(00:00) your job as the parent is not to deal with the emotions like I say all the time it’s your job to set the boundary it’s their job to have the feelings and if you can kind of keep those things very separate it makes it so much easier when you have toddlers because then you don’t fall into these power struggles welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and today I speak with parenting coach Cassie Goodmanson we get very real about how to reframe and re imagine parenting and mothering specifically so we get into how mothers
(00:35) can stay grounded while navigating toddler Tantrums the importance of emotional self-regulation and how to access it and what it is to break free from Power struggles for good with your kids so I intend for this conversation to shift your perspective and liberate you to an easeful and joyful experience of your kids which is your Birthright let’s dive in hi Cassie and welcome to the show hi I’m so excited to dive in awesome so as I was mentioning I am always on the lookout for women who speak to the topic of mothering from and
(01:18) through the perspective of sovereignty you know the way I would describe it which is essentially self- responsibility as a mother as you know a parent in general but specifically as a mother uh the role of emotional Reg regulation and how we subtly engage in victim triangle Dynamics even when we tell ourselves that we are doing this in the best interest of our child so when I started to come upon your videos I immediately recognized this uh shared intent and because my girls are teenagers I have very little access to
(01:58) Council on the toddler year it just feels like so many lifetimes ago and it’s very hard for me to honestly apply a lot of what becomes pretty easy to catch rhetorically in the you know verbal years let’s say and and the tween and and teen years you can really in my opinion monitor yourself as a mother and see when you are engaging in manipulative and you know fear-based tactics control-based tactics and I think it’s probably a bit harder when you’re when your children are at this age uh or at least it is from what I
(02:33) remember so I wanted to to zoom out Cassie because uh I know your primary credential is your motherhood but you also have a background in several different uh modalities and I wanted to just give you the opportunity to speak to your philosophy about mothering you know like what what do you think is actually going on here what do you think is the the more spiritual dimension of the um the role that we play in these children’s lives and and maybe from there we can hear a bit about where you think we’ve gone wrong you know or at
(03:06) least are unconsciously operating when it comes to to mothering yeah I mean I I do not come from like a standard clinical psychologist background or like I don’t have an undergrad in child development or anything like that so much of what I teach has just been my own research along the way and then even in previous businesses before what I do now I was more in like the business world doing coaching and stuff but so much of what I was doing was like emotional regulation for business owners and like connecting with your
(03:40) spirituality and um kind of tuning in to like what’s going on inside of you and how that reflects in your business and so many of my clients were also moms and so it just naturally was like trickling across to our conversations about okay this is what I’m doing in business but like how do I work through the mindsets and like the pattern that are coming up in motherhood too and I have just pulled you know a lot of pieces of information I also one of my very dear friends who I work with in my business now we work
(04:12) with moms together is a clinical psychologist so I kind of came to her and was like here’s how I see things and she was like yep yep yep I can see how that’s backed up by you know different pieces of research and different things that she learned in her her background but I just I have always I think since my very first pregnancy approached motherhood differently than I think was the norm than a lot of my friends did I just wanted to do things differently I mean back then I was like digging into books and watching videos about like Rye
(04:46) parenting and Magda Gerber and like all of these other kind of alternative philosophies that like people didn’t really know about even just five years ago because I just even back then I saw friends that had like toddlers or little kids and just were like struggling like they just kind of hated motherhood and I was like I don’t want that I don’t want to go into this feeling like I’m going to have to trudge through the next five years before it gets good like there has to be something else that I can do here
(05:17) that’s going to make this different and I think with having my own background around like mindset and being very aware of my own emotions my own patterns so much of that was so helpful going into motherhood because noticed a lot of where you know my like Natural Instincts as a mom were just triggers were just like patterns that were coming up for me from my own childhood and from things like that so I think like it was easier for me to catch that stuff and be aware of that and really shift how my motherhood has looked I have found that
(05:52) there are so many ways that the reflexive programs of I know better than you for you if we could summarize them come through our voices right so it’s in the form of insisting that our kids have manners and be polite and Obey and comply that they serve our needs literally serve our needs and then we wonder where adult entitlement comes from that they serve our needs whether or not it it suits them and there are ways that we relate especially to these very uh tender relationships that we form as humans to our environment and specifically through
(06:29) nurturance through food right so the way that we control eating and how our kids you know understand their own body we are a part in my opinion most of us of the separation that gets induced between a a spirit and a body you know that then gets commandeered by so uh much of dominant culture let alone agendas and and all the rest but a lot of what you focus on is of course what I in my work with adult women uh and you know attempting to un unpack which is the realm of um emotional self-regulation emotional self-mastery
(07:08) and we wonder why we have all these attachment issues why our relationships are dysfunctional and why we literally can’t feel a feeling without engaging a defensive strategy when we are parented to never be given the opportunity to to feel our feelings and I know that you agree one of the only things I got right out the gate was the the punishment thing even before I I read Alfie K’s work or whatever I knew based on my own uh childhood childhood experience that I I wasn’t going to do the whole punishment thing and it’s funny because
