Harmony in the Home

In this episode, we’ll be continuing the dialogue I started In episode 61. I’ll be responding to more questions from you, my listeners, and expounding on the ease with which we “lose ourselves” and our identities outside of parenthood.

I’ll also speak even more regarding our pressing need to reclaim and nurture our non-parent identities in order to be the best parents we can be. We owe it to our children to make time for ourselves, to have a Self from which to draw an abundance of love and compassion!

The Miracle Morning regimen I described in detail in episode 59, three weeks ago, was a godsend in my life. I have found enormous peace in taking time to express gratitude, to meditate, to exercise, to put my mind in order, and to speak to myself with love and compassion before my family wakes up.

Rachel Marie Martin, author of The Brave Art of Motherhood, has an original work called “Breathe, Sweet Mom,” on her blog Finding Joy. I adore this brief and tender free verse for its powerful reminder that your children don’t need perfect, they need you.

Don’t put yourself on the back burner. Don’t think that you have to choose whether to prioritize yourself or your family. You can do both! You’ve got this!

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I have received hundreds of emails from listeners — parents who feel overwhelmed by parenthood, frazzled moms (and dads too) who are trying to give their children the world, but feel like their own needs are not being met. These people struggle to feel a sense of Self outside of the identity of parent, and they suffer considerably as a result.

Attachment to your children to the point of codependency or projecting your idealized version of them onto them can have deep negative consequences. Children are very attentive to the distress of their parents. If they become conditioned to act or be a certain way to appease Mom and Dad, they will have difficulty developing their own individuated sense of Self and obtaining the skills they need to be independent and have healthy relationships as adults.

The dual burden and blessing of motherhood (and fatherhood) may become corrupted into “martyr-hood” in the mind of a parent who lives, breathes, and makes unreasonable sacrifices for the children. This can result in resentment for children and spouses alike, and nobody wants that!

On airplanes, the flight attendants instruct that in case of emergency, parents and guardians of children should don their own oxygen masks first in order to assist the young ones. By the same token, parenting needs to come from a place of abundance. In this and the following episode, I will be addressing parental concerns and suggesting ways in which you can care for yourself so that you can parent from an abundance of love, practice self-care, and not feel lost in motherhood or fatherhood.

There is no need to play either/or with meeting the needs of your family. You can be prioritized, and your children can be prioritized too!

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Early on in parenthood, my own perfectionism and “mommy guilt” ran rampant when planning events, from my children’s first birthdays to a family excursion to Walt Disney World. I often relied on my children’s emotional states to inform me whether I was parenting “correctly” and sought validation from them and other external sources rather than from within my heart.

On the first Disney World trip, I lectured them about conforming to what was (to them, barely toddlers) a literally unattainable behavioral norm. We had meltdowns galore. Everybody was unhappy! But time and my personal growth process have been excellent teachers. I have learned that my “perfect” family experience is one filled with an abundance of love and understanding.

Byron Katie’s concept of “The Work” or “loving what is” has taught me to take a grace-filled and compassionate approach to parenting. We take rainy days, cancelled sports events, even pandemics, as-is, and we find ways to appreciate life in spite of its difficulties. If we can have patience with those often severe inconveniences, how much more patience, love, and compassion we should have for ourselves and our children!

Dr. Shefali Tsabary, author of The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children is an inspiration to me. She often discusses the need to embrace the pain of life in her work. Every “bad” experience, even in parenting — especially in parenting — is actually a learning experience divinely tailored to suit our unique needs. Embrace the pain.

Your kids are always going to teach you lessons in life; your job is to show up for that lesson and develop as a result. This is part of growth. You’re on the right track!

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Parenting is a wonderful, glorious, grueling challenge. Our children rely on us to help them learn to manage their emotions and make rational decisions when they cannot do so alone. Despite your inward drive toward perfection, parenting doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be enough, and “enough” is well within your capabilities! As you come to have an abundance of love and compassion for yourself, you will be able to extend the same to your spouse and children.

