When you’re learning a new skill, information is critical.  Without that, it’s very difficult to make any kind of meaningful change.   But I see a parallel between learning new skills and respectful parenting: I like to say that love between parent and child is necessary but not sufficient - and that respect is the missing ingredient.  With learning a new skill, knowledge is necessary - but not sufficient.   And support is the missing ingredient.   You might remember from our conversation with Dr. Chris Niebauer a while ago that our overactive left brains tend to make up stories about our experiences to integrate these experiences into the narratives we tell about ourselves.   If we’re “the kind of person who triumphs through adversity,” a setback will be taken in stride.  If we’re “the kind of person who has been hurt,” each new individual hurt makes much more of a mark.  The new experiences have to be made to fit with the framework that’s already in place.   Especially when you’re learning a skill related to difficult experiences you’ve had, your left brain wants to keep itself safe.  It might tell you: “I don’t need to do this.  Things aren’t that bad.  I’ll just wait until later / tomorrow / next week.”   And when that happens, you need support.  That support can be from a great friend, although sometimes you don’t want even your closest friends to know that you shout at or smack your child.   Therapy can be really helpful - but it’s also really expensive.   Sometimes the thing that’s most helpful is someone who’s learning the tools alongside you (so they aren’t trying to look back and remember what it was like to be in your situation; theirs is different, but they are struggling too…) who isn’t a regular presence in your life.   There’s no danger you’re going to run into them at the supermarket, or a kid’s birthday party.   You can actually be really honest with them and know it won’t come and bite you in the butt.   That’s what today’s guests, Marci and Elizabeth, discovered when they started working together.  Separated by cultural differences, fourteen(!) time zones, and very different lives, they found common ground in their struggles and have developed a deep and lasting friendship.   If you’d like to work on taming your triggered feelings - and get help from your own Accountabuddy in the process - the Taming Your Triggers workshop is for you. Sign up for the waitlist now. Click the banner to learn more!      

Jen Lumanlan: 00:02

Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child won't listen to you, and what to do about each one, just head over to your parentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group, I do hope you'll join us.

Jen Lumanlan: 01:00

Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. One of the most persistent challenges that I see among parents is their children's behavior is often incredibly irritating to the parent. And the parent reacts by going into fight mode where they get very combative with a child trying to get the child to comply, or flight mode where the parent just leaves the situation. Or some parents will freeze both physically and emotionally and simply not know what to do or say. Or they might fawn over the child and say or do anything to stop the child's crying or tantruming in that moment. And once they get their wits about them again, the first thing they often think about is how they can change their child's behavior, how to get the child to stop doing this thing that's driving the parent up the wall. After all, if the child wasn't doing this, we wouldn't need to be irritated, right? The problem with this is that even if we could get our child to stop doing this thing that we find irritating, they'll probably start doing something else, or if they don't one of our other children will. They'll get to a new age and a new developmental stage, and they'll do something else that drives you up the wall because you haven't really addressed the underlying problem. Because it turns out the underlying problem is not in your child's behavior. But it's most likely in experiences that you had when you were a child. Sometimes these might be what psychologists called Big T traumas, things like divorce, and your parents or caregivers experiencing mental illness or death. They might even have been things that didn't seem actually traumatic at the time, but really were like your parents not recognizing your needs or not meeting your needs, either unintentionally, or maybe even intentionally. So the real cause of these triggered feelings isn't in your child's behavior at all but in yourself. And this can seem very overwhelming but it's actually great news. If you've ever tried to change somebody else's behavior, you know how hard it can be. Changing your own behavior is actually one of the few things in life that you do have control over, but it's really hard to do it by yourself. And that's why I created the taming your triggers course, to give you the knowledge that you need to do this. We have a supportive community and a non-Facebook platform as well, but if you really want to take it to the next level, you can sign up to get what we call an accounta buddy. And the parents we're going to hear from today did exactly that. In some ways, they couldn't be more different. Marcy lives in the state of Washington in the US and Elizabeth lives in Kenya. Marcy is active on her local school board and in her community, but she's home a lot of the time while Elizabeth travels sometimes for multiple days at a time for her work on human rights. But these two women who was separated by 14 timezones and a whole lot of cultural differences, found a common ground that neither of them expected. They held each other gently accountable to keep working on the course, even when it got difficult, and they were learning things that required a lot of courage to implement. And they developed a deep friendship that's going to far outlast the course and they hope to one day visit each other. So without further ado, perhaps each of you could introduce yourselves, maybe Marci, you'd like to go first.

