gets better and better I think many parents find that being on group coaching calls also provides some motivation because it tends to offer some insight into their

25:42 situation that they hadn't had before I said this on the how to get on the same page as your parenting partner episode as well I do have training and coaching and I've been working with couples and I've been coaching with parents for over five years but I have two really big secret weapons that help me to help you actually neither of them is really a secret because I've told you about them before in different contexts the first

26:03 of these is I'm not you it's always easier to have Clarity on struggles that are going on in other people's lives than in your own which is why peer coaching is so effective with a little training in listening and mistakes to look out for peers can be outstanding coaches when we're having a hard time I'm a bit hesitant to mention my second secret weapon because I'm worried about being misunderstood I really believe that my autism helps me to be a better

26:31 Coach I think some parents look at me and they think well Jen doesn't seem like she struggles with parenting and the one thing everyone knows about autistic people is they can't relate to others so is she really the right person to help with my parenting challenges after I released episode 175 where I shared my autism self- diagnosis a year ago a listener wrote and shared that they had conceptu believe that all people had value before but it wasn't

26:55 until they saw how autism helps me process massive volumes of information so quickly and turn it into podcast episodes that parents can use that they viscerally got that all people genuinely can make incredible contributions to the world one of the subsets of that massive information processing ability is pattern recognition many autistic people are Master pattern recognizers and that can be incredibly helpful to you we've all had unique experiences in life but underneath the specifics there are so

27:26 many commonalities and quick identifying those commonalities helps me to coach you effectively so I want to share about 5 minutes of episode 206 that was released a few weeks ago on how to find yourself as a parent when parent Jen told us that she was having a really hard time with her babies crying and you can hear this for yourself baby wants to be held and touched um it's not enough to be next to me or in the crib and I'm just 3 feet

27:57 away folding laundry um he just loves that feeling of being held and um I've tried multiple things including baby wearing and I am very uncomfortable with him crying for a prolonged period of time just um I recognize that for me it dresses me out um so it's just uh yeah it's hard I'm very open to feedback yeah it it is hard and I am

28:29 wondering uh the extent to which you were independent as a child that is a great question um I think my homes um my parents were divorced when I was 6 months old separated before I was born um and I believe that the homes um were very different um my mother was in graduate school and working full-time so I don't

29:00 know how much time she was able to give me um and my dad um I I don't know I don't know yeah yeah so as a baby I don't know but I was quite um I was left to my own devices a lot um As I Grew yeah and so now we start to see where this struggle is coming from right this is not just about do I baby wear or not right this is about a deep heart

29:31 that you're carrying with you that makes it really hard to consider that that baby is there and is crying and there's something you could do about it and maybe you're choosing not to right yeah I think I think you're right that that Taps into something that's um quite um a a deep uh feeling for me yeah yeah I me it's like a hurt right like a wound that's there that's still really raw and maybe it seemed as though it was kind of

30:00 okay and then uh maybe maybe your older child actually was fairly independent and it it wasn't such an issue and now you've got this baby who really wants to be held all the time and it's like somebody ripped that Band-Aid right off and there's this raw unhealed wound still there about what it means to be abandoned to be left to your own devices and so yeah so that that's why this is hard not not because there's

30:25 some sort of mythical strategy that you have to use that is going to magically fit all these pieces together right you're going to have enough time for baby and for your daughter and to connect with your partner and get all the housework done right it's about how it [Music] hurts yeah that's that's I I feel that um I guess I hadn't quite made that connection but um I feel the same way with all of my issues with my daughter

30:53 as well I'm always I don't want her to feel a alone I don't want her to feel like she's less than now that there's a a baby here I think when my parents remarried and had their own children my younger brothers and sisters who I love I think it was still um quite difficult for me to be the only child of my two parents and to be at minimum seven years older um and not really maybe part of

31:19 the family so maybe that's yeah maybe that's I guess I hadn't thought of that where some of my discomfort is coming from or a lot of it yeah and and always feeling like you weren't really part of the family right and and now looking at this older child who's like does she feel like she's not really part of this family now little brother's here is she is she hurting in the same way that I have hurt yeah yeah and that's that's really

31:47 hard that's really hard to be with and also she is a different person your son is a different person you are not your parents we can't protect our children from all of the struggles that they will face in life and so much of parenting is about seeing what is our thing that we're struggling with and trying to work to heal those hurts that we have experienced while letting them have

