Ep 90: Kid Whispers

We all have a lot of information spinning in our heads about communication, relationships, and kids. Today I’m going to share my all time fave, love blooming tips to bring out the best in ourselves and the kids in our lives.

And before you think that this episode is not for you because you don't have kids- hang tight. These ideas are also for you. For your relationships with other adults and most of all for your relationship with all of the parts of you.

In this episode, I will give you the top seven soundbites that I play in my head to remind me of how to interact with my kids and bring out the best in them.

Use them to ground you when you’re most frazzled or overstimulated- to help build stronger, more empathetic connections whether dealing with children, adults, or our inner selves.

What you'll learn in this episode:

My seven key soundbites to guide parenting and relationship strategies
The importance of "connect before correct" to improve communication
Techniques for creating a "power with" dynamic instead of a "power over"
Strategies for addressing unmet needs instead of just focusing on problems
How parenting techniques can be adapted for interactions with adults and for self-care

Mentioned in this episode:

How to connect with Marie:

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We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want, and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it.

Well, hello everyone and welcome to episode number 90 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. 90, that's so fun.

Well, I just got back yesterday from wham bam, whirling dervish, from a really quick turnaround camping trip. My brothers both have children that are going into kindergarten for the first time, and they were like let's start a tradition of taking all of our children to go camping right before school starts and let's do it for the first time this year.

But this idea happened, you know, like a week before school started. So, we had to make it happen fast if we were going to do it, and my nephew has never been camping before. So, we decided to go camping on Friday night. I mean, we had no reservation. We had decided like a week before we were probably going to go. We were still as of the day we went camping. We were still batting around, should we go or not. We decided to go.

It's just me with my two kids and I bring a friend for my daughter because she's almost 12 and all the other kids are younger. So, I have three kids by myself, and I have all the camping gear by myself, and we leave town at like a little after four and we drive for an hour and a half to go to the campsite. We get there, we have dinner together and then we go out to the campsite.

We've got about an hour and both my brothers are camping in their cars and so they have two trucks, and they have mattresses in their trucks. They have this whole setup. So, they're camping there. I let my daughter and her friend sleep in my car it's an electric car, so they're sleeping in the back of it and my son, and I are going to sleep in a tent. So, I set up this tent in the little hour that we left a big tarp on the ground.

Underneath it, the blue tarps you know spread all the way out. I have all the kids help me set it up and shake it out, so it's like way larger than it needs to be, a detail of which will be very important pretty soon when you hear this story. So, we have this giant tarp with this tent that's sitting beneath two trees. Okay, they're oak trees. This was all out past Ramona, up in the hills of Julian and Santa Isabel in Southern California, where there are these rolling golden Hills.

It's where my husband actually asked me to marry him. A story that I've told on the podcast before under this oak tree and way out beyond that. So, we're camping out there, we're setting up the tent under two of these Oak trees and they kind of form like a rainbow over the top, like an arch. Another important detail. I'm setting this story up for you.

Then the night goes on, okay, and my nephew has s'mores for the first time so exciting, there's lots of sweets on this camping trip. So that happens. We're all just setting up camp, enjoying each other. At like 9.30 at night we decide to go on a walk, and we are the only people in the campground. Not another soul is there and so we go for this little walk around the campground with flashlights and the kids are so pumped and it's so fun. We go back. Eventually we all head to bed, where the real story begins.

So I'm in the tent and the moon is bright. I can hear my brothers and their kids kind of winding down, going to sleep. I'm a pretty light sleeper and so it takes me a while. It's taken me like an hour, an hour and a half, to like start to go to sleep this night because there's lots of sounds. Not only were there lots of voice sounds which were very charming to listen to, by the way, I was not mad at it, it was delightful but also so much of the sound of nature.

The crickets were symphonic y'all. They were so loud and there were wild trills from these different birds. All these different sounds. The moon is bright, and it becomes dimmer and dimmer and I'm starting to fade to sleep, and I hear some more sounds. I hear my brother talking to his son. I hear my other brother talking to his daughter and it wakes me back up again.

Their tummy troubles, air is, you know, leaking out of mattresses. Things like this are happening. I'm it's kind of like watching a camping show. So, I'm kind of entertained as I'm hearing all this, everybody settles back in, then I start to go back to sleep again.

By now, I don't know, it's like one in the morning, just when I'm starting to fade to sleep for the first time, I hear footsteps, y'all footsteps. You remember when I told you there were zero other people in the campground? Footsteps in the leaves very close to my tent and I am like lying there with my son, being like what is happening and it's, you know, I mean literally one footstep, the next footstep, one foot, the next footstep, and it's dark outside.

