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Parenting The Kid In Front Of You
Episode 11611th April 2024 • Become A Calm Mama • Darlynn Childress
00:00:00 00:29:23

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I often talk about parenting the kid in front of you, not the one you wish you had or the one you’re afraid they’ll become. 

Today, I’ll explain three thoughts that you’ve probably experienced when you don’t like your kid’s behavior or parts of their personality, why judgments about your kid aren’t helpful and what to do instead.

You’ll Learn:

  • The parenting advice I give the most
  • Why behavior is really just information - and what to do with it
  • How raising a kid is like baking a special kind of cake
  • The long term benefits of unconditional acceptance.

It’s never too late to commit to shifting how you think and feel about your kid. 

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I just got home from a trip to Paris with my newly-turned-18-year-old son. I got to spend a lot of time with him, getting to see and know who he is right now. We had an amazing trip, and there were also times where I found myself feeling a little uncomfortable, sad or disappointed about his views or attitude toward certain things. 

I’m continuing to work through some of those feelings even after we’ve returned home, and I hope my experience will help you parent the kid in front of you, too.

 

Why Parenting The Kid In Front of You Is Important

When we’re in a relationship with someone and we make their behavior mean something negative, then it is going to sour the relationship and the way that we interact with them. 

When you perceive your kid in a certain way, thoughts and feelings come up, and these drive your actions. It's really important to work on how you think and feel about your kid and not put that negative attitude or judgment on their behavior.

This can be really hard because as a parent, it is your responsibility to help your kid learn how to be in relationship with themselves and others. You’re trying to teach values like politeness, generosity and kindness. 

But sometimes, you see your kid behave in ways that are opposite to those values. What often happens is that you get so caught up in the behavior and what it means that it prevents you from actually parenting and teaching them the skills they need in order to become who they’re meant to be. 

Your child is on a journey of development. In order to help them grow, you have to accept how they are right now, from a neutral place, and see it either as a part of their personality that hasn’t fully developed or a skill that they haven’t yet learned. 

 

3 Negative Mindsets to Avoid

When your kid behaves in a way you don't like, it's easy to make their behavior mean something negative - either about you as a parent, them as a person, or their future.

All of these negative stories impact how you show up as a parent; and have a negative impact on your child.

These are the three negative mindsets I see causing the most long-term harm. 

 

#1: Making your child’s behavior mean something about you. If you look at your child’s behavior and think, “I’m a bad parent,” it makes it feel really personal. It puts you into your own story and takes you out of what’s going on with your kid. 

You might find yourself overparenting, being overly strict, harsh or mean. Often, this is where I see parents skip past calm and connection and go straight to correction and consequences. 

Behavior is a coping strategy, and the behavior you’re seeing is just information, data about where your child needs support, tools and skills. 

Instead of thinking, “How does this behavior affect me? How does it reflect on me?”, try asking, “How is this behavior going to affect my child? What skill is missing here? What do they need to learn?”

When you see that they’re acting the way they are because they’ve overwhelmed and don’t know how to cope, you can show up with compassion and help them problem-solve. 

 

#2: Making their behavior mean something about the future. This is where you find yourself jumping to the worst-case scenario. You assume that this negative behavior will play out long into the future and become a part of their identity. One example is that your kid lies to you, so you think, “they are going to become a liar.” 

Instead of giving them this negative self-concept, acknowledge that this is where they are right now, and they have so much time to learn and grow. 

Think back to when you were in middle school or high school. I’m guessing there were times when you (like me) said or did “bad” or inappropriate things that you didn’t necessarily know were wrong. You needed to be taught. Think about how much you’ve changed since that time. 

We all go through different versions of ourselves, and we learn through mistakes. But our core self is true and lovable and worthy and wonderful. 

Your child’s core is unconditionally worthy of love and acceptance. And some of their behaviors might need work. Your job as a parent is to help your kid learn so that they can grow into the person they’re meant to be. 

 

#3: Making their behavior mean that something is wrong with them. You think they’re rotten to the core or disturbed somehow. That they aren’t “good”. We need to separate their actions from their core self. It’s the idea of, “I caused a problem, but I am not a problem.”

We cannot grow when we’re feeling judged, unworthy or bad. But when kids feel safe in their relationship with you, when you love who they are at their core, they can grow in the world. 

You can speak into your child's life what you want them to believe about themselves. For example, instead of saying, “You’re rude,” you can say, “You're being rude. Are you okay? What do you need right now? Do you need to take a break? Are you overwhelmed? Because I know you're not actually a rude, mean person.” 

