I’m often asked, “How do you handle it when your husband or your coparent isn't on board?” or, “How do you handle it when you're divorced and you don't know what's going on with the other parent?”

In this first episode of a two-part series, I’ll start answering these questions and share some essential conversations to have with your coparent.

You’ll Learn:

• Why I know your kid is going to be okay.
• How to determine if you and your coparent are on the same page (and where to start if you’re not). 
• Essential conversations for before, during and after explosive incidents - with scripts!
• Using the “hard no” with other adults.

The parenting you're doing is not in vain if your co parent isn't on board. Your child's other parent isn't unraveling all of your hard work. What you are doing is not pointless. You can give your child everything they need to grow into an emotionally healthy adult.

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The Real Question

The real question at the root of these concerns is, “Is my kid going to be okay if my coparent doesn’t practice compassionate parenting?”

There is fear of what will happen in the future if your coparent is harsh, too permissive or just on a different page when it comes to parenting your kid. 

But what does it really mean to be okay? The way I think about this in my programs is that we are setting our kids up for success by teaching emotional literacy - knowing what they’re feeling, how to talk about it and what to do with it. 

This is the key to raising kids that are confident, self-aware and love themselves. 

No matter what happens in your child's life, there's going to be pain and struggle. Things won’t always go their way. 

In the long-term, when they know how to process that pain, they can handle anything. You’re giving your kid the resilience that they need for the future. 

Being On the Same Page

For our purposes, being on the same page means two things:  

1. You and your coparent agree on the same parenting philosophy. In this case, that means agreeing that compassion and helping your child process negative emotion are important to you. 
2. You share the same approach to the philosophy. You’re using the same strategies and tools. 

For example, compassionate parenting is a philosophy. The Calm Mama Process of calm, connect, limit set, correct is the approach. 

A beautiful place to start is by asking your coparent (whether you live with them or not) what they value when it comes to parenting. 

You can start the conversation by saying something like, “I'm learning a lot, and I want to make sure that you're on the same page with me. I believe that feelings matter and that it's important for our kids to have a safe place to express those feelings and learn how to deal with them. Do agree?”

When You Aren’t On the Same Page

I know that you want to have a good relationship with your child, and you want them to have a good relationship with themselves and with the world. You get to decide how you show up. You can put in the work to make sure your relationship is connected and loving. 

Your coparent also has a relationship with your kid, and it’s their job to decide how they want that relationship to play out and take action to create the relationship they want. 

It is not your responsibility to preserve your child’s relationship with their other parent. Ultimately, your responsibility is only to the emotional health of your child. 

If you’re struggling with your coparent, look at where the disagreement is. Is it about the philosophy or the approach?

Maybe you agree on the philosophy, but your coparent struggles to manage their stress and calm themselves. Or they’re avoiding following through on consequences. When you understand where the disconnect is, it is easier to problem solve. 

Dealing With an Explosive Parent

If your coparent is dysregulated and not calm, it might look like being explosive, needlessly critical, aggressive, insulting or using shame for discipline. They might shut down or walk away in steely silence. 

This parent is probably overwhelmed and stressed. They’re in their own ego or fear. Maybe they’re scared that their kid is getting away with something or being disrespectful. 

I want you to recognize that this parent is dysregulated. It's not that they're a jerk or they don't care. And you won’t be able to support them if you’re coming from a place of judgment and criticism. Compassion for your coparent will help your whole family. 

Your responsibility is not to try to change your coparent and their behavior. It is to emotionally coach your kid and help them process what’s going on. There are a few different ways you can do this.

Preventative Conversation. This conversation happens outside of an emotional moment. You’re discussing the pattern that you’ve been seeing and telling your coparent in advance how you will intervene if you see it in the future.

You might say something like, “Hey, I want to talk about this explosive behavior that you do. I understand you get overwhelmed, you get frustrated with the kids, you get angry with them. That makes perfect sense. I do it too. But my goal for this family is that everybody stays safe, and that includes emotionally safe. Dumping your big feelings or blaming the kids or being explosive with them doesn't work. So when I see you acting this way, I'm gonna intervene and ask you to take a break.”

If you have a good relationship with your coparent, you can even come up with a plan for letting each other know when you’re overwhelmed and need to tap out for a minute.

