What to Do When Parenting Tools Don’t Work?

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Emma. Hi, I'm Emma, and I'm listening from the UK. We all want our children to lead fulfilled lives, but we're surrounded by conflicting information and clickbait headlines that leave us wondering what to do as parents. The Your Parenting Mojo podcast distills scientific research on parenting and child development into tools parents can actually use every day in their real lives with their real children. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free infographic on the 13 Reasons your child isn't listening to you (And what to do about each one), just head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/subscribe and pretty soon you're going to get tired of hearing my voice read this intro, so come and record one yourself at YourParentingMojo.com/RecordThe Intro.

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Before we get started, I just want to give a quick shout out to Steven H. in Oak Park, Illinois, who sent a generous donation to support the podcast recently. Thanks so much, Steven. Really appreciate your support in this episode. I want to celebrate just a little bit. It's the first birthday of my book Parenting Beyond Power, and I'd like to share some thoughts from parents who have read the book and used the ideas in it and have seen shifts in the ways that they've been able to interact with their children that are better aligned with their values, as well as help them to address some struggles that they're still having, most of which actually comes up, not in challenges with their children, but with their partners. So if you're having a hard time breaking old communication patterns with your partner, even though you really want to, and especially when this comes up, when you're discussing topics like child discipline, and if you're having challenges with sugar and screen time, then this episode will have ideas to help.

Some people who have read the book have also begun celebrating the book's birthday using an idea from it, which is the feelings and needs cupcakes, where either baking or buying cupcakes doesn't matter in the slightest if you bake them or buy them, or if your child hates cake, like mine does, you can substitute any other food that you like. And we're using cupcakes because of the feelings and needs cupcakes in the book, which readers have really latched onto as a way to understand and remember their own and their children's most important needs.

So we're putting little flags on the cupcakes to show our 3-5 most important feelings and needs. And these are what we call our cherry feelings and needs, which come up over and over and over again for us. So the 3-5 needs that come up next most often know the frosting needs and then the remaining suite of needs is the cupcake. When we know our cherry needs and our partners and our children's cherry needs, it's much faster to understand what might be happening when we see resistance from them. We can first check if it's a cherry need and then check for a frosting need, and if it isn't any of those, then we can start looking at the wider set of needs. And after you've eaten the cupcakes, you can stick the flags on the fridge as a tangible reminder of both of your child's most common feelings and needs, but also of the kind of parent that you want to be.

I hear from parents all over the world that it can feel lonely parenting in a way that's different from what everyone else around them is doing, and that having a sense of community really helps to remind us what's important to us so we can meet our needs for competence in parenting as well as for belonging. To help us feel less alone on this journey, I will host two group coaching calls on September 26 at 11am and 5pm Pacific, so people from around the world can find a time that fits their schedule, and we'll learn more about how to find and use information about our feelings and needs and do some coaching as well. It's totally free to join me on the call. Just go to the page for this episode at YourParentingMojo.com/bookbirthday to download a PDF of some flags that you can decorate, if you like, stick on your favorite cupcakes, showing your and your children's Terry feelings and needs. You can bake or buy your favorite cupcakes, just post a photo of them with the flags on on social media with the hashtag, parenting beyond power, and we'll DM you with an invitation to the call.

I also want to acknowledge the feedback that I received recently from a listener survey, which will inform how I discuss some of the ideas in the book on the podcast. In future, I've definitely been on a learning journey related to the intersection of really big social forces and parenting over the last few years, and I know that a number of you have been on this learning journey with me from the start, and are now members in my community who really value and appreciate this perspective that's difficult to find in other places. I also admit that it may have been harder for folks who are newer to my work to have found an entry point that really resonates for you in my content, and so for that reason, I'm going to shift my approach to how I examine and discuss these kinds of social issues. In the future, this kind of analysis will still be there, underpinning the episodes, but it will be a little bit more subtle than it's been in the past, which I have to say, makes this a particularly difficult episode to share, because it's hard to talk about the themes in Parenting Beyond Power, which are the ways that we've been impacted by social forces like White supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism without directly mentioning White supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism. So I am going to talk about them directly today, but it will be the last time that you hear about them for a while, at least from me. Obviously, I can't control my guests ideas that they might share on the podcast.

So let's start with parent Kathleen, who attended an event that I hosted in Seattle in October of 2023 and featured several local activists who work on social justice issues in the Seattle area.

I was lucky enough that I first heard about the book through a promotion that was sent out through my work about an upcoming talk that Jen was doing with a full panel of authors related to parenting and education. And so I went to the event. I had a chance to kind of hear more about the book and how these three big, scary things like White supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism infiltrate our parenting styles. And it just totally hit this area that I've been involved in, in my work and in education. And then it's now checking off this new box of like, well, let's think about it from a parenting lens. And so I was just so excited to learn more about that, and I found this to be probably the most impactful parenting book I've read, beyond, of course, how to keep your children alive with all the illnesses and things that you learn about. But when you think about building community and parenting practices and styles. This was the best go to book that I found.

