0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to the your parenting mojo podcast today in this episode of sharing your parenting mojo we're here with parent crystal all the way from tasmania australia welcome crystal it's so great to have you here thank you it's exciting to be with you so can you tell us a little bit about you and your family please i'd love to um firstly though i just want to start by thanking you for

0:31 everything that you've done um to invest into my life in the last couple of months it's just been such a joy and an honor to get to know you um through the taming your triggers um workshop so i just wanted to start with that thank you you're welcome a little bit about me i am the eldest of eight children and my younger sibling is still 10 years old so um that's my you know extended family my

0:56 family now i have three small children at home so i've got an eight-year-old a six-year-old and a three-year-old and they would be what i would classify as strong-willed and spirited children so life is a lot of fun a lot of my energy a lot of high needs um in our family situation so that's a a little bit of a background about me okay super and i i i'm curious to just get to know you a little bit more and understand

1:24 um a bit more about your values and and your your beliefs as a person and i think this is going to take us into some interesting territory um so values and beliefs as a as a person i think is a really interesting one like family is hugely um important to me and then um growing up as we will explore as i go through i'm sure but um growing up in a family context where my family was very

1:54 religious and being the eldest of eight children i felt a lot of um responsibility on my shoulders to not only please my parents but from a faith-based perspective i felt like not only did i have to keep my parents happy i then had this finger in the sky i guess kind of um view that i had to keep this god happy as well and so it's been so interesting i really walked away from my faith for a long period of time

2:21 because i'm like well i can't make my family happy i definitely couldn't make this finger in the sky happy and then um it'll be so interesting as we explore like the ace score i was when i was reflecting on um you know just the different modules and how that is it ace or ace um ace yeah yeah you can see i was really something that came out for me over the last couple of months has been um you made this comment once

2:47 that said after everything i've been through it's no wonder i react the way that i do and that just was like the start of this amazing self-compassion for me and this realization and so um i had walked away from my faith for like a really extended amount of time and then as a young adult i found myself in a situation where i was heavily caught up in the drug scene heavily caught up in i'm drinking alcohol and i thought oh

3:12 you know there's something wrong with me i can't believe that i'm in this situation doing the things that i'm doing you know in really toxic codependent sort of relationships and it was so eye-opening to um to have this score and realize these are all contributing factors for how you end up in this situation and so i found myself probably um in my young probably around about 20 i had had a drug overdose moved from i had moved away from my

3:40 family situation but obviously needed support and so i found myself back in tasmania where i grew up and my family was going to this church at the time and i was like oh church but i went along with them and from the minute i walked into the doors i experienced this grace that i'd never experienced before and i experienced you know what an actual faith-based community could be like which was loving and accepting and gray-skilled and yeah i just had this

4:08 experience that i'd never had before and you know that has really contributed to where i am today and i guess the journey that i've um been on but yeah it's really interesting looking at different um people's values and faith-based perspectives and so that's yeah a really important part of my journey but has definitely changed from you know thinking that um religion was about punishment and control to really being about acceptance and love and grace and so has

4:37 really contributed to that self-compassion and self-awareness um that i've been on over the last couple of years yeah and wow i had no idea about all that background i i had thought we were going to go right into the part where you're a pastor and i'm an atheist and you sent me a link to a sermon that you preached where you were essentially talking about taming your triggers in this context of being in church and and wow so so all of that backstory

5:08 behind it i mean just adds so much more context to your journey and yeah and how far you've come it was a funny moment wasn't it i thought um i had obviously been so focused on these training taming your treaties for three months i'm like oh i wonder what jen's background is maybe you know i can see that you are hopeful and you know all of the components of what i would think from a faith-based community

5:31 so i was like oh jolly you responded i was like oh um yeah was but it was fun it was a fun comment yeah for sure and and so i guess the the point that i took really took home from it is that it doesn't matter whether you have a strong face-based perspective or not um that the this these ideas can really fit into a value set that um that prioritizes unconditionally loving relationships with our family members and with a

6:00 higher being as well if if that's the way you perceive it is that sort of what you take away from it too yeah definitely but i also think kind of that shift for like there would be a high number of people in your um community i imagine that do come from a faith-based perspective and helping people along like this is my passion helping people move from a god who just wants to punish them and you know that control as we were growing

6:24 up and it's so interesting that often how people perceive you know god or jesus or a higher being is exactly how they would perceive how their family interacted with them and so i've learned you know in my worst moment i want a god who is able to be loving and compassionate and kind and yet in my worst moment you know i'm running a hundred million miles away because i'm just going to experience more judgment and condemnation and guilt and

6:47 shame and so it's been really beautiful to bring those two into a context of being actually i'm just loved how i am and i'm accepted how i am and i'm worthwhile and valuable because of who i am and not because of what i do or what somebody kind of says about me so that [Music] yeah how fascinating that the the model that you grew up in with your family is essentially what you imagined god to be like

