Untitled - January 7, 2026
00:00:00 Speaker: Parenting is hard, parenting is beautiful, and we're all in this together. Hey, it's Denise, and thanks so much for hanging out today on this episode of the Working Moms Redefined podcast. I am excited to welcome my guest today, Todd Sarner. He is the founder of Transformative Parenting. For over twenty years, this fabulous man has helped families create calmer and more connected homes. Sign me up. I'm all. I'm all here for it. What is really cool about Todd's perspective is that he takes on this look at parenting in the real world, how it happens in between work calls and dinner prep and bedtime chaos because parenting never stops. But the cool thing about Todd is that he helps us parents understand really, what is going on beneath the surface when kids act out. And I love the shift in mentality that some traditional mindsets and parents might have of we really need to respond instead of react and dare I say, bring more peace into the conversation and teamwork into the home. Because isn't that what a partnership in parenting is all about? Being a team? But that's hard when emotions are high and Todd is here to share his perspective and of course, help us become even better parents than we already are. Todd, thanks for joining us. I'm very happy to be here, and I, I love starting my day being referred to as fabulous. So I hope I, uh, I can, uh, meet that that, uh, the bar you've set. Well, I just appreciate your tan. Todd is based out of California, and so if you're watching us on YouTube, he has a nice glow about him, and we. It's not lost on us, Todd, that you are taking time to share your wisdom and your expertise with us today. And if I were to ask you the question, hey, listeners, stick with us till the end, what would they learn? Oh, boy. You'll learn that I like to talk about this stuff and that I could go on and on all day, and that it seems like maybe it's going to be fifteen hours because this guy is pretty enthusiastic about about the topic, but I don't know, I, I, I could come up with fifteen things right now off the top of my, my head, but I hope what I convey to parents is you are the answer for your child, and nobody's more important than you. And you can't be perfect and they don't need you to be perfect. They need you to try. They need you to have certain things in mind, and the story you tell yourself about yourself and what parenting is, is everything. And I hope that you come away with, oh, I'm going to try that. Oh, I'm going to try that. I love that and it's valuable. But I hope the main thing you come away with is parenting is more about who you are to your child than what you do, and that if you figure out the who you're supposed to be to your child, if you figure that out, I hope to help you figure that out or feel more confident in that. If you know who you're supposed to be to your child, almost everything else lines up after that. But unfortunately, because of things we weren't taught to do, because of societal pressures and messages that are unfair to parents and and kind of tell you the wrong story. There's a lot of noise and there's a lot of interference, and there's a lot of stuff that fills the vacuum. And what I hope to do in this conversation, and what I hope to do in my work every day, is fill that vacuum with a different story. You know, let's start the story. Holy cow, I am ready. This is fabulous. For twenty years you have been doing this. Explain to me what transformative parenting is. Yeah. You know, you'd think I'd have this quote memorized by now. There's a quote by Marianne Williamson that I swear I wasn't aware that I was aware of. Um, before I named the practice transformative parenting. The idea was, hey, by learning to be who your child needs you to be, by being the parent they need and that you want to be, you can't help but transform yourself. You can't help but grow yourself. And Marianne Williamson had a quote that I'll try not to botch too badly, but it was, um, there is no effort more radical in its potential to transform the world than a transformation of the way we parent our children. And I really, really believe that. I believe we can make the world a better place. Not trying to be too, you know, grand here, but I think one of the most direct things we can do to make the world a better place and to make ourselves more complete people, is to learn how to parent um, in the way that we we want to and how we how we want to be to our kids. So I know repetitive theme here, but that's that's what the idea was. I went into psychology to work with kids. That's all I wanted to do. I wanted to do that from the time I was thirteen years old, and I started mentoring kids in foster homes and, um, adoptive care and in group homes and working with parents as a parent, relief worker and group homes. And I just wanted to work with kids. And part of me still wishes I did. But becoming a father myself about twenty two years ago and being mentored by Doctor Gordon Neufeld, who was just a huge influence in my life personally and professionally, I kind of came to the place that, hey, it's God's work to to work with kids. That's awesome. But I think what I want to do is I don't want to work with kids. I want to work with the parents. Because like what I said, you are the answer for your kids, not me. I'm not supposed to be. I'm supposed to be in the background. Your kids shouldn't even know I exist. And I'm just in the background going, hey, Denise. Hey, I know you're thinking this way. This is actually what's going on with your kid. And if you don't understand what's going on, you can't respond. Well, you know, and and by the way, you're supposed to be kind of more proactive most of the time. Parent isn't. Parenting isn't supposed to be reaction. It's supposed to be proactive. And yeah, that just made sense to me. So one hat I wears, I do