Marci: 04:05

Okay, I'm Marci. I have a five-year-old son who's very energetic and very smart. And I am mostly a stay-at-home mom and I teach some yoga classes for children also. The values that I'm trying to engender, I guess into or share with him include compassion, and independence, which she is very independent, a sense of justice and also just a sense of creativity and joyfulness, playfulness. Patience is like a really an idealistic one because I'm having, I gotta work that one myself, but..

Jen Lumanlan: 04:51

As we all do, and where are you located in the world?

Marci: 04:54

I am in eastern Washington State.

Jen Lumanlan: 04:57

Okay, perfect. And then Elizabeth, you are a long way away. Tell us a little about you and your family and where you are.

Elizabeth: 05:06

Yes. So I'm a mother of two girls. One is three and a half and the other is one year old. A couple of days I live in Nairobi, Kenya. So yes, a long way away. Indeed. Yeah.

Jen Lumanlan: 05:21

And what values are important to you, because I know that you do a lot of worthwhile work in the world.

Elizabeth: 05:27

Yes, so I work in a Human Rights institution, very specifically on the rights of people with disabilities. And so one of the things I really value is social justice and ideas of justice, ideas of, you know, ans. I value also interdependence, I just am so cognizant of how much I rely on others, and I'd like my girls to grow up, knowing that they are going to have to rely on other people, and that other people are going to have to rely on them and that we, you know, live in this tapestry of dependence says, so that's something that I value, I also value empathy and compassion, and kindness. And I value knowledge, a great deal, so.

Jen Lumanlan: 06:22

Yeah, yeah, that idea of interdependence, I think is so critical, and something we struggle with in American culture, I think in the US. So you two met somewhat recently because you both joined the team in your triggers workshop and I wonder if maybe each of you could tell me just a little bit about what were some of the reasons because there's, there's pretty much always a specific reason that somebody joins taming your triggers. Marcy, what was going on for you? Why did you decide that that was something that you needed?

Marci: 06:51

I've been doing a lot of self-work, and I've been kind of struggling with anxiety and depression for most of my life, but especially after pregnancy, and motherhood. But just in the recent, you know, COVID, and everything, I just was having flare-ups, and I was like, I really want to root this get to the root of the problem, and I was reading a lot of trauma books and all kinds of things. And taming your triggers was one thing that a good friend recommended, so I thought, how many tools I can take as many tools as possible?

Jen Lumanlan: 07:29

And when you say flare-ups, what kinds of things were it? Was it your child's behavior? What was happening?

Marci: 07:35

I mean, it was just sudden, it was just this like period of just impatience and frustration and getting triggered, and yeah, and I mean, he's, I think four years old is a really fun time. And no one tells me about four, they think they say that threes or twos are really, no fours are so interesting. So that's how he became a whole new level of himself and testing boundaries and now he's just, you know, trying to do my part and Kelly's controlling my own reactions are trying to, so. And I love her mind. So it was really just a nice, you know, it made sense for me.

Jen Lumanlan: 08:19

Awesome. Thank you. And Elizabeth, what was going on in your life?

Elizabeth: 08:23

Yes. So I joined them a membership, Your Parenting Mojo membership, and, you know, was working on that, particularly in the Action Group, and then, but still, I kept finding myself being quite like Merci, say, like, triggered, and then but the turning point, I think, is that I had a really negative experience with a paid caregiver for my child, my oldest son, and this caregiver happened to, you know, physically punish my child. And I found out about this, both from my child and another adult, and, you know, of course, I let her go, and a couple, you know, sometime later, I was having a casual conversation with my daughter, and, you know, I happen to ask her, “Who beat you?” and then she said, the caregivers name, and she also said, my name; me, “and Mama.” And it was a moment when I realized that from the child's perspective, like I had managed somehow to convince myself that this correction, you know, with love, which you know, can be physical but the child surely knows that I love how her mama and these like physical abuse and like the two are separate, but then I, in that conversation with my daughter, I was able to really see from the child's perspective, that she didn't see a distinction between those two things. And I held one to be so abhorrent and incredibly wrong and the other to be socially acceptable and biblical even. And here was my little girl telling me that to have both of those things, wow, pretty much on the same point, and so that was very difficult. And then subsequently, I had many times of trying to be, you know, the kind of parent I wanted to be in my head. And I just realized good intentions don't go very far, sometimes in this work, because then sometimes, the moment between, I'm going to have a calm respect and response, and then just really blowing the lid can be like, in seconds, even like, so I knew that I needed some new tools. And I had been following your work for a while, and so this was something that I thought would really benefit myself and my family.