The moon has gone down and I kind of stand up and I look around because I didn't have a rain flap on the tent. I could see through the screens and there's nothing out there. I lie back down. Everything had gotten still and quiet again.

I lie back down, I'm starting to fade to sleep again, and I hear rustling, all this rustling. Now the leaves that have fallen from the oak tree are dry. It is the end of summer; they are really dry and it's very loud. It's like crunchy, crunchy leaf loud, okay. And there's all this rustling and it's loud and I'm like what is happening. And then footsteps on the tarp.

They're not giant human footsteps, but they're literally like one step, another step, another step on the tarp. Now I told you, it's like, you know, pretty wide around the tent and it's so it's got a couple of feet, but it's like a couple of feet away from the tent and it's right by our head, and then they get still and I'm like what is happening, and then it gets quiet. I stand up, I look around. I see nothing.

Every time I lie back down, and I almost fall asleep, the sound starts again, and this time not just footsteps on the tarp, footsteps in the leaves rustling in the leaves, but something swipes the tent right by our heads. Now I am like is this some event horizon BS or what? Like? This is freaky, deaky. It is pitch black outside. I have lanterns but I don't have a flashlight. I can't like shine it out there.

But I stand up and I can't see, like I would be able to see if there were a person standing there or something, right, so I'm just like I don't know what to do. I'm definitely not going out there right now. This is so weird.

And after a couple of hours of this, every time I start to go to sleep, I realized like this is, like this is an animal. I mean, I realized that sooner, right, but I realized for sure this is an animal that is curious and that is really messing with us. And I'm thinking it's got to be a raccoon because it's big, it's like heavy and it's walking like feet. And every time I stand up it stops, and then, a couple minutes after I lie down, it will run up. I told you that the oak trees right Are like an arch over the top.

It will run up into the tree and acorns, giant heavy acorns, start dropping on the tent and I'm picturing this little raccoon cracking up and dropping these acorns, hacking them, throwing them at our tent. The whole bunch of them rain down on the tent, one at a time, bam, bam, bam, and then I hear it scuttle down the tree again and then run over to the tent and swipe the tent by my face and I'm just picturing this raccoon cracking up out there. So, it was no longer like kind of creepy.

It was entertaining and kind of charming, because there's this creature of the forest and I've put my tent where its house must be, you know, and it is straight up messing with us going up and down the tree like giant acorns popping down. I just realized eventually that my only choice is to enjoy this.

Unless I'm going to like get out and yell and like get a flashlight and try to chase it away, which is probably not going to work. I just need to surrender to the fact that I am not going to go to sleep until this creature does. So that's what I did. I just like listened to it and kind of giggled about it and was like well, what the heck is this thing?

And was charmed by it until finally I fell asleep at like 4.30 in the morning and I slept for like two hours until the little kids were awake and giddy, you know, because they rose with the sun.

So, I'm awake in the tent trying to snooze for a while and eventually I get up and I look outside and there are these holes that an animal had dug, big holes in the dirt behind the tent, but nothing else. There's no footprints on the tarp, there's nothing to tell what this was. But you guys, y'all listen, the marshmallows were still on the picnic table.

It couldn't have been a raccoon man, because a raccoon would definitely have gone for those marshmallows. What could it have been? Squirrels would have gotten the marshmallows. Possum, I think, would have gotten the marshmallows. What the heck was this animal? Remember freaking footsteps?

Okay, okay, if you have any idea what the animal of the like you know, an hour and a half northeast of San Diego, what this could have been, I am open if you tell me that it's a woodland nymph, that's a trickster god of the woods. I will listen because I need answers, so. So go ahead and tell me. Anyways, I hope that was entertaining for you.

On to the meat of our episode. When we were on this trip, we headed back, and we had breakfast, and I sat down. I was talking to one of my brothers about our kids, and we were, you know, my kids are eight and 12.

I became a mom over a decade ago. I have a daughter that's turning 12 very, very soon, been a mom for a long time and been a parent for a long time, and his kids are turning five. Right, both of my brothers, their children, are turning five, and so we were talking about, you know, one of them was picking my brain about, like, what age does what happen?

And what came out of my mouth is something that I realized is really helpful for a lot of my clients, because my clients come to me, and I will coach them on anything. Pretty much, unless it's going to traumatize them or re-traumatize them, I will mostly coach on what they want coaching on. They come to me for business.