(07:42) we were just I was just traveling with my daughters and there was this cute little toddler on the airplane and he was crying and the mom we pass like we were walking past and the mom was like you’re acting like a baby and everyone in the plane is going to be looking at you and I’m taking your iPad like it’s just like a summary of the the shaming the punishment and all the things and I could watch my daughter’s reflect on what felt off about that and then I also felt for that Mom who probably has no idea that there is is another way so you
(08:21) know when it comes to unruly Behavior right when it comes to so-called misbehaving or or Tantrums what is your general perspective and what do you think is important for moms to to bear in mind because that is the moment of emotional uh disregulation that most of us experience obviously right like when our kid is screaming and they want something that we don’t want to give them or we don’t think that they should have it sounds like a simple moment and it can literally lead to the most injurious behavior that is normative
(08:55) like it’s socially accepted to to behave in this way and so obviously part of this conversation is is the attempt to end that that cycle and the root cause of so much of our our relational um issues so so maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you believe is the best way to approach a toddler’s tantrum yeah I mean that is like one of the things that I get asked about the most that I talk about the most because I feel like that is one of the most visceral ways that this really shows up when your little ones are young and I
(09:28) mean across the board think the place where most people have to start is realizing that the reason why Tantrums are so hard for a lot of moms is just because it feels so triggering and then realizing that it feels so triggering because like they were never taught like you said how to be with upset frustration anger sadness discomfort like those emotions as the mom feel very unsafe and like so obviously your natural reaction when it feels unsafe is to shut it down to stop it to cut it off even if you know logically like it’s
(10:05) normal for my toddler to have a tantrum in that moment you’re having this like physical body reaction to it and so a lot of what I talk about is just noticing that and starting to be okay with like your job as the parent is not to deal with the emotions like I say all the time it’s your job to set the boundary it’s their job to have the feelings and if you can kind of keep those things very separate it makes it so much easier when you have toddlers because then you don’t fall into these power struggles and I did a video the other
(10:39) week and I was talking about like handling my my almost two-year-old he was having like a big meltdown about something and I was talking about how like a lot of times people can get into these like spiraling power struggles where they start throwing out like random threats to get their toddler to stop and something I said in the video was like if you don’t stop crying you’re not getting dinner for a week and it was just like this such a good explanation of like how we say things that are just like almost so absurd to get our kids to
(11:09) be like calm and pleasant and happy when like that that none of that is needed right so I do like the least in those moments that I can in terms of like setting limits and boundaries like as long as everybody is safe and like our house is safe I let it be right because in those moments like what your little ones really need is practice feeling and then regulating through their emotions like they don’t need like you said a punishment they don’t need this like major discipline moment they don’t need to be like logic to reason out a it it’s
(11:47) just like a moment for them to practice feeling their feelings and that’s it and I feel like if you can kind of take a step back and not get so caught up in how it looks or how they’re supposed to behave or you know they’re three they shouldn’t be throwing Tantrums anymore like it’s so normal and it makes it easier to to like enjoy the little years too I think that’s a huge reason why I have actually enjoyed these years is because like the Tantrums don’t bother me like it’s just like oh yeah he’s having feelings about it that’s to like
(12:20) he’s allowed to have feelings about this I have feelings about stuff too and then we just like move on from that moment and it’s it’s nothing more than that you know what I mean but I again it starts with like you have to back up far enough into yourself being able to be okay with those feelings and them feeling safe for you as parent absolutely which you know which is is why I’m glad that I uh ended up where I ended up in terms of what I focused on which is just the prioritization of of just feeling these feelings as adults it’s everything and
(12:54) it’s um it it’s literally as simple as it sounds to just simply commit to feeling them and take the responsibility for your own feelings rather than to require your child to regulate your own emotional state which is I mean it’s literally like how we we um end up with all the struggles we struggle with as adults so I want to double click on this though because I know a lot of folks are going to be wondering okay well what do you mean by by by boundaries and what do I do that in that in that case right so if the options so your kid is on the
(13:25) plan airplane screaming let’s say just this instance I brought up and and you feel pressure right so this pressure is often imagined whether you’re at home or you have to go somewhere or whatever you you feel some pressure to conform to an expectation that you’re bringing to the moment and so we often these are the options I sort of remember feeling available to me so so you can punish right so you can say I’m going to take your iPad you’re not going to e dinner for a week whatever it is let alone obviously further on the Spectrum which
(13:58) is like you know physical grabbing arms spanking whatever you can incentivize by coupling some reward that has nothing to do with you know what’s going on you could distract you could try to verbally engage right like use your words kind of a situation or you know what I would have heard if I heard what you said back in the day was actually what I often did because I didn’t have a lot of tools for self-regulation however I was very committed to not punishing or yelling and so I would just withdraw like emotionally right so I would either
(14:35) sometimes be like you know I’ll be in the other room or something like that or I would just emotionally withdraw which is a form of punishment even if it looks more benign it’s like ignoring like ignoring uh dismissing the the situation so I’m imagining it’s not going to look like any of those um in your ideal world so what might be maybe an example of a scenario and how you would like what literally would you say and how would you interact with the situation yeah I mean those are all like pretty spot on I think with what I see a lot and I think