Jen Lumanlan: 11:12

Wow. So that was, that was an incredible moment. And I just want to pull out a couple of things that you said there, Elizabeth, you were talking about how we may punish our child physically or not sort of coming from a place of thinking that well, it's my child, they know I love them, they know this is coming from a place of love. And that if somebody else were to do this behavior, that would be an entirely different thing. And I think a lot of parents would look at that and think, “Well, the problem here is not with me, the problem with is with them, and if firstly, if they would change their behavior, then I wouldn't need to correct them. And secondly, I am doing it from love and from the best of their best outcomes. And so I need to do this thing.” And you were able to hear your child in that moment and make such a shift, and see, not only do I not believe in this thing that I have been doing, but I'm going to take some steps to do something different, I mean, there is a huge shift happening in there, right?

Elizabeth: 12:10

Yes, indeed. I mean, sometimes we will have this moment in your life when something happens, and you realize that you're just going to have to change. That things can't go on the way they have been. And you don't know exactly what you're gonna change into, but you know that you cannot continue the way you have been in I had that moment with my child's where I suddenly, after that conversation, I couldn't go on telling myself the story about this being for her own good and spare the rod, spoil the child, and all those other lines that I saw from her face, and I heard her voice and I understood at a very deep level, that something needed to be different, and that something needed to change, and I, you know, wasn't sure how to make the shift, but I knew it was essential that something needed to shift.

Jen Lumanlan: 13:06

Okay, and so, from what I understand some shifts have happened. I wonder if each of you could maybe tell me a little bit about what helped you the most about what you've learned over the last few months? Maybe Marci, what would you want to get first?

Marci: 13:20

Sure. I think that one of the biggest shifts happened really early on in the course when we were studying all the childhood trauma, intergenerational trauma, and just shining a light on those and giving myself like, an actual space and time to just examine that. I mean, I feel like, intellectually, I have gone through my life thinking, “Oh, yeah, this happened, that happened,” but I've never really stopped and actually, like, looked at these things. And so just being able to, especially like with the mother exercise, and just thinking about relationships with my mom, and all that just gave me a really wonderful opportunity to take a look at the stories that I've been telling myself since childhood, to protect myself or whatever, just as a kid, when we don't really know what's going on, and we don't understand the perspective of the adults too. And now being a mother, being able to reframe that story with the adult lens that I can look through now and really understand, and actually, Elizabeth also, it was really lovely to help her to just process with me. So it was it was a really, that whole section was just a great time for me to give myself space and a lot more like compassion and just being able to start telling a different story. I think that was extremely helpful. That was the first big shift for me. But basically since then, like, since through the latest part, just all the self-compassion, really re-introducing the meditation back into my life, I do yoga every day, pretty regularly, but really being mindful about just preparing for the day by like meditating. And then I've been able to like, take a breath, most sometimes, sometimes not. It's still a bumpy road but I definitely have been able to take more breaths and have less reaction versus like responding more intentionally, since then. So yeah, been really helpful.

Jen Lumanlan: 15:35

And that's such a critical skill, right? To be able to pause and actually make a choice, instead of just having the explosion happen immediately after whatever your child was doing. And, Elizabeth, what were some of the things that you would learned that have made the most difference for you?

Elizabeth: 15:54

Yeah, so I would say that the S score—that's the adverse childhood experiences, like tests and the questions and the score. I think that it really laid the foundation for growing self-compassion to extent I hadn't witnessed before because then I think that the way we live life is, I mean, I guess we live life forward. And while you may look back, it's really not easy to make the links between both, and then this thing happened, and this thing happened, and this other thing happened. And now I'm like this, you know, and it's much more easy to maybe blame ourselves fully, I mean, it's important, obviously, to take responsibility as well. But yeah, so I mean, I think for me that looking back and being able to see the impact of all that, in the way I am, I show up in the world in the way I relate with my children, in the struggles I have at work, I mean, the thing with this work is that it's not just limited to parenting, and that's something that I'm finding, and that keeps sort of blowing me away. That once you start doing this work, and showing up in this way in the world, it impacts your other relationships as well, and it impacts the way you relate with other people, and other people notice this. So there is that. And I think that certain shifts have come since I joined the workshop, and I think, mostly is that I see my role in my child's behavior more. So an example, just today, actually, I got back from a week-long conference, I was separated from my first child for the last six or so days, I have gone with my younger one, but I'd left the older one. And now today, she's been really what I would have called earlier, like acting up not listening, not obeying, like I’m trying to make the bed and she's jumping on it and will avoid eye contact the whole time when I try to, you know, get her to work with me or whatever. And now I'm able to say, like, listen, you've been gone for a whole week, she's missed you, she's trying to connect, and you came back and, you know, got into a whole cleaning mode. And that's not helpful, you know, like, just, I'm able to see what I bring into the things that I would have previously labeled as misbehavior or just like this child's money. This is a difficult child, you know, and I think that I also have more attuned expectations that are more consistent with my child's age, and I feel a lot more grounded. And so for example, again, we had another difficult moment where she had really big feelings, and I was, you know, also, you know, feeling a bit exhausted still from the journey and from the work and, but I was able to put aside that and just show up for her just hold tight and tell how you having a difficult moment, seems like you're struggling and just, you know, channel, you know, my imagine or whatever. And just be really kind, yeah, I think I owe that to the taming your triggers workshop, so and also, obviously, the ongoing conversations that we've been having with Marci.