I’ve titled this episode after Hal Elrod’s amazing book The Miracle Morning, which details “lifesaver” techniques for drastically improving the quality of your day. Hal’s six S.A.V.E.R.S. are Silence, Affirmations, Visualizations, Exercise, Reading, and Scribing. It is an excellent book which I highly recommend! I have adapted the principles in Hal’s book to my own life.

Each day, I cultivate my own “miracle morning” with my GMPW regimen, which I call “Good Morning, Pretty World!” In this episode, I’ll discuss the GMPW component parts of gratitude, meditation, prayer, and working out, and why it is vital to devote time to yourself in order to maximize your capabilities.

Your daily “conscious brain” time is bookended by periods in which your unconscious brain cedes and then regains control at the beginning and end of the day. Learn to talk to both parts of your brain kindly when your brain is most malleable — that is, when waking up and falling asleep. As you are open, vulnerable, kind, and loving, your family will be too. Model and embody it and they will mirror it back to you.

Remember, don’t let your takeaway be “this is the one way.” As always, I hope that my main message with Harmony in the Home is that there are an infinite number of right ways to parent. You’ve got this.

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Imagine, if you will, a teacher and the parents speaking via counselor; divorcing spouses venting to their children; and one man torn between his wife and his mother. These are all instances of triangulation, a perilous tool.

Sometimes it’s useful to have an external mediator in a situation fraught with potential conflict. For example, as a counselor, I was often the “third wheel” between parents and their children's teachers. I facilitated a healthy, affirming dialogue centered on the needs of the child.

But I have often seen, in my own life and in the lives of people around me, that triangulation can be misused and even weaponized. In the wrong hands, triangulation can become a source of drama and infighting between a parent and their children, wounded in-law relationships, or even long-lasting emotional trauma for a child unwittingly turned surrogate spouse.

In this episode, I’ll discuss the good and the bad of triangulation. In addition, I’ll discuss some of the means at your disposal to combat emerging patterns of triangulation and overcome your trauma with an abundance of love. And overcome it you must, for your own sake as well as for the sake of your children.

As always, the key to healing is compassion, understanding, and that abundance of love. Learning to love yourself and forgive your parents is half the battle. Above all, know that you don't have to continue the cycle of triangulation in your adult relationships. That is true freedom!

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This will be my second Q&A episode, and I have some great questions from listeners to discuss with you!

Before I started my journey with my own coach back in 2013, I was paralyzed with fear that I was a bad mom. I was convinced that my happiness and fulfillment depended on external circumstances. I thought that perhaps I would be happier if I set my house in perfect order, or changed my husband or my children. But anyone can tell you it’s impossible to change other people — and a house is nothing but a collection of temporal possessions.

With the help of my coach, by my personal study, and by adapting what I knew as a teacher and counselor, I came to the shocking realization that my thoughts, not my circumstances, controlled my feelings. As I learned to have the same grace and compassion and empathy for my children and myself that I had so liberally bestowed upon other parents and their children, I no longer felt the burden of mommy guilt. I didn’t need to rely on my children as a metric for my competence as a parent.

I often feel like an Olympic ceremony runner tasked with passing the torch to mothers (and fathers) parenting from mindsets plagued with paralyzing fear that they are bad parents — this is the place of no I talked about last episode.

I want you to be able to say yes. I want you to know that if you care about your children and worry that you’re a bad parent, you are already a good parent. Above all, I want you to face your inward fears of inadequacy and say no, I’m kicking booty at this.

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For this episode, and the forthcoming episode 57, I’d like to take some time to answer questions from my listeners and participants in my parenting boot camp.

I often receive questions like “what’s your opinion on [parenting technique]?” I say the same thing Dr. Phil says to participants on his show: “how’s that working for you?” There are no universal answers to cultivating a healthy family dynamic. Every parent is different. Every child is different. Life is like a test, and everybody gets a different exam form with different combinations of questions to figure out.

