MegAnne is NOT a parent, but...

In today's episode, we're talking about letting go of the dream of perfection for both you and your child. This topic comes with a trigger warning as we'll be discussing perfectionism and white supremacy culture.

I find it interesting that I created this outline a year ago without fully knowing where this episode would go. But now, it feels perfectly aligned with this week's theme—white supremacy culture and perfectionism. 

As you listen, I invite you to take care of yourself. Get cozy, grab a notebook, and let's dive in.

I'll start with a bold statement: Perfection is a myth. It's a fantasy that can keep us going, but it can also become a major demotivator. Perfection is an illusion sold to us, making companies millions—if not billions—of dollars. It highlights our insecurities, creates gaps, puts pressure on us, and triggers our nervous system into a threat response. It can be deeply destabilizing, making us vulnerable to exploitation. 

Today, we'll explore the conversation around perfectionism, letting go of the "dream child" and "dream parent," and grieving the loss of that dream.

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Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

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In today's episode, we'll be talking about how you can ensure you're doing your P.A.R.T. This is an acronym by Seigel that I love, and I'm excited to dive into it today. We'll explore how doing your P.A.R.T. helps build trust and safety within your family. So, I invite you to get cozy, grab your notebook, and let's dig in!

I'm thrilled to share this episode with you because it ties together everything we've been building throughout the season. It's like a pretty little bow wrapping up all the momentum we've created.

Let's start by grounding ourselves. Positive parenting is a philosophy that helps you as a parent become more insightful and critical of the methods you're using. That's what today's episode is all about—connecting all the dots we've been laying down all season. Positive parenting values the parent-child relationship, and today, we'll explore how doing your P.A.R.T. plays a crucial role in that.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

In today’s episode, we'll be talking about what our nervous system does, and let me tell you, when it comes to behavior management and positive parenting, it plays a huge role. So, get cozy, grab your notebook, and let’s dig in!

Alright, friends, we’re going to start by revisiting the concept of temperament, which we've discussed in the past few episodes. Temperament is a crucial factor that influences our attachment and how we interact with the world. As a reminder, temperament affects how we take in information, process our environment, regulate ourselves, and ultimately, how we behave.

In the last episode, we explored the nine traits of temperament and learned that they generally fall into three categories: easy temperament, slow-to-warm temperament, and difficult temperament. It’s easy to get caught up in labeling a child as “difficult” simply because we find them challenging. However, when we talk about temperament, it’s important to focus on the child’s experience, not ours. For example, a child with an easy temperament finds it easier to regulate themselves—they’re flexible, calm quickly, and are generally happy and easygoing. On the other hand, a child who is moody, explosive, or has big outbursts is struggling to regulate themselves. Their behavior is a reflection of how difficult it is for them to feel safe and calm in their environment.

Remember, a child who is having a difficult time isn’t giving you a difficult time—they are experiencing difficulty themselves. This perspective is a major paradigm shift when we think about behavior management. It helps us see that difficult behaviors are often signs that a child is struggling to regulate their nervous system, and temperament plays a huge role in this. It’s important to recognize that temperament is an innate part of who they are—something they didn’t choose but were born with.

 🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

Today's Episode: The Nine Traits of Temperament

Why This Episode Matters: If there’s one episode you shouldn’t miss, this is it! We’ll explore the nine traits of temperament through an assessment from the book Raising Your Spirited Child. Get cozy, grab your notebook, and let's dig in.

Key Question: What Is a Good Kid?

We’ll start by examining this question, as posed in Raising Respectful Kids. It’s common to hear about the "fantasy" good kid—great listeners who follow instructions perfectly, enjoy the activities parents choose, do homework on time, and are always pleasant.

Common Images of a Good Kid:

-Total control of emotions  -Always happy  -Uses words to communicate -Makes good choices -Well-behaved in public -Shares and is nice (for younger kids)

Reality Check: If this has been your vision, you’re not alone. But remember, there’s no such thing as a bad kid or a bad parent. In positive parenting, behavior is communication, and we focus on relationships rather than compliance.

Tune in to get a more realistic and compassionate view of what it means to raise a "good kid."

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝 Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

We're going to start today is by grounding back into the three factors that influence our attachment.

As a reminder, attachment means the quality of the bond between parent and child, and those early attachment styles and bonds will influence all of their future relationships.

Wow, that's a lot, but it's also such an opportunity because we can always learn, grow, and take intentional moves to do better.

The three factors that influence attachment are:

The quality of caregiving: As a parent coach, I help parents like you improve the quality of caregiving, including the tools, methods, and approaches you take while interacting with your child.

The emotional climate of the home: This means the tone and emotional temperature. Have you ever walked into a room and thought, "Wow, this is tense and cold," or into another and thought, "Oh my gosh, I love coming here because it's always so warm and inviting"? You’re tuning into the emotional climate of that space.

Temperament: This is a big piece of the puzzle that often goes overlooked. Today, I hope that by the end of this episode, you have a clear understanding of what temperament is, its impact, and how you can support your child's temperament.

They say, the powers that be, say that a child is just difficult. Perhaps you've heard this about your child or someone else's, or maybe you've even said it yourself.

What I say to that is: Are they being difficult, or are you having a difficult time with them? As a teacher, I encountered children who gave me a harder time than others.

Initially, I thought I needed to change them until I realized they were showing me opportunities for growth and expansion.

The biggest "aha" moment for me in this work is understanding that behavior is communication. When a child exhibits difficult behavior, it signals they are having a hard time.

As soon as I stopped labeling them as difficult and instead identified that their difficult behavior was a signal of their struggle, many things shifted for me.

Difficult behavior indicates difficulty in regulating emotions and energy.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

This episode dives into 3 factors impacting the attachment bond.