Jen Lumanlan: 19:34

So yeah, yeah. And Marci, I'm wondering if you have similar stories as well about situations that you've been in where maybe ordinarily, you would have seen them differently, you would have seen misbehavior, or you wouldn't have been able to create that space, and now you have been able to do that. Is there something that springs to mind that's happened maybe recently?

Marci: 19:54

Let's see. Yeah, I mean, definitely like when I have to go away off Elizabeth, but not for several days, but how often and I, my son and I are very, we're together a lot, and he really, you know, likes that attention. And when I have to do meetings or other things for other parts of my life, and then coming back to that, that he can be very volatile, and it's definitely helped a lot to just be able to take that breath and be like, okay, like, we just need to recalibrate, he's just having a hard time because he missed me or because he's just not was not comfortable and held it together for so long. And with other people, you know, with his father, he's so not that emotional, and they do work together, but there's not, it's a different type of playfulness and a different type of everything. And so, so when I come home, you know, I know too, like, be ready for that, like being grounded and trying to practice what Elizabeth was telling me about stoicism, which is just like, running that through your imagination before you get to that part, to the reality of what may happen. And so yeah, this whole experience has just given me much more patience and understanding with my son and, and he knows it. Now he's starting to notice and then act out more, you know, because he's like, “Well, maybe if I press this button, it'll still happen.” And my friend actually has a daughter, who is a big button pusher, and he says, you know, I just, I realized one day that we're like, slot machines, and if we keep, like, they just want to pull the handle to see if they're gonna get that jackpot. And I have to remember, I mean, it's so hard, like, to not be the slot machine, but I like that, that image of just trying to consistently not be the slot machines.

Jen Lumanlan: 22:05

So yeah, I love that. It helps you to create some distance, right? A little bit of sense of humor about it of imagining yourself as the slot machine and your child sitting in front of it, pulling the handle creates some separation because you can see, it's not just about me, there's another way I can picture this. And also, it's kind of a little bit funny. And so if I can bring a sense of lightness and a sense of humor, to what otherwise can be a stressful situation. And you talked about preparing yourself before you go into these interactions. I mean, that's really, really important, because pretty often these kinds of situations don't, they don’t come out of anywhere. We can No, we've made some of them do, but the vast majority of them are coming up on a regular basis in response to regular things. And if we can go into those thinking, oh, yeah, this might be difficult, how am I going to show up in this interaction, then that can entirely shift the tone of the whole thing so thanks for sharing that example. And so I want to get to the reason why you're both here with us today, which is that in the taming your triggers workshop, we're now setting up a mechanism which we're calling accounta buddies, because it's easier to say than accountability buddies. And I imagine a lot of people who are maybe thinking about signing up for the timing your triggers, or who have already signed up or thinking, “Yeah, I don't need an accounta buddy, I don't need to talk to somebody else that I don't know who may be on the other side of the country or the other side of the world, I don't really see how this is going to add to my experience, I just need to read the material. And when I read the material, I will be able to understand what to do and I will do it differently.” I wonder if maybe each of you wouldn't mind sharing whether that was a perspective you went into it with or were you all like I need all the help I can get. And how did you come together, and what was that process like to work together?

Marci: 23:51

Okay, I'll go first. So when I read that we needed to have a accounta buddy, I got really shy and I'm very outgoing but um, I think that the responsibility of the head sounded really daunting to me. So I was like, “Well, we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll just slide by and no one will notice,” and I’ll just do the work, you know, but then I got this really, like brief but like lovely email from Elizabeth saying, “Oh, I saw your profile and I feel like we have a lot in common or things that you said resonate with me. And if you don't have an accounta buddy, I'd be happy to be your counter buddy,” and I was like, “Yeah, okay,” that was so much easier than me like searching and I don't know, putting myself out there I was very like, self-conscious or what it was, but yeah, so it was a really great thing that she found me and then I saw like the work that she did and then just we just started getting to know each other on Marco Polo. And it was it's been like a really like lovely friendship, actually, I mean, we had all these very serendipitous commonalities, I guess. She's very, I mean, obviously, she's very articulate and it's really lovely to process things with another person because you get their point of view, and you also can reciprocate the amount of vulnerability and trust and humor that each of you are there to offer. So I think we got paired up really well, by the grace of the universe, to like, just be there to share and be vulnerable together, and be really honest and not have any form or expectations that we needed to, you know, that we have around us, like, with the people that we see every day.

