Mindset Shifts to Make Parenting Feel Less Stressful

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy, while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Lasky, McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Episode niner of the executive coach for moms podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in again! I'm excited to be back on the mic this week, just me talking to you. And I want to talk today about something that is near and dear to my heart. Really, because as I've been spending the last two and a half years as a full time parent, I have learned a lot. And there's a lot that I feel like I want to share in order to help other parents. And so today, I want to focus on parenting mindset shifts to make the overall parenting experience feel a little bit less stressful. I know the parenting is really hard at times. And so I want to help make that a little bit easier. So I think that there are some opportunities that we have to shift our mindset a little bit, and cut down on the stress and just enjoy the overall experience more. So I've been parenting now for four and a half years, full time meaning not doing a full time professional job. I'm also an admin of a parenting Facebook group with over 100,000 members. So I see a lot of posts come in. And I talk to a lot of other parents in my parenting circles. And I just see how much pressure we put on ourselves, and how much stress we create for ourselves and just the expectations that we have of ourselves as parents and the expectations that we have of our children. So I see a lot of this. And I think there's just a lot of opportunity for us. 

So I get a lot of questions, since I've focused full time on parenting and spend a lot of time learning about it, since it's my current profession. And a lot of people ask, like, what would you do in this situation? Or, you know, how should I respond to this, and kind of the thing I always say is that at the end of the day, every adult and every child, every human is different. So I'm not really usually focused on like, what to do, I'm a lot more focused on what are we thinking. And that makes sense, because as a coach, I'm very focused on mindset. And I think I've shared this model before on the podcast, but the idea that there are circumstances out in the world that are neutral, and then our brains create thoughts about those circumstances, our thoughts, create our feelings, our feelings, then drive our actions which generate our results. And often our results, and our thoughts, if we look at the two of them, our results are confirmation of our thoughts. Basically, we're trying to prove ourselves right. So I think it's really important to look more at the thoughts and the mindset. And then the actions will follow that right. And then we can kind of look from there and look through whenever we're looking through different lens, then our actions can become much more clear, we can take actions that are more aligned with our values. And we can kind of figure out what to do from there. But often a mindset shift is kind of where we need to start. So that's what I want to talk about today. 

I think it's important to also just note that how we view our children, and what we think about them and their actions largely drives our actions. So when I say that circumstances are neutral, I think it's important to remember that our child's or children's behaviors, to us in this model are circumstances so they're neutral. And we may think and feel and react differently to the same behaviors on in different ways on different days. So, for example, if we've had one of those days where it feels like it's mess after mess, push back after a push back. We feel like we are just treading upstream without a paddle and we're it's just a really hard day. Then whenever our child has some big feelings a meltdown, quote unquote tantrum, then we might have some thoughts about that, that are kind of like, oh, man, no, please no, oh my gosh, no another one, right. And then we have feelings that generate some feelings that are probably not super pleasant like dread or exhaustion, just really not positive feelings and emotions. And then we take our actions from that place, we make our decisions about what we want to do about it from that place. And generally, we might not respond as our highest, truest best selves in that moment, right with those thoughts driving our actions. On the flip side, if we've just had a really restful day, maybe we're coming off of a nice break, or our partner had our child and we were able to go in disconnect a little bit. And then we see our child upset in some big emotions, we might have a totally different thought about that. Right? We, we might think, like, oh, my gosh, I wonder what's going on for them, you know, I want to be here for them. Because we have a little bit more capacity to think that way. And then our feelings are more compassion and empathy. And then our actions come from that place. And so if our actions are coming from that place, it's very, very different than if our actions are coming from exasperation, exhaustion, overwhelm, right. So I paint that picture and share that example. Just because I think it's really important that we understand that our child's behaviors and what's going on is a neutral circumstance, and how we react and how we think about it, how we feel about it, how we act about it is all up to us. And it's subjective. And it can be different on different days, depending on where we're at. 

