134. Parent Interview: Supporting our kids through challenges

The podcast that shows you how to parent an alignment to your emotions, needs, and goals.

“Versus your programming, bad advice, and let's face it, outdated strategies that just don't work.”

You'll get in the trenches support on nervous system and emotional regulation, critical mindset shifts, stronger communication strategies, and more.

In this podcast, you'll gain transformational tools that take you from reacting to every frustration, to respond you with clarity, regulation, and finally setting the example you desire for your kids. I'm Becky Jennings, your new parenting coach, and this is the Response Abel Parenting podcast. Let's get into it. Hello, welcome back to the Response Abel Parenting podcast.

I wanted to just jump in before the episode starts and give a quick trigger warning and a quick disclaimer on what to expect from this episode. I'm actually interviewing a mom, and we are talking about her current situation, and I give her some advice since I'm coaching on this call. The trigger warning here is that in the explanation of what is happening in her home and the dynamic that we're focusing on, we do talk about the fact that one of her children has been in and out of the hospital sense birth.

So that is something if that is a trigger for you, maybe this is not the episode to listen to.

“That is a quick little trigger warning on that, and the disclaimer that I want to share is that the information that I share in the advice that I give to the mom for this podcast.”

It is general information and for entertainment purposes only. If you would like to receive personal feedback on your own dynamic and your own situation, please feel free to reach out. This advice that I give to this mom is specific to her and not tailored for your specific situation. So I just wanted to make that quick note before we dive in. I hope you find a ton of value from this episode and without further ado, let's dive in.

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode.

I am very excited because for the very very first time in all of response able podcast history.

I'm interviewing a parent and we're just talking about parenting challenges and we're going to get some strategies and stuff like that on the board. So I'm very excited to introduce you to Emily. She's here, we're going to talk about what's going on in her house, what the common patterns are, what the common challenges are, and we're going to get into some solutions. So this should be really fun. Welcome, Emily. Okay, thanks for having me.

Yeah, yeah. So tell me about yourself, tell me about your kids, your family structure, walk us through it. So I'm obviously a mom. I have three kids, my oldest is six who's about to be seven. A three year old who is going on 30.

We like to say and then a one year old. Wow. We're typical, you know, kind of the small young family. So we thought and then when my daughter was born last year, we were kind of spiraled into the congenital heart defect world. We were unaware that she had anything wrong with her heart until she was born.

And then they started to notice some things and did an echo pretty much right after she was born. They're like, oh, can't really see anything. And then they were like, well, check, you know, again tomorrow and check her the next day. And she was life-lighted to male with him six hours. So I was one day post stop from a sea section with two little boys, very thankful my parents were with at the time.

My husband flew with my daughter and I went home and basically threw some underwear in a bag for my kids. And then went six hours down to Rochester, Minnesota. And we were told what was supposed to be a five day stay at the most two weeks. We actually landed ourselves down here for about two months. Between the cardiac ICU and the NICU.

She spent some time down here. And so we our boys were pretty much uprooted that whole time as well. And we're very thankful for the circumstances. I mean, obviously world-class medical facility and we ended up staying at the Ronald McDonald House that whole time.

And so those an incredible place for for our sons and things like that.

But definitely not a world that we for saw ourselves being a part of until kind of happened. And so last last year she's undergone three other part procedures, open heart procedures.

“And so we've honestly just kind of been trying to navigate with that looks like for our family.”

And a big thing for us is ensuring that our two older boys are not lost in the chaos of that little world. I'm so sorry that happened. And you know, it's one of those things where the vision that we have for ourselves as parents, the like the thought that we have heading into like our third baby, you know, no one ever prepares you for that.

No one ever prepares you for that potential outcome and all the residual things that come from that. Like yes, she is safe. Yes, she has had the best medical care. And still there's a lot of emotion and feelings and traumas and micro traumas and a lot of chaos that has come as a result. Oh, absolutely. I know, especially with our oldest, we've really tried to prioritize.

