Transcript: 

P is for P.A.R.E.N.T. (or How to Encourage our Kids to Gain Courage)

 

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Us & Kids Podcast. I'm your host Jan Talen. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, a mom, a wife, and a grandma. This Us & Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent together. And today we're looking at the word PARENT. You know, it's not an easy task, so I encourage you to subscribe to the Us & Kids podcast in your favorite podcasting app. Glad you're here. Let's get started. Let's see once we're going to talk today about what it means to be a parent. Well, some of you have said to be a parent means to be exhausted. That was your first thought. That's a parent - exhaustion. Those two go together. Sometimes you'll think parent to be confused, frazzled, overwhelmed. But some of you had thought parent, Oh, fun, encouraging, challenging, funny. Hmm. You know, there are so many different approaches to parenting and because we all have different personalities that how we parent can look different and often needs to be different depending on what our kiddos are like.

 

So this is not exactly how to parent a child in a specific age frame. But more about the general qualities that no matter where your kiddos are at is good for you to demonstrate to your kiddos and to work on with your partner or your spouse. So we're going to make an acronym of the word parent. Here we go. P, first letter stands for patient. Sometimes I would include and praying because when I can't have any patients, I would go and I would pray for patients. Usually it worked. Yeah. Not always, but usually no patience has the quality of being able to hold your emotions in a calmer space. Well, there is crazy and uncertainty around. And so because infants two year old, four year old, five-year-old, 10 year old, 15 year old can make us crazy unsure. We don't know how to decide should I push this or shouldn't die?

 

This kid has some responded, well all day today, do I have to scream to get them to notice. The parenting skill here that still is going to be the best is going to be to be patient. So let's just build that out one more. Because to be patient doesn't mean to ignore. To be patient might mean that you have to engage more, not ignore but engage more so that might mean that patient means putting down the diaper bag, bending down eye level to that three year old and holding them. There are little hands for a minute. Looking them in the eye and saying, I know you don't want to go to the store, but we're going to do it. So hold my hand now and let's sing your favorite song. You start by singing the song and now they start to move to the car. Not perfect. I'll agree with you.

 

I'm around three-year-olds weekly. I know it. It's that patience instead of just grabbing them around the middle and marching them to the car and throwing them in the car seat and everybody's uptight and loud. This was patience. It's not always as smooth. Sometimes we're patient while we just scooped them up or they're going to kick and scream and we're going to put them in the car. Okay? It's our job as best we can to stay as patient as we can. Often this includes some self-talk that says I'm going to be okay. They are going to be okay. We're all going to get in the car. Nobody's going to get hurt. We're just going to get in the car this to shall pass and we know they are three. It'll change. Give him three minutes. Hey, A is assertive, not angry, but assertive. Assertive is that quality that says that we are able to speak what we need.

 

It uses the pronoun I. I would like you to do this. I'm glad that you said this. I noticed that your Duplos are still out and they aren't in their pretty green bin. That's assertive. When we started our words with I and we have usually a request, so I notice those Legos are still out, your Duplos aren't in their green bin. I would like you to do that please. Do that right now. I have bent down, I have been patient and I'm going to use straight eye contact to let them know this is what's happening right now. Now, it might be that because they're three, I'm going to help them. Okay. I'm going to help them by singing a song. I'm going to put one in their hand. I'm going to move the green bucket closer, but I'm going to be assertive enough to say you're going to do some part of getting the Duplos back in the bin.

 

Assertive is also when we're parenting with our spouse and we have to say to our spouse, I would like to approach that time differently and I would like to work towards less screaming and more calmness. So I'd like to try turning down the lights, maybe doing bath first, and book second instead of books first and bath second. I would like to try something different. What we're doing is not working. And our spouse then in assertiveness would say back to us, I'm not sure that's going to work, and you're going to talk about going through about what will, there's no name calling, there's no blaming. There's just exploring what could and might work because the assertiveness has simply stating what I need or what I'm asking for. Without blame, without shame. Usually without a lot of noise, without a lot of volume, it often has an invitation in it.

 

Okay. I'm asking you to help me figure out bedtime differently. Yeah. Would you do that with me? Okay. It's not passive aggressive. It's not, nevermind i'll do it myself. Sort of seeding anger underneath. It's cooperative and it's asking for cooperation. We do it with parenting, our children also as we try to work together as a husband and wife parenting together, so we're patient. We're going to include that. Now we're going to be assertive. What else are we going to do? As were a parent, we're going to read now some of you say, I hate reading and I'm going to say you are so lucky you live in this day and age because you can get almost everything on an audible somewhere, right? So learn and read, read interesting things, read uplifting things. Work yourself away from things that are too dark or crabby or that it's going to build up.