the parent coaching, and I run through this process with my clients for about three months. And then on the other hand, a few years into it, somebody on an airplane actually was reading a book by doctor Sue Johnson, one somebody I hold very dear. She passed away a couple of years ago. I was lucky to do some training with her too. And, uh, she does attachment based couples counseling. And a person next to me on a plane was reading her book, and I said, hey, I do attachment based work for parenting. I've heard great things about her, but I'm not a couples counselor. I stopped doing that. And they're like, why do you do parenting work? I'm like, for the kids. I want them to have a better experience in life, and I want them to kind of have what they need to grow and to thrive and to become their own unique potential. And this this woman psychotherapist next to me on the plane said, um, helping their parents with their marriage is kind of a big part of that. And I'm like, oh, duh. I started doing couples counseling only for parents as well, I don't know, sixteen years ago. And, um, so those are the two things I do with my day. Did I answer your question somewhere in there? Beautiful. It's so neat to me because when Jeremy and I were in couples counseling. Our therapist at one point said to us, I am not the best therapist for your kids. You are. And you alluded to that point perfectly. And yet there is still sometimes heavy emotions or chaos or whatever you want to label it in the homes. Why do you think? Because comparison is a trap, and yet we all do it from time to time. Why do you think some families are nicer? The structures there and others? There's a lot of struggle. Yeah, well, there's a lot of pieces to that. I think the biggest pieces are. And, um, as of the time we're recording this, I just did final edits on on my, my book that's coming out. And yes, I just became that person. You did radio, you listen to podcasts and you listen to radio shows. And somebody, as I said in my book, as I said in my book, I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to be honest. I actually just did the final edits, and one of the things I decided to add in at the end is just talking about parenting is not supposed to be a solo effort. It's not supposed to be one person or two people. Yes, you are the most important people in their lives. Yes, like I got so frustrated when there's this debate, Hillary Clinton, whatever you think about her, she came out with a book in the nineties, I think, called It Takes a Village, based on the African proverb. It takes a village to raise a child. And all these people got upset like it doesn't take a village that's communist. It takes parents. No, those are not opposing things. Yes, you are the most important person to your your children. But you're also not supposed to be parenting in isolation. And that's one of the biggest changes that is making parenting more hard. It used to be you had the whole village around you. You had aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas and yes, some of us have some of those things, but like in Europe or South America, if mom and dad are working, great, but mom, grandma moves in and she helps you. Right. And that's one of the things that's made parenting harder. It also is harder just talking about big picture, because we're meant to have a lot of structure and ritual and downtime and things like this. Predictability. How does a kindergarten teacher survive when she has twenty or thirty little five year olds running around? She's a big alpha presence, usually, which doesn't mean she's a jerk or a dictator. It just means she's a big mama bear. You know, she's a mother goose, and she's just going to go this way and the kids are going to follow because they want the right. But she also knows we do this, and then we do that, and then we do this, and then we do that. And I find in America, North America, a lot of Western Europe, a lot of, um, kind of more quote unquote, advanced economies. Right? We we have a lot of chaos in unstructured. And today we do this, and tomorrow we do that, and next week we'll do it differently. And I understand the pressures that working parents have. Believe me, I understand it's not a judgment thing, but we're meant to have a lot of predictability and knowing and structure, because when we have that, kids actually rest in that, they go, oh, it's like my kid in kindergarten. It's soup day. I, I'm not arguing that it's soup day. It's soup day. And on soup day we also do this art. And on soup day we also do this right. But when kids know we do this and we do this and we do this. Oh, and by the way, there's downtime here. So you can decompress and you can have free play. All these things are meant to be part of the culture. So I would say having a village, having a lot of rhythm and structure and things like that, these are all really important things. And then part of what I'm concerned with is, like you said at the beginning, it's so well said. And I, I thought coming into this, I really like your voice in terms of, like your perspective and, and what you bring to the conversations, because I've listened to your show. But I just also have to say I love your voice. Voice. You clearly have some professional experience. I have friends that are in radio and stuff and I'm like, oh, some people you just, I don't I don't have that voice. But parenting has always been hard. It's it's not that there's some mythical time where it was like perfectly easy. And more importantly to me, raising children to grow into their full potential has always been hard because most of us come into it with no experience. Most of us come into it with like not knowing exactly what to do because we weren't shown exactly what to do perfectly, you know? But also, we also are facing some things now that are unlike any time in history where internet, social