Questions this episode will answer

What you'll learn in this episode

• What made Terese realize the way she was talking to her kids was starting to sound like her own mother, and what she did about it
• Why trying to be logical and calm in the moment didn't work for her, and what did
• How identifying her kids’ needs, instead of taking the toy away, helps them navigate fights more easily
• What Terese says to her kids on the far fewer occasions when she still yells, that they now say to other people as well
• The specific phrase Terese still uses to quiet the voice telling her she's a bad mom

Taming Your Triggers is open for enrollment

My two youngest were fighting over a pink unicorn and they both really wanted the pink unicorn and my one-year-old can like get pretty aggressive when she wants to like push and pull and my eldest did have it first and so I was like okay Freya can you maybe find a way of playing with her and Freya was like no it's my unicorn. My youngest one so it's just like in that fight I think before I would have been just really stressed and angry I said okay I'll just take the unicorn away no one's playing with the unicorn but it like whatever versus this one I was like okay well you both have a need for play let's try to see if we can do this together.

Hi I'm Adrian in suburban Chicagoland and this is Your Parenting Mojo with Jen Lumanlan. Jen is working on a series of episodes based on the challenges you are having with your child from toothbrushing to sibling fighting to the endless resistance to whatever you ask. Jen will look across all the evidence from thousands of scientific papers across a whole range of topics related to parenting and child development to help you see solutions to the issue you're facing that hadn't seemed possible before. If you'd like a personalized answer to your challenge just make a video if possible or an audio clip if not, that's less than one minute long that describes what's happening and email it to support@ yourparentingmojo.com and listen out for your episode soon.

Your kid spills something and before you can stop yourself words come out of your mouth and they are not your words. They're your mom's or your dad's or whoever took care of you when you were little. It's maybe the exact tone that you heard a hundred times maybe a thousand times growing up and you swore you would never use with your own kids. Today's guest knows that feeling very well. Terese is Swedish, spent her teenage years in Canada, now lives in Norway. She's a teacher and she has three kids. When she joined the Taming Your Triggers workshop about a year ago she told us she was snapping at her kids and she could hear her mom's voice in her head when it happened. In this conversation she shares that her mom was a single parent in a tiny house doing the best she could under a lot of stress and that's how these patterns get passed down because nobody sets out to hurt their kids but parents under pressure fall back on what was done to them and then that continues through the generations. In this episode Terese talks about what growing up with her mom was like and the tool that she uses now when her voice shows up in Terese's mind. Then she shares what's different in her family today including a moment with her son she could never have had with her own mom and we get to see firsthand that Terese is interrupting the cycle with her own kids.

Well we met because you joined the Taming Your Triggers workshop and you realized you were having trouble snapping at your kids is the language that you used when you introduced yourself and then there was this sort of other related thing I think of hearing your mom's voice in your head and I'm wondering what made you realize that you needed help with those things?

Well I did not want to become my mom and I felt that was the route that I was going and so I was after okay how can I stop this how can I deal with situations in a way that's differently because I felt I was saying my mother's words and I didn't want that I wanted something different and I didn't really know how to do that and then when I came across your podcast I was like yes this is what I want and then the rest is history.

And would you be willing to share what your relationship was like with your mom maybe in your teenage years sounds as though that was a really formative period with her?

Yeah I mean I guess I didn't really reflect on it as well until I had kids but so my mom she she yelled at us all the time and anything, anything bad happened it was always my fault and I guess she didn't yell at us she yelled at me. It was my brother and I but it was it was me who it was always on my fault so I felt that I couldn't exist like I would come home I would start doing my homework at the kitchen table she would get mad at me for having the books on the table. I would move into the living room and then after dinner she would go into the living room and get mad at me for having my books in the living room and then I wouldn't pick up and move them back and so it ended up being that I started going to night school just to like get away from home and have a place where I could sit and do homework and I mean it was just I felt like I couldn't exist it was like I I was being sorry for existing and taking up space and being a human being. At the time I didn't realize any of this at the time I just wanted to get away through the Taming the Triggers, through having kids, and like all of this coming okay it definitely wasn't as calm or like zen as I had it pictured in my head. And I think that like this baggage it definitely came back and I mean my mom was a single mom she did the best she could she just she got irritated as well she it was this tiny house and there wasn't a lot of room and she wanted to take up space so I can kind of understand where she was coming from now as well but as a teenager I didn't understand that side of it I just tried to be good as good as possible follow everything and never stand up to her and get out of the way and then left very early.