Our kids (girls especially) need to be told that they are worthy, lovable and good exactly as they are. Even when they act badly, they are not bad.

 

If you’re reading these and realizing that you’ve done all three, I want you to know that I have, too. We all have. When your kid misbehaves, it’s normal for your first instinct to be to catastrophize the future or to make it mean something bad about you as a parent or to think, “My kid is just an asshole.” 

The challenge is to catch yourself when you slip into one of these traps. When you can become more aware of the thoughts, you can start to shift them into something more helpful. It’s never too late to commit to shifting how you think and feel about your kid. 

Recognize your child’s lovable, essential, worthy, perfect core self. Parent the behavior of the kid in front of you, and let the rest of the worry go. 

Additional Resources:

Free Resources:

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✨ 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: 

Transcripts

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

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A Childress. I am a life and parenting coach,

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and I a wanna talk about

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parenting the kid in front of you. So this is something I say often.

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It's one of my, like, favorite a, and I've talked about it a little bit

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on the podcast in an earlier episode of, like, 5 things I say the

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most. But one of the things I talk about is parenting the kid in front

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of you, not the one you wish you had or

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the one you're afraid they'll become. And I wanna

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talk today about the this idea because there are

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there are 3 things that come up when we're parenting our

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kid and they don't act the way we wish they would act

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or we don't like their behavior or we don't like parts of their personality.

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And emotion comes up from that, and we can have

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our own thoughts and feelings and then actions that come

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from the way that we are perceiving our kids. And some of the things

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that I wanna talk about today are really sort of

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the problems when we look at our

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kid and we make judgments about them, either wishing they

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were different or worried that how they are is going to

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be how they become in the in when they get bigger.

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This came up for me because I this past week, I

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was on an amazing trip with my youngest son, Sawyer,

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who just turned 18. And what we did was I took

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him on a trip just the 2 of us to Paris. I live in Los

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A. And we so we flew across the country, across the

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ocean, and we spent a week a, just the 2 of us in

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Paris. And it was absolutely amazing. Like,

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we had the best time, very little conflict between us. I

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mean, really none. We both kind of dealt with our feelings even though it was

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complicated. And, but I also got to spend

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a lot of time with him, right, and get to know him and see who

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he is right now. I got to sort of I wasn't really

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parenting him that much, but just being with the kid in front of me,

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like, getting to know my son as he is

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now as this 18 year old. Parenthetically, he turned

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18 while we were there. And for his 18th

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birthday, that was the day that we booked the Eiffel Tower. And so we went

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to the top all the way to the top. It was a beautiful

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evening. It was the only clear day that we had where there

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wasn't clouds and it wasn't raining. And we were at the top right at

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sunset, and we had a little champagne toast, and he got to celebrate

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his 18th birthday, like, on the top of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, how

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amazing is that? Right? So cool. So I feel really, really

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grateful that I had that opportunity. But like I said, I

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got to spend a lot of time with him, and there were definitely points

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of time where I'm like, oh, woah.

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This is who you are. This is how you think. You know? This is

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your young man attitude towards whatever.

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And I found myself sometimes

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feeling, like, not

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angry, but uncomfortable or sad

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or disappointed or, you know, I had some emotion about it.

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And I wanted to really explore that for myself and and talk about

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it on the podcast Become when we

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have a a person that we're in a relationship with

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and we make their behavior mean something negative,

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then that is going to sour the way that we interact with

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them. And it is going to sour our relationship with them, and it's gonna

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sour their relationship with themselves, particularly if you're

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their parent. So it's really important to work

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on how we think and feel about our kids and

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not put that negative attitude or

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negative judgment about their behavior. Now

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that's really hard, right? Because as a parent our

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responsibility is to help our kids, you know,

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learn how to be in a community, how to be in a relationship with

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themselves and with others. And that means

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there's being polite, having manners, being

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generous, being kind, all of these different

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values that we have that we want to see in our kids. And

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when they're young, we sometimes see

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sort of the opposite of that. You know, last couple weeks, I talked

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about, you know, when your kid is lying to you or when they say I

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hate you a how easy it is to look at your kid when

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there's, like, lying and be like, oh my god. They're becoming a liar. They don't

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have, you know, they don't have the the values that I

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have or they say I hate you. That's so disrespectful. I'm

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raising a disrespectful child. And what

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happens is that we get kind of caught up in our own head about

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that behavior, and it prevents us from actually parenting our children.