media, smartphones and now AI are creating this environment. And believe me, I'm not anti those things necessarily. Like I grew up in Silicon Valley, right? I'm fifty five years old. I was born in San Jose when IBM was like the biggest employer in town, and then Apple and Atari were around, and I was on a documentary about kids in America being very smart at computers when I was like twelve or something, which I wasn't that smart, I just my neighbor worked for a computer company in PR, Um, my. But her husband also was like a computer programmer. I love some things about a lot of technology. I use it every day. I think AI has so, so much incredible potential. There's things that I want to do that I'm like, I don't have time for it. And now I'm like, oh, I can create that in fifteen minutes. But understand as a parent, the access to these things and the influence it has, it's not meant to be for all kids at all times. It's meant to be once they have a secure attachment, once they have the ability to think, once they have the ability to figure out their emotions, once they have the ability to be creative and not bored, then technology can be a great tool. But it is definitely, definitely impacting our ability to connect with our kids, to influence our kids, and to lead our kids in the right way. And so all of these things together are creating like this moment in time for parents. So I think knowing the big picture is so important, because otherwise moms out there and dads out there are like, why is this so hard? It wasn't so hard for my parents or my grandparents, or it really looks easy for that person to drop off who looks like they're doing great. Your comparison comparing their front of stage to your backstage. You're comparing like, believe me, I. I've been in the same community, Marin County, California, which is something like the most affluent, successful people in the world working at some of the biggest companies. And I have a lot of clients in Silicon Valley, in San Francisco and all over the world. They all think everybody else is doing it better. They're not, because I've also had their friends as clients. I know we're all having the same challenges, but I think it's important to get the big picture of all that. And I know I'm going on and on and on. But when you understand that, you go, oh, it's not just me. There's these things going on around me. So the point and a lot of people read my, my mentors book, doctor Neufeld, hold on to your kids. And he kind of spelled some of these things out twenty years ago for where they were then, right? And a lot of parents got depressed, like, oh my God, this sucks. The point is not this sucks. The point is, you have to know the playing field, because if you don't know the playing field, you don't know how to adjust to it. You don't know how to do something with it. And that's what this part of the conversation has been to me. Let's just acknowledge the playing field and the time and place where we are right now, because then we know maybe better what we can do about it. And that's the very next question is with that secure attachment goal in mind, what's the next step to take on the playing field? Oh, gosh. Um, I, I teach, you know, in my kind of coaching process that I developed over time. And again, it's not meant as an advertisement for it. It's meant to kind of tell you what I think the roadmap is, so you can pursue that however you want. The roadmap to me, and the metaphor is not perfect, but the first phase always is attachment and connection. Typically parents come to me and they're professional and they're both working and they're both really well intentioned and they're always good parents. They're always trying their best. People don't come to me to like, can you please just fix my child? You know, they always come to me more from a place of guilt or stress or we're fighting. And one of them is almost always saying, we're having these problems. Our kids aren't listening. They're fighting with each other. Sometimes our our nighttimes are too too much of a hassle. Morning is way too crazy. I think our kids need more connection. I think our kids need more of us. And then that's often the mom. It's not always the mom, but it's often the mom. And often the dad who's really well intentioned. And I never want to sound like a dad basher. There's a lot of that going on. But from his perspective, he's thinking, look, we love these kids, but they don't have enough discipline. They don't have enough boundaries. They don't. We never say no to these kids. The thing is, is they're both right. Kids need both things. It's just a matter of what order we do them in. And it's a matter of how we execute those things. Right? Because I can set boundaries with a kid that are firm and loving and beautiful and that they need. Or I can be an ass that's gonna go. I was going to be more extreme. I can be a jerk, and I could yell at my kids and threaten them and take things away, and I could call that discipline. I could call that boundaries. But that's not, you know, um, it's not helpful. It doesn't work. Leave the ethics of it alone. It's not practical. It doesn't work. You can get compliance by being loud and taking things away. You can't get a kid who actually wants to, um, do what you're saying, right? And then they get bigger and their bodies get bigger, and you can't do that anymore, you know? Or they get smarter and they get trickier. And so the, the, the three phases I teach people is attachment and connection. The most simple, elegant seems way too easy to be real. Thing you can do in that realm is never assume connection with your child or anyone you love. You don't walk into a room and just tell a child what to do. You don't. You don't assume your child feels connected to you after school. Right. How old are yours? Seven and eight. Perfect. Like starting at that age, a