The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Mindfulness and stress management for families raising kids with big goals, big feelings, and everything in between.
Hosted by mindfulness coach Lindsay Miller, The Stress Nanny is full of practical strategies for calming anxious kids, supporting high-achievers, and teaching emotional regulation in everyday moments. Each episode offers easy-to-use mindfulness practices, stress management tips, and confidence-building tools that empower kids (and parents!) to navigate challenges with ease. Whether you’re raising a child who struggles with big feelings, a high-performing student-athlete, or simply want a calmer home, The Stress Nanny will give you the resources and encouragement you need.
The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Ep 201: Why Letting Go Of Control Gives You More Influence As A Parent
What if the fastest way to more cooperation at home is to stop chasing control? We sit down with Katherine Sellery, founder of Conscious Parenting Revolution, to explore why power moves and punishments so often backfire—and how connection-first strategies create durable trust and real influence. Katherine unpacks the “three Rs” that control tactics trigger—retaliation, rebellion, resistance—and shows how to interrupt that spiral with co-regulation, perspective-taking, and a reliable ritual of rupture and repair.
We dig into the everyday moments that test our calm: public meltdowns with an audience, teens clamming up, and the sting of believing we must be doing something wrong. Katherine and Lindsay show how to re-frame behavior as information, assume goodwill, and place the relationship at the center so problem-solving can begin. You’ll hear vivid stories, practical scripts, and a clarifying distinction between “belonger” kids who protect connection and “autonomous” kids who protect their inner compass. Both needs matter; both can be nurtured without rewards and punishments.
Expect actionable guidance you can use tonight: how to “get bigger than what’s bugging you,” what to say when a child fears your reaction, and why asking “What was your perspective?” can unlock stalemates. We also highlight supportive resources like Katherine’s Family Lifeline community, gaming webinars, and her book “Seven Strategies to Keep Your Relationship with Your Kids from Hitting the Boiling Point.” If you’re ready to trade obedience goals for belonging and mutual respect, this conversation offers plenty of ideas—and the encouragement to keep practicing.
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For more on Katherine's work visit her website.
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
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Welcome to The Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence, and connection. I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, Kids Mindfulness Coach and Cheerleader for busy families everywhere. Each week we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories, and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience, and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too. I'm so glad you're here. My guest today is Catherine Sellery, CEO and founder of Conscious Parenting Revolution. She helps individuals minimize misunderstandings and meltdowns in order to communicate with more collaboration, cooperation, and consideration. As a creator of the Guidance Approach to Parenting, a program that applies conflict resolution skills to communicating more effectively with children, Catherine has positively influenced relationships for generations and brought about healing and reconciliation in families that were suffering from disconnection. For over 20 years, she has taught and coached thousands of parents, educators, social workers, and medical professionals in half a dozen countries through her popular workshops, coaching programs, three TEDx talks, 250-page comprehensive training manual, her Amazon bestseller, seven strategies to keep your relationship with your kids from hitting the boiling point, and numerous appearances on major networks and global stages. Catherine, thank you so much for joining me. I cannot wait for this conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Me too, Lindsay. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it is my pleasure. As soon as I learned about Catherine's work, immediately I was like, yes, let's talk, let's connect. Because I'm excited to learn today, too. As we get started, Catherine, can you just give the audience just kind of a glimpse into how you made your way into this work? And then we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of all the amazing tools you teach.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I got into the work by having kids. I was a commodities trader. We lived in Hong Kong. My husband is an architect, and we were just two professionals living overseas. And when we did the kid thing, we both felt like we were deer in headlights. And, you know, we had all these skills, but we did not know what we were doing. So our own journey, we started taking trainings and classes, and it really actually opened up that I was really passionate about this. And so it became my thing for the last 20-something years. It's taken me down lots of different roads and met lots of incredible people in the space who, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We always have. So I've gotten to meet a lot of those giants and train with them and work with them and then eventually create the guidance for charity. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, that's fantastic. And I appreciate just the organic nature of what you teach, right? I mean, the tools aren't esoteric. They're direct, like practical from the trenches into.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, totally. And they work. They actually work, you know, they bring about the changes and the ships and all the rest of it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So let's get right into it. One of the things that I love that you teach is the idea of replacing control with connection. And I can really relate to that initial sense of, you know, when you're parenting and you're like, I'm not sure what to do here. But as an adult, we think, well, if I can just control the situation or control the outcome or control something, that's going to make it better. But that's actually a lot of times leading us the direction we want to go, right?