32:18 their own experiences right she she may have an amazing relationship with her little brother for her entire life they they may grow up and they may never speak to each other again right we can't know that yeah we can't know what their relationship is going to be like all we can do do the best that we can to show up in for them in a way that's aligned with our values so um obviously there's so much

32:44 more that we could do like I I am just noticing in myself the like the the wish to be able to hand you something on a platter that says this is how you fix this and it doesn't exist right it's not there um I think it's really in like developing that that self- understanding and that self-compassion and noticing oh yeah baby's crying and oh gosh that hurts and that hurts because of what I've experienced maybe baby's feeling a

33:11 little bit of discomfort but that's baby's little discomfort that's very different from the hurts I had felt and working to start to separate those two things maybe that's a good place to start yeah I think that's a wonderful place to start and it's thank you for seen that it's not something that I had really considered before as part of um some of the struggles that I'm having so that gives me something to reflect on and yeah and go from there so there's my

33:39 autism superpower at work where I noticed Jen saying how stressed out she was by her baby's crying and I know there's something deeper at work and because the autism makes me direct I can gently ask the question that got us to the Insight which was about how independent Jen had been as a child I never met Jen before I had no idea what she'd experienced in life but I know that people who present like that have

34:02 something much deeper going on that we have to address and I know how to uncover what that is and that's where the real magic starts to happen because Jen left that call with both insight and motivation to do things differently and she put that into practice immediately here's what she shared 10 days later describing how things are different now I joined the coaching call seeking help with my daughter who has been sh showing some physical aggression at school and

34:32 at home and uh I was able to get some help there but I was very deeply affected by your insight into my Dynamic with my son um which is related to what's happening with my daughter as well um I've been struggling to accomplish anything housework self-care uh quality time with my husband and my daughter um because I've

35:03 really been struggling to let my baby cry just a little um I'm not talking about crying it out I'm talking about um not being able to tolerate the sound of him crying even when I know he's safe fed um clean uh I still struggled and because I couldn't put him down um when he was crying I I found myself always holding

35:34 him and then unable to meet any other needs mine or anyone else's um so you had an Insight um and asked me about what my infancy was like and while of course I don't remember um stands to reason that there may have been some deep feelings and un unmet needs that I was really unaware of um so now as long as my baby is safe I've been

36:06 practicing and building the muscle of putting him down and taking care of myself and my daughter and my husband and that has actually helped to calm everything in the home including my own heart so there's motivation when you have Vision skills resources and a plan but no motivation you get slow progress Jen was motivated and she made substantial progress on addressing her preschool's difficult Behavior as well as her relationship with her husband and changing how she shows up for herself as

36:37 well out of a 10-minute conversation on a group coaching call the next step in the framework is resources which are defined as the tools and the time to combat frustration because frustration is what you get if you have a vision skills motivation and a plan but no resources I know it can be hard to imagine how you're going to find the time to participate in something like a membership and while we're talking about things it can be hard to find I think

37:04 money can fit into that category for a lot of parents as well and I get that I really do the decisions that I make about running this business things like not running ads on the podcast not selling merchandise that PE members have told me I should sell trying as hard as I possibly can not to raise prices and accepting scholarship requests for basically any amount that potential members propose although the number of people who pay the higher end of sliding

37:28 skill rates never covers the cost keeping my small team intact when the smartest business decision is to lay people off when our workload fluctuates because I prioritize their safety and well-being above my own at the same time I still make decisions about how I spend money I prioritize spending money and time as well on some things rather than others I chose to spend $30 on carisa's favorite chocolates so I could lay an Easter egg hunt for her around our

37:56 neighborhood my husband suggested we use the cheaper chocolate covered almonds from the supermarket which is a totally valid alternative and I chose to buy her favorite kind of chocolate because she doesn't ask for many things and she asked me twice for an Easter egg hunt and I knew that by making a map of our neighborhood and setting up the hunt in our neighbor yards and using those chocolates the whole experience would be something she will remember for years if

38:19 not for the rest of her life by saying yes to those chocolates I said no to other things and the same goes for the ways I choose to spend my time I chose to spend the 4 hours getting the chocolates and emailing our neighbors and drawing the map and hiding the eggs because it fits with my values of supporting her learning through reading the map and spending time together doing things we both enjoy and she did have an

38:43 absolute blast and it was a really connecting experience for us so I guess the idea I want to get across is that we're constantly making these choices and I want to make sure that we're making choices that are aligned with our values maybe that's difficult right now if we haven't thought thought too much about what our values are maybe we make decisions about what to spend money on without considering what is the thing we won't buy because we're buying this