So we fairly young for the time.

So we've really tried to emphasize the emotional aspect of parenting as well. And so with him, it was, we kind of knew how he processed difficult things. And so he's very much at a halted inside until one day he's just ready. We had gotten home. We've been home for about a month and then one day he just kind of looked at us sitting on a couch. And he was like, wow, it was really hard when he was in the hospital.

And at the time he was five and it just, it just blew us away.

And it was one of those, wow, I can't believe he actually did that and we were so proud of him. But there was also a little bit of pride in while we, we helped him kind of with that.

“And the difficult thing that I think we've had kind of a harder time navigating is our middle child was two at the time.”

So he was completely shell-rocked and so many different ways. He went from being the youngest to all of this out in, hey, I have this baby. I kind of sort of liked the baby for about 20 minutes and then she was taken away. And then she had all of these medical devices and these tubes and obviously she was intubated. And he could not even touch her for about two months.

Not from a standpoint of like, no kids allowed to touch her. He could not bring himself to. And so with him, we really dealt with a lot of figuring out how to connect with him and help him through it because at the time he was so young. But the thing that we really tried to give our kids the credit of this, yes, they're young, but it doesn't mean that they don't feel the same. Absolutely. And it's a lot scarier for them than it's obviously traumatic in the parent, but you want to shield your kids from as much as possible.

You can't shield them for seeing a sibling. Yeah. That's sort of sad. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's like our kids are born with a fully formed nervous system, right?

“The nervous system starts, I believe it like six weeks in utero, you know?”

And not only are they experiencing that external input and that information, they don't know how to do anything with it. They don't have the skills to say, oh, I understand what's happening here. I can process this feeling. We barely have those skills to process that challenge.

And so to be able to prioritize their emotional health and safety during this is incredible and also really challenging, absolutely really challenging.

What have you and your husband been experiencing and how is this showing up, how the challenge is showing up for you both? I think for us, it's so hard because the unique thing about our situation too is we also work from home. So there is no daycare situation in our left. There is no. Our oldest is obviously in school. He's in first grade, but our middle child. I tried to avoid that because I was technically a middle child. But yeah, so our middle child, he really, really struggled. Like I said, there's been a series of different procedures kind of throughout the year. We've really noticed some anxiety there.

When she has different doctors appointment, it's filled sort of panic and ask if he's going to see her again or she gets to come home from the doctor and things like that. So we've really tried to work with him kind of through that and he's so sensitive and he's so empathetic. But he is also so headstrong and very, if he feels like we're maybe being a bit too harsh, they'll push back could be like, no, fine. I actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this map, but we could call him our middle, our walking middle finger. If he acts like it is sometimes, you know, if he feels any type of like, oh, if I'm in trouble, fine. I might as well be in trouble.

And that, that is pretty, that a lot of tense tense moments with us parenting. I know it feels, my husband and I kind of talked about this at length. He and I almost feel like we don't know how it is frustrating for us as parents, because we sit there and obviously you know your kids in and out, but we'll try one strategy and it'll work and then the next day won't work. You know, he's just in a really tough spot and I think we're all just kind of tearing our hair out including him because he doesn't, he doesn't feel hurt, he doesn't feel, you know, we're expected or, you know, and it's almost laughable because he's three and he still needs those boundaries and things like that, but especially with, you know, our situation, we're really try to allow our kids to be heard as well, but it's so frustrating.

So, you're trying to discipline and you're trying to, to pair is, and you have a walking middle finger.

“Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and not only that, but your nervous system is experiencing a tremendous amount of stress on a regular basis, right?”

You're not only trying to maintain the health and safety and life of your youngest, with the doctor's appointments, with the checkups, with constant, I can only imagine the monitoring, the visual monitoring of any potential change of any sort of any time. I kind of more hyper vigilant around her, I'm assuming, I lost my son in 2019 and the hyper vigilance that came afterwards to my living children was almost like this biological necessity to feel like I was keeping them safe, even though, you know, you can't control everything, right?