7:14 and it makes sense logically right that these people are supposed to be looking out for me they're supposed to be being they're supposed to be caring for me and this is how they show it and therefore this must be how everybody shows that they look out for you and care for you even when it can be so damaging to us as well so wow that's that's that's super fascinating um so so let's let's go a little bit

7:34 more into your journey as a parent and i think you've you've put a lot of thought into this before you ever stumbled on my work and and i know you were already familiar with respectful parenting can you tell us a bit about how that process unfolded for you yeah sure so i have a daughter who's turning nine in july and um and it's just so interesting how all the components come together but she was born and you could see from day one

8:00 that she was strong-willed like she you know from six weeks old wanted to be held in a certain way and you couldn't lie down and you know just was really um very strong in uh how how she wanted to be treated and um and as she grew up probably you know as she hit two or three i was looking at all my friends around me who had um essentially that toolbox of control and authoritarian and um and i could see

8:26 that the majority of my friends kids just wanted to keep their parents happy and so they were super compliant and the parents could throw at them you know this whole toolbox and the children would comply and yet here i was with this toddler who i mean i could send her to timeout i could you know put in these authoritarian things but i could see long term a when she was 12 or 13 what would i have

8:49 when she says you can no longer control me i'm like uh what am i going to have at that point and you know that's where we often see these uh super um compliant children just completely rebel you know and that was my experience um you know around 13 14 when you realize your parents can't control you and so i was like i need a different i want a different style of um parenting and a different paradigm and

9:12 at that um time i i found this facebook um thing which was looking at the gifts behind your children's misbehavior like that's how it kind of um framed it up and i had never thought about that before and so that was kind of the start of this whole journey of opening up around respectful parenting and gentle parenting and i know for myself i swung you know way out this other side where i was so permissive and didn't you know want to do the wrong

9:39 thing or say the wrong thing and so to go from authoritarian to permissive and you know now it's been probably seven years and i feel more you know kind of in the middle of walking that line a little bit then to start with yeah and and i imagine that that's really challenging not having community around you who see parenting in the same way that you do that it's very much sort of a traditional command and control approach

10:06 combined with the fact that your children you describe them as being strong-willed you know you put those two things together and you're you're kind of figuring things out as you go right exactly and so i had found um janet lansbury's work around about that time which was so helpful and just kind of immersed myself in that and in um and in you know podcasts and people who had that really similar um line of thinking and then i found

10:30 actually i found you because i had been listening a lot to the upbringing um girls and there yeah hannah and kelsey yeah yeah and then they talked about the train taming your um triggers workshop and so i had really struggled i found that in my parenting networks i actually couldn't maintain the friendships that i had had when i felt so uncomfortable with the way that parents were parenting and you know my whole thing had been what's the need beneath the behavior

10:58 what's driving this behavior and parents would just say oh they're a brat or they're spoiled or um you know that type of thing and i was like i can't i can love them and come along rather i probably can't spend a lot of my time with people that don't have that same view as me and so it was just a relief to find obviously hannah and kelty and then um the group with taming your triggers was

11:25 just like oh i'm home like it was just so nice to have a group of people that although it's not perfect are all on the same journey of wanting the same thing you know you're signing up for the course because at least you want to do things differently and i just i was like always contributing and just like uh putting all of my ideas out there because it was just so nice to have a space that i could connect with and feel

11:45 comfortable and be like oh my people yeah and so what made you want to take the workshop like why what made you think oh yeah this is a thing that i need so um i just love i have done so much work probably in the last two or three years uh you guys call it therapy we call it counseling and so i had done um counseling for about three years prior and the first time um i got to see a psychologist my

12:12 husband and i went together and i was like finally i'm going to find out what's wrong with my husband because there's nothing wrong with me and i thought that person didn't act like that or didn't they didn't say what they said then i wouldn't respond the way that i did or um have the issues that i had and i just uh legitimately thought that everybody else was responsible for my behavior and the way that i reacted

12:37 and so it had been probably a three-year journey of um i'm just really looking at belief systems and unpacking what's driving your behavior and and how growing up impacts on how you view the world and so when hannah and kelsey um talked about they're taming your triggers i was like oh that's exactly you know my passion and what i'm excited about and what i'm interested in and i love um a quote that says when the student's ready the teacher

13:03 appears i don't know if you've heard that before you you quoted it to me yes that's where i heard it i'm ready um for this next step of just digging a little bit deeper beneath the surface of what's going on yeah okay so so one of the reasons that i asked to talk with you was because it was so clear from the post that you were putting up in our private community this journey that you were on and you were

13:27 all in on this like you were you wanted to to do things differently to make some progress to really see some shifts in the 10 weeks that we were working together and i wonder if we can maybe walk through some of those and i actually went through the post that you would put up in the community to sort of get a feel for how this was developing for you and i think um maybe uh one of the first things was seeing how