SPEAKER_00:So tell us more about that. Yeah, you know, it really does come up all the time. And we all want to have at least the sense of security that, you know, if things are going pear-shaped, we can get it back the way it's supposed to be and everything's under control, you know. And of course, the longer we're on the planet, the more we know we really don't control anything. We didn't control our upbringing. We didn't control our family of origin. We didn't control whatever dysfunctional patterns we got to grow up in, and unfortunately, probably trying to replicate. None of it. It all just happened. And I think that creates so much grace when we can stop blaming ourselves or blaming somebody else and just be like, you know, it just happened. It happened. This is the cards. And now I get to really basically, I think the best we can do is uh learn how to play our cards really well. And part of that is letting go of control. And, you know, there's an inverse relationship between influence versus control. And the inverse relationship is the more control you have, the less influence you have, and the more influence you have, the less power you have. And so we have to have like this trustfall that, you know, we may not have seen it yet, but we're gonna trust that somewhere in these kids that we're raising are sensible human beings who actually want to do the best, not only in the dynamic. I think I really do think kids like their parents and that they want their parents to be happy with them. And they don't want to upset their parents. And yet, you know, it happens. And then we get upset, and then they feel like it's their fault. And sometimes we encourage that perspective, which I don't think is a good idea. So if we just revert back to this idea of how's my relationship, you know, are we good? Because if we're good, then we can do whatever we need to to get through this. And I always like to say if you do nothing else in parenting other than let your kid know you've always got their back. Let them know you're the one person on the planet that you may not have all the facts and things may not look in their favor, but you've got their back, not necessarily to prove that they're right or any of that stuff. We don't want to get in that land, but to know that they had a point that there was something going on that, you know, whatever the story is right now, it's not complete.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And it was so funny because the other day my daughter, who's now 26 and getting her PhD in clinical psychology, was talking to me about another one of the PhD candidates, a good friend of hers. And they're similar kids. They grew up overseas and they're expats, they're in similar fields, they're getting their doctorates. And she said something about how her mom, me, still had feelings about this girl who had bullied her in middle school and ended up at USC, where my daughter went to school. And I did, I had feelings. Gosh, what is it, 15 years later, and I'm still holding a grudge. And she said, you know, I'm fine with this girl now. Like we went through it. We were little kids. Little kids are not developed and they make mistakes behaviorally. And mom still, you know, got feelings. And I thought, oh my God, she's so true. And her friend said, you know, my mom never had my back. And she said that her friend said it as a passing comment. And we both stopped, you know, we're in the car, we held our hearts and we went, oh god, the agony of that to be a young adult now and look back on your childhood and feel like mom always took the teacher's side, or mom always took the other parent's side, or mom never had my back, never believed in me, never saw my perspective. Ah, heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, totally. Well, and just the way that you phrased that was so beautiful because I think that in the process of relinquishing control, like you said, it does open us up to all the other factors in a situation, right? And saying if we attribute every action or every outcome to just us and our kids' behavior, we're not accounting for a myriad other variables in the situation, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But like you're saying, if we can zero in on the relationship, that's just one thing we got to focus on. And then if we can make sure that we dial that in. We're good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. Now let's figure out the rest of it. And people make mistakes. If you've made a mistake or I've made a mistake or they've made a mistake, that's okay. Because we get to make mistakes and we learn how to do the rupture and repair thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. And just like you're saying, the communication intact is the key, right? If we lose the communication, then we're toast because there's not gonna be much problem solving going on. But we keep that communication intact, assume goodwill.
