Harmony in the Home

How are we on our 200th episode???? And we have a giveaway!  

And Holy moly guacamole look who we have with us today!! I was lucky and blessed enough to be asked to interview Dr. Shefali about her new book and how conscious parenting has completely transformed our home from stressed to blessed. 

Listen below and reply to this email with your biggest takeaway.

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Today’s episode was inspired by the book, Hands Are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi.

We aim to stay out of the bickering when our kids get into it, but what about when it gets physical with each other or they are destroying toys/property?  

Today we will talk about a cool strategy that works well when tempers are flaring and how to be the calm in their storm so you all can have more harmony in our home.

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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Today you’re in for a real treat!  

I was lucky enough to be asked to be on my friend Joelle’s podcast and we talk all things imperfect parenting. You can link hearts with her on IG here.  

We dive into the strengths and struggles that come with each age and stage in parenting.

I don’t want to give away the punchline to our chat, but the entire parenting journey is filled with a lot of 50/50 experiences.

Once we let go of wanting to do it the “right” way then parenting feels a lot lighter and fluffier.  

Our kids pick up on that and it takes the tension out of the rope for them too to have more harmony in your home.

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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What would you do if you had more time every day? What wonderful goals would you accomplish? What feats of parenthood would you achieve?

Well, what’re you waiting for? Stop imagining it and start doing it!

You may have seen Pomodoro timers (the little tomato-shaped kitchen timers) in many people’s houses. This is the hallmark of Pomodoro technique, a time management system developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. Pomodoro technique is applied by breaking up a block of “work time” into small chunks, usually around 25 minutes each.

Now: children are very quick to pick up on the behaviors we model (whether intentionally or unintentionally). If your child seems to have bad time management skills, you may also have a problem that needs addressing. In this episode, I’ll discuss the Pomodoro technique and the ways I have used it to help myself, my students in the classroom, and my children at home.

As you subdivide and account for your time, you will become more conscious of how you spend your time. You will be able to make better decisions about your own time management, and you will be able to help your children get better at managing time as well. You’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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I’m always trying to think of things that worked in my classroom with 20 kids so they’ll scale down and work in your four walls. One thing that helped my 1st-graders was teaching them tangible words to stand up for themselves and be assertive. At the beginning of the year, we’d teach them to counter teasing, bullying, etc. with a polite but assertive “please stop, I don’t like that.”

Why this phrase? First, this phrase is a valuable tool for small children who are just beginning to get a grasp of verbalizing their feelings. Teaching them “please stop, I don’t like that” will prevent a good number of peer disputes and tantrums before they even start.

Second, a healthy society is founded on personal autonomy and mutually-respected boundaries. By teaching kids early on to voice a concern when something is causing them distress, we prepare them for grown-up life. We empower them to stand up for themselves at work, in public, in relationships, and in a multitude of other scenarios that (God forbid) can become abusive or toxic if all parties involved do not respect boundaries. We also teach them empathy for others, so when they get told “please stop, I don’t like that,” they’ll comply.

The goal is helping all students be assertive with a Goldilocks balance; not too hot (no SCREAMING, no tantrums) and not too cold (no whining, no enabling the person doing the teasing). Just like we want to embody “calm, assertive pack leader energy,” we want our children to develop that energy early on.

By empowering your children to turn their feelings into words and communicate with other people, you are giving them the tools they need to be successful throughout their lives. It is an incredible gift to give. You’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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How can I have a loving family without falling into bad patterns? — Well, here are some of my thoughts.

Think about your childhood family environment — not just your parents, but your siblings, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, your grandparents, friends of the family. You had a totally different “Saturn” growing up, with different people and different power dynamics orbiting your family. As a child you learned what love means, what it feels like to give and receive; you had some positive experiences, and some negative experiences. The brain started to form patterns very young — certain sights, smells, or tastes can bring you right back to your grandma’s kitchen or your childhood home.

And trauma doesn’t have to come from parents. A sibling, a teacher, an illness, infertility, an ex-spouse: you may have experienced trauma in many situations. I’ll discuss how persistent negative emotions affect the brain, and how your unconscious mind might organize your life around those emotions as it comes to expect them. I’ll also ask an important question: how do you heal from this?

First, remember that you are not broken. You don’t need to do anything to deserve love. As you internalize your inherent self-worth, you will have fewer expectations for other people to make you feel whole. You will not seek validation from other people (including spouse and children) who are NOT tasked with validating you and couldn’t do it even if they were supposed to — that validation must come from inside your own heart, and nothing anybody else says or does will be an adequate substitute.

The best part of being an adult is that you get to draw up the blueprint for your family dynamic. YOU have control now, and you can retain the good parts of your childhood while not practicing the harmful parts.