I’ve worked with kids and parents who are chained down by self-defeating mindsets — the place of no. These people are conditioned to rely on external validation and motivation. They deeply dislike leaving their comfort zone and taking risks. They want the solution, the Right Path, to be provided so they can take it.

If only life were that simple!

As parents, ours is the responsibility — and the joy! — to figure out what works in our families. My goal is, as always, to give you that assertive “pack leader” energy that Randi Rubenstein always talks about. I want your efforts as a parent to come from a place of yes. Everything is figure-out-able.

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The Love Cup — it sounds like The Love Boat, doesn't it? I taught first grade and was the counselor in a school that was pre-K through 5th grade, and at the end of each school year I'd ask my students, "what was your favorite part?" It was always something related to emotions. People may forget words and actions, but they never forget how you made them feel.

Says L. R. Knost, "Every strength has a corresponding challenge and every challenge has a corresponding strength. … When faced with challenging behaviors, look for the corresponding strength, and focus on nurturing that gift while providing gentle guidance and coping techniques for the challenging areas. That is the essence of working with, instead of against, our children."

Learning to make the shift from compassionate teaching to compassionate parenthood has been a challenge in its own right. I don't want to throw my children under the bus, but they have exhibited challenging behaviors, as all children do. Instead of judging them and asking myself, "what's wrong with my child?!" — I have had to detach my ego to attach to them at the heart level. Challenging behaviors are indicative of a growth experience.

In the classroom and in the home, when I worked with my students and my children to recognize all the good things people were doing, we noticed even more good things. You see, there is an abundance of love in our hearts. It can't be seen, but it can always be felt.

In this episode, you'll learn about the symbolic "love cup" exercise and other techniques I've used to build up my students and my children. By cultivating self-love, we encourage our children to share the infinite abundance of love, compassion, and forgiveness with themselves and with their peers. We can create community, connection, and cooperation. We can raise our children to have powerful internal motivation and drive.

Guards down, masks off — you don't have to be anything other than yourself here.

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When our kids are freaking out in front of us it is natural that we tend to freak out with them because we are so overwhelmed with seeing them so upset.  Some kids act super hot and show their frustrations through anger like hitting, screaming, spitting, etc.  Some kids act super cold when showing their frustrations through pouting, feeling sorry for themselves, and with a “nobody loves me” attitude.

Most  kids do a combination of both, but usually do one more than the other. Today I will show you how to get comfortable when they get uncomfortable and empower them with strategies on how to help them calm down akin to how we teach our kids strategies to tie their shoes, do their laundry, learning to drive, etc.

When we are teaching them a new skill, we usually do it for them through modeling then we do it with them like spotting them while they are learning to ride a bike and then we allow them to practice-practice-practice until it feels more permanent.

It takes an average of 10,000 hours to learn a new skill so buckle up and enjoy the ride because this is a journey and not a destination!

Here is the checklist for your kids:

https://tinyurl.com/HelpMeCalmDownChecklist

Here are some examples of strategies to teach through role playing during calm waters.

https://gozen.com/50-calm-down-ideas-to-try-with-kids-of-all-ages/

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Join my FREE parenting bootcamp: https://mailchi.mp/038b02da043a/freebootcamp

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Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com

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So many people reach out to me about becoming a life coach.  You want to make a difference in people’s lives while having time and location freedom with your work.  Today I’ll unpack what it is like to be a life coach. You can fill out this application if you would like to find out more about it to see if it’s a good fit for you to become one too.  

Application: https://tinyurl.com/LifeCoachingApplication2020

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https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kelly-hutcheson/harmony-in-the-home

Join my FREE parenting bootcamp: https://mailchi.mp/038b02da043a/freebootcamp

Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me:

Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com

Find me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kelly.hutchesonFind me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kelly.stouthutcheson