13:52 stressed you felt all the time and that you were in this constant uh this constant feeling of being stressed from the moment you were waking up all through your day rushing your kids from one place to the next um what was it like to to see that for the first time so it was a shock um i remember signing up for the course and module one i was like oh you know i know i know quite a bit really i felt like i

14:17 knew a lot and i had you know done some work and module one just opened up with bang you you were introducing um you know triggers or um being flooded and you introduced the terminology around freeze uh fight what is it fight fight flight freeze um and uh is the recently added one yeah one and i was like whoa i hadn't heard that additional fawn one before and that was just such a shock to me because the

14:44 other ones hadn't really resonated so much i was like oh maybe a little bit of flight but you said fawn and from that it just opened up that i'm like in every situation with my children um in conflict in situations that i just the fawning aspect is i just want to do whatever i can to make that situation stop to please that person to make it go away and um and you had this slogan i i'm not

15:07 slogan about this quote um uh harmony what was it uh um where you want peace at all cost oh i don't remember it exactly but yeah that that's essentially addiction to harmony and so i was really um intrigued by that and so i was kind of thinking about that a lot and then as we kind of went on um because i know so much about belief systems i'm like i know belief systems i know what's driving my behavior but then

15:37 we do this whole um really starting to journal what am i feeling in my body and i'm like what what am i feeling in my body and i remember the first time my daughter i don't know it must have been bedtime and she had called out for the fifth time you know for me to come and whatever it was and i felt my i never connected these two before i felt my arms go back i puffed my chest up

16:00 i like marched down the corridor with my arms like and it was the first time that i really had um realized what's happening in my body connected to my belief or what i was thinking about and so i then was able to then soften up my body and walk in and have a smile on my face and and like the other thing that i realized is when you're triggered your child or your family context becomes enemy number one

16:24 and so you know my body responds to you are my enemy and and just learning to let go of that and so as i started to be realized these sensations in my body i then realized from the moment i woke up in the morning i was running on adrenaline i i had this list of what i had to do and my heart would race and i think there was an element of i would utilize that like i

16:48 i didn't mind running on adrenaline because it helped me get through the day but it's not good you know overall for your mental health or your physical well-being to you know always be running on this adrenaline so that was incredibly eye-opening to realize what's happening in my body as well as what's happening in my mind wow thank you for tying all those elements together and and just to kind of go back a little bit to the beginning

17:12 of what you said and the idea that you would uh sort of default to this fawning mode whenever somebody did something that you found difficult i mean i'm just thinking of you as the oldest of eight kids sort of being probably the one who had to pacify everybody and keep everything under control and make sure that nobody was annoying anybody else and don't don't annoy the parents and was there a big element of that in play

17:35 100 yeah so um my mom had children every three years so there's a seven year gap between me and my next sibling but then after that there was a child born every three years and around about the fifth child my mum just went into severe um personnel depression because she carried the weight of she home educated them all my dad was studying and then went into full-time work and she was driven by this belief system that i have to do it

18:01 all i have to you know have it all together i'm home educating i'm the perfect housewife mother kind of sitting within that belief system and so she really didn't cope for a very long period of time and so i felt that it was my responsibility to make sure everyone was happy keep peace and they tell this cute story that is just quite confronting to me when i think about it but from five years old i would offer people cups of teas to

18:26 make sure that you know the environment was peaceful and and happy and you know they think that's cute and i think that's horrific you know that as a five-year-old i was reading the um the environment just to make sure that everybody was happy and i you know you can't you can't keep everybody happy all the time so i felt like i was probably treading water you know my whole my whole life and and hadn't realized that until i was about 30 years old and

18:50 really started to explore that wow that's really hard to think about and look back on and and it again brings up the context of of what you said of um no when i look back on where i've come no wonder no wonder this is how i respond to people and that was something i got out of the taming the triggers workshop i still hadn't developed probably the self-compassion and that more open-minded thinking of a looking at my situation why am i

19:21 thinking like this or responding the way that i am and as a perfectionist you know i want everything perfect i want my parenting perfect i want you know i'm a perfectionist and so i carry so much weight around that instead of just yeah this open-minded curiosity of what's going on for me why am i responding like that why am i thinking like that and in fact it's been really interesting kind of looking at that parental journey

19:45 that i grew up under and at the same time as taming your triggers um my parents had separated after 33 years of marriage or it had been kind of um in the background and so in this week of my parents separating being the eldest of eight and then supporting my parents there was like 10 people that i was trying to support as the weeks kind of progressed and i remember writing something and it was just such an aha moment

20:11 it must have been just after the xavier dagbar boundaries thing and and i wrote something around my parents or situation and you just said this thing that was like um what what are you wanting to contribute or what are you willing to contribute and i thought actually nothing i really don't want to be really i don't want to be contributing anything and so i looked at what am i contributing versus what i want to be contributing

