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Episode summary:
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In this episode, Susan responds to a parent's question: Why is it so hard to keep cool in the chaos of parenting, and how can we remain calm during our kids' storms?
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Susan Stiffelman is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist, an educational therapist and a highly lauded speaker. She is the author Parenting Without Power Struggles: Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids While Staying Cool, Calm and Connected and Parenting With Presence: Practices for Raising Conscious, Confident, Caring Kids (an Eckhart Tolle Edition).Susan offers online events for parents around the world on topics like Raising Tweens and Teens, Parenting in the Digital Age, and Raising Siblings and also hosts a monthly support group with Wendy Behary on Co-Parenting with a Narcissist.
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Things you'll learn from this episode:
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Even the calmest parents get triggered sometimes!
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Tips for recovering your cool when you've lost it
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Why co-regulation is fundamental to being the Captain of the ship for our kids
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1:
And welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman. I'm the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. I'm also a marriage, family and child therapist, a teacher, a long time parenting coach and writer and educator, and a mom. And I'm really happy that you're here. This podcast is all about helping you raise confident, caring children with more joy and fewer power struggles. It's really a joy. It's an honor. It's a privilege. It's a delight to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years during the work that I've done. And so I'm glad that you're able to take it in and hopefully share with those in your circle. Some of the things that you're learning, but before we get started, I want to make sure that you're signed up to get all the updates from our online community at susanstiffelman.com.
Speaker 2:
If you get the newsletter, you're also going to get, in addition to news and inspiration updates about programs and classes that are coming up, including something really special with Julie Lythcott-Haims on escaping the over-parenting trap. It's going to be a fantastic session. I can't urge you more strongly to show up for this class because we're going to address some of those internal conflicts that we have about when to help our kids. When to offer support, when to show our love by intervening and when to stay out of the way and as painful as it might be, see them make mistakes or stumble. So please, please check out susanstiffelman.com for the scoop on that. Now, today, I'm going to respond to a question that was submitted by one of our wonderful listeners. This is what she wrote:
“I was raised in a fairly chaotic household with lots of yelling and punishing. My husband had a similar childhood. So we were determined to do things differently, not using threats or punishments when our kids act up and definitely keeping our cool rather than screaming and shouting. Unfortunately, it's pretty much proven to be impossible. What can we do? We feel so guilty after we've yelled at the kids or sent them to their rooms when we're upset, but both of us have a really hard time staying calm.”
I love this question. I love it so much because first of all, I'm a huge fan of honesty. And I think parents deny at least to the public or to people in their circle, how hard it can be just to get through a day peacefully and calmly. And you might think otherwise, but one of the greatest things about being a therapist is that people come in the room, they come in my office and they tell me the truth about their lives and rest assured many, many, many parents say this kind of thing to me when it's just the two of us and they feel safe.
Speaker 2:
So even the people who you think are just floating through their day with big smiles and everything they're posting on social media might suggest that they're just reveling in every single minute of parenthood. It's hard and everybody loses their cool. Sometimes it gets frustrated. So I'm going to talk about that today. And again, I urge you to stay in touch by getting the newsletter at susanstiffelman.com. I write about this kind of stuff all the time. So I've done a lot of classes on keeping your cool. I've addressed this in so many different programs in so many different ways. And I particularly loved the sessions I did. We did three or four or five sessions with Byron Katie related to parenting because I love her work. I referenced it in both of my books. And I talk in that context about how it is often the interpretation that we're making of our child's behavior, that sort of flips our switch internally.
Speaker 2:
But I want to touch on this from another angle. And to that end, I'm referencing the wonderful book beyond behavior by Mona Delahooke. I adore her. I love everything she's doing. We're going to be doing, I think a two part class later in the summer. But in the meantime, I want to share with you a different way or a new way of thinking about those moments. When you're just having a hard time. Mona talks about three pathways that you can be on. And of course that a child can be on, but we're talking right now, actually about the parent when you're feeling really calm and centered and confident and things are going while you're socially engaged, she calls that the green pathway, when you're in that fight or flight mode, you're, you're feeling the anger welling up. You feel just so frustrated or anxious or you're acting out.
