- I mess up, I mess up all the time with my kids.
And it's a daily occurrence for me and I wanna share
some of those ways I mess up with you here today.
And also share some of the ways I'm rocking it
because I feel like that just needs to be
a normal part of our parenting conversation.
The Parenting Junkie.
So, how am I messing up with my kids?
Or what are the things that I'm working on?
Let's put some healthy language around that.
I wanna kind of give you an insight into my mind
so that you can see how I handle my failures
and my mess ups and the things that I'm just not so good at
or uncomfortable with in parenting.
And how I talk to myself about that.
Let's start with some of the things that I fail at.
Well, first of all, I still haven't really tamed my temper.
It's improved a lot since I started down
the Peaceful Parenting Journey and it's become rarer
for me to have rage and angry outbursts,
for me to yell or grab my children in anger
or wanna punish them and inflict
some kind of pain back on them
because I'm annoyed at something that they're doing.
That's become rarer, but it still occurs regularly.
And that's something that on the one hand,
I feel a level of shame about
or I could beat myself up about, feel guilty over,
but on the other hand, I know to tell myself that I'm human
and that I'm working on it and that it's improving
and sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back
and sometimes it's 10 steps back and that's okay.
There are lots of things that I don't do perfectly,
that I do very imperfectly or that I do wrong.
There are also just things that aren't in my genius zone,
that aren't the things that I love to do.
I don't like pretend playing.
I don't love pretending that I'm a mermaid
and you're a unicorn and we're going to the beach.
It's not my favorite thing, and sometimes I just won't
do it because I don't feel like it.
But a lot of parenting advice out there says
how important it is to play with your kids.
But I choose to own the areas of parenting
that are within my genius zone.
I love building Lego with my kids.
I can do that for a long time.
I like to read to them.
I like to go on adventures with them.
I like to bake together, there are things
that I like doing and things that I don't like doing.
And I prefer to do things wholeheartedly
and fully, rather than to begrudgingly tick boxes
of parenting, parenting should's
because I don't believe in that many should's.
I think we're all different
and we've gotta honor those differences.
So, I'm messing up or failing in that
I don't love playing with my kids.
I also suck in not trying to control
my kids eating, their food.
I really suck at that.
I always want to control what they're eating.
I have this urge to stuff in more greens,
to bribe them, to shame them, to blame them,
to coerce them, to threaten them
if they don't eat healthy foods.
And I have this inexplicable drive to shame them
when they binge on unhealthy foods.
That clearly something that's
a little bit unresolved for me.
I always feel a sense of inadequacy, imposter syndrome
or just feeling like I haven't got it together
when it comes to food and establishing really good health,
even though I've learned a lot about it
and I know what I'm suppose to do.
I know how I'm suppose to behave around food.
I know I'm not suppose to shame them.
I know I'm not suppose to blame them.
I know I'm not suppose to be so controlling.
And that leads me into another point
that I kind of suck at which is being controlling.
I think I am a bit of a control freak.
Maybe I'm a closeted control freak who isn't in the closet
because I'm genuinely very controlling.
I care a lot about how our house is setup
and I control my kids' spaces
and what they wear and how we spend our time.
Maybe I veer off into being too controlling
and that's probably not healthy.
But then there are a lot of things
that I think I'm great at, you know?
I think I'm pretty good at not punishing.
Even though in my mind, I have a drive like,
I'm gonna teach you a lesson
and you deserve to be punished for that
and there should be consequences to your actions.
I really kind of have fully come to terms with the research
and the feeling space of not punishing
and why that makes sense and what to do instead.
That's something I feel very comfortable about.
That's one area that I feel like I'm kind of, you know,
I'm kind of well established, I'd give myself an 85
(laughing) grade on that, not that we're grading.
Of course we're not, but you know, for myself.
And then there are other areas that I feel
like I'm really good, you know?
Maybe I'm getting better at listening.
I'm getting better at listening to my kids.
I'm getting better at really trying to just close my mouth
when my kids are talking to me
and let them express themselves.
I'm getting better at helping them with conflict resolution.
I have the same drive as anyone else
to just shut down conflict to make it stop,
to say, well you take turns or switch on a timer or solve
the problem for them in some aggressive and adult led way.
But I'm getting better at trusting and at facilitating
conflict rather than trying to control it.
And I'm also trying hard to model.
To model managing my own feelings and triggers,
self regulation, to model speaking kindly.
But often I find that I'm kind of a sucky model.
Like I'll tell my kids to use a fork
and the very same moment, I'll grab food with my hands,
like what is that about?
Sometimes I'm just a walking contradiction.
A real hypocrite and I guess that's part
of the human experience too.
All this is to say that we're all really complex.
There are things that we're working on
and trying to improve at and we all start
at different starting points.
And if you ever do feel like you're an imposter,
like you say you're a peaceful parent
or you're into this thing but you don't really fit in.
Like you don't really measure up, you're not a real mom
because you only have one kid or you only have a little kid
or you work outside the home, so you don't spend
all that time with your kids or you're yelling the whole
time, so who are you to call yourself a peaceful parent?
If you ever have that sense of being a fraud
or you'll be found out, like one day they're gonna discover
that you're not really the mom that you say you are.
If you ever have that kind of feeling,
then I wanna direct you to my podcast this week
which is all about imposter syndrome.
I think you're really gonna enjoy listening to that.
But for here, I just wanna say,
if you're into Peaceful Parenting, there are gonna be
things that you suck at and things that you're awesome at.
And instead of framing them up like that,
we can frame them as things that we're learning to do
and things that we feel more comfortable with.
Things that we already have well established
within our comfort zone and things
that are uncomfortable still.
Things that we're still learning and that we haven't
quite figured out yet, and that's okay.
Just like we wanna give our kids license to learn,
we've gotta give ourselves license to learn as well.
Now if this episode spoke to you,
I would absolutely love to hear your comments
over on the blog, just go to TheParentingJunkie.com/blog
and leave your comments on this episode there
because I really wanna know from you,
what are the things that you kind of suck at
and the things that you're rocking
and how can you reframe those to be more compassionate
and kind to yourself on this parenting journey?
We all need as much compassion as we could possible get.
Am I right?
Slam that like button, leave me a comment over on the blog
and share this out with anyone who you think it might help.
And I'd love to see you over on the podcast as well.
Now is the time to slam the subscribe button
because here's what's coming next week.
Today I'm gonna share some peaceful approaches
and steps that you can take practically
to wean your baby or toddler from breastfeeding.