They coach on their mom and their marriage and their habits and weight loss and you know communication style, everything, sleep patterns. They coach on whatever they want, whatever comes up for them, and often kids come up.

So, I often have coached my clients on kids and given them my top tips for what has worked for me, and also as someone that was in the field of educational leadership, basically within innovation it was the intersection of innovation and education.

For 15 years I have read a lot of books on education and parenting and, just in general, I'm a research nerd and so I read a lot of books. So, I have a lot of information in my head about parenting and I wanted to make a podcast that gives you the top seven sound bites that I play in my head when I'm interacting with children.

And before you turn this off because you don't have kids, any of you that do not have children. Before you turn this off because you don't have kids, any of you that do not have children aren't interested, whatever. Keep listening for two reasons.

This works with any children, okay, and even when you're thinking about your best friend's kid, your niece or your nephew, your neighbor's kid, I also mean all of the children living inside all of us. So, the tips that I'm going to give you today work for any children, but also for most adults.

Adapted right, the basic philosophies work for most adults and also for how we treat ourselves when we have emotions, when we have reactions that come up inside of us. A lot of times they're coming from versions of us that are a lot younger. If you want to look up internal family systems, that's a great resource for understanding some of kind of like how we have many parts of us inside of us that are reacting to things as we move throughout our life, and that the most important thing to bring is compassion to all of those parts of us.

So, when we're making ideas real, when we're working on projects, when we're trying to change something about ourselves, we will have younger parts of ourselves reacting. So, all of these tips are applicable to not only your relationships with other adults, but your relationship with all of the parts of you, as well as any kids that are in your life.

So, what I realized in talking to my brother is that my go-to for parenting has always been to have sound bites for myself. Here's what I mean for parenting has always been to have sound bites for myself. Here's what I mean when you are, when I am in the heat of a moment and my patience is lacking or I am overstimulated that's something that happens to me a lot where there'll be music on and I'll be working on something that I'm trying to get done and maybe I'm thinking about something else, and then multiple people are talking to me.

I feel overloaded mentally and sometimes emotionally. I'm just like I can't do it all. I have to, like put on the brakes. If you feel like that overstimulated, or you feel impatient, or you're just you're at the end of your rope or you're tired and you haven't slept, I love to have a sentence in my mind that reminds me of the goal with my kids, so we don't have to figure it all out from scratch in the moment when they're doing something.

That's really triggering for me. So, I am going to tell you the like seven things that are sentences that I use all the time and have for a long time with my children to remind me of how to interact with them and bring out the best in them. And again, I want to remind you that this will also bring out the best in the adults you interact with, if you adapt these to them and the children inside of you.

So, the first, one number one soundbite is connect before correct. So, Dr Becky at Good Inside says this in a different way. She may say it in this way too, I don't know, but one of my clients actually said it a few weeks ago in this way. Now it is the fundamental thing I always have tried to do with my kids, but she said it in these three words, and I was like what? Brilliant.

Connect before correct, meaning there's so many things right that we're like, hey, do it this way. Hey, please don't do that. You know so many things. We want to intercept with children and have them do a different way.

But if we can connect with where they are, what they're experiencing and, as human beings, connect with them before we tell them to do something different, many things happen. It's better for them, it's better for us. We may even decide we don't need to correct them anymore because we really understand, have empathy for where they're at and what's going on for them. We also feel the connection between the two of us, so they have all of our attention.

We're not offhandedly correcting them while we're multitasking, but we're connecting to them, and so then they feel that and they're more receptive and we also say things in a way that are much more in tune with their life experience in the moment and also over time, they will hear us much more effectively.

Now, this is the top one. That is also true for ourselves. If we're waking up and we're in a grumpy mood, instead of beating ourselves up for not being bright and shiny, when we can connect instead of correct. So instead of that, you know, if we're feeling grumpy, if we're feeling down instead of being like dang it, why am I down again?

Why can't I just be in a good mood when I wake up? It's not going to help if we can connect to that part of ourselves that's feeling a little down. See, oh, of course you are, you had a late night and it's a kind of daunting week ahead of you, or maybe you don't know why you're feeling that way, but just say, ah, like, come at that part of the inside of us with validation and love and compassion. It's much more likely to shift.

So, number one is connect before correct. Number two is what's missing. So, when there's some behavior, that's not what we want to see from a kid.

Our usual natural instinct is to be like what's wrong, like try to fix it Right. Ever since my children were small, I try to ask myself what's missing? Have they not slept? Have they not eaten? Have they not had water? Have they had too much transition today? Are they out of their routine? What is out of integrity in terms of what they need that's causing their behavior to be off? Instead of what's wrong with them, what's wrong with the situation?