20:34 and then i was able to kind of work back from that and go this isn't my responsibility you know this has been 33 years in the making and really been up to step back from that and then in that process i was able to identify that i was feeling responsible for my mum's health and well-being and i thought if i'm not supporting her and contributing to her health and well-being then who knows what is gonna happen and so

20:59 after you said that i i had a conversation with my mom and who would have thought you know this would be an aspect of the taming your triggers workshop but i called up my mom and i said look i can't carry this i it's impacting my family how i'm you know relating to my own personal children and husband and i said i feel responsible for your mental health and well-being let's chat about that and um and then say you know i'm gonna have to

21:24 i love you and i support you but i can't keep carrying the weight of this and it was just so freeing and you know the timing was just incredible for me yeah for sure and and how did that process play out and you've been in this role for for most of your life and and all of a sudden you decide you know what i'm to set a boundary what happened because i think a lot of people are afraid like um oh i could set

21:48 a boundary but uh but the other person would never respect it you know it would all fall apart if i if i didn't step in and navigate the situation and hold everything together for everybody how has that played out over the intervening weeks well it's been interesting i mean it's it's always a working process i think it's two steps forward two steps back as you know these are roles and responsibilities that i've carried for my whole life

22:11 but i'm really starting to see that my mum and dad um there's a quote that i love that says families get healthy one person at a time and so it's been really interesting for me to kind of feel like i've been that person for the last you know five or ten years of really getting healthy and doing the work around you know some of those things and so it's just been a natural progression of putting those boundaries in

22:32 and not enabling and having the conversations and when you have the conversations in your mind you always think it's so much worse potentially than it actually is in in real life and so that has been my experience of just saying what i will do what i won't do what i'm happy to do and the other thing that has been so helpful is actually understanding my role as a daughter and a sister and i've really started to say

22:57 that sounds like a great question for a counselor that sounds like a great question for a psychologist and really removing myself from that i don't have the answers or even if i do i don't want to contribute to that space so you should write that down and ask your counselor a psychologist and that just having like that's what i would say to listeners who are wanting to put in some boundaries around that just having some go-to

23:18 things so that um something that i learned from you is these things aren't surprises they just keep coming up and coming up and so why are we so shocked when we're you know addressing the same thing and something that i'd learned from the taming the triggers workshop is i had thought each crisis was a new crisis oh my gosh my family's going through this crisis a week later two weeks three weeks they're going through another crisis

23:42 and i paused and i was like well my crisis my family because they're so dysfunctional is going from one crisis to the next crisis to the next crisis they're not new we're gonna have this until people change how they relate and how they respond and so um you had said i have a drama when you can have a crisis and i thought that's so true and so when these next crisis has come up how do i want to respond

24:05 okay it's not my responsibility what am i going to say when they come knocking on my door and another thing that i realize is don't answer the phone call leave it for 24 hours people call me when they're triggered um leave it for 24 hours they're often fixing their own you know issues within that time it was a big response right there wow that's that's incredible to hear how it's impacted so much of your life because most parents

24:28 when they sign up for taming your triggers they're signing up for it because their child's behavior is triggering something in them and and they most of the time they want to know how to get their child to stop doing the thing that is causing them to feel triggered much as you said that it felt as though everybody else in your life was responsible for how you were feeling and if they would just act differently then you wouldn't need to feel so

24:50 triggered all the time um and so so we've talked a fair bit about your family of origin i wonder if we can talk a little bit about how this has played out with your family with your children as well because i think there have been some fairly profound shifts as well there haven't there yeah yep so um the question is how this has kind of impacted on my family so we've been yeah so maybe we could start with your husband because i

25:12 think that you you had mentioned something around there around uh really connecting with his needs and instead of sort of seeing being in this antagonic antagonistic relationship where um he you you wish that he could respond in a certain way to you and he's not responding in that way to connect with his underlying needs instead what was that like yeah exactly so from that kind of um counselling uh experience it was really eye-opening this was about five years ago

25:40 i think of i hadn't realized the conditions that because i had grown up with so many conditions placed on me i then place these conditions on other people if you love me then you'll do x y and z and so what happens when that person has a completely different temperament than you and so we were um on completely different pages like these psychologists had said to us if you don't kill each other you can be a powerhouse but we were in that space

26:06 where um we had no points of compromise in our relationship you know he's a high doer i i'm not he's got a huge capacity i like to be at home in a peaceful environment i've got a high need for social interaction he has no need for social interaction um he finds so much enjoyment in task i find all my enjoyment in people but we didn't know any of that stuff when we um went to this counselling session and

26:32 so from that um we've looked a lot at temperament or we look at that as their needs what their needs are because of their temperament and what my needs are because of um his temperament and so it has been really interesting and something that came out in probably the last modules of the tamiya triggers which i've never seen before and just was like this all-encompassing ah this is why we're here it was a nbc or non-violent communication and i

