TUNED IN MODULE 3

Trasncipt

Welcome to module three, the module that will have you really tune into what kind of parent are you being, what kind of parent would you love to be and most importantly, what is probably the most effective parenting style for your unique child.

This is a really good one. I believe it's some of the most important content in the whole course for the day to day moments of parenting with your kiddos. If you can embody some of the concepts and tools that you'll learn here, you'll feel a lot better in the day to day.

Of course there's a whole bunch of good and helpful content coming, but this is a really important one. So do what you need to do to take care of yourself, to really take the information in and it's going to be great.

So overview of where we are going today. First of all, I'll give an introduction, some big picture themes to be thinking about for our feeling empowered as a parent. We'll talk about the types of parenting with two different models.

One's a bit more old school from the 1950s, one's a more current take on types of parenting. I think both are really important and it's just to have some theory to bounce off your experience from and then you'll get to take the parts that feel good and hopefully some things will click.

I really hope for today that there will be some big aha moments. We will then talk about attachment styles. You may or may not have heard of this, but it's a really important way to understand how you're relating to yourself, how you're relating to your kids and how your kids are relating to you.

Once again, there will be two takes on that, one more historical from the mid -1900s and then more current take on attachment styles, just moving this a little bit. We'll talk about rupture and repair, how relationship is really getting disconnected and then coming back to connection.

and how to do that really well with your child. If you can get that process down, you're really good to go. Especially if you have this template in place now, the rupture and repair, the teenage years with your kiddos will be a whole lot easier.

So let's learn this now. And then we'll close. So that's really it. Get comfortable. This is going to be a good one. So I want to first introduce the concept of the good enough parent. Donald Winnicott, he lived from the end of the 1800s to I think 1970.

So he was studying this a while ago. He coined the term the good enough parent. And what he was looking at is that when the environment isn't good enough for a child, like they're really not getting what they need, the child will then go into their thinking mind.

They'll go into caretaking themselves and they'll actually stand in place. for their own parents that were otherwise distracted. Like they become their own internal parent at an age that is too young.

So in some ways this is really important because it's kind of a flag saying, hey, it's really time to be a present attuned caregiver to your child. Otherwise they will be taking on inner capacities that they really shouldn't be taking on yet.

And most importantly while I'm bringing this up right now is that Donald Winnicott also found that an attuned caregiver is actually only attuned 20% of the time. So you don't have to do this perfectly.

You don't always have to be there and available for your child to feel safe to relax into their childhood and let you be the parent. But 20% of the time you have to be really there which is also another plug for the meditation practices, the staying connected to self, the finding one's authenticity so that you can be there more of the time.

I saw this on a social media meme so I don't even know who said this but I recently read, one of the greatest gifts you can give your child is to be conscious. It does not mean to be perfect or healed.

It just means to be aware. With awareness comes self responsibility then can come repair and apology and you can really start to grow with your child in a place of mutual respect. So we have to have the awareness and the consciousness.

I also wanna bring in the concept of staying power. So the dictionary definition of staying power is the ability to maintain an activity or commitment despite fatigue or difficulty. It's kind of like choosing to run a long running race.

like a marathon and staying committed, even though it's difficult and you're fatigued. Parenting takes so much staying power. It's like, I know this is hard. I know this is tiring, but when I chose to have a child and I made a commitment to bring a child into the world, I chose to stay, to have the staying power, to maintain, to maintain stamina.

There's also a queen song called Staying Power, which I'm totally going to drop that link into this module just to get you a little pumped up for remembering that you can do this, you can stay. And there's actually so much reward when you stay present and you stay with yourself and you tolerate the difficult moments.

And then there's a landing. Then if you choose to run away and that, when you're parenting, you obviously don't literally run away, but sometimes we run away. energetically or with our minds. There will be a meditation in a later module that's really good for building distress tolerance.

But for now I just want to leave you with the idea of staying power and I know that you have it. So I'm gonna move into sharing about types of parenting now. Two different models. The first one is more recent and it was developed by Dr.