Speaker 2:
And of course this applies to children as well. This is where a lot of the explosive behavior in kids comes from, the red pathway. And she says that when you're sort of disengaged, this can result from trauma or something too big for a child or an adult to cope with. That's the blue pathway. That's where you're more in the freeze. So there's white flight and then blue would be the freeze where you're disconnected. You're muted emotionally. You might be looking down, not making eye contact, not having sort of the energy to, to push past obstacles. So the there's the green healthy, socially engaged, stable regulated, the red pathway you're explosive or you're angry or frustrated and the blue where you're more muted and disengaged. And of course, Mona talks about this at great length in her book. So I'm going to invite you first to just pause right now.
Speaker 2:
Now you're listening to this podcast and we might think that while you're, you're probably, or possibly in the green pathway, but maybe it turned it on because you're in the blue, you feel so disconnected. You feel shut down and maybe you wanted to tune in to see if you might get a little inspiration or a little nudge to help you feel better. You could also be in the red pathway or having just come out of the red pathway because we do wander through these different States of regulation, just as human beings. We're not always calm and easygoing. We get pressed frustrated, we get upset, we get angry and anxious. So it's helpful to just pause. And I'm inviting you now just to reflect on where you feel right now, blue, red, or green. None of them are good or bad. This isn't about some failure.
Speaker 2:
If you're in the blue or the red zone, this is just useful to non-judgmentally pay attention and notice. So, as I said, we wander through different emotional states throughout our day. And one of the best gifts that we give our children is to let them know that we're not hard on ourselves when we're struggling, that we actually are recognizing that when we're yelling, it's reaching the end of our rope saying, or doing things that we know we don't feel comfortable doing, or we might later regret that we can make amends, that we can make repair. And I've talked about that many times and that it's normal, that it's human. Now of course, if you come from a background where you've gone through a very difficult childhood or you've suffered trauma, there's a greater likelihood that you will struggle to stay regulated and calm, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:
That's just information for you to compassionately visit and get support on. And I'm a huge fan of that. It's an area I want to explore more and more in my work, but we all get triggered. And there's an important dynamic that I want to touch on here. So many times parents get really keyed up and frustrated and angry at their kids because when a child is misbehaving, it can bring up for the parent feelings of failure or feeling incompetent or out of control or judged by others. If there are people witnessing a child's outbursts. So we, in a sense, make our child calm and cooperative behavior as a marker for whether we're doing all right as a parent. And that's a terrible relationship to have with a child because it sort of puts the child in charge of our state of wellbeing. And that is absolutely not the dynamic that we want to have with our kids.
Speaker 2:
We don't want them to govern or be in charge or in control of whether we feel stable and centered or not. That's our job as the parent. And if it's hard for you by all means, be kind to yourself, be accepting of that and, and receive the help that's being offered. I know as I said, we do lots in our community as well as many other people who work with trauma. I love the book. The body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk, and there's many, many other references. Peter Levine, lots of good resources. If you've gone through trauma and you're finding that it's showing up a lot in your daily life, but for this moment in this little brief time we have together, I'd like you to think of one thing that helps you out is that red or blue zone back to the green.
Speaker 2:
So here are a few ideas, but it's something for you to reflect on. You could even jot it down. What's one thing for some parents, it's going to be time away from their kids, just having a five, 10 minute break from the drama and the chaos for some, it's going to be calling a friend for summit to prayer or, or a short meditation. Others find stepping outside and being in nature or taking a warm shower or washing the dishes, turning on the TV for a few minutes, reading an inspirational passage in a book. So right now, call to mind something that helps you come back to a state of wellbeing. It might not mean that you're no longer mad at your, to your kids or that you're suddenly going to be a fuse of in your warm and loving energy, but it means that you find yourself moving toward a state of regulation because here's the thing.
Speaker 2:
And this is so, so, so important that I'm going to do, as I said, hopefully a two part class on this with Mona Delahooke. But this idea of co-regulation is fundamental to so much of what I teach the idea that when we're in that room relationship with our children, as what I call that calm, loving captain of the ship, that energy that we exude is one of the most valuable resources for a child who's dysregulated who's in the red or blue zone. Who's lost their way. Who's not able to cope. So consider one thing that helps you feel more regulated that brings you back to yourself and make a note of that. Put that front and center, put a sticky note on your refrigerator door or the mirror in your bathroom. What is something with kindness? So much kindness that you can offer yourself as a loving parent to yourself that you have discovered is a way for you to feel safe, again, to feel everything's okay.
