Is your child Highly Sensitive?  Does it sometimes feel as though you don’t understand them, and struggle to support them in the ways it seems they need to be supported?  Or does your child experience and process things more deeply than other children, but this is the first time you’re hearing about High Sensitivity?
In this episode Dr. Michael Pluess helps us to understand how we can know whether our child is highly sensitive, and how to parent these children effectively so they can reach their full potential.
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099: How to parent highly sensitive children

Jen Lumanlan always thought infancy would be the hardest part of parenting.  Now she has a toddler and finds a whole new set of tools are needed, there are hundreds of books to read, and academic research to uncover that would otherwise never see the light of day.  Join her on her journey to get a Masters in Psychology focusing on Child Development, as she researches topics of interest to parents of toddlers and preschoolers from all angles, and suggests tools parents can use to help kids thrive - and make their own lives a bit easier in the process.  Like Janet Lansbury's respectful approach to parenting?  Appreciate the value of scientific research, but don't have time to read it all? Then you'll love Your Parenting Mojo.  More information and references for each show are at www.YourParentingMojo.com.  Subscribe there and get a free newsletter compiling relevant research on the weeks I don't publish a podcast episode!

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Here's a little thought exercise: think back to what you were doing this time last year, right around Mother's Day (in the U.S...I know it has already passed in other places!).

What kinds of things were your children doing that were really endearing?

What kinds of things were they doing that drove you up the wall?

What kinds of fights (resistance, back-talk, stalling, tantrums, etc.) were you having with them a year ago?

Are you still having those same fights now (or variations on them)?

Do you wish you weren't still having those fights? That you could get out of the endless cycle of trying an idea you saw on Instagram, seeing a small change, and backsliding to where you were before?

Do you have all the tools you need so that a year from now you can look back and know, without any shadow of a doubt, that things are different now?

Today I'm going to introduce you to several parents who have made exactly this shift, and a framework you can use to make it for yourself.

It's not complicated. There are only five elements to it, and when they're all in place you can make sustainable change in parenting, as well as your own personal issues, work, and anything else you like.

It really is very possible to make sustainable change in parenting happen by yourself. But all of the five elements have to be in place, and operating consistently, to make it work.

Losing focus on each one of the elements creates a different outcome, none of which are good:
Confusion
Anxiety
Making slow progress
Frustration
Being on a treadmill
If you can see already that one or more of these things are happening for you, the Parenting Membership will help you make the kind of sustainable change you want to see in your family.

The first thing you'll do after you join is have a 20-minute private call with my community manager, Denise, who will see which element you're struggling with the most right now, and connect you to specific resources to help.

Many of the parents who signed up this time last year are now in an entirely different place. Things like this are happening:
Their preschoolers can use a picture-based list to accurately identify their own feelings and needs;
Parents are recognizing how their own actions are creating shame in their children, and are working to address this;
Parents see which parts of their co-parenting struggles are theirs to own, instead of blaming their difficulties on their co-parents;
They can also see which parts are not theirs to own, make requests to get their needs met, and practice accepting their co-parent for who they are;
Siblings are fighting less, because they understand each other's needs and can find strategies to meet both of their needs.

Of course these parents still have hard days...but none of them looks back on who they were a year ago and thinks: "Aside from the fact that my kids are older, I don't really know what's different now from what it was a year ago."

I want this kind of sustainable change for you, too. It's so much more than taking a short course to learn a new skill. It's a fundamentally different way of being in the world.

Enrollment for the Parenting Membership is open right now, but only until midnight Pacific on Wednesday May 15th.

212: How to make the sustainable change you want to see in your family

Are there parts of yourself that you don't share with other people?

Things that you think: "If people knew that about me, they wouldn't love me / they'd think I'm a terrible person / they wouldn't even want to be around me"?

When you mess up, does it seem like it's not that you did a silly/bad thing, but that you are a stupid/bad person?

If your answer to any of these questions is "yes," then you're experiencing shame.

Almost all of the parents I work with are ashamed of some aspect of themselves...but not Dee.

That's not to say that Dee never struggles - far from it.  But her struggles seem to feel more manageable to her, and she has a sense of 'right'-ness about her.  

If Dee recognizes that she has a need, it never occurs to her to not ask for help from others in getting that need met.

How did this happen?  What implications does it have for how we can raise our children so they don't experience shame?

In this episode, Dee shares her story and her top three ideas for raising children in a shame-free environment with us.

If you realize that shame has been a huge part of your childhood (and even adulthood) and you're ready for help healing that so you can be the kind of parent you want to be, I do hope you'll join me (and Dee!) in the Parenting Membership.

We don't just learn how to make parenting easier (although that is a big focus!).  We also work to heal ourselves so we can show up as whole people in our own lives.

Enrollment opens in just a few days, on Wednesday May 5th - click here to learn more about the membership: https://yourparentingmojo.com/parentingmembership/

If you want to get a taste of how coaching in the membership works, I'd love for you to join me in the FREE Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits masterclass from 10-11:30am Pacific on Thursday May 2nd.  

It's almost like getting the insight and tools from the 8-day Setting Limits workshop that wraps up this week in one 90 minute masterclass.  

I hope to see you there (we will have prizes...) - maybe I'll even get to coach you live!  Click the link to sign up: https://yourparentingmojo.com/settinglimitsmasterclass/

211: How to raise a child who doesn’t experience shame

Do you have a core group of parent friends who are always there for you? Friends who might not be 100% aligned with your parenting philosophy, but they're close enough that you know that when they do offer suggestions you would at least consider doing them?