Intervention Conversation. These conversations happen when you are in the middle of an explosive incident. The goal with these interventions is harm reduction.

Option #1: Intervene with your coparent. If they are having an explosive incident, like yelling, shaming, threatening, being physically aggressive, name calling, swearing, insulting your child, etc. I want you to confidently say, “Everyone stays safe here. Your behavior is not working. Please take a break.” 

Option #2: Intervene with the child(ren). If asking the other person to take a break will escalate the situation (or if they’re just not able to reset at that moment), you can move your child away. Say, “Daddy/Mommy/whoever is very upset right now. We're gonna let them have a break,” and move the kids into a different room. 

Resolution Conversation. Often, the reason events become traumatic is because the person experiencing it doesn’t ever process it with someone else. They personalize it and mull it over. There is no real resolution. 

In a resolution conversation, we separate the coparent’s actions from the child. We help the child understand that these behaviors that their parent did are about the parent, not the kid. 

Maybe your child acted poorly or made a mistake, but the parent’s reaction was about their feelings and not knowing how to handle them. 

Start by narrating what happened. Then, pick one emotion they might have been feeling. Say, “I wonder if you were feeling a little scared?” and give them time to respond. This gives them a place to dump some of those thoughts and feelings so that they don’t internalize it. 

If they don’t want to talk much, that’s okay. The goal is really to talk about this incident as a circumstance that they experienced and not let it get mixed up into “I’m a bad kid” type of thinking. 

Good News

Your child only needs one person in their life to help them learn emotional literacy and grow up to be emotionally healthy. 

When you’re coparenting alongside someone who is explosive, overly permissive, harsh or emotionally disconnected, it can be easy to look at how they’re acting and think, “they’re gonna mess up my kid.” 

But this thought only creates fear of the future and resentment toward your coparent. Instead, remember that they only need one person to help them understand their inner world. 

The parenting you're doing is not in vain because your co parent isn't on board. Your child's other parent isn't unraveling all of your hard work. What you are doing is not pointless. 

You are the only person that your child needs in order to become the human that they are meant to be. You are enough. What you're doing is enough. Keep at it. Your kid is going to 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

A Childress. And today is part

of a 2 part series that I'm gonna do on being on the same

page with your co parent. This is a question I get

often of, like, how do you handle it when your

husband or your partner isn't on board? Or how do you

handle it when you're divorced and you don't know what's going on with the other

parent or they're not aligned with your parenting philosophy?

And the question really, I think a all of that

is, is my kid gonna be okay if my

co parent doesn't practice compassionate parenting?

If my co parent is harsh with my kids, if

my co parent is too permissive. So the fear

under there is really about the future.

Like, is my kid gonna be okay even

if my partner isn't on the same page?

So the quick answer to this is yes.

Okay? And the reason why a to

get it right up at the beginning of this episode is

that when we think about the future and like, is

our kid a to be okay? We have to understand what is required

of being okay. Like, what does that even mean?

So, essentially, what we're looking for is what I

think of as emotional health. Right? So that's why a lot of my programs

are, like, emotionally healthy kids, emotionally healthy teens. It's

really how do we set our kids up for success

in their adult life so that they feel good.

Right? That they feel confident, that they feel,

that they love themselves, that they're they know how to be in a.

And all of that requires emotional

literacy. And what is emotional literacy? It goes to

knowing what I'm feeling, being able to go

inside of myself a know, like, if there's a difficult circumstance,

I need to have self awareness. If I'm aware of myself, myself, if I'm

aware of my feelings a I know what to do with those feelings,

then I can kind of handle anything in life. So emotional

literacy is I know what I'm feeling. I know how to talk about it, and

I know what to do with them. So if you think about

any kind of interpersonal relationship issue or

inter interpersonal, like within myself, If there's a

situation in my life that is difficult, then I'm gonna need

to process my emotion about it and talk about it and understand

how to move through that feeling and what to do about it,

either changing my circumstance or talking to a person or

changing the way I think about something. So emotional literacy

is the core value that we have

in our in this program of how do we help our kids

grow up to be okay. So the good news,

okay, the best news ever is that you only need

a person in your life to help you

learn emotional literacy. It's great

if you have 2 people, 5 people, a community, a

whole society that is literally

literate and aware and empathetic and helps people

process their negative emotion a when that's what my goal

is, is to create a society where we have a bunch of emotionally literate

humans. Right? Healing the next generation in advance is my

vision. But when you

are in your own life with you

and your family, and you might have an explosive parent

or an overly permissive parent or a harsh parent

or emotionally disconnected parent that you are co parenting

alongside. And you look at how they're acting with your kid and

you're like, wait a second. They are going to mess up my kid.