This is especially challenging for me, because I hear from a lot of parents that they didn't always appreciate hearing the information on the social justice topics in the episodes, but once they start considering it, they realize it's really at the heart of parenting. I had an illuminating conversation recently where the parent named Kim who gave me permission to share this story with you. So Kim responded to the listener survey that I mentioned, and in her response, she said that when she started listening to the show, she kind of didn't appreciate hearing about the social justice issues at all, but she's come to learn about it and understand more. And I was curious about how that process had happened, and so I asked her, and she told me, when I first listened to your podcast, I remember thinking, this doesn't interest me. I'm here to learn how to parent. I'm laughing while I type this because social justice issues are necessary to acknowledge, understand and discuss in order to parent. But I didn't think about it like that. I almost compartmentalized it in my mind. I think I remember you had a podcast where you invited a parent who felt this way. And as a side note, this was episode 179 on Monica Guzman's book I Never Thought About It That Way. Rather than just interview Monica about her book, I thought it would be more interesting if we had a conversation based on the methods in it. So I put out a call for listeners who disagreed with one of my ideas to ask them to come on the show to discuss it respectfully. And listener Lulu was brave enough to say that she thought that I talked about White supremacy entirely too much on the podcast, and so we discussed it in the episode.

So Kim heard that episode where we discussed why Lulu thought this and why it was important for me to share these ideas, and then we had an open dialog. And it really kind of showed Kim how you can have this productive discussion with someone who thinks differently. And it was, she said it was really impactful hearing that discussion. Kim also said she did a diversity training at work that was very good, and she said she'd always consider herself colorblind, and that race just wasn't an issue to her. And then she realized that that was, in fact, racist, and to acknowledge the reality of race and the challenges people face due to the color of their skin or ethnicity is important, and learning the history is crucial. Learning how to be comfortable discussing it is vital so that she can teach her daughter about it. She said she's still learning about it. She's much more comfortable than she used to be, not 100% but much more educated. She said, both thanks to Your Parenting Mojo and also to this training that she went through. And so she actually said she wanted to commend me for pushing through, for keeping on with mentioning these topics over and over again. She said, It's uncomfortable, but it's necessary. And I responded with a huge thank you for insights on that topic.

I was also curious about whether Kim saw the connection between broader parenting issues and the social justice issues, because I think it one thing to discuss topics like racism with our children, which we have to do, right? We always have to do, especially if we're white, but if we're talking with our kids about race, and then we're using traditional parenting methods, which are power over tools and which teach children that it's okay, and in fact, desirable for bigger, stronger people to use their power over smaller, weaker people, then our children are going to take the lesson of our actions and not our words.

And so Kim wrote back to me, and it did seem as though that was a very new idea for her. She said she hadn't consciously thought about it in that way before, but it made so much sense, and she agreed that if we can remove power from the equation and teach understanding and valuing all needs, then we can get somewhere so. Yeah, and it seemed as though she was really kind of typing and processing at exactly the same time. She said, I feel like I just had a weight lifted a little bit. Because when I first read your email, I thought, Yes, I agree with that. And then I thought about the ways I use power over my daughter, telling her I'm going to do something else because she's not ready to go to bed, and walking away, for example, or saying I'm leaving when she refuses to leave a friend's house. I feel guilty when I use this power, but I'm aware that I'm doing it, and I try not to use it, but maybe I just need to be aware of it, acknowledge that I used it to her, and try to problem solve this, maybe later. And I definitely think that Kim's on the right track here, and the tools in the book can help her to understand what are her child's likely needs in this situation, as well as her own needs, and that's how you find strategies that meet both people's needs.

So parents, Selena has been doing this for a couple of years now, and she sees how it makes a difference.

Well, I can't emphasize enough. I have a really strong connection with my children, and sometimes it almost feels like, you know, we're riding a magic carpet together when we're around each other. And, you know, obviously it's not all fun and games. Sometimes there are really, really difficult moments. But I think that's the thing about this book, is that it shares why this behavior is happening. You know, they're not being difficult. They're having a difficult time, and it really helps one navigate these situations so that you can have these magic carpet moments and foster a great relationship. And you know that it's just wonderful to have that now, and knowing that you know this is also building a strong relationship and connection for the future as well, and that's just wonderful.

So one of my central challenges in the podcast and my work more broadly is that even the best intentioned parents who share my values and goals tell me they set aside the episodes that are specifically on social justice issues to listen to when they have time, and then they prioritize the parenting challenge focused episodes. And then there's a second set of listeners who find hearing the social justice ideas to be very uncomfortable and even resist hearing them, but eventually come to realize that they do share values with me, and they ultimately appreciate knowing how these values show up in their parenting, even though they'd resisted at first, and we could probably put Kim in that category. Selena says how important it is to her to truly see and hear her children for who they really are.

There's a really moving line that Jen shares about one of the best things we can do for our children, aside from, you know, the obvious, loving and caring for them is really letting them be seen and really letting them be heard. And that's just so powerful. And the book really goes into that, and it just does wonders for the connection that I have with my children.

