Parental Development

Adoption is beautiful, necessary, and important. It's also hard and often misunderstood. This episode talks about some important ways adoption is misunderstood and how to think about it in a way that might be helpful.

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In this episode, we FINALLY talk about attachment, Leah's first love and truly what guides everything she does as a parent and a person.

Attachment is a reciprocal relationship between people and begins to develop in utero and continues throughout childhood, but particularly in the first three years of life.  As we respond to our babies in distress, we start to hardwire their thoughts and beliefs about themselves, other people, and the world around them.

Over time, our responses to our babies change, largely when they become mobile and develop language but remain incredibly important to continue to teach them that they are safe, people will take care of them and protect them, and the world is a safe place in which they can develop, explore, and grow.

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This episode talks about consequences, which usually means punishment and often doesn't address the actual problem or behavior. People use these words interchangeably, but they actually are very different.

Many people only know two ways to change or manage behavior: rewards or punishment.

We believe that misbehavior is a sign of a need or a missing skill or a desire for connection, which means imposed consequences are not effective in actually fixing any of those problems.

Attempting to impose consequences can very often create a power struggle, because we can only "force" our kids to follow through by using fear, threats, or manipulation. It's important to avoid putting yourself in a position where you can't guarantee cooperation or follow through.

If your goal for imposing consequences is truly to TEACH your kids how to do better, think about how you would teach them to read. If you wouldn't do it to teach them academically, then it probably isn't actually going to teach them how to have better behavior.

There seems to be a group of parents who either think kids always know how to do the right thing, so the consequence has to hurt, which doesn't truly take child development into account. Demanding our kids behave in ways they're not developmentally able to and then punishing them for falling short leads to shame, low self-esteem, guilt, and increased bad behavior.

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Last week we talked about what zaps our resources, and this week we build on that conversation talking about how to build resources and think of resourcing as a verb.

In the therapy world, resourcing someone means we're giving people tools to be able to manage the stress and dysregulation that often comes from stres and trauma. Effectively, we want to do the same thing with our kids, giving them tools to know how to handle the stress they experience, even if we don't understand or agree with the stress.

If our kids don't have the resources to cope with certain situations, then it's our job to help them build those.

To help kids build their resources, we can help them recognize when they're overwhelmed or dysregulated. Then, give them some options of things to try to help them feel better. Ask them again how they feel and if the tool they used helped them recover. Once you have something that works, prompt them when they start to get overwhelmed so they can learn to use those tools on their own.

Ways to replenish resources:

• Connection
• Time Alone
• Play
• Sleep
• Physical Touch
• Dancing
• Routine
• Sensory Activities

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We all know when our kids are out of resources and can't handle anything. It can be challenging though to know how to respond in those situations.

Things that zap our resources:
Hunger
Fatigue
Pain
Decision making
Heavy effort
Punishment
Lack of connection

It's ok to lower demands and expectations when you see your kids are out of resources.

When they're out of resources, we want our kids to learn how to:
Recognize what's happening
Communicate that to their people
Regulate their behavior
Replenish their resources

Removing demands when our kids are struggling is one of the best ways to take care of them.

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One of the most important skills our kids can learn is problem solving! Lots of research has shown it leads to better academic performance, self-esteem, and social skills. This episode talks through this information and gives ideas for how to develop this skill in our kids.

Problem solving comes from the prefrontal cortex, which is the last part of our brain to develop. But when we're in a stress response, that part of our brain is not working as well as it can, making problem solving hard. This process happens outside of our awareness and is largely not in our control. 

As adults, we learn different tips and tricks to remind ourselves of different things and make sure our problem solving and decision making are functioning. Our kids don't have those skills...yet. So, we should expect that our kids will forget almost everything and screw up when they're trying every new thing.

The mistake we make as parents is TELLING them how to fix something or do it better, instead of letting them figure out, "What do you want to do differently."

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In this episode from 2022 Leah  does her own work, in front of everyone. Illustrated by an interaction with her 9-year-old,  she works through her own history and how it impacts her responses to her own children.

We often assign very negative intentions, motives, and behaviors to our kids when they are incredibly young, setting the stage to maintain these negative beliefs about them as they age.

The messages we got as children seems to determine the negative attributes we assign our kids.  As a child, if we were taught that we had to listen to adults because they always knew better, and if we didn't we were labeled as disrespectful/sinful/ungrateful, then those are thoughts we will very easily have about our kids when they engage in the same behavior.

Even when I can recognize how unhealthy my childhood messages were for me, those same thoughts are almost automatic when my kids engage in negative behaviors.

Traditional parenting puts all the burden on our kids, focusing soley on how they behave and what they did that was inappropriate. This type of parenting flips that on its head and recognizes that how we respond and react as parents is actually what impacts the nature of those interactions and our relationships with our kids!

When we think we're not able to do this type of parenting because we keep getting triggered and respond in ways we don't want to, we believe: "YOU'RE DOING IT!" The process of being triggered, responding, and assessing how it went and how we want it to go differently, is how you do this and start to make changes!

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This episode talks through how the successes and challenges of our kids say nothing about us as parents, even though many of us feel like it does and let this drive our response and parenting style.

We all have different areas that are important to us as parents and that we focus on and struggle to find our worth as a parent. These might include:
1. Sports
2. Academics 
3. Clothing
4. Behavior

If you find your worth in these areas, then when your kid struggles, you have a higher likelihood of punishing, shaming, or becoming punitive in response to that behavior.

What you celebrate or praise is how you communicate what you value. Even if you aren't giving direct praise or recognition, what are you putting on the refrigerator, how are you celebrating successes, what kinds of success are you telling your family members about? These little differences communicate to our kids that we celebrate or value them more when they perform.

What can you do differently?
1. Tell them how proud they should be of themselves
2. Praise their effort, not the performance
3. Tell them you're proud of them when it's not tied to any performance or success

It is not our kid's job to make us feel like a success as a parent. 

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Is it anger or something else? Parenting anger is so tricky and something we often don't know how to manage or discipline. In this episode we talk through it all.

Kids need to learn ways to manage ALL emotions, not just anger. When we single out anger we lose sight of the overarching skill kids need.

Anger is almost always a secondary emotion  nd there's something under the surface that's causing us to appear and act angry.

When we teach our kids that we always want them to share their thoughts and feelings, that means they'll do it the same way whether we're at home by ourselves or in a crowded room.

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Today we talk about the ongoing reactions and hard behaviors with Leah's 10-year-old son and she is trying to navigate it and make sense of his behavior and their relationship.

Going through challening seasons with our kids can be really challenging, even when we've adopted this new way of parenting and see their behavior through a new, more respectful lens. It's ok to be burnt out and need extra time and support.

Our kids are learning new skills and ways of being and that will always be messy. We can keep helping them learn, "not like that," while showing them a new way.

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