Reflective Parenting by Curious Neuron
A parenting podcast that doesn't tell you HOW to parent your own child. We teach you how to think during parenting challenges and help you build emotional intelligence skills to lower your stress and help you cope with those challenging emotions that come with parenting.
Neuroscientist, Dr. Cindy Hovington can help you parent your child with confidence and feel competent by helping you understand your triggers, recognize and break your emotional patterns and teach you how to model healthy emotional coping skills for your child.
Cindy is the founder and CEO of Curious Neuron, is an internationally recognized emotional well-being resource for parents with their evidence-based educational content being consumed in over 70 countries! She is a leading thought expert in emotion regulation and parental well-being as well as an international speaker on well-being and emotional development in children.
The goal of this podcast is to help parents gain awareness of their emotional triggers, build your confidence as a parent, understand how their past influences behavioural patterns they can stuck in and help them learn how to model healthy emotional coping skills for their children. We do this by discussing the science of emotional intelligence and effective parenting practices.
Join us every Monday for conversations with leading researchers and best selling authors in parental well-being, childhood adversity, attachment, emotional development, stress management and emotion regulation skills. Past guests include Dr. Bruce Perry, Dr. Marc Brackett and best-selling authors Dr. Ramani Durvasula and Stephanie Harrison.
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Reflective Parenting by Curious Neuron
How to parent yourself first and break unhealthy cycles with Bryana Kappadakunnel
This episode explores the profound impact of childhood experiences on parenting styles, emphasizing the importance of self-reflection and emotional healing. Brianna shares insights on building connections with children through understanding and compassion while setting healthy boundaries.
• Understanding how childhood wounds manifest in parenting
• Importance of self-reflection for emotional health
• The role of connection in nurturing healthy relationships
• Practical strategies for engaging with emotions
• Defining and communicating boundaries effectively
• Navigating partner dynamics in the parenting journey
• The need for compassion and curiosity in parenting conversations
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In Canada or the US
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Hello, dear friend, welcome to the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. I am a mom of three from Montreal, canada, and I have a PhD in neuroscience, and my goal through the Curious Neuron podcast is to help bring awareness to different aspects of your life that can be impacting your emotional well-being or emotional health, and so I bring in experts that are going to talk about aspects of mental health and how we regulate emotions and different aspects of your child's emotional health as well, because if we are struggling to cope with emotions, that trickles down to our kids. And if you are new here, not only do we have the podcast, you could join us on social media Curious Neuron or Curious underscore Neuron on Instagram or Curious Neuron on Facebook. You can visit our website at CuriousNeuroncom. And if you're somebody who's been listening to this for a while and you say, well, I'm now aware of various aspects of my life where I need to make changes, but I'm not sure how Well. That's why we launched the Reflective Parent Club. It is a three-month program. I know for those of you that have been listening knew that I was referring to it as a membership. It is no longer a membership, because now we noticed that in three months you gain enough self-awareness and emotion regulation skills to see an impact in your life, and so I don't want this to be a huge undertaking for parents. I want you to know that this three month commitment will make a difference in your life. I have left the sale price at $50, $55, sorry for three months. That is all it takes for you to see a difference.
Speaker 1:The Reflective Parent Club has its own podcast, called the Reflective Parent Podcast, where we dive into different topics. So, for example, last week we spoke about mental load and these task lists that are never ending, and we reflected on what that could look like in our home. We brought in a special guest, erica Jossa, who's a psychotherapist, to talk to us about that. I recorded a podcast giving everybody specific reflection prompts. Next week we are having since it's the end of the month, we are going to have on Saturday morning a special family reflection call, and so we started that in December and everyone loved it so much. We are bringing in our kids and, as you know, part of Kirsten Neuron is not just to show you and teach you and help you learn how to cope with emotions. I want to help you model this for your kids, and so next week, children are invited on our Saturday morning call and we are going to be reading a book together and talking about the characters and the emotions that they felt. And so if you are trying to support your child's emotional development, you get a week free when you join the Reflective Parent Club. You might want to join in on Saturday to see what that looks like. Join in on Tuesday, where you can have a reflection call specific to you. We're talking about how we perceive stress next week. So every week is a different topic and you get tons of content inside the Reflective Parent Club PDFs, digital journals, audios, videos, you name it. It's there. I want to make sure that you, you know, learn how to build your self-awareness and learn how to regulate and cope with emotions. That is all All right.