So one thing I want to really talk about is the importance of curiosity. Maybe it'd be interesting to just kind of take a mental note of how much time are you spending in curiosity? Because I truly believe that the more time we spend in curiosity, the better our lives become. So if we think about a continuum or a spectrum, if curiosity is on one end of that spectrum, then what do we have along with those that we have curiosity, we have openness, we have opportunity, where there's curiosity, that's where we can learn. That's where we can grow any kind of growth or learning there has to be some curiosity there, right, and a desire to figure something out to learn something new, on the opposite end of that spectrum, is judgment. And along with that closed final, there's no room for growth, there's no room for learning. We already know the answer. We've already made the judgment. And so whereas curiosity allows us so much opportunity, and so much room and space, I think curiosity feels very spacious. Judgment is done, it's closed its final, we've decided this is what it is. And there's nothing more to do there. So our brains tend to go to judgment, because it's more efficient. It's a little bit less work than curiosity, to look at something and just say, I know the answer, right, done. And I think that when we can challenge our brains to get back into that curiosity mindset, it can be so much more fruitful for ourselves, for our relationships for our children. 

So in that example, that I just shared about our child being upset, I think there are two opportunities for curiosity here. So one is looking at curiosity for ourselves. So whenever we start to feel a certain way, whenever we start to have these thoughts about the thing that's happening in front of us, so our child's on the floor, screaming and kicking, and we have thoughts about that we have an opportunity to be curious about those thoughts, right? Or maybe we start with feelings, and then we can be curious about those feelings and back it up to what are the thoughts that are generating those feelings? So we have this opportunity to to be curious about our own reactions. And what's going on there. What happened when I was a child, and I was laying on the floor screaming and kicking, you know, like, Oh, that's so interesting that whenever my child whom I love is seemingly in distress, I go to a place of judgment, right? There's just so much opportunity there whenever we can be curious about what's going on within ourselves and not be judgmental toward ourselves. The second opportunity there is to be curious about our child's behavior. Oh, that's so interesting. My child is lying on the floor right now kicking and screaming. Something must be going on, what could it be? Right instead of just jumping to judgment of another tantrum, right, like they're just trying to mess up my day or whatever thought we might have that is, maybe we know what's happening here. And an assumption that we need to do no further exploration, we have an opportunity to challenge ourselves and stay curious and find out what's going on and approach the situation from a place of genuine curiosity of, hey, I don't know what's going on with my child, because I'm not inside of their heads. And something must be happening for them. I wonder what's going on? Let me check this out. Right. So I think that curiosity is something that I'll refer back to a lot in these mindset shifts. And I think it's the foundation and just gives so much opportunity. So anytime I think whenever we're starting to feel stressed, we're starting to feel like we know what's going on with our child, there's an opportunity to step back and just maybe just get a little curious, get a little curious about that for ourselves of why we're feeling that way. And also get a little curious about that for the other person in the situation, whether that be our child, or really anyone else that we're in relationship with. 

Another concept that I want to share is about NVC or nonviolent communication. If you are not familiar with this, I highly recommend learning a little bit about it. I took a course in it last summer for my coaching recertification. And it was really interesting, it has kind of the premise that every type of communication, every time we're communicating, we are communicating a need, and all humans have needs. And then we create different strategies to have our needs met. So the strategy would be the words that we're using the body language we're using, the actions that we're taking, whatever it might be to communicate how we're feeling or communicate the need that we want to have met. So I think that that's really interesting whenever we look at our relationship with our children, because, number one, I think it's so important to remember that anytime a child is communicating to us, they're communicating a need. And we have the opportunity to going back to what we were just talking about, get curious about what is that need? What are they trying to communicate that they need right now. And then I think the second thing to remember is that our children come into this world as blank slates, and they have not been socialized the same way that we have, I think sometimes we forget that. All these years and years and years of learning that we have done, we kind of take for granted. And our child who's just been in the world for a few short years, is has so much to learn. And they haven't necessarily learned about all of the different strategies that are available to communicate needs. And so it's really up to us to help them learn how to communicate their needs in an effective way. But I think a lot of times, what happens is we see them acting in a certain way. And we tend to maybe play some judgment on it. But really, it's just a strategy that they're using to communicate a need. And that strategy, just their strategies aren't very socially acceptable, right? They just haven't learned those things yet. And so I think that's also really important to remember that oftentimes, our children are communicating in need in like the most maybe counterintuitive way that we would think about it. So, you know, if we wanted some love and affection from somebody, then we might, I don't know, give them a hug, or say I love you or go and sit close to them, when our child has that same need, because the most common need for humans as for connection, they might come and hit us on the head or tell us that they hate us or some other very seemingly strange way to us. They're using to communicate that need. 

