Harmony in the Home

This week I wanted to share a story about food — because, like, who doesn’t love food? This is also the story of a mutual aid effort I’m getting involved in. This program is called Lasagna Love, it’s now extended to all 50 states in the USA, and my family and I are enjoying this opportunity to spread random acts of kindness in the form of food.

Lasagna Love matches people who need food with people willing and able to make lasagna. Lasagna Love provides the recipe; a donor makes and delivers the lasagna to the person or people in need. And this isn’t always a financial need, either. Maybe the recipient recently had a baby or has a bunch of kids and is struggling to set the house in order.

And sometimes maybe a recipient doesn’t technically even “need” my lasagna, and that’s okay too. The beauty and perhaps the point of volunteering with Lasagna Love is not that I get to be the arbiter of Who Deserves To Have Food, but that I am able to spread joy to anybody who chooses to receive it. Knowing that I have made the world a little better is a reward in itself.

This program is also a low-stakes commitment, because you can make and deliver as many or as few lasagnas as you can handle. Once every three months? Perfect. Twice a week? Also perfect. If you’re looking for some way to teach your children about random acts of kindness, I definitely recommend volunteering with Lasagna Love.

Visit https://lasagnalove.org/ to learn more about the Lasagna Love mission.

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The grass is always greener on the other side … right? WRONG!

On a slight tangent from last episode’s subject, I’ll be talking more about lessons learned during my first forays into coaching. I came to use the expression “Facebook grass” to refer to that bit of sweet sweet greenery in your neighbor’s metaphorical “yard” of social media — a beautiful, cultivated space that appears to be free of all the problems of your mundane and at times miserable existence.

When I was first meeting other coaches, it seemed they often resorted to “compare and despair” mode in their lives. “Did you see [friend]’s post? I have ABC locked down tight, but [friend] has XYZ and I don’t.”

I return once more to that evergreen (see what I did there?) adage: comparison is the thief of joy! And what’s more, do not be deceived by your neighbor’s verdant lawns. Believe it or not, your friends, family, and favorite influencers are all suffering from problems you don’t have and would not like to have. If you traded places, just like the mom and the daughter in Freaky Friday, you wouldn’t know how to handle each others’ issues!

As we discussed last episode, you have a unique opportunity to figure out what works in your life based on your circumstances. It will be different from everybody else’s, and that’s okay! Says writer Rebecca Sugar: “you are an experience; make sure you’re a good experience.” Own your experience, and create your parenthood and your life on your terms. As always, you’ve got this!

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What does a pizza parlor have to do with parenting, anyway?! Well … let me tell you.

Several years ago, when I was just beginning to do life coaching, I attended a seminar for life coaches. I met many of my heroes there and found myself up to my neck in information. Naturally, I was curious about these people and how their lives stacked up now that they were living what I considered the “dream life” — an intersection of self-directed employment and a beautiful vocation of helping other people, all rolled into one. I found a pattern among the people I talked to: they experienced 50/50 just like I did, good times and bad times.

I had a good talk over lunch with one coach who is now one of my very good friends, and she beat herself up over how badly she thought her life was going in comparison to how it should be. In that moment, a flash of inspiration washed over me. I said to her that it seemed to me like she had an excellent pizza parlor, complete with great food, great service, and an ever-growing clientele, but was hurting herself by focusing on her flaws and comparing her pizza parlor to those of her neighbors.

The pizza parlor is, of course, a metaphor for your life, your home, your career, your family — whatever it needs to mean to you. You are allowed (more than being allowed, you need) to take a break now and again to chill and get some fresh air. If you are looking at other people’s pizza parlors to compare and critique yourself as you’re likely in the habit of doing, you’re missing out on the life experience that is uniquely yours. Only you get to have YOUR life. Cherish your life, even though it’s a 50/50 experience, and some days feels worse than that.

And if you do choose to look at other people’s metaphorical pizza parlors, use that experience to get ideas for tweaking your own setup. You don’t need to copy other pizza parlors’ methodologies to the letter. Figure out what works for YOU and YOUR family and do that. You’ve got this!