Wow so you really had this sort of peacekeeping role in a way right your your job was to make sure that she doesn't get dysregulated

Yeah, yeah, and like I was always walking on eggshells trying to make her not just like that was a good way of putting it like you said you get dysregulated yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and so I I think you that insight had helped you to make a lot of changes right and from what I can gather you were not yelling as much as your mom did and yet there was this kind of gap between where you were and where you wanted to be and so what had you already tried to to close that gap?

Uh I mean I guess I had tried being logical with children.

I thought that would be effective too.

Actually especially in the situation it's really not that big a deal it's just the cup it's in the dishwasher it's fine but yes the being logical has never really worked with my kids not in the moment anyways. And then I also uh like I tried saying the same thing over again and tried like calming myself which also it worked until it didn't and I mean now looking back at it as well I mean when I am fed when I am rested things go a lot better uh and and so there's been like a lot of that has been a realization to take care of myself more but I mean this was always the probably still is this hasn't gone away but I can almost I can definitely hear your voice as soon as my mom's voice comes in. You told me once that okay I am thinking I'm a bad mom I'm not a bad mom and just that I still say it like as soon as it comes up it's like okay this isn't I'm tired, I got two hours of sleep, it's understandable that uh I'm not as patient as I would be if I had a full night's sleep and I can be more considerate to myself and how the thoughts are in my head as well.

Wow I'm really honored to be in your head in that way and I think it's pretty common parenting advice right the the idea to put your own oxygen mask on first and I guess the layer I would add to it is not just so you can be a more effective parent but because you're a human being who deserves to have your needs met so um yeah so I think that that piece is there as well. So I'm curious about the kinds of shifts you've seen in your ability to navigate uh situations that would have been difficult before I know if you remember any of the ones that you went through while we were actually working together or some more recent ones that uh that you want to share.

Yeah I mean like one just yesterday for example is very fresh in my mind. My two youngest were fighting over a pink unicorn and they both really wanted the pink unicorn and my one-year-old can like get pretty aggressive when she wants to like push and pull and and my eldest did have it first and so I was like okay Freya can you maybe find a way of playing with her and Freya was like, no it's my unicorn. And my youngest one so it's just like in that fight I think before I would have been just really stressed and angry I said, okay I'll just take the unicorn away no one's playing with the unicorn but it like whatever versus this one I was like okay well you both have a need for play let's try to see if we can do this together and I was like, Freya can you find a game that Saga can also be in? No it's my unicorn. Okay and it's just like not to become angry at my kids when they are melting down I mean sometimes I can definitely feel frustrated but I can also be like okay I feel frustrated because my kids are angry at each other this is a normal feeling and then try to work through that feeling and then like, okay let's put the unicorn and let's look we can have a stall for the unicorn maybe you guys can go get some food and then within like two minutes of me coming in and making the game then they were perfectly happy to play together and feed the unicorn and go on adventures with the unicorn together. And I think that the whole like situation became a lot easier.

For the times when it doesn't go well I guess I'm curious about how you repair. I I'm imagining that your mom didn't really model that for you and and there was not a lot of repair so how do you go about that differently than the way you were raised?

Um I can definitely come to my kids and like quickly so that they'll calm down quickly and be like hey I know that was hard this morning um I'm sorry I'm sorry we had to go through that together I'm sorry you felt this way uh and and just like that I think has also made my kids open up a little more to me um and because I'm not a perfect mom either and then just like talk about how my feelings are and I can understand where they were coming from and then sometimes we make a plan for how to avoid it in the future. Sometimes we just like talk about what happened and um it kind of is if it's a reoccurring one then we can try to figure out something to not have it happen again but otherwise it's like it can be a bonding experience just to say, yeah hey I'm sorry um I was stressed I had this happen at work uh and then this just blew it over the top for mommy.

Yeah and I think it models real vulnerability and authenticity in a relationship right and and the idea that they don't have to be perfect either they can mess up and come back and apologize too and the relationship can be stronger.

That my son has he's started apologizing to other people too uh which is also not done in Norwegian culture uh not very often anyways uh so coming from a Canadian's perspective that's what you guys don't apologize. But uh just last week um uh my son was going home from a friend's house uh and he was playing there by himself so he was like leaving by himself as well and he wanted a hug from his friend and his friend refused to hug him and he was really sad because my son was leaving to go home and go to bed and my son said, well if you don't hug me then I'm not gonna come here and play tomorrow, and that made his friend even more sad and the mom was like, well making threats don't usually work and just make people sad. So then he was like, oh I'm sorry and then like so he like unprovoked wasn't forced to say sorry he was just completely on his own and then uh you don't have to hug me and then got on his bike and went home. It's uh I feel that it has helped my son as well to realize that like he yeah to be able to say sorry and to reconcile as well. And my son has gone from not ever talking about his feelings about anything that's happened at all to now starting to open up I wouldn't say he's the most talkative son ever but he's definitely a lot more talkative and opening up most of the time at bedtime when we want to go to sleep. But he is opening up a lot more than he used to.

