The Parent Practice Podcast

If you're a parent you will almost certainly have come across plenty of advice about feeding children, some of it from professionals and some from well-meaning family and friends. Some of that advice will probably have been conflicting and your best efforts to follow it may have left you feeling confused, frustrated and guilty. There is no more primal urge than for a parent to want to nourish their child and when that is challenging we can feel anxious and inadequate. Sometimes feelings of hopelessness can lead to us shouting at and nagging our kids with the result that mealtimes can become fraught and tense.

If that is you Verena Dickson has plenty of tips to help change all that. She is a registered nutritionist specialising in child nutrition and is the founder of Kinder Nutrition. Her aim is to dispel some common myths and replace some misplaced practices relating to children's eating habits so that children develop a natural, relaxed relationship with food.

Verena has a very gentle respectful approach to feeding children that moves away from a coercive model to one based on enthusing children about food and trusting them to take in the nutrients their bodies need. Some of these ideas are very different to how most adults were raised.

Listen to this episode with Verena if you want to learn:

• Why it works to shift away from WHAT kids eat to establishing more positive feeding and behaviour based strategies, to raise curious, mindful eaters. In other words, we need to relax on WHAT foods we provide, while focusing on HOW we feed the family
• Why bribing doesn't work and in fact any form of pressure, including threats or even over the top praise, backfires
• Why we shouldn't try to hide vegetables in food
• How it works better to just present healthy foods and let the children decide what and how much to eat
• How it matters that the adults be seen to be enjoying the food themselves
• About the difference in tastes as children mature, particularly bitterness
• About presenting food in many different ways, trying different sauces or different textures, not to disguise the food but to make it taste good
• How difficult it is for parents to move away from the approach to food we were brought up with and how learned behaviours can overwrite our bodies' natural cues
• About the Division of Responsibility in Feeding and how it works to solve many different kinds of eating challenges
• Why it matters to give children independence about food and make them responsible for what they eat so that they listen to their own fullness and hunger cues
• About the research that shows that children are in fact very good at self-regulating
• How it helps to take longer view of what your child is eating, not just looking at what they eat in one meal
• How to avoid power struggles at the dinner table
• How having regular family meals can make all the difference both to children's eating habits but for social skills and even academic outcomes
• How getting older kids involved in the planning and cooking process can help them become more interested in food
• How to cultivate a kinder attitude towards bodies, whether our own or anyone else's, especially in the language we use around food and bodies, focusing more on positive qualities and the body's functionality than appearance and exposing children to diverse ideas about body types

And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It's important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some Surprising Uplifting Moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Verena shares what she has appreciated personally about this time in lockdown and the fact that the families she works with have all appreciated having more time to eat together. Verena also shares her top tip for raising happy, confident eaters.

Links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_jmIg4FIDR/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Kinder-Nutrition-110986073685384/

You tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwhcGN06vdUAqyUJaD0gZNg

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kinder-nutrition/

Are you over the whole Coronavirus thing? We know you will be experiencing all sorts of feelings and one of them may be guilt. Your perfectionist instincts may be riding you to aspire to unrealistic expectations of perfect at home learning conditions, enriching activities for your children and perfectly baked sourdough bread while carrying out your own job in unfamiliar surroundings with less than perfect tools and resources with a partner who's not usually under your feet. Do you feel guilty about losing your cool or nagging your kids or your other half? Do you feel guilty about how much time you can give to your children? Or how much time you're allocating to your work? Do you feel guilty for complaining when you're still well and you haven't lost your job?

Caroline Ferguson is the perfect person to be speaking to in these conditions. She is a mindset trainer, speaker, coach and cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist who works with people to bring out their potential. She's worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and executives, teaching them how to embrace their own promise and ditch self-sabotage habits like thinking small, procrastination and imposter syndrome. Melissa credits her with getting rid of the negative self-beliefs she needed to write her book 'Real Parenting for Real Kids'. It had been gestating for six years but Caroline helped Melissa have the mindset shift which helped it to come into the world! Caroline also delivers mindset talks and training to organisations, helping employees create a growth mindset and build the number one life skill of self-awareness

Listen to this episode with Caroline if you want to learn:

• Why some people beat themselves up and others don't when faced with similar circumstances; tip: how it's not the circumstances themselves but the beliefs we have about them that cause the feelings we have
• How unconscious beliefs like 'I shouldn't have to disrupt my child's life…' or 'I should be able to keep my child safe…' or 'I should be able to attend to my child's need for attention…' are demands of ourselves or of the world which cause us to think 'or else….I am a bad person/not good enough' which cause feelings of guilt or shame or anxiety or anger or hurt
• How essential it is to challenge those beliefs by really tuning into them and becoming self-aware when we are out of equilibrium
• How many thousands of thoughts a day we have!
• How while we can't change the circumstances we can change the way we think about them
• Why relentless positivity is not necessarily the best course. (What a breath of fresh air this pragmatic approach is!)
• How to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves that are causing us discomfort
• A structure that helps that rewriting of the 'shoulds' which helps dial down the emotion or change it to a feeling that you can manage
• How the big difficult emotions prevent us from accessing our adult pre-frontal cortex and our creative solution-focused brain and we get stuck in the feelings and once we deal with our feelings we are able to access our skills and resourcefulness (See our workshop on How to be a Calmer Parent)
• How setting boundaries and safeguards for ourselves will be part of the solution and encourage children to discuss their own boundaries
• About the Three Empowering Questions to ask when you feel stuck in challenging feelings to put you back in charge
  • What am I demanding that is causing me to feel like this?
  • What would be a good outcome in this situation?
  • What can I do to make that good outcome happen?

And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It's important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some Surprising Uplifting Moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Caroline shares her own story about finding pleasure in adversity.

Links:

Facebook: Caroline Ferguson Mindset Trainer

Website: https://carolineferguson.com/ Do have a look at Caroline's website for a self-awareness tool called PACES.

https://Linkedin.com/in/CarolineFergusonMindsetTrainer

Are you anxious about how your children are going to emerge from this period of lockdown? Do you worry about gaps in their education? Are you concerned about the loss of social interaction, especially for young children just learning social skills and teenagers who are so dependent on peer interaction? Or do you see this as a period of difficulty from which your children can emerge stronger and more resilient? Resilience is that quality which enables us to weather the difficulties that life throws at us and to learn from them. But how do we encourage resilience in children?

Sue Atkins is a parenting coach and author with a background in teaching and she is a mum of two adult children. She has many ideas about how to encourage resilience in children.

Her books for children are:

• The Can-Do Kids Journal
• Anti-viral and the Virus (with Tina Stubbs)

Listen to this episode with Sue if you want to learn:

• How to cultivate happiness in families by what the attitudes that parents model
• Why it is important to be authentic with children about how everyone is feeling
• How self-care helps combat anxiety in these stressful times
• Tips for dealing with worries
• How to turn 'what if' questions into 'How can I' questions
• How accepting uncertainty and calling our current situation 'different' rather than 'difficult' helps
• Tips for building up resilience in kids, including the perhaps surprising role of building fun into family life
• About the role of building competencies to create confidence
• How to create mindsets or attitudes around tenacity and lifelong learning, especially from mistakes
• How praise needs to be descriptive if it's going to have any impact on building mindsets and encouraging good qualities for life
• How parents can give the gift of self-esteem
• About The Crucial C's from Betty-Lou Bettner; connection, competency, counting and courage
• How to use the current pandemic situation to push a pause button on school work and focus much more on real life learning and each child's own individual learning needs

And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It's important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some Surprising Uplifting Moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Sue shares what she has noticed about nature and a more natural pace to life. Sue also shares her top tip for raising happy healthy resilient kids.

Links:

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SueAtkinsTheParentingExpert/

Twitter https://twitter.com/SueAtkins

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sueatkins18/feed/

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.thesueatkins.com

Do you feel as if you're going insane at the moment? Being in lockdown with kids has all sorts of challenges associated with it but one of the particular difficulties is managing screens when children need them for school work and want to be on them for leisure and social contact as well. Do we have to throw out the window the previous guidelines we had about moderating screen usage?

Victoria Markou is a parenting coach and a mum of two teenage boys who is facing these issues day to day and is making it work for her family.