little older. Uh, my kid went to this fabulous school that people move from different countries to go to this school, right? It's a farm in a in a wildlife area. Waldorf school. It's amazing. I'll plug it. Summerfield Waldorf school and farm in Sonoma County, California. He's been out of it for a few years. But a little little girl in his class. Little girl. She's a young woman now. Moved from China to live with parents. Here, people move. It's this amazing school. One day I got to campus and I was really stressed out about something. A major thing that I was supposed to do for a school system for many months. And I had scheduled everything around, it got cancelled. Big impact on my time. Big impact on money. The business manager sees me and goes. Hello, Todd. Good to see you. I forgot you didn't play. Uh, we didn't charge you for the materials fee this year. And, um, that's two thousand dollars or something. Can I have a check? I'm like, oh, God. When it rains, it pours. And then I walk up and I collect my son, who's probably seven at the time. And, uh, I said, this is what parents all around the world do after school. How was your day, son? Fine. What did you do? Nothing. And in my tension and my stress, all I wanted to say is like, oh, nothing. Okay, you can go to that school down the street that costs nothing. Okay. If you go to this school that I'm. You know, I'm. I'm kidding. But it's a long winded way to say you don't do it. He has been attached to his teacher all day. He's been his energy has been on his, um, classmates. I had to take the time to look at him in the eye. Take. Take some time. Take it easy. Let him come back to me over a few minutes. Don't walk into a room and just tell your kid what to do. Like I said, you get their eyes, you get their smile, you get their nod. You imagine they have a little green light on their forehead, like on my webcam here or on my, like, power cord. I imagine there's a green light there, and I need to get that light on before I do anything else. That is like the most simple thing you can do in that realm. But parents don't do it. They don't. They just go, we were fine earlier. We should be fine now. Get in the eyes, get in the smile. Sometimes it takes 10s. Sometimes it takes ten minutes. Because you haven't seen them in three days. Because you're on a trip. But collect before you direct is what Doctor Neufeld calls it. Since I'm being long winded, I'll just say in the attachment and connection realm, we're making it a culture of our home that we don't just get our child's attention when we want them to do something. We make it the culture of our home that we get into relationship first, especially after transitions, that we help each other hold on when we're apart by talking about what we'll do when we get back together, by helping them get along with the caretakers in their life. These all sound like simple, common sense things, but I've worked with two thousand four hundred couples, okay, or two thousand four hundred clients. I that doesn't count webinars in parenting talks in, you know, conferences. And I'm telling you, people aren't doing it because they're like, okay, next thing and next thing and next thing. The second realm is environment and structure have predictability. Like I said before, have downtime, have time for play. But in this realm it's also important to teach Consequences and consequences are not punishment. They're teaching your child. When we do this, we can do this. When we don't do this, we don't do that. That's it. I'm not yelling. I'm not taking things away. You were yelling in the car, okay? I asked you not to because it doesn't feel safe. So now I'm going to calmly pull over, and we're going to sit there for twenty minutes. And no matter what you say, hey, I just need to let you get it out of your system. It's not safe to drive when you're yelling. It rattles me. And, um, so we're just going to sit here until it all gets out of your system. No matter what you say, I love you. Do you want to talk? I want to listen to music. And then we go to the park, and we have twenty minutes less. And you're mad because you're like, we usually stay longer. And I'm like, hey, I know, Bubba, but, um, we had to pull over the car and now it's dinner time, so we got to get home. Mommy's waiting for us, right? That's consequences. Doing that day to day. You didn't do your homework. You don't get to do that extra thing. You didn't eat dinner. You don't get dessert. People are not doing that. Or the parents are disagreeing about it. And then the third realm is having proactive attitudes and understandings about behavior and discipline. Right. That that you have to have strategies for when your kids not listening. You have to have strategies for when your kid blows up, but they have to be done in a firm but kind way. That's it. That's the whole picture. It's probably bigger than what you asked me originally, but that's the roadmap. I think that's parenting, but it's mostly supposed to be proactive. It's not supposed to be what you do when your kid does something to make them stop doing it. And that's what too many people think parenting is parenting. Discipline has the same root word as disciple. You've probably heard that before. It's it's not about reaction. It's about being a good leader. It's about being a good teacher and understanding if this thing keeps happening every single day at the same time. That's probably not on my kid. So if I find myself saying, I have told you a thousand times, maybe you should pause out of love and maybe you should pause and consider. Maybe it's not working if you've said it a thousand times, right? Because I say this over and over again. Your kids want to behave. Your kids want to follow you because your kids want to have a good relationship with you. Period. It is the most important thing in their whole life. And no matter how they