27:00 could just i just couldn't work out so you have needs i have needs i feel like it's often still a win-lose situation or a lose-win situation especially because what i'm bringing to the table in terms of the fawning and the people pleasing and and i'd had a um you know this really shift around not having to walk on eggshells i knew i didn't have to walk on the eggshells i knew i wasn't responsible for somebody else's

27:26 happiness but i couldn't work out how do you communicate your needs in a way that they can understand and so we did this um you know that really looking at the non-violent communication and suddenly it just really became clear for me of the difference between you know those requests and demands and i had always thought that demand what i essentially understood is a demand is the other person either submits or rebels but there's no middle ground and

27:54 a request is you have choice here you get to say yes you want to do that or no you want to do that and so learning to make those requests versus demands and then equally um being able to bring my needs to the table and being open-minded with why did you respond like that what was going on for you and so this standout um experience was we had had we're very both of us are strong-willed and very

28:19 like can clash when it comes to um conflict and both coming from dysfunctional backgrounds you know there's a bit of baggage that you you bring to that and so we were in a um you know check mate position being a couple of days and um i'm like he's so rude what an obnoxious you know like my thoughts were just really negative i can't believe he thinks like that i can't believe after all these years you know that

28:40 real that spiral that if you're not if you don't pick up back here just really starts to spiral out and then i was like oh well that's a really judgment um statement as opposed to an evaluating statement and the evaluating statement is what's going on so i i went to him after a couple of days i'm gonna i'm gonna merge i'm gonna offer grace in this situation and i said it sounds like you're really frustrated about this situation

29:06 and i wonder if x y and z and he said yeah i felt really powerless i felt you know all of these things and i was like whoa um i didn't you know i didn't know that and here i was in this position of you're rude you're obnoxious you don't care about me um all of these types of things when he was just you know had had all of these things going on for him so that was yeah that

29:27 was hugely eye-opening and about how you can communicate your needs and have a win-win situation mm-hmm yeah and and then of course to take that forward with your children as well because you've had so many of those with your children over the course of the workshop as well and and i'm just thinking about the situation at breakfast time at your house tell us about breakfast time at your house yeah well i think the backpack of that

29:50 is when i had two children i just thought i was perfect parent i really was like i was not up for much pressure i could um implement the respectful parenting really well you know i had two hands for both children and i just thought i'm just gonna add a third child and i'd had two girls and then i had a boy and i just thought he's just going to slot this baby's just going to slot in

30:10 and it's going to be great and it was a disaster like it was just so intense of just being on all the time and i just had never had this experience and so my girls are really strong-willed but he's like next level strong-willed as well as energetic and so i as he grew older and older and this started to come to the surface and he's three years old now i suddenly was in these environments quite often where there's three kids

30:37 yelling at me all the time for what they want and what they need and so um that has been incredibly overwhelming for me and so one of the biggest things that i've got has been to really be able to sit in that and go i don't have to fix this it's okay for them to have needs it's okay for them to have feelings i can take a deep breath and i'm okay and i'm safe and how can i work with these children

31:02 for both of us having them having our needs met and so it's so eye-opening to go okay what is your need and what is my need and so um my toddler just at the moment gives what i liked about the tamiya triggers is you're learning in real time what you can implement you know you're here for the very next minute to be able to plan out what you want and so for weeks and weeks and my toll would come to the table

31:28 and he would just be so upset about his breakfast not having enough milk not having enough yogurt not having enough honey and so i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt you for just a second uh the signal cut out there for a minute okay um okay i think we're back now can you speak again yeah i can speak okay okay yeah it's back um so i wonder if you could start at um so the thing i liked about taming

31:54 your triggers is that you can implement this in real time as you're learning it yeah okay yeah so it's so amazing like um put up a question in the community and be like i'm struggling with this or the modules and then you learn pretty much in real time simultaneously what you can then transfer into um a practice and so my toddler we come to the breakfast table every day so angry because you didn't have enough milk

32:17 didn't have enough yogurt didn't have enough honey and in my fawning state i was getting to a place where i'm like 10 times putting on more milk and more honey and more yogurt i'm feeling so frustrated that i'm doing this but then the outcome it could be 30 minutes of screaming if he doesn't have what he wanted and so i problem solved well maybe he could put the yogurt and the honey and that whatever on and that worked for one

32:39 day it was so much fun and then the next day once the yogurt ran out on his weebix you know it was it was all over and so then we came i came up with a solution of giving him his own pot of milk and his own pot of honey and yogurt and that has really helped with that but then i equally learnt because i've now signed up to the um your parenting membership actually if he

33:01 screams for 30 minutes because he's disappointed that's okay it's okay for him to have big feelings about that and it's okay for me to do the j the work of sitting with him and going you're disappointed yeah that looks different than you thought it would you were hoping that your weepix would have an endless supply of milk or whatever it is and so that's kind of although i've problem solved and it's been great to go yeah do you have