Speaker 2:
Are going to be okay again. So I hope that you can remember the thing that you chose. The thing that helps you find your way back to yourself, that you can use that as an anchor to stay connected to the deeper part of you. That is stable. Even when the external world feels a little crazy and chaotic, listen, children are loud, noisy, messy, and active. And we don't always feel like being in the presence of loud, noisy, messy, active. Sometimes we want quiet stillness, and we may not be in a situation if we're responsible for the care of our children to just go off somewhere and find our calm. Again, sometimes we have to show up in the midst of the chaos or the movement and activity that comes with children and anchor internally, even while the outside is going so fast. But one thing that I have found in this work for so many decades is that when we have some kind of regular practice, something that we even for three, two minutes in the morning, just connect to our heart express gratitude, set an intention, not to get certain things done, but just to stay present with ourselves and accepting toward ourselves and maybe a little more flexible with our kids, that in those moments later in the day, when things start moving really fast or get really noisy and messy, there's a greater chance that we can touch our heart and rediscover or reconnect to that place inside ourselves.
Speaker 2:
That knows what it's like to be the eye of the storm, because definitely there are storms when it comes to raising kids. Remember that the work of our children is to eventually become adults. And so they are always pushing limits. They're trying to individually rate depending on what stage they're in. And sometimes that's really welcome from us. We love that they're testing boundaries and sometimes nothing could be further from the truth. We just want them to do what we ask and we might get really stirred up and activated and move on to that red or, or even the blue pathway. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion about regulation and staying calm. And that the author of this question is very kind to him or herself to accept that, yes, you lose your cool and the solution. Isn't to say a particular thing. When you're finding yourself really upset with your kids, it's going to start by some of the practices that I've touched on staying calm.
Speaker 2:
Isn't so much. How do I do it in the midst of the storm? It's more having a reservoir or a library of things that you can do when you are ramping up to the parent. Who's written this trying not to use threats or punishments. One of the things you might find as you notice your heart rate going up, you're getting sweaty, you're getting a knot in your stomach. You see where things are progressing. You remember that one thing that you identified today, it might be taking three minutes, even in the bathroom to be by yourself to just take two or three quieting breaths, letting the exhalation be a little longer than the inhalation. It might be. As I said, meditation, prayer, reading a passage in a book, stepping outside in nature, jumping into a shower. And if you don't have that time, just washing your hands in warm water and noticing how it feels on your hands, any of these things that you can do as you notice that you're starting to ramp up the yelling or the threatening can bring you back to a place where you have even a chance of finding yourself regulated, because that is the precursor to creating regulation in your kids.
Speaker 2:
The most important is just to find one thing that you can start practicing or referencing or using to bring you back to yourself. And again, I encourage you to make a list before you rejoin your family to take a minute or two and consider some of the things that you can do or have done in the past that have successfully helped you kind of not fall down that Hill, not slip down that slippery slope when you're, when it's almost too late to recover. And if that's the case and you do yell at your kids, or you do send them to their rooms, you do all the things that you wish you promised you'd never done and wish you'd hadn't done. Then that's where we use repair. And it's such a beautiful experience to offer a child, a genuine, sincere apology.