John DeMartini. He is a coach. She does amazing life coaching. I encourage you to look up his work. He talks a lot about how really knowing your values and staying true to your values takes you towards a life of greater alignment and ultimately greater success.

There's even a quiz that you can take to determine your values on his website. I'll his work is that he shows you that your values aren't actually what you think your values are. Your values are really like where you're spending your time and attention.

It means that you value it. So there's a lot more there. I encourage you to look into his work but as it relates to parenting, he offers a model of parenting that has three different types. The caring parent, the careless parent, and the careful parent.

It relates to if you're honoring your values, your child's values, or both. And I'll put a description of this. You can read that now underneath if it's helpful to see a visual. But let's go through each one.

So the caring parent is going to take my values as parent into account and my child's values into account equally. So if the example is that my child really doesn't want to go to bed because they want to keep playing with cars because that sounds so fun to them.

But I really need them to go to bed because I really value getting sleep so that I can function for my work the next day. We have an issue. The way to support both values would be to say, Hey, buddy, we have 20 minutes to keep playing with cars and I'm going to be so available.

I'm going to be right here with you. This would take some planning ahead and that it's time to go to bed. And if you go to bed and you do a good job in the morning, we'll get to play more. It just means you get to wake up and play more.

But it has to happen. And you set a timer so that when there's five minutes left, you can give a warning when there's one minute left. And then there's a lot of time and patience and that transition that's honoring both my values, my child's values, and it's probably going to go pretty well.

The careful parent option would be tiptoeing and being in a space of anxiety because I don't want my child to freak out and I just wanna avoid the conflict. And so I'm gonna honor his values of playing with his cars and wait an hour and a half, just let him keep playing.

All of a sudden I'm gonna look at the clock. I'm gonna realize, wow, it's really late. None of us are going to get enough sleep. Everyone will be cranky tomorrow. And ultimately I'll be feeling resentful because I didn't value what I needed and wanted.

The careless parent would say, nevermind with what you want. Like, I don't care about your values to their child. What I need for you is for you to go to bed right now. You better get upstairs and get into bed or you're gonna not get to have breakfast.

You know, that's an extreme version, but it's like kind of a forceful, we're gonna do what I want and I don't care what you want. And that's that. The beauty of this model is that every single option is allowed.

We all use every option. That's just the way it is. Sometimes it's time to get in the car and go and I'm gonna strap you in your seat and we're gonna leave because I have to get to my meeting. Other times you just decide, I just don't feel like dealing with the big burst right now or the big explosion.

And so I'm gonna not really do what I wanna do just to make it all okay so that my child doesn't have a big outburst and I'm using the careless option and that's okay. The trick is it's so important to have awareness of which option you're using and then to have realistic expectations of what to receive in return, like what you will get in return.

So if my child is given the careless option where it's like, I don't care what you want, I can expect that they will have a big outburst and say that they hate me and I'm the worst and that's just what's happening.

going to happen. This is John DiMartini's model, but it was a talk to me by my teacher, Lisa Dion, that I mentioned with the nervous system sheets in both this model and the nervous system model is something that she really integrated in a new way for me and many therapists, especially in this area.

So I just invite you to consider like, which one do you go to more? Are you one that leans towards a careless parenting style because you just want to get the thing done that needs to happen? And does your child often fight back?

Do you lean towards careful parenting because you want to avoid conflict or have you gotten pretty good at the care ring option? All are okay. Just notice and care ring really is a good place to be as much as we can.

It takes us slowing down. It takes the recognizing. What's my highest value in this moment? What's my child's highest value? How can I find a place to meet in the middle? Something I like to add to this model is if you do use the careless option, it's really important that you come back and repair later and you model to your child.

I just did a thing where I said, your values don't matter. I'm sorry, like you and your interests and values and desires really matter to me. I just really wanted to get to bed and that was a difficult moment.

And you might do that the next day, but you wanna be modeling to your child's self -responsibility for your reactive moments. Also with the careful option, just a big recognition that even though you think you're making it better for your child in the moment, you're not actually supporting them.