are acting today, just like if you and your husband were fighting, and I know you never do because you're perfect and you don't fight and you're not human. But do you feel like listening to him when you're mad at him? Do you feel like doing what he wants when you're mad at him? And is that because you don't love him? No, it's because you do love him. And you're just upset with him right now. And you don't think he understands you right now. And I'm sure he would say the same thing. And so that's the same thing with our kids. It's not because they wake up and they're like, oh, I don't want to listen to mom later. They want to. I worked with this is so bizarre. And I'm going off on my tangents. I worked with severely emotionally abused children in group homes, kids that their situation was so bad that a judge said, get them out of there. Every single one of those kids wanted to be with their mom or dad. Every single one. And I'm not justifying anything. I'm just saying every single one of them wanted to be with their mom or dad. Every single one of them. If we said, hey, but this is the best place for you right now because your dad was severely I mean, I'm horror stories that kids still wanted to be with his dad. You know, that's how strong the bond is, guys. And so it takes a mindset shift. My kid wants to do good. My kid is not trying to be antagonistic. My kid is trying to tell me something. I don't feel safe right now. I don't feel secure right now. My nervous system is rattled right now. Aw, mom, you didn't take a minute to even say hi to me. So my whole body and my whole brain is saying, don't listen to this person. That is an instinct. It's not a thought out thing. And we would feel the same way. I loved how you compared that, because instantly, when you were talking about putting Jeremy and I in that situation, of course I love him, but I definitely don't want to do what he asked me when, because of the issues that we were having, I instantly think of mainly Hudson. Sometimes I think my parenting changed so much in just that year and a half between the two. Very much with Sydney parenting how I was parented, right? Discipline was a large part of it, and if you don't do this, you don't like consequences were basically the discipline part and they were a little bit more severe. Whereas I shifted a little bit with Hudson and it's more of this relational connection thought process. And yet, in those moments when we get to the wit's end and that struggle occurs, I default back to the way in which I was raised. And I don't love that I'm better than I used to be. But when you put it in that perspective of really giving them grace in the sense of why would they want to, they need to chill out a little bit. And you said it so very well about that thought process of they don't want to disappoint you, they want to be good. And yet we get to help them do that. And it's hard. Emotional regulation is so interesting. And how do we help our kids sometimes figure out how to regulate their emotions when we as parents sometimes aren't doing it ourselves? No. And it's it's this. I used to argue a little bit with Doctor Neufeld when we, I, you know, I was one of his first interns and, um, then I was on the first faculty when he formed his institute, and I had the incredible privilege of not only learning from him, but sometimes sitting at a bar at a hotel in Montreal after a training and talking for hours over a glass of wine about these things. Right. And, um. One of the things that I thought we should talk about more was regulation and parent regulation and how our regulation affects kids. And he absolutely knew all that. I mean, I, I have a lot of experience. That guy has ten times more experience. You know, he's been doing it a long time. He's a couple decades older than than I am, and he's still out there doing it. But, um, his attitude, I think, and I hope I'm not mischaracterizing it. And he might have evolved and I might be, but was like, hey, Todd, parents take that too personally. Um, they it triggers a lot of shame and we shouldn't talk about it. But one of the most powerful things to understand about the nervous system is our nervous system's wired together. It's a very hard thing to explain. We could do a whole nother show on it. But when you're married to somebody, your nervous system is wired together. When you have children, your nervous system is wired together. And that's why if you come home and you're rattled and you didn't get enough sleep and you had a bad day at work and you and your husband are in a fight or something, you are dysregulated. The chances of your kids being dysregulated are huge. But then you get mad at them for being dysregulated. And it's like when it rains, it pours. I don't need this. I'm already having a bad day. Well, duh. It's because they look to you for what is safe. They look to you for guidance and stuff. So that part, if you only heard that part, would be where good parents with a conscience would feel some guilt, and a little tiny bit of guilt is okay. A little tiny bit of shame is okay because it's just your conscience telling you you want to do something better. That's all fine. Great. In the book, I call it clean guilt versus sticky guilt. Clean guilt is fine. Feel it a little bit because that's your own internal compass saying that's not who I want to be. Fine, but act on that. If you keep whipping yourself about it and saying, oh, the parenting guy just said that I'm a sucky mom or something. No, that's not helpful. It doesn't help you. It's not constructive, and it doesn't help your kids who are still just sitting there going, I just need you. I don't need perfect. I just need you to stop beating up on yourself. Mom, I just need you to pay attention for a minute. Right? The power of it is understanding that nobody in the world has as much power to help your husband feel regulated