Listen to this episode with Victoria if you want to learn:

• How you may have to a different approach to your children according to age but also because of their different temperaments and interests
• How trust can be the basis of screen-regulation when there is real connection between parent and child - how self-regulation begins but does not end with parental regulation
• What happens when parents try to control and coerce
• How cooling down routines around screen-withdrawal and getting to sleep matter as much for teens as for younger children
• That kids also need rules to help them regulate themselves when they can't yet manage the impulse to be on screens
• That it's ok to change your rules as circumstances require
• That hard and fast rules will never work unless parents understand their kids' motivations and needs
• How boundaries can be firm while empathising with the kids for wanting more
• About the importance of what parents are modelling around screen use
• How families can have sharing experiences through technology
• How we need to recognise that social contact is only really possible through tech at the moment
• The importance of getting involved and understanding what screen interests your children have and how it can be a way to engage in your child's world rather than being dismissive of their interests
• How you can engage as a family offline. Top tip: get a dog! You might like to try '2 o'clock docs' as well
• How family solutions are usually found by trial and error and there is no one correct answer
• How to get your kids involved in clearing out spaces and cooking
• That when there is trust present you don't need to spy on your kids but they are ok with some supervision
• How important it is to see things from your child's perspective around screens
• Why it matters to explain your values to your children and get their input on what the rules should look like
• How you can use family meetings to help work out issues and find solutions in the family and along the way learn skills like negotiating and compromise

And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It's important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some surprising uplifting moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Victoria shares how much she has enjoyed the lack of rushing about since lockdown and cherished the simple things like Friday family movie night. She's also found that her very different sons have had to work out stuff between them because there is nowhere else to go!

Links:

Facebook www.facebook.com/victoria.markou.9

Twitter @VictoriaMarkou

Linkedin.com/in/Victoria-markou

Email: [email protected]

Are you are in that group of people hit really hard by the current pandemic-enforced lockdown - a parent stuck at home with young children, trying to continue their education or keep them occupied while working yourself? If you're doing that on your own that brings its own stresses of course but if you're trying to do it with your partner you may be finding some stresses in the couple relationship too. Anxiety and overwhelm have a way of highlighting fault lines. If you're currently holed up with your partner, you may start to notice things a little bit more. Everything is amplified in close quarters—their quirks and habits, the things they do that are helpful, and the things they do that might drive you a little batty.

My guests today are two parents who are currently working from home with small children. Alain Desmier is an entrepreneur and founder of Contact State, a technology platform focused on data privacy. He's spent the last ten years building internet businesses whilst also working flexibly and remotely so he has some ideas about how to make working from home work, albeit not previously with kids in tow! Hilary Fyles is one of the office managers at The Parent Practice, so an essential worker! Her background is in the literature sector but she's not getting much time for reading books right now!

Listen to this episode with Alain and Hilary if you want to learn:

• How to use schedules to divide up work and childcare and home schooling, which reflect your individual priorities
• How it might help to talk with your partner, and the children, about how life is different now and how you're going to approach it and work out your priorities together
• About talking to children about the fact that adults may be a bit stressed right now and apologising when we lose it but also setting up time for the adults to keep stress-reducing activities as part of the routine and modelling for the kids how we take care of our emotional wellbeing
• About the need to talk to children about adult feelings as well as their own
• How to separate work and home life even if you're transitioning between the two throughout the weekday and how keeping the weekend for fun time is more important than ever
• About what role non-verbal signals can have in separating out the different parts of life
• How mealtimes can be a real focus for family life and preparing meals and eating together more than previously can be a real bonus for this period, with the added improvement to digestion and sleep!
• How to involve your children in contributing to the management of the household
• How to look for opportunities to be kind to your partner during this time, show interest, find areas of agreement, express affection and appreciation. Descriptive praise will be one way of doing this. Making time for the other's interests will be another
• Ideas for building a united front in this time of stress including having conversations with your partner about shared values.

And as usual we finish with our SUMs. It's important, now more than ever, to not let anxiety drown out joy. To help us be grateful for the small things in life we are celebrating some surprising uplifting moments, some good things coming out of this crisis. Hilary and Alain share some lovely stories with us, lovely family moments and re-evaluations of what's important as a family.

Links:

Alain

https://www.alaindesmier.com/

linkedin.com/in/alaindesmier

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: alaindesmier

Hilary

[email protected]

One of the many changes parents have had to adapt to in this era of rapid change is having kids home from school 24/7 and having to ensure that their education continues in some form. You probably didn't sign up for home-schooling and may be breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of the Easter holidays, even if they'll be holidays like you've never had before. But even when term resumes the children will still be at home so it's as well to get our heads around this educating at home thing.

Home-schooling is a considered decision that parents make after much thought. They will have planned for it and set up the home environment and the support structures necessary for it. They will have got in resources to work with at home and will have set up classes or activities outside the home as well. That is not what we are doing right now.