 

Sort of quiet anxiety. Read more things about parenting, learn about it. There are lots of ideas and opinions and information, so keep on learning. Share those good things with your spouse. When you learn something good. Go back to assertiveness and say, I learned something new. I'd like to share it with you. Do you think we could try some of this? Read to your kiddos. They love to hear your voice. Have fun with them. Snuggle next to them, but also don't be afraid as they get older to let them read or listen to books and then talk about it and see if they want to make up a different ending. Talk about what you think is funny. What do they think is funny? What did they think was scary? What do you think was scary? Because part of being a good parent is sharing those ideas and learning how to share ideas.

 

So much of that happens through reading. What else should we do? Our next letter is E, so we're patient. We're assertive, we're going to remember to read and learn and we're going to be both encouraging and empathetic. Now, parent does not have two E's in it. I will agree with you. I just couldn't decide which E word was more important, so I'm going to let you remember use both of them. Yes. Here you go. First of all, encouraging, when we encourage, say you can do it or I'm proud of you, or let's try it together. When we encourage, we help kiddos gain courage. Remember, all of this is new to them. You've practiced putting on your shoes 49,000 times they haven't. It feels funny on their feet. The shoe feels funny in their hand. They don't know which way is frontwards and backwards.

 

Encourage them to explore it, to try it. How often have I said in my lifetime, those are really cute. If you want them to feel better, you can have them switch feet. I had one little kid, I'll respond back to me. I still giggle about it because they looked up at me and said, no, they will fall off and here's the deal. There's two is we're a little too big. Okay. And they realized that if they put them on the wrong feet, those shoes fit just a little snugger and they stayed on their foot better.

 

Wow. That's really a self-awareness kiddo. Way to go. I didn't use all those words with him. Yeah, I just giggled it and said, well, good for you. Then keep those on your feet, they look great because that's just encouraging, right? Encouragement also brings calm because the encouragement says I believe in you and usually anxiety comes in when we're not sure when we're a little more scary. So encourage quietly, encourage joyfully, encourage your kiddos but also remember to encourage each other, your spouse and your partner, they need encouragement. This is tough. Remind them, encourage them were doing the best we can. Okay, let's try that again. Encourage when it's a bust, some nights are just bad, just hold each other. Remember to be patient and just remember to giggle like, yeah, that took 9 million hours. Sure did. Thanks for your help. Encourage each other. But in that encouraging is that other E word and that's empathy.

 

Empathy is that ability to be able to enter into someone's skin, into their body and think and feel what they are thinking and feeling. It takes on their perspective, not just intellectually, what do they see, but also takes on their perspective. What do they feel? And then that's taking on theirs. But now flipping back over to you is caring about it. Letting your emotional energy move to, I care about that. I care about that. That is happening to you. So empathy when I'm trying to parent with my spouse, but my spouse is just overwhelmed, is saying to them while I hug them and I'm going to be assertive. I can see you've put your all into this day and you are out. So go take a bath or go take a walk. Give yourself a break. No shame at all. You have spent it all and I'm here for you. That's empathy. Empathy to a kiddo is when they have had a no good, very bad day is still hugging them. They have said no to you every inch of the way. Uh, usually then or often in my experience, the kid who was not feeling very good, there's something physiologically not happening. That's not just right. There's a little earache growing or they have a little belly ache or they're a little constipated. There's something, they're not just quite right.

 

But empathy is remembering that kiddos not out to get you. They're not trying to even, they're not trying to make you angry. It's not in their being. They're trying to make it through the day too. And empathy comes from their perspective and hugs them and says, work gonna be okay buddy. We're gonna be okay. And just comforts them. So, so far as a parent, we've been patient, we've been assertive using our I sentences and often asking or inviting for something to be a bit different. We've remembered to read and to learn, and remembering to be encouraging and empathetic. So this sort of goes without saying or I've been saying it a lot perhaps, but the N stands for nice. Be nice. Don't be rude, don't be crass, don't be quick to anger. No, those are all easier said than done. I know that well. Being nice often means this part of being emotionally balanced, emotionally under control.