As you make it your prerogative to consistently practice techniques of mind management, exercise self-love, give yourself grace and compassion, and heal your old wounds without using other people as proxies for your childhood relationship dynamics, I promise on a stack of Bibles, you will feel better about yourself and you and your family will enjoy each other’s company. It is a joyous way to live.

Remember: you’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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I often get asked, how do I deal with temper tantrums?

Probably one of the hardest parts of parenting is working through your child’s temper tantrum. When I was a teacher and counselor, I dealt with a lot of tantrums, but the kids were generally able to keep it in during the day. I wasn’t privy to the post-school, in-car meltdowns, and I either had support, or I WAS the support. But as a parent, I was not prepared for the overwhelming amount of anger, screaming, hitting, and crying accompanying tantrums. Sometimes I felt like the house was going to flood from all the tears!

Now, I am very opposed to slapping negative labels on children’s developmental stages. Terrible twos, four-nados, no no no. Thing is, the high emotion in a tantrum is normal. Children are supposed to have human emotions. You, in your 20s, 30s, 40s, etc., have the same big internal emotions, with a key difference being that you have (consciously or not) developed coping strategies to avoid going nuclear. — Well, hopefully you have. If not, it’s time for some internal work. Luckily, you’re in the right place.

Tantrums at different ages may look different, but at the root they’re all the same. The tantrum-haver was stressed to begin with, and something pushed them over the edge. It doesn’t matter what age, kids will always have tantrums and so will you. So do I. Again, this is normal.

In this episode, I’ll dive into the four main steps of tempering a temper tantrum:

I’ll define what I mean with these steps, because I know, they sound pretty nebulous. I’ll arm you with strategies that you can deploy to help your child get out of the “red zone” and back to yellow and then green.

Now, a caveat: by applying this process, you may feel like you’re giving in to the tantrum, but the goal is to change the behavior, not the emotion. You don’t want strong emotions to go away. Emotionless Stepford children and Stepford people are creepy. Your results will be better if you try out your own additional strategies as you feel inspired to do so. I am not an infallible source of knowledge. Yours is the opportunity to experiment and figure out what works for your kids (and what works for you, if you need to learn some coping strategies). Remember: you’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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How do you teach your kids to feel tricky emotions?

This is an important topic — so important that we’ve addressed it a few times during the run of our podcast. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last! Emotional regulation is a skill for life! Whether you’re new or seasoned, I hope this episode will be a great help, or a helpful review.

In this episode, I’ll help you understand WHAT emotional regulation is (and it’s not creating emotionless robots!), WHY emotional regulation is an important tool for kids to learn, and WHO it’s for — because it’s not just for kids!

I’ll also help you see WHERE, WHEN, and HOW to appropriately practice it with exercises such as modeling and role-playing.

I can’t stress enough how helpful it is for kids to have healthy role models. As you work on this alone and with your kids, I promise you will all see benefits!

Remember: you’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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

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I get so many questions about what parents should do when their child makes a bad choice of XYZ. 

Today I will help you understand how to find the ABC to match the XYZ.

You can plug and play this strategy into every situation to have more harmony in your home.

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

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

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How do I get my kids to listen?!

It’s no secret: getting kids to listen the first time is a huge point of interest for parents. It’s the topic that most often brings people to me. Now, while there is no single good answer, there are a lot of things you can and should try, and I’ll be introducing you to some ideas that I hope will help you on your quest for attentive children!

I’ve sourced the title of this week’s episode from Foster Cline and Jim Fay’s book Parenting with Love and Logic, since I’ve found some of their methodology to be useful. As always, I encourage you to read the original material, test and see how you feel about what you’ve learned, and then decide whether you will use it in your own life.

In this episode, I’ll talk about the why and how of offering choices to children whenever possible. I’ll discuss “code words” I use with Lily and Grady to help them be attentive when I need them to do something. I’ll talk about win-win ways to reward your kids for overall good behavior while still retaining leverage to encourage them to listen. Perhaps most importantly, I’ll discuss your children’s greatest need: that you put your phone down and dedicate time to getting on their level, playing with them, and listening to them. Listening is a two-way street!

As you engage with your children on their terms, and as you set healthy mutual expectations for your relationship, I guarantee you will all be more willing and able to listen to each other and have a happy experience within your four walls. You’ve got this!

Check out our sponsor Herbal Face Food and support the show by clicking the link https://tinyurl.com/KellysFavoriteAntiAgingSerum and using the code Harmony20 at checkout for 20% off.

Subscribe on Apple!

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Join my FREE parenting bootcamp!

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

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

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