Mindful Moments Blog

Undoubtedly, the most frustrating moments in parenting are those that happen to us every day. When we understand what is causing our frustration, we are able to move from connection. Here are 3 tips. 

3 Steps To Blast Through The Shame And Reclaim Your Power The memes are swirling again. You only get 18 summers with your children. Make it count! Don’t miss out on a single second! You’re running out of time! Make sure you give them an epic summer! The clock is ticking! Don’t fail them! I understand the sentiment, really. It’s meant to be a reminder to pay attention and soak it in. No harm meant. Much like “your children are only little once” and “enjoy every second.”  But how these sentiments land really depends on one’s current state - emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, etc.  When you’re struggling, these well-meaning sentiments land like a swift slap to the cheek. They can induce waves of guilt and not-enoughness as we: Share custody with a co-parent, only getting half of the summer Navigate the troubled waters of a mentally or physically ill child Work extra shifts, multiple jobs, or longer hours to make ends meet Feel grief and loss or fight the darkness that is descending Attempt to rebuild broken relationships or shattered dreams Lack the financial capability to trek to Disney or beaches Feel complete exhaustion from running in circles daily Work to piece together childcare solutions because work doesn’t break for the summer Crave alone time because you’re now a 24/7 jungle gym for little ones There have been periods in my life when those inspirational memes and quotes did just that - inspired me. They landed softly. Sweetly. They stirred something positive in me.  This summer, when my life is upside down and nothing looks the way it’s supposed to, they land hard and it stings. They leave me feeling deeply ashamed and inferior. It is not the fault of the meme-sharer. While it lands hard on me, it is landing softly on countless other parents, gently encouraging and nudging them along their paths, inspiring connection and presence.  No, it is not incumbent on those who share such things to make sure I am okay enough to read them. My reaction is my own, and rather than spiraling into the shame it evokes, I can notice my not-enoughness - my guilty reaction - and take some important steps. Step One: Notice My reaction to “you only get 18 years” landed hard because my kids are teenagers. I don’t have anywhere close to 18 left. I have only 2 left with one child, and 4 left with another. When you’re staring at the end of a journey, well, there are a whole lot of emotions.  Not only is my time left with them extremely limited, but shared custody limits it more. Now the pressure is really on. I need to provide the most awesome final childhood memories. But wait, financially, things are strapped. We won’t be flying to Disney World like so many of our friends. We won’t spend a week lounging in front of the Atlantic.  It’s no wonder the well-meaning sentiment hit so hard. But now that I’ve noticed the sting and paid attention to its message, I can make the conscious decision not to spiral into the shame it initially evoked.  Your reasons for the sting are different, but I want you to know they are valid. You’re not being silly or overly sensitive. You have permission to feel it all - your disappointment, frustration, sadness, grief - whatever is bubbling up to the surface for you, let it come. Feel your feelings and breathe.  Step Two: Choose Compassion Now that we’ve noticed the frenzy of feelings that are coming up for us, let’s meet them with compassion. Let’s hold ourselves in a safe space while they wash over us, and then allow them to go, appreciating the messages they brought but not holding on to them.  I have to purposefully choose to be heavy on the self-affirmations this summer - to dose up self-love and self-care because myself is hurting and needs to heal. When the shame gremlins whisper in my ear, when they speak to me of my inferiority, mistakes, and failures, I have to look them in the eye and whisper back “I am enough.” And even though I may not believe it at that moment, I may not truly feel enough, I will repeat it because the little girl within is listening.  Step Three: Own What I Can Do When I focus on everything I cannot do or provide this summer, I feel despair. But when I focus on what I can do, I feel empowered.  I can make and accept bids for connection. I can be present and give my full attention at times. I can stop worrying about tomorrow. I can take a short trip. I can build them up and share my love. I can leave the past where it belongs. I can choose love over fear. I can enjoy the days we have together, and if not the whole day, at least a part of it. Maybe I can’t give my children a magical summer, but I can help make it lovely. I can’t fly them to Universal Studios but I can make sure they feel seen and valued and deeply, deeply loved. As for me, I can take the next small step toward rebuilding a life that I love. I can rest in the knowledge that this difficult stage is only temporary, as all stages are. And most importantly, I can acknowledge that life doesn’t end when my kids hit 18. I will have lifelong relationships with them, and there will be many, many more opportunities for grand adventures, epic trips, and great memory-making. Sure, childhood may be nearing its end, but life - well life is just getting started, isn’t it? A new stage is coming, and I have a feeling it’s going to get much better. 

Disrespectful behavior is a normal response for an underdeveloped, reactive brain. Our response to this normal behavior, however, will determine whether a negative cycle ensues or our relationship is strengthened. When you must choose between showing power or showing love, choose love.