Speaker 2:
And of course, I've talked about that in other podcast episodes and in other essays I've written, but we don't have to get it right all the time. You guys, we just do the best we can. So that's it for today. If you've enjoyed the podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating or a review, and please tell a friend or all three of those things. It really does help. And I am on a mission. I really want to help impact positively impact the lives of parents around the world. And we are making some headway, I think, here and there, but your help is always welcome. And of course you can hit the subscribe button and that way you'll be notified as soon as a new episode is released. Please remember to stay in touch, get regular doses of parenting inspiration at susanstiffelman.com. There's some really good stuff coming your way, including this fantastic class with one of my favorites, Julie Lythcott-Haims, who is the author of How To Raise An Adult, a really, really wonderful class coming up. All right, that's it for today, everyone so glad that you were here. Look forward to connecting with you in one way or another in this beautiful work of helping raise our wonderful, amazing kids, even through those inevitable bumps in the road. So remember no matter how busy life gets look for those moments of sweetness and joy, stay safe, stay well. And I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:
And welcome to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. I'm your host, Susan Stiffelman. I'm the author of Parenting Without Power Struggles and Parenting with Presence. I'm also a marriage, family and child therapist, a teacher, a long time parenting coach and writer and educator, and a mom. And I'm really happy that you're here. This podcast is all about helping you raise confident, caring children with more joy and fewer power struggles. It's really a joy. It's an honor. It's a privilege. It's a delight to share some of the things I've learned in my 40 plus years during the work that I've done. And so I'm glad that you're able to take it in and hopefully share with those in your circle. Some of the things that you're learning, but before we get started, I want to make sure that you're signed up to get all the updates from our online community at susanstiffelman.com.
Speaker 2:
If you get the newsletter, you're also going to get, in addition to news and inspiration updates about programs and classes that are coming up, including something really special with Julie Lythcott-Haims on escaping the over-parenting trap. It's going to be a fantastic session. I can't urge you more strongly to show up for this class because we're going to address some of those internal conflicts that we have about when to help our kids. When to offer support, when to show our love by intervening and when to stay out of the way and as painful as it might be, see them make mistakes or stumble. So please, please check out susanstiffelman.com for the scoop on that. Now, today, I'm going to respond to a question that was submitted by one of our wonderful listeners. This is what she wrote:
“I was raised in a fairly chaotic household with lots of yelling and punishing. My husband had a similar childhood. So we were determined to do things differently, not using threats or punishments when our kids act up and definitely keeping our cool rather than screaming and shouting. Unfortunately, it's pretty much proven to be impossible. What can we do? We feel so guilty after we've yelled at the kids or sent them to their rooms when we're upset, but both of us have a really hard time staying calm.”
I love this question. I love it so much because first of all, I'm a huge fan of honesty. And I think parents deny at least to the public or to people in their circle, how hard it can be just to get through a day peacefully and calmly. And you might think otherwise, but one of the greatest things about being a therapist is that people come in the room, they come in my office and they tell me the truth about their lives and rest assured many, many, many parents say this kind of thing to me when it's just the two of us and they feel safe.
Speaker 2:
So even the people who you think are just floating through their day with big smiles and everything they're posting on social media might suggest that they're just reveling in every single minute of parenthood. It's hard and everybody loses their cool. Sometimes it gets frustrated. So I'm going to talk about that today. And again, I urge you to stay in touch by getting the newsletter at susanstiffelman.com. I write about this kind of stuff all the time. So I've done a lot of classes on keeping your cool. I've addressed this in so many different programs in so many different ways. And I particularly loved the sessions I did. We did three or four or five sessions with Byron Katie related to parenting because I love her work. I referenced it in both of my books. And I talk in that context about how it is often the interpretation that we're making of our child's behavior, that sort of flips our switch internally.
Speaker 2:
But I want to touch on this from another angle. And to that end, I'm referencing the wonderful book beyond behavior by Mona Delahooke. I adore her. I love everything she's doing. We're going to be doing, I think a two part class later in the summer. But in the meantime, I want to share with you a different way or a new way of thinking about those moments. When you're just having a hard time. Mona talks about three pathways that you can be on. And of course that a child can be on, but we're talking right now, actually about the parent when you're feeling really calm and centered and confident and things are going while you're socially engaged, she calls that the green pathway, when you're in that fight or flight mode, you're, you're feeling the anger welling up. You feel just so frustrated or anxious or you're acting out.
Speaker 2:
And of course this applies to children as well. This is where a lot of the explosive behavior in kids comes from, the red pathway. And she says that when you're sort of disengaged, this can result from trauma or something too big for a child or an adult to cope with. That's the blue pathway. That's where you're more in the freeze. So there's white flight and then blue would be the freeze where you're disconnected. You're muted emotionally. You might be looking down, not making eye contact, not having sort of the energy to, to push past obstacles. So the there's the green healthy, socially engaged, stable regulated, the red pathway you're explosive or you're angry or frustrated and the blue where you're more muted and disengaged. And of course, Mona talks about this at great length in her book. So I'm going to invite you first to just pause right now.