So again, if we can drop into curiosity, if we can get it to our kind of detective mode of this is really interesting that my child's doing this, what's going on here and really trying to figure out what is the need that they're trying to communicate? That is such a different place to come from, again, then kind of feeling like we're judging the situation, you know, and getting into kind of that defensive mode that We might sometimes do. So with NVC, the intention is to understand not to correct not to share my own experience just to understand. And honestly, NVC applies to any relationship. And everything I'm talking about today can really apply to any relationship that we have. Just talking about children specifically, but for our children, like, what if we just saw our jobs as parents as to just to understand and identify the need rather than to fix, I feel like so often, we feel like we have to fix they bring something to us, and we're supposed to fix it. But a lot of times, it's really just helping them to get to the need, and us to get to the need. And then to help them learn, you know, and us learn about their communication strategies. And for us to work together collaboratively to figure out different ways to communicate those needs. What if we could just kind of sit in a place of curiosity with our children, rather than in judgment of their sometimes kind of seemingly strange behaviors? And what if we could kind of do all of this in our interactions and our relationships? Honestly, I think the world would be so much better. If we all came from a place of curiosity, and from a place of trying to understand and identify the underlying needs, don't you? 

So I want to talk about five specific thoughts or mindset shift opportunities that I think definitely helped to reduce my stress level quite a bit. And so hopefully, they do the same for you, all of them will really kind of go back to those two frameworks that I talked about curiosity and NVC and identifying the needs. 

So the first one is that my child is intentionally taking this action or intentionally trying to ruin my day, right? They're intentionally hitting their brother, they're intentionally biting the kid at daycare, whatever it might be, right. So there's kind of an assumption of intentionality. And again, if we go back to the curiosity judgment spectrum, whenever we decide that our child is doing something intentionally, that takes us into judgment, rather than curiosity, I think also, I talked earlier about how we're viewing our child. So if we think about anyone in our lives, if we believe that they're intentionally trying to hurt us, they're intentionally trying to ruin our day, they're intentionally doing this, quote unquote, bad behavior, then we are going to be looking at that from a very specific lens and our feelings about that, right, when we have that thought, the feeling that it generates is probably not a very positive one. And then our actions are probably not going to be very positive either. And that will generate not the best results. So I think there's an opportunity to kind of shift this mindset here. And I think it's important to remember that our children do want to please us, like biologically speaking, they rely on us, for their livelihood to stay alive. I mean, they, especially whenever they're younger, they can't do anything by themselves. And so whenever our brain tries to offer this thought that they're intentionally doing something to hurt us, upset us, make us mad, whatever, we can just remind ourselves that like, that's just factually not true. seems not a true statement. And so I think if we can kind of accept that, then we have the opportunity to step back and get curious about this behavior, and ask, What need are they communicating here, right, it is not an intentional thing. And maybe we can shift that a bit. 

The second one kind of goes along with that. And it's that my child is giving me a hard time. So same thing, if we're feeling like someone's intentionally giving us a hard time, we're not going to feel very compassionate toward them, we're not going to feel much empathy toward them, right? If we look at that, instead, as my child is having a hard time, then that mindset shift, I think gives us so much more room for empathy, connection, compassion with our children. I think it's important to remember that being a kid can be really hard as adults, like we might kind of chuckle at that, or because we feel like you know, what do they have to worry about? They don't have bills to pay, they don't have jobs, you don't have all you know, all this stress, but at the same time, they're trying to figure out the world they're trying to learn. They haven't learned all of these things that we inherently know at this point in our lives. And they're trying to navigate so many things, social relationships at school or daycare, they're trying to, they're trying to please their parents. And you know, they might have sibling rivalries and relationships that they're navigating. And just learning to be a person in this world, it can be challenging. And so I think it's important to remember that sometimes our children are genuinely having a hard time. And if we can look at them with that lens through that lens, instead of looking at them through the lens of they're giving me a hard time. For me, that just reduces the stress so much, and allows me to be a better parent and a more resourceful parent for them. Because I know that whenever my child's doing something, it's not intentional, they're not trying to give me a hard time, they're genuinely having a hard time. And I can help them from that place. And also not feel all kind of stressed out about how they're acting. 