They're gonna unravel all the work I'm doing. They're messing it all

up. And that creates fear for the

future, and it creates resentment towards your co parent whether

you live with them or not. So I want you to have a fear

free and resentment free experience of raising kids.

So a the way that we overcome that fear and

that resentment is by understanding

that all my child needs this one, the one that I'm raising,

maybe you've got a few, but all that they each need

is a person who helps them understand

their inner world. One person who helps them

narrate and name what's happening for them,

one emotional coach. I

hope that just hearing that makes you go,

like a big exhale because I know what

it's like to have a parent, a co parent. My co parent is

really great. Kevin and I've been married a long time, and, you know, he's

a he's a he's on board. Right? We're on the same page, but we haven't

always been. Because I was learning all of these

philosophies and how to be compassionate and empathy and growing

my own emotional regulation, I was doing that before he was

doing it. I kind of brought it into our lives. And

so there was a lot of times early on, and even now, for

sure, we both lose our shit sometimes with our kids or with our lives.

Like, we're not perfect a. But whenever he would

act, you know, in his humanness and not be

processing his emotion and not regulated, it would

freak me out. I would, like, go in and intervene

and, you know, run interference and triangulate me and

the kids in him and kind of put him into, like, he's the bad guy

and I'm the good guy a the kids are the victim of their dad's behavior

a all of this cuckoo land stuff that

actually prevented Kevin

from understanding the impact of his

behavior on the kids. When I was always kind of,

you know, hyper a and managing everybody and, you

know, intervening all the time, a in terms of,

like, making sure everything worked well so that Kevin didn't get

mad. Okay? Like, a perfectionist

perfectionistic way of approaching my family, especially early

on. Like, a, I'm on a tangent here. I'm sorry. But

literally, like, when they were real little, I would know oh my god. It's

embarrassing to say this. But I would know he was coming home, like, at 6:45,

7:7:30, whatever. He would text me or we didn't really have text back then, to

be honest. He said he'd call me, and he'd say I'm on my way home.

And then I would, like, get the kids together. We would, like,

clean up the, you know, all the toys, and we would get ourselves settled. And

I would, like, regulate the children, make sure they got all their wiggles out, let

them know daddy was coming home. And I swear there was this part of me

that was like, should I put a ribbon in my hair a, like, a nice

dress on, like, a 19 fifties housewife and be ready for my man to come

in? Like, ew. But my reason for doing

that was fear. I didn't want Kevin

to come home and mess up

all the good work I had done with the children all day. So I didn't

trust him, and I didn't trust the process.

What I didn't understand back then that I am teaching you right now,

so you don't have to do what I did, is that

you don't need to have every moment in every

relationship with your children be perfect

or be in the model, in the calm mama model

in order for it to work. Because when

we define work it, like, does it work?

All we're talking about is the long term emotional health of our kids.

So I wanna get into some practical

strategies of how to actually handle an explosive a, how

to actually talk about it with your partner or, you know, your co

parent if you're not partnered with them a, you know,

problem solve with you. But I really want you

to understand that sort

of no matter what happens in your

child's life, there's going to be pain.

There's going to be struggle. They're not always going

to have it be go their way. They're

gonna not be invited to the birthday party. They're gonna have, you

know, problems in the class and the teacher might correct them in a way that

you don't agree with. They might not make the

team. You know, they they might they might have something tragic a in

their lives that is outside of your control.

And you'll worry, oh my God, this is a mess them up for

life. Don't put that thought in your head. Just know

every pain, every experience

is just an emotional experience. And when you

can process that pain, when you can move through it

in a way that is, I know what I'm feeling. I know how to talk

about it. I know what to do with a. And you keep reinforcing that.

Your long term child can handle anything.