Where are we out of integrity? Where is there something missing? And the same can work for us. Rather than beating ourselves up or beating somebody else up in our minds, what's wrong with them or what's wrong with us for not being in a great space when we can ask, hmm, I wonder, what need I have or what need another person has?

That's not met. That's causing them to act a little bit off. It can bring a lot more effective information that helps us get in balance, so that then we can get on the right track again, rather than coming at things critically. So, instead of saying what's wrong with a person, it's what's missing here. Okay, that's number two. Number one is connect before correct. Number two is what's missing.

Number three, this is one I use every day limited acceptable options. This came from my work with Galileo Innovation Camps back in the day. They had incredible sort of kid behavior management techniques that were so supportive of children, and this one is to say give a kid limited acceptable options.

You can either continue to yell and scream and stay in the bedroom and we can stay home, or you can decide to use your words to communicate what's wrong and what you need, and we can still go to the playground. But if you choose to keep screaming at the top of your lungs, the playground won't be available anymore. But it's up to you.

If you want to continue to scream, that's your choice. We'll just stay home. If you want to take a couple of deep breaths with me and I can help you along with it, we can talk about what's going on and we can still have the option of going to the park, going to the playground.

So, limited acceptable options. And what that does is it leads to number four, which is power with, not power over. Instead of being the one that's making the choice, you're handing the choice to them. You're giving them limited acceptable options. You can choose this, or you can choose this.

It is up to you, and that's incredible, and it also works with other adults rather than. It's a great way of setting boundaries when you're interacting with people and you're coming up with ideas. You can say, hey, I'm down to do this or this, and you give out the options of what you're available for, what is okay with you, what sounds good to you.

And many of us who have grown up in a society where, especially if we're socialized as women, where we think we need to please and where we need to be available for everything and okay with everything, we might often say, hey, I'm good with anything, when that's not really true. So, if we can give limited, it doesn't just have to be two, it can be three or four, but acceptable options. Hey, I'm willing to do any of these three or four things.

It gives the people around us something to go off of and it leads to success really quickly because we've already laid out the things that work for us and they can either choose one of those, which a lot of people are very grateful for having something to start with, or they can say, hey, what about this fifth option? Then we can decide whether that one's good with us or not. Okay, so that's number four.

Number five and is the second to last, and it is very, very important and works with all three of actual children, the children inside of us and other adults that we're interacting with is to validate first and y'all. This is the most important thing.

Always, just because an experience doesn't seem to make sense logically, it doesn't mean it's not valid. If somebody experienced it, it's true, it was real for them, and so if a child is saying something that just feels really wrong and off the wall, validate first. Let me give an example. Hypothetically.

Let's say, a mom I know very well took her children out and to lots of fun events for a couple of days, to lots of fun events for a couple of days birthday party, let's say, camping trips, let's say play dates, all kinds of things and did a lot of like set up, clean up. All these things chose. It chose to do this to have a wonderful few days. This mom was single parenting and let's say, this mom just chose to make it real fun so that it could just be a lot of good memories.

And in between, fun camping trips, fun beach trips with friends, there was an hour at home during which the mom put away things, got other things together, took a little rest for 20 minutes and asked let's say, asked her children to put away a couple toys and get a couple towels out.

The end of that day, when a child is very, very, very tired and going to sleep and maybe more emotional than usual, so that goes back to that what's missing piece. The child says you made me clean all day long. As a parent it can be really hard not just say that isn’t right, that didn't happen. But what is way more effective is to recognize they feel like they cleaned all day long.

So for me I'll say, in that situation, as that parent, I might say, even though we were home for an hour, even though we're gone for most of the day I like, and we were home for that hour, maybe I'll say that that hour it sounds like that hour felt like a lot and it sounds like that putting away that little pile felt like a lot. And if I get the response, yeah, it was all day lot. And if I get the response yeah, it was all day, I'll say I hear it really felt like it was a lot of cleaning today.

I felt like it felt like all day long, even though it was this like you know, we're gone for most of the day, and we were only home for that hour. I hear that it felt like a lot. It really felt like. It felt like a lot of cleaning, and I really hear that it felt like a lot of cleaning, and I really hear that. And just validating first that the experience was had I don't even have to say the part about the hour I was trying to understand in that moment.

