Today I a sharing a shift I have made in my parenting that has made such a big difference - when I teach it to my coaching clients they have an 'aha moment' too - because we might not see that we are often parenting the wrong issue. 

 

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This is especially evident when we find ourselves in power struggles. We are taken out of the original problem and into all of the mental chatter and drama around the power struggle. 

The power struggle of getting kids to sit down for the meal 

In this episode, I'm explaining how I apply this to a real-life example that moms experience: wanting the kids to sit down at the table for dinner. 

Focussing on just wanting our kids to LISTEN. We just want compliance - and we spend a lot of effort trying to just get them to listen to us - and now we have a power struggle

This is turning the simple issues of parenting into bigger, harder issues 

 

What happens when we are in a power struggle with our kids?

When we have a power struggle over our kid's 'obedience' we sink into a story about how they don't listen to us and don't respect us. 

This narrative can make us feel unconfident in parenting, it is exhausting and it makes the relationship feel hard and heavy. 

 

Problem-solving the real issue

Come back to the real issue we are dealing with. And start to problem solve from there. 

I'm offering the questions I ask myself and my kids to handle this issue of getting up often during mealtime. 

Related: Episode 84 How parenting with empathy can transform your relationship

 

The value of family mealtime

I want to come back to the root of why this matters to me. Why do I want family mealtime? How much work am I willing to do to make it happen in the long term as we all grow the skills of getting better at it?

 

Making mealtime more engaging

Hard and Awesome - asking each kid what was hard today? what was awesome today?

Trivia questions - we make them up or have alexa ask some

Q+A a day book - from this great book we got from my SIL

 

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey friends, it's Shawna, your nerdy girlfriend and my coach from simple on purpose.ca Welcome to the simple on purpose podcast. This is the place where we talk about slowing down, and living life on purpose, living it with intention, instead of on autopilot, and autopilot used to be my speciality. So I know both very well - life on purpose and autopilot.

Many of you who listen are moms and I love to hear where you're listening, some of you are listening while doing chores. Hey, Melissa, some of you are listening while driving to work. Hi Jisha some of you are listening went on a walk. Hi, Julia. And I just really love hearing from you real people who are listening. So whether you email me, tag me on Instagram, or leave a review in iTunes, I just really love to hear from you, the person, the woman with this in her ears right now. So I'm really glad you're here.

It is spring break here in Canada. And I just took a week off of work to be with the kids while my husband was at work. And I just really wanted to do things with them to not just sit around because I mean, we've been doing that for a year where downtime is usually TV time. So I've been trying to embrace any sunshine, we get, you know, go skating, go to the park, go on mini hikes, go to the library, and playing way too much monopoly, they're getting very good, and they're beating me. And I've just really been trying to sink into being present with them. And I'm going to talk all about that in this week's simple Saturday's email, if you are signed up for that, you can read that there. And if you're not super easy,