The future kid that you're raising, you're giving them the

resilience that they need for the future in real

time now. It's beautiful. I'm excited about it. So

I just wanna remind you, like, your kids are gonna be okay if you keep

at the calm mama process. So let's

break that down for a second and I wanna talk about, like, what does

being on the same page even mean a where does it go

wrong? Okay? So being on the same

page a is my

partner and I or my co parent and I, we have the same,

a parenting philosophy. Like, we agree

on our parenting philosophy. So the calm process,

the parenting philosophy is feelings first, behavior second.

That's a really easy way to to break it down. So

you say, okay. Do we agree that emotional

coaching is important for our kids? That compassion or helping our

kids process negative emotion is an important thing.

So you can ask your co a,

hey, what do you think? Do you value this?

Do we agree? I think that's a really

beautiful place to start. And and asking

even if you don't live with your co parent. Right? Even if you could just

be like, hey. You know what? I'm learning a lot. This is something that is

really revealed to me, is really important to me, and I want

to, you know, make sure that you're on the same page with me. And that

is that I believe that feelings matter a that it's important for our

children to have a safe place to express those feelings and learn

how to deal with their feelings. Are you into

that? Are you, you know, do

agree that that's a piece?

My guess is that most people would say yes,

especially if you have, like, this conversation about the philosophy.

Most parents, we just blindly, like, move through our day and our life and, you

know, that kind of thing. And we don't get to, you know,

actually, like, big picture, you know, what are we

doing here? I love having big picture a are we

doing here a, particularly with my partner.

The second part of being on the same page is the approach to that philosophy,

the actual strategies and tools that we use. So

if you have a a struggle with your co parent, I would like you to

kind of figure out, is it is it that we don't agree

on the philosophy itself, or are the tactics or

approach that we're taking in conflict? So

just breaking that down is helpful. Now, how does this show up?

Okay? If both people agree,

right, that compassionate parenting is the goal or like that's

our approach, right? In the A Mama process, we have these

4 parts. We have calm, connect, limit set

correct. So a the approach to the

philosophy can break down in in these areas. So

the first is it sounds complicated. It's not. 1st, it's calm.

Right? So, essentially, we have a human, a a,

who is either self regulated or dysregulated.

So if you have a co parent who's like, I really am into this

philosophy, but I have a lot of trouble self regulating,

then that means they need to be working on calm. They need to be

working on their own stress management, their anger management, how

they process their emotions, self compassion, all of those

strategies around calm. So that is an approach issue.

Right? They're not they're not able to to

in, like, reinforce a philosophy because they don't have the

skill of self regulation. You cannot do the calm mama

process when you are dysregulated. So that's why we

always go back to the pause break. We always stop. We check-in with ourselves. We

calm our bodies. We calm our stress. We calm our minds. And

then we go to connect. So the way that

the being on the same page breaks down with connection

is a if you're in the process and you're

in the approach, you're emotionally coaching your kids using the connection

tool. Hey, honey. You know, you're screaming a lot. You're

hitting your brother. You're spitting. You're you're throwing stuff.

I wonder if you're feeling overwhelmed. Right? So when you're naming that

emotion and we're narrating the circumstance, narrating the

behavior, and we're helping our kids label what's going

on, and then we give them a strategy. And now what strategy of, like,

makes sense? You're not allowed to hit your brother, but you are allowed to be

overwhelmed. Why don't you what do you need right now? What do you wanna do

to take care of yourself? Or you can set a limit, like, you can come

back once you're calm. Now if

the parent is not emotional coaching,

right, if they believe that that's a value, but they're not actually doing

it, then what they might be doing is emotional bypassing. So they're

just like, hey. Get over it. It's not that big of a

deal. Don't worry about it. Just cut it

out. You know, be a. Good effort. Right?

If they are not allowing for the big

feelings to come out, they may say, I I believe in this.

But then when it happens, they may not have the skill of emotional coaching,

or they might be like, actually, I don't think their feelings

really do matter. You can talk about that with your co parent. You'd be like,

hey. I noticed that you're like, hey. Cut it out. Stop crying.