At the time of recording in the UK schools are closed except for children of key workers. So parents are home with their kids, many of them trying to work from home as well and keep their children occupied and continue their education.

Many of us are not feeling equal to the task.

So we've invited Sam O'Neill to be our guest on The Parent Practice podcast to help sort out some issues around this. Sam is a parenting coach, one of The Parent Practice's licensees, and the founder of Assured Parenting. Her background is in teaching with 20 years of experience in classroom teaching and in pastoral care. She is also a mum of 2 young children.

Listen to this episode with Sam O'Neill if you want to learn:

• How this is an opportunity to engage children with learning again in a different way and to re-enthuse them where they may have lost a bit of spark for learning
• How to utilise your specialist knowledge of your child and their interests and enthusiasms to tailor their learning, especially doing project work
• How to create a bonding experience out of this time
• How to encourage them to work independently, instead of hovering over them and nagging!
• How to encourage kids to improve–using targets or wishes rather than criticism
• What our role is as parents (especially around reviewing work) and how this is different from the teacher's role
• About the essential role of praise and the ratio of positive feedback to developmental feedback
• About the importance of routine and structure and mental stimulation
• How to moderate your expectations of yourself and your child, including what are reasonable stretches of time in which to work
• How you can build life-long skills and a love of learning in your children by taking emphasis off content
• Skills for encouraging kids to problem-solve and develop strategies for getting themselves back on task or engaged
• Some strategies for motivating children about their learning tasks
• Why schedules matter
• How chat throughs can help to set up for success (see the Setting up for Success module on our positive parenting courses) with different tasks
• How descriptive praise (see the Descriptive Praise module on our positive parenting courses) and acknowledging feelings (see the Emotion Coaching module on our positive parenting courses) and contributing to household chores can really help with motivation self-esteem
• And finally how to get kids to do chores (or 'family contributions') with you and feel connected to you at the same time, leaving them ready to play independently

Listen out for Sam's Surprising Uplifting Moments around doing and rushing less.

Sam has made available to listeners a free resource on responding to children's questions. Just click here.

If you want to get in touch with her the relevant links are below.

Links:

https://www.assuredparenting.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/assuredparentuk/

https://www.instagram.com/assuredparentinguk/

https://twitter.com/assuredparent

Did you know that on average 3-7 year old siblings argue 3 1/2 times an hour, spending about 10 minutes every hour arguing? Given that we've all been cooped up together for a while now it may feel even more than that! With different ages and different temperaments all vying for parental attention, not to mention time on scarce devices it might be getting a little tense at home. It may feel like a pressure cooker in your house as the kids start fighting over who's going to be in charge of the remote control , who gets the laptop first and whose turn it is to take out the rubbish -no surprise if your buttons are getting pushed!

We are all getting triggered by less these days and feeling pretty grumpy sometimes as so much feels beyond our control. And that's just the adults. Kids are still learning how to get their needs met without attacking each other. It can be really upsetting if the kids are constantly arguing, bickering, calling each other names and fighting over possessions and even more so now when you are juggling working from home and sharing confined space 24/7. But the good news is that there are some things you can do to promote sibling friendliness and effective ways of teaching kids when things go wrong that don't involve taking sides and punishing.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

• Why siblings fight and how stress can impact on sibling relationships
• How holding an Extraordinary Family Meeting can help family members to voice their feelings and identify trigger points for each of them (click here for a free download of an invitation to an EFM)
• How building quiet time into schedules and having quiet zones can help siblings have some space away from each other
• Why it is important to keep contact with friends and wider family using technology and how to make such interactions work for younger children
• What role rules may have in passing on your values about family interactions and avoiding conflicts over possessions and shared resources
• How adult modelling around respectful communication and dealing with conflict is so crucial. No pressure then!
• How acknowledging a child's feelings can help avoid battles with siblings in the first place and if they do come into conflict help the children to resolve things themselves
• How appreciating each child uniquely is so important for building self-esteem (and when children feel good about themselves fighting is less likely) and making them aware of how much you value them (so they don't think you love their sibling more than them). Some examples of descriptive praise:
  • Thank you so much Hannah for taking Charlotte out in the garden to let me get on with my work. That was so helpful.
  • I see you've put the jigsaw puzzle away really carefully Tom. There's nothing worse than spending hours on a puzzle and then finding there's one piece missing. You were really careful to put each little piece back in the box.
  • I know Harvey's not really big enough to join in your dinosaur game Alex but it was kind of you to let him hold the tyrannosaurus for a bit. He loved it when you roared at him.
• About the importance of Special Time with each child alone. Use this time to connect with them and give them undivided attention
• How making time with all the children together doing an activity they all enjoy can be used to help them see the fun in having siblings and to teach them important social skills, such as how to work through differences.
• What to do if kids do fight. Top tip: don't punish them.