SPEAKER_00:We have a road. I mean, I get to coach parents who are fired all the time. And, you know, when they're fired, their kids don't communicate anymore. In the land of everybody's doing their best, that doesn't mean that people don't get hurt. And it doesn't mean that we didn't screw up and make mistakes. Actually, it's okay because I think the best relationship comes from repairs where you've had the breakdowns and you've had the tough conversations, and it's obvious that everybody cares enough that they're gonna go work it out. Yeah. And they found the words. I mean, a lot of times I think it's that it's not that people don't have the heartfelt desire. They just don't have the road. They don't even know where the road is. Is there a road out there? Like, where's that road to recovery? And how do we get close again?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And like you mentioned at the start, often just before we find the road, we maybe think that clenching as tight as we can to our perspective or our ideas or our solution is the road, right? I know we're not actually getting us anywhere. And that's when we have to open ourselves up to just another avenue. But then I love the way you phrased it. Like it does imbue the situation with so much freedom, flexibility, and creativity because then all of a sudden, instead of grasping onto this thing that just isn't working, you're instead connecting with the person. And the resilience you can build between the two of you in the repair and in the road forward is really powerful.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just laughing. I have a client who calls me up recently, and they were traveling through Europe, and her son is a college student. And she was so upset, and you know, I didn't even remember this, but she told me later that she'd called and told me the whole thing and la la la la. And I just I guess I just said, Well, what was his perspective? And that's often all the shift we need. We're so clear about our perspective. We know all of it inside and out, but but once we're done knowing our side so well, it's useful to kind of think, all right, maybe they have a perspective, not that I'm gonna agree with it, or but what their perspective is, but to just get back into that space of wonder, you know, and not needing to be right.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's amazing, you know, that one thing not needing to be right is it's like it's like Mount Everest, you know? It's yeah, a big thing to climb. It takes so much humility, a lot of self-compassion. And the relationship has to be more important than being right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so well put. And I think uh, you know, I work with families in teaching kids skills of mindfulness. And one of the skills we really work on is self-awareness, right? And those moments come when we're self-aware, right? When we can notice, like, actually, me digging in my heels in this moment isn't getting me the outcome or isn't getting me the result that I'm looking for, potentially I'm a little bit stuck right now, right? And like I would benefit from shifting gears and considering the perspective of my child. And I think, you know, developmentally, you speak to this too. Developmentally, there's so many factors, right? At any given stage of development that they're navigating. And if we're not attuned to those and we're coming at the situation just from our adult perspective, we really don't see it clearly, right? Because, like you're saying, if his perspective is one of an 18-year-old, a 25-year-old, a 13-year-old, you know, whatever it is, there's just gonna be so many different pieces of it that are beyond our reach if we're stuck in our own siloed viewpoint.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. And, you know, basically that idea again of just being more concerned with the relationship and leaving that at the center to be sure that, you know, I've got this thing and I've got to talk about this thing, and I really want to breach this thing with you. And and I wanted to be sure that before my son used to do this to me. It was hilarious. He would say to me, Mom, I gotta talk to you about something, but I'm kind of worried about bringing it up because I think you might be upset about it. And I'm I'm not really sure how you're gonna react. And I mean, he'd mastered it. You know, that's the joy of modeling certain skills, is that you think to yourself, oh my God, the slugfist I went through to get to where I am, yeah. Like, seriously, and you're just born this way. Well, of course not, right? We did model it for him, but he was so good at it. And by the time he got done preparing me for whatever the difficult thing was that he needed to say, that he was so worried about my response, I was just more worried about whatever it was that he thought he couldn't tell me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That, you know, it was like, no, I mean, really, okay, I'll manage my feelings. Yeah. I just want you to feel like you can talk to me. And we really, you know, we walked the talk. We never punished our kids. We we abandoned the rewards and punishment thing. Like that was lesson 101, you know. Let's not activate the three R's retaliation, rebellion, and resistance. Because, you know, it's not good for the relationship, it's not good for them. It builds all of the resentment flows, la la la. And yet he was still worried. And he still was concerned because we're still human, you know, we still have feelings and we say things or our face says things. We can't hide. So, yeah, that rupture and repair, it's huge.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, let's get into the three R's. I love this story. I can relate in my own way because I'll have conversations with my daughter similarly. We don't do punishments like after nose in the corner when she was three. I was like, this doesn't feel good. Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't miss it that feel good to me at all. And so I had to make some adjustments. But I think nowadays she'll be like, I'm a little bit nervous to tell you this. I'm like, what am I gonna do? You know, like what? Okay, I know.