And I guess the crux of Parenting Beyond Power is that I want all children to be really seen and heard, and the structures of White supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism make it very difficult, if not impossible, to do that. Amazingly, two of the parents who responded to my request for stories about how the book has impacted their lives were named Leila. So here's Leila B sharing why she wouldn't necessarily recommend the book to every parent:

I would say, for parents who already have some views or some ideas on the social challenges in our society, I would advise a book for this part in particular, even though I can understand it for parents that really don't have this in mind, it's maybe not the kind of information that they will be looking for in the parenting book. So that's why I think what this aspect I will maybe not recommend for the social views, even if that's one of the products I appreciate the most.

This was never intended to be a book for every parent, because half the people in the US voted for candidates who are fundamentally opposed to the ideas in the book in our last election. Perhaps not everywhere has such a divide as we have in the US at the moment, but there is a similar divide in a lot of places, and I totally get that. It's an unusual parenting book. There are a lot of books on the social issues related to parenting. There's a whole slew of books just on the topic of mom rage, which we're going to talk about in a few weeks on the show. And many of them connect mom rage, particularly to patriarchy, but also to White supremacy and capitalism. And then there's another set of books on children's development and on tools we can use to work with children that seem to exist in some sort of social vacuum. And it's up to you, the reader, to try to figure out what kind of social issues the author situates their ideas within, because they always do situate their book within a broader social context. So for example, the book 123 Magic is situated within an idea of a culture where children should be seen and not heard. Children should be obedient. They should preferably do what they're told when number one is stated, but by the time the parent counts to three, that's their last chance. And that philosophy and approach is never explained by the author. The methods in the book are just presented as this is a way to parent effectively. Books that listeners may be very familiar with, like Dr. Dan Siegel's books, the How to talk so kids will listen books, Dr. Mona Delahooke's books are grounded in a view of children, which says that children are doing the best they can with the tools they have, and that we can support them in developing those tools. But again, these authors don't really explain their philosophical groundings so you. The reader has to figure those out and understand whether those values are aligned with your values. My goal with Parenting Beyond Power was to explicitly state what I believe about these big social justice issues that kind of shape our society, and then explicitly connect those to a tool that is aligned with my view on those issues, because I think that when we don't understand the approach that's behind the tools we're using, it can lead to a lot of uncertainty as we try to implement the tools. So if I'm a parent who believes that all people have value, and a society where some people have a lot of power and others have less power, is harmful to all of us, and then I use power over tools like 123 Magic in my parenting, I'm going to know somewhere, maybe in my unconscious brain that something isn't right, even though I might not be able to put my finger on it. If I have a view of the world that sees people who have a certain skin color or who have more money, or who are men having more power over people with a different skin color and people with less money and women is a right and normal thing, then power over tools like 123 Magic and time-outs are going to feel much more natural to me than they're going to feel like if they fit with my worldview. And so in Parenting Beyond Power, I was aiming to lift some of the burden from you of having to figure out whether the book fits with your values, so you can read the preface and the introduction in chapter one and say, okay, yeah, more or less, these are my values. And so these tools are going to fit with what I believe about the world more broadly, and how I want to raise my child to fit in that world.

Another big idea that I tried to get across in the book, and I don't know if I was entirely successful at this, given the number of reviewers on Goodreads who have commented that this seems like two books mashed together, which it presumably wouldn't if I'd better made these connections, is that our children don't just learn about social justice issues from out in the world. They learn it from us. And I think that that represents an enormous opportunity, because if we see the media that our kids are consuming, the cartoons, the video games, the conversations they're having with friends at school, the music, I think it's easy to feel helpless and that these things are all happening outside of our homes or are created by people outside of our homes, and we don't have a lot of say over that happens. And my big point in the book was that, yes, our children are absorbing cultural lessons from all of these things that happen or are created outside of our homes, but the biggest cultural lesson they learn is how to interact with other people, and they primarily learn that from us. And it's been really satisfying to have readers express to me that they now see the choices that their family of origin made in a different way than they had seen it before they read the book, and I heard this from a really wide array of people, including Parent MJ, who interviewed me about the book when it was first released.

One thing that has come to me reading your book that I will forever be grateful is understanding my mother and why she did the things she did in her lifetime, how my matriarchal line, which comes from a very rural patriarchal society where where abuse was very, very present, how she was running away from that, and in her running away from it, she had to embrace capitalism and and I'm very, very grateful for her to get us out right of that abuse and stopping stopping that generational trauma for us. But in doing that, she took on capitalism in such like a happy go lucky way, you know, with perfectionism, with a lot of image issues, with all, really, all the baggage that capitalism can have for women and and your book really put it in front of my eyes and in a way that has been incredibly beneficial for me to go a little step further in forgiving her, in giving me the opportunity to create that pause to be the parent that I want to be.

Leila B also made that connection as she was reading.

So I would say that I was quite aware of the system of patriarchy, White supremacy and capitalism in our society, but I absolutely never made a link with the systems and the way we parent our children every day, which was, I think, the big aha moment for me. And I think it kind of bring hopes, at least for me, that we can hopefully have some social impact. Also, by the way, we just interact with our children every day, which is, I think, what is so important and taking so much of our energy every day. So if it's not only good for us our family, but for the society in general, I think it's a very, very big plus.