Speaker 1:I'd like to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute for supporting the Curious Neuron podcast, as well as the McConnell Foundation. Without these two organizations, this podcast would not be possible, and thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. If you've been listening for a while and you haven't done so yet, make sure that you take a moment to click out and leave a review. The reviews make such a difference and we don't get enough, and so if you can review the podcast or at least just rate it on five stars, that would really be helpful. If you actually take the time to leave a review, send me an email at info at curiousneuroncom. I will send you the Meltdown Mountain, which is our special PDF that allows you to teach your kids how to cope with emotions and understand what dysregulation is, and so I will send that to you for free, gladly, if you write a review for the podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to share the interview that I had with Brianna, and she's the founder of Conscious Mommy. I don't know if you follow her online, but now she has a book called Parent Yourself First, raise confident, compassionate kids by becoming the parent you wish you had, and if you are somebody that has lots of triggers and you've never been able to identify them, then this podcast episode is for you. We go deep into what it looks like to kind of do a bit of the self-work and reflect on things that are impacting us as parents, because sometimes the aspects of self-work that we need to work on really surface when we become a parent. We don't think about these things, and so I really do think that this book if you are expecting your first child, this is a book that will really help you do a bit of the reflection and the thinking about what your past might have looked like. You don't have to dig deep, but asking certain questions and looking at what that might look like for you now that you are a parent or becoming a parent, and this book will help you in really intense emotional situations that you will at some point encounter with your child. The link to her book will be in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Please enjoy my conversation with Brianna and welcome back everyone to the Curious Around podcast and, as promised in the intro, I am here with Brianna. Brianna, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Cindy, I said it and I want to say it again Congratulations on the release of your book. Parent Yourself First. I don't even know what to say in terms of just how needed this book is and how much we all need to read this. I can't wait to dig into it with you today.
Speaker 2:So congrats, thank you so much for reading it and for agreeing to help support getting the message out there. It means so much to me.
Speaker 1:It's truly a book that's needed, and what I'm curious about, I guess, to start this conversation is well, first, I think we'd like to get to know a little bit more about you. But, in addition, how did the idea for this book come about? Is it conversations that you were having? Is it an idea? Was it an idea that you had on your mind for a while? How did it come about?
Speaker 2:Well, I knew that I wanted to write a book, but I didn't actually know what the book was really going to be about. I thought it was going to be about. I thought I was going to call it the connected parent, because I really see, like, at the heart of this message is about being really connected to yourself and understanding yourself from a lens of self-compassion and gentleness and kindness, so that we can then show up in relationship with our children in this way. But when my, my what became my editor? When she read the book or read my proposal, she was like I think that this book is called Parent Yourself First and we were like bada bing, bada, boom, yes, like that is the name of this book. Like, clearly you're a marketing genius and I'm not. I'm not actually, I'm just. You know, I'm a therapist and I'm a healer.
Speaker 2:I work with families that are in it and they're in hard parts of their lives. They're struggling with whether it's just the general transition into parenthood, or their mothers, fathers that had difficult past, difficult histories, whether that's trauma or just something even like not feeling seen and heard, or feeling disrespected, or feeling punished or made to feel small. I will often work with parents when they come into this transition of being a parent and they often have this idea I don't want to parent the way that I was parented. And what happens is that either they end up just repeating it unconsciously and then guilt trip themselves and feel terrible that they made this promise. I'm not going to yell at my kid and like here I am, like I can hear my mother coming right out of my mouth. I'm not going to yell at my kid and like here I am, like I can hear my mother coming right out of my mouth. Or they go to the other end where they are just like completely overcompensating, to the point where it's almost like they're trying too hard and it's creating a lot of anxiety and insecurity in the children.
Speaker 2:And so I just thought, wow, we need to peel back these layers and we need parents like to have a very accessible tool to help them. One know how to peel back the layers, right? I felt like a lot of books just say go heal yourself, but they don't actually provide you the details and the steps of what that actually looks like, which is what I do in the book. It's really laid out very clearly and easily for you to remember, and there's so many different tools so you can pick and choose the ones that actually mean the most to you and support you the most, so that you can focus on that healing, self-reflective work that you need to do for yourself. That is what parenting yourself first is, so that you can show up for your children in that connected, consistent way that you really desire to show up.
Speaker 1:I really feel like this is one of those books that I'll keep referring to. You know, like in a moment when you gain awareness for something because it takes time you don't just read the book and say, okay, got this, you know, you have the reflection prompts. You break it down in terms of us having to work on ourselves first, and once that self-awareness is there, then we build that connection with our child. It was written in a way that just flows beautifully and I know that we have to keep still at that point.
Speaker 1:Coming back to it, there's a sentence that really stood out for me at the beginning and I want this to sort of be the foundation of this conversation. But it says having kids reveal wounds in us, and I think that, from the parents I've spoken with, sometimes those wounds are not obvious, and I wanted to say that I appreciate that you shared your story and that you brought in conversations and other parents into this, because I think that's how we can relate to them, and there might be a parent reading this saying I hadn't really realized that that aspect of my childhood or upbringing was impacting the way that I'm parenting. Do you feel that that might be an aspect, too, where the awareness piece might not be that obvious for all parents.
Speaker 2:I definitely think that awareness piece, especially about how our past shows up in an instant with our children. I think that most parents, unless they've been in therapy for a while or they've been reading some books, like maybe Dan Siegel's Parenting from the Inside Out, something like that I do think that most parents don't necessarily see that there is a connection or understand the relevance of it, especially if you were just made to button it up and keep going and bury it. You know passes in the past, you know I was beat. I turned out just fine, right. If you kind of grew up with those types of ideas and those types of messages which you know, let's be real, I think a lot of people have, it can be difficult to understand that. No, that actually did have quite an impact on me, and so in the book I talk about some of like the four main relational needs that we have. We have that need to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel understood and to feel safe, and so just very, very simply, I think a lot of the times when we're talking about wounds being revealed, the wounds are going to be in like one or more of those areas of not feeling seen, not feeling heard, not feeling understood, not feeling safe, and that becomes a really, I think, steady anchor.
Speaker 2:I had a mother today actually talking about how what did she say? Her child suddenly started becoming very clingy to her, her six-year-old, to the point where she's having to pry her child off to go and do things that the child previously used to love doing. My first thought process, my first questions, are when did this start? What was happening around when this started, and what does this bring up for you? And that's really what the book teaches us to do. It teaches us to go back and to examine the history and to connect with what it's bringing up for us. So this mother says that it started this past summer when they had a bunch of plans, they were doing a bunch of stuff and schedules were very tight and the daughter didn't have a whole lot of say in terms of what she was going to be doing. And I then asked mom to reflect on what this brought up for her and she said well, it really makes me feel trapped.
Speaker 2:So this now this mother, we've been able, like we've been all working together so we're able to get to that point where she could go into her history and she could explore what that feeling of being trapped was like for her. Did she experience that as a kid? What's her relationship with feeling trapped? And and this is where I think the bridge is so important, when you are able to reflect and have awareness of the wounds and things that are coming up for you with your kid, you can then be curious is that what my kid is feeling too? You can wonder, hmm, is she feeling trapped?
Speaker 2:And it would make sense really, when you think of it logically, if she spent the whole summer and into the next school year being, really, you know, having to be on an adult schedule and not really having a say. You can see how a six-year-old might feel like I don't have any freedom, and we can also understand how they may not be great at communicating that. Now, this is why I think the way that this mindset is different is, you know, a traditional parenting paradigm might look at. We have to have consequences for her right. We have to explain to her that this behavior is unacceptable and tell her to suck it up and tell her to keep going that you know she doesn't, she's not going to always get what she wants.
Speaker 2:That's not how the world operates. So it's. It's really coming from this place of disconnection, right, I'm not willing to see you, I'm not willing to hear you, I am not willing to understand you or keep you safe. Whether it's willing or able to, that's honestly, moment to moment. I think most parents desire to, but I think in the moment we might be so triggered that being vulnerable and being intimate and being connected, it gets scary, and you know what I mean. That's what I'm trying to teach parents to do. This is really a book about being in relationship with yourself and being in relationship with your children.
Speaker 1:Right, and there's a lot of work that goes into that and I don't think that we put enough of that or give enough space to that work that we have to do with ourselves, right.