Grief is a universal human experience that can affect anyone at any time, and at any age. By acknowledging and processing our grief, we can help our children cope, too. Learn how children of different ages may express their grief and tools to support them through it. 

At its core, parenting is about relationships, and in our search for the perfect discipline tricks, we've lost sight of that. Here are 7 pieces to the "parenting pie" that shape your child’s formative years. 

When it comes to getting your child to listen, tricks and bribes only go so far. Eventually your kids will wise up to them, and because these tactics evoke a fight or flight response, they will rebel. Here are 3 tools to increase cooperation so that your kids want to work with you (instead of against you). 

Time-Ins are an opportunity for us adults to re-connect with our inner child and learn the skills of emotional regulation so that we can then model and teach these skills to our children. Here are 5 steps for taking a Time-In as an adult.

Teaching your child to hit or scream into something when angry may train their brain to link anger and aggression, creating a counterproductive cycle. When it comes to calming strategies for kids, the internet has provided a vast array to choose from, but not all of them are backed by research. In fact, some of the most recommended tips - punching or screaming into a pillow and stomping feet, for example - are actually not good strategies for calming down. But let’s back up.  Anger is a normal emotion. We often give it a bad rap because unchecked anger can certainly lead to behavioral problems, aggression, and violence. But anger itself is not bad. There are no “good” and “bad” emotions. All emotions are data, and if we listen to why our anger is visiting and what it has to say, we’ll find that it has great value.  Anger may visit to help us: Protect ourselves from a threat Motivate us to solve a problem Defend our values and beliefs Inspire social action and justice Gain a sense of control While we typically think of calming strategies as a way to deal with anger, that is not the only emotion for our children to regulate. Over-excitement, fear, worry, jealousy, embarrassment, guilt, overwhelm, and silliness are just a few more examples of emotions that may need calming, though please note that calm and regulation are not the same!  Calming Strategies are Really Regulating Strategies Regulation is being able to recognize and modulate your emotions. It has nothing to do with achieving a certain state, but rather regulation is having your response to whatever emotion you are feeling be in your control. It’s mindful awareness, connecting with yourself and your emotion to listen to your needs at that moment, and this is what we can teach our children.  The message isn’t “don’t be mad” but how to be mad. Not “worry is useless,” but here’s how to calm your anxiety. When we label emotions as bad, we shut down important messages, but when we show our kids how to recognize, name, and regulate those emotions, they’ll learn true emotional intelligence.  According to a paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2004), the emotional life of toddlers and preschoolers is complex. Notably, the authors say, “The emotional health of young children is closely tied to the emotional and social characteristics of the environments in which they live.”  While differences in temperament are part of their biological makeup, their experiences are coded in their brain circuitry, and what we both model and teach regarding emotions affects how their brain circuits get “wired.” The early childhood years are critical for learning positive ways to deal with one’s emotional world as the brain's emotional center and the prefrontal cortex (where empathy, reasoning, and self-control lie) rapidly develop. This is the ideal time to introduce your child to The Time-In ToolKit and to create a Calming Corner in your home. I’ll discuss a little more about how to incorporate these tools in some calming strategies below. The Calming Strategies That May Do More Harm Now back to my original point. It turns out that strategies such as punching a pillow, stomping feet, screaming into a cushion, etc., may do more harm than good. I once thought these were appropriate tools to “get the anger out,” but research now tells us that these actions do not help us calm down. In fact, they continue the adrenaline rush that fuels the hostility. Iowa State University psychologist Brad Bushman, Ph.D., says, “Expressing anger actually increases aggression.”  He and his colleagues asked subjects to write an essay and to inspire anger, they handed it back to them with brutal critique. Next, the essay writers were asked to deliver bursts of noise to either the person who had insulted their paper or an innocent bystander. Angry participants who’d hit a punching bag before administering the sounds were twice as cruel in their choice of noise length and volume as those who had just sat quietly before performing the task. Furthermore, “they were aggressive toward both types of people,” said Bushman, “and that’s scary.” In fact, teaching your child to hit or scream into something when angry may train their brain to link anger and aggression, creating a counterproductive cycle. The rush they get from releasing aggression may become addictive. It may quickly become difficult for your little one to keep the hitting to the pillow! 5 Calming Strategies to Help Your Child Regulate Their Emotions 1. Help your child name their emotions The Feelings Faces Poster included in The Time-InToolKit is great for helping your child identify what they are feeling. They can then choose one of the activities from the Calming Strategies Poster to practice. This interactive Feelings Poster guides children through the process of emotional regulation by first helping them identify what emotion they are feeling and then providing suggestions for different fun activities they can use to help them calm their bodies. 2. Incorporate mindful movements Teaching your child how to move their body mindfully to create feelings of relaxation and calmness is beneficial. Inversion is a remarkable calming tool as it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, producing feelings of relaxation and calm. Here are three mindful movements to try: Downward-facing dog. Begin on your hands and knees, curl your toes under, straighten your knees, and lift your hips! This is a relaxing inversion exercise! Stand like a flamingo. Simply balance on one leg and then switch! Palm presses. This is a good mindful movement for when your child needs to remain seated. Simply have them close their eyes and press their palms together firmly. Focus on the breath and the feeling of the palms.  3. Engage the five senses This grounding exercise for calming anxiety and stress will also help dissipate anger. Choose one sense (sight, smell, hearing, feeling, taste) and focus attention on it. For example, ask your child to look (sight) for the red objects in the room and name them. Red bear. Red cup. Red pen. Likewise, feel different objects around you and name their texture. Soft bear. Bumpy cardboard. Smooth tile. Continue this exercise until your breathing and heart rate slow to normal.  4. Teach breathing exercises  Teach breathing exercises such as blowing out finger candles and elephant breathing. The first is self-explanatory but for elephant breathing, teach your child to clasp their hands together and raise their arms up high (like an elephant’s trunk) as they take a big breath in. Now exhale and bend at the waist, taking the arms (trunk) down and between the legs.  5. Teach children to do a body scan  Start at the top of the head and scan down to the feet, noticing any tension or bad feelings in the body. Relax the parts where tension is felt. As it turns out, these calming strategies are great for adults too. Ask me how I know. ;) Practice these regularly with your child when they are calm and happy so that they will feel more natural when it’s time to use them. It will take time and consistency for this to become a habit.  As always when talking about child development, it won’t work 100% of the time, but teaching these calming strategies now will help your child build positive lifelong skills and increase their emotional intelligence. And remember, connection and PLAY are the world's very best teachers.