So there's like, no, don't speak to them, and I created some tension between my husband and I, because he was with our daughter that whole, it was a transition period of around 48 hours, and she with it full focus. And so the shift was, my soul focus was, my, my other two, and just the over, almost want to say overbearing, need to protect the two that were okay. Yeah, you know, and that comes out in a way that is disconnecting.

“I, this early remember doing the exact same thing to my oldest immediately after losing my son is I was so hyper corrective because I was so enveloped in fear.”

And that fear basically was telling me, fix every challenge, fix every problem, fix it now, fix fix X.

And so it just came out with constant correction, constant oversight, constant constant constant constant, and it really put a wedge between me and him for a while. What have you tried so far to support your middle finger, tiled, and also, you know, build out some structure for him in a way, like sounds like you're doing such an incredible job of allowing the feelings and being really open and honest with that. That's huge, right? That's a huge step for them, but it is also challenging when you're like, there are things that need to happen.

There are ways in which we often interact, there are ways in which you are allowed and not allowed to talk to people, so yeah, yeah, what have you tried so far to help him kind of grasp that understanding.

“You know, honestly, I think that's the part that we're kind of grasping at straws right now.”

We feel like we've done everything from, you know, different rewards systems to different corrective, you know, no, you don't get this if you're going to do that or different things like that.

And I know a big thing that we actually picked up on, I think it was your Instagram was, they're your kids talk to you the way they hear you speaking to other people and that's been a huge challenge for us because we did get so burned out and so frustrated. And then we find ourselves speaking in a way that we're not proud of or in a way that he does not respond to regardless, we are just at that point where we are so frustrated and overwhelmed that we snap. And he will repeat back to us exactly what we just said, if I kind of lose it and I say enough, he'll look at me and he'll be like, enough.

And so I think that's and that's enough to spend you even further off in a dysregulation and I think at that point we don't even know that's where it gets hard because we don't know how to help him.

“Because we obviously want to raise productive members of society who don't look at their teachers and say enough, but and we're not sure if it's oh, yeah, he'll go away, that's what we've been told a lot, but for us it's it's so defeating.”

And so I think that's the part that we're just grasping a straws, we've tried the gentle correctiveness, you know, and so I think that's honestly where we need the most kind of guidance is how do we break this cycle of not continuing. That behavior and also that parenting because it's all tied together way so absolutely I think there's a couple things at play here one. It's really important for us to understand that our behavior as well as our child's behavior is a direct reflection of the state of their nervous system and I think that's really important for us to mentally reframe in our minds of.

Yes, the behavior is unwanted yes, it is definitely not a pattern we want to solidify right these are the things that the outward expression of their behavior can create a lot of internal stress for us right so they're talking back they're kind of saying back to us in a mocking tone exactly what we've just said to them. And it almost feels like as they're doing that we're losing our authoritative standing we're losing our stance is their parent and all the sudden we're like we have to do anything we can to re-grab control of this situation like we have to use our bigness to stop this behavior as fast as possible.

And it's really tricky especially when you are really trying to involve like the emotional aspect of things so these behaviors can be really challenging because we view them as disrespectful we view them as defiant because they aren't actually good feeling to our body they aren't appropriate externally in you know schools and things like. And on the other side of the coin we want them to be able to express themselves and we want them to have emotional intelligence and so internally we have this push pull of like almost this internal chaos in the moment where we freeze and we're sitting here going.

I know that's not allowed I know that's behavior but I don't actually know how to fix that but I don't know you know and we just constantly and we kind of the only thing that we can do is follow the state of our nervous system which will tell us to fight or freeze and you know kind of passively allow it.

He was talking back demanding it be his way he was refusing to listen to any of our solutions and the moment was getting really intense.