Jen Lumanlan: 25:55

Yeah, that seems really important that you don't have to maintain any kind of facade, right? That your lives are far enough apart, that if you decided you'd never needed to be in touch with each other again, that could potentially happen and that you wouldn't have to show up thinking, “Oh, yeah, I know this person, and they know all this stuff about me and is it ever going to come out?” Elizabeth, what was it like for you to reach out to somebody on the other side of the world?

Elizabeth: 26:19

So I know myself. And so, I knew that if I tell myself the line, the challenges, just read the content and the videos, and I'll be fine. I knew that within work. So I really was hoping to find an accountability buddy, but then it was one of the things that attracted me, that was one of the features that really attracted me to this, because I've read Gretchen Rubens work and she talks about like personality, she talks about types that include obliger—people who are able to meet outside expectations pretty much most of the time, and I have big tendencies of that nature, so I really, rely on others, anybody knows someone else is relying on me, I'll show up for them, and so, I knew I needed this. And then the thing is that the time difference was so much with most of the other like many of the other participants, I'd found there was someone I had reached out to who seemed to be close enough to my time difference, but then they were very, very busy. And it was clear that they will only touch him like maybe once in two weeks, and I knew that within work, so we agreed to try, you know, find someone you know, more suitable. And so when I saw Marcy's profile and I saw yoga, and I thought, you know, and just, I don't know, your smile, Marci on that photo that you have, like, “Oh, let me see if she'll, you know, agree to be my accounta buddy, despite many hours of difference,” and when you said yes, and then we shared our first polo's. It just clicked, you know, and it was really amazing in many ways because it felt at once like I'm talking to someone I've known for a very long time, and yet, you know, it's obviously it's someone new, and, and there was so many like references to books, or like, I'd mention, I like poetry. And there she is sending me a link that now remains consistently open on my browser, to this point three podcasts thing. So it went into parenting, but it went beyond parenting, so we ended up talking about, like, things that we care about, like how women are in the world of work, or, you know, poetry's, toys, books that we've both loved, podcasts that we both loved, just we, you know, have this investment in personal growth and curiosity about the world. And I really have cherished the supportive relationship that has developed between us, it's been very meaningful.

Jen Lumanlan: 29:20

Wow, that's amazing. And you did all of this using an app called Marco Polo, which I am not at all familiar with. How do you navigate that, given your huge time differences?

Marci: 29:29

So actually, Elizabeth, maybe you should talk about it because it was your idea. Now, I've become quite the user, I mean, mostly just scribbling. But it's such a great tool, in that you basically just when you're ready to record, you just record, you know, you're part of the conversation so I would, you know, talk about my accounta buddy questions, or just check in, she would check in with me or whatever, and then you just send it, and then they just get to look at that and respond at their own pace and on time, and then those videos actually stay in your account too, so you can go back and reference things or, you know, review something part of the conversation, but it is kind of like a nice, continuous conversation that just flows, but, you know, with a really good time difference, because it's like 14 hours, I think between us.

Elizabeth: 30:24

Yeah, it really works well because you can do a Polo as you drive and get lost along the way. And I do it sometimes hiding from my children like Marci, now I'm hiding from the little ones like for these three minutes, and this is like a quick catch up, it's really, really cool. It doesn't have sometimes the seriousness of email where you feel like, okay, and at the same time, it doesn't have the pressure of a phone call, where you both have to be on it at the same time, or like a zoom call, so it adopts to the busy pace, or sometimes the more relaxed pace that we have in our lives, so sometimes we catch up a lot, and sometimes it's a couple of days before we do. And so I find that flexibility very, very appealing.

Jen Lumanlan: 31:17

Yeah, wow, that sounds really cool. It's almost like video texting, right? Where you can respond when you want to, but you get to see each other as well. And so you obviously followed the prompts in the course and used it to help you with that, but it seems as though this is a friendship that's going to extend far beyond taming your triggers is that right?

Elizabeth: 31:34

Yes.

Marci: 31:37

I think so. Yes. I was just writing and reading actually, this book called unbound by Kasha Urbaniak. And she's, you know, one of the first exercises is like, write all the things down that you want and keep a running list. And I was just reading about visiting Kenya with my family, ao you know, there are lots of things but so..