It's not that big of a deal. Are you trying to stuff their

emotion? Are you trying to bypass it? Are you trying to, you know,

shift them away from their feelings instead of allowing them to

express their feelings? So you can, you know,

look from a neutral place, especially if you're not afraid

of the future. You're not like, you have to be kinder. You're gonna

mess up our kids. It's like going to your partner or

your co a to be like, hey. I heard you say

this, and I'm just wondering, you know, is it

aligned with the value that you have? You know, do you need some

support of, like, how to actually let them have their feelings?

To be honest, letting someone have their feelings is just letting them have their feelings.

Just, you know, keeping people safe and making sure that,

you know, they're learning new tools and strategies to process that

emotion. Honestly okay.

So that's kind of the more traditional way of

seeing somebody who is, not approaching

connect, you know, in in the philosophy. Like, they're,

like, shoving the kids' feelings down.

But sometimes, some parents are actually

they are emotional excusers. Right? So instead of

emotional coaches, they're emotionally excusers. Like,

oh, you're sad. Okay. You can you know, I'll give you

another cookie or, oh, you're sad. And they don't they

just allow that feeling to just get stuck, and they just kinda

get in this cycle of, you know, not really coaching the child through

the feeling, giving the child strategies to cope with that feeling

a just almost like an emotional indulgence and then going, well,

they're really tired. They're really hungry.

You know, they're really sad, and that's why they're acting that way. But there's not

any follow through. So you might see that. That's kind of the

permissive parent model. So the other

areas that I'll talk about next week are, like, around limit setting. Maybe you

have in our philosophy, we're doing logical limit setting.

Right? We're setting limits that get our kids to think. But maybe your co

parent is using limits as rules, like

fear based, harsh, a lot of commands, a lot of

threats, a lot of emotional manipulation

that might feel like, you know, don't do that. Right? Or you could

have it where the person's like, who cares? No rules. Let's just let them stay

up and eat cookies, and it doesn't matter. And, like, let's just be

free. That might feel, you know, really difficult for you.

So looking at the limit setting, it's

like if you're doing the model, you're in a logical limit setting,

you know, follow through shame free, pain

free, logical, and natural consequences. Right? That's limit set

correct. Or you might have a parent who's fear based and punitive

or a parent that's no rules and permissive. So I'm

gonna like I said, I'm gonna talk about next week. I'm gonna talk about limit

setting and correction. But today, I wanna talk mostly about calm and connect and

how to handle that Become we do feelings first, behavior

second. Right? So that's you know, I wanna talk about feelings, and then

we'll talk about behavior second. Let's get into when

your co parent is dysregulated, when

they are, you know, not

calm. Okay? And this can look like an explosive parent

or needlessly critical, aggressive,

insulting, using shame for discipline, shows

up in any unhealthy way. Your

what's going on there is that you have a parent who

probably is overwhelmed or stressed. They are not calm.

When a person is acting that way, especially with their kid, they

don't wanna show up that way. Right? They're in their own overwhelm

or their their ego, like, their own fear that their

Childress, like, getting away with something or being disrespectful a that's not how I would

talk to my parent. A they're in their own head. They're in

their own a, and they're acting that out.

Now I used to be like this. Right?

I was not calm. I wasn't always able

to manage my feelings and then help my kid manage theirs. I'm

sure many of you are there in that spot where you're still learning about

yourself and your self a, and you're working hard at

it and probably doing a pretty good job. And you look at

your co a, and they're having a rough mama. And you're like, what is wrong

with them? You know, but you're still doing the same thing. That's what I notice

is that I'm very critical of my partner and not as self aware

of, like, when I am losing my my shit. I'm always like,

well, I'm working on it. You know, it's fine. And he's like, well,

I am too, but I don't have as much compassion for him.

Probably because I don't have a lot of compassion for myself. Anyway,

your co a. Okay? If they are having trouble

regulating their emotion and they're explosive a they're or they're

emotionally checked out or they shut down or they walk away with a steely silence,

whatever they're doing to cope with their big feelings, I want you to

recognize that they are dysregulated. And they're not

it's not that they're a bad a. It's not that they're a jerk. It's not

that they don't care. Because if you come from judgment and criticism,

you aren't going to be able to support that person.

Honestly, even if you don't live with them. Okay? Even if they've been a jerk

to you and you are divorced and you can't stand

them, everybody in

the world is behaving the way they are behaving because of their

feelings. Either they don't know how to

cope with those feelings, they don't know a communicate with those feelings, or

they're desperately trying to change the circumstance in order to feel better.