Speaker 1:I think that you know the example you mentioned is so relatable and there's a parent that I spoke with this week that she was struggling with seeing her mom not show empathy towards her kids and that would bring up the lack of empathy that she grew up with, and there are so many examples that just fall within what you are offering in terms of support, right, and this mom doesn't. She didn't know where to begin. Like, how do you begin that work? Do you ignore, do you set a boundary, that mother that you know her mother doesn't even see it, and so there's a lot of work that we need to do. What would you offer as advice for a parent who says I see it, I'm aware of certain things like my mom lacking empathy or my childhood that I know is bringing certain things up, but where do we begin in terms of the work? As we're reading your book, Is it about? Is it the journaling piece? Is it about talking to somebody? How do we start that work to kind of even open up that awareness even more.
Speaker 2:So I think probably the most important place to start is learning to sit with what makes us feel uncomfortable, and it is in that process that we are able to sit with the discomfort, that we can understand and start to learn. What is the discomfort trying to teach me right now?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So in the book I talk, I have it as like an acronym to help us remember. So SIT as an acronym, s stands for slow down. I is internally sense. So I'm asking you to get out of your head and stop thinking your way out of things and really invite yourself to just feeling your way through things. And then T is talking to the feeling starting to have a dialogue with the feeling. In the book I talk about a client who was talking with her anxiety and learning that her anxiety would come out like a critic and because it was so afraid, so afraid that she was failing and effing these kids up.
Speaker 1:Her words, not mine.
Speaker 2:So many, right yeah, so many parents have that fear and really the critic was so strong and so loud, reminding her at every single misstep what a failure you are with this intent or this desire to try to get her to stop failing. And so, now that we have this awareness, okay, my inner critic is online and it's trying to protect me from failure. I can now have a different relationship with this protective, immature part of myself. I can go into exploring that. Whose voice does this inner critic belong to? A lot of the times, the inner critic is a. It's a learned voice. For a lot of women, it comes from their mothers, but it could come from really anybody. It could come from a teacher, it could come from a sibling, it could come from a father, it could come from anybody, it doesn't matter. So we want to understand, like, whose voice is this? And then we want to psychologically like give that back to the other person. Right, let them deal with that. This is what being a cycle breaker is all about. It's not about showing up perfectly. It's about recognizing what work is actually mine to be doing and releasing the work that is not yours.
Speaker 2:And you know, I think, for that specific example that you provided about the mother lacking empathy, I would encourage the person to sit with, whatever that feeling is that's coming up for them, is it? I can never get it right? Like nobody sees me, I feel invisible, or I feel like something's wrong with me because I'm feeling this way and I'm being told I shouldn't be Like, do I feel wrong in some way? Or do I feel like I have to be perfect in order to get love? Or do I feel like I'm a burden, right, right? So figuring out like what is the core wound here that's being brought up for you, and then making a decision on what you want to do with it. Do you have the type of relationship with your parent where you can have a vulnerable and intimate conversation where accountability can happen?
Speaker 2:If that's the case, I'm all for having the hard conversations, but I also understand that that's not the case with many of my clients, and so sometimes it's lowering expectations, aligning expectations with the reality that they're not going to see the hurt they're causing, and so we just have to have better boundaries with them.
Speaker 1:Right and boundaries you explain in the book is not what we all think. Can you explain what boundaries are?
Speaker 2:Yes, boundaries are not how to control other people's behavior. Boundaries are saying what it's really about our own behavior, what we are going to do, what is acceptable to us, and I really like to think of boundaries as a bridge that we build to connect us in a safe way with other people, as opposed to a wall that shuts us off from people. Right, right. So if we're, if we're just, if we're aligning our expectations with reality and we're like mom is never going to change, she is not going to be empathetic and she's probably going to continue to be critical and will make digs and comments that make me feel badly. So what's a boundary that I can set here?
Speaker 1:feel badly, so what's a boundary?
Speaker 2:that I can set here.
Speaker 1:So I have another acronym. The book is full of acronyms, I know, but it helps. I really think that we should be putting these on like post-its on our fridge.
