It can feel really hard when your kid is unhappy or uncomfortable. It’s easy to blame yourself and feel like you should have done something differently. But your kid’s happiness isn’t your job. 

In this episode, I’ll explain what I mean by that and how you can help your child process their emotions without trying to solve all their problems for them. 

You’ll Learn:

• How much responsibility you have for your kid’s happiness
• Why making your kid’s happiness your job might actually be creating other problems
• How to support your child through negative emotion in a way that empowers them to soothe and regulate themself

We all want our kids to be happy. But what I want even more is for your child to be able to move through any emotion. I want them to be able to be flexible and to have resilience in the face of hardship. To develop those skills and traits, they need to experience discomfort.

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Motherhood is confusing. There are so many different stages and phases. Babies are so vulnerable. They rely on you for everything. But as kids get older, we have to figure out how to back away, give them more responsibility & freedom, let them grow, change & make mistakes so that they build the skills and resiliency that they need in order to launch into adulthood.

One of the biggest skills you can teach your kid is emotional literacy - understanding what they’re feeling, how to express it and what to do with their emotions. 

Your Kid’s Happiness Isn’t Your Job

We all want our kids to be happy. But what I want even more is for your child to be able to move through any emotion. I want them to be able to be flexible and to have resilience in the face of hardship. To develop those skills and traits, they need to experience discomfort.

Often, when your kid is upset or uncomfortable, you go into problem solving mode. You try to figure out how to help them feel better and how to prevent that kind of discomfort in the future. It’s normal not to want your kid to be unhappy, but there are a couple things that happen when you work so hard to prevent it. 

First, it might keep you from showing up the way you want to and being the emotional coach for your kid. When you think it’s your responsibility to make your kid happy, you might end up thinking negatively about yourself. You might think you’re not a good mom, that you should have planned/done/said something differently. You might see your child’s struggles as being your fault. Or think that you have to work harder and be better. 

This is a really hard place for you to be. And I want you to know that you don’t have to take on that guilt. 

Second, you end up paving such an easy path for your child that they don’t have the opportunity to work through problems on their own, which is how they develop resilience and emotional literacy. 

It simply isn’t possible to prevent all problems and discomfort. Even the most “perfect” parent (not a real thing anyway) cannot prevent unhappy situations from happening. None of us feels happy all the time. 

Your kid is going to have hard things happen. It’s a part of life. We don’t want them outsourcing their happiness to you or anyone else. Instead, we want them to believe that they have the power to make themself happy even when shitty stuff happens.

Your job isn’t to eliminate discomfort for your kid. It is to teach them how to handle it and move through their emotions in a healthy way. Guide them when they are unhappy. Allow them to see that they can handle their feelings, that they know how to feel unhappy and how to shift to a different emotion. 

How To Support Your Kid’s Emotions

Before you can coach your kid, you have to shift your own thoughts. If you are thinking, “It’s my fault. I have to fix this,” or other bad thoughts about yourself, you’re going to get dysregulated. You won’t be able to stay calm. 

If you are judging or blaming yourself for their feelings or you are anxious about their negative emotion, you will likely try to shut down their emotion or rush them through it. You want them to feel better quickly so that you can feel better. 

But trying to soothe your kid so that you feel better is backwards. Start by soothing yourself so that you can show up for your child as that calm, neutral, compassionate witness. 

A more helpful thought than, “It’s my job to make my kids happy,” is “It’s my job to make sure my kids can handle all their feelings.” 

When your kid is upset, sad or disappointed, give time and space for them to feel those uncomfortable feelings. Be in the Big Feeling Cycle with them. Be neutral, show compassion and trust that they will shift out of the negative emotion. 

Shifting between different pieces of the nervous system takes a little longer for kids because they don’t have the same perspective and experiences that adults have. As an adult, you’ve been through hard things. You know that you can overcome them, and you have a different perspective. 

It may take a little time and support, but kids’ nervous systems are designed to do this. Let go of the responsibility for your child’s happiness, be a calming presence for them and trust that they will be okay.

Free Resources:

Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!

In this free guide you’ll discover:

✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)

✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)

✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet here

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Book a complimentary session with Darlynn
• Learn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm

Darlyn Childress, and I'm a life and parenting coach.