Looking for more peace in your home? Start here. I love having tools in my parenting toolbox. The bigger the belt, the more I feel prepared to handle all the things that come with raising children. And the big heavy-weight tool for my household has been a Calming Space.  I am not saying that (poof!) magically all of your problems are solved. There are still meltdowns (both theirs and mine) and power struggles, but it is so much less. The frequency of my kids’ arguing, my yelling, and the family battles has exponentially declined.  5 Reasons Your Family Needs A Calming Space What’s that saying, happy wife, happy life … well … happy mom, smoother home. But jokes aside, here are five reasons why your family can benefit from a Calming Space.  1. It meets the need for safety. Safety is a fundamental need. If we want our children to cooperate with us (and decrease power struggles), regulate emotions (work through meltdowns), and learn new skills (like impulse control) then they must first feel safe. When daily rituals are created in a Calming Space, children come to know that they can count on that time with you and that they can be who they are (and feel what they feel) without shame or blame. This builds trust not only with you but within themselves.  2. It meets your child’s need for connection. Connection is the wheel that keeps the Calming Space spinning. Not only do you and your child create this space together but you visit it together, too, especially in the beginning. Unlike a Time-Out where children are sent to isolation with their feelings, a Calming Space is one where co-regulation happens. Your child has access to your nervous system to regulate and process unpleasant sensations and experiences. So snuggle up, read a book, color, explore feeling posters, or any other activity that brings your relationship closer, even if it is just five minutes a day.  3. It meets your child’s need for power. Children who feel they have some agency in their process become empowered, and when they feel empowered, they fight you less for that power. Really reiterate to your child that this is your family space and that everyone has a say here. Engaging in five to ten minutes of child-led play not only fills their connection tank as mentioned above, but it is also a potent way to honor their authenticity. Additionally, as children begin to understand their internal sensations and control their outward behaviors, they feel a sense of governance over their own bodies.  4. It helps you channel your unpleasant emotions. Ever feel like you just need a small pause so that you don’t flip your shit? The Calming Space is that space. Whenever you feel your overwhelm taking over, take a Time-In in your family’s space. Model to your children what it looks like to feel something, name it and choose a calming strategy. They are watching and when we show them that our emotions aren’t scary and contagious, they begin to believe that about theirs too. Of course, we won’t be perfect at this, but the way I figure it is, some of the time is better than none of the time.  5. It grows our child’s brain. At least in a sense. We can’t rush optimal development in our children but we can teach skills that promote it. So every time we connect with our children in this safe space, we help them build somatic awareness and build an emotional vocabulary. The more they learn to understand themselves and share it with another, the more they can connect and heal any hurts that have accumulated throughout the day. This takes time and consistency. Remember, we are dealing with fairly immature brains here. Our leadership paired with neurological development can lead to new circuits that take our kids from blowing up to working through emotions in productive ways. And not just emotions but impulse control, problem-solving, and relationship repair, to name a few.  Our children are never going to have fewer emotions. In fact, they will only get more complex as they get older. But when we stay steadfast in our connection and guidance, they become adults who don’t feel less but who feel their feelings and know what to do with them. 