Jen Lumanlan: 32:00

Wow. That would be amazing. I would love to do that. We can go together. Well, thank you. And so I love how you've sort of taken this and expanded it and really made it fit what you needed to get out of this. I mean, it started out with sort of accountability, it seems like I know, I need someone to keep me on track. And it's blossomed into so much more than this. And it seems as though it has really supported you in getting through the material in taming your triggers, which a lot of parents, I don't think a lot of parents struggle with the volume of taming your triggers, but it's more sort of mental blocks, like, this is hard. This is kind of hard and hard things kind of suck. And if I'm by myself, then maybe I'm just gonna be like, “Oh, I'll do it tomorrow, and then I'll do it tomorrow. And then I get behind as it were, and oh, well, I guess I'm behind now. And I'm never going to catch up. And I'm just not going to finish it.” Was there any kind of element of the accountability that helps you to say, “You know what, this is important to me and I've made this a priority, and I'm going to take this time to focus on me, and I need this,” did that come up for either of you?

Marci: 33:09

Absolutely. And just like Elizabeth said, I am much more of a person that will do things because of an external deadline, and because of my walk, because of my own self-will, which is I need to work on that one. So it was really great to have this program to like, you know, give us a structure of working through all of these issues, but having an accounta buddy was for me, just like the I don't want to say the nail in the coffin, but you know..

Jen Lumanlan: 33:39

Dancing on the cake.

Marci: 33:42

Yes. So it was like icing on the cake to have someone where we were basically each other's cheerleaders and I think that the hard stuff going through it together was so much more. It just made it so much more easy, because you know, it's hard, but it's really, it's nice when we are both supporting each other, and we're both doing this journey together, and try and we're striving so hard for these things in our own personal growth for our children, that it's hard sometimes to relate even to like my spouse, you know, it's very different. So having her having Elizabeth there really did underscore the importance and the possibility of getting these things done. And then just also like, knowing that we each were like, I'd look at my phone and say, “Oh, there's a video from Elizabeth, okay,” you know, and we I think that even was just like a motivator to get them to so knowing that she had done it or that it was my turn or that you know, that it we were trying to get through it and we definitely weren't like spot on with the timing of the actual course, but we had each other to like, you know, say we can do this despite like all the crazy stuff that's happening in these two very separate lives, you know? So it was, yeah, it gave me the comfort to like make the space.

Elizabeth: 35:11

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And on my part as well, Marci, you were, like, so compassionate with the like, more difficult stuff, and you listen like with such an open heart, and it's be something there to being really seen by another person. And Jen, you've set it up so well as people progress through the material. And then increasing levels of vulnerability that come with it that catches someone's unawares, and like, you know. So that recently, I had a difficult time with my younger child, and she'd stayed up, crying and crying for ages. And that morning, I just needed to talk to someone and I just grabbed my phone, and it was this long, rambling call to Marci that had nothing to do with the contents of the workshop, but just like about, you know, what it's like when a young child cries and cries. And I think part of it was that my response was less than ideal than I would have wished, but to be able to say that to someone and know that they’ll hold that space for you, and will hold you and will reflect back to you a vision of yourself, that is so kind and so yeah, so it's meant a lot really.

Jen Lumanlan: 36:41

It's almost like you're teaching each other how to do self-compassion, right? Because we find that so hard, we beat ourselves up. And we would never speak to a friend in the way that we speak to ourselves most of the time. And so you're almost sort of training each other, and it's like, okay, if this other person sees me in this way, could I perhaps see myself in that way, too?

Marci: 37:04

Yeah, that is right. And Elizabeth has been like, the same, like just so observant in ways and noticing the winds within the losses or just having that mind to be able to say, you know, give yourself credit or give yourself compassion because these things are hard, and we're all doing it together. And I don't know, yeah, your reflections for me were really beautiful. And there was just one time where I just dropped off the face of the earth early in the program and she just like, sent a Marco Polo thing, just asking me if I was okay. And I think what had happened was I taken a deep dive into a very long novel, and I was like, oh, and I came back up, but it was such a good book and I thought that it was one of her favorite books also, so it was like good understanding. But it was also just really sweet to like, see that my accounta buddy, who was this brand new person in my life, just wanted to make sure I was okay. And I think that that set a really nice tone for us to just being like, oh, yeah, we're here to care about each other and support each other.

Jen Lumanlan: 38:17

But what was the book?

Marci: 38:19

The signature of all things by Gilbert.

Jen Lumanlan: 38:24

All right, adding that to the reading list.

Marci: 38:27

Good. Audio Book is great, too.

Jen Lumanlan: 38:31

Okay. So it seems as though this really supported you in making progress in taming your triggers and I'm wondering if we can just talk a little bit as we wrap up about what are some of the major shifts that you have seen in your interactions with your children. And maybe more broadly than that, Elizabeth already hinted at that. And I'm very curious about that. So what are some of the I don't know or maybe there are stories about things that you used to react to in a certain way, and now you react to it differently? Elizabeth, do you want to go first on that?

Elizabeth: 39:02

Yeah, absolutely. So I keep my like journal, which I began earlier on in the workshop close at hand. And so even when I have like difficult moments, I try to scribble things when like, I notice a difference. And I'd say that a couple of months ago, before the workshop, if my child would have expressed anger, say there was a recent moment where we were doing puzzles together and I think someone interrupted, and so got my full attention, and my child took my older one and took all the puzzles, and just threw them. Like, a couple of months ago, I'd have been really like, impatient and like, I'd have been like, okay, so you don't want to play that's fine, and then walked off in a half or something. But now I really, increasingly do think, “Oh, there is an unmet need, what could it be?” You know, and in obviously, some days, you know, I lose it and I shout or yell or whatever. But many, many more times, I try to figure I approach it like a scientist, like what could it be? I wonder, is it attention? I wonder, what is it and so, on that day, for example, I was able to ignore that throwing and just come back and ask, do you still want to play and she did, you know, and we went ahead to have a really lovely evening with a puzzle, it went really well from that moment of just like, ignoring that, not feeling like every behavior from a child that is misbehavior needs to be addressed in like a specific pickup those puzzles, sort of way. I think I am also much more the problem-solving conversation is something I try to do with varying degrees of success, very often, I do know that I introduced my ideas quite strongly in the eye, and I sort of need to be holding myself back a lot. But I find that even when I've suggested a couple of ideas, then we pick one of them, it's still a better outcome in terms of how I feel about the solution, about how we dealt with it, and most importantly, how my child takes how we've dealt with things. I think that even just looking back to my six days away trip, before that, I really tried to prepare her, I really thought about what is it gonna be like for her to be left at home when I go away with the baby for six days for work. And so for two weeks before that, nearly every day, as I drove her to school, I mentioned it, you know, I'm going to be going away for work, I'll go with the baby because she's still not seeing and you'll stay behind, and I'll call you and I tried to prepare her as much as I could for what it was going to be like so that on the day that I was actually leaving, there wasn't like a meltdown or like big feelings, it was more like, “Oh, the day has come for you to go to Mombasa. Okay, my mama,” and she gave me a hug, and off I went, I mean, obviously, it's been difficult now coming back, but it would have been difficult much, much more difficult living with her hanging onto my leg yelling or whatever. I find that I try to translate some of those things in my relationships as well, so we've had a caregiver, I'll try and also think, along the same lines if things are going to be different, a lot have beforehand, much more than I would have before I started doing this work or when there's a time we had different grid difficulty in the course of the workshop, and Jen, you said, approach with vulnerability and I wouldn't have thought to do it like that in like employee-employee relationship. But I did. And it, it's worked out. And I've learned to do that again and again, in various relationships, obviously. And I was telling Marci that sometimes the difficulty is when the relationship doesn't, you know, maybe isn't very supportive and maybe requires perhaps a calmer or a different response. And I'm still working through that. But for the most part, I am finding that approaching with vulnerability works much, much better all around, not just with my children.

Jen Lumanlan: 43:53

Yeah, for sure. And just want to expand a little bit on what you're saying there when we come into a difficult situation, our typical way of doing that is to be like, you know, wall up and, and pokey tool out ready. And that when we come into what we know is going to be a difficult conversation like that, then it turns out to be difficult. Whereas if we come into it from a place of vulnerability, like you're saying of this is what I'm seeing in this situation, and this is why I'm worried about it, then it kind of invites the other person to participate in a problem-solving process, whether that's a child and you're worried about their safety, and you need to do something to keep them safe, and you're asking for their input on how can we do that or whether it's an adult and you're having a disagreement with them, and invites them to share what's really going on for them, not the anger that's on top, otherwise it could be very difficult, but actually what's underneath that anger, and how can we help you to address that and also helped me to address the things that I hold to be true as well. So yeah, it cuts across all relationships. For sure. Marci, I'm wondering about some of the things that you've seen in your relationship with your child and maybe with other people as well.