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Let’s revisit last week’s question: how do you care for a child with a radically different personality than your own?

As you know if you’ve listened to much of our podcast, my problem was the opposite. Early on in my saga of marriage and parenthood, I had the family scheduled up to our ears. I couldn’t allow us to have a single free moment; I needed social events to occupy all our free time. I felt like we were on a treadmill going at like 10 or 11 — and then God gave me these beautiful introverted spirits to teach me how to slow down!

Now, per the title of this episode, you may have the opposite challenge: extroverted children. If you’re more introverted and you have an extroverted child, you may see your child as almost like a threat, because you’re not gonna understand why they’re so energetic and independent, and it may trigger some unconscious part of you. Now, I need you to take a deep breath. Let it out. Repeat as necessary. Get curious, not furious.

You and your child are working at completely different paces, and that’s okay! Just know in advance that it’s gonna be a little bit harder to connect with that child because they’re not like you. Remember the “birthday parenting” mindset (episode 116): just like planning a birthday gift for someone means thinking the way they think, your task is to get curious about how and why they think and act the way they do so you can give them what they need.

I saw a very useful image floating around the Internet, which was a list of 10 ways to care for extroverts. I’ve placed my own spin on the blog in high resolution — go check that out! — and I’ll write down all the points for people who are using podcast apps or might otherwise want a text copy.

Respect their independence.Compliment them in the company of others.Accept and encourage their enthusiasm.Allow them to explore and talk things out.Thoughtfully surprise them.Understand when they are busy.Let them dive right in.Offer them options.Make physical and verbal gestures of affection.Let them shine.

Honor the child that you HAVE, versus the child you THOUGHT you would have — and I promise on a stack of Bibles, things will work out, and this will let them evolve into more of who God intended them to be, versus who we thought they would be. REMEMBER: you’ve got this!

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How do you care for a child with a radically different personality than your own?

This is the very question I asked myself as I came to realize that my oldest, Lily, was nothing like me, and was not supposed to be. Two events changed my outlook. First, reading Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s The Conscious Parent, which is an INCREDIBLE read by the way (or listen, if you prefer the audiobook), shattered my paradigm and aligned my expectations for raising my children away from what my ego expected and wanted. I’ve shared this quote before, but I’ll share it again:

“When you parent, it’s crucial you realize you aren’t raising a ‘mini me,’ but a spirit throbbing with its own signature. For this reason, it’s important to separate who you are from who each of your children is. Children aren’t ours to possess or own in any way. When we know this in the depths of our soul, we tailor our raising of them to their needs, rather than molding them to fit our needs.”

That moment of clarity shifted my outlook for me and for my family in the best way possible.

The second event was that Lily — my poor, clingy, always-weeping, seemingly antisocial daughter — came home from a visit to David’s parents in South Carolina bright and sunny at age 5, and said how nice it was to just sit on the porch and rock in the rocking chairs and watch the hummingbirds. I realized I had been ramping up the pressure on her to perform in social situations and play dates. I tried to make her into something she simply was not.

My heart aches for the damage we do to our children when we try to suppress their God-given spirit, and that is why I am passionate about my message, which is also Dr. Tsabary’s message: we must help our children become who they are meant to be, not who we think they are meant to be, and their spirit knows the way. Besides, I’ve learned from Lily and Grady that the more you push your child to abandon their natural introversion or extroversion, the harder they cling to it. And the more freedom you give them to be themselves, the more well-rounded and even-keeled they become. It’s miraculous.

I saw a very useful image floating around the Internet, which was a list of ways to care for introverts. I’ve placed my own spin on the blog in high resolution — and I’ll write down all the points for people who are using podcast apps or might otherwise want a text copy.

