Jennifer Kolari: Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode
of connected parenting. So today I wanted to talk about something
really important. And this is sort of a foundation to building
resilience in your kids and, and recuperation. And if we've
learned anything in 2020, it's that things can change really
fast. Disappointments can happen for some kids and families have
been huge disappointments, really big things happening. You
know, tragically losing family members, financial, big
financial changes. And for a lot of families, there's just been
regular kind of disappointments and for our kids, because we've
tended to raise them by making everything as easy as possible
for them. We've tried to smooth out every bump in the road. They
are not particularly equipped this generation to handle this
appointment, and there's been a lot of it and there will be
more. And life is like that. I say this all the time that you
can't you, if you try to protect your child from every
disappointment and every hurt, all you're doing is giving them
a disadvantage. So the neurological hardware that needs
to develop in order to handle disappointments, trouble
breakups, not making a team not getting the job. That that
hardware comes from experience. It comes from losing something,
learning something, losing something again, and learning
something and if we rob our children of those experiences,
then they're not going to have the neurological equipment to
handle trouble when it comes. And trouble always comes. Hi,
everyone. I'm Jennifer Clary. I'm a child and family therapist
and a parenting coach and the founder of connected parenting.
And welcome to the connected parenting weekly podcast. Join
me every week. And we'll tackle everything from temper tantrums
to bedtime to sibling issues to teenage angst, parenting can be
so wonderful, but it can be so hard. Parents often say to me,
Hey, can you just come live at my house, this is the next best
thing. Let's do this together. So let's talk about how to help
your kids deal with disappointment. So the first
thing I want to talk about is the importance of
disappointment. Healthy adversity is actually critical
to good mental health. The brain organizes itself in polarity. A
bad thing means a good thing is better. And a good thing means a
bad thing is worse, and it just goes back and forth. And as you
deal with that polarity, because everything in life has an equal
and opposite. You help your children learn that contrast. So
disappointment, hurt feelings, going through something really
hard. Or be the things that really help you do have your
character and the sense of who you are later on in life. So as
difficult as it is for us as parents to watch our children
struggle, and to watch them suffer. In those moments, there
is growth, there is learning, there is an opportunity to see
how strong they are to learn how to recover, to learn that things
can seem really difficult and really impossible. And that can
be okay. But if we've jumped in and rescued them every single
time and fixed it or bought them something or called that teacher
or got them invited to that thing, or got them on that team
they shouldn't be on. We're robbing them, we're robbing them
of the learning that can come from more negative experiences.
History is the greatest teacher you will ever have. Right? So
learning from those those difficult experiences really is
critical to mental health. Those contrast those contours in life
are essential, because it's those things that actually help
us really appreciate when things go well, when things feel good,
when things are pleasant, and things are positive and you
cannot have one without the other. Now I've given this
example before. But imagine you had a little eight year old girl
and you have fixed every problem she's ever had. You can't stand
her looking upset, you can't stand her suffering. So every
time that she is sad, you rush in and you buy her something or
you have a different birthday party or you find something else
to distract her and make her feel better. She's learning two
things one, pain is intolerable. Sadness is intolerable. It's an
emotion that is really painful. It's so bad that my parents
won't even let me experience it. And my parents can't even
tolerate my sadness. So it must be really, really bad. So
there's sort of this doubling down of what happens in these
negative experiences. Now imagine that you take that
little girl to go and get an ice cream cone and she's eating her
ice cream and plops onto the floor. Now that child is going
to start crying and screaming she will be shrieking and
devastated. Why? Because the ice cream falling on the floor is
actually one of the worst things that's ever happened to her.
Because every other part of her life has been so carefully
programmed and cushioned. All we've done is shifted, she's
going to experience the pain anyway. But now she's going to
experience it over smaller and smaller things, because the
brain is constantly looking for that balance, and that polarity.
So the first thing you want to be able to do is use the contact
niq. So go back to the earlier podcasts, and, and listen to all
of those, it's really important because it's how you listen and
hold space, and sit with your child, or your mother in law or
your spouse, or your best friend. It's not just for kids,
when they struggle, it's it's being present with them in that
painful moment, not talking them out of it, not cheerleading them
out of it, not distracting them out of it. But being present,
and truly listening with your heart in that moment. That's the
greatest thing you can do for your child. So we'll come back
to it exactly example in a moment, but you're present with
them in that moment, you're using the Contact meek, two or
three statements to release that oxytocin to help your child feel
like you've heard them, it is not happening to you, you are
not devastated, you know that it is happening to them, You are
grounded and neutral. And then you do your absolute best not to
rescue, not to fix the situation, if there's a learning
lesson in there, your child needs to experience that lesson,
the best example I could give you is let's say your child
procrastinated horribly on a project. And it's too late, they
can't do it anymore. It's too late. Instead of doing it for
them, or doing it with them, at 10 o'clock at night, you mirror
first, which looks like you know what, this is a horrible feeling
you really did believe you were gonna get this done you
everything in you thought you were going to be able to finish
this, and then it was going to be okay. But it's taken so much
longer than you thought it was going to take. And that's a
really scary feeling. You're right in there. Now you're not
panicking, you're not gonna You really thought this was gonna
work. And now it can't your own emotions can't be in there you
must be parenting from a place of love, not fear. It's
happening to her, or to him in you are sharing that back, you
are reflecting that back through empathy, and compassion in the
realm of neutrality. And then you say my darling, I love you
enough. To help you learn this lesson. You need to learn what
happens when you don't do your homework when you leave
something the last minute, and if I jump in and rescue you, and
if we do this together, your brain is going to remember that
it worked. And it turned out, okay. And in this case, I don't
want your brain to know that it's okay. Because it's not
okay. It's going to keep piling up. And it's going to be
something that you keep doing. So I want you to learn this
lesson. Now. I'm not going to help you, I'm tired. It's 10
o'clock at night, I've worked all day. Either do it yourself
or don't do it. But you need to figure out what happens when you
make a choice like this. And again, it must be in that
beautiful neutral tone of
Unknown: Canva you have left at the last minute. Now you got to
figure out what happens. It's up to you to find out, you got
yourself in this mess, it
Jennifer Kolari: can't have that energy. Because it's all about
fear. Right? That's all about angst. And it's all about fear.
And that's not the right energy, then they just walk away
thinking you didn't help me, you're so mean, you don't care
what happens to me. And that becomes the context that you're
communicating. It must come from a place of love, I love you
enough not to buy you that. I love you enough not to do that
homework for you. I love you enough not to call and make this
right. Because as hard as this is you need to learn voices, and
that when you make choices, there will be consequences. This
is so critical. Because if you if you don't teach them this
life will. And then you'll have a child in their late 20s, early
20s late teens who does not have to handle all kinds of things
that life is going to throw at you. And when you have little
kids, you actually do have some control over their lives. You
can give them a timeout, you can take their computer away, you
can go in and talk to the teacher. When they're older. You
can't do anything but watch. They are they have sovereignty,
they have independence, they will make their own choices and
all you can do is stand back and hope that you have taught them
enough and love them enough so that they can make really good
choices and or learn from their negative choices. What you can
do is constantly remind your child, I believe in you. I see
what you're capable of. I know what you're capable of. I'm
excited to watch this unfold. I'm excited for you to see you
become the person I know you are getting them to line up with
Aaron Integrity, are you in your integrity? Are you out of your
integrity, when you're out of your integrity, you know, you
did a bunch of things first and goofed around and watch a bunch
of shows and, and ignored what you needed to do. And now that
project is due, and now you're in big trouble. But the reason
you're upset is because you know that you're out of your
integrity. That's how you guide your child. That's how you love
your child into becoming the incredible human being that
they're meant to become. Now another technique that is really
important. So this is more for little kids. But it's really
important because it prepares kids for later in life when big
hurts and little hurts become different things, but having a
conversation with your child about what is a big hurt, and
what is a little hurt. So you talk about a big hurt first, and
don't make up something terrifying work work with your
child, but if it's something that they can really identify
with, so if they've lost a grandparent, if they've had an
experience or life that has been a really big hurt, you can use
that as an anchor point. If they haven't, then and sort of find
the something in their in their life, that was a really big
thing that they had a really hard time with, and use that as
a definition of a big heart. And then you talk about a little
hurt, well, a little hurt was my show wasn't on that I thought