39:06 thing maybe it seems like we don't have a lot of time but somehow we end up scrolling through social media while the TV's on in the background for an hour before bed every night here's what member Anne said about how she made the decision to join the parenting membership I've been in the membership for a few years now um four and I decided to join four years ago because I was listening to the podcast at the time and I kept hearing the um

39:36 the advertising about the membership and so I think my son's music class was up for Renewal and I was looking at the cost of that the cost of this and I was like you know what I think I need I need this more than he maybe needs his music class and um that's that was um in retrospect a very wonderful decision but even when we say it's about the time or the money it isn't always sometimes when we say

40:02 that it can be code for it's scary to think about doing something different because what if it doesn't work or what if I put in a whole lot of time and effort and money and I put myself out there with my partner and my kids and it makes things worse and then the guilt that you would feel at wasting the money and the shame you might feel at realizing this is really all about you and you can't fix you would be too much

40:25 to bear I hear you it's it's such a tough spot to be in and what you're dealing with right now with your children's behavior is also a tough spot someone told me once marriage is hard divorce is also hard co-parenting is hard pick you're hard so I can't promise that things won't be hard if you join the membership but I can say that if you show up with me I will show up with you and that doesn't mean you'll just see me

40:51 when I broadcast a live video into the community I will respond personally to your questions both in the community and on our group coaching calls if you want things to be different in your family life I will help you to make that happen here's member Denise who shared her thoughts on some things that she's learned and changes she's been able to make both in her family and in herself over the last 5 years and she's actually

41:13 our community manager now which I personally enjoy so much Denise has learned tools to work with her children more effectively but you may also be noticing a theme by now when she says the person she's seen the most growth in is herself I am not the the same person I was since becoming a parent and I know many of us can will probably agree with that um but what I have found is that thanks to this

41:40 membership I have become more myself and that um I have really grown into me um I've gotten to know myself better I've gotten to love myself more and I know that a lot of that is because of the membership where it's really not just about figuring out how to make your kids do the things that you want them to do um but also just about learning how to accept yourself and love yourself and

42:11 also love your kids and I just want to shout out to Jen to your parenting Mojo team and to all of the members I am so grateful that we get to be doing this work together I am so much more comfortable with the person that I am today and I am so much more content because I know that I have

42:42 this community that is there to support me and to really just allow me to be me then the final aspect of the model of sustainable change is you have to have a plan if you have a vision skills motivation and resources but no plan then you're on a treadmill and the treadmill is outdoors and you can see the mountain that you want to get to the top of which represents the family life you know you want to have but you're

43:06 just walking in that same spot for miles and the mountain isn't getting any closer and that helps us to start closing the circle that we opened at the beginning of the episode the setting limits Workshop isn't designed to help you make sustainable change there's no way that a 10-day Workshop can do that it just isn't possible real change takes a lot longer than 10 days I can help you to develop the beginnings of a vision of

43:32 what you want to be different and show you some new skills and you'll get some motivation in the community and the time and financial investment is pretty low for a free 10day Workshop but if you don't commit to making real change in a year's time you'll take the workshop again and maybe you'll take it again the year after that and some things will be different because your children will be a year older but you may well look back

43:54 in a year and think that things are actually kind of similar to what they are right now and if where you are right now isn't where you want to be I have the tools to help you make that change one of those tools is the action groups that some members have mentioned where you meet up with up to five other parents and an experienced peer coach once a week they really do get to know each other even though each of them only

44:16 talks for five minutes and the members will help you to set a plan for what we call your next step so if you know your goals and values which we help you to figure out then you can't just decide to get there and go you have to have interim goals along the way and meet those goals and get a bit of satisfaction from doing that and maybe some weeks you won't meet your goal and that's also okay and your group will

44:37 help you figure out why you didn't meet that goal was it too big did it contain too many subcomponents did one of the subcomponents feel scary and then you'll get support for choosing a manageable sub goal for that week so you can keep making progress toward that mountain it might be slow progress if that's right for you at the time I know some some weeks parents set a goal of I am going to rest this week and also when you're

45:02 setting goals every week you are most definitely not on that treadmill you are making progress toward that Mountaintop at the pace that's exactly right for you if you want to know more about what it's like to be in an action group you might want to check out the episode from two weeks ago called The Power of learning in community I think everyone who has contributed stories here today is in an action group including Miranda she recorded a 20 minute video for me to