33:22 solutions sometimes they don't work and sometimes you are just going to have to sit with this child who is having their big feelings and just do whatever you need to do to keep yourself calm and the hard work of i'm here for you i'm with you and this is what this moment looks like for us in our family wow yeah there's so much in there so i want to slow that whole thing down because you the the all of the different pieces

33:47 of it really come together in there and and so um i i was looking back through the posts in the community and so one day you posted um you know my child is is melting down at breakfast because he wants an unlimited amount of yogurt and he always wants me to keep coming back and and how do i put a limit on this and then nine days later your next post was in our sharing wins and gratitude

34:12 section was saying we have found a path forward on this and that you had taken the time to understand his need in this situation for autonomy that he wanted to choose how much milk and yogurt goes on his cereal and your need for peace and ease and when you hold those two things together you can start to find solutions that seemed impossible before when when the only way you think about it is how do i set a limit on this child's

34:38 behavior because they're not doing things in the way i want them to do it and instead you see okay they have a need for autonomy they want to have some control over what their breakfast looks like and i have a need for peace and those two things can work together and then you find solutions that as you discovered may work for one day and then you realize you know what actually that didn't give him the amount of

35:00 autonomy that he was looking for in this situation so we come back and we try again and we look for another solution and then that solution works for a while maybe it works indefinitely maybe it works for a few weeks or a month and if it stops working for one of us we can come back and use the same process again to understand okay what changed here because it seems like this isn't working for us anymore

35:20 did your need change did my need change what's going on here um and so you you've just beautifully illustrated the the entire process uh of seeing the that you that a limit is not helping you getting underneath the the the difficulty that was causing you to feel so triggered to to immediately go into anything anything you want to make it stop and and to see the needs underneath to propose solutions that actually work for everybody to have it not work and then come back

35:51 around and find another solution and then to say you know what sometimes i'm so sorry that breakfast isn't what you hoped it would be and you know this comes up all the time the cracker breaks and we cannot put the cracker back together again and that yes there are going to be big feelings because in our child's world this is a huge deal and and it is not our responsibility to fix that and that just brings so much calm that

36:16 that we can be with this and say i hear you this is hard for you and also this is how it is yeah that's such a beautiful illustration i picked up on when you did the nbc communication the book parenting from the heart and so i started reading and we have a bit of a funny uh internet connection going on do we want to do do we need to do anything about that we do um oh we're back again now yeah it's back

36:47 again now okay so maybe you just want to say uh just start from the beginning about after i started um i loved when i was listening to the nbc podcast what was that one called again because it's just um i think it was actually called nonviolent communication yeah yes and i always write down the resources when you say what resources are in there and um there was one parenting from the heart and so i started reading parenting

37:15 from the heart and i had written in taming your triggers because i was really working through why should our children listen to us like i had written and i thought it was a bizarre thing to ask but i was like i don't want my children to be controlled and i was really wrestling through why why should i listen to us and i had written that up and i felt really vulnerable you know um asking those questions and

37:38 then something just popped out at me um when i was reading it and it says the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic intrinsic can you say those two words intrinsic and extrinsic yeah yeah and so um i obviously came from external motivations all the time consequences fear guilt shame you know that type of thing and what we're really wanting to do and what i'm learning from this is as you communicate with your children you have needs and i have needs

38:07 we actually work in this beautiful environment where our children are motivated because they're part of a family and they're part of a team and they know that they're safe and that their needs are being met and because their needs are being met they also feel that they're happy to contribute or meet the needs of the family that they're equally able to say actually i don't want to do that or that doesn't feel right to me and

38:27 so it's been so interesting the journey for my nine-year-old daughter because obviously my toddler is irrational and there's a lot of you know that that still comes into play where she's much more you know solid and in her thinking and so she'll start to say to me hey that felt really manipulative or i feel like my boundaries aren't being met or respected right now and so like the other day um because i'm really you know what is your need here what are

38:50 you feeling but equally i'm using the language of i'm setting a boundary here on myself with what i need and what i feel and i may have to remove myself from this situation or i'll say i'm struggling to support you i'll be right back you know just really starting to put in those boundaries and she's eight and i had she was in the bath the other day and she normally um jumps out of the bath and then the other

39:11 two jump in and she's really you know um as she's getting older wanting privacy but we're you know in this place of still learning that and so i was trying to get her out of the bath and then i just took a deep breath and she said to me you're not respecting my boundary right now and i said you know what you're right i'm gonna put the towel here i'm gonna shut the door and you can

39:29 get out of the bath and you know do that for yourself and um and so really starting to have that language in our family and having that respect and autonomy and really every time i feel resistance from her i'm able to stop and say hey what's going on for you and um there was this beautiful moment where it was so hard to get her dressed for school for months and it's hard to get her to go to school to

39:52 start with because she would much rather stay with me all the time if she could and we just had this resistance for school clothes and um i would help her get dressed and she would just say take them off like one morning i think i dressed her three times and she just kept taking them off and i'm like what do i do and so i sat down with her and i'm like what's going on for you and