Grab your notebook and get comfortable, because we're getting deep!

Picking up where we left off, let's explore what affects attachment.

We discussed attachment qualities and how they build trust (or not) through repeated cycles of the child expressing needs, the caregiver interpreting them, and responding appropriately. We saw how a caregiver's actions can build or break trust, all within the framework of Attachment Theory (different from attachment parenting, as discussed in Season 5, Episode 27).

The core of Attachment Theory is the child feeling safe to explore and return.

Does the child feel safe landing with and launching from their caregiver during stressful times? Can they bring their distress to the caregiver, find comfort, and feel secure to venture out again?

Sometimes, we might think there's a "right" way to practice attachment.

It doesn't have to be perfect! Mistakes are part of the process. What matters is the quality of the "repair work" – how both caregiver and child address the mistake and rebuild the connection. This repair process strengthens the attachment and allows everyone to feel safe making mistakes.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach. Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

Welcome to the final episode of our 8-part series on Attachment Theory, where we learn that a good relationship is a secure relationship. 

This episode is a recap of everything we've learned so far. Grab your notebook and get cozy – we're about to dive in!

A big thank you to the listeners who followed along!

If you've been listening to the entire series, I want to acknowledge the great work you've been doing. You've explored important concepts, made big shifts, and accepted some challenging invitations.

Today's episode is all about why Attachment Theory matters.

We'll discuss why understanding attachment and how we contribute to its quality is so important.

As a reminder, Attachment Theory focuses on the parent-child bond.

Throughout this series, we've specifically looked at things from the child's perspective. This helps us understand the impact of our actions rather than just focusing on our intentions.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach. Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

We are on the final episode of this eight-episode stretch, examining the difference between showing up in trusting ways and showing up in non-trusting ways through the aspects of feeling safe, feeling seen, feeling secure, and feeling soothed.

We've been exploring these foundational steps to building a healthy relationship. When discussing attachment and attachment qualities, we're talking about the dance between rupture and repair in a strong relationship—making a mistake and working to repair it, messing up and fixing it, experiencing stress, and then finding soothing. It's this constant ebb and flow of life that influences the quality of attachment.

Attachment theory focuses on the quality of that attachment bond, which affects your child's development mentally, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. The strength of that relationship is the main predictor of how well your child will do both in school and in life. How they learn to find security within themselves and their primary caregiver, often you, will extend to how they handle stresses in other areas of their lives—friendships, school, and future romantic relationships. This primary connection to you, their caregiver, is crucial.

The child looks to you as a safe base, and their sense of safety is determined by the quality of attachment to their primary caregiver. This means how safe they feel to leave you and come back to you, repeatedly.

The bonding perspective of the child is different from your perspective as a parent. You see things through the adult, caretaker's perspective, while your child sees things from their own viewpoint. In this eight-episode series and in my work, I invite caregivers to see things from the child's perspective. We look at what safety, being seen, feeling soothed, and having a sense of security means from the child's point of view.

 I always emphasize that a good foundation of this understanding is worth the investment.

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In today's episode, we will be chatting about the qualities and characteristics of a secure parent. Whether this is your first time listening or you've been on this entire journey with me, we are nearing the end of our eight-episode stretch exploring the four qualities of secure attachment. So, I invite you to get cozy, grab your notebook, and let's dig in.

Starting at the top, it's important to remember that strong relationships, especially between parent and child, involve a dance between rupture and repair, mistakes and reconnection, mess, and clean-up. The quality of this dance influences our attachment bond. Attachment, rooted in attachment theory, affects your child's mental, physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development. The strength of your relationship with your child predicts how well both of you will do in school and in life. It's foundational work, the unglamorous process of building a secure base.

When I mention a secure base, I mean a safe place for the child to land and launch from. It's crucial to note that your perception of bonding with your child differs from how your child perceives it. In this eight-episode breakdown, we're shifting from the parent's perspective to the child's. We're focusing on how the child feels safe, seen, soothed, and ultimately secure with you. Building these foundations is a worthwhile investment.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/

We have made it to episode six of this episode stretch, talking through attachment theories and the quality of attachments, and how parents can show up to create a sense of trust or distrust.

We've been going through, just talking about the foundations of what creates that connection in a relationship, and we are coming off of the foundation of attachment theory, where it states that strong relationships are that dance of rupture and repair.

There are benign ruptures, meaning like little blips in the relationships, and then there are big ruptures that require major repair. The quality of that dance, how well we are sensitive to the ruptures and quick to repair, and the quality of the repair made is what signals the quality of the attachment bond.

So we're talking about attachment theory.

Attachment theory is the quality of that attachment bond that affects the way that your child develops mentally, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. The strength of this relationship is the main predictor of how well your child will do both in school and in life, meaning how well you are becoming aware of the ruptures and doing the repair work with them is empowering their toolbox so that they take those skills into their future relationships.

In all of this, the child is looking for a safe base, somewhere to land and somewhere to launch from that creates a sense of safety in them. It's important to know that your sense of bonding, your sense of safety with your child, is different than their sense of safety with you.

For example, I work with parents, and sometimes they come to me and say, "No, no, no, I'm not punishing them," but they act this way. And when we flip it and I say, "Well, do you think that they are feeling punished?" then they start to say, "Oh yes, they are."

It's when we shift out of our own perspective and shift into a child's perspective, we can start to see like, "Oh, the ways that I'm showing up is creating this threat response in them." And as soon as we can become aware of that, then we can start to step into our own empowerment of growth and change.

🐝 Welcome to Be Kind Coaching! 🐝

Transform Challenges into Opportunities with a Parent Coach.

Effective parenting doesn't just happen. It's intentional.

🌐 https://www.bekindcoaching.com/