(15:09) there’s a lot of focus in the online parenting World about like how do you stop yelling how do you stop being kind of this like forward-facing aggressive but I think just as often are the people and like myself my tendency is like the freeze shut down being like I’m done with this this straight up kind of ignoring them sort of situation which again isn’t helpful because they’re still not learning anything about which like the ultimate goal in these moments is that they’re again starting to learn that skill of like regulating themselves
(15:42) so I think what I tend to do looks most closely like from the outside like the kind of shutting down ignoring because it’s very calm it’s very quiet it’s very understated but it’s different and the energy is different and the intention behind it is different and I like that’s small but it’s really important because it’s very much I come into it with this approach of like I’m here to help but I I can’t control this so it’s very much like I know you’re having a hard time I’m here and while I don’t say a lot of
(16:15) words because especially when your little ones are small they’re in a tantrum talking so much at them can almost make it worse a lot of times right like they’re already disregulated giving them like one more thing that their brain is trying to process if you’re like you almost go into like trying to fix it mode can make it worse and so I tend to be pretty quiet but it’s a very like focused present energy it’s very much like I’m making eye contact if they want a cuddle they’re getting a cuddle I’m like right there in their space with
(16:46) them like I hear you this is really hard a lot of times I will model like some sort of regulating thing whether it’s like taking deep breaths or like I do a lot of like shaking my body out that like helps me regulate and again not even like telling my toddler to do it I’m not like take a deep breath I’m just doing it right I’m doing it in front of them that is enough often for them to kind of meet my energy where it’s at their nervous system their brain is absorbing that calm from me and then they’re going to come back down obviously like
(17:22) especially in public settings the hardest part of this is kind of shutting out everything around you not being so focused on the other people that you’re feeling you know judged or pressured to like get your kid to calm down and I think that just comes with practice that just comes with practice of learning to be unbothered by other people’s perception of you as a mom or out of a job you’re doing or other people’s annoyance or grumbling or whatever that your kid is having feelings and I think the more you do it the easier it is to
(17:56) kind of ignore all of that and just be able to like laser in and focus on your kid but like that’s that’s all it is like it really is not more than that until they kind of start to calm down a little bit get get more regulated out of it so one of the things that I talk about is how we are not exposed as children to the Natural Arc of an emotion right so so we’re told to calm down to you know stop crying you’re okay all of this gaslighting you know kind of behavior and so when we are confronted by intense emotions as adults we often
(18:31) imagine that we’re gonna like fall into the abyss you know or the crying is going to start and it’s going to be like a tital wave that never stops and so we don’t have a lived experience of the beginning middle and end of an emotion so what I hear you suggesting is that you know the co-presence and the intention to do so which especially if you feel like the victim right like especially if you feel like your child is is doing you wrong in that moment and and you you you feel your heart closed down and you feel unavailable to them
(19:01) emotionally it requires your own inner work right to just be present to just be attentive let alone to offer a word or two of you know reflection you know you seem upset this seems hard you know whatever it might be and you’re so so whatever it requires for you to do with your body take a breath you know shake your hands off shake your body around you do that and then your child goes through the arc and then how do you recommend communicating right because I think this concept of boundaries is such a diluted
(19:33) term at this point means 100,000 things to 100,000 different people and often I think people use the term boundary to cloak punishment and disconnection and so I wonder what you mean by that and is that the time that you would start to establish like if there’s hitting or throwing uh going on like is that the time that you would start to establish something like that yeah so I mean when I say boundary what I mean is always something that you can do as the parent that’s just going to keep everybody say like I say this I said this before but
(20:07) just is keeping everybody safe like especially in the moment a boundary is not like if you do that again you’re going to your broom or I’m like you’re never seeing this toy again like like you said it’s not a punishment it’s not a threat it’s just I can see that you’re hitting I’m going to hold your hand right it’s just like this very gentle firm clear but like it’s just there to keep everybody is safe and then what I always teach and what I always do is the time for like teaching especially in the toddler years with like tricky behaviors
(20:38) and things like that the time for teaching is later when they’re calm when they’re happy throughout your day that’s when I would be asking myself like okay if my toddler’s really having a hard time with hitting every time they’re upset they’re frustrated they’re sad they want attention they’re hitting then I’m going to address that throughout my day I’m going to ask myself where is the hitting coming from what need is at trying to communicate and how can I teach them other ways of getting that right maybe if it’s like every time
(21:04) they’re frustrated they’re hidden then I’m going to be doing like games or activities with them that are other ways that they can get their frustration out maybe it’s literally just like throwing a bean bag at the floor or maybe it’s like hitting a baseball or whatever like we’re giving them another skill because we can’t expect them to stop that kind of instinctual Behavior if we don’t give them a healthier way of dealing with it if we’re just coming in from this perspective of like hitting is not nice right I hear that one a lot with little
(21:33) kids that’s not nice but then like a 2-year-old doesn’t know what nice means they don’t know what else to do they still have the feeling of frustration in their body there’s nothing else to replace that they need it to go somewhere so in the calm moments in the other moments of your day is when I’m kind of working on those skills games other behaviors just like naturally throughout my day and then in the moment again we’re like co-regulating and I’m like I can’t let you hit so I’m gonna gently block your hands or I’m gonna