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It prevents us from actually teaching them

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the skills that they need in order to become who

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they're meant to be. So we have to accept how they

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are right now from a neutral place and to

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see it as a part of their either part of

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their personality that hasn't fully developed yet or part of

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their skills or values that they haven't had an opportunity to learn

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yet. Do you see I'm saying yet?

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Because this is a big part of the perspective I want you to

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take from this podcast episode is that your children are on a

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journey of development. So the 3

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problems that I see when you're parenting the

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kid in front of you and you don't like them,

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what happens is we either problem number 1

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is that we make their behavior mean something about us.

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So I'm gonna talk about that. So if we're looking at their behavior and we're

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making it about us, like, I'm a bad parent, that

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creates a problem. If we look at their our

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kid, problem number 2 is if we make it

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seem like that's who they are from now on.

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So looking at our kid and making their current behavior means

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something about the future. Like, oh, they

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are disrespectful. They're going to become disrespectful.

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Oh, they are lying. They're going to become a liar.

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Oh, they're selfish. They're going to be a selfish person.

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When you are looking at their behavior in the present and you're making

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it mean something about the future, that is a problem.

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So that's a problem number 2. And then problem number 3 is if you look

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at their behavior and you make it mean that something is wrong with them, like,

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that at their core, they are bad.

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Like, there's something wrong with their personality. They're almost sociopathic or

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something. Like, if you look at them and you're like, I do not

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like this person and that something is wrong

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with people who act like that, that is really gonna make

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it's gonna mess up your kid. Okay? So I don't mean to

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be, like, too super scary here, but those these three

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things, if you make if you look at your kid's behavior and you make it

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mean something about you, you make it something about the future or make it mean

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something that's wrong with them. Those 3 are

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parenting traps that will get you into some trouble.

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Now you're gonna listen to this and you'll be like, I've done all three of

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those things. Me too. I wanna

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offer to you that the awareness of the thoughts that

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you have is the beginning of shifting them.

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You cannot change something unless you see it.

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And you know you're not motivated to change something unless you see that

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maybe something's not working about it. And so I want you

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to not use this podcast episode as a way to judge yourself

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and and condemn yourself and be like, oh, I've already screwed a. My kid you

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know, even if your kid is, like, 20 a you have 20 years

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of, you know, this kind of baggage, it's fine. Just fix it.

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Apologize. Move forward. And make commit make a commitment to shift

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how you think and feel about them. So I'm

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gonna talk a lot about each one and then give

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you some ways to shift. So this is your invitation

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to grow yourself, and you

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cannot grow if you are judging yourself. If you don't

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like how you've been, then say thank

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you to the past because it served you for some reason,

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and then move forward into a new a new pattern.

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Okay? So let's get into if you make it mean

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something about you. So imagine that you have a

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kid and they are at a birthday

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party a, you know, it's their birthday party, say.

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And, you know, there's a kid who wants to play with their new toy.

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And you're like, oh, go ahead and play with your toys. Your friends aren't gonna

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be here that long. Let them play with your toys. And they're like, no. I

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don't want them to play with my toys. No. Everyone needs to leave my house.

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Get out of here. You've seen this. Right? Like,

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you know, kids get like, get out of my house. I don't want you here

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anymore. And you then start to

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worry how the other parents are

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judging your kids' behavior. And you look at their

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behavior, and you're like, oh my gosh. I must be a

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bad parent if my kid acts this way.

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When you are thinking, I've done something wrong, and that's why

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my kid acts this way, or I'm a bad parent, and that's why they act

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this way, You are going to get stuck in a self

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centered trap. And what happens is that

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you can end up being you I want you to be

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neutral about their behavior. But if you're personalizing

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it, then you're not in their narrative. You're in

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yours. And you might overparent, be over strict, over

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harsh, over mean, too quick. Don't

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talk like that. That's not nice. Don't let you know, we get, like, a little

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bit into correction before we go to connection. So this is

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where I am cautioning to you

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that not to make their behavior mean something about you.