40:10 she's like i like knowing that you're the last person who touches my clothes and i'm like what you know when we're having a children's resistance that's the last thing that we would think that it was going to be this you know heart melting reason as to why she wasn't wanting to get dressed and so you know now i just work with her she'll put her pants on but i put her top on and i hug that top and i snuggle it and

40:31 you know we don't have any resistance around that and in saying that she sleeps with half of her school clothes on now anyways after the bath she puts on fresh um pants and that works for us to not have that battle every morning and then so what i'm seeing from that is and she knows that she's safe to have her needs there i'll now say to her can you do this or will you do that and

40:52 she's like yep no problem or the other day we came home and we had people coming over for lunch and i said can you clean upside outside and normally if she didn't want to do something she said no i'm not doing that and that's that and she said it's too cold for me to clean up outside is there something i can do inside and i was like you know like um she was able to see it

41:12 you could tell that i needed that i wanted to clean up for people to come over and she was able to contribute i don't want to do that but this is what i'm happy to contribute and i was like oh amazing for sure oh my goodness there's so many amazing moments in there and i mean going back to the example of the bath and uh and and thinking of a child saying to a parent you're not respecting

41:36 my boundaries i think to many parents that would feel incredibly threatening that uh the child would answer back in that way that we've been sort of called out as you know it's sort of like yeah i'm not but you're not supposed to know that or say that right because i'm your parent you're supposed to do what i want you to do but if we want to raise children who understand what their boundaries are who are coming into the teenage years

41:58 and beyond and who are going to start exploring romantic relationships with other people what do we want them to know about boundaries when they get there do we want them to know uh a sense of what is okay with them and if so if they have a gut feel you know what this is not okay with me do they feel as though they can actually say something about that to another person i mean who who what parent doesn't want their

42:23 child to be able to say that and so but if the first chance we're giving them to practice that is with another kid their own age um who feels maybe in even in a position of power maybe the child isn't a year or two older than them and we're putting them in this position where they're they're we're asking them to understand what their boundary is and to set that boundary for the very first time because we've never allowed them to use that

42:48 language with us i mean we're putting them in an extremely difficult situation whereas what you're doing is you are giving her actual real-life practice at understanding her physical feelings okay i'm feeling that this is not right for me this is this is not comfortable for me i can express that to my parent and she doesn't take it personally this is this is not an attack on her this is this is me saying what's okay with me and my parents not gonna have a

43:13 massive reaction she's gonna look to understand what my need is and say you know what yeah i don't have a need to dry you when you get out of the bath if you have a need for privacy right now then as long as you're getting tried that's what counts i mean that's such an incredibly important thing that you're doing right there and and that's going to set her up in in good stead for relationships she's going to have

43:35 throughout her life yeah 100 and it's interesting to helping them navigate through their relationships too as in the sibling relationships of respecting each other and bringing those needs to the table and it is interesting you know i blow it all the time and it's so nice to be able to come back and say hey this is this what you were feeling or what what were you needing and just um having those beautiful conversations of actually that didn't feel right or

44:02 that didn't go how i wanted it to do and we say do-overs in our family i'm like can i have a do-over and then just addressing that again and so i used to feel so much guilt and shame and condemnation if i didn't get it right and now i'm just like oh that didn't work um after everything i've been to it's no wonder i reacted that way i've never been in this situation before with three children and you know the

44:25 intense pressure and so we just come back and have a do over and um and experience grace with each other and move on it's yeah it's awesome yeah and and and the second part of your example was your child the way your child responds to you when you ask them to do something and you know i think it's a constant struggle with parents where they're asking their child to do something and they say no i want you to do something you say no

44:49 and what we don't realize is that very often we're not giving our child an opportunity to share what's actually going on with them we're seeing this no as an act of resistance an act of defiance when actually it's usually just saying i i don't know how to do this or i'm invested in doing something else right now it's not that i'm not willing to do it is that i'm busy doing something else right now and that when we do really use this

45:13 approach of of giving the child a choice like you can actually say no that that you're not going to do this right now it helps us all out if we work together as a team and when when we can see that i have needs and you have needs and we're going to work together on this but you actually do have the freedom to say no to this particular request what the child will very often then do is to

45:33 say this part of your request is not working for me this other part i'm more than happy to help with and and let's figure out a way to for for me to contribute to this this uh gathering event that you're hosting and that you need help preparing for so there's there's such a meeting of of relationships and of people and of good will i think when when you come from that place of i'm not demanding that you do something i'm

45:58 requesting and you can say no definitely yeah yeah and so i'm curious about uh if you if you cast your mind back it's it's probably 12 weeks now isn't it since you started taming your triggers um and and not that this has obviously fixed everything in in your family but i'm just curious about where you think you were headed if you hadn't taken the workshop how would things have been different than the way they're going right now