(22:06) move you over here like we’re going to go over here away from the baby if you’re having a hard time being safe around the baby we’re just like it’s very clear calm boundaries in the moment but that like that’s 10% of it the other stuff the skill building the giving them the tools the practicing and like learning about emotional regulation that’s 90% of it that’s where you’re really going to see a difference in like how hard moments kind of play out okay this is super helpful so so in a situation where safety is more
(22:41) apparently relevant like like hitting and a boundary is just going to be you know I’m gonna hold your hand or I’m gonna we’re g to move over here it might feel more clear what that boundary looks like but what about when it’s around you know sharing or Cooper in you know to like leave the park or something that doesn’t seem to uh clearly involve safety as an issue like how what actually goes on in that moment uh where there is a tantrum where there is upset but it’s related to you know one of those kinds of categories and you feel
(23:18) like you have a good sense of what needs to happen like it’s time to leave the park or like it would be nice if you shared with your sister Sally or we have to get to the airport now now you know but it’s not it’s not clear that there’s like a boundary that would be invoked I think the first thing with those sort of situations is that you have to kind of step back and ask yourself like is this the boundary that I actually want to uphold because I think a lot of times parents especially as little kids get like so exhausted and so burnt out
(23:48) because they’re trying to hold like 18,000 boundaries a day and it’s like you could drop most of those because they’re not really important like sharing is something that I talk about sometimes I I think there’s this like weird thing in kid world about like forced sharing and it’s such a bizarre concept because like adults don’t force share with each other but yet with little kids we’re like you have to share with your brother you it’s it’s been five minutes it’s time to share with your brother and I’m like that’s really weird like we don’t do
(24:17) that as GRS so we practice like being patient hey if my brother has that and I want to turn I can say can I have a turn when you’re done and then like my job in that moment is to like be there to block the toddler from like snatching things out of his brother’s hand because he has to learn how to be patient so like I I just think a lot of boundaries are like power struggles that we don’t need so we can draw them because they’re just kind of weird if it’s things like you know it’s time to leave the playground then I
(24:48) feel like my Approach has always been to start from an energy of like playfulness and fun and curiosity I think that’s going to get you cooperation way more than than anything else way more than you know like we were talking about the airplane threats or bribes or I mean parents sometimes even will be like the park is closing it’s time to go and like I understand why they do that because they’re trying to avoid a tantrum but I feel like it backfires like you can just be honest with your dollar like you can just have show them the respect of being
(25:23) honest and so I’m always going to approach a situation with like fun and playfulness especially as little kids you know telling them to hop like a kangaroo to the car something is going to get them to move with you a lot more easy but yes I mean sometimes they don’t want to leave and that’s where I would I would pick them up and I would say I know you don’t want to leave it’s really sad to leave the park we’ve got to go now and like me carrying them to the car would be the boundary again not coming from this place of like if you don’t
(25:56) stop throwing a tantrum that we’re never coming to the park again and like they’re allowed to be sad about leaving the park I’m allowed to still continue to leave you know what I mean I think that like my overall approach is just very respectful because I tend to try and like if if it’s a boundary like that where we need to move or we need to do something like I’m always going to do my best to keep their world in the front of my mind right like if they’re in the middle of building a sand castle and I can wait 10 more minutes before we need
(26:30) to leave because they’re so focused on something I’m going to do that because I would want that kind of awareness and thoughtfulness towards me too so I think that that’s just a piece of it too is like when kids are little I think it’s very easy to see them as like this little human that you can just control you can pick them up you can move them you can kind of do whatever you want with them you’re so much bigger as the parent and it takes a little bit of awareness to stop and be like what what’s happening in their world right
(27:00) now what are they doing are they focusing on something you know can I give them a minute before I jump in and interrupt and give them that respect of their personhood if that makes sense before we’re kind of coming in with these instructions these boundaries as a parent and I think you would probably describe what you’re engaging as distinct from like child centered parenting so it’s not like you’re suggesting that you know there be this evacuation of the parents others like you know experience selfhood um priorities in service of you know
(27:42) generating the per perfect conditions for this child it sounds like it’s more uh a combination of adult emotional self-regulation and some degree of perspective I mean I look back on so and sometimes I hear these things right so many things that are reflect of tropes right like brush your teeth and uh I mean I have colleagues who literally think that teeth brushing is a scop right like like how are we so sure about any of this right so that we we insist needs to be um complied with you know by by these very controllable
(28:16) humans so it some of it comes from just reflexive programming some of it comes from you know emotional disregulation in the adult and so so what is the the the balance between like your own uh assessment of your priorities your needs as an adult and this this child if we’re not going to be communicating and I think that’s what makes this conversation interesting because it’s not about uh verbalization and communication if anything maybe more about like body language and decision making right yeah I mean you have to be
(28:51) more tuned in you have to be willing to kind of stop and observe and pay attention a little bit more to the things that they’re telling you about and like that was something that I picked up very much from like Ry parenting and if you’ve if you’ve ever heard anything that like Magda Gerber talks about in her philosophy her research that is like very much a part of her approach was like even when you have a newborn you can take the time to stop and just watch them for a few minutes and see how much they’re noticing how much awareness they have