That it's like a control thing. Right? So

get growing in your own compassion for your co parent will help you

help your family because you won't come from fear and

criticism. Now I made

mistakes as a parent. I acted my big feeling cycles

out. I, you know, exploded on my kids. I

had parenting temper tantrums. And then I would see

their face. I would see their sadness. I would see

the boys crying. I would see them, you know, harsh turn away from

me, any of that. And that

experience broke my heart.

It softened me and made me wanna become a better

person, better mother. I didn't wanna show up like

that, but I had to fail in order to change.

So that might be you as well. Right? You might

have shown up in a way that's not calm and not not the way you

wanna be. And that's why you listen to this podcast. You're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No. That's me. I wanna get all these tools. Right? So you

are learning and growing and partly motivated

by your child and your relationship with your child.

Because you wanna have a good relationship with your child and you want them to

have a good relationship with themselves a you want them to have a good relationship

with the world. Now your co parent,

they are also in a relationship with their

child, and it's their job to decide how

they want their relationship to play out as the child gets older a

it's their job to take action to create the relationship they want.

Listen carefully. It's not your responsibility to preserve

your child's relationship with their parent. It's not

on you. Of course, there are things that you can do to

support your Childress help them understand what's happening.

You can help your co parent learn self a, or you can

give them compassion and offer them tools if they're

open. But, ultimately,

your your responsibility is only to the emotional health of your

child, and that might mean they need to process their negative emotion about

their parent, like a other parent, and you calm be

available for that. But you don't need to run interference

Become what happens is you prevent your co parent from

going through the entire process of I

lose my shit. I hurt my kid. I have to then

apologize to my kid and fix it and deal with my own feelings

of guilt. Now not every person feels guilty.

Some people feel shame like, oh my god. What's wrong with me? Something's deep a

deeply disturbed and then they can't deal with that shame so the shame turns to

blame. And they're like, it's not me. It's the kid. If the kid

would just be, you know, stop being a jerk, I would need to be a

jerk. So if that's where your parent, your co parent

is, that's where they are. There's nothing you can do about that. They have

to just go through the process. So if

your co parent is in a dysregulated

explosive way, your role

is to support your co parent if that's a,

but mostly, it's to emotionally coach your kid. So let me

break that down a I know this episode is going a little bit long, but

I'm just gonna get through it. So

if you have a explosive co parent or a co parent that

has trouble with this with with emotional regulation,

there's a few different types of interventions you can have.

So the first is a preventative conversation.

Now this is only possible really if you have a decent relationship with

that partner and they are

wanting to be on the same page as you with terms to of

parenting approach. So even if they're

not, you can do this at any time, honestly. Like, if

you have an explosive parent, then I would love for you to have what I

call a preventative conversation. So a conversation

outside of the moment. You see a pattern a

you go in and you discuss the pattern with the co parent.

So you say, you know, to them, you know,

hey. Is explosive behavior that you do? I,

like, I understand you get overwhelmed, you get frustrated with the kids, you get angry

with them. That makes perfect sense. I understand.

I do it too. But my goal for this family is that

everybody stays safe a that includes emotionally safe.

My goal for these kids is that they don't get dumped upon

by us. So dumping your

big feelings or blaming your kids or, you know, being explosive

with them, that doesn't work. So when I see you acting this

way, I'm gonna intervene. I'm gonna say, hey. Everyone

stay safe in this house. Please take a break.

So actually going and telling your parent, your co parent,

when I see this behavior, I am gonna say something.

Because my role is to help our kids be emotionally and

physically safe in this house. So I will intervene. So you're

telling them in advance. And if

you are really close, you know, you have a good relationship, you can be like,

hey. What's going on? Do you wanna show up this way with our kids? Like,

I know you don't. So what can you do instead?

And you create kind of a little a, right, where you're like, hey.

Tap out. I'm overwhelmed. This has helped

a lot in my relationship with Kevin. Like, there's been times where I'm

like, uh-uh. You need a break. Because I can see that

he's doing too a. You know, he's, like, way overwhelmed.

