0:10 one of the most persistent challenges that i see among parents is their children's behavior is often incredibly irritating to the parent and the parent reacts by going into fight mode where they get very combative with the child trying to get the child to comply or flight mode where the parent just leaves the situation or some parents will freeze both physically and emotionally and simply not know what to do or say or they might fawn over the child and

0:36 say or do anything to stop the child's crying or tantruming in that moment and once they get their wits about them again the first thing they often think about is how they can change their child's behavior how to get the child to stop doing this thing that's driving the parent up the wall after all if the child wasn't doing this we wouldn't need to be irritated right the problem with this is that even if we could get our child

1:01 to stop doing this thing that we find irritating they'll probably start doing something else or if they don't one of our other children will or they'll get to a new age and a new developmental stage and they'll do something else that drives you up the wall because you haven't really addressed the underlying problem because it turns out the underlying problem is not in your child's behavior but it's most likely an experiences that you had when you were a child sometimes

1:26 these might be what psychologists call big t traumas things like divorce and your parents or caregivers experiencing mental illness or death they might even have been things that didn't seem actually traumatic at the time but really were like your parents not recognizing your needs or not meeting your needs either unintentionally or maybe even intentionally so the real cause of these triggered feelings isn't in your child's behavior at all but in yourself and this can seem very

1:54 overwhelming but it's actually great news if you've ever tried to change somebody else's behavior you know how hard it can be changing your own behavior is actually one of the few things in life that you do have control over but it's really hard to do it by yourself and that's why i created the taming your triggers course to give you the knowledge that you need to do this we have a supportive community in a non-facebook platform as well but if you

2:19 really want to take it to the next level you can sign up to get what we call an encounter buddy and the parents we're going to hear from today did exactly that in some ways they couldn't be more different marcy lives in the state of washington in the us and elizabeth lives in kenya marcy is active on her local school board and in her community but she's home a lot of the time while elizabeth travels sometimes for multiple

2:42 days at a time for her work on human rights but these two women who are separated by 14 time zones and a whole lot of cultural differences found a common ground that neither of them expected they held each other gently accountable to keep working on the course even when it got difficult and they were learning things that required a lot of courage to implement and they developed a deep friendship that's going to far outlast the course

3:05 and they hope to one day visit each other so without further ado perhaps each of you could introduce yourselves maybe marcy you'd like to go first i'm mercy um i have a five-year-old son who's very energetic and very smart and i am mostly a stay-at-home mom and i teach some yoga classes for children also um the values that i'm trying to engender i guess and to or share with him um

3:38 include compassion independence which is very independent um a sense of like justice you know and also just a sense of creativity and joyfulness playfulness um patience is like a really an idealistic one because i'm i'm having i gotta work that one myself but uh-huh as we all do and where are you located in the world um i am in

4:09 uh eastern washington state okay perfect and then elizabeth you are a long way away tell us all about you and your family and where you are yeah so um a mother of two girls one is three and a half and the other is one year old um a couple of um a couple of days i live in nairobi kenya so yes a long way away indeed

4:43 um i had have been i've been doing a lot of like self-work and and it had some and i've been kind of struggling with anxiety and depression for most of my life but especially after pregnancy and motherhood um but just in the recent you know covet and everything i just was having flare-ups and i was like i really want to root this get to the root of the problem and i was reading a lot of trauma books and all kinds of things and

5:14 taming your triggers was one thing that a good friend recommended so i thought how many tools i can take as many tools as possible thank you and elizabeth what was going on in your life the the turning point i think is that i had a really negative experience with a paid caregiver for for my child my oldest then um and this caregiver happened to um you know physically punish my child

5:45 um and i found out about this um both from my child and another adult and you know of course i i let her go um and a couple you know some time later i was having a casual conversation with my daughter and you know i happened to ask her um who beat you you know and then she said the caregiver's name and she also said my name me and mama

6:16 and it was a moment when i realized that from the child's perspective like i had managed somehow to convince myself that this correction you know with love which you know can be physical but the child surely knows that i love harm her mama and there's like physical abuse and like the two are separate but then i in that conversation with my daughter i was able to really see

6:46 from the child's perspective that she didn't see a distinction between those two things and i held one to be so abhorrent and incredibly wrong and the other to be socially acceptable and biblical even and here was my little girl telling me that to have both of those things were pretty much on the same yeah on the same frame the same point and so that was

7:17 very difficult and then subsequently i had many times of trying to be you know the kind of parent i wanted to be in my head and i just realized good intentions don't go very far sometimes in this work because then sometimes the moment between i'm going to have a calm respect and response and then just really blowing the lid can be like in seconds even like so i

7:48 knew that i needed some new tools and i had been following your work for for a while and so this was something that i thought would really benefit um myself and my family so when i read that we needed to have a counter buddy i got really shy and i'm very outgoing and but um i think that the responsibility of that sounded really daunting to me