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It is information. It's just data. It's just a

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like, oh, wow. This child right now in this moment is

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struggling with this thing. They need support. They need

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tools. But if you are worried that everyone is, you know, gonna judge

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you, it makes it a lot harder to be present in

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the moment and offer the child the support and the tools that they

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need. Now I get it. What I am saying

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is hard to do. So I had an interaction

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like this on our trip, just one where, you

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know, I'm I'm sure that my behavior sometimes was not great for my

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kids. It's funny Become now that I have an adult child,

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he'll see me through the lens of, like, adult to adult. Sometimes

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if I'm in, like, I'm being too sharp or mean or rude to, like, a,

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like, a health care provider or something like that, my son later will say to

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me, like, wow. You were really harsh there. Like, you know, he's aware

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of my behavior. So I am not perfect nor are your children perfect.

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Right? It's just not a really helpful thing for a person in a

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relationship to be like, oh, you're acting that way because I did something wrong.

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It takes the personal responsibility away from the other person. It takes the

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agency away from the other person. Your child needs to believe that

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they have influence and power over how they act,

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that they can change their behavior, that they can learn about themselves.

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So when you personalize it and you become the self centered person and make it

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about you, you prevent your child from learning and growing. Instead of

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saying, how does this behavior affect me? How does it reflect

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on me? What are people gonna say about me?

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I'd rather you start thinking, how is this behavior gonna

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affect my child? If they keep going in this way,

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what might happen? What skill is missing here? What do they

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need to learn here? And if you can look at behavior as

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just a strategy, right? I talk about all the time on the podcast that

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behavior is

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unkind, you know, disrespectful, unkind,

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you know, disrespectful, harsh, or

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whatever they're doing, that is because they have a feeling that they're

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overwhelmed by, that they don't know how to cope with. They they are

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lacking a skill. And when you are calm

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and you are present and you're not in your own head and making it mean

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everything about you, you can say, A do you need here? Let me

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support you. Let's problem solve. And if you give your

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kids the skills they need in real time while they're dealing with their,

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you know, emotions and while they're learning these things, then they grow up

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and actually they don't become the thing that you're worried about.

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So that takes me to number 2 is when we

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there's parts of our kid that we don't like a we make it mean

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something about the future. So we catastrophize or

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worst case scenario, their behavior a we play it out

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in a negative way and we play it out to the future,

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what that does is it prevents your child from growing

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and changing. It pigeonholes them.

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It it creates a small narrow window of a

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personality type. Oh, you are unkind. Oh,

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you're selfish. You're not a generous person. You're not

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a loving person. You're not a respectful person.

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The child be that they pull that identity in and that

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becomes part of their self-concept. And then it gets,

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like, a. How if you leave clay out,

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right, it will Become, hard.

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But if if you keep molding it and wetting it and and manipulating

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it, you can keep changing it. So we don't want to,

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you know, put that into our child and be like, this is who you are

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or this is who you're becoming. Instead, I would rather you be able to

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say, oh, you this is where you

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are right now. And you have so much time to grow and

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change and become. I want you to think

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about yourself in middle school

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or yourself in in high school.

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You it's harder for you to think about who you were when you were real

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little. But I actually remember, like, doing bad things

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when I was little or saying inappropriate things

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and not necessarily knowing that they were

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wrong, not necessarily knowing they were bad, and

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needing to be taught, oh, if I do this, this hurts someone

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else, and that's not who I wanna be. So

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learning how to, approach your child

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from, hey. Right now, you're learning and growing and struggling, and I'm gonna help

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you learn. But if we look at them

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and we say, you know, oh, this is who you are now.

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This is who you're gonna become. This is this is, like, set in stone. That

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is really difficult. So thinking about you as a little kid,

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thinking about how much you've grown and changed, how much how

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different you are. We were talking about this during the parenting teen

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support group. I have this monthly support group for parents of teens. If you're interested,

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let me know. We can get you in there. But we we

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meet once a month, and we just talk about what it's like to raise teens.

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And we talk about the struggles and challenges. And one of the things is we

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feel when you're raising teens, like, you're running out of time. You know,

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that you you don't you've got, oh, this is who they are, and you've, you

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know, you don't have any more time to teach them or that, you know, it's

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like it feels like they're done. And so this mom was talking about

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how she's like, I'm not the same person I was in high

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school. Like, I've changed a lot. And she's like, I'm like version

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2.0. And then she's like, or 3.0 or 4.0. And we

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started laughing about how probably every decade of our

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life is a new version of, like, Darlynn 2.0 was my

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twenties. Darlin 3.0 is my thirties. Darlin

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4.0 is now in my forties. And so we all

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have these versions of ourselves

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And our core self is true and

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lovable and worthy and wonderful, just like your you are,

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and your children's core self is totally unconditionally

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worthy of love and acceptance.