Speaker 2:Good, I'm so glad. Maybe I'll create a little handout with all the acronyms in the book. So set is, state what you need clearly, express compassion and treat with respect. So sometimes I think just seeing the good in other people is really helpful. So, like, hey, mom, I know you're trying to help, right With the lack of empathy, right? I hear you, you're trying to help. You want everybody to feel better. Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:And it's not actually really helping me right now. It's making me feel more stressed. So I'm going to ask if you could please stop that. That way I can take care of myself, please. Or I'm going to ask that you, please, you know, let's find another way to interact with my daughter, or, you know, let me take care of it, mom, I've got it, something like that. So now we're not putting people on the defense, we're protecting the relationships that we care about, even when they're not perfectly functional, and in a way, we're kind of modeling and teaching how to be in a functional, healthy relationship with us. Right, that's what boundaries are. They are the tool to teach others. This is how we get to be in relationship together. That feels safe and good for me, and the hope is that the other person also has their boundaries and you get to be uncomfortable with what their boundaries are and you learn how to wrestle with it. That's the that's.
Speaker 1:Boundaries are so important, but I know that many of us, including myself, only really started understanding this and applying this in my late 30s, and so I think we've heard about boundaries, we hear that they're important, but you really give us this blueprint in terms of how to do that and how to set that boundary firmly, and it feels very empowering to hear it the way that you described it. So thank you for doing that. You know, there's one thing that you say. There's a phrase and you said like we're not blaming parents right, and I think it's.
Speaker 1:I really applaud you for adding that, because I think sometimes we feel bad for setting that boundary, or we feel bad for kind of you know, I don't know like trying to set things straight with our parents, and it's not blaming them, but we can still acknowledge what right. I don't think that takes away the idea that we can't talk to them about certain things without blaming them, but they're bringing their own work that they might not have done, and so it's really important for us to say that I know that there are different cultures as well that as soon as you talk about something that you don't agree with with your parent, it's like you're saying they're the worst parent, and so those are hard conversations to have, but reminding us we're not blaming the parent, but we're still addressing something that's important to us, I think is really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when we're blaming anybody, really it's just a way to cast off our own shame and to not deal with what is really being triggered within us. Yeah, I mean, parents' lack of accountability is a problem, and that is a motif, I think, or a theme that a lot of people experience. But I think where we can be more empowered is lowering our expectations for the accountability that they can or cannot take.
Speaker 2:If they're just not going to, there is no amount of really anything that you're going to say or do to make them take it. So you have to find you still have to live your life, and you have to live your life confidently, and this is your one life that we get to live and, like you, deserve to live it in a way that feels really good for you. You know I mean. My hope, though, to be perfectly honest, is that this is a book that brings people together and that brings families together.
Speaker 2:I think that, no matter where you might be on the parenting journey, you're going to get something out of this book. You read the first part. You on the parenting journey, you're going to get something out of this book. You read the first part. You're going to leave part one. Knowing yourself so well. You're going to finish off parts two and three having such deep compassion and awareness for your children and for your parent partner and for all of the people that are involved in your life parent partner and for all of the people that are involved in your life and that was really like. What I wanted out of this book is to like see yourself on a page, bring people together and help. Like have healing actually happen in our relationships.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to that second part. I think that the connection piece is really important because sometimes I speak to parents who say I really struggle to connect with my child or I just don't feel connected to myself, and so you bring in that aspect and I think it's really important for us to talk about that. So when we think about connection, how do you define it or describe it, and why do some of us struggle to connect with our kids, especially during their difficult behaviors?
Speaker 2:to connect with our kids, especially during their difficult behaviors. Yeah, I have a whole chapter dedicated to connection in the book, so I'm going to summarize it as much as I can. I look at connection. I describe it as the connection garden versus the connection desert. The connection garden is this really lush place where there's a variety of plants that are present and we're really watching and noticing those plants. So it's that metaphor of us being the gardener and our children being the plants. And what connection? Building a real sense of connection with children is very similar to how a gardener builds a gorgeous garden. They are with it every day, they're watching it, they're noticing it, they're recognizing oh, this place, this too much sun here that's impacting the way this plant is growing. In the same way that we might look at our children Too many activities that's having a negative effect on my child.