Layla R also saw the ways that individual needs are not considered in families as well as in our broader culture, and that we tend to try to deal with problems using the fastest, easiest approach possible.

It really helped me see kind of the patterns that are not just in my family or in families that I know, but also like in the broader world, that individual needs aren't really considered in a lot of situations. It's more about what's convenient and what makes the challenging moment go away faster, or what makes the stress feel less stressful more quickly? I can see the pattern in so much of the structure of our society where the needs just aren't looked at, and a lot of what Jen talks about in childhood traumas really resonates too, that like we grow up with, you know, our own experiences, and everybody else does too, and then we don't have that formal recognition necessarily, of why we don't think about our needs, and why we don't think about other people's needs, why we just try to cope and move on.

And I totally get why we use the fastest, easiest approach possible, because we're all stretched so thin because capitalism values paid work above caregiving work, and we're often trying to do those at the same time, and even if we're only parenting, we're probably doing it without enough support. It can seem like everything is a struggle, which creates so much exhaustion. And if we're all feeling that exhausted, then of course, we want to take the easy way out with something. We want to just not have to fight somewhere in our lives, and our children are small than we are, and they don't know as much as we do, and so could they just do what we ask them to do? So we don't have to fight this battle as well. Kathleen has used the ideas in the book to release herself from the pressure that comes with following systems of power, and instead moving toward mutual understanding and trust.

The big thing that I see is we set ourselves up with these big expectations for parenting, for certain experiences, for, you know, making childhood the most magical thing every day, and it's it puts so much pressure on ourselves. I've also noticed that we we build a lot of parenting models based on power and obedience and following the rules, because they're the rules, and that now I can see, overshadows just mutual understanding and learning and building trust and a loving relationship with your children. And so seeing the way parents or grandparents talk to children, seeing the way we we try to get from one activity to the next, it's really easy to use power struggles and and time-outs and countdowns and through this book, just kind of being able to take a pause and a step back and recognize, you know, why am I saying what I'm saying? What is it I really want my child to to accomplish, and what do I want them to understand? And when you take the time to kind of reflect on what the purpose is, and then really think about your values and the response that you want to have. I've been able to slow down in those moments and really think about those things, and that's been a really awesome kind of learning outcome from this book.

Parent CG wanted to participate in this episode, but didn't feel comfortable being recorded, either with or without video, so she was kind enough to submit some responses to my questions for me to read aloud. We found a way that meets both of our needs. When I asked her what she sees now that she didn't see before, either in her family, in her social systems, or perhaps both, she responded:

The book is rich with golden nuggets, but if I were forced to pick one, it would be the awareness of "power over versus power with" my child and that making the choice to practice "powering with" may be instrumental in how my child shows up in the world and becomes part of humanity. The other golden nugget worth mentioning includes learning a communication style with others that promotes connection and authenticity, both with self and with others. This book moved me to my core!

I was really moved by seeing CG connect the idea of sharing power with her son, with the idea of how her son will show up in the wider world outside her home. When I asked her what success she had had as a result of using the tools in the book, she was unfailingly honest. She said:

Well, the perfectionist in me would say I have not been able to successfully use the tools in the book to report that I have success in my parenting I can share with joy, pride, confidence and hope that there have been many, many celebrations on my parenting journey since reading the book. Foremost is the clarity gained from discovering a path toward connection within my family that is authentic towards an intentional and conscious practice of compassion and understanding for each other. No longer did it feel like an empty wish for world peace. In turn, this state of clarity has given me a peace of mind and an acceptance that wherever my family is now is the right place to be, as long as we remain willing to keep practicing together the tools in the book. Another success, I would point out, is my newfound awareness of practicing self-compassion in times when I would habitually chide myself as a failure, and in doing so, find myself having more compassion for my family and others.

That authentic connection with compassion and understanding fills me with so much joy, and I see that from a macro level of perspective in CG's words, and then that shows up in a micro level perspective from the Leilas as well, both of whom reported better being able to uncover their own needs and their children's needs. Here's Leila B, whose child is still very young.

So my child is a bit on the younger side, he's less than three, but I can still see some successes. First of all, in myself, for example, I can see more and more often beyond the behavior. So I'm not stopping at the bad behavior, but I can stop and see that it's probably that there are probably some unmet needs behind it. For myself, I'm also more aware of my feelings and my needs. And even though, as I said, my son is quite young, he starts to use the vocabulary of feelings, even though it stays, like, quite basic, but like happy, sad, mad, tired, but still very, very nice to witness.

And here's Layla R who uses the language of needs, not just with her child, but with her partner as well.

There have been a lot of times when my partner and I will, like, we really come back to the what is the need right now with my daughter. I've heard him many times say, Oh, it sounds like you need such and such, or I need this thing right now. How can we make sure that our needs are met? It has also opened up conversation with friends that we will talk about it in other contexts, about people in relationship having needs, and in every relationship, each person has needs. So it's it's helped us have some successful conversations about that in friendships and in our partnership, and I really appreciate having that that structure and that language to work on things with.