as you do, and nobody in the world has as much power to make you feel regulated as your husband does. But it's absolutely the most true for you and your kids that if you just understand the message in this and the power of it is, oh, if I put on my oxygen mask first, if I take care of me, if I make sure I'm getting sleep, if I make sure I'm doing that ten minutes breathing or that twenty minutes meditation, or I'm going to that class, that sometimes I think I don't have time for Pilates today because my kid. No, no. Do that. Okay. Do the ten minute breathing exercise in the car and get used to it. Do the meditation once or twice a day. I didn't do it today because we're having a massive storm here, but I take a walk every morning for an hour and it's not because I need cardio. I go to the gym. I, you know, it's not really effective cardio wise that much, but walking for an hour in the morning and listening to a Japanese podcast, um, because I'm trying to learn Japanese for the last few years. Settles my nervous system. I get daylight exposure. I do this now. I know not all of you can do a walk for an hour in the morning. My kids twenty two. He doesn't live here, but doing things like that are a priority need to be a priority. And I know a lot of parents that they're such good parents, and they're trying so hard that they get a little bit of a martyr complex and they're like, no, I have to sacrifice me for them. No, you do not, you do not. Some days are going to be hard and some days you won't have time. I get it, I couldn't take a walk this morning and I will miss that. Um, you can't do that all the time. But. But you absolutely need to regulate your nervous system. That's why I called the book Calm and Connected Parent. I didn't want it to be just parenting advice. I wanted it to be. How do we create a state of a more calm, regulated parent? How do we create a state of a, of a parent who understands the right narrative of who they're meant to be and what the goals are? That was the main goal. I know I can do that when I work with clients for twelve weeks. But the challenge was, not everybody has time to talk to me. I don't have time for everybody, and it's expensive for some people to work personally with me. But what if I could create something for under twenty bucks, where people, like might be inspired to be on that journey and might be able to create that state? That was the challenge, right? And again, there I go. Plug in the book. I can't wait, though. I'm the book commercial guy and I get to give you that platform. So we will have the book in the show notes. Because although at the time of recording he was making final edits, the time of air, it is now out and about. So we will it is out and it's twenty twenty six now, and I always find that the new year is not a time for Um, resolutions. I'm not going to eat ice cream this year because. Good luck. That's not going to happen. No way. The way we think of resolutions and they don't work. But I do think it's a natural time of intention. I think it's a natural time where the days are shorter and the nights are longer. It time for more like assessment. Like, who do I want to be? What? What is work this year and what hasn't worked? And what do I want to do? And I just think it's a that's part of why I rushed it to get out. Um, at the end of twenty twenty five is I just thought it's a perfect time. Parents are thinking this. My phone rings, rings off the hook. Two times a year. I get consistent calls throughout the year. I'm lucky. I've been doing this a while. Lots of referrals and stuff. But September and January? Yeah, the phone rings off the hook because the kids go back to school in September and everything that's been building up where it's time for couples counseling and it's time for parent coaching, but it's also the new year, I think, because of the same thing. Kids go back to school. We've been thinking about what's going on. And yeah, so I know I've always it's always been my favorite time of the year is New Years. Me too. I love it. That being said, can you give one realistic way or start that parents can bring more peace and connection into their home tomorrow? I think I would base it on some of the things we've talked about. Again, I laid the foundation right. Pick one thing in each area. Oh, okay. That you can do. Yeah. So Neufeld's language collect before you direct. Have you been really doing that? Have you been taking relationship for granted? Um, just assuming it, like I was just joking with with somebody else. The other day, we went to, uh, Paris, uh, the holidays last year, and I hadn't been there since. I was, like twenty years old or something. And, um, there's this well-known thing that Parisians will get pretty mad at you if you don't take the time to connect first. You're not supposed to say, can I please have some bread? You're supposed to say Bonjour, mademoiselle or something. You're supposed to take a minute, no matter how busy they are, and get into connection, because it's just part of the culture. And so people come. Americans especially, will go to Paris and go. That person was really rude to me. They're rude. They're. I find that's not as bad these days. I only had a couple experiences of that in my youth. I had one particular person that was super, but I they're thinking, we're the barbarians. They're thinking we're rude because we're just like, can I please have this? And they're like, that's not what we do, right in business, right? Do you just walk into a meeting and go, here we go. You don't. You say, hey, Sally, how was your weekend? How are the kids doing? Bob, how was your golf game? And you spend a minute doing that. You do that with your best friend when you haven't seen her in a while. Why don't we do it with our kids? So the number one thing I would say is what I was talking about before, especially transition