SPEAKER_00:I know I saw our son lying once. And I mean, I have a whole thing on, you know, kids say lies as coping mechanisms. It's a way for them to cope with whatever they're because they can't open up to you. And I'm thinking to myself, how is this possible? I mean, seriously, yeah, how is this possible? And what it taught me was that even a look on my face of disappointment was something he wanted to protect himself from. Wow. I was just like, oh my gosh. Now that's a whole deeper level of like, why would I have a feeling? Why am I not neutral about this? Yeah, you can go round and round.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I think the reflection is so powerful because there's just the opportunity in those moments, like you said earlier. We can either take those moments as information and have a little bit of neutrality about them and invite a bit of reflection, or we can, you know, feel offended. There's a whole range of responses that we could generate in that moment. But as we're intentional about our response, that's when we find the power, right? Because then we can nail in those components of the relationship. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, very well said, it makes me kind of chuckle because you probably do something similar in terms of like a centering exercise where it's about getting bigger than what's bugging you. So, in this conversation of getting bigger than what's bugging you, the idea is not to be identified. Like, you really can't stop whatever arises from arising. It's kind of out of our hands. We're back to the control thing. Like I would hope that that wouldn't arise in me, but you know what? I really have no control about whether it does or doesn't, other than I can choose whether to be identified with it. That requires being bigger than what's bugging me. And it requires having that sense of spacious consciousness or presence that I have a sense of who I am as something larger than my feelings, my thoughts, my reactions, my responses. And yet I'm also present to them. Like I'm totally not pretending that stuff isn't happening. That's so inauthentic. And so I have to be like real and yet have a context around it so that I don't collapse into it and also help, you know, the kids I work with or my own kids to also be able to be with it but not merged with it. And that's kind of the language that I like to use is to be with it and not merged with it. And it takes some experience of that as opposed to just using the words. Because as a word or a concept, it's not going to help me or anybody else, but as a practice of getting in touch and being present to whatever's arising in a way in which it's not like I'm trying to bury it or pretend it's not there or have any feelings or judgments about it, to be connected and at the same time present to choice.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, so beautifully put. I love that phrasing because I think, you know, I'll talk to kids about how there's a part of our brain, and that's the part of our brain's job, right? Is to do that, to have that like sense of what's going on without being a part of it. And if that part of our brain doesn't get practice, it can't do its job, right? And so, like you're saying, or we practice it, the more that part of our brain comes online, we can access it with more immediacy when we need it. And then, yeah, it's like we unlock a whole nother level of presence because we're able to sit with the feeling without shoving it away, invite it into the moment without being overtaken by it, and then engage with it in a way that lets us move forward more skillfully with the person that we're interacting with.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Yeah. And that is a practice. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's a huge practice.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, let's go back to the three R's because I love the way that you conceptualize so many things, especially this. Talk to us about that framework.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So, I mean, it was Thomas Gordon who did the research that led to our understanding that when you use power and control in order to make theoretically make somebody do something, change the behavior that you don't like, you will activate retaliation, rebellion, and resistance. So he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times based on this work. And I was originally my first training was as a teacher of Gordon's material, and I taught it for many years before eventually becoming really, really deeply, you know, enmeshed in NBC and kind of a lot of other work that got integrated into my work. But I love his work. And, you know, he's one of the giants that I bow to and acknowledge like the profound uh impact that this awareness brings. Because if you're just uh using uh your logical mind and you know That you're going to activate the three Rs when you use power and control and make somebody do something by the use of rewards and punishments, then someone else's work that I worked with, Dr. Louise Porter, her doctorate, looked at how many behavioral disruptions can we attribute to the three R's. And found that 75% of behavioral disruptions are the three Rs, which leaves us just one out of four problems is actually the primary issue, like getting them to clean up their room or take their shoes off before, you know, or whatever. Like all the daily things that people get so irritated with. How we deal with those things when we, all right, fine, no TV, you know, for a week. Okay, great. You can't have Tommy over. That's it. No play date. You know, when we start using those sort of things, the threats, then they get their nose bent out of shape. And we get mad about how they responded to, you know, what we thought was the correct response to their probably disrespect. I mean, I can think of all the things that we label and how we judge the behavior rather than just looking at it as it was thoughtless. We do thoughtless things, especially when we're tired and exhausted and we haven't had a snack yet. And it goes on for the rest of our lives where we will have times when we're thoughtless. And it's not even age specific, and neither are the three R's, right? The three R's are not age specific. I see them all over every day. We walk out on the road and we're gonna see an R, it's gonna