In this time of difficulty we feel we need to celebrate the surprising uplifting moments (SUMs) we come across so we highlight some positive things that have happened lately. We recommend you do this with your children. Maybe help them to see some SUMs about their siblings!

Please let us know what topics you'd like us to cover on this podcast by emailing [email protected]

If this is the right time for you to access positive parenting support do take advantage of our special offer on our Positive Parenting Academy which is available until April 30th. For the next 12 weeks we are offering weekly live support and ongoing FB support in a private group-so if you are looking for a likeminded community, support from both of us and life time access to our accredited 10 module parenting course then check it out. The link is below.

And if you're enjoying our podcast please rate and review it wherever you access it.

Links:

Our blogs

Positive Parenting Academy

Every single one of us is dealing with a really challenging situation. Even if we stay well we will be impacted. At one end of the scale we may not be able to get toilet paper and at the other end we may have to close a business and lay off loyal staff. We may have to work from home and look after children at the same time. We may have to juggle care of elderly relatives as well. We may be health workers who are exposed to a much higher degree. All of that will bring with it anxieties and disappointments and frustrations, and perhaps feeling not up to the task.

If we're going to find creative solutions to our problems we need to first address the feelings. This is what we need to teach our children to do and we have to model it ourselves too. We know that when people try to suppress feelings their emotions are still occupying space in the brain. Research shows that naming the feelings helps it to dissipate. We also know that our brain needs to satisfy basic feelings of safety before it can even move on to higher order emotions, let alone rational thought and our sense of security is threatened at the moment.

Listen to this episode if you want to learn:

• How to help children deal with feelings
• How to manage our own feelings of disappointment, frustration, anxiety, overwhelm and guilt and lack of agency, starting with acknowledgement of those emotions
• Why it doesn't work to deny, dismiss, minimise or suppress feelings
• About the thinking/feeling eggs which are a visual metaphor for how the brain can be taken over by emotions, not leaving much space for rationality, creativity and problem-solving
• About the role that temperament can play in your child's propensity for anxiety
• How to use an Extraordinary Family Meeting to air feelings and discuss how to deal with them
• About stress-busting tools that your family can use
• Some tips for managing learning at home, including taking a reality check about what's possible in these times of rapid change

In this time of difficulty we need to celebrate the surprising uplifting moments (SUMs) we come across so we need to point out to our children things like the improvement in the environment including the return of wildlife to the canals of Venice and the fact that some countries are emerging from this crisis and people are starting to get better.

Please let us know what topics you'd like us to cover on this podcast by emailing [email protected]

If this is the right time for you to access positive parenting support do take advantage of our special offer on our Positive Parenting Academy which is available until April 30th. For the next 12 weeks we are offering weekly live support and ongoing FB support in a private group-so if you are looking for a likeminded community, support from both of us and life time access to our accredited 10 module parenting course then check it out. The link is below.

Links:

Our blogs

Positive Parenting Academy

Everyone in the world right now knows all too well that we are in the grips of an unprecedented pandemic. Covid19 has spread rapidly across the globe and hundreds of thousands have been infected, with several thousand dying. There is massive uncertainty about what this means for us, our families, our work and our communities. Change is taking place almost on an hourly basis and many of us are checking news reports on the hour. The situation may be leaving you feeling really quite anxious and overwhelmed or you might be relatively calm. I hope it's the latter. You might be wondering how to deal with your child's anxieties or how to field their questions without upsetting them. You might also be thinking about the prospect of being cooped up under one roof for a period (we don't know how long) if you're forced to self-isolate for medical reasons or if schools, nurseries and daycare centres close.

This week's episode is with Elaine and I, your hosts of this podcast. If you're a regular to our podcast you'll be used to hearing us interviewing our guests separately but today we've come together (online) to discuss the only topic of conversation at the moment –Coronavirus or Covid19.