Respect their need for privacy.Never embarrass them in public.Let them observe first in new situations.Give them time to think; don’t demand instant answers.Don’t interrupt them.Give them advance notice of expected changes in their lives.Give them 15-minute warnings to finish whatever they are doing.Reprimand them privately.Teach them new skills privately.Enable them to find one best friend with similar interests & abilities.Don’t push them to make lots of friends.Respect their introversion; don’t try to remake them into extroverts.

REMEMBER: you’ve got this!

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Sometimes all we need is time to chill!

When Grady was starting school, I got many reports from his teachers that he was crying often. Not just crying for mom and dad at the beginning of class, but crying ALL. DAY. LONG. It was shocking to me, mainly because Grady’s red zone (don’t know what that is? see episode 89!) was usually “hot”: getting red in the face, pushing people, turning over chairs, causing a miniature path of destruction, and so on. Crying was something I’d have expected from Lily, whose red zone was “cold”: whining, crying, or manifesting neediness.

Grady’s crying disturbed me. This was very unlike him, and if he wasn’t happy, I was wrongly convinced that his emotional state somehow reflected on me and my ability to parent. (The ego is incessant, as always.) But after consulting with my sister Molly, who had the emotional connection to Grady but not the attached ego, my eyes were opened. Molly had dropped Grady off at school before. She noted that arriving at school was incredibly stimulating, with crowds of kids right inside the door and overly enthusiastic teachers. She said that maybe it was too much for Grady to take in and adjust to without some time to warm up.

With Molly’s help and Grady’s teacher’s cooperation, I made a plan. Grady would enter through the side entrance of the classroom, sit in what we called the “chill chair” (but NOT like he was in trouble or like a time-out; see episode 8 on why I don’t utilize time-outs) and read, and join the class when he was ready. Grady’s teacher said it was like having a completely different child in class.

Grady doesn’t use a chill chair at school anymore, but this was a valuable tool for me and hopefully this idea will be useful for you too. It is essential that we allow children to have space while they process their big emotions, whether it’s the overstimulation of being plunged into public school or an altercation with siblings at home. Everybody develops at a different pace. Allow kids to grow at their natural pace. Give them grace and compassion, because it’s literally their first time learning to be human! And give yourself grace and compassion too! You’ve got this!

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Birthday parenting? What does that mean?! Okay, let me tell you, because this is some really good symbolism.

So this week, Lily and I went to the mall to shop for a birthday gift for one of her friends, who we’ll call Sally. She picked a couple things and I said, “is that something YOU would like, or something SALLY would like?” After some introspection, Lily got into Freaky Friday mode and did a personality and perspective shift, almost as though she were becoming Sally like a character in a play, and picked out some things that truly suited Sally’s style rather than her own.

This is what I call birthday parenting: taking on your child’s personality as though you’re shopping for the perfect birthday gift. This can help you understand their thoughts and feelings, what makes them happy, what their triggers are, why they have tricky emotions, and what those tricky emotions are. It’s like baby-proofing the house, where you have to crawl around on the floor to see things the way a baby sees them and recognize potential hazards to baby-proof.

Too often we fall into the trap of assuming our children are going to be just like us — or worse yet, purposefully attempting to compel them into developing the same way we developed (see episode 112, Clone Parenting). Let’s nip that idea in the bud right now. We should not labor under the delusion that our life is good enough that we would even want our child to follow in our footsteps!

Children are like trees; we need to give them the metaphorical equivalents of sunlight, water, nutrients, and space to grow and develop their individual Self. One big way of helping them develop their inner Self is by allowing them to experience and process the 50/50, the good and the bad, without telling them how to feel or process it. As you practice “birthday parenting” and try to adopt your child’s mindset in order to understand and empathize with them, you will find patience and compassion for your child (and for yourself!) that you didn’t know you had. You’ve got this!

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This week, I want to talk about leapfrog thoughts. I came up with this term to describe the leaps and bounds of an unmanaged mind imagining the worst-case scenarios, as I used to do when my children did things I thought were incorrect. I remember when I was teaching and the school provided YMCA pre-K daycare, I watched Lily from afar begging for the teacher to hold her and bawling her eyes out at 10:30 in the morning. My brain instantly jumped to “oh no, she’s never going to be sociable, she’s never going to go to prom!”