arise. And so knowing that, who in their right mind would want to like not just double but quadruple even more? It's more than that. Yeah, right. Who would want to create more problems for themselves? And I mean, I pondered this so often because, in spite of the knowledge, the research, the background, there's more to it. And the more to it is that there really is ageism. And, you know, I feel like I am a child advocate. I literally go around the planet doing this, yep, drumming my little drum. Yes. To see children as people too, yeah, to see their pure little hearts, even as they're acting in ways that are absolutely diabolical, that it was the best that they could do under the circumstances. They didn't want to be diabolical, but you know, they're little and they're at the beginning of managing absolutely every aspect of their journey. And to see them when they're being socially unacceptable and acting in ways that if we chose to, we could feel embarrassed about. If we wanted to, we could make it about ourselves. And, you know, all of those choices that we can do rather than just see them as drowning, drowning in whatever the emotions are that they don't know how to manage. And I like to like get out in the little boat and you know, row out to them, pluck them out of the water before they drown, wrap the blanket around them, give them a cup of cocoa, let them know they're not alone, that you're there with them now, and that they're gonna get through this because you're gonna help them. And then you just do all the co-regulating things that can support them and just be getting to get under control again. Because I don't know about you, but my experience is that when kids have acted in ways that embarrassed you, they also were embarrassed. Yeah, yeah. They don't need you to punish them to learn a lesson of that behavior wasn't okay. They already know it wasn't okay. And if they could have done better, they would have. And it really is a skills deficit. It's not disrespectful, it's not that they're out to get you. I mean, but these are the ways that because of the negative view of children, and because we literally project our judgment onto the situation, we can't see it as just a little person, even when they get to be big. It's just somebody who is out of their depth right now. Yeah. And they really just need a helping hand.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, that was so poetic. And I love that metaphor of the boat and the drowning because it really does like pull at my heartstrings when I see a tiny person dysregulated in public. Like you said, they're not excited to be dysregulated, right then. They don't love that feeling either. And so, you know, as a parent, it's so tricky to be in that place where you can feel the feeling without being enveloped by the feeling and allow it to be there while also initiating connection as your primary focus. But when you can practice it and do it, it makes all the difference, right? Because I mean, we've all seen those moments when because you tell a child to regulate, they don't just do it, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's like Bob Newhart. Did you ever see that Bob Newhart thing? Right? Where you know, he's the therapist or whatever, the guy comes in, he's talking about all his problems and he's like, stop it. Like if I could have done that, I wouldn't be here because I would be able to just tell my, you know, my nervous system to stop it, but it didn't work. You know what I mean? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So fun.
SPEAKER_01:No, and I think the conflict piece. I think if we can normalize a sense of conflict as a part of family relationships, as a part of parenting, instead of seeing it as a power struggle, that's just a part of being around another person, is you're gonna have conflicting ideas about how something should go. And just because one of the people is very tiny doesn't mean they're not gonna have a powerful response to the conflict, right? Or you know, to the situation. And I think again, the relationship, if the relationship is what we want to walk out of the grocery store having intact, then yeah, like what time do we need to take or what opportunities to notice to create that sense of connection amidst yeah, and you know, it gets back to what's your value is your value obedience and compliance.
SPEAKER_00:And if you value obedience and compliance, then you're gonna pay a really, really heavy price for that for a long time, for a really long time. And I think about my parents and my mom in particular, she had this sort of like, well, what were the neighbors think? And I don't know if you experienced that growing up or not, but I always used to think to myself, the neighbors? What are the neighbors gonna think? Like I was so dumbfounded by it. But I mean, it did, you know, acculturate me. And there's this idea that it's what other people think about my mom, um, or the family, or you talk about the kid with the breakdown in the grocery store. And it's so hard because of the other people. It's so much harder because you have an audience now. So, I mean, I always say, get out of the audience, like find a closet, just get out of the view of all the people, because that also is where I guess the norm is that you're supposed to come down on kids hard if they don't have perfect behavior. So if you are now going to try and connect, have empathy and understanding, and you know, just be more focused on supporting them through their big emotional upheaval, as opposed to correcting them and making them wrong for having done it in public and embarrassing you and going down that road. Well, you can try to be a compassionate, loving person with a child that's falling apart, but when everybody around you is looking at you and saying, Oh, she's being permissive, and you got to come down hard on that, and has this whole script about how you're supposed to discipline children who are misbehaving and that you're, you know, gonna raise, I don't know, like a terrorist or something if you don't do this better. That makes it really hard, you know, to stay in the lane of connection over correction. Yes. And it's almost, I mean, it's just so hard to do that it's almost like you have to look at the people around you and say, you know, it's okay. He's gonna get through it or she's gonna get through it, and I'm gonna be here with them as they move through these really big feelings. And I'm sorry if this is inconvenient for you or in any way distressing to you. Because now you're worried about like other people's feelings that are arising, but of course it's because of their judgments.