I also asked readers what struggles they were still having with implementing the ideas in the book. CG is a member in the Parenting Membership. We've been working together for about three years, and she has had quite a journey in being able to understand and apply the ideas that are summarized in the book. And when I asked her what she still finds difficult, her response was, everything. So many things are still very difficult. How can I so easily understand the rationale behind the problem solving conversation and yet find it quite challenging to practice this tool and integrate it into my daily consciousness?

The first challenge she's having is seeing how our habitual judgment and blaming presents what she calls huge, thick obstacles to making non judgmental observations. We saw this actually in the conversation with parent Diana in episode 207 on How to not be a permissive parent, and we were talking about Diana's dysregulated behavior.

Okay, okay, so then, if I can translate that, what I'm hearing you say is that the percentage of time when she's actually, genuinely, really dysregulated is relatively small, and that more of the time. It seems as though she is speaking to you in this way because she's making a choice.

It's been a successful strategy for her so far in life.

Okay, okay. Okay, all right, so let's, let's go into that piece, right? And so I want to play a little, a little like a game to try and illustrate some of this, right? So if I was to say to you, you know, Diana, I think you're just wrong about this, right? I do. I just think you're wrong. You're not saying this clearly. You don't know what you're talking about. And if you've, if you actually listen to the more recent episodes of the podcast, you would see that right, that there are different ways of interacting that would be more beneficial. So how would you describe the way I just spoke to you?

Dismissive.

Sure, yes, disrespectful?

Maybe, sure, yes, yeah.

Okay, sure. Okay. So what I want to do here is just sort of to illustrate the idea that the labels that we put on these things are not necessarily about the words that are spoken. Right? If I was to come to this conversation and say, well, actually, you know, my husband just learned that he got laid off this morning, and I have no idea how we're going to pay our bills next month, and I'm feeling scared and distracted and overwhelmed, right? And so if I explained that to you, what would be different about how you perceived the outburst that I just had, right?

Then it gives the context of knowing that where you are coming from was not about me and our interaction at all, really. It was about something different.

Yeah, it was about something that happened in my life, right? That there isn't really anything to do. Really anything to do with you. And so the hypothesis that I want to raise is that perhaps there's something similar going on for your daughter, and that we put this label of disrespect on it, right? You initially used the word dismissive in the way that I spoke to you, and then I said disrespect. And you agreed that, yes, it probably was disrespectful. And so you put that label on the way I spoke to you, because you perceived that a certain set of things was happening with me, and then once you knew different things were happening with me, all of a sudden it didn't seem dismissive and disrespectful, right? And so when, okay, so yeah, I can see you're having a reaction to that. Let me pause and see what that reaction is. But is.

Well, there is some sense in which the comment you specifically made still was dismissive or disrespectful. I just cannot understand why that wasn't not taken personally, right? Yeah, and so I think that that makes a lot of sense, and we should all look for those opportunities to realize, okay, this isn't actually about about this right now, this is about something else. And absolutely some of the time, that's true in all of our communication with one another. It's not always about what it seems to be about. So I think it's definitely right to look for what you know, what is really going on in my own, in my daughter's mind, in my mind, what are each of our needs? I love that framework.

Diana was judging her daughter's language and tone of voice as disrespectful and rude, when actually her daughter was probably doing the best she could at the end of a long day at school. Because our children are navigating the world with brains that aren't fully developed, I think we bear a lot of the responsibility to reframe what we hear from them instead of judging it when we're talking about our partners, it can help if we can be the ones to stop criticizing whenever possible, which then helps our partner to stay more regulated, and hopefully they can criticize us less as well. Diana actually dropped me a voicemail to let me know how things were going a week after our conversation, and she shared that seeing these judgments had resulted in a huge shift in how she perceives her child, and thus how her child could show up in the relationship since we talked. And then she also points out the importance of understanding her own needs, which is, of course, a central theme in the book, that the parents' needs are just as valid and important as children's needs. A week later, she sent me a voicemail where she first acknowledged she's going to try much harder to understand and meet her own needs, and then she mentioned the part of the conversation that we just heard.

The second part was letting go of the judgment. So of course, there's judgment that goes into identifying when you want to work on improving something, but when you really want to partner with other people, with my kids, with anybody to figure out solutions. Moving forward, you really have to get on the same team and work together on it, and bringing judgment to that space is only going to sabotage it. So I really appreciate those insights. I think being intentional about thinking about all of this has helped shift the amount of good to negative interactions in a very positive way in this last week.

When I asked readers what they were still struggling with, both Layla R and Kathleen said it seemed more difficult to change their communication patterns with their partners than with their children. Here's Leila R:

There's certainly some patterns that my partner and I are really stuck on with each other that are hard to break. We can consciously discuss needs and meeting each other's needs and meeting our child's needs and helping our child understand her needs and communicating. Am, but I think it's really hard to shake the patterns that we've built between us as grown ups. For you know, it's it's almost been two decades that we've been together, and we've built a lot of really strong patterns that, even with the structure and the language have been hard to break when we're intense moments. So if there are some ideas on how to kind of bring us back to the focus on needs, even when we're in our most strenuous, tense moments, I don't know that might be helpful.

And Kathleen had a very similar issue.