We often feel like our children are manipulating us yet research shows that willful manipulation is a function of higher brain regions that are still extremely underdeveloped in toddlers. Unfortunately, parental manipulation is much more common and used to get our children to listen and comply, which uses their need for attachment against them. Here is what to do instead for more cooperation.

It happens subconsciously, but it happens. Our brain judges and labels every input we receive. And since parenting offers us a constant and endless stream of input, at some point, we stop parenting young human beings and start parenting labels instead. Here's how to break the cycle. 

You know you are a parent if you have ever questioned your qualifications for the job. You may be asking yourself, How do I know I am not messing up my children every time I pitfall into conditioned habits? Whatever your wounding patterns are, these tips can help you embrace your enoughness as a cycle breaker.

During a meltdown moment, these 4 tips are your survival guide. What if I told you that the key to fewer meltdowns in your home was not to suppress them but to let them happen?  Any parent could probably tell ya that big emotions and challenging behaviors are daily (sometimes hourly, or, if you’re like our home, minute-by-minute) occurrences. So it makes good sense that we have some tools to know what to do when our children fall apart.  Why Children Struggle To Calm Down  Emotions are pretty new and alarming to our children who are still pretty new to this being alive thing. They struggle to control impulses, even when they know that certain behaviors are not desirable. They lack the foresight to see ahead to consequences and also the memory capacity to remember a “lesson” you taught five minutes ago.  As such, drowning in our frustration and overwhelm, we often work to make it all make sense. Because even more stressful than a flailing child is that feeling we get when we are at a loss as to why our children are behaving the way they are. We look to close the gap and fill in the missing puzzle pieces. We create narratives that our children are defiant, manipulative, and dramatic.  But what if our children were inherently good? If we came in with that mindsight then we’d begin to see that who our children are and what they do are two different things.  Our children are just being children. They are doing their job … making mistakes, learning about themselves and the world, and feeling their feelings. This isn’t a plot to “get us” like the Boogie Man but rather their road to development.  4 Ways To Get Your Child To Calm Down Now that we know the role of our children, what’s ours? Well, we come in with our sage wisdom, being a guide by the side that they can trust, both in their moments of regulation but also during dysregulation… especially during dysregulation. So, next time your child is exploding like an emotional volcano, give these four tips a go.  SnuggleBuddies® Help Big Emotions & Meltdowns 1. Move to a smaller space.  It doesn’t feel good to feel out of control, especially in front of a crowd. Help your child transition from a large room to a smaller one, from a room with an audience to a quieter space. In removing extra stimulation and influences, your child’s nervous system can shift more quickly. It may sound something like this: “I see this feels hard. I am going to help you to your room where we can sit together. You are safe and I love you.” 2. Validate and empathize with your child.  This is one of our biggest roles as parents. Validating our child’s experiences meets one of the most vital needs for connection, which ultimately leads to regulation. Our children want to know that their feelings, thoughts, and intuition matter, and to take it one step further, they want to know that their experience is real. They want to know that when they are struggling, they won’t be left alone with their overwhelm, which would feel pretty scary (and thus further a meltdown). Sometimes just feeling seen, heard, and understood is the balm our children desire. This may sound like: “Something doesn’t feel good inside of your body. I believe you, and I am here.”  3. Respect your child’s boundaries.  Many times, we are so consumed with what we think we should do or the right script or on giving our children what we didn't receive when we were young that we move further out of our relationship with our kids. Despite our best intentions, we are attempting to control the situation or outcome and control is the contrast to connection. Either way, we can end up inadvertently railroading our child’s boundaries. If your child desires closeness, offer it. If your child is asking for space, honor it.  This may sound like: “You are telling me to go away. I hear you. I will sit outside your closed door. I trust your body to know when it is ready. I am here any way you need me.” 4. Wait it out.  Whether you’re right next to your child or on the other side of the door, give your child the emotional space to feel what they are feeling to the full extent that they are feeling it. This means we aren’t fixing it or rushing them along to the next pleasant emotion. This means that we manage our own discomfort so that we can hold space for theirs. In order to fully process the limbic (emotional) tension in their bodies, they must be allowed to express it. Sometimes that takes two minutes, sometimes ten. Keep holding space without the agenda of gettin’ on to the next thing. As you begin to notice your child shift into a more regulated state, you may choose to touch on the pain point and finish the processing right then by taking a Time-In to discuss what happened, how they felt, and tools for next time, or maybe your child feels ready to move on.  Remember, when it comes to your child, you are the expert. Trust your own intuition to guide you in each meltdown moment. Ask yourself, What do I need right now? What does my child need right now? Use your context clues to give you the answers, because the answers live within you.