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Yeah, and you can't control other people's need for control, right? I mean, in those situations, you just I think that there's also unfortunately a tendency for people who are like the more vocal voices are often the more judgmental ones, right? So for every one person who is maybe eyeing you funny or even says something, there are other people wandering around that store who are also like, you go mama, right? Or you know, like way to go. And so I think sometimes because the cultural narrative can be loud in the direction of judgment, that it can be challenging to access those voices of compassion in those public spaces. But I think that exists, they're just not the loudest ones all the time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm just remembering Marshall Rosenberg. You're familiar with Marshall Rosenberg, yeah. So Marshall used to say, you probably know this, you know, what you think about me is none of my business. It's so good. And, you know, just to stay so centered in like really, you know, the outer voices and what they think about me or the child or the situation or what's going on here, it's all about that person. I mean, they're basically giving you a download of their mindset, their consciousness, where they are. And it really has nothing to do with me or other people around me or the situation. It has everything to do with them. Yeah. Knowing that, like really knowing that deep in your soul, in your bones, is I think it's one of the keys to life, honestly. I do. I think it's one of the keys is to be able to really know, like, what you think about me is none of my business. You know, maybe you think good things about me, maybe you think bad things about me, but in both cases, it's healthier for me not to have that external locus of causality where I feel good about me based on what you think about me. So then let's go back to my mother. What will the neighbors think? Well, I think that was a whole generation.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think that was a whole generation that was inculcated in the external locus of causality. It was all about what other people thought about you.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It was so dysfunctional. It's not gone, but I think there's been a big shift in this idea. It's about what other people think about you. It's funny, you know, parents who want their children to be self-motivated and don't realize that everything about their parenting is teaching them to have an external look to causality and to not absolutely no self-connection whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01:I have this conversation all the time. And we'll talk about how I'm like, I know it's can be maddening to parent, but this is a quality that is gonna serve this kid for their entire life. And so stamping it out when they're little, I mean, maybe for your own benefit for a couple of years, it makes life a little easier. But the movement through life without that is gonna hamper this kid for quite a while. So if we can figure out how to work with it instead of how to control it or change it, you know, just how can we channel it, right? How can we make this serve and work with it in a way that allows the connection? And that's, you know, easier said than done for sure. But I think there is so much value in noticing the qualities as they emerge in the kiddos and then seeing the way that they will show up again later in life in ways we really appreciate, even though at three we might not.
SPEAKER_00:No, I agree with you. And, you know, I mean, I'm gonna say this what I think I hear you saying. The words that I use when I'm training are we have the kids who want to please you, the belongers. And then we have the group that I think you're talking about right now. And these are the ones who are prepared to risk your displeasure in order to be true to their own idea of what's coming forward. And these are the autonomous children. And you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and we're looking at behavior on the needs-based perspective of okay, like what behavior is this, you know, trying to meet? The thing is, is that autonomy and belonging are both, they're like their needs. We have a need for both. And I think that we may literally be born more in one camp or the other. We may literally be more of a belonger and geared toward like, oh, wow, that's really upsetting. I can see you're more interactional and like my son, really concerned about what mom was going to do or think. And that was his relationships in general. Very, very concerned. I mean, usually the kids who are high belonging needs are not hard to raise. They're really not, because they are worried about your face and they self-correct because they don't want to risk the relationship and all the rest of it. The ones who find coaches like us probably are people who have autonomous children. And they're the ones who are like drawing lines and they're like, well, fine, then send me to my room because I will not change my behavior. Yeah, this is the hill I'm gonna stand on forever. I've used every power tool I have, and you are still not changing your behavior. So you're gonna spend the rest of your life grounded and in the room, and you know, no family dinners, no friends over. So this isn't working. So they're getting all three of the three R's. And it's so great. I mean, I love these kids. I love these kids. And it is, however, back to the beginning of if you have a negative view of children and if you believe that a child should be obedient and compliant and do as they're told, then this will be the child that is going to be your teacher, honestly, right? They are your teacher, they're they're the ones that are strong enough to teach you what nobody else could have done, because our kids can unravel us, yeah, right, because we love them so much. And so this kid that you probably want to strangle is also the kid that you're gonna get to write the thank you note to, because thank you for teaching me that uh just because you're autonomous doesn't mean that you're not considerate and