“I has been looked at me and said well you know all the parenting stuff fixed this.”

I completely froze all the scripts from the books I read all the strategy from the podcast I listened to completely disappeared from my brain that morning.

But based on the volume of challenges that we were having with our strongwill ADHD son I knew I had to figure out the different way.

Because panicking in the moment and grasping at anything only to not follow through at all and end up yelling just wasn't working.

“From this experience I developed a repeatable easy to remember and easy to follow system that literally works with every single triggering moment.”

I can attest to it as there are many in my life. Now I can show up the way I want.

I can communicate in a way that actually resonates with my strongwill child. If this sounds like a solution for what's happening in your home, take these next two steps.

“Number one watch the free training about my rewiring process in the show notes and then number two book your free call on that call we will talk about what's happening in your home and you will get a customized solution that works best for you.”

I assure you this doesn't have to feel as hard day in and day out as it does. There is the solution and I'm so excited to talk to you about it. So I think number one it's really important to recognize these moments and say what is my nervous system telling me most of all parenting like you said when I say something he mimics it he mimics all of it. So we get this beautiful opportunity while it is really challenging in the moment we get to recognize what our physiological signs are that our body is sending us and what I mean by that is like am I feeling like my heart rate is rapidly increasing do I feel like I'm clenching my fists is my jaw really tight am I starting to sweat do I feel panic do I feel fuzzy headed do I feel what are the sensations in my body telling me.

And when we can allow those sensations to be present we get to do something different I always say the triggers the cue to try something new so we're experiencing the physiological signs our body is starting to get flooded with anger we're starting to you notice that our fists are clenched our jaws clenched we're starting to sweat a little bit all of these signs are telling us we've moved out of our window of tolerance we're we're in that we're creeping up that ladder and we're going to flip our lead and that is just the natural.

And natural way that our body will protect us I want to remove the shame and say parents shouldn't ever do that because our body is actually saying protect protect us from our child protect and so we are naturally following what our body is telling us to do and as conscious beings as people who can make choices right in the midst of chaos. And we get to choose something different if that is in fact our priority and in that moment we get to recognize the signs that our body is sending us and we get to put a time out on the whole situation right we're putting a time out on the whole situation and we are actively working on taking our body from say a level nine back to a level eight maybe even a seven if we're lucky we're just trying to lower our temperature.

I think a big reframe and something that I have recently learned from my coach is is this behavior naughty or is it neurological is it naughty or neurological because if it's naughty we can put systems in place we can really work with them to almost practice and train a different behavior. But if it's neurological there's no deterrent amount of deterrence that's ever going to stop that way of reacting right and so we get to get really curious about where this is coming from. I would be very very curious to see if this is a response to stress he has gone through so much stress and hasn't really had an outlet to really work it out.

I wonder if his nervous system is now primed for reactivity in a way that might not have been if the external circumstances weren't the same and I think his little body and his little three year old brain and I know it's so hard because you're like he's three. Working out a lot of stuff and trying to give the curiosity lens versus the fear baselines of oh oh this is a pattern oh this is who he is right he is a walking middle finger while super funny and super cute the more we view him through that lens the more we start to gather evidence that in fact that is who he is that is his person.

It is like a herculian event for a human for a mom to say this behavior isn't my child it is a direct reflection of the state of their nervous system that is it and I think that's I really had to kind of focus on that again when he was in the last but all it was he would obviously the time he was too so he wasn't quite you know even old enough to we left for mayo and he wasn't even speaking really he would talk you know a little bit but he was always a little bit more quiet and he's always been.

He's been my sort of wild child he's just silly and he's he's boisterous but he's also the most sensitive person and so seeing his sister like that destroyed him.

And it was almost like we were having to reparent a completely different version of him and I think what you said resonates with me a lot about you know separating the the person from their behavior because I know that this is not. He is he's not trying to be defiant because he hates us as parents you know he's three doesn't even know what that means I think that's a really good.

“Really good point yeah and I think another thing to remember is that sort of keep you at arms length spicy like defiant attitude that's deeply protective that is an incredibly protective coping strategy.”

You do not feel way more vulnerable feelings like you said that destroyed him and it made a huge impact on him anger aggression.

Those are all really beautiful ways to keep you at arms length and not really address what is really going on underneath. So whenever I'm seeing anger unless it's quite literally been my son has punched the other kid and that would obviously elicit anger when my son's acting angry and being rude and defiant. That's a cute to me to be like what's going on underneath here what happened at school or what are you feeling or illuminating about yourself where's that coming from and when we get curious a lot of it unfolds.

“And you can get curious in a really fun way with him I think one of the best strategies I've ever employed with my very strong wild kids is the curiosity through play.”

So I will literally make a scene right a scene that we're constantly struggling with and I'll either make it with action figures or like my son was super into spider man so I had all the spider man figures and we were kind of acting like the spideon is amazing spidey friend we had all the characters. And I basically played out a scene that we were constantly repeating over and over and over again like basically like you getting frustrated and then him kind of talking back to you and then you and I would start that scene out.

And I would let him take the lead and let him kind of unfold what's happening for him underneath in those situations.

“Because through play there's no judgment through play they're very open their hearts are open their brains are open it's very connected it's very light their nervous system is activated in a positive way.”

It's just all things all cylinders are firing in the positive and so whenever I encounter a situation where I just don't know how to get the information out of my kid. I don't know how to answer the question that I'm like illuminating on I'll jump into play and I'll map out the scene or I'll try to mock up the scene in a way or I'll talk as a stuffed animal or something along those lines just to remove any of the pressure any of the felt judgment any of the fear of telling the truth because it's not them it's a character and they're able to share what's going on for them inside their experience right they're able to use spider man.

Or use a stuffed animal or use clay or use a drawing to really express what's going on for them and I think the way in which we want to know these things really fast we want to be able to help them as fast as possible because we don't want them to be stuck in this pattern. But as we do this we allow it to go as far as they want and then if they're done they're done and we pulled as much information out of that as we can and then we try again in a different way you know in different game the next time or we create the same scene again two days from now and see if there's any more and then we're just kind of creating that safe scene for them to be able to share what's really going on for them to be able to unfold and allow the truth the honesty the vulnerable feelings.

Because they're not under pressure to share it with us in that exact moment because it can be really hard for kid my eight year old if I'm like what is going on he's like I don't know and that's all I get how was your day at school I don't know did anything happen I don't remember like those are the questions but if I like open it up in a play scene I get way more information and I maybe some of that I don't even want but yeah.

And I think the thing that my husband I will struggle with to is he is to literally only three years old so we you know these strategies and things like that they're great for kids who have the verbal skills to be able to say. No, I'm overstimulated and well he knows he actually does know what that mean what that means just because of everything we've tried to do he's still only three and so we can't make him get to that point that that our seven year old is that where he can tell us.

“So I am frustrated and I need him in it he does not have that capability and so these strategies are great for kids where a little bit older but with him being so young figuring him out kind of through how he plays is really good the start for us.”

Yeah and you know they all they want all they want is us for to play with them that's all they want our eyes on them exclusively they just want our attention and they're just like they cannot get enough of our attention. And so you know in that moment you're just you're on the floor playing with him and all of a sudden you know one of the characters has to go to a doctor's appointment and then see what unfolds you know see what fears he expresses see how he is thinking about this situation like he might be like oh I don't want to go or oh gosh will she come back.

And you know you can yeah she's coming back this is a routine checkup are you okay or how do you feel you things like that and now all of that starts to give them that opportunity to really express themselves and I think play especially with the younger ones is such an incredible way to like get information that will otherwise just faster and stay stuck. Always if it's getting too much we're stopping the game right we never have to go like push just to get that to get the intel but I think that's a really beautiful strategy in order to just open his heart up to see what he actually just naturally shares with you.