45:27 share what her 5 years in the parenting membership has been like so I did edit this down quite a bit to make it more manageable for you hello my name is Miranda Fleming and I have been part of the your parenting Mojo parenting membership since the beginning uh five years ago which is hard to believe but yet I don't remember a time that I wasn't in the membership so it's been just an integral part of my life I

45:53 joined an action group and now I meet every week with five other parents from all around the world uh the same parents uh the same people and we have been uh in the Action Group pretty much the the six of us the same on since the beginning we've really developed a tight Bond and it's a highlight of my week to be able to uh go on the call and hear what the other ladies are talking about

46:24 and um you know because because it's consistent I know them and I know their their stories and their lives and it's it's a continuation each week to talk about the membership to me is very connected now to the action group but what I've gotten out of the membership has been transformative to say the least but it's you know to narrow it down to five things that I've

46:56 have really really been key things that have changed in my life is this this idea that that everybody has a need and the better we can be to meet each other's needs the better we are to to to to function together and I think you know I always knew that my kid had needs I always knew that AA had needs but to to be able to know and see that I also have needs and by being meeting my

47:28 needs I'm so much better equipped to be able to meet her needs has been really fundamentally changing of my whole self I within that realized that like many others was raised with parents who disregarded my needs um who still to this day do and being able to advocate for what I need has been uh and well continue to be a a path that I am constantly walking

48:01 down but it has become our family motto that if there's a way to meet everyone's needs that's what we're going to do and not one person gets priority over what their needs we just try and find a way to work together being able to show that to Ava I think is fundamental to the growth of a a well-rounded person um you know one of the things that Jen has sometimes relentlessly drilled into

48:34 me is that emotion isn't the problem like how do I get my kid to stop crying how do I get get my kid to stop yelling like the the motion of it which is what triggers me the most and makes me want it's got to stop you know or if I say you know if I do that she starts crying genu would say you know crying isn't the problem crying isn't crying is fine and at the

49:03 beginning I remember being like I don't even understand the words coming out of your mouth because it is clearly the problem and it is the thing that in the moment is causing me the most distress but she has really helped me learn to sit with the emotion and to work through the crying and that it's okay for her to cry it's still even hard for me to say um because emotions were the worst thing I could have as a kid to this day my mom

49:35 will preemptively tell Ava before we go somewhere even if Ava's not doing anything if she's just getting her shoes on and my mom will say remember no crying when we go to the restaurant and I remember the first time Ava was like I'm not crying is there something that I'm going to be crying about at the rest is there reason why I may cry at the restaurant and it's it was was a a moment for me to really realize how much

50:07 I was not allowed to have emotion how much emotion was really the enemy and so now I was never first off I was never shown how to deal with emotion I was never allowed to sit with it I was never given the the space to cry I only cried in private and so now to have a child that I'm doing everything in my power to make uh comfortable with doing it is now also the thing that is hardest for me

50:40 to work through because I didn't have that so you know that's that's a really important one of just holding space for for people and it's also something that I've learned a lot in being in the action group and being the peer coach in it because I get to do that for adults as well and the power that I know that that is for them and the the security that we're creating in that space gets reinforced of what

51:12 I'm I'm doing for for Ava in our home so when you put all those pieces together and you have the vision and skills and motivation and resources and plan you get sustainable change if you're out there in the world doing this by yourself you have to Cobble all the pieces together and it's a bit like spinning plates one of them slows down so you focus on getting it going again and then another one almost drops and

51:35 you have to hold the whole thing by yourself and our culture reinforces that and says you should be able to do all this by yourself and you certainly shouldn't let anyone else know you're struggling and if you are struggling it's really your fault and that's something we can diagnose and sell you a medication to fix rather than seeing your overwhelm as a massive failure of our social systems you could build all this by yourself you could absolutely

51:58 develop your own vision and take lots of individual skills courses and motivate yourself to keep going even when things get really hard and find a community that will help you create a new plan every single week for how you're going to take the next step towards your vision it's really not rocket science and you could totally do it yourself or you could come to a place where it's all set up for you and where you can plug

52:21 into exactly the resources you need you won't even have to do any work to figure figure out which resource will help you because after you join the membership you'll get a 20 minute one-on-one Zoom call with Community manager Denise who started as a member five years ago so she has participated in all of these things as we've built them Denise is a trained coach and she will listen to what's going on in your life and she