that uh autonomous children are extremely considerate and their consideration will not happen because you forced it. But if you create an atmosphere in which you're prepared to see their resistance not as disrespect, but as something they're trying to honor within themselves, and they don't exactly know how to do it in a socially acceptable way, especially because you probably have an unconscious negative view of children and a bias that you don't even acknowledge, because even though you are an ageist, you didn't know you were ageist. And if it were an adult who was doing the same behavior, you probably wouldn't even blink an eye. But because it's a child who's supposed to be obedient and compliant and do as they're told, now we're talking about disrespectful. And often I hear, oh, they've got ODD. And I'm like, are you sure about that? Because I don't buy it. Okay, maybe a few, but not the numbers I hear. Everyone I hear is just a child looking to figure out how to honor their needs for autonomy and learn how to also recognize that there are other people in the room who also have needs. And they're not always going to get it right because not everybody gets it right. And at the same time, to call them inconsiderate is actually wrong. It's not even about consideration because you, if we I mean, I don't know, this might not go down well, but in any event, you are the one being inconsiderate of them. Yeah. I mean, fair.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I know and I've mirror here, mirror. Yeah. And it's so well put. And I think one of the beautiful things about the vantage point that I have in some of these exchanges is the recognition that parents have of that. Right. And when they come to realize that, what it unlocks is they can let go of some of the control. They can let go of like, I did something wrong with this kid. They can let go of the need for determining the outcome, and then they open up to so much. And I feel like that shift, what you just described, the realization of it, it is so much work. And the parents who engage with it and do it, I'm sure you see the same thing. Absolutely. I mean, they access such a deep level of self-awareness, connection, and the relationships they're able to build from that new place after they've clawed their way through all of their biases and their preconceived ideas about how this parenting thing was going to go. Like the relationships they build as a result, it like brings me to tears. I think it's so incredible.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, absolutely. Me too. And I remember, you know, because I have one of each. I have a belonger and I have an autonomous child, and my belonger is the older one. And he was about two and a half, three. That's when my husband and I started really thinking, what are we going to do? Like you mentioned, like the nose and corner, whatever. We all have done something, and we we followed the script that's, you know, the dominant culture, society. Like this is what you do. I probably read a dozen books, and I was like, this doesn't work for me. Like, none of this, I can't do this. It's just not lining up with my sense of brightness. And so we just kept digging and finding and found so many extraordinary people who had done so much work on these, you know, incredible conversations and dynamics. And Marshall, he had, I think, three kids. And he would make one captain of the week, I think it was. And Captain of the Week got to make the decisions, and they would go to the dry cleaner or something. And the dry cleaner would have lollipops. And he would say to the captain, What do you want to do about this? Like, this is your choice. Do you want all three? Are you going to pass them out? And he would see them holding on to the three lollipops, trying to decide, like, how do I want to handle this? I could take all three, but then I'm not going to be captain next week. And how's it going to play out next week? And it was such a great like experiment, right? In social behavior. And watching his children learn about power, access to power, the price you pay for power over. I mean, it was incredible. And I I think it's a good idea to teach our children consideration through the use of ways that they can experience like, wow, I guess I'm really going to pay for that. And andor I'm going to really benefit from that. I mean, transactional leadership, it's one flavor in a relationship and really developing leadership through like, well, how do you feel about that? It's the relational type. It's a whole different type of power. And the powers that be don't always use. Use that kind of power, it's domination and control. And we could go on to social justice next, but I think we're kind of wrapping up.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't know there's so many other questions I could ask. I think that as you're talking this through, one thing that's coming back to me again and again is the messaging around support, right? And the recognition that when we don't have what we want in a situation, again, it's not because we're doing something wrong. It's not because we are messed up. It's not because our family didn't teach us how to do the thing. Maybe those things are all factors, but like maybe it's just that we haven't accessed the support that we need yet to do it the way that resonates with us, right? Or to do it the way that connects us to our kids. So talk to us about that. Talk to us about some of the tools you have to support families. Cause I think when we can get over this idea that we need to have been born knowing how to parent beautifully on our own, just yeah, you know, like I think when we can get through that and then make our way to really solid ideas that resonate with us and help us build strong connections with our kids, that's when the magic starts to happen.