I'd say one thing I really struggle with is when my partner doesn't follow the same response that I want to. And maybe because I've read this book and I did the taming your triggers class and my partner didn't, at times, I recognized, like, oh, maybe this is a situation where we could say yes, because saying no isn't necessarily fitting my values. Saying no feels like a power struggle. Or, you know, I just have a different approach to what the situation is turning into in this moment, and it's hard to know, you know, you don't want to overshadow your partner, or you don't want to contradict your partner, and you're trying to figure out what's the best course to help your child get through the emotions they're getting through or to get ready for bed or whatever the task is. And I've just noticed at times I'm in the moment having these feelings and frustrations not knowing what to do. When I feel like my partner maybe is going down a path that is more on the power struggle path, and I want to more. So try to think about what I read in the book, and think about other ways to try to find reason and build connection with my child in order to complete whatever task it is we're talking about. And so any advice on, what do you do when you as partners are struggling and have different strategies or values in what you want to do in handling a tough situation with your child.

The place that I would start with this kind of situation is inviting your partner into a conversation about the issue when you're both regulated, so definitely not in the middle of a situation at hand. And so with Kathleen's example, that would mean just kind of letting her partner get through bedtime in whatever way they're going to, without us sticking out or in. And then after bedtimes over, we could say something like, Hey, I've noticed bedtimes have been a bit hard lately, and I'm wondering if you'd be willing to chat about that. And that would you be willing to is a really important part of the invitation, because it allows your partner to consider whether participating in this conversation meets their needs. They may decide it doesn't, and we have to accept that no is a full and complete answer to that question. And perhaps our partner will be willing to have a conversation on this topic in the future, or maybe not if they are willing to have a conversation, it's super important to start with a non judgmental observation. And so instead of saying something like, Why do you always speak to our child with that condescending tone of voice, or, Why do you always force our child to do something they aren't ready to do yet, which carries a lot of judgment, which is going to immediately get our partners back up, we can open with something like, when I hear you say, and then we're going to insert the actual words that our partner said, right? So it might be something like when I hear you say, get into bed now or I won't read bedtime story. And then we're going to use an actual feelings word, right? So, so when I hear you say x, I feel y. And if you're not sure what feelings word to put in there, take a look at the list at YourParentingMojo.com/feelings. So we might say something like, I feel sad and overwhelmed because I have a need for partnership with you, and it seems like we're taking different approaches. Would you be willing to share what's going on with me and how I can support you better at bedtimes and at other times too? And usually, if we go in with this kind of opening, our partner is going to be receptive to that, because everybody wants to get their needs met. We want to get our needs met. Our partners want to get their needs met. Our children want to get their needs met, and we can do that when we open the conversation from a perspective of non judgment.

Lauren said she is having the hardest time with some of the biggest struggles in parenting.

I still struggle with having to use power over sometimes and things like, you know, needing to go to school or stuff like that, also with things like sugar and screen time, those are still kind of hard to figure out issues.

There's a particular reason why these things are hard, right? Companies spend billions of dollars making sugary and salty foods more palatable and screen time fun to engage with, and our brains were designed to cope with sugar from fruit and entertainment in the form of games and stories around a fire. For problem solving to be effective, we have to truly be in what's called in choice on the issue. And if you've ever mindlessly shoved one candy after another or one chip after another into your mouth, or spent an hour scrolling through social media when you're exhausted and sleep would have been more helpful, or if you were overwhelmed and you could have used a chat with a friend, then you'll know it's really hard to be fully in choice on snack food and screens. My personal opinion is that as adults who do have fully developed prefrontal cortexes, it's our responsibility to set limits on screen time and snacks while our kids are young, shifting that control over to them as soon as we can. And we had lots of ideas on transitioning control of screen time to kids in episode 218 on What children learn from video games with Ash Brandin. So I definitely encourage you there to go and look there for ideas on how to make that shift really slowly and at the pace that works for your child. For sugar, a limit that we found helpful is to say our bodies need a variety of foods to be healthy, and you've already had a serving of whatever this kind of food is today, and so any other food in the house is on offer. So we say that when Carys has had a serving of chips or when she's had a serving of apples, so we aren't judging some foods as healthy and some foods as unhealthy, but that all foods are great in moderation. School can be really tricky, because there's so little autonomy for kids there, and they know it. They may have many other unmet needs in school too, particularly if they're neurodivergent. And I think two things are important here. Firstly, we can recognize that we are making a choice to send them to school. I know it might not seem like we have a choice, but unless we're a single parent with no other potential caregivers, and we work a job where we have to be somewhere else every day, then school really is a choice, and that's okay. It's okay to prioritize our desire to work and have time by ourselves, but it's a choice, and the second piece is that maybe we can find some way to meet more of the child's needs in school. So if they have a need for movement, could they stand at the back of the class or sit on a ball if they aren't disturbing anyone? If they have a need for competence and they're finding school work hard, can we find accommodations if they're looking for autonomy? That is where things get tricky, because school is not an autonomy supporting environment, but maybe we can give them more autonomy over decisions at home, which might help.

Leila B says that now she knows this language of needs. She sees them everywhere she goes.