The third thing is, my child doesn't want to, my child doesn't want to listen to me, my child doesn't want to go to sleep, they don't want to follow directions, right? We have this language that says they don't want to. And first of all, that's a pretty big assumption to know what another human being wants, right? Because how do we know we don't know if they want to, or, or if they can't, but I think it's important to trust that they're doing their best that they're trying their best to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because in the sleep example, whenever we just want the day to be over, I know bedtime can be a challenging time. For a lot of parents, we want the day to be over, we want a little bit of time to ourselves to kind of decompress. And our child has an opposite agenda. From that, right, they're staying awake, they're not going to sleep, they're asking for more story, time, etc, more playtime. And so our brain starts to go into like, they don't want to listen, they don't want to go to sleep, they, and it goes back to that and they're giving me a hard time they're intentionally trying to stall bedtime, right? When we are looking at it from that place, then our feelings are not going to be very positive about the bedtime experience. I'm speaking from experience here, because I've had these thoughts, many, many nights where I was just kind of ready for a little break and for the day to be over. But we have the opportunity to notice when we start to have these thoughts, and to kind of question them and correct them. And kind of shift the thought to like my child will go to sleep tonight, right? Like we all go to sleep eventually, it might not be till much later than I prefer it to be. And this is not an intentional thing. This is not that my child doesn't want to maybe they can't sleep. I don't know about you. But there have been plenty of nights that as an adult, I can't fall asleep right away. And I might need a little bit of extra time to talk something out or to think something through, right. And so I think we just have the opportunity to maybe shift that a bit and understand that our child, it's not that they don't want to do something, but they're genuinely doing their best. 

The fourth mindset is more of a global kind of thing. But it's just around expectations. So I don't know about you. But I tend to have these very, very high expectations of especially like big events, right? So I think, Oh, we're going on vacation, and I plan this perfect vacation in my head. And I spend so much time thinking about it. And picturing this perfect time we're going to have and everyone's going to get along and everyone, nobody's going to whine because they're so grateful that we are having this wonderful vacation. And then we get there. And it's not like that, because we've brought along our human children and our human selves. And we haven't just like magically converted overnight into a different person whenever we go on vacation, unfortunately, or fortunately, right? So we get there. And not only are we kind of frustrated by what's happening in the moment, but we also are frustrated and disappointed by the fact that like this, that this vacation or this experience is not meeting your expectations because we we create such beautiful visions in our head about what it's going to be like. And I think that I'm talking about the big things. I think it's little things too. Even just going out to dinner, right? We take our two year old out to dinner, and we're like, oh, it's gonna be so great. We love this restaurant. They're gonna love it. The food's great. There's stuff to play with. It will be great. And then we get there and our two year old isn't sitting in their seat. They're running around. It's not at all what We pictured right with this perfect dinner that we've imagined in our heads. And I think that number one, understanding that when we go in these different situations, we are still the same people. And so our experiences are going to be very similar to what they are all the time. I think that's one thing, it's just important to remember, I think the other thing that's important to remember is that we have these expectations of our children. You know, last time that we went out to dinner, it went really well. And very smoothly, nobody was fighting with each other. Nobody tried to get out of their seats, everybody sat and ate, and it was wonderful. And so therefore, we know that they're capable of it. So that's how it's going to be every time and so that, like raises the bar of our expectations. I think the thing that I always go back to here is baseball. And I think they think it's so important to remember is that nobody bats 1000, a professional baseball player, their batting average is 300. Okay, that's like really good for a professional baseball player who makes millions of dollars, who has been doing this their entire lives, and is clearly really good at it, right? If they hit the ball three out of 10 times, that is amazing. We are expecting that our children, it's not like they've been doing this their whole lives, it's not that they've been professionally training. And it's not that they're being paid millions of dollars to do this. And then we take them out to dinner, but we expect that 10 out of 10 times they're going to sit in this is going to be a perfect dinner, when in reality, one out of 10 would be really great, given their level of experience with this situation, right. So I think just overall expectations and kind of readjusting our expectations from that perfect vision that we have for whatever we're doing whatever experience we're having. And then also just realizing that sometimes it's gonna go really great. And sometimes it's going to be terrible if sometimes, there'll be lots of experiences in the middle. But I think it's just important to cut our kids some slack. And understand that, like, they're figuring this out, they're learning, they aren't going to do it 100% of the time perfectly. And I think it's important, we cut ourselves some slack too, because at those moments, a lot of times, especially when we're in public places like a restaurant, then we start piling on the judgment. And you know, maybe I'm a terrible parents, and all these other things, right. And so I think it's also important that we cut ourselves some slack. 