times. Take the time to get connected when it comes to the second realm. I could pick a couple things environment and regulation. But if you have a particular time of day and it's always transition times morning after school before bed, that's particularly chaotic, particularly crazy. Take a little time and put in some more predictability there. Put in some more ritual there. Have a thing we always do, you know, have a a sequence of how we do things and just hit the reset button. You know what? Bedtimes have been a little crazy. That's on me. I'm the parent. Daddy and I were talking about it. We do this and we do that, and then we do this. And that way we get to spend time together. And that's the most valuable thing to me. And, um, it's on us now. You're not beating yourself up. You're just resetting and saying, we haven't been doing this. Let's do this. And when you're connected with your kid, when you say that they love it, they're like, oh, yeah, cool. You know, and then in in the the behavior realm, is there a place where you've been reacting a lot? Is there a place, um, where the same problem is happening over and over again? I would say a from the second realm maybe put a consequence there. I have a, um, go to my YouTube channel. It's not monetized. I don't make it. Just go there, see my video on consequences. It was the first one I filmed. It's twenty minutes long and you get a fuller explanation. Consequences are meant to be clear. They're meant to be related to what happened. They can't be taking something away that your kid needs, like a bedtime story. Don't take that away. But they need to be followed through with in a kind, consistent way. That's one way to approach a behavior that's happening all the time. But if it's happening all the time from the third realm, the behavior realm, just do a deeper study about what might be happening there. If it's resistance and defiance, the chances are that you didn't spend the time connecting with your kids first. And if you ask yourself, this keeps happening, they keep defying me at this time. Am I actually taking the time to to get in their face in a friendly way and connect with them first? If your answer is no, honestly, there's your problem. There's also a thing that happens in your you're coming up on it. Beneath that, there's times in your kid's life. And I know I'm going on and on and on, I love listening. Um, there's times in your kids life where they really need to exercise their voice. They really need to know they have a say. They really need to know they have some agency. It happens a little when they're two or three. It happens a little when they're five or six. It happens big time. Bigly when they're nine. All of a sudden they will just be like, do you want ice cream? No. You know, do you want your favorite meal? No. That is always an indication your kid is just needing to exercise their own say in their own voice. They're being told what to do all day long, and that's just part of being a kid. And then it becomes part of being a teenager the whole time. So if you're getting that kind of resistance and defiance, the chances are you just need to give your kid a little bit more. Say, that doesn't mean you let them rule the roost. And they they're in charge of everything. It just means, hey, we're going to go to the park. Do you want to go to this one or that one? We have to go to the store and to the park. Which one do you want to do first? We can do either one first. Just give them a little bit more. Say, give them a little bit more ways to express themselves. So it's a really big answer to your question, what can parents do? But I just wanted to give you a sense of I told you these three realms, here's a thing you can do from each of them. Yeah, Sydney is nine as of December, and she's already showing these types of voices to the point where a few days ago she was like, mommy, I would like to decide what to cook for dinner next week and make it. And I said, okay, what a way to contribute to the family, I love that. What are we doing? And she said, pancakes, eggs and sausage. And I was like, well, that's going to be a whole family affair, but let's do it right? I didn't say that with her, but it's it's saying yes. And she wanted to do it that following Monday. Okay. Yes, we are absolutely going to be able to do this. But Monday does not work because you have piano at night. How about Thursday? And so directing her towards. Was there a little bit of a tantrum? You know, maybe a scoff, but it wasn't full blown out. Had I said, no, that won't work. We can do it Thursday, but we can't do it Monday. Things might have been a little different, and it's pausing at times while also realizing, like, I don't do it all of the time. That was one example recently where I can think in which we did, and I think that's where you've talked about this is a forever journey. There is not an end goal. Besides the fact of you want them to leave and be able to fly without being viable human beings. Exactly, exactly. And so the guilt. I love how there's a little healthy guilt in that, but to do different. And so that's where we're at. Yeah. I'll address two things really quick. Um, one, that's great. The way you're handling it with her in general going forward, the things this is what you think about, I use used the metaphor that I think I got from Neufeld of little steering wheel, like the little, uh, shopping cart things in the store where the kids think they're driving. But you're actually driving? Yeah, it's not manipulative. It's like, look, kids aren't really supposed to be in charge of what they eat all the time. Kids are because they would, like. My kid ate pretty well, I would like. We were super lucky with that. Like, he actually liked kale. Crazy. I don't know why most people don't, but. But he didn't like Brussels sprouts, right? So I would know that he kind of likes