Listen to this episode with Elaine and I if you want to learn:

• How anxiety affects us all differently and why some of us are more predisposed to worry than others
• How adult anxiety can be passed on to children
• About the second chicken theory
• What we can do to control our own levels of anxiety
• How to talk to kids about what's going on without exacerbating anxiety
• How to help children feel they have some control against the virus. Demonstrate how washing your hands protects against the virus. See the pepper and soap video here
• How books can aid us in our explanations. https://littlecoronaking.com/
• Why it is so important not to tell children not to worry or to dismiss their concerns
• How to encourage children to be understanding and to challenge any racism associated with the virus
• How to regard it as an opportunity to spend positive time with your children if you are forced into self-isolation or your children's school closes
• How to set up for success and avoid screen over-dosing while confined at home even if the usual rules no longer apply (Our module Setting up for Success in our courses deals with this)
• How schedules and planning can help
• About activities that will save your sanity and bring you all together. Top tip: you don't have to think of everything yourself –get your children to compile a list!
• How you can encourage your children to help in your community
• How using Descriptive Praise and Emotion Coaching can help get through periods of frustration

Do keep an eye on our Facebook and Instagram and the blog on our website to see how we can help you manage this difficult time.

Stay well and keep washing your hands!

Links

To get in touch with us:

www.theparentpractice.com

the parent practice on facebook and on instagram

Do you ever feel as if everyone else is getting life right but you are failing at it? Have you had the feeling that you are not enough just as you are? Do you find yourself putting off doing things until the conditions are right or you feel more qualified or resourced? Are you afraid that someday you'll be found out as the imposter you are? Do you suffer from parental guilt? Are you exhausted? You may be a perfectionist.

This week's episode is with Zoe Blaskey. Zoe is the founder of Motherkind, a self-empowerment platform for modern mums. Through Motherkind Zoe coaches mothers of all backgrounds from Global CEO's to stay at home mums on how to navigate the huge challenges of modern motherhood. Zoe also hosts The Motherkind Podcast and speaks every week to leading experts on a range of topics from self-care, mental health, to career, nutrition and parenting.

Zoe shares with us how she got into the work she does now, having had a breakdown at the age of 23 and then found healing. She describes how the birth of her daughter was a catalyst for her to make changes in her life. She had been a people-pleaser and a perfectionist and was living to satisfy other people's goals for her and feeling like she was never quite getting there despite achieving so many outward measures of success. She developed several addictive behaviours to help her numb and distract herself from her inner pain. But her healing process has enabled her to help many others.

Listen to this episode with Zoe if you want to learn:

• About the difference between nurturing the inner self vs looking good on the outside
• How important it is for parents to develop their own emotional intelligence so that their children can do the same and how important it is for us to 're-parent' ourselves
• The signs of perfectionism –the seeking of qualifications and prestige jobs, trying to get everyone to love you, or maybe striving to look immaculate, saying 'yes, but….' about your achievements and procrastinating or not finishing projects because they'll never be good enough
• How perfectionism is different from doing your best
• How perfectionism can suck the joy out of parenting and lead to criticising your own child and passing on the perfectionism burden to that child
• When trusting your instincts as a parent what the difference is between defaulting to learned parenting behaviours and parenting from a place of awareness
• How having a strong inner critic gets in the way of building our children's sense of self-worth, resilience and joy
• How parental guilt is unreasonable as it focuses on the wrong things, the small things, the things we feel we 'should' be doing, not on the things that are out of step with our values
• How to handle things when we (inevitably) get things wrong, including asking our children if there's anything we can do to make amends, so that we can model our humanness and our imperfection, because if we beat ourselves up we are saying I only love myself when I get things right and they can accept their own imperfection
• How to avoid putting on the mask of perfectionism to hide not being good enough
• To be willing to show our messiness so that our children can accept their own feelings and the complexity of the world
• How to hold your own feelings and accept your child's feelings rather than distract your child from them
• How to build your self-awareness, which plays such an important role in understanding yourself and in quietening your inner critic
• What role meditation plays in understanding that we are not our thoughts

In our celebration of vulnerability and perfect imperfection Zoe shares with us a Low Parenting Moment of her own. Some of you will recognise this moment and may feel that Zoe handled it perfectly well actually.

And she also shares her top tip for raising children to be confident, happy and successful. It's a really lovely one.

Links

To get in touch with Zoe:

Website:https://www.motherkind.co/

Podcast: https://www.motherkind.co/podcast-1

Blog: https://www.motherkind.co/blog

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motherkind_zoe/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Motherkind.co/

Twitter: @motherkind