What is it that you think has driven that change because I know that's a place that many parents find themselves in?

I think it's that he feels that he can be his authentic self and that I'm going to accept that. I mean there have been times that he's done things that are wrong and messed up and I've reacted with oh thank you for telling me even though I'm really angry so there's a but there's been like quite a few situations where that has been the case so it's safe to come in and tell us things uh no matter how much we mess up. So it's like it's not something that came overnight either but I realized that when he was the other night when he was talking about oh I messed this one up and I accidentally I was playing with the stick and it hit this boy and he got really sad and it's like oh well thank you thank you for telling me what happened next and then he's like oh I went and said sorry right away but it's like he can tell me when he messes up, and I could never do that at home.

Yeah that's that that's really different right and and I think you've kind of nailed it I want to hone in on the part that you nailed right he he has permission to be his authentic self in his relationship with you and you didn't get that with your mom with all of the stress she was carrying, all of the trauma she was carrying, everything else that was going on for her she wasn't able to see you as you truly were. And you are interrupting that cycle and you're able to give that gift right that gift that we all want more than anything else which is to be seen and loved for who we are by another person who's important to us. Um yeah wow that's that's really incredible thank you for sharing that. Given how important community is in your real life I'm wondering what that meant for when you're thinking about uh you know learning how to navigate your triggers and and the learning that we did together. I'm curious about how your experience was different uh you know obviously, I gave you some information there was some content to read but a big part of it was the community can you share what what that experience was like for you and what it contributed to your learning and growth?

I remember feeling better right away so it was uh going from oh I'm stressed about this to instantly getting uh help and ideas and how to deal with things so I remember it feeling that like it wasn't something oh I have to read this and this and this and try to find this it was that you just post something and then all of a sudden there's three four different ways of solving and then can take one of them straight off or adapt something it was just the ideas that came quickly.

Awesome and I'm curious as we wrap up is there anything any particular idea any particular tool or something that you have learned about Taming Your Triggers what would you want parents to know?

Um I mean I think for me anyways it's getting rid of the voice but saying that I wasn't good enough I would say that was like a huge shift for me uh to okay having this voice and not feeling that I was good enough uh to being kinder to myself. And even if you I do get triggered and I do get angry uh being able to okay you you have it like okay how would you talk to a friend uh and I I that doesn't come up to me in this situation I don't think how would I be to a friend right now but I do use I am thinking I am thinking uh and that is really really helpful and still is helpful uh just this being very a lot kinder to to myself as a person.

Yeah ultimately I think a lot of that is is what this is all about right if we could be kind to ourselves as people then things ripple out from there so thank you so much for Terese for sharing your story with us and and uh how far you've come on this journey not that it's ever complete there's no arrival point but to look back and reflect on the last year or so with you it's a real privilege thank you so much.

Thank you.

When Terese talks about I'm thinking I'm a bad mom she's actually referring to a tool that we use in the Taming Your Triggers workshop so when that old voice says I'm a bad mom she can change it to I'm thinking I'm a bad mom right it's a really small change but what you're doing is you're turning the voice into a thought instead of it being the truth about who she is. And once it's a thought instead of the truth she can see it a little more clearly she's tired she got two hours of sleep of course she's feeling less patient than usual. Terese still gets angry sometimes she still snaps occasionally but it happens a lot less often than it did before and when it does she comes back and repairs, and her son now tells her when he messes up, and he apologizes to his friends without anyone making him do it. The voice that her kids are growing up with is a lot more like thank you for telling me than it's your fault. If you hear a voice from your own childhood coming out of your mouth and you want your kids to grow up hearing a different voice, registration for Taming Your Triggers is open now until Wednesday, October 7th. It's a transformative 10-week workshop and you're going to do it alongside other parents who are navigating very similar things just like Terese did.You can find all the details at yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers that's yourparentingmojo.com/tamingyourtriggers.

If you'd like Jen to address the challenge you're having in parenting just email your one-minute video or audio clip to [email protected] and listen out for your episode soon.