In hindsight, that was a massive jump — a leap right over normal, rational conclusions about Lily’s behavior, such as “this is normal for kids her age, because they haven’t developed an internal Self yet and still rely on external validation, and many still need a lot of attention.” I only saw what I wanted to see, which was that Lily was not an extrovert like I was at her age. We want our kids to be like us because then we can relate to them — and then when they’re NOT like us, instead of learning from them and growing from them and evolving from them, we try to mold them into this cookie cutter version of us. That’s where some of the biggest conflict happens.

As I have mentioned many times before, the human mind has an unconscious mind with 3 primitive objectives (seek pleasure, avoid pain, maximize efficiency in doing these two things), and the conscious mind of rational thought and decision-making is precariously overlaid on top of the unconscious hodgepodge. Leapfrog thoughts like “Lily is never going to go to prom” are very much a mark of the unmanaged unconscious mind at work. The good news is, once you’re onto yourself, you can slow those thoughts down and play them out in your mind.

Now, what does that mean? It means exactly what it sounds like. Go over that worst-case scenario. Confront it, analyze it, and challenge it. If you aren’t leading by example and teaching your kids to be that way, they most likely won’t end up in that scenario! And if despite your efforts they do stray from your ideal path, that’s because it’s their path and their experience. Your kids are going to have to visit the full gamut of life experiences, and that’s how they’ll figure their stuff out.

As you rein in your leapfrog thoughts, make peace with the ever-present state of being, and accept the as-is, you will find that it is a happy way to live. You’ve got this!

How do you stay focused on long-term goals? How do you get back on the horse after you’ve fallen off? I hope this episode will illuminate some useful principles for you.

Darren Hardy’s excellent book The Compound Effect posits that every major success in life is compounded from tiny, almost imperceptible choices made on a day-to-day basis. For example, having a strong, healthy body means keeping to daily regimens like exercise and a food intake rich in nutrients, healthy fats, and protein. Having a clean house comes from picking up one or two things when you see they’re out of place. This can apply to a lot of facets of our life.

My clients’ problem — it’s often my problem, and I’m sure it’s other people’s problem too — is that all people have a tendency to catastrophize when we miss something in the routine. We have a commitment to have a peaceful household, we snap once and yell at our children, and then we feel terrible and we can’t do it so why try?

Okay, well, first off, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The compound effect is as much how we deal with daily failures as how we meet with daily successes. Your job is to afford yourself the grace and compassion you WILL need, so that when you mess up (and it’s okay that you do), you keep trying. You’ve got this!

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Suppose that you notice that your child or children interrupt you often when you may be busy on a phone call or talking to somebody in person. Why is that? And what can you do to quietly communicate your attention to your children’s woes?

Well, first of all, know that this is totally normal for any children under the age of seven. Second, know that even if they’re well over that age, it’s not malicious intent driving them to distract you from your important business. They simply haven’t learned the skill. This is not cause to be angry with them, and in fact nothing truly is. Remember — your child is not giving you a hard time, your child is HAVING a hard time!

I’m going to talk about something I would do with my first graders. I’ve talked about wearing the Hawaiian lei to let the kids know they should “ask three before me” when I was teaching other students or attending to a priority matter, but here’s another part of this equation. I also allowed them to come up to me quietly and give my hand three squeezes to let me know that they needed more immediate help with something. I would squeeze back to let them know I was paying attention and would get with them ASAP.

The hand squeeze helps both of you become aware of each other’s needs without causing a major distraction from an important task. It is also an exercise in teaching your children patience as you deal with the person or thing occupying your attention. It’s just one simple way to practice healthy communication, one more resource to deal with tricky emotions. Feel free to adapt this idea how you see fit. As you use it with your children, I hope it helps you all build trust in each other, become more attentive to each others’ needs, and less annoyed by distractions. You’ve got this!

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