Speaker 2:As an example, it's the ability to attune and be sensitive and, of course, being self-aware. And be sensitive and, of course, being self-aware, you have to be self-reflective enough. We have to co-regulate with our children. That's a big, important piece of connection. We've got to play with our kids and I don't say that to put pressure on parents, I'm talking about just being playful in our spirit and in our energy, and I know that that doesn't always come easily or naturally right. It doesn't, and that's okay.
Speaker 2:We can actually increase playfulness within ourselves as we lower our anxiety. We can increase creativity, increase spontaneity, and those things have an inverse relationship. We will find ourselves feeling more playful in periods like everyday moments with our kids, like the morning routine, the evening routine. It doesn't have to be so hard. Play is a big emphasis here. Observation, just the watching of the child this is how you really get to know your children. This is how you get to know what they're interested in, what makes them tick, what motivates them, what sets them off right Just by watching. I think parents feel so much pressure to be constantly doing and constantly entertaining and constantly structuring, and it's just too many demands.
Speaker 2:We feel so much demands to be, in my opinion, overly involved in our children's lives in a very intense way. So I feel like true connection is we're spending time together. We are present together, we're in the moment. I'm eliminating my distractions, I'm taking interest in what you're doing and when I need you to do what I need you to do, we are working on collaborating and we're finding a playful way about that.
Speaker 1:That makes me think about what you said at the beginning in terms of feeling safe and heard and seen right. I mean, this beautiful relationship that you just painted is all of that, and so that's why connection seems to be important, right for our kids.
Speaker 2:Right and if you come from a connection, desert Right.
Speaker 2:So the connection desert is where you didn't have that, where it wasn't consistent Somebody seeing you, somebody noticing you, somebody observing you, somebody being tuned in, somebody being responsive, supportive, somebody co-regulating with you rather than escalating with you. Those things were inconsistent, they were unreliable, they were not predictable. You think they happened but you don't have a felt sense that they did. I hear that with a lot of the parents I work with. I think my childhood was okay but honestly I don't really remember a whole lot of it. I think my childhood was okay but honestly I don't really remember a whole lot of it.
Speaker 2:So the connection desert, I think, is where a lot of my clientele come from and they want so badly to have this beautiful connection with their children but they kind of feel like they have a black thumb Right and so when we acknowledge how we got our needs for connection met and we mourn and grieve what was not there, it's that process, that grief process, where we go through the anger about it, the frustration with it, the deep sadness, the depression associated with not getting an essential need met, an essential human need met, to then eventual just acceptance of okay, that's what happened.
Speaker 2:I am going to be the source of connection for myself that I always needed. I'm going to nurture my inner parent. So every time my inner child comes out demanding that she is the center stage right which often happens at the exact same time that our children are demanding that they are the center we are able to comfort her and love that little one and help her feel safe so that the inner parent can come out and we can be present to our children. And that is how we correct a lifetime of connection deserts and rebuild connection gardens addressed how we have to kind of approach it that way for ourselves, right?
Speaker 1:Because I think that's what's missing today and I wonder if there's a link to what you were saying at the beginning as well, where sometimes we over-parent or I think you said it even recently. In terms of over-parenting, do you think it comes from people who were raised in this connection desert, and now they're like I'm just going to give everything to my child and be there for you, know, and do as much as I can with them, but then there's a it's like a pendulum and maybe we swing it a little bit too far towards being there for them.
Speaker 2:I think that's one piece of it for sure, and I think the other piece is the demanding society that we live in and the lack of a village, the lack of community and the lack of support.
Speaker 2:Lack of a village, the lack of community and the lack of support. I think parents feel an incredible amount of pressure, far more pressure than I think parents in previous generations ever felt about raising their children. In fact, in some ways, I feel like this current generation of parents maybe some young Gen Xers and the millennial parents that are doing it right now, I think, are like the first generation of parents that collectively, have been very intentional about their impact. I think we as a group have done a lot of therapy and are not so bought into some of the societal norms that we've been told. I know that you're Canadian, so I don't know how super relevant this is to you, but as an American, like the American dream, you work really hard, you're going to pound that pavement and you're going to be able to have all of the things that you ever wanted. I think a lot of parents are feeling like I've done that, but yet I'm struggling.