So far I still have to find a book that presented in the way that is presented in Parenting Beyond Power, by taking both the child and the parent feelings and needs and how to solve problems together. And since I'm following my work and a membership in since, I mean the membership, and since I read the book each time I see some parenting problem or just like problem in society in general, of like interaction between people. I'm just saying, oh, there is feeling, oh, there is need, and this just makes everything so much clearer and kind of easier.

Layla R really hits the nail on the head with her assessment of what the book is about, which isn't just about parenting.

I have recommended Parenting Beyond Power to so many of my friends and even people who aren't parents, because I feel like it goes deeply into a lot of emotional intelligence, and it discusses issues that are very helpful for child rearing, but are also just really helpful for being a person in relationship with another person. And a lot of parenting books try to focus on a set of strategies to use, instead of kind of building a framework for finding your own strategies. And so I think the really big value here is helping people get to the root of why they respond to a situation the way they do, and how to respond in a way that opens up the possibilities for strategies.

I think this is so important, because most books on parenting give you a set of scripts to use where you say one thing and then your child magically goes from resisting you to complying with your request. What Parenting Beyond Power aims to do is to help you understand why your unique child is resisting your unique request in this unique situation, but also, most importantly, why you're making the request in the first place, and whether you might be able to meet your needs by asking for something different.

Here's Parent Akiko, who shared with me a while ago how she's used the idea of needs to navigate bath time resistance with her son:

My son, because of his skin condition, needs to be bathed every single day just to give him some moisture into the skin and be lotioned, you know, all over his body every night. So that was our bedtime routine. And when he was little, he already had, you know, shown some sort of discomfort with that process, you know, temperatures, you know, sensitivity. I mean, all babies have a little bit of aversion to, you know, being wet or, you know, being cold or too hot or whatnot. And you know, I think we didn't do quite as good of a job as sort of, you know, validating him in those moments. And, you know, we just wanted to get through the process. So I think he started to kind of develop a an aversion. And once he got older, you know, and was able to resist us a little bit more, he started to really express that. And, you know, we were a little bit at a loss as to what to do, you know, we try to accommodate, you know, oh, is the water too high, too cold, that kind of things. But it wasn't sort of as smooth as we would like. And, you know, especially if he was tired that day, he would just run around or, you know, keep asking us to read books instead, and just, you know, extend the whole process. And was delaying bedtime. And so, I mean, one of the things we did do was to kind of introduce a word that he could use to tell us that we needed to stop whatever we were doing that, you know, made him uncomfortable. So we used banana. And so he would say banana. And the first day, he would just say banana, like every five seconds. And then we would say potato back. And, you know, stop what we're doing and try to say, Okay, what was uncomfortable? That seemed to help a little bit. And then, but it wasn't still completely not as smooth as we would like. He would still kind of stall. And eventually it kind of we kind of realized, like, okay, it seems like his need is for a connection right before separating, because he sleeps in a separate room from us, and especially with me, because right before that time, I tend to be just washing dishes or cleaning up, and Dad is with him during that time for the most part. And so it seemed like what he needed was just like, five minutes of alone time with me and, you know, lying in the dark in his own bedroom. Like if I say to him, like, Oh, do you need to say something to me? You know, is there something you want to tell me? And he would tell me something happened at school or whatever, and, you know, just five minutes, and it just seemed to make him, you know, help him just that transition to that time. So that's something that that I wasn't really, you know, I was focused on the bath time, you know, what does he need during the bath time? But it actually was something afterwards, that separation, you know, to go to bedtime. That was what he was concerned about. So,

Yeah, and that's such an amazing example, because I think it speaks so clearly to we see that problem at bath time. We think that's the thing I need to fix. That's the problem here. And if the child would just change their behavior and they would, you know, suck it up for bath time, because we have to get them in this bath, then things will be better. And you were able, instead, to look outside that. And we had talked about, you know, autonomy and and giving him more control over that process. And so I'm so glad you instituted that safe word. And it seems as though he's playing with it, and he's, he's really appreciating using it. We didn't talk specifically about connection time with you outside of birth time, and so you were able to then identify that as a potential unmet need in the evening as a whole, not just considering bath time in isolation. And once you were able to meet that need, then bath time is okay. And how often, you know, we experience this as adults all the time, right? Something else is impacting us and and that carries over to the way we interact with a certain person, and we're not going to be able to shift how we interact over here until this other thing is resolved. And so this happens to us as adults all the time, but we expect our children is, you know, super isolated. We're just going to, it's all about the bath, and we're going to fix the bath, and then the bath's going to be good when it's not the case at all. So what's bath time been like lately?

Yeah, and so it's just much better. You know, he, he just gets a little bit of time with me right before, and then he goes off. And, you know, before he would like always ask me to take his clothes off and everything. Now he sometimes lets dad do it or does it himself. So yeah, it's just, you know, can breathe a little bit before about time, which is always good.

Kathleen said that she's used these ideas as a way to parent more consciously, rather than falling into parenting the way she was raised. And also wishes there was a way she could have learned this in a community environment when her kids were much younger.

I recommend this book because I think it's a great opportunity to reflect and think about what you value as a parent and what you value in raising your children, and to also kind of learn that moments you get triggered by and emotions you feel, and emotions your children are feeling have so much to do with the environment that we're in and the culture that we're in and the expectations that we're under. And we actually can reshape a lot of this if we if we want to. And I felt like this book gave me a lot of permission to kind of evaluate what I learned from growing up from my parents, and things the grandparents keep saying to kids, or what friends or other people say with their kids, and and really evaluate what a strong and trusting relationship could look like with children, and how do you get there? And it built in a lot of steps to get there. So I definitely recommend this book. And I think if anything looking back, I wish there was a version of this book and the parenting membership that was part of like the peps group that I did with my first child which supports kind of that first week through 16 weeks, and you meet with different parents for three months or so. And I just thought, well, if there was a new parenting group like that that you had that similar age children, and it was grounded in the exercises that we do in this book, that would have been awesome. And so if you're thinking about building anything like that, I volunteer. I think that would be really fun.

Before we go, I did want to offer a couple of ways for you to continue using the ideas in the book and from this episode, if you'd like to do that. The first is that Kathleen's wish of having support in these early days with an infant, whether or not you have an older child as well, is actually available in a course that I run with Hannah and Kelty of Upbringing called Right From The Start. We used to run it on a cohort basis, where you would sign up to go through the course with a group of people, but we realized that that was making it difficult for people to access because usually when you have an infant, you want help right now, rather than waiting for the next cohort to open. So we've recently relaunched the course to be available anytime you want to take it, you still get the benefit of monthly group coaching calls for the year after you purchase the course, and you can take the modules anytime you like, instead of waiting for a new module each week. So we hope that that gives you the best of the information that you need, as well as the guidance from Hannah and Kelty and me in a format that makes it more usable for parents who really do need help right now, and you can get more information on the right from the start course at YourParentingMojo.com/RightFromTheStart. Again, that's YourParentingMojo.com/RightFromTheStart.

Another option we have, if you're feeling particularly drawn to explore the ways the social issues show up in your family is to join me for a book club based on Parenting Beyond Power that I'm hosting with Moms Against Racism Canada, starting in September. And we're calling it a book club because we didn't know what else to call it, which coincidentally is how I ended up with the name Your Parenting Mojo, because it's only going to be a book club in that it's based on Parenting Beyond Power. What you'll actually get is a series of six 90-minute group coaching calls with me, where it we'll explicitly draw the connections between the ways that White supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism have shown up in our families of origin. I'm not going to lecture you on this. We're actually going to start by doing an exercise together where you will see how these systems showed up in your unique relationship with your parents and caregivers. You'll see a demonstration of the methods described in Parenting Beyond Power from start to finish in a typical parenting struggle like toothbrushing or getting out the door in the morning or getting bed in the evening. And then in each of the four remaining sessions, we break the problem solving conversation down into its four components, so you can see how judgments creep into communications with your child and partner as well if you have one. You'll learn to understand your feelings, your child's feelings, more effectively so you can have empathy and curiosity about the needs that are underlying their difficult behavior. We'll practice identifying those needs in a variety of situations, as well as making requests in a way that our partner and our child can receive and potentially be more willing to act on than then we are requiring them to do a certain thing. You'll definitely get the most out of the book club if you can join the coaching calls live, which is why we're hosting them at 6pm Pacific on Friday nights. So hopefully, if you have a partner, you can make it a date night, but we will have recordings available if you need to miss a session. There's something about doing this work with other people that seems to be more impactful than just learning about it by yourself.

When I asked Leila B if there was anything else she wanted to share with parents about what she's learned from the book, she said both that the tools themselves were impactful, but also she gets so much out of discovering and practicing these tools in community with me and other parents in the Parenting Membership.

So in terms of parenting, when I see my child's character, and maybe it's just the age, but I don't see any other way than the one presented in the in the book, to parent him while still keeping and fostering a deep connection with him, which I think is lacking from the traditional parenting in my view, I don't think that the connection is so deep when we use traditional parenting tools. Personally, I think paying attention to my feelings and my needs was in terms of personal growth. It was quite big. More generally, I would say that the tools are great, but they're better to practice, if possible, with the community, so maybe finding like minded parents and practicing these tools to make them walk in in their everyday life. I think that's it.

The Parenting Membership isn't open again until next May, but if you want to be in community with me and other parents who share your values before then, I would so love to see you in the book club. All the information about the book club is at YourParentingMojo.com/MARBookClub. That's M A R for Moms Against Racism. So Your Parenting Mojo.com/MARBookClub. We'll get started together with the first coaching call for the book club on Friday, September 13.

So I'll hope to see you in one or other of those places, if that would be supportive of your needs for learning and growth and community with others on this journey as well. So thank you so much to you for joining me on this episode today. Thank you for all the parents who contributed stories and ideas for the episode as well. All of the links to other podcast episodes that I've mentioned in the course of this episode, as well as the flags for the birthday cupcakes can be found at YourParentingMojo.com/bookbirthday.

We know you have a lot of choices about where you get information about parenting, and we're honored that you've chosen us as we move toward a world in which everyone's lives and contributions are valued. If you'd like to help keep the show ad free, please do consider making a donation on the episode page that Jen just mentioned. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.