And today, I'm gonna talk about this idea of

your kids' happiness and whether or not it's your job

to make your kids happy and how much responsibility you

have for that. And I'm gonna hopefully, through this

episode, help you see that it's really not your

job and actually thinking that it's your job to make your

kids happy may actually be creating some problems in your

family and in your life that you might not like.

So it's funny because I feel like it's a little bit confusing

motherhood. Motherhood is confusing. That's what I think. Because it's

there's so many different phases and stages of being a

mom. And that's because your children start out

extremely vulnerable, extremely needy, and they don't

really have a lot of skills. Right? Because they're babies. And then over the

course of time, our role, our job as

parents is to sort of back away, give them more

responsibility, more freedom, let them grow, let them change,

let them practice, let them make mistakes so that they build the resiliency

that they need in order to launch into adulthood. Right?

But how do we go about that? Like, when do we shift

gears? When do we sort of start to take off our foot

off the gas and start to hand, you know, the car over to the

child? Right? It's not always clear. So I'm

hoping to maybe clear this up a little bit for you

and talk that through. So, okay, when your

baby comes, right, and they are crying

because they have a wet diaper, they can't they can't fall asleep, they have

gas, they're uncomfortable, their body temperature is having

trouble regulating. You know, they have a lot of difficulty

regulating their physical well-being and their emotional

well-being. And so you as the parent are like shushing and

soothing and swaddling and, you know, moving them around, trying to get

them to to soothe, to calm. Right? And it can kind

of feel like your job is to make your kids happy. That your

job is to make your child be able

to feel happy so that they calm their body, right?

I wanna help you understand that soothing is

not the same as making someone happy. So, a

circumstance happens. The baby is,

you know, having to has gas. Let's just do that. Like, right, has

a tummy ache or has a gas bubble. And you're over there doing all

the things to try to deal with that. And

you're getting them comfortable and soothing them so that they

don't have gas. Right? And then your mind, your mama mind

or your parenting mind will say, okay, I need to prevent that from happening. How

can I do that? Should I burp them? Should I, you know, are these pajamas

too hot? Or, you know, whatever. You start to problem solve in order to

prevent that problem from happening. Of course. Right? Because

we don't want our children to be uncomfortable. But then that can

become a habit that we put in a lot

of work to prevent discomfort for our children. And

we can think of it like it's our responsibility to

prevent problems for our kids. We are thinking,

oh, my job is to make my kid happy, So I need to bulldoze or

clear the way in order to make sure that they experience

happiness as much as possible. And I love that. I mean, I do. I want

your children to be happy. But really, I want for your kids.

I want them to be able to move through

any emotion. I want them to be able to be flexible

and to have resilience in the face of hardship. When

you are over there trying to prevent a lot of problems

and trying to, you know, pave the way and do everything you can so that

your child is not uncomfortable, so your child is happy,

what happens is that they may not be getting the

opportunity to develop their emotional literacy.

Their well-being is dependent on whether they can roll through

any emotion. So we want them to know what they're

feeling and how to talk about it and what to do with it. That's emotional

literacy. When you are hyper parenting

or, like, hyper problem solving, you may

be preventing your children from going through these

experiences. Now, the other thing that is true is

that you you cannot prevent every problem. Like, you literally

can't. Even the most perfect parent who doesn't exist

cannot prevent unhappy situations from

happening. Your kid is going to have hard things happen. You

cannot control the universe. You cannot control the weather. You cannot control, you know,

what time stores open and close and, like, you just can't control things.

You're not God or the goddess or whatever. Right? You're not an

actual omnipotent being. So you don't know everything. A lot

of times, you're learning alongside with your kid. Right? You've

never had a kid in 1st grade. You never had a kid in middle school.

Like, you can't prevent every problem. And when you

are trying to or you think that it's your responsibility, then what happens

when you don't and, like, things happen

that are hard for your child, you might start

thinking negatively about yourself. You might start thinking,

oh my god, I'm not a good mom. If I would only

be better, then my kid wouldn't be unhappy. If I only would have

thought about this situation better, or plan better, or

organize better, or married the right person or go chosen the right

school or lived in the right neighborhood or didn't work or maybe I should

work. Like, you might start spinning and thinking, I need to work harder.

I need to be better. I need to do this better because my

child is struggling, and it's my fault. Well, that's a really

hard place for you to be. That is guilt. That isn't

yours. It is not your job

to make sure your kid is happy. It is your job

to help your children move through any emotion.