Speaker 2:Like I'm not that's not actually materializing Produces a lot of anxiety. How am I going to make sure that this child is competitive? And so, as a result, I think it makes us feel like, well, I have to get them in Kumon. I have to get them in competitiveon. I have to get them in competitive sports by the time they're four. I have to get them started on tons of instruments and extracurriculars. They have to be, because if I'm not, then I'm not being a good parent.
Speaker 1:It's exactly that, and I've even heard new parents, new moms, specifically say I'm failing already as a mom because my child, my baby, my infant, isn't sleeping through the night. Right, my God, I hear that so much.
Speaker 2:I know. Doesn't that break your heart? It does. Breaks my heart when I hear that, like we have all of these measures for our children, we measure our children's output and their behaviors and use that as a tool to determine if we are doing good as parents. And I like to flip the switch on that. No, like your kid's behavior does not reflect how well you are doing as a parent. Your behavior does. Your behavior, that's the measure for how you are doing as a parent. Here's my deal If the majority of the time you are showing up as consistently, as predictably, as reliably as you can and you are keeping in mind, you know, making sure that everyone in the family not just the children, but yourself as well we're feeling seen, we're feeling heard, we're feeling safe, we're feeling understood.
Speaker 2:And then that other handful, and then that other handful, whatever percentage of time. You're not right, you are scary, mommy, or you yell, or you don't have the patience, because Jesus, like you can't, like you can't possibly have all the freaking patience, like we have to let go of that right, we have to let go of it. The perfection is killing us. So those times when that happens and it's inevitable repair, repair Show that relationships are not this fragile that we can be vulnerable and we can hurt each other, even unintentionally, and we can still show up, we can still take accountability, we can still show love to each other and we can still find a way forward. That will be so deeply healing for every parent who does not have a parent who took accountability for their impact. It will be deeply healing for you to be able to show up.
Speaker 2:This is what I consider an unconditional love of showing up rather than a transactional way of loving our children. I don't need you to be perfect in order to earn my love or in order to get my support. We may have our own wounds around that. I know I certainly do, from growing up in a corporal punishment environment and lots of violence and chaos and extreme expectations that were never in alignment with child development. And here I am now doing what I can to be mindful of how transactional our love and affection and connection can be with our children and say you know, I'm going to show up differently. I'm going to do my best to be in full acceptance of who you are, even if it's not who I expect you to be or who I thought you should be or who I want you to be or who I need you to be. If I need you to be anybody, I just need you to be you. That's it to be.
Speaker 1:If I need you to be anybody, I just need you to be you. That's it, hearing that as if I'm the child on the other side. It feels so good to hear that from a parent that you look up to, right, like to say, like I can be who I want to be and it's okay, they're not putting me into a box, and it feels so healing and so good to hear that. I have one last question.
Speaker 1:I think you know sometimes I hear from parents who are on this healing journey and doing the work and trying to understand how their past is impacting their parenting and so on, and then they have a partner who is completely against any of this and really struggles to even take any first step or even say things like I'm fine, I had a great childhood, I don't have anything to work on.
Speaker 1:But then they're seeing pieces of it'm fine, I had a great childhood, like, I don't have anything to work on. But then there's seeing pieces of it come out. You know you had mentioned a father at the beginning, I think, of the book, where it was the awareness of the pressure they were putting on themselves, I believe right. So I mean it comes out in small ways that, like I said at the beginning, I don't think everybody has the awareness. So what kind of conversation, if any, should we be having with our partner? If we feel that they need to read the book or that we want to at least maybe have certain conversations with them, how can we start that journey with them?
Speaker 2:So it's reminding me of an experience that I had with my husband, which I believe I put some version of it inside the book, but to protect his own privacy I won't share all the details, or at least I'll try not to. So we had this moment where I found him feeling very just like exasperated by my kid, just rolling his eyes. I was personally very triggered seeing that and he didn't seem to really notice that he was doing that. But I was very triggered by it because I had parents who behave that way and it just made me feel like I was so unwanted and annoying and just such a burden to be around. I'm just not an enjoyable person to be around and it really really affected my sense of self-esteem and confidence. I say that to know that I'm hypervigilant to those types of things, and when I saw it happening to my son and then I saw the way that my son was responding to it, he didn't really do what I did. I just learned to kind of get quiet and get small and just get out of the line of fire and just try to be who I thought everybody wanted to be. He didn't do that. He would fight back and it was creating these power struggles.