was gonna be on or I thought we were going to be able to go for
a walk and we can't right now like, we just sort of find that
scale with them. And then there would be a medium part. So if
they're a little, I don't know, maybe that would be leaving
their favorite teddy bear on the subway or a bus or something or
losing something that really matters to them, you know, not
getting invited to something, you know, that's a friend that
isn't really a close friend, something like that, that would
be a medium hurt. And then constantly working that out with
them so that when they're in a moment of upset, you can help
them scale it. So your body feels like this is a really big
hurt. But is it a little hurt? Or is it a medium hurt, they
will always tell you in the moment, it's at the heart while
we say that. But as you're kind of working that out with them,
they're doing the job of that you're helping them you're
assisting them in the job that the frontal lobe does, which is
to try and take perspective right in some of this can be
done afterwards. So there will be moments where doing this in
the middle is just not going to work there. And they're so upset
they're in such as fight or flight state that they're
hysterical. In that moment, you try three to four statements of
mirroring. Really being present with them, not talking them out
of it, not sure leading them out of it, maintaining your own
sense of neutrality, tell yourself in that moment, my
child is in pain, think to yourself, my child is in pain,
but they're going to be okay. They've been in pain many times
before over many things. And in an hour from now they're going
to be okay or tomorrow they're going to be okay. Really used to
love to adjust where they are in this moment, trusting your child
that this is part of life and they will get through it, they
will be okay. Acknowledging that you're in pain as well watching
them just resonating with that feeling, letting it sink in a
little bit, don't fight it, then you can kind of release it and
trust that your child will be okay. And there'll be some
learning here and some guiding here. You can do all of this
with your child after the event. So maybe a couple of hours
later, hey, let's go back and think about what happened this
morning you thought you know so and so was going to come over
and they didn't mirror first totally crummy. You had all
these plans. I saw you were so excited last night, you knew
exactly what we wanted to do with your friend. It's so hard
when things don't happen. It feels so awful in your body,
just really being present. Letting them feel that. And then
you can reflect and say but you know what I was thinking about
it. And where does that fall on the scale of big heart to little
I know, it felt like a big hurt. It really, really did. But part
of learning to grow up and partying part of learning how to
run this amazing brain that you have, and deal with all your
feelings so that you can control them, instead of them
controlling you is figuring out maybe that was a medium part.
And helping them actually scale their response. Well, that's
interesting, because it looked like he had, you know, a big
hurt response to a little hurt and what can we do, and it's
really helping them look at these situations from a
different perspective. Now, as always, with connected
parenting, you also want to be doing this with yourself. So we
often have especially if you're an empathic, super sensitive
parent, it's going to gut you, when your child is upset, your
body is going to have a big hurt response to it. So first you
have to ground yourself you have to acknowledge that feeling. You
have to literally use the contact niq on yourself. I love
my child so much. I do so much for them. I try in every way
possible to make sure that they're having a good life and
they're happy and to watch them this devastated just so hard.
It's so hurtful. Be really compassionate with yourself. You
love your child very, very match, which is why you feel it
in such a big way when they're hurting. After you resonate with
that, after you allow yourself to feel that feeling, sit with
it a little bit, let it flow through, you take a breath, and
then say, okay, now I have to move into frontal lobe mode, my
own frontal lobe, and I also have to be the substitute
frontal lobe for my child. Now I need to go back, I need to keep
in my mind, a very strong sense that my child will be fine, that
this is part of learning that there is incredible value in
contrast, and contours, they are essential for growth, they're
essential for mental health, there are all these little bumps
that my child needs to have when they're little, in order to be
protective, in order for them to have the hardware that they need
to handle big bumps later real bumps that Mommy and Daddy can't
fix. Having faith in your child, having belief in your child that
they will get through it. It is very hard. And as we move
through life right now, where there's all kinds of change,
there's so much anxiety. There's a lot of disappointment. A lot
of things that were supposed to happen aren't happening right
now. We're feeling very fragile, and worried ourselves. But it's
really important to understand that emotions are information,
they are not to be feared. They are not to you, you're not to
run away from them, their information, you register them,
you read them, you feel them, you resonate with them, and then
you release them. And then you teach your child to do the same.
This is the greatest gift honestly that you can give your
child giving them the gift of emotional resilience, giving
them those emotional shock absorbers that they're going to
need to handle life. There is nothing greater that you can
give your child why
Unknown: I'm Barry Clary from connected parenting. I hope you
enjoyed our podcast. And don't forget to check us out on the
web at connected parenting.com and like us and follow us on
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