But like I said before, also, sometimes I let it play out

because it's on him to find his own way to regulate himself. But that took

me a long time. I used to intervene every time. I used to have

him, like, top out every time, and I would shut him down and shut his

relationship with the boys down. And I've learned over time that

it's better for him to go through the entire dysregulation process

and then resolve it with the kids. But that can

be hard and scary. A depends on the level of explosiveness. Obviously,

I'm not gonna let my husband or my copartner,

my coparent, like, swear at my kids and call

them names and stuff. Like, no. That's not gonna happen,

or hurt them. Absolutely not. So intervention

is really important if you sense that your children aren't being

safe. But a little bit of, like, what's going on with you?

Why are you acting this way? Come on, man. I've told you three times.

Like, you can let that play out a little bit and just see

if your co parent realizes, like, it's ineffective.

It doesn't feel good. It doesn't solve any problems.

Alright. So how do you intervene when you're actually intervening?

So, I when when

my co parent is in an explosive incident, you know,

especially if they're being physical, then I want you to feel

confident. Like, I feel confident. I say, listen. Everyone stay safe here.

This is not working. Take a break.

So I would turn to anybody who's doing that with my Childress. Whoever's

in the house, a grandparent, a sibling, you know, a a

babysitter. I don't know why I would have a babysitter that's that way. But anyone

who is really, you know, hurting

my child in the moment, I am going to say, your

behavior is not working. Everyone stay safe here. Please go take a break.

I want you to use that firm voice. It's a little bit like the hard

no that we do with our kids. I I want you to feel that leadership,

feel that a, and not be afraid or

resentment or bring all your negative energy just like, no.

That's enough. That's not okay. Please take a

break. Now I a

that in some relationships, some

dynamics with some people, if you were to

intervene like that, it might create a lot of

extra chaos. It might escalate that person.

So, of course, I want you to always keep your kids safe,

and I want you to intervene on their behalf, but I also want

you to be safe. So

you might have to let sometimes things run their course.

A, again, don't let your kids get hurt. Okay? Like, physically

hurt. Don't let people hurt your kids. But and if they are

hurting if your kids are getting hurt, then get help.

But for the most part, a lot of times, this is just like a lot

of words, you know, a lot of yelling and things like that. And

if you were to intervene and that would just escalate it all and it just

turns into, like, even more yelling, then you can just let it

out. And when it's a

little bit calm, you can turn to your child

or the children and say, you know, daddy is very upset right

now. So we're gonna let them have a break. You come with me. We're gonna

go into this other room, and, you know, everyone

stays safe here, so I'm gonna move you. So even if you have an older

kid, 12, 13, 14, you can intervene in the same way. Say,

listen. You know what? Your dad's a upset or your mom's real upset. They need

a minute. Come with me or go to your room for a minute.

Just get the people out of the circumstance.

So if you can't stop the aggressor,

right, the person who's really dysregulated, the co

parent, and you can't kind of stop them, they're not gonna

reset, you can move the children.

So I really want you to think about this in terms of harm reduction.

You're trying to create some distance between the child and the other adult so

that there's not so much disconnection and harm for your child.

So it's the same thing as the hard no. Right? I say if a kid

is hurting somebody, hurting another kid, like, usually a

sibling, like, everyone stay safe here. This behavior does not work. You can

be mad. You can't hit. Right? And I say if you

wanna hit, go over there or you can hang out with us once you stop

hitting. Whatever. I set a boundary. And then the child keeps

hitting or they keep screaming or they keep doing whatever they're doing. I would go,

oh, okay. This isn't safe. So you turn to the other child and you

say, you go to my room for a minute. So this is the

same concept if you have one person who's highly dysregulated and

you try to check them and they won't reset,

then you just move the other children. Yeah?

Okay. Now this part, this last part is

really important. So we have prevention, a, now

we have resolution. How do you resolve these

kinds of things? How do we get our kids to,

you know, feel, like they understand what

happened to them? When you think about

traumatic events, a lot of times, the reason why

they've become traumatic events is because the person

experiencing that bad thing personalizes it

and they mull it over a they don't ever process it with somebody. They never

get it out. So the resolution conversation, what we're

doing is we're gonna narrate what happened and we're gonna give words

to it Become the goal here is to separate the

actions of the co parent from

the child. We wanna help the child understand

that these behaviors that my my

parent did are about my parent, not

about me being a bad kid. There's not I want your kids

to go like, there's nothing wrong with me. That was a person who was a.