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And some of their behaviors need work.

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This mom said she said, you know, I learned about myself

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that, like, some of my behaviors, you know, didn't work for

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me anymore. And it's like, well, we only learn that because

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we've made mistakes. We hurt people. We cause problems. We

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lose jobs. We, you know, don't reach a goal. It's like

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through obstacles, we grow. So I want you

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to think about your kids as, like, version 1

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point o. Some of you have kids 0 to 10. They're,

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like, in, like, point 0. Like, there's 0 version. This

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is, like, version beta. There's

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not even really, like, who they're gonna be. They haven't even gone through adolescence

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yet. So don't pigeonhole your kids. I

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also sometimes talk about this when I talk about teens is

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that we want to think of them as being

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done. Like, Sawyer, he just turned 18. Okay. I'm done.

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Right? I raised an a. And so he's done.

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Like, my work is a, whatever. And it's not

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because I'm not doing anything. He's him. He's

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growing. He's changing. I'm always gonna have the ability to

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speak love into his life and to speak guidance into his life

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Become I've been doing that all along. I have

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been working really hard to not judge him and pigeonhole him and make his behavior

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mean anything about me and just allow him to be who he is

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and love and unconditionally accept that person while

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also helping guide him towards the best

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version of himself. And so he's not

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done. And I think about it like like a

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cake kind of when you're baking. There are certain things that you

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put in the oven that you aren't supposed to open the oven

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while the thing is baking. Maybe you don't know this Become

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opening that oven door changes

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what's happening inside. And so you might wanna open the

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oven to check if something is done. And when you open it, you're

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letting all the steam out or you're changing the temperature. And

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that changes the chemicals that are, like, inside of,

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like, the baking soda or baking powder or whatever that's inside the cake.

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Ironically, I looked at this up because I was like, which kinds of things are

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you not supposed to open the oven for? And one

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is a Victoria sponge calm. And it's because when you

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open the door, you are letting in the cold

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air, and you're losing some of that moist hot air. And then that

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actually makes the cake, get denser and

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even collapse. Like, that's also true if you make, like, a pop over.

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If you open the door, it will it will flatten.

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And so with your teens, not to belabor this, but with your

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teens, I don't want you to be looking at who they are at 15 or

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16 and being like, oh, you're cooked. A was like, no.

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They're still in the oven. Do not judge. Don't start poking

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around to see if they're done. They're not.

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Version 1.0 is not finished yet.

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Let the process happen. When I

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looked this up, by the way, it was like, it said, cornbread is less

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sensitive. And I was thinking to myself, some of us

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are raising kids who are, like, fragile Victoria sponge

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or, you know, popovers, and they're gonna take longer in the a, and we

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really shouldn't judge them. And then others are like cornbread. You're

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like, they're fine. You get open and look at them,

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and they're fine. So I don't know if that's helpful, but I was

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thinking about it. I was like, well, I don't have cornbread. I'm not I'm not

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baking cornbread over here. I've got kids who have you know,

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they're complicated. They're they gotta work themselves out.

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So Lincoln's about to turn 20. I'm like, oh, we're getting into Lincoln

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2.0, which is really fun. If you can lighten up about the future

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and just kinda be like, this is who they are right now.

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Parent the kid in front of you, not the one you wish you had or

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the one you're afraid they'll become. Now a

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last problem is when you make their

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behavior mean that something is wrong with them at their core.

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Like, that they're disturbed. Like, that they they they're

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they're rotten. And I wanted to read a couple

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of quotes. I've talked about this book before

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on the podcast, but it's the myth of normal by Gabor

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Mate. And the book is

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the most powerful parenting book I've ever read, and it's not a parenting

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book. So if you are at all curious about, like,

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you know, how trauma works and and development

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and what what humans need to thrive and how

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how when we don't get our needs met, how that shows up in

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our life. This book is phenomenal.

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But he he talks about the two core

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needs of every human, and I've talked about it on the podcast of a,

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which is for our version of safety and then our need for authenticity.