this, and he kind of likes that. And I would sometimes give him what people call a a B choice. But I knew both choices were okay. Right, right. Do you want to go to that park or that part? Hey, you know what? I know your sister's not here right now, but we have chicken in the fridge and we have salmon. Which one do you want? Right? Things like that. Let them have the sense of choice. But the big mistake parents make, and I just didn't want anybody out there to think that that's what I was saying, is you go, so what do you want for dinner? Because if you say that a couple of things are happening. One, even the best kid who eats well will go pizza or macaroni and cheese or my kid burrito. Okay, we can't have a burrito every night for dinner, right? But guess what? You just gave them a chance to express themselves, and then you took it away. Uh. Makes sense. Like, yes, I was, I we lived in a place in Marin County when my kid was, um, like five, six. And I made the mistake once. Even though I taught people not to do this. I said, hey, you know what? We have a little extra time before dinner. What part do you want to go to? I thought he was going to say this park really close or that park really close. He said, a park that honestly, I don't need to explain all the details. It would have taken us an hour to get there and back. Because at that time of day in Marin County, when you lived in Fairfax, and there's one lane into your town and one lane out of your town, Fairfax, it would have taken forever. So I'm like, oh no, no, no, I didn't mean that. I meant Fairfax or San Anselmo. So you said, I get it right. So you more give him a choice of this or that. But to me, the outcome of parenting. Yes, it is a journey. I say this all the time. I know it's compatible with how you see it. It's not about perfection. It's not about this one end goal, but it is about being on the right path. And that path is relationship first, but also balanced out with healthy consequences and healthy limits. Because sometimes our kids are really frustrated and they need somebody to help them get it out. Okay. And that that is helpful. Um, but the end goal is not that you send them off into the world. Perfect. Because that doesn't exist. I think part of the human condition is we're meant to always grow and change and learn, and your kid's not going to be a finished product at eighteen years old or twenty years old. That's silly. They have, on average like seventy more years to live or something. Hopefully we keep growing and changing, but that we send them off in the world with what Bowlby, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the psychologist said, was a secure base that they kind of just have a sense of inside of I'm a good person. I, I know what it's like to be healthy. I want to have healthy people in my life, and I don't need my life to be kind of centered around getting my needs met, you know, because I know how to get my needs met and my needs is I take care of myself. And I'm in relationships with friends and partners who we take care of each other. And that's not codependence, that's healthy, you know? and if they have that, then what they do in life is what serves them and does something for the world. And it expresses all of their greatness. But it's because they have a secure base, and they've developed the tools that they need to develop the maturities. They need to develop that. If they have these tools, they can do whatever. And that's what the secure base provides. And that comes from attachment first. That comes from relationship first. And that's not easy. It is not easy. Human beings are born super insecure. So much so we don't even know mommy's coming back when she leaves the room. That's how insecure we're in. It's psychological. It's emotional, and it's survival. Well, we don't survive without each other. And that's how deep the attachment need is. And so going from that to an eighteen or nineteen year old who hopefully kind of has a know I'm a worthy person and I'm not a complete all the way finished project. But I'm a healthy person. That takes a lot of time and a lot of reps, and it just takes a parent that's not perfect, but is just keeping it in mind and working in the right direction. And when you notice something that's not working, fix it. Learn about it, right? Listen to a podcast like Denise's. Read a book if it's helpful. Go on YouTube and sample different things from Doctor Neufeld and Todd and Doctor Becky or whoever you know, and just learn what you didn't learn. You know, become what you want to be. You know, Todd Sarner with Transformative Parenting. Check out his book. It's in the show notes as well as his YouTube videos. We'll link the one on consequences that Todd referenced, as well as his website and so much more. Todd. Appreciate you sharing your wisdom and your kindness and your heart with all of us today. Oh, thank thank you for the time and letting me speak to your audience, Like I said, I like your your voice out there in the world, but I also like your voice. I wish I had a radio voice. I was a DJ for a little bit in college and I did not have the voice for it. I tried really hard. I'm like, hey, everybody is a, you know, no, it wasn't, it didn't work, but it didn't work. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I hope we get a chance to talk again sometime. Visit more for the Working Moms Redefined podcast. Thank you for listening to the Working Moms Redefined podcast. It is not lost on me that you chose to spend time together. Thank you. Let's connect outside of the space on socials. We'd love for you to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. We've got it all to connect with you. If you feel as if someone in your life could be impacted by this message, feel free to share it. That is the biggest compliment as we part ways together. Remember, you can do hard things.