Marci: 45:02

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, as I was saying, just remembering the pause has been a nice game changer, because I'm so in a hurry, I guess, to either address something or before I forget it like, this is the thing that one of the things that we're learning is, you know, to circle back when everything's calm so that we can talk about tell the story of what happened, and how that was going, what was going on within me, and asking what was going on within my child, which I love. But then sometimes I forget, but it's but I get that it has been, because I guess just reading something and seeing it out in examples has really helped me to like, practice it in real life, and that's been, I think, a really big shift just with the key and I so that, because I recognize that I've had so many traumas from my childhood that are really, probably more traumatic, just because I never, we never talked about it afterwards with my like, my parents and those are some of the biggest, the biggest ones. In my lives would be constantly like giving him little micro-aggressions that turned into the big T, you know.

Jen Lumanlan: 46:20

And what you're doing here is you're interrupting that cycle of intergenerational trauma, you're seeing the ways that these things hurt you, when you were a child, and what you have been talking about, about creating space here now, some of the time a lot more of a time able to choose a response, some of the time, we're still going to explode, we're human, it's still going to happen. And that just because that happens, doesn't mean it's the end of the world, we can go back and repair and it's so so easy to just think, “Oh, my goodness, this awful thing happened and I never want to think about it again. If I just don't say anything, then they'll probably forget, and it won't be a thing. And I won't have to deal with the shame of you know, I know better. Why can I not just do better?” But you're consciously interrupting that cycle by saying, “You know what, I did something that I regret. And let's talk about that. What was going on for you what was going on for me? Okay, maybe we can even make a plan to do something differently next time,” and you're helping him to integrate that into his brain so it's not this scary, huge thing, like, why am I so scared of this weird random thing? Or why do I freak out when somebody says a certain thing to me in a certain way? Well, because somebody said that to me when I was a kid, and I never got to be able to process that. And it seems like such a simple thing, right? Like just coming back and readdressing it afterward, but what you're doing is incredibly, incredibly profound.

Marci: 47:41

Yeah, thank you, Jen. Because I feel like you're parenting us to parent our children. And really, it's really amazing the work that you're doing. And I also just feel like, with, like, kind of what Elizabeth said, like just figuring out each other's unmet needs and starting that collaborative problem-solving process, and trying to habituate, it has been really, I mean, it's an ongoing work in progress, but it's something that I really want to be able to do, and I want to like, eventually not have to regret that I forgot to do that, you know. And I wrote a note because I wanted to say that I really loved your podcast with, I forget her name, but it was just about self-compassion and parenting-Susan Pollock. Yeah. And how, I mean, just the thing that she was saying about just remembering that everyone's going through this, it was hugely helpful. It was hugely helpful because, I mean, in the moment, it feels like, I don't know, I feel like I blank out on every other child's, you know, flaws or potential to be as challenging as mine is, sometimes. But it's not true. And it was just really good to hear that and I loved the meditation that she had about going down and under the water and finding like, the true calm essence of our own selves there and not like, up in the storm. So, I think I kind of reflect on that one.

Jen Lumanlan: 49:16

Yeah, that's lovely. It's so easy to feel like we're alone. And the podcast episode sort of gives you an example, at a conceptual level. I'm telling you, we're not alone. And now there's this person 14 hours away from you, whenever you need, is going to tell you, you know what, you're not alone, because look what happened to me last week. Now that we're trying to one-up each other all the time. But yes, I'm struggling too and you're struggling and it's just part of the experience of being a parent.

Jen Lumanlan: 49:44

Yeah. Well, thank you so much to both of you for being here and for sharing so much about your experience in the workshop and with each other. It's this is sort of what I had hoped would happen. When I set up the accounting Buddies program, I hope that people would form these kinds of really friendships with each other that, that both support them through the workshop and also become something that is fulfilling and rewarding beyond during the workshop, and beyond after the workshop as well. So I'm so glad that you both signed up for it and saw what was going on in your lives and that you wanted to do something differently, and that you've committed to doing that so wholeheartedly. You're really doing the work here to shift again, the cycle of intergenerational trauma for that next generation. It's such profound stuff, and I'm so grateful to both of you.

Marci: 50:30

Thank you, Jen. I'm grateful for you and your work. And your ideas on how to support each other.

Elizabeth: 50:39

Yeah, same here. Thank you, Jen. It's incredible what you're doing and what you've made possible. So yeah.

Jen Lumanlan: 50:46

Thank you. So if you'd like to tame your own triggers, so you can find yourself in a calmer, more relaxed place with parenting like Elizabeth and Marci have, you can join the taming your triggers workshop doors are open now through Wednesday, August 11th. And we'll get started together a Monday, August 16th. I'm so looking forward to helping you to tame your own triggers. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Your Parenting Mojo. Don't forget to subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com to receive new episode notifications, and the free guide to 13 reasons your child isn't listening to you and what to do about each one. And also join the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. For more respectful research-based ideas to help kids thrive and make parenting easier for you. I'll see you next time on Your Parenting Mojo.