46:28 i think the real benefit from the tamiya triggers and then why i've chosen to continue on with your parenting mojo is often when you've done quite a bit of work around you know i read all the books i love i listen to the podcast but there's such a disconnect between the knowledge that i have versus being able to implement it especially in the environment where these things are just happening all the time because i've got three children with you know very three

46:56 strong-willed children and so i think what happened from joining the um taming your triggers it was just that focus of really being able to be intentional and even though i wasn't you know there was a slot a couple of weeks there that i really did fall behind because i just had so much going on i knew that and um it was so such a supportive community that just catch back up like there's no shame or give him that

47:22 get here when you get there i think having that accountability of just knowing hey there's other people in this who are going through the same thing as me they're having that knowing once a week i'm going to get some course content which is going to refocus and resent me um there's people that are in this together going through this journey with me i can ask questions when i need to ask questions and so i think that

47:45 really putting the framework of being able to support me moving forward and i think if i hadn't signed up for the course i just wouldn't be having the same outcomes like i would be still having positive experiences but i wouldn't be having as many as i was having because you know you've got that support of the community it makes you much more intentional when you know that you might be having a conversation about it or you're studying something

48:10 and so i think there would still continue to be and this is what i'm working on now the disconnect in how i want to behave versus how i actually do or how i want to show up or how i want a parent versus how i do whereas the timing your triggers workshop and then obviously going on with your parenting membership it gives me the opportunity to just continue doing the work and not necessarily slide behind from where i want to be yeah and

48:36 and i'm wondering about uh sort of the the sense of where you're going as a family like what do you feel about the direction that you're heading in as a family at this point that's an interesting question i mean we're still very much in it feels a bit like sometimes it does feel like survival mode because um we're in a new season we've moved house so we're like um 45 minutes away from school return trips so there's a whole bunch of

49:03 elements that are new in our environment that we're kind of working through but i think what's amazing is it helps me be so intentional about okay what do what do i want my life to look like what does my parenting what do i want my parenting look like but then the other thing that's been so freeing um is my husband and i are 80 on the same page in our parenting style which is absolutely incredible but there's

49:27 probably a 20 that we're not and it's been really helpful of i hadn't realized how judgmental i could be around that like oh are you gonna parent like that or i can't believe and i didn't know i was doing it but there would be a look on my face or i would think well i wouldn't do it like that and i'm better than you um and so really being able to go actually this is your relationship with the kids

49:50 and in this moment if that's the best that you can do or if that's what you want to do i'm here to love and support you not judge you for that and i love um kind of the idea that children can switch between caregivers so i think the um there's just so much hope for parents who maybe their their partners aren't you know on the same page as them to actually you can still love your partner

50:12 and support them in their parenting style and do your thing in their in the way that you parent as well so i think um i'm not sure if that answered the question 100 but you know there's just we're still bringing in a whole bunch of those elements and we're still very new like in the parenting aspect of respectful parenting and and learning all of those things so it's still a journey but we've got maybe like a cake we've got

50:38 all the ingredients we've put them on together and the next kind of step is we're putting it in the oven to kind of see see that next um outcome i guess yeah it feels very hopeful the sense that i'm getting for you is very hopeful yeah yeah exactly yeah there is a lot of a lot of hope in that and i think just having compassion for life doesn't look a hundred percent how i thought it would with three small

51:02 children my husband and i often laugh you say let's have a baby oh we're gonna be nice we're gonna have a baby and then you have another one and all of these things come up for you and they don't sleep um and it doesn't look like you thought it would and you don't respond and react like you thought it would and so you really have to and this definitely happened with my first child i thought this is what it's going to

51:24 look like and so letting go really letting go of those expectations of this is what i thought it was going to look like to this is what it is like and how do i parent this child now not the one that i um thought i would have in 18 years and getting rid of um i've learned this from the whole brainchild daniel siegel um getting rid of the shark music oh my gosh like if i let my

51:46 child do this now then in 10 years time they're going to be a brat or sport or whatever and just go just parent the child in front of you so you know i mean this season and it doesn't look like it is going to look in five years and i need to have compassion for just the intensity and that it's overwhelming like three children can be so overwhelming when i'm driving in the car and i've got a 45 minute trek and

52:07 someone is screaming for that whole time you know that is what it is that's my that's my life at the moment and sometimes i can't fix that but i can take a deep breath and know that you know i've got support and um and resources and things to be able to move through that well thank you so much for sharing your story with us crystal it's such an honor to talk with you it's been so great to chat with you too

52:31 one day i want to sit down and hear all about you so you have a podcast where somebody's on the other side hearing or bringing all your stories and things together yeah yeah we'll have to try and make that happen and so for anyone who's listening to this thinking i need some of that in my life you can find out more about the taming your triggers workshop at your parentingmojo.com forward slash taming your triggers [Music]

53:02 you