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, so true. I mean, we have a family lifeline in our conscious parenting community. So if people want to go to conscious parentingrevolution.com, they can actually just join the family lifeline. And it's a free community. It's just what we you know, it's like when you need that lifeline, like when you're hanging away. That's a good phrase, right? So the lifeline is there to support families. We have seven strategies to keep your relationship with your kids from hitting the boiling point. And you can go to freeparentingbook.com and download that. So that's you know, the Amazon bestseller as well. And if you were to go to the website, I have like gaming webinars because that's a big, you know, conflict point with parents. They don't always know what to do. I mean, there are tons and tons and tons of free resources that touch on a lot of different things. And of course, I have a program where I actually coach parents over three months. And that's my 90-day parenting family reset. And I call it a family reset because you know, sometimes you just need a reset. You know, we don't have to go into the blame or I did this wrong. No fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame is kind of the cornerstone of the work. And if you have this mindset of no fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame, everybody can really just get the do over.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Without that extra layer of shaming them or making them wrong or, you know, any of that other stuff. Because if that is still in the family system, it's hard to go, I didn't really handle that well without going into the whole self-blame thing. Or to give someone else grace and go, yeah, I know things don't always come out right. If you had the do-over, what would you wish you'd said? And to just provide that, my little girl, when she was tiny, would sort of blow up. And I used to say she had the disposition of a car alarm. And parents who know kids that have the disposition of a car alarm. You know what I'm talking about. And so as a result of that, I think she had a number of times when she just really felt badly about the way she handled the situation. And so we got to talk about how she had like the learner permit on her head, and that, you know, it's okay, you're just learning. We make mistakes, we drive off cliffs, we, you know, pop corners, things like that happen. And we can go back and and we can do it over. And she actually would say, Well, I want to call so-and-so's mom because I don't think I acted right, and I want to apologize. I said, Oh, okay, well, that's fine. You can do that. You can make up. Yes. You can you can clean it up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's so much better than holding this rigid perspective of someone. Of course, I say that laughing, remembering that you know, we started with me telling you the story about the little girl that bullied her in middle school. Yeah. That you're still so just because I preach it to you know, I always do it. We all get to be human. We all get to be human. Oh my gosh. It's so funny because I do have feelings.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I think, you know, I said magic earlier in terms of accessing the information, but it really is just practice, right? Like you said, it's work and it's practice. And it's work and it's practice. And we as humans, we're just going to keep practicing for our whole lives in different ways in different situations. And I think bringing that level of, like you said, grace to it and just recognizing and honoring that allows just it's not easy, but it gives the process an element of ease because you're not reinforcing blame and shame and all of those things on top of the pretty challenging situation. So I love the way you phrase that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I just remember when I first got started at all of this, it was it was about 27 years ago. And I took this class over and over and over and over. I literally took it once or twice a year for five years, and it was Gordon's training. And the woman who was teaching it in Hong Kong said to me, I think, I think you've got it. I said, Well, intellectually, I could do the whole thing chapter and verse. That's not why I'm here again. I don't want to be thinking about it. I want it to be my automatic response. I talk about it as like, you know, if you play tennis or if you have a sport or if you speak a language, it's not something that you take one language class, it is a life's work. And when I was starting to work with Marshall Rosenberg, it was in the time, I don't know, 25 years ago, maybe or something like that, where he stopped certifying people. He said nonviolent communication is a way of being. And you can't get a certificate, you have to live it. You can't just go and get a degree. You have to make it who you are. And that means when you're in those conversations, you've got to find your way. You have to walk your talk.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's so well put. And I love the idea of find your way. The stage of life that we're in now or starting to look at colleges and starting to navigate that process. And I thought I had these skills down, but this you know, this is inviting, I'm finding my way for sure in this stage of parenting. But right, but like you're saying, there's never a completion point for the relationships or for the situations. So it is the continual practice, finding our way to those skills or finding our way to the relationship or finding our way to our practice no matter no matter what we're in the thick of. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's our journey. For sure.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Catherine, this has been such a joy. I have learned so much. I have loved it.
SPEAKER_00:I have loved it too. I'm sure we'd be best friends if we lived. I think so too.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_00:So welcome. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Can you just give a shout out to your website? We'll link you referenced it. We'll link it in the show notes, but let people know where they can actually go to find. Yes. It's conscious parentingrevolution.com.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you again. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Stress Nanny. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to share it with a friend who could use a little extra calm in their week. And if you have a minute, I'd love for you to leave a review. It helps other parents find the show and join us on this journey. For more tools and support, head over to www.thestressnanny.com. Remember, you don't have to do stress alone. Together we can raise kids who know how to navigate life with confidence and ease. Until next time, take a deep breath and give yourself some grace.