8:20 so i i was like well we'll see what happens maybe i'll just slide by and no one will notice and i'll just do the work you know um but then i got this really like brief but like lovely um email from elizabeth saying oh i saw your profile and i feel like we have a lot in common or things that you said resonate with me and if you don't have an accountability um you know i i'd i'd be happy to be your counter

8:48 buddy and it's been like a really like lovely friendship actually i mean we had all these very serendipitous commonalities i guess she's very i mean obviously she's very articulate and and it's really lovely to process things with another person because you get their point of view and you also can reciprocate the amount of vulnerability and trust and humor that

9:18 each of you are are there to offer so i think we got paired up really well um by the grace of the universe um to like just be there to share and be vulnerable together and be really honest and not have any um former expectations that we needed to you know that we have around us like with the people that we see and know every day so um i know myself and so

9:50 i knew that if i tell myself the line that i'll just read the content and the videos and i'll be fine i i just i knew that wouldn't work so i really was hoping to find like an accountability but then it was one of the things that attracted me um that was one of the features that really attracted me to this um because i've read gretchen rubin's work and she talks about like personality she talks about types

10:20 um that include obliger people who are able to meet outside expectations pretty much most of the time and i have big tendencies of that nature so i really really yeah that i really really rely on others and if i know someone else is relying on me i'll show up for them and so when i saw marcy's profile and i saw yoga and i saw you know um and just i don't know your smile mercy

10:52 on that photo that you had i was like oh let me let me let me see if she'll you know agreed to be my accountability despite the many hours um of of difference and when you said yes and then we shared our first colors i it just clicked you know and it was really um it was really amazing in many ways because it felt at once like i'm talking to someone i've known for a very long

11:21 time and yet you know it's obviously it's someone new and um and there was so many like references to books or like admention i like poetry and there she is sending me a link that now remains consistently open on my browser to this poetry podcast thing so it went into parenting but it went beyond parenting so we ended up talking about like things that we care about like how

11:52 women are in the world of work or um you know poetry stoicism just um books that we've both loved um podcasts that we've both loved just we you know have this um investment in personal growth and curiosity about the world and i really um have have cherished the the supportive

12:22 mutual you know relationship that has developed between us it's been very meaningful on my part as well marcy you were like so compassionate um with the like more difficult stuff um and you listened like with such an open open heart um and it's been something

12:53 that being really seen by another person and then you've set it up so well as people progress through the material and them increasing levels of vulnerability that come with it that catch you somewhat unawares and like um you know so so that recently i had a difficult time with my younger child and she she'd stayed up crying and crying for ages and that morning

13:24 i just needed to talk to someone and i just grabbed my phone and it was this long rambling hollow to mercy that had nothing to do with the content of the workshop but just like about you know what it's like when a young child cries and cries and so and i think to be and part of it was that my response was less than ideal than i would have wished but to be able to say that to someone and know

13:55 that they'll they'll hold they'll hold that space for you and they'll hold you and they'll reflect back to you a vision of yourself that is so kind and so yeah so it it's it's it's meant a lot really a couple of months ago before the workshop if my child would have expressed anger say there was a recent

14:25 there was a recent moment where we were doing puzzles together um and i think someone interrupted and so got my my full attention and my child took my older one took all the puzzles and just threw them um [Music] like a couple of months ago i'd have been really like impatient and like i'd have been like okay so you don't want to play that's fine um

14:56 like and walked off in a half or something um but now i really increasingly do think oh there is an unmet need what could it be like you know and in obviously some days you know um i lose it and i shout or yell or whatever um but i many many more times i i try to figure i approach it like a scientist like what could it be i wonder

15:27 is it attention i wonder what what is it and so on that day for example i was able to ignore the throwing and just come back and ask do you still want to play and she did you know and we went ahead to have a really lovely evening with the puzzles it went really well from from that moment of just like just you know ignoring that like you know not not feeling like every behavior from my

15:56 child that is a misbehavior needs to be addressed in like a specific pick up those puzzles and you know um sort of way i mean i think for me as i was saying just remembering the pause has been a nice game changer um because i'm so in a hurry i guess to

16:28 either address something or before i forget it like this is the thing that one of the things that we're learning is you know to circle back when everything's calms but we can talk about tell the story of what happened and how that was going what was going on within me and asking what was going on within my child which i love but then sometimes i forget um but it's but but i get that it's it's it has been

16:55 um because i i guess just reading something and and seeing it out in in examples has really helped me to to like practice it in real life and that's been i think a really um big shift just with the key and i so that because i recognize that i've had so many traumas from my childhood that are really probably more traumatic just because i never we never talked about it afterwards with my like my parents um and that those are some of the

17:26 biggest the biggest ones um be constantly like giving him little microaggressions that turn into the big t you know thank you jen because i feel like you're parenting us to parent our children it's been really it's just really um work that you're doing and i also just feel like um with like kind of what um elizabeth said like just figuring out each other's unmet needs and starting that collaborative

17:57 problem-solving process and trying to habituate it has been really i mean it's on ongoing work in progress but it's something that i really want to be able to do and i want to like eventually not have to regret that i forgot to do that you know