And primarily, we have trouble moving through negative

emotion through hard things. To be honest, little kids have trouble moving

through excitement too. Right? And nervousness like other

feelings. It's not always just anger and sadness. All the

feelings bring up stuff in our body. Feelings activate our

nervous system. It tends emotion. If we're thinking we've done something

wrong and we should prevent it and it's our fault, then

we're maybe not allowing our children

to experience disappointment or hurt or anger

because we don't want them to be uncomfortable. We're trying to

rush them to become happy. Let me actually break this down with

an example. I think it'll be helpful. So thinking about a birthday party.

Right? You've planned a birthday party, beautiful birthday party. It's, you know,

April and all of a sudden it's a rainy day

on your kid's birthday party and it's at the park. Okay?

And it's, like, being postponed till next week or, you know,

whenever you have to do it. You're like, okay, honey. I've had to

postpone your birthday party. They don't know what postpone means by the way. So you

say, like, we're not having your birthday party today. We're gonna have your birthday party

next week. And your kid, in an ideal

situation, your kid would feel sad,

they would feel disappointed, they might cry, and ideally

you would allow for their feelings. You would trust that

they will shift out of their negative emotion. That

you're just in the big feeling cycle with them, letting them

process that emotion and trusting that their brain

and body is going to get to the other side of

that emotion. Now, a little kid,

it might take a little while, especially if they're so accustomed to

you doing a lot of work to get them to calm down. They might be

reliant on that. But when you're neutral or just in a compassionate space

without trying to fix it, your child

will move through their activated

nervous system into a rest nervous

system. They will get back to balance.

If you force it, if you rush it, if you try to convince

them that they should be happy by saying, you know what? You don't need to

be sad because we're gonna do your birthday party tomorrow. Or you don't need to

be sad. We're gonna do it next week. Oh, you don't need to be sad

because today we're gonna get ice cream and said, oh, you don't need to be

sad. Because, you know, you if you have some anxiety around

their negative emotion, you may be rushing the process.

I want you to trust that your child

is designed their their neurobiology

is designed to get back to

homeostasis to balance to calm The

the brain, the child, they do need support. They need someone who's

not like cut it out. It's not that big of a deal, kid. We don't

want to shut down the emotion. We don't want to try to rush the emotion.

We don't want to shift the emotion too fast. We're like in an attuned

dance, just sort of guiding your child through

their feelings. But you as the parent have

to be neutral and be compassionate, which means

you're not judging yourself. You're not thinking, oh my

god, I shouldn't have done that. You know, this is my fault.

If you are in your own head, you will you may

most likely rush your child's

process. You may rush

their, their their emotional regulation.

You might try to bypass their nervous system or trick

it to get to the other side. When you're not

okay with your child's disappointment, when you're uncomfortable with

your child's discomfort, it will be harder for you

to allow your child to move through their big feelings.

You you may rush it. And because you wanted your kid to feel

better, so you can feel better. It's like you are soothing yourself

through your child's regulation and that's backwards. I

want you to soothe yourself and then show up for your

kid as that calm, neutral, compassionate

witness, trusting that they will

get to the other side.

The the the body, like I said, it it is supposed

to be able to switch between an activated nervous

system, the sympathetic nervous system, down back

to the rested nervous system, the parasympathetic.

We're supposed to be able to switch between.

And when you're little that takes a long time,

it does not long time. It takes longer than when you're adult. Because as

an adult, you can get to perspective taking sometimes

faster, not always. You know, gratitude is a great way to

shift, you know, creating a

better case scenario. Like, oh, well, my birthday party got

postponed for next week. But it's so cool because I kinda get to have 2

parties because we're gonna celebrate today and we get to celebrate next week.

That's perspective taking. And that's the beautiful thing

that we can do with our brains. Right? We can, like, kinda manage our

negative emotion through our thoughts and through our body. We

need to, like, discharge, move through all that negative emotion, of

course. And we also use our brains. And as an adult, you

have easier access to those new thoughts. You know

what the future is. You know how things aren't that big of a deal. You've

been through hard things. You know, you can overcome hard things. So

you you as an adult, your nervous system is more primed to move through

back and forth. Although, having little kids

means that your activated nervous system your nervous system is really activated.