“Absolutely the other thing I was thinking especially for a really strong world who's very expressive and is sounds like really smart as well.”

How he is something that we're implementing in our own house is shaking off the shudds and we can get as parents you know my child shouldn't be talking to me like that you know I should be able to manage this. They're also experiencing a version of should right you shouldn't do that you you know the whole thing right yeah exactly should's for me is just seeped in shame and I'm so guilty of this too a therapist years and years and years ago told me that should is just could wrapped in shame. It's just yeah I couldn't do it should I do it that's when it gets a little more all little muddy all of that stuff so quite literally turning on music that makes you want to dance and we're shaking off the shudds actually verbalizing insane at loud and shaking it off like kind of like wiping it off your arms like I should be able to do my homework faster I should be able to brush my teeth on my own all these things giving some space and some breath to these things.

“When they actually start to say the shudds that they are maybe rumenating on or experiencing in their brain then we get to help them with skills and systems around those things then those are indications like oh they feel shame around.”

I'm not being able to do x by z now I can step in and say I noticed that you're struggling with this in a little bit can I help you can I help you with that first step and one of the biggest things when we look at like the huge challenge like there's such a big challenge there's an overwhelming amount of stuff we could fix. If we look at one and just focus on one and get really really curious about how we can help in that one area we know all those others are coming we can deal with them at a later time but it's almost like you see a cluttered room and you can't clean the dresser make the bed full the laundry put the shoes away all at one time we have to go.

section by section by section and so I would really address like the very first section in the overall pattern which one feels the most triggering for you most activating for you most concerning to you and take aim on that one and let's focus on that one. And just really work it through until you feel like okay we were in a flow here then we can move to the next and we're still following that same model of getting really curious we're using play as the modality to teach were really like you are already doing investing in that emotional intelligence of just allowing the feelings and teaching you what to do with the feelings when they come up.

Oh, absolutely yeah, so he'll do exactly what you do as well and so I think part of it is you know sharing how you're feeling in the moment which you're already doing and then saying and here's how I'm going to work through this here's what my next step is here's how I handle my frustration and as they start to do as they start to see you model that over and over and over again.

And that's becomes their default method of handling it as well. Gotcha. How are you feeling about all this what's coming up for you?

Honestly, it just I want to kind of move forward with him. I mean like you said we've tried so so hard to you know separate the behavior from the kid and I think is apparent that almost makes it harder because you know that the behavior is not you're like this is not who you are this is not how.

“It's not you and and so I think that reminders are good think to kind of hear yeah absolutely which one are you going to try first what do you think?”

Honestly, I think the figuring out the why I think the the curiosity aspect of it actually.

I mean obviously it's apparent you play with your career play with your kids, but you know I'm doing it a little bit more for a purpose kind of looking for these things without trying to drag them out of him because he is so little.

“Yeah, I think that's definitely a good a good starting. I love it. Yeah, the intentional play using words like I'm curious or I imagine you might be feeling those type of things really help them feel disarmed.”

They don't feel the threat, you know anytime anyone's curious it's never threatening.

You know it's never it's always it's like oh, let's be detectives like I'm curious that always sparks like that invitation to join them in adventure.

“Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Well Emily, thank you so much for being here. I'm sure many people will find themselves in your shoes experiencing what you're experiencing.”

And so I just want to thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story and I'm so grateful that your daughter is okay and that you're moving forward there. Thank you again so much for being here and everybody I will see you next week. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the response able parenting podcast. If you'd like what you heard, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. If you know someone who would benefit from this podcast, I'd be honored if you'd share this episode with them.

Until next time, know that you are enough. You are capable. You've made it through all of your hardest days and we will keep growing on this parenting journey together. This podcast was produced by Kim Kelty in my self, Mackie Jennings, and edited by the Kelty method, branding and podcasting.