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So your child needs to feel safe and they need to feel,

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accepted. What your child needs in order to

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grow up and mature is they need to feel emotionally

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safe. We cannot grow and change when we're feeling

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judged or not worthy or bad at our core. If I'm bad at

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my core, why I can't change? I have no agency. But

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if I feel as if I have unconditional worth and I feel

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safe in my relationships, then I'm able to go and grow in

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the world. So what your kids really need is they

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need to they need you to like who they

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are. When you like who they are at

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their core, their essential self, and you can speak

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to them. Like, yes, you're acting selfish,

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but you're not a selfish person. You're you're

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saying sharp words, but you're not unkind. You are

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kind. You're you can speak into

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your child's life, what you want them to believe about themselves

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and communicating your values and saying

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you're worthy. No matter how you behave,

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You need to be the one who first separates their

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their self, their core self a their actions. When

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you do that, when you're able to say, yes, this person, my child is

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acting this way, but that doesn't mean that's who they are,

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Then they get to grow up believing that about themselves. They can say,

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I make mistakes, but I'm not a mistake.

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I cause problems sometimes, but I'm not a problem.

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I really I'm I'm feel so strongly about this because

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I've I know this is the biggest thing. If you could give your

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kids the gift of self love,

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they won't have to unravel a ton of pain.

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And the way that we end up, like,

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transmitting that sense of self

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loathing is in these subtle ways that we

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are like, no. Don't act like that. You are being

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you are unkind. Don't be unkind. I

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can't even model it, to be honest with you because I've practiced not thinking

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this way for so long. Like, instead of saying,

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like, you're selfish. You're you're rude.

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Right? Really being like, hey. Hey. You're being

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rude. Are you okay? What do you need right now?

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Do you need to take a break? Are you overwhelmed? Become I

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know you're not actually rude. I know you're not a mean person.

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That is so powerful for especially

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for boys and girls, but girls especially need to be told, like, you are not

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your actions. You are worthy. You are

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lovable. You are good exactly as you are. Even

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when you act badly, you are not bad. Brene

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Brown is so wonderful the way she explains shame. And

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she says, shame is something's wrong with me

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and guilt is I've done something wrong.

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And if you wanna shame proof your kids, which I know you

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do, we have to really separate at this,

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like, you know, this level of

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behavior from from self. I

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can act shitty, but it doesn't mean I am shitty.

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So when you are able

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to, love your child

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and communicate your unconditional

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acceptance of them and their self their your a their unconditional

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worth, even in the midst of them acting

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badly, that is magic. That is what we're

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working on here. So

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I wanna normalize that your first instinct when you

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see your kids misbehave is

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to catastrophize the future to or to

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make it mean something bad about you as a parent, something you did wrong

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a take all this responsibility, which takes away their agency.

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You may end up thinking like, oh my god. My kid is just an asshole.

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You know, that's who they are. That's just what they are. Your your

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first instinct might be to go fall into these 3

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traps, and that's

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okay. Okay? Just catch yourself

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a listen to this podcast episode again and commit back. And

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that's why I think that a delight list

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or a, you know, positive parenting vision, these two tools I teach

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are so valuable because then you can go back and say, who is

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my child at their core? And

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every human at their core is loving.

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We all want to be in relationships with other people.

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We all wanna be kind and loving. And it's only

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when our pain takes over that

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that that core self gets interrupted.

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So let recognizing who your child is at

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their at their core is, like, who they were at the

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at birth, at the baby, like, right when they were born.

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That little baby is perfect. Right? It's so lovable.

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They can't do anything wrong. They are just enough.

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And it's only as they grow and they, you know, express

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themselves in different ways and their behavior shows up that we start

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to worry. So their core self is their essential,

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worthy, lovable, perfect self.

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See that person and then parent

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the behavior, which behavior is a form

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of communication, and it shows a skill gap. That's it.

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Okay. I like I I wanted to share all

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this. I've been this is, like, all been on my mind for a while. So

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I'm glad to have done this episode. I hope it was helpful for you. Lately,

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I've been receiving some emails and messages

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on Instagram from some of you, and I just want you to know I love

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them so much. Like, it brings me so much joy

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to hear how the podcast is impacting you and how it's affecting you.

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And some of you have asked for podcast episodes, so I have

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those planned. So if there's a topic you want, you can email me and ask

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me to do an episode on it. That that's fun. And, yeah,

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just reach out. It's really great. I wanna have a I feel like we're in

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community. So, this week, I want you

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to go out when you see your kid's behavior, catch

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yourself, reset your mindset, noticing if

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you're making it mean that something's wrong with them, the future is ruined a

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that something's wrong with you. That's when you need to reframe.

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Okay. Mamas and dads, I know you a to. I hope you have

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a great week, and I will talk to you next time.

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