Right? And it can be hard for you to get back to that parasympathetic.

Notice that it could be your thoughts that might be progress, like,

prolonging that switch.

So when you are thinking it's

my job to make my kids happy,

it might be that when your child is unhappy,

you are rushing through the emotional coaching

process. So that's why one of the things I want you to

take away from this podcast episode is that it is not your responsible

ability to make your children happy. It is your responsibility

to guide them when they are unhappy, to

be their compassionate witness, to be their emotional coach.

And that is, you know, it takes it's a process for sure. It's a

learning skill. It's not something that we know how to do naturally.

I mean, we do, but you need help. Okay? You need tools.

And that's what I teach in my programs and on this podcast, like, how to

do it. But what I want you to understand is that just

the thought it's my job to make my

children happy will prevent you

from or possibly can prevent you from

becoming the emotional coach you want. Becoming the calm

mama that you want to be because your thought

it's my fault to make it's it's my job to make my kids happy, and

when they are unhappy it's my fault, is going to dysregulate

you. You aren't gonna be

able to stay calm if you're thinking bad thoughts about yourself. That's just how it

works. So that's like one of the main reasons why I'd want you to move

out of this. It's like it's my job to make sure my kids can handle

all their feelings. Right? That's such a better

way to think about it. Alright. So that's the first

reason that I want you to realize that, you know,

it's thinking it's your kids. It's your job to make your kids happy.

It might prevent you from being the emotional coach that you wanna be.

K. Now, here's the kicker. Here's the second one. The

other reason that I want you to stop thinking that it's your job to make

your kid happy is this and really, really listen to

this part. When you're

thinking that and then your child isn't happy

and you hold yourself responsible,

guess who else is holding you responsible?

Your kid. Now, this is how blame

comes up. It's almost subs subconscious. It's

like your kid is

like, I this sucks. It's my mom's

fault. If my mom mom, you should have

known better. You should done it better. It's what are you well, you 2 have

told me. How come you didn't know? Like, if your child is blaming

you, that's might be because you are

holding the responsibility for their happiness. And when you're

aren't aren't happy, you're blaming yourself. And then your child

is also going to blame you. So it's like this

almost subconscious situation.

Now, not only will they blame you when they're unhappy,

but they also think you're supposed to fix the feeling.

They're like, it's your fault. I'm feeling this way because you said your job is

to make me happy. And here I am unhappy. So obviously, you didn't do something

right. And my unhappiness is also your

problem. So it's your fault and your problem. So you

better fix it. Okay. That sounds

annoying. Right? As, like, in a relationship, we don't want that. But

also, what happens if I'm a little kid,

and I'm thinking that it my parent has to fix my

circumstance or fix it or give me a prize or give me a present

or give me a sticker or do something to fix my problem, I sit

my not my problem, but fix my unhappiness,

then they don't believe that they have their power over themselves

to fix their own unhappiness.

When you fix your child's emotions and you bribe

them or you, you know, promise them

or you like, you know, whatever. Soothe them, like, overly

soothe them and and stay stuck in their

negative emotion because you're just, like, trying to, you know, fix

it. And they're, like, not it's not shifting. That's because it's not

shifting because it's not from them. They their nervous system

is, like, no. Not that. No. No. No. Yeah. Say say someone else,

mommy. You know? No. No. Like, what I want you to

understand is that your child needs to

believe that they can handle their feelings,

that they know how to feel unhappy and how

to shift to a different emotion, that they know how to

self regulate. They have to believe that they have

the power to do that. Even if they don't have the skill yet, they

need to believe they're capable of it. When

we are saying it's my job to make you happy and when you're

unhappy, it's my job to fix it. These are

subconscious thoughts. But when they are there, your

child misses the opportunity to learn to manage their

own feelings. And that's that's not what you want. Right?

Because you want them to grow up and be able to,

you know, take really good care of themselves. Now,

what happens when you have grown

up in this dynamic where you think, you know, it's

it's it's my mom's fault that I'm unhappy.

And it's my mom's job to fix my feelings. Okay. This

could be super subconscious. But then when you grow up

and you show up in your other relationships, you can it can

show up like you're looking outside yourself for someone or something

to make you happy. Because you don't really believe that you have the

power to make yourself happy, that it's somebody else's job. You've outsourced

your happiness to someone else. And that's not a great

place to live as a grown up. Maybe it's fine when you're

5. Right? Of course. Or, you know, even 15.

But it does get stick stickier and more complicated as you

get older because you look to others to make you

happy. And then those people or those things, they don't. They can't

always make you happy because life is full of hard stuff.