Speaker 2:
Now you're listening to this podcast and we might think that while you're, you're probably, or possibly in the green pathway, but maybe it turned it on because you're in the blue, you feel so disconnected. You feel shut down and maybe you wanted to tune in to see if you might get a little inspiration or a little nudge to help you feel better. You could also be in the red pathway or having just come out of the red pathway because we do wander through these different States of regulation, just as human beings. We're not always calm and easygoing. We get pressed frustrated, we get upset, we get angry and anxious. So it's helpful to just pause. And I'm inviting you now just to reflect on where you feel right now, blue, red, or green. None of them are good or bad. This isn't about some failure.
Speaker 2:
If you're in the blue or the red zone, this is just useful to non-judgmentally pay attention and notice. So, as I said, we wander through different emotional states throughout our day. And one of the best gifts that we give our children is to let them know that we're not hard on ourselves when we're struggling, that we actually are recognizing that when we're yelling, it's reaching the end of our rope saying, or doing things that we know we don't feel comfortable doing, or we might later regret that we can make amends, that we can make repair. And I've talked about that many times and that it's normal, that it's human. Now of course, if you come from a background where you've gone through a very difficult childhood or you've suffered trauma, there's a greater likelihood that you will struggle to stay regulated and calm, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:
That's just information for you to compassionately visit and get support on. And I'm a huge fan of that. It's an area I want to explore more and more in my work, but we all get triggered. And there's an important dynamic that I want to touch on here. So many times parents get really keyed up and frustrated and angry at their kids because when a child is misbehaving, it can bring up for the parent feelings of failure or feeling incompetent or out of control or judged by others. If there are people witnessing a child's outbursts. So we, in a sense, make our child calm and cooperative behavior as a marker for whether we're doing all right as a parent. And that's a terrible relationship to have with a child because it sort of puts the child in charge of our state of wellbeing. And that is absolutely not the dynamic that we want to have with our kids.
Speaker 2:
We don't want them to govern or be in charge or in control of whether we feel stable and centered or not. That's our job as the parent. And if it's hard for you by all means, be kind to yourself, be accepting of that and, and receive the help that's being offered. I know as I said, we do lots in our community as well as many other people who work with trauma. I love the book. The body keeps the score by Bessel van der Kolk, and there's many, many other references. Peter Levine, lots of good resources. If you've gone through trauma and you're finding that it's showing up a lot in your daily life, but for this moment in this little brief time we have together, I'd like you to think of one thing that helps you out is that red or blue zone back to the green.
Speaker 2:
So here are a few ideas, but it's something for you to reflect on. You could even jot it down. What's one thing for some parents, it's going to be time away from their kids, just having a five, 10 minute break from the drama and the chaos for some, it's going to be calling a friend for summit to prayer or, or a short meditation. Others find stepping outside and being in nature or taking a warm shower or washing the dishes, turning on the TV for a few minutes, reading an inspirational passage in a book. So right now, call to mind something that helps you come back to a state of wellbeing. It might not mean that you're no longer mad at your, to your kids or that you're suddenly going to be a fuse of in your warm and loving energy, but it means that you find yourself moving toward a state of regulation because here's the thing.
Speaker 2:
And this is so, so, so important that I'm going to do, as I said, hopefully a two part class on this with Mona Delahooke. But this idea of co-regulation is fundamental to so much of what I teach the idea that when we're in that room relationship with our children, as what I call that calm, loving captain of the ship, that energy that we exude is one of the most valuable resources for a child who's dysregulated who's in the red or blue zone. Who's lost their way. Who's not able to cope. So consider one thing that helps you feel more regulated that brings you back to yourself and make a note of that. Put that front and center, put a sticky note on your refrigerator door or the mirror in your bathroom. What is something with kindness? So much kindness that you can offer yourself as a loving parent to yourself that you have discovered is a way for you to feel safe, again, to feel everything's okay.
Speaker 2:
Are going to be okay again. So I hope that you can remember the thing that you chose. The thing that helps you find your way back to yourself, that you can use that as an anchor to stay connected to the deeper part of you. That is stable. Even when the external world feels a little crazy and chaotic, listen, children are loud, noisy, messy, and active. And we don't always feel like being in the presence of loud, noisy, messy, active. Sometimes we want quiet stillness, and we may not be in a situation if we're responsible for the care of our children to just go off somewhere and find our calm. Again, sometimes we have to show up in the midst of the chaos or the movement and activity that comes with children and anchor internally, even while the outside is going so fast. But one thing that I have found in this work for so many decades is that when we have some kind of regular practice, something that we even for three, two minutes in the morning, just connect to our heart express gratitude, set an intention, not to get certain things done, but just to stay present with ourselves and accepting toward ourselves and maybe a little more flexible with our kids, that in those moments later in the day, when things start moving really fast or get really noisy and messy, there's a greater chance that we can touch our heart and rediscover or reconnect to that place inside ourselves.
Speaker 2:
That knows what it's like to be the eye of the storm, because definitely there are storms when it comes to raising kids. Remember that the work of our children is to eventually become adults. And so they are always pushing limits. They're trying to individually rate depending on what stage they're in. And sometimes that's really welcome from us. We love that they're testing boundaries and sometimes nothing could be further from the truth. We just want them to do what we ask and we might get really stirred up and activated and move on to that red or, or even the blue pathway. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion about regulation and staying calm. And that the author of this question is very kind to him or herself to accept that, yes, you lose your cool and the solution. Isn't to say a particular thing. When you're finding yourself really upset with your kids, it's going to start by some of the practices that I've touched on staying calm.
Speaker 2:
Isn't so much. How do I do it in the midst of the storm? It's more having a reservoir or a library of things that you can do when you are ramping up to the parent. Who's written this trying not to use threats or punishments. One of the things you might find as you notice your heart rate going up, you're getting sweaty, you're getting a knot in your stomach. You see where things are progressing. You remember that one thing that you identified today, it might be taking three minutes, even in the bathroom to be by yourself to just take two or three quieting breaths, letting the exhalation be a little longer than the inhalation. It might be. As I said, meditation, prayer, reading a passage in a book, stepping outside in nature, jumping into a shower. And if you don't have that time, just washing your hands in warm water and noticing how it feels on your hands, any of these things that you can do as you notice that you're starting to ramp up the yelling or the threatening can bring you back to a place where you have even a chance of finding yourself regulated, because that is the precursor to creating regulation in your kids.
Speaker 2:
The most important is just to find one thing that you can start practicing or referencing or using to bring you back to yourself. And again, I encourage you to make a list before you rejoin your family to take a minute or two and consider some of the things that you can do or have done in the past that have successfully helped you kind of not fall down that Hill, not slip down that slippery slope when you're, when it's almost too late to recover. And if that's the case and you do yell at your kids, or you do send them to their rooms, you do all the things that you wish you promised you'd never done and wish you'd hadn't done. Then that's where we use repair. And it's such a beautiful experience to offer a child, a genuine, sincere apology.
Speaker 2:
And of course, I've talked about that in other podcast episodes and in other essays I've written, but we don't have to get it right all the time. You guys, we just do the best we can. So that's it for today. If you've enjoyed the podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating or a review, and please tell a friend or all three of those things. It really does help. And I am on a mission. I really want to help impact positively impact the lives of parents around the world. And we are making some headway, I think, here and there, but your help is always welcome. And of course you can hit the subscribe button and that way you'll be notified as soon as a new episode is released. Please remember to stay in touch, get regular doses of parenting inspiration at susanstiffelman.com. There's some really good stuff coming your way, including this fantastic class with one of my favorites, Julie Lythcott-Haims, who is the author of How To Raise An Adult, a really, really wonderful class coming up. All right, that's it for today, everyone so glad that you were here. Look forward to connecting with you in one way or another in this beautiful work of helping raise our wonderful, amazing kids, even through those inevitable bumps in the road. So remember no matter how busy life gets look for those moments of sweetness and joy, stay safe, stay well. And I'll see you next time.