Like, even having the word. So what we

we don't want is for your child to internalize the messages

that they might have received from their parent. We don't want we want

them to know this has nothing to do with me. I might have acted

poorly. I might have made a mistake, but their

actions are because of their feelings.

My parent acted that way. My parent yelled at me. My parent was mean to

me. My parent did whatever they did because they had big

feelings that they didn't know how to handle.

So how do you do that? You go through and you

first create facts for your child, then you name the emotion.

So the facts are daddy said this or mommy

said this or this thing a, and then he he said this

a then he kicked this and he threw this and he said that.

Like, whatever happened, I want you to describe it Become

your child will make up a story about it, and they'll add facts

to it as if the if they don't get anybody to process it with them.

And, you know, they have a big imagination. So we wanna just kinda really

name what happened, narrate narrate what happened,

and then pick one feeling that they might have been feeling while

it was happening. I wonder if you were feeling a little

scared or I wonder if you're feeling confused. So

you pick a emotion and that your child might be

feeling a then you name that emotion and let them say

what they're gonna say. Yes. He was really mean. I don't like when daddy

does that. I don't like when mommy says that. I don't like how she talks

to a. And you give them a place to dump some of that

feeling and some of those thoughts so that they don't internalize

it. So they'll try to make sense of it in their own head.

Now not every kid is going to talk. Some

of them might feel disloyal. They don't wanna talk badly about their co their

parent. That makes sense. We don't need

them to talk a lot in order for this to be

effective. All we wanna do is

put the behavior on the outside and talk about

it as a thing, as a circumstance that the child experienced

So it doesn't get mixed up into, like, I'm a bad kid

and that's why my parent acted this way. It's

like, no. Your parent acted this way because they had big feelings.

They didn't know what to do with. Now your

co parent may may not like this. Right? And it's like, well,

this is what is true. You were dysregulated. No. I

wasn't. They shouldn't be acting like that. They need to learn. No. No. No. You

go, okay. Well, there's better ways to teach that.

The truth is the way that you handled yourself doesn't work.

You were dysregulated. So

if you don't live with your co parent and your child

goes back and forth or they spend time, you know, with their with their parent

and you don't know about what's happening, I really want you to know your job

is not to become a detective and unearth all the dirt. That's

not what we're I want you to do. Try to figure out what happened and,

like, I know you do this if you if you don't live with your,

with your co parent. And instead, I

want you just to be attuned, just paying attention, noticing your

Childress, and talking about their behavior that they're currently

doing. Like, they come home after being at their co parent at

the other parent's house a they're really grumpy with you a they're, you know, they

a about everything. And so you just wanna narrate a name and use the

connection tool. So let them process some of that emotion that might

be a. And without, you don't have ever have to really

know what happened. So they may

tell you eventually, especially if you're really neutral

and curious about their feelings, not about the experience,

just like a is it like to be you, little kid? What is it like

to go back and forth? What is it? What part is hard? What part is

confusing? You don't need to ask all these questions. You're just open

to seeing what they reveal to you.

Okay. Now the

remember, the key takeaway here is that

the parenting you're doing is not in vain

because your co parent isn't on board. Your

child's other parent isn't unraveling all of your hard work. What you are doing

is not pointless. So you your

child only needs a person to emotionally coach them in order to be

emotionally literate, in order to grow up and be emotionally healthy.

Isn't that amazing? You are the only person

that your child needs in order to become the human that they are meant

to be. Like, you are enough.

What you're doing is enough. No matter

how the other adults in your kids' life show up, you're

enough. So really let that sink

in. And next week, I'll talk about

the when your co parent isn't on the same page in terms of limits

and rules and things like that and following through.

Alright. This week, I want you to give yourself a little pat on

the back because you're doing a hard thing. You're parenting your kids in a way

that hasn't happened before, and I'm really proud of you. And I want you to

be proud of yourself and have that hard conversation with your co

parent. It's not hard. Just have that conversation. Go over and

say, hey. What's our approach here? Here's mine. Are

you aligned with this? See what they say. Be curious.

Alright, mamas. I will talk to you next week.