Right? And then you you're if you're in that cycle, you blame others.

You're like, I'm not happy because you didn't treat this way. I'm not happy because

you didn't do what I asked you to do. I'm not happy because and

you're outsourcing your happiness again to someone else. Instead of believing that you have the

power within yourself to make yourself happy even when shitty

stuff happens. That's what I want for your kids. That's what I

want for you, obviously. But I want your children

to believe in themselves that they can handle

disappointment, that they don't have to be happy all the time. That's a

wonderful thing to feel joy and delight and,

and peace and, like,

deep contentment. I've been feeling that a little bit this summer, a little bit,

like, in my belly, that contented feeling. And I keep then I also, like, move

from my belly to my chest. And I'm like, what is that? I'm like, I

think that's happiness. Like, I just kind of have been, like, feeling

this little giddy happy feeling. And I love

that. Like, that's amazing. Right? And

I also have moments, even though I experienced this

giddy happy feeling, I also have moments that I'm not happy. I

feel disappointed. I feel frustrated. I feel annoyed. I feel

angry by a circumstance or a person's behavior. I feel

scared. I have these other emotions and I'm like, okay. I know how to

deal with those. I can, you know, wait for them

to pass. I can talk about them. I can move my body. I

can distract myself. I have always so many options

of how to regulate my emotions. My kids, they're young

adults now. They're learning that too. Their job is their

happiness is their responsibility, not mine, not anybody

else's. You're having a crappy summer. Go fix it.

Shift your mindset, take on some new feelings, some acting, some new

actions, chase a new feeling, see what happens. Of

course, that's like the long term goal for all of our kids. And one

of the obstacles that comes up is when a

mom or a dad, I guess, is thinking it's my job

to make my child happy, and I need to do everything

schedules and all the snacks and all the

all

all this stuff. So that you're like, okay. Now they'll be

happy and then they're not. I'm not even talking about resentment yet.

I'm just talking about the thought that you have that, oh,

man, I messed up somehow. Might make it so that you don't let

your kids feel that unhappiness. Or

they might blame you for their unhappiness, which blame is annoying.

But also at the root of blame is I don't have power.

I don't have power over myself or my circumstances. And that

lack of agency, that disempowered place is very,

very vulnerable. It triggers right back into fight flight.

If you've got a lot of blame going on, then you might want to

take a look at whether you're thinking that it's your job to make your kids

happy. And if you have a big feeling cycle that

you're rushing and you're trying to, like, at least and hurt, you know, it's okay

because, you know, if you're trying to soothe, like, over soothe and not just be

a witness of the feelings, but you're trying to solve the feelings

might also be because you are thinking it's my job to make

my kids happy. And when they're not happy, I've done something

wrong. So that's my message for you today. I hope that

it was clear and that you kind of got the understanding.

It's clear in my mind. I just know I, you know, I always hope that

when you're listening, you're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got it. I got it. If

for some reason it's not clear, you can send an email or response

on Instagram or whatever and just, like, ask you can ask me questions. I'm happy

to answer or book a consult. We can talk about it and have

a little conversation about this. Also, these are the kinds of things that we work

on deeper and deeper in the group in the ComMama Club and in my 1

on 1 programs. So those are always available to you as well. Alright.

This episode is coming out just as the summer is ending.

You might be thinking, oh my god. My kids do not have a good good

summer. I didn't make them happy enough. I didn't do enough.

They seem so grumpy. Yeah. Check yourself. It's not your job

to make your kids happy. It's your job to make sure your kids can handle

any feeling. Alright. I hope you have, like, squeezed

the last little bits of summer. Slurp it up. I know some schools,

like crazy schools in Arizona have already started. That's absurd to me. I

know we're all kinda gearing up for back to school. So next week is an

episode on gearing up for back to school, troubleshooting back to school

stuff, and prepping and preparing. Not so

that you don't you can prevent unhappiness, but just so that your

children are prepared for their emotions. That's it. Okay, mamas.

I will talk to you next week. I hope you have a good one.