Speaker 2:Now here's the mistake that we make. When we see this happening with our partners and we've been doing some work and our partners haven't been doing much or anything at all the mistake we make is to say that's not what we do. You're doing it wrong. This is the right way. Or we'll say something like don't you see that you are the problem here? You are making him fight back with you. You're acting more like a child than he is. What am I doing there? I'm going right into critique mode.
Speaker 2:Now, does critique mode get us anywhere? No, it literally gets us nowhere. He's going to have to be on the defense. Well, I'm exhausted, I'm tired. He's been doing this all day. He's not listening to me. I'm done Right, which are all fair points, of course, right. How do we fight with that? Now it's about us fighting what happens when I'm just curious with my partner, which is what I decided to do with my husband. I said, hey, here's what I'm observing. I'm wondering, like, what is coming up for you? And he shared that he was right. He's burned out, he's exhausted. Kiddo's not listening. And tell me more like why is that such, so, so difficult for you that he is not listening to you, and that reminded him of how he was kind of not allowed to not listen as a kid.
Speaker 2:And that like the parents would do whatever they had to do to get you to listen, and he's just feeling that same stuckness. I have to just get this kid to listen at any cost, it doesn't matter. And it was just in that moment of just oh yeah, that makes so much sense. And so like that little anxious little kid part of you is coming out and it's like this there's something wrong here. Like I have to fix this. We can't tolerate this. We can't tolerate not being at an impasse and not understanding each other. Like that's not okay. And we can like help that little boy know that like it's okay to be at an impasse, it's okay to like misunderstand each other.
Speaker 2:It happens, misunderstandings happen, and I think that when we take this approach, this curious, compassionate, help me understand approach with our partners, it's going to create more intimacy, more vulnerability in a good way, a deeper connection with our partners, and allow ourselves to see each other as like, see that we're on the same team, rather than seeing each other as the problem. We're seeing the problem as the problem, we're triggered and we don't know how to you know to help this kid cooperate, and so to me, it just makes so much sense Deal with the trigger by building compassion and awareness and gentleness, slowing down, feeling those deep feelings, whatever they may be, and then finding artful ways to help this child be more collaborative. Connect with what is going on for the child. The child's feeling frustrated, the child's feeling unheard, honor that. I know exactly what that feels like.
Speaker 2:You know, I remember being a kid and I remember how hard it was when my parents didn't hear me or they didn't understand me. It made me want to do exactly what you're doing Put my foot down and yell and scream until they got it. I totally get where you're coming from, so now I'm offering that beautiful connection and then I'm moving into collaboration. We got to find a different way, though, buddy. Yeah, cause I'm asking you to work with me and I'm hearing that you're, you know, needing more time to build. We have to come up with a plan together to make this work so that both of our needs are met, because they're both important, and I guarantee you that your home is going to just feel so much more peaceful and, you know, connected because we're taking this very intentional way of being in relationship with each other.
Speaker 1:What a beautiful kind of picture to have of our homes, right when, instead of that chaos you're thinking, we're seeing it more as calm and connected and truly listening to each other and our needs and being curious. Thank you, brianna, for everything that you do. I'm so grateful that we connected a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:And I'm truly. I wish we were in the same room. I'd want to give you a big hug. I'm just so happy for you and congratulations on the launch of your book. I can't wait for everybody to get their copy. Is there anything you want to share with us in terms of how we can reach you or follow you or learn more from you?
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. Well, thank you again so much. This was such a beautiful conversation. Parent Yourself First is available internationally. You can find more at my website, ConsciousMommycom. I'm on all of the socials at Conscious Mommy and I do have an online community. I know that you do too. We're both nurturing beautiful communities. I do have an online community where I teach weekly classes. I do monthly parent group coaching. I have quarterly full-length workshops where I discuss a classes. I do monthly parent group coaching. I have quarterly full-length workshops where I discuss a variety of topics and we get to just continue to learn and grow and be in community with each other.
Speaker 1:So that's the best thing. I will put all the links to everything that you are part of. I want everybody to have access to that and please get the book. It needs to be. You know, I think of like the prenatal classes that we have, and this is what's missing. Everybody needs this when they're expecting, so thank you again.
Speaker 2:That means so much. Thank you, Cindy.