If you're making a choice, that's gonna put you in resentment. That's gonna put you in a place of your own self -care needs not getting met or your own desires not being valued. So just more and more reason to try to find that sweet spot where both values can be acknowledged and met.

So take some time with that one. That'll be part of the homework. But now I wanna share about an even earlier model of styles of parenting that you may have heard of. Diana Beaumreen, she's a clinical psychologist.

She was working in the 1960s. She's no longer living, but her models and her theory certainly are. She coined the parenting styles of authoritative, authoritarian and permissive slash indulgent. Later, there were a couple more theorists that added in the uninvolved or neglectful parent.

So now it's a square. And I actually invite you just to check out the chart that's here in the module. we're listening to this or come back to it later if you don't have access to be looking at it, but it might be helpful to have a visual.

So I'll just give it away. The place you want to be is authoritative. It means that you have high responsiveness and warmth. It's like really loving, warm, patient parenting, but you also have a high level of control.

This chart says demandingness, but I also like to think of it as control. So you set clear rules and expectations. You maintain those expectations and hold clear consequences if needed. You solve problems with your child when they're needed to be solved.

You get down on their level. You look at them with warm eyes, with compassion. You're not mad at them for messing up like when they forget to. follow a certain rule, you're here to teach them, but you do hold the boundary that this is a rule, you know this is a rule, and I love you, and I want to help you learn the rule.

So can you feel, even in my voice, there's a warmth, but there's a sense of grounded regulation and control. If you can really orient towards the style of parenting, your child will feel safe, secure, and loved.

You'll see why it actually doesn't feel good to kiddos to not have that sense of control. And of course, it doesn't feel good when they don't have warmth. That's kind of just intuitive. So let's look at the other options.

Just so you can see, and you may also be thinking, wow, I was really parented in some of these ways, and maybe that explains some of the reactions that I have, or some of the imprinting that I have in those moments.

It's all okay, once again, the awareness can come shifts. So the permissive parenting is super high warmth, but no control. So that's the parent that tells all the 16 -year -olds, yeah, just come over, drink out of my liquor cabinet, like I'm cool, you're cool, and trying to be the best friend doesn't go so well.

The neglectful parent will have neither warmth or control. They are really the ones that are unavailable and aren't really doing their job as parent. They're uninvolved. They're kind of indifferent. They're not taking interest in their child's schooling and everyday needs.

And if you receive this kind of parenting, if you're here, I know that you're not this kind of parent because you're investing in a course, but it might be so that you received this kind of parenting.

And I invite you just to take a moment and feel into what that did for your little self. A child with neglectful parenting gets a message that I'm not worthy of care and attention. I probably won't get what I need to thrive.

And sometimes an experience of learned. helplessness can come in where I'm just going to be helpless, or sometimes an opposite thing occurs where I will like really do whatever I need to do to make things happen and to always be in control so that I never have to be not taken care of again.

Two extremes. More on that later when we talk about parents self healing and being intentional in the weaving of your life. Lastly, the authoritarian parent, super strict, one way communication. So it's like, parent talking at child with no room to hear from child.

How are you doing? What are you feeling? What? What made you do that? Like what were you what were you really wanting or needing in that moment that made you do the thing that you know is breaking the rules, but I want to understand the authoritarian parent doesn't do that.

It's just like we're going to do it my way. And that's it. If you've seen the movie Matilda, the dad that's like I can't remember what he says, but it's like, you listen, I talk, I'm the parent, you're the kid, you're nothing.

That's authoritarian. If there's child abuse, anything like that, physical abuse, it's like authoritarian parenting. So, so, so, so harmful for a child's sense of power and control in their life. And it will generally have them swing towards becoming small and shut down or ultimately fighting back and being against authority, which can cause issues functioning in the world.

So it's pretty obvious research tells us that authoritative parenting is the most highly ranked for academic, social, emotional and behavioral outcomes. And it's like authoritarian parents expect a lot of their children, which is good, but they're not being accountable for their own behavior.

authoritative parents expect a lot from their children. But even more, they expect a lot from themselves. It's like, my child's going to do well, and I'm going to do well, I'm going to communicate even when it's hard, I'll allow natural consequences to occur, but it's opportunities for learning, like, you know, oh, we broke the lamp, now we won't have light.

I mean, that's a pretty that's not the greatest example, I'll come up with more later. But we're really fostering independence for our kiddos, and we're involved in their progress and growth, even when it's hard.

So that's a big one, let it land, you'll have time to think about it in the homework assignments. But before I move on to attachment styles, I want to share about a study done by John Balby, also in the 1900s.

It's called the still face experiment. And I'm actually going to put a video here in the lecture for you to watch it's only two or three minutes. I highly encourage this. I've shared it with a lot of parents and it's been very impactful but just the cliff notes of the study are that babies were put in front of their mom and they were kind of like going and gogging and in connection with their mother who was being told to make a really warm face like loving eyes connection and baby was happy and always good.

The mother was then told this happened with multiple mothers and their babies to have a still face and to not make any eye contact or if they were looking it's just like not really at the child and it's not with warm eyes and you will see the baby really panics like the dysregulation the not feeling warmth from their mother causes is extreme and now you know because we talked about the brain.

When kids are dysregulated and they're feeling like they did something wrong, or they're in trouble, they're likely going to be in more of a baby survival place of the brain. And if they don't feel warmth from you, they are going to spiral out.

So all the more reason to use the warmth getting on their level, like I said, warm eyes, open heart and learning how to set loving boundaries instead of harsh boundaries. A whole module on boundaries will come later.

So now we will talk about attachment styles. And for this one, I'm actually going to start with an older model that came from studies, again, done with it was like 12 to 18 month year olds. Yeah, babies that were 12 to 18 months with their mothers.

And it was, you know, Ainsworth was the researcher and her research was called the Strange Situation Study. And what she did is she put a parent and a child alone in a room. The child was just exploring with parental supervision.

Then a stranger entered, a stranger entered the room, approached the child, the parent quietly left, and then later the parent came back. It was incredible how attachment styles of the children impacted the way that they related to the situation.

So the securely attached child, this is what we really want for our kiddos to be securely attached to us as our as their parents, because then later on, they can securely attach to themselves and regulate in situations when they're not near their parents, which is age appropriate later.

But the securely attached child showed a lot of distressed when the stranger when they were there with the stranger and the mother had They became avoidant of the change or they were kind of like, I don't know about you because my mom's not here and I just don't know if I can trust you if my mom's not here.

And then when mom came back, they were really happy to see their mom. They didn't get insanely dysregulated. They just, you know, you could tell they were like, I don't know if this is safe. I'm really stressed.

My mom just left. I don't know about you. That's healthy. That's secure attachment. That is also being able to regulate with mom when she got back. The ambivalent attached child was really not sure about the stranger.

Really stressed when the stranger was there, but then when mom came back, they ignored their mom. Like they didn't seek regulation with their mom in that moment. Then there was the avoidantly attached child who didn't care when mom left.

just played with the stranger like it was anyone you know and then when the mom came back they also ignored them. That's kind of an avoidant attached style or it is an avoidantly attached style because we want our kiddos to be attaching to their mom and dad or mom and mom or dad and dad or just their primary caregivers not a stranger.

Later on some other research researchers added the disorganized or the disordered style of attachment and those were the ones where like it didn't even make sense like sometimes they wanted the attachment sometimes they didn't it didn't really make sense what was happening there so it was more of a disorganized style.

If your child is showing you some of these styles that are less insecure it's okay and it's also a really normal reaction to any sort of trauma so if your child experienced any medical trauma if there's been divorce if there's been any experience where they might have gotten they might have created a story that they can't trust the people they are attached to in their lives or they can't trust their world they may have started to develop an attachment that is not secure but we can still work with it and the reason I'm sharing it is because having the knowledge is power.

If you start to pick up on the fact that your child sort of has this avoidant style you can just be aware of it and start to look for ways that you can create more safety. They might have an avoidant style or an ambivalent style because they've learned that if they have a big feeling or desire they get yelled at because they're being faced with a more careless or authoritarian style of parenting so this might be a really good indicator to come back to that warmth.

I'm also sharing it because it's important to think about what your style is So my style can be sometimes avoidant and sometimes anxious, which I'll share more about in a moment. So I sometimes can become the helicopter parent where I'm just like watching everything.

Like no one likes being watched like this, you know, like look how scary that is. And that doesn't feel good to kiddos. Or sometimes I can get a little checked out and avoidant because I don't want to face conflict.

And that also affects kiddos. I know that part of the reason I developed this strategy, this style is because my mom was really sick when I was born. For the first two weeks of my life, she was bedridden.

And when I was a baby, she actually couldn't carry me because of some medical issues she was having. And so I know sometimes, you know, this might feel far out there if you haven't been around the kind of research that's looking at birth trauma and implicit memory, meaning memory that's stored in places we can't consciously remember.

um it's true that things that we and our children experience at birth in utero in their early years really does impact their way of being and um sometimes it's just the awareness like i know that about myself and in time i've also been able to create really secure attachment with myself with my husband with my world and trust that the world is a safe place and i'm okay so we want to be looking at our own attachment styles at our kiddos and looking at what we can do to create a more secure and safe environment so a lot more attachment theory has been studied since those original studies um i believe the book is called attached there's a book that a lot of people have been talking about i haven't actually read it yet but i know that um the author covers these styles in more detail and applies it more to adults you might want to look into some of this on your own but with another um way that it's been put since and you'll see this image in the lecture is we have the secure attached which is self -assured responsive trust oneself we have the preoccupied or anxious which is really doubting oneself and can get really sensitive in interpersonal moments we have the dismissive or avoidant which generally the strategy for that one is just to become a really self -reliant like i'm never gonna ask for help i'm gonna learn how to fix everything in my house and do everything in my business and not have to get help from anyone because i don't trust and i'll be a little distant then we also have the fearful unpredictable self -sabotaging kind of disorganized style um that might be the person that just isolates from it all and can be a little bit disorganized in their style so i'll leave it as at that i hope that it feels empowering to to consider these different attachment styles.

It can be a really fun exercise to figure out your primary attachment style, your children's, your spouses or partners, your best friends, and just kind of learn how to work with each other and grow together towards a more secure place.

Okay, just one more section. This is a really important one. So there's a lot of research studying on relationship and attachment, as we've been talking about. And something that comes across the board, like a lot of people are saying it, is that relationship is really based on rupture and repair.

It's actually not based on the moments of connection and security. It's based on what do you do when you mess up. What do you do when there's a misunderstanding or someone needs to apologize or someone didn't show up and honor their commitments?

Like how do you come back to a place of repair? Sometimes an apology is required. Sometimes accountability is required. And ultimately returning to a place of connection and safety is necessary. So the reason I share this is that so you can have realistic expectations that you are not going to be a perfect parent, or wife, or husband, or partner or employee, whatever it is, like we mess up and it's human.

And if we can bring compassion to ourselves in those moments, it will lead us towards a healthy repair more quickly. So I like to call them reparative conversations. That's when we're looking at adult to adult with kiddos.

It's a little bit different. I'm going to talk about that now. So in order to repair, we have to bounce back to center likely if there's been a rupture or moment of disconnection with ourselves, like we just did something that was extreme, and our child actually doesn't care, but we've become disconnected and we're in a hyper aroused or hypo aroused state because we're mad at ourselves.

Or maybe we really do hurt our child, like we get really mad at them instead of teaching them. When it takes their brain time to learn new things, and we know that they need to be taught, but instead, we scream and said, well, you did this right yesterday, why are you not doing it right today?

The more quickly we can bounce back to center and become regulated, the more easily we can engage in a reparative moment with ourselves and our child and then move towards a productive solution. The solution might just be, can I give you a hug and say sorry, and we can move on.

I'm going to try to do better next time. The solution might be, can we have a redo? I love this one. Can we pause the movie? Let's pretend with a remote control like we did in the meditation. Pause. Let's rewind.

Everyone go back to where they were five minutes ago and let's redo this and have it be better. We want to start by modeling moments of redo and repair with ourselves for our kids and then later we can encourage them to have those moments of repair, whether it's with siblings if they messed up or if they just did the wrong thing, we can encourage that later.

I'm going to go into the details of what I call the bounce back, but I also just want to say that for the attachment system, repair is everything. Secure attachment isn't having no conflict or no disagreements.

It's about coming back to a place of safety and trust and believing because it's happened over and over again that you'll be able to listen to the other person in the relationship. that person will listen to you, your voice and your opinions will matter and it'll be received in a way that's not met with defensiveness.

And if that happens over and over again, I can break patterns of the less adaptive styles of attachment and I can start to become secure in myself and in my world. Note, if you get too stuck in guilt, you're not going to go the guilt like, oh, this guilt is letting me know I did a thing that isn't an integrity.

I'm going to let it go. Thank you for being here and letting me know that I did something on an integrity, come back to center and then I can take action. So the bounce back. All of this will be written in this module in written form.

So know that you can find the writing here. But I'm just going to go over the steps of the bounce back. Number one, you must notice when you have entered a trigger state, almost always. When you're in a triggered state, it's because there's been a rupture.

Something's not going right. Someone's done something that's too much. You might be hyper aroused and feeling checked out in depressed. You might be more hyper aroused, like anxious and aggressive, but you will want to feel the trigger in your body and soften towards it instead of pushing it away.

So I just lost my temper at someone in my family. And now I'm feeling a little bit of it. I'm like, either getting more angry, or I'm kind of getting checked out. It's like, okay, something just happened.

That's not totally cool. Instead of numbing and pushing it away, I'm going to sit with the feeling of discomfort. Step two, take space and regulate. Before I go back and try to anxiously repair, but I'm sorry.

And they didn't mean to do that, can we fix it? I'm gonna take a minute, I'm gonna step outside, I'm gonna shake my body, I'm gonna take some breaths, I'm gonna remember that it's okay. And then I'm going to prepare to reenter the scene in a regulated state from a place of openness and centeredness without the extra doubt and shame.

And I'm gonna make this right. Note again, if it doesn't feel available because other family members aren't in a place to receive, like they just need a little space to cool off or you're not in a place to truly communicate and repair, wait, don't do it today.

You can do it in an hour, you can do it tomorrow, you can do it next week, you can be driving with your kiddo in the car next week and say, do you remember that moment when I lost my temper? That was pretty icky.

I think what happened was... I was tired. I had been asking a lot of times for you to stop doing that. And I just reached my edge, but it still wasn't an excuse. What I wish I had done is slowed way down, connected with you, gotten more information about what it is you were wanting or needing.

Maybe I could have played with you for a few minutes and felt like I was in connection to you. And then I could have said, Hey, the thing you're doing where you keep yelling at me that you want candy, let's say, it's really bothering me.

It's making me feel like I can't just be here with you and see how your child responds. But key point here, it doesn't matter when, but it just matters that it happens. So you'll have space and time to practice the bounce back in this module.

But I encourage you to not look so much for the quantity of the times that you're doing things perfectly and you have the perfect parenting moment, but the quality with which you're able to bounce back more quickly.

I just remember a time that I got a text from my husband right when I was starting to develop this idea of the bounce back. And he just wanted to share. It was kind of a rough morning with the kids. I lost my temper, but I bounced back quick and I'm good to go.

And I think we, I think we repaired it. And I think he even used the emoji of a basketball. So just, you know, just a little bit of lightness and it's like we bounced back and we're good. So be celebrating in yourself and other family members that bounce back and trying it on as much as you can.

So we are coming to a close for this module. I want to leave you with a few closing points. So the truth is, I feel like I've made this clear. We really need to take responsibility for the fact that we shape our kids.

our choices, what we model, the environment we provide. It's not to be shaming of ourselves and perhaps of you, but it's just to take responsibility and be mature. Like if our child is showing us disorganized attachment because they've moved to four different schools in two years, like that was an environment that we created for them.

Of course, sometimes we can't control life that happens, but as parents, we can take responsibility. I'm sorry that this is the way life is unfolding in our family and of course you will have some disorganization in your attachment style.

And in that we can be present to it, we can regulate with it and we can grow to a more grounded and regulated place together. I also wanna bring in this concept that when we're in a family, we're a part of a system.

So that's, I mean, we have a system with ourselves with a nervous system, we have a system with our family, with our community and with society at large, that's kind of the Bronfenbrenner s ecosystem model.

That's a whole other course we could, we could go into. But in recognizing that you're part of a system, just like a machine, like if your car has a system that's running, you can create a lot of shifts by taking responsibility and making changes in your part of the system.

So if you choose to be more regulated, if you choose to try on more loving boundaries, greater warmth, what else, um, bouncing back and repairing, the whole system will benefit. Sometimes if we don't do this, our kiddos will do this for us.

So they're going to make a shift, they're going to say, I'm just going to keep on pushing this boundary that you're setting, because I know that it's not true. I know that you don't actually care about me going to soccer practice every day, you're just doing that because you feel like you should and that's what your parents would have done.

And they're actually, it's more congruent for me to let you do what you want to do after school, not make you go to a sport you don't want to go to. So the system is dynamic, different players in the system will shift it.

And it will really always be in motion. Family therapy idea is that if there's furniture in the living room, and the furniture represents the different family members, if one piece of furniture shifts, all the other furniture will have to shift to make the living room fit.

So if you make a choice to shift where you are in the structure and how you're being, the rest of the family will follow suit, even if they have resistance at first. And lastly, I just want to leave you with one study that I found really helpful.

And it came from a lot of parents in my practice asking me, am I messing up? Is what I'm doing now going to make my child not so great down the line? Like, does it really matter? And I had kind of been coming from the perspective of saying, it's going to be fine.

Let's stay here. Let's stay present. You're thinking 10 years down the line. And I think that's true. I think it's very important to stay present and not be putting our energy and future focused fear.

However, the findings of this study by Cheering and Yates in 2020 were really important. And what they did is they interviewed a whole bunch of seven -year -olds. It's a longitudinal study. And then they waited for three years and they assessed them again.

And they measured for behaviors kiddos were showing, as well as how their parents were parenting. And they found that kiddos that were experiencing high hostility, so that low warmth, high control and hostility, hostility, the authoritarian parenting style, were exhibiting greater rule -breaking behavior, especially for boys, like high hostility and parenting meant they had 10 year olds that were breaking the rules.

They also found that a specific lack of warmth in the home predicted depressive symptoms in 10 year olds, especially for girls, they were experiencing a lot of depression. So it really matters. It matters to slow down, to offer more softness and compassion to ourselves and our kids, especially in the stressful situations, to forgive our children for their mistakes, because they are learning, they're not supposed to be perfect,

to offer them trust and forgiveness now instead of hostility, so that we can see more positive behaviors later on. And it all starts with building the muscle of compassion for yourself so that you actually have a shot at growing and shifting.

And even if you are, and have actively worked on this warm style of parenting, it takes a next level of compassion and regulation to get everyone in your family on the same page. So maybe you've been spending a lot of time in warmth, but your spouse hasn't gotten there yet.

It's not going to work to be controlling with them. to have them get to a place of warmth with you to support your kiddos, but it might help you to try on some of those authoritative styles of having both warmth.

Like I get why you would be parenting in this more controlling form. It makes sense to me knowing your story and knowing your style and then having the control of the firm boundary that says, and what I need is for both of us as parents to slow down and soften and offer our kiddos both warmth and control together.

That's it for this module. Enjoy the exercises and there's so much more coming. I can't wait to have this journey land for you. Take care.