And on the days when you just want to just vent and not hear any advice at all, you know that it'll be totally fine for you to vent. They won't take offense and they'll just empathize and reassure you that you aren't a terrible parent; you're a great parent having a difficult day - because they've seen you on your good days as well.

In this episode I'll introduce you to SIX parents who have just this kind of relationship. Katherine, Rachel, Beth, Peju, and Kati live in the eastern United States and Jody is Australia, and they meet once a week on Zoom for 40 minutes, and each of them talks for just five minutes...and in that time, they've become incredibly close friends. The relationships they have with each other are among the deepest and most profound ones in their lives.

If you need a supportive community like this in your life then I'd love to see you in the Parenting Membership, which is where Katherine, Rachel, Beth, Peju, Kati, and Jody met. Enrollment opens very soon, between May 5-15.

And if you'd like to get just a little taste for how the membership works then I'd love to see you in the Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits workshop.

You can take the FlexPath option anytime for just $7, or join me for the FREE Guided Path option where you'll get one module of content every day for eight days starting this Wednesday April 24th.

You'll meet an awesome community of parents whose approach to parenting is aligned with yours, and you can add five group coaching calls with me for just $37, which is the cheapest rate you'll find parenting coaching anywhere. We'll start to develop the same kind of community that you'll hear about in this episode.

210: The power of learning in community

Do you ever fight with your partner?

Do you ever fight with your partner about parenting?

(Pretty much all of the couples I work with do both of those things.)

And these arguments tend to follow a pretty well-defined formula:

Child misbehaves.
Parent A gets overwhelmed, criticizes the child and snaps at Partner B for not doing more to help.
Parent B and says that clearly Parent A's 'better parenting approach' isn't working, since the kids are still misbehaving - this is contempt.
Parent A knows they don't want to parent the way they were raised, and also knows they aren't doing things totally in alignment with their values right now.  Parent A has done a lot of work to try to heal themselves, but worries that it isn't happening fast enough to protect their children.  And isn't it better than the bribing and punishing that Parent B is doing?  They're being defensive.
Parent B stonewalls - they are overwhelmed and shuts down, refusing to talk about the issue.
Both partners walk away feeling frustrated, wonder how on earth it got to this point, and feel hopeless that it will ever improve.

If your fights look like this, I'm here to let you know that there is hope!  

Last year I did Levels 1 and 2 (of 3 levels) of Gottman Method training.  The Gottman Method is basically the only evidence-based framework for couple's therapy.

Drs. John and Julie Gottman describe the main ways they see couples struggle in their communication, and named them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - you saw all of them in the example above.  

How many of the Horsemen show up in your fights?

(Criticism is almost always the first Horseman to arrive.  Interrupt that, and you can communicate in entirely different ways.)

If you wish there was a better way to communicate about these challenging issues with your partner so you could actually get on the same page and parent as a team, today's episode will show you how to do that.  

You'll see a couple, Dee and Jono, who usually walk away from each other in frustration after they discuss their roles in the family.  

In this conversation they use very different tools.  We didn't completely resolve the issue, but they kept going with the conversation by themselves and gave me permission to also share Dee's report of what happened after the call - which was really magical!

Learn more about how you can avoid using The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and what tools to use instead so you can actually discuss these kinds of difficult topics with your partner.

It's really hard to learn these kinds of communication skills on your own.  I'd actually read one of the Gottmans' books but didn't really see how to apply the ideas in my own relationship until I did their four-day training.

During the training I realized that they use basically the same set of tools I use to help parents with their children's behavior, but with a couple of key weaknesses.  So I recruited couples from the Parenting Membership and created a series of demo videos so you can learn the skills and see couples practicing them.

There are cheat sheets, starter scripts, and quizzes to help you identify the Four Horsemen in real couples' arguments.

Couples who have used these tools report not just that they're able to address their disagreements more easily, but they're having fewer squabbles in the first place because things just seem to 'flow' in a way they hadn't before.

I'll coach you (live!) on how to use the tools with your own partner in the Parenting Membership.  Enrollment is open between May 5th-15th.

209: How to get on the same page as your parenting partner

Do you ever wish that you know the appropriate logical consequence to give your child (aged 1-10) for each different kind of misbehavior you see?

When your toddler empties the water out of the dog's bowl for the 10th time today...
When your preschooler climbs on the table three minutes after you told them to get off it...
When your kindergartener refuses to come to the table for dinner (and you know they're going to announce they're hungry in an hour)...
When your elementary schooler won't get dressed in the morning (even though you know they are FULLY CAPABLE of doing it themselves) without 300 increasingly nagging, pleading, and begging 'reminders' from you...

Wouldn't it be amazing to have the PERFECT logical consequence ready that would be appropriately proportioned to the misbehavior, and also just get your child to do the thing you're asking without you having to ask again???

But here's the thing about logical consequences: they essentially say to our child: "I don't care why you don't want to do this thing; I just want you to do it."

If we saw one adult saying that to another adult, we would call it 'emotional abuse.'

So why do we do it to our children?

Because it seems like we don't have another option to get through the day.

We actually have many other options; it's just hard to remember them all and which one to use in which circumstance.

In today's episode, I'll tell you the three main reasons why setting limits is hard (and what to do about each of them).

And if you want my complete framework for how to navigate misbehavior, with ALL FIVE of the tools we can use and guidelines on exactly WHEN to use each of them, sign up for the FREE Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits workshop.

We get started on the content on Wednesday April 24 but when you join early you can come and ask me your questions in our private community, get extra Live sessions, and extra chances to win cool prizes.

099: How to parent highly sensitive children

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