 

It's easy to be nice when somebody is being nice to you. Right? And when you're feeling pretty good about yourself anyways, it's harder to be nice when you're off kilter. When you have a headache, when your stomach's just sort of wound up, when you're too tired. I'm going to remind you, nice takes less energy than crappy. So if it's about energy being nice, using patience, using encouragement keeps a whole household calmer and let's everybody settle in a little a bit more and that helps cooperation to grow. Well should you be nice when they're being naughty? I answer yes. Be nice. That doesn't mean you aren't firm, this doesn't mean you don't correct or teach or train. Harshness releases fear inside of a kiddo and when that fear happens, their brain freezes and they can't learn anything from you except for to be scared of you. Not really helpful as you go through the years of helping their little personalities and self control develop themselves.

 

When we're nice, even when we're naughty, we can be firm, but our niceness keeps it that their brain can still work. So when we say we're going to talk about this and this is what you're going to do next time when mama says it's time to get in the car and I know that you have heard me then you are going to go get in the car. You are going to, and then you're going to go over the steps, get your coat, you may take one toy and your boots on. How are you going to get to the car? And the kiddo has to say, I ain't gonna walk. Okay. And your answer is yes you are because you're going to be nice, but you're going to be very clear and they're going to be able to start to remember it because you had been firm and nice wanting to help them do is well.

 

They want to do it well, but you have to help them. And niceness and firmness is really often a good approach. So the last part of parenting, the T word, once again, you know, I couldn't decide which one to use. So we're going to start, we just will build off from nice. And that is teach. We can trade it out for train. Some people would call it taming so we could use teaching, we could do training or we could use taming. I'm not that much a fan of taming because it sounds like an animal. Your kiddos are not animals. They're way too cute for that. They'll beat out a puppy or a kitty any day in my world. So we're going to move back to teaching. It built off from the patience, the assertiveness, the reading, the encouraging and empathy and the niceness. Is that, in teaching we would use all of those components.

 

Now you can say I'm not a teacher and I'm going to say, well switch out the word teaching. I use teach cause it has a T but show, demonstrate, help them do it. They remember so much of this they have never done. You have done a lot of and you have an adult brain. They have a kiddo brain. So teach, show them, let them practice accept, encourage what they do and because they're doing it at their age level. How a three year old cleans a sink and yes, I had three year olds cleaning sinks. Okay. We all had a little bit of Saturday morning chore, but you couldn't expect a three year old to clean a sink like my 14 year old could. That wasn't going to work. Right? I had two different sets of expectations, but I still taught that three year old how to clean it.

 

They got the beginning and then when they were six we upgraded at when they were eight we upgraded it again when they were 14 we upgraded it again. We just kept teaching. Teaching has those elements of encouragement in it of you can do it. Come on, I'll show you. Let's do it together. Here's your rag, here's mine. I'll help you. Come on, let's pull up the stool. Let's do it together. This is how we hold a knife so we don't get cut. I'm not giving them a sharp knife, but I might give them a plastic knife or a butter knife or one of their play knives. I'll teach them. Teaching is fun because you'll watch the little eyes turn on like, Oh, I get it. And they're looking up at you like mama, is that right? And you'll be able to catch their eyes and put your arm around them and go so good.

 

Right? And there in you encourage them. That gives them the courage to keep trying new things. So crucial for development at any age. So I hope that you're hearing in this that to be a parent and the qualities we've just talked about are things that are really important as you interact with your kids at any age. But they're also really good things to use when you are with your spouse and your partner. Oh my be with each other. Oh, don't parent your spouse or your partner, you will get in trouble. Right? Okay. But you still can use assertiveness, encouraging words, empathy, being nice and when it's right, show them how to do something else. Well, this is how I did it. You figured out something that worked for that four year old and you gotta show them, you sure better show them, right? Everybody in your family is worth working these ideas, work them together, encourage each other, try, try it again.

 

Maybe that's what I should have made that T be, is try, try again because that's another part of parenting is try and try again. Hey, you know we have a new program coming out. It's called DNA for fun and it's a communications course that's going to take the ideas for parenting and the ideas for being married and put them in one space and help you learn the skills that you need. It's effective, it's efficient and it's compassionate. You'll find information for that on the Us & Kids website and the dates and times for the webinar and for purchase will be coming out soon. I'm really glad that you are with us. Join our discussion on our Facebook page too, because podcast comes out on Tuesday, but on Friday, I will be just upgrading it a little bit more through Facebook live. If you have a question or a comment posted on the Facebook page and I'll incorporate it into my Friday answer. All right? Hey, I'm really glad to spend the time with me and I will look forward to talking to you again next week. Thanks. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.