52:44 will plug you into exactly the resources that will be most helpful to you m Sonia used to try to take advantage of all the things that we offer but like most members she has settled into a rhythm of using the elements that work best for her rather than trying to do everything hi my name is Sonia and I joined J's membership four and a half years ago on its second opening um I found Jen's work through her podcast um as after my

53:12 little one was born and we were getting so much advice and opinions that just didn't resonate with us uh so uh we looked up stuff on the internet about um science based parenting and respectful parenting and this is how our journey began uh began uh both me and my husband were following uh the podcast and later joined the membership uh first three months we done uh together going through the core modules which was really good

53:42 uh finally putting like value our family values on a paper and actually seeing that we align we always thought that we do Aline but um yeah being able to discuss it and and see it and prioritize stuff uh was really good um uh later on when the Action Group started to form also my husband was part of the dad's only Action Group and I was part of the one of the action group as well action groups as well and although these really

54:13 sounded scary to start with they turned out to be my favorite part of the membership uh just a safe place to connect with um sameem minded parents and discuss whatever is uh on your mind at the moment uh figuring out how to move on or um solve any problems or just share vins actually um I think I really like first three core modules and although I'm in membership so long I keep coming back to them uh because

54:45 every time I come back to them I find some new value in them uh probably combin with like more advanced topics and everything um so uh I was mostly involved later in following the uh topics and modules uh but my husband was taking on board like suggestions and everything uh and it's really great to see that most of the tools that we learned we really applying today in day-to-day life

55:17 uh for instance like two weeks ago my husband came and told me like I'm so proud I'm uh um he he was getting frustrated uh because my little one was in a playful State uh she wanted to undo the bad shets he was doing uh and after a while he started being frustrated but he he stop he realized he's getting frustrated he stop took a bit deep breath uh came down to her level and and asked her like do you need a hug she

55:45 said yes they had like really nice connecting long hug and after that she was happily helping him straighten the bed sheets and set up the bed uh so it's just nice to see and hear all this stuff happening now so yeah so many so many tools and growth has happened in both of us me and my husband uh over those uh last four and a half five years uh and it's really nice to see that they're yeah kind of our our n second

56:18 nature now I think over the years I just kind of decided that that is what benefits me Mo most and I can catch up on coaching coaching call recordings uh when or if I'm doing the module topic of that month because also like at the beginning first first year I think I was like really pushing and trying to do as much as I can to learn as much as I can but now we more raed into okay we are um

56:46 uh doing the doing what we can we are we are following the modules when we can and we're just uh focusing on applying the those important tools that actually learned in our first year or come back and revisit it um every now and then uh so thank you so much Jen membership was like amazing we're planning to keep um on like stay in both memberships parenting and learning as long as they're available

57:17 basically uh and um yeah it really it really help us really really grow uh as parents as a family uh and just accept that things that did deeply resonated with us makees sense for our family and um being able to have that Community even on just online as we actually are most surrounded by people who are traditionally parent uh is just amazing so thank you thank you so much

57:47 enrollment into the membership is open right now until midnight Pacific on Wednesday May 15th if you've been looking for more tools and skills and some science-based information to help you navigate this difficult stage of parenting we've got those but it's possible that once you get in and start using the skills you'll realize the vision and motivation and resources and plan are just as important in creating the kind of sustainable change that you want to see rather than listening to an

58:15 episode like this a year from now and wishing things were different so if you want to make this happen we will help you starting with your one-on-one call with Denise so you can access exactly the resources that you need all the information is at your parenting mojo.com parenting membership as always we've got sliding scale pricing and a money back guarantee again that's your parenting mojo.com parenting membership I can't wait to meet you inside I've had an amazing five

58:47 years as part of the membership and I think for me the most noteworthy thing is that I came looking for more tools and more information to meet the situation as it was when I joined and what I got was so much more than that and the real value has been in my own personal development in the clarity I've had towards what my own expectations were for my family and for myself and being able to move away from how do I

59:12 fix this problem that's coming up for me right now and more towards how can I embody my own values and be the person and the parent I want to be and learn to follow my own IM inner Compass as we go through challenging times and times that we don't expect and so I've just been so grateful for all the insights and the wisdom the support and the overall community that I've received through my time with the membership and I'm so

59:38 grateful to Jen and to everybody in the membership for being on this journey with me and I would encourage everybody else to do the same because it's been truly transformative so thank you