(29:24) how much they focus on the tiny little things and learning to not interrupt that or learning to just be aware of the fact that they have like this whole internal world that’s happening and they’re not just like a potato that’s laying on the bed right like I feel like espe it starts when they’re little and it grows up through when they’re toddler and people will tell me all the time like well I could say all this stuff to my you know two-year-old but they have no idea what I’m talking about and I’m like yes they do even if they’re not
(29:57) saying words back to you they’re so capable of understanding so much that’s happening around them and showing that back to us whether it’s just through their body language or like sign language or just like watching how they’re interacting with the world you can start to see the things that they’re paying attention to and how they’re feeling and what they’re trying to communicate and like obviously it’s not always perfect you can’t always know what a todler is thinking but I think it’s just that shift in in mindset of
(30:25) like I can pay attention here and I can try and see what needs they have and what’s going on in their world and how I can be respectful to that and then obviously it’s just a balance like it’s never going to be everything they want all the time all their needs met perfectly it’s never going to be everything I want all my needs met perfectly but it gets to be both a lot of times and I think also like I’ve seen this with my older kids my oldest who’s almost six because I have very particularly like respected her economy
(30:58) her needs her wishes as part of our daily life like when I need something when I’m sick when I don’t feel good when I have a need I need time by myself like she’s so good about respecting that because that’s just part of our family culture is you know being aware of other people and what’s going on for them and it’s not it’s not this motherhood where I’m just like always the one who’s giving giving giving doing everything serving her and she’s just like expects that 247 so it’s it’s cool even like she’s not even six and I can see that
(31:33) already kind of reflected back and how she exists in our family so yeah I mean I think it’s just it’s that shift in perspective that shift in mindset more than anything with our little toddlers that we can still do that I believe the recording I recommend more than any other is my victimless mothering Workshop which is the product of 14 years of motherhood where I help smoke out the reflexive control-based habits of unconscious parenting and specifically the way that conditional love hides in the well-meaning bistic
(32:06) mama Vibes of a woman like me who is so convinced that she’s ending all the abuse of her motherline by imposing rules meant to protect her kids against toxic food Tech and Pharma I have been humbled and I’ve seen some darkness in my own righteousness and in the holistic health mothering world so I want to open the conversation and and I think it went really well so I’d love to share these recordings with you and attendee said I was pretty emotional during the call I journaled like 10 pages afterwards my husband told me I looked happier already
(32:41) and I feel lighter that call with Kelly felt like 10 years of therapy in 1 hour it cut through to the core so I hope you’ll check it out and commit with me to truly ending victim Consciousness and fear-based parenting in all of the places that it hides the link is in show notes I wonder what you you feel more generally about Concepts like respect and even discipline right as uh this imperative that we have to impose on our our kids as parents because one of the the major jailbreak Moments Of My Life as a mother was when I started to
(33:15) recognize and actually um my work in a modality called family constellation which everybody listening knows I’m obsessed with really helped me to see the the directional Vector of energy that comes you know from parent to child and from child to the world right it doesn’t go in the other direction that help me to see you know my my children owe me nothing right I gave them life they can thank me for that if they want to at some point but that’s literally it they don’t owe me respect they don’t owe me helping around the house they don’t
(33:50) owe me picking up their blocks like they owe me absolutely nothing okay and the fact that I feed them is my choice the fact that I put a house over their head is my choice I don’t have to do anything for them either so like recognizing the agency and the many many decisions that I make to participate that are my own free will helps to relativize this uh assumption that like because we do all of this whatever this is uh for our kids that they owe us anything you know gratitude behavioral compliance you know support assistance whatever so that
(34:32) comes more naturally when you can you know invoke the I thou gaze with your child and see their Divinity right like see them as these um spiritual equals if you will rather than you know some sort of you know lesser class citizens so I wonder yeah like what what do you think generally about this idea of of respect and you know because it’s such a common Trope I’m sure you hear it too like well but how am I ever going to teach them to respect adults and how am I ever going to you know they need to learn discipline right like I’m guessing you
(35:06) feel right like there’s not even much of a role for for these kind yeah well I mean I think that the way that most people use those words isn’t really how they were intended or what they even really mean I think those words often are just a word that’s kind of used to imply control which really you have to you have to step out of this perspective and this experience where being the parent equals being in control and being able to control everything and I mean the the only thing you can do at that point is start going further and further
(35:43) into like manipulative and fear-based tactics and the thing about that that I I think a lot of people don’t realize like especially the young years is it can seem like that quote unquote works in the little years because it’s easy to control a three-year-old right it’s easy to control a 5-year-old you’re literally in charge of their whole existence they don’t know anything outside of you like you’re their home you’re their food it’s you’re huge compared to that like it’s very easy to manipulate and control a
(36:13) little kid into listening or obeying or being polite or whatever but as they get bigger that tactic is not going to work anymore that it becomes very apparent I think when a lot of people get to the teenage years and it doesn’t work anymore more and you have to kind of go harsher and harsher and harsher with your punishments or your tactics to get a 16-year-old to listen to you because there’s no there’s no connection there there’s no actual like relational currency there it’s you’ve completely severed that relationship and the only
(36:46) thing that’s left is fear and so I would much rather focus on I think what the intent for the word respect is which is actually building this connection this currency people always talk about like well I’m the parent I need to have authority you can’t have authority over somebody unless you have influence over them you can’t have influence over somebody if there’s no connection or currency between you so I’d much rather build that relationship I would much rather focus on strengthening the trust and the emotional understanding and the bond
(37:20) between us in Easy moments and in hard moments when there’s you know mistakes or tricky things that come up because I know that’s going to be valuable the older they get and that’s going to continue to strengthen and grow and I think similarly like people use the word discipline when what they’re really saying is punishment and if you actually look at what discipline means it means to disciple to guide to show the way and that’s very much like you focus as the parent how are you showing up how are you regulating your own emotions how are
(37:56) you existing as a human how are you handling hard moments in front of your kids like that’s really what’s going to end up being the discipline throughout their childhood and it’s going to stick with them instead of like trying to get them kind of to comply or behave properly or obey or any of those things that again are very like control focused so I want to talk a bit about consequences and natural consequences because you know again I’ve come to a pretty radical not so IAL in like the unschooling world uh but a radical
(38:31) perspective on you know what is to be expected of of our kids and and you know like one of those things is like cleaning up or helping out and I’ve shared you know the the example that I don’t ask my kids to clean their room I have nothing to do with their laundry and in their dad’s house it’s a different you know uh I I would say more normative like set of expectations and in my house there rooms are always clean they’re always clean and it’s literally a nonissue and the my uh interpretation of that is that they have like an intrinsic
(39:10) a connection to intrinsic motivation like they actually give a what their rooms feel like and so they know when is a good time like my one daughter always cleans her room on Sunday I have never suggested that I’ve never you know prompted her around that and she does it because it feels good to her to start her week off with a clean room so when we don’t have the opportunity to develop intrinsic motivation we’re only ever caretaking you know for our environment or ourselves because of other people’s expectation and I wonder you know what
(39:38) I’m I can’t remember really but like maybe I used to say like hey clean up your blocks or your markers or then we’ll go you know we’ll go after you clean it up and do they need to clean up like is that is how do they learn the natural consequence of messiness if we’re constantly regulating that and do they even care about messiness so I don’t know I’ve sort of like spiraled out into like wow I have no idea how I would approach this with a young kid and where is the line between these like arbitrarily manufactured
(40:09) fictitious consequences and rules and the ones that actually do exist and might serve to support the development of that intrinsic motivation and relationship to care you know for the environment than like management yeah I mean I think we’re we’re still like figuring that out with our kids being really little but definitely we have we have leaned very heavily into developing intrinsic motivation and not kind of squashing that because they think it is really easy to squash that when you from a very young age start pairing chores or
(40:47) anything like that with a reward system I mean even like potty training comes to mind people always will do like M&M’s or sticker charts or things with potty training and I’m like you could just not do that and and it will be fine like everybody learns how to pee on the toilet on their own like it’s they don’t need a sticker for it it just it adds this like weird level again of like control to the situation that I feel like doesn’t need to be there and I think something that we’ve done in our house is again it’s very much like modeling
(41:24) plays a big role and then when they’re younger having Sation and helping them start to connect feelings to like situations so I mean even with like my 5-year-old she is like so creative that her room can get so chaotic right she’s got like markers and puzzles and books and lovees and things everywhere and she’s pretty young still so I think it’s hard for her to kind of make the connection in her brain sometimes of like I’m feeling overwhelmed because of the situation here so instead of me just being like you need to clean your room
(41:57) today it’s like hey you seem like you’re feeling like you’re a little overwhelmed you’re a little frustrated because you can’t find your stuff let’s observe what’s going on in your room and let’s talk about how like sometimes it can be hard to concentrate when our room is crazy like should we talk about a plan for how we can handle that and then it becomes this like collaborative effort where they have that internal reflection obviously a 2-year-old isn’t really having those sort of conversations and for a 2-year-old it’s really like me
(42:31) modeling or talking about that out loud or even just like I give my kids like one toy in the living room two toys in the living room because I know for myself if there’s 800 toys everywhere I’m going to be overwhelmed and so that’s even something I can say out loud is like we’re we’re gon to take some of these out of here because it’s too much for me like it’s making me feel overwhelmed and they’re just absorbing that but they’re kind of learning to connect those things together again intrinsically instead of like you
(43:01) clean your room and you get a dollar every Sunday because then there’s no there’s no meaning to it it’s just like you said has that extrinsic value to it and then you kind of again have you have to keep like upping the reward to make them want to do things and it becomes a really slippery slope I think yeah and and what I’ve noticed too is that when it is a control-based and and fear-based tactic there often isn’t the effort to teach to educate you know like I actually discovered this around a lot of subjects
(43:35) you know whether it was talking to my girls about buying natural Cosmetics or eating the right food or even like Tech like how to relate to Tech it was just like that’s the rule that’s the the good way to do it and then there’s the bad way to do it and I’m going to be upset if you do it the bad way and often there isn’t right like did you teach your kid how to clean like how the fre are they supposed to know how to clean like there’s no effort and it’s just about I don’t like this it feels bad in my adult system you make it better kid right and
(44:08) and when there is that intention like you’re suggesting you’re on the ground with them and I don’t know maybe you would say something like I think it would feel good for me if I put this away her stuff right because that’s really what it’s about it’s like I think it’s Byron Katie who says like if you don’t want the sock on the floor pick up the sock like if it’s bothering you that it’s there you do something about it because you know even with teenagers my you know my girls don’t do you know dishes and and that kind of a thing if
(44:40) if things pile up in the sink I’m the one who’s going to do it and so every once in a while I’ll be like well when they’re on their own how are they ever going to know how to you know clean a dish and so that actually incentivized me to make sure they actually know how to do it and then if they do it or don’t do it like it’s I’m the one who’s bothered so like if I’m going to do it then maybe even I could do it from like a devotional place like I am caring for these beings I actually have the opportunity and honestly privilege to
(45:14) live with in this time before they go off into the world is it that really is it really that big a deal is it that deep or you know I could say like you need to learn because that’ll make you a better adult bu out there at some point meanwhile you’re sacrificing this like you said this moment that you do have with your kids so there’s like a very different on the ground energy so I wonder too if you could speak about um sibling Dynamics and like how it what I would describe as like your minimalist approach like it’s it sounds very
(45:47) minimalist like just pause more you know observe more regulate yourself more and right like engage and and interfere less sometimes you know when sibling conflict comes up it feels it really invokes that triangle especially you know if you just have two kids it invokes that triangular Dynamic almost immediately where you you know feel inclined to take a side and make sense out of what’s happening and give your purview on the whole situation and you know again I have teenagers it’s not often that this comes up but when it does I have like a method
(46:23) if I’m in the room where you know I’ll ask I’ll I’ll ask if they want me to you know hold you know this conversation and I’ll ask them to say like and I I feel sentence basically like an I’d love sentence and then I’m I’m willing to right so like I feel is like their victim story it’s like I feel like you always do this and you always take my top and whatever and then it’s I’d love it’s like what do you want of of her right like what do you want her to do and then I’m willing to is like what could you offer right so like some
(46:55) permutation of those three and it and it works you know also my kids for reasons I can’t entirely understand are incredibly emotionally mature so they you know they they can work it out without my help I’m sure but in exploring this with them I often think like wow how does it work how would it work with toddlers like I don’t I don’t even know how that gets applied because you end up right like intervening on behalf of one I imagine and that sets up this triangular Dynamic where one is the B one and one is the good one what is
(47:28) the best approach for for conflicts that arise yeah sibling stuff I feel like is is one of those things that is the most triggering to parents and very often it ends up with this energy of coming in and you see one kid as the victim and one kid as the perpetrator and then the more that that happens the more it creates a divide between them and then the more conflict that happens and it just turns into this bad cycle I mean I always think think back I was at the playground a few years ago and there was this dad with twins a boy and a girl who
(48:02) were probably three and he was like paying attention to their older kid and the two twins were under the playground and the girl bit her brother I watched it she bit her brother on the leg and then he kicked her because like in instinctually because she bit him the dad turned just in time to see the brother kick the sister and like yelled at the brother so much was instantly like why would you do that that was not nice like set him to time out was like cuddling the girl and I was just thinking like wow he has no idea of the
(48:34) whole situation that just happened there and that me like the boy was you know he like he was hurt he had something happened to him too but it’s just like this instinct to come in and be like you’re right you’re wrong and so I very much try and approach any sibling fighting from a very neutral perspective of they both have a thing going on and my job is to help them Bridge the communication gap which obviously like the younger they are the harder it is and it’s more of just like making sure they’re not whacking each other with
(49:06) toys but like as they get older my job is not to decide who was right and who was wrong even if I like watch something happen it’s to help them communicate and so I’m very much will always come in and I’ll kind of make sure they’re physically separated and then it’s just like giving each kid a turn hey tell me your story what happened to you you tell me your story what happened and then like how can we how can we fix this what what can we do moving forward and that has made a huge difference I mean my kids are still little they still wrestle
(49:38) and fight and push each other over and like normal stuff but like I can see my three and my 5-year-old 75% of the time have a conflict start kind of like yelling at each other going at each other and then they’ll like pause and they’ll kind of figure it out on their own and I feel like that’s a really impressive thing for a three and a five old to be able to do and I I think it is due to that approach like very similar to what you do with your girls of I my job isn’t to decide who was right or who was wrong my job is to help make sure
(50:09) that like nobody’s hurting each other and to help them figure out a better way of problem solving I mean I think another part of it is like giving them space to problem solve a little bit and not just like jumping in the first time I hear them starting to bicker or argue or kind of coming into the room to be the problem solver like you have to give them the space to be able to practice that skill and then like if I can hear it devolve into the place where they’re just like kicking at each other or something then I’ll come in and and help
(50:42) move this situation along but like they don’t they don’t ever grow that skill and be able to kind of handle conflict if you don’t give them that space But I mean it also goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of like you have to be okay with with there being conflict and not seeing that as bad but seeing that as just part of like a healthy relationship and it’s okay if there’s conflict sometimes and they sometimes are feeling angry frustrated mad upset whatever at each other right which of course tracks back to your
(51:13) being able to hold that in your own system yeah amazing okay so I want to to wrap up with just sort of neon lights around some of the patterns that you know moms listening might be unconsciously engaging in so that perhaps they could be given pause uh or at least develop a little bit of witness Consciousness around some of the these habits so I wonder if you could share a couple of your like these Cycles must end you know things that you see in your clients and in in your friends and and family in the world um or maybe even
(51:52) that you committed to no neither no longer engaging or not engaging period based on your own lineage um like what are some of the things that you think we really need to look at a better I know you’ve mentioned some of them but we really need to look at a better way yeah one thing I think that comes up a lot that was a big thing for me and that I see as my clients a lot is giving yourself space as a mom for your needs to still be important and that kind of wraps in with like everything that I talk about but I always think of how how
(52:27) moms will often say like I can’t even pee without my toddler being on my lab and I I’m always trying to remind people like you can it’s okay if you set your toddler outside the door and they sit there and they cry for 10 seconds while you’re peeing on your own like I think that’s one of the biggest things is this idea that we have to be like such a sacrificial martyr that we have absolutely no space for our own needs and you you can’t be a healthy present mom from that space the only thing that it does is kind of further disregulated
(53:03) you and so I think that’s a big thing is just being okay with putting boundaries around what you need as a mom like as cheesy as that sounds and being okay with your kids being upset about it like they’re it’s okay if they feel um like they don’t appreciate that you went to the bathroom for five minutes by yourself so I think that’s a big one I think the other one is just this this piece of kind of trying to control your toddler all day and just recognizing how many decisions you’re making from a place of like this isn’t how it’s
(53:41) supposed to be or this isn’t how I imagined it to be and then getting into like the power struggles like I said earlier I think a lot of moms would enjoy motherhood a lot more if they weren’t constantly in this like power struggle with their toddler about everything all day day long and they just like let 90% of It Go and learned to be okay with their toddler their little kid kind of being their own person having their own existence so I mean stuff like as little as if your toddler wants to put his shoes on the wrong feet it’s like it’s
(54:17) really okay they can wear their shoes on the wrong feet if if they want to paint with their finger instead of the paintbrush like it’ll be okay just like all those little things that I feel like add up all day because we just want to like grip on to the control so tightly and then it causes a lot of conflict that doesn’t need to be there there’s so much about the resolution of this victim triangle Dynamic pattern uh in our lives that is just about getting on the same team right like how can you be on the same team with your partner how can you
(54:52) be on the same team with your body and how can you be on the same team with your kid you know like I I was reflecting the other day on the fact that I I don’t know that I have ever like talked my kids like ever and probably quite the contrary uh and how I just you know I know so many of us grew up just like overhearing our parents you know talking about us to their friends to the other parent and how can you give your child the impression that you are on your child’s team and that trust isn’t is is there uh when these these habits and again if
(55:34) nobody’s pointed this out it’s like you might not even wake up from the the the spell and so what you’re suggesting is like you know like I wonder if if every time you say no to your kid right like how many times a day does a mom say no no no do that it’s just like the same way we treat our husbands you know it’s like the same way we interact with our bodies it’s the same way we interact with the world as as women who are fundamentally out of touch with the the Deep fears that that drive our embodied existence so so if you look at how many
(56:06) times a day you are micromanaging and regulating your child’s Behavior I mean even as you’re talking I feel like yeah doesn’t matter like it’s okay you know it’s like zoom out you know zoom out a bit and experience even the you know it’s like as I as I come to the end of this like 18-year you know tenure with my with my daughters I just feel this I could cry about I just feel this like grasping almost like scarcity you know like it’s it’s almost over it’s 18 years for most of us I mean that’s it that’s it in the
(56:40) whole span of your life that you get to live with these humans and be with them and co-create with them and experience them like does it really matter if they you know like color on the walls like who cares so it’s it’s that relativizing perspective that I you know that I that I get from you and also of course the same messaging you know that I’m you know um on the mountaintops delivering which is just about the importance of emotional self-mastery as a woman in in your relationships so amazing Cassie thank you and I want to
(57:18) make sure that because you are offering um support directly to to moms that uh women know how to find you and and what they can Avail themselves of yeah yeah thank you thank you for having me so you can find me at Cassie mom coach kind of across the board website Instagram Tik Tok anything like that and then yeah I have I have a ton of like very accessible guides that kind of cover both sides of the spectrum I have my wild hands activity guide which I love so much which is very much focused on like activities and games and things
(57:57) that your little kids can do to start teaching them how to regulate their body that is very much like if you are in the trenches if you feel like your toddler is like wild crazy has huge emotions all the time like get that it’s so good to start giving them like I had mentioned before the actual skills and tools to kind of regulate their body and then on the other side guides around regulating yourself as a mom noticing your triggers moving through that how to kind of you know tune back into your nervous system
(58:30) and your fight ORF flight response that’s happening all the time and regulate yourself so that you can be more grounded and calm for your kids so I have that to you can kind of start wherever is going to be the best for you amazing well thank you so much Cassie for contributing to the root cause resolution of so much of what we’re dealing with as as adults I really appreciate it of course thank you for h b [Music] I [Music] [Music]