So that's what I would why I would say that is like hey, are you meeting that hour? And if the child is like, yeah, it felt like all day, then I'm just going to validate that it felt like all day. We can talk later on about what works and doesn't work. Like the next day I might talk to that child and say, hey, listen, how can we make that work? So, it doesn't feel like all day, and we can come up with an answer together. Because you have got to love this idea that, with your kids, you can tell your kids or any kids that you're around. There's nothing that we can't figure out together.

And that's something that you can also tell other adults and that you can tell yourself right, there's nothing we can't figure out together. If I need children to pick things up and those children need to not feel like they're cleaning all the time we can figure something out together that works and that, again, is a way of having power together, not power over. So, this validating first works with other humans, no matter how illogical their experience seems to us.

Our experience might seem as illogical to them, it doesn't matter if we can just validate that their experience was their experience, without judging and without being condescending. Just validate. I hear you and really try to understand. It changes everything and it just connects, connects, connects, all right. Last thing emotional adulthood. So, teaching our children. It's not your job to make me happy. It's not your job to fix it.

If I'm seeming stressed, your job is to be true to you. This is true with other humans as well. If we can say this to the other adults that are in our lives, anybody that feels responsible for our emotions, we can say, hey, thank you for caring about me. I don't need you to make me happy, that's my responsibility. And thank you for caring about me. This is such a healthy thing to tell kids. It's not your job to make me happy, because kids naturally, innately, take responsibility for our emotions and take responsibility for the things that happen around them.

So, if we can remind them over and over and over again, your job is you. Your job is being true to yourself and sharing that, sharing what's true for you with the world. Your job is not to make me happy. That is so freeing and so good for them. I also just would add to this sharing about mistakes that you're making, telling them that they can tell you anything, because they're going to make mistakes too.

This is all a part of that emotional adulthood. You don't have to make me happy, and you can tell me the truth and I might have an emotion related to whatever you tell me, but that emotion is my responsibility and I'm not going to put it on you and you're not going to have to deal with it. But I want you to be able to tell me anything and you can make mistakes and I'm going to tell you about my mistakes as often as I can.

And so, we're teaching it's okay to have feelings. You don't have to own other people's feelings. Nobody has to manipulate you to change your feelings, and you get to make mistakes. It's safe to tell me anything. All right, that is what I have today. A couple of last PS points is to underline that idea. You can tell me anything. I will be here for it, no matter how messy it is, I will always have your back. You can talk to me about anything.

This is something I tell my children all the time and they listen and in any moment, if they feel like I'm reacting in a way that they don't like, they say hey, mom, I thought you said I could tell you anything and that I say you're right, you're right, hey, try me again. The next thing that I already said is telling them we can figure it out together. Anything that happens we can figure it out together. Anything that happens we can figure it out together. Creates that partnership or a team and also helps them feel less alone in life and like they're not burdening us when they tell us things. Two more things that I just love with my children are at the end of the day, to talk about what we loved most in the day, and if they're too tired, I just recap the day.

I do it with gratitude. I can't believe we got to do this and then this and we saw this beautiful thing. These are all the riches in our lives, the people, the experiences, the beautiful things that we saw. And what that does is it teaches them a gratitude practice. It helps me practice gratitude and it also helps anchor in our memories the most wonderful parts of what we experienced that day. It helps to take on an intentional lens in our memory of the day and of what we experienced, in the retelling of it and our favorite parts. So, these are all things we can do with ourselves. We can do with other adults, and this last one I haven't done with my husband yet. I'm going to try it out.

I'm going to challenge myself right now to try this with him, but I think I feel a little cheese ball. So, I only do with my kids, but I'm actually going to do this with them. Every night, as they're falling asleep, I say I love you, I'm so proud of you, I'm so proud to be your mama. I say these different things and then I say we have the sweetest dreams, and I can't wait to see you when you wake up, so that the last thing that they hear before they go to sleep is that someone is looking forward to seeing them on the other side.

And in the morning, when I go and I wake them up, I say I'm so happy to see you this morning. So, the first thing that they're hearing is a voice saying I'm happy to see you, and my hope is that maybe they'll look in the mirror and that's what they'll start to tell themselves too. So those are some sound bites for you for parenting real children and the children inside of us and y'all. I am so happy to be here with you and I'm so glad that you're here listening this week, and I can't wait to talk to you again next week either.

That's what I've got for you this week, and I will see you then.

Thanks for hanging out with me, friends. If you like today's episode and you want more of them, please take two minutes right now to subscribe and give me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Then send this episode to a friend. See you next time.

Bloom Your Mind

Ep 90: Kid Whispers

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