And then the fifth and final thing is catastrophizing, the future, we have a thought that whenever we see our children like exhibiting some undesirable behavior, we have thought that they have to learn, we go down this road 10 or 20 years, and we think, Oh, my gosh, they are not going to be a productive member of society because they came and clean their room, right. But like they're 10, they're still learning how to clean their room and how to pick up after themselves, right. And oh, my gosh, my child's never going to be able to hold down and job because they can't get out of bed and get to school on time. But they're three, and they have a little bit of time to learn or they're 13. Right, they have some time. 

And I think it's important to recognize when we're doing this the other day, I was thinking about this because my daughter was in a summer camp for a week. And it was in the mornings. And we've never done consistent morning activities that we have morning preschool starting in the fall. And I started realizing that whenever we were getting kind of stressed getting out the door, I was getting stressed. And I was trying to get us out the door. And it seemed like we were always rushing. And it just wasn't always the enjoyable, beautiful, relaxing experience. I expected it to be in the mornings. Then I started also piling on Oh, this is how every day is going to be in the school year. I don't want to feel like this every day. I don't have to do this every day. And so on top of just dealing with the present moment. Also, we put this on ourselves all this extra pressure and stress and worry about months or years in the future. And so I think it's just an important thing for us to recognize when we're doing that to ourselves and just say like, alright, that's fine. Like for us to worry about that and normal. Let's focus on right now what's going on right now, so that we can work with our child to figure out the task at hand and be able to do that from a place of resourcefulness and openness and curiosity rather than having all this stress piled on top of it. 

It's important to remember, also, I think the thought that I often have is, we've got some time. And a lot of the things that we worry about in the future are things that are not developmentally appropriate for our child's current age. So for example, this is why three year olds can't get a job yet. This is why 10 year olds can't leave their own apartment, yet, they have some time to grow and develop. They're just not at that point yet. And so it's just an important reminder to ourselves, because our brains do these really funny things where they totally catastrophize and totally paint this horrible picture and again, gets us into judgment mode, rather than curiosity, because our brains like I know how this is gonna go, I can see it playing out. And we can just step back a little bit, take a breath and recognize this is not the place I want to come from. I want to come from a place of focusing on what's going on right now. 

So I hope that these mindset shifts will be helpful for you. I think it's always important in summary, to just come back to what is the underlying need that my child has my child, my employee, my partner, my friend, my mother, what is the underlying need that this person in front of me is trying to communicate? Be a detective? Most importantly, stay curious, stay curious, my friends, curiosity brings with it so much potential for learning and growth, and most importantly, fun, and let's have some fun whenever we are with our kids, they have this one and only childhood and they're so freakin fun whenever we can kind of relax and drop the stress and enjoy it with them. So I hope that you find some more joy in your parenting moments. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Have a great week, everybody. 

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai