What is Peaceful Parenting? with Dr. Laura Markham

Hi everybody.

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Welcome.

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This is a very special first episode because I have here with me today, Dr. Laura Markham, my mentor and the founder of Peaceful Parenting.

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We're going to talk about what peaceful parenting is and how you can begin to use it in your family today.

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Hi, I'm Diana Yokely.

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I'm a peaceful parenting coach and mom of three, and I'm here to support you in putting the delight back into parenting.

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Welcome, everybody.

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Thanks for joining us today.

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I'm so delighted to have a special guest on the podcast today.

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I'm here with Dr. Laura Markham, the author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings, and she also has a workbook.

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Welcome, Laura.

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So glad to have you here today.

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Hi, Diana.

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I'm glad to be with you.

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Yeah, I'm so excited that we're going to be talking about really...

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a framework for parenting that you founded based on research, science, your own really parenting experience.

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I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about how you got started in this work and why you do the work today.

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Okay.

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Well, I got started in the work when my son was born, my oldest, because at the time there was nothing

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that really gave parents information.

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There had been Dr. Spock, you know, but, and there was Mothering Magazine that actually was the only voice out there.

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It's sort of in the wilderness of, you know, encouraging people to pay attention to the needs of their child, their baby really at that point.

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But there was really nothing.

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I had just read a thousand studies.

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I had just been finishing my coursework for my PhD.

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I didn't even have the PhD yet.

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And I looked at all the moms and dads, it was more moms at that time with the child.

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And, you know, I would go to mommy and me play groups and whatever.

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And I saw that parents really did not have the benefit that I did of having read all these studies.

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They didn't actually understand what science was saying about responsiveness.

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And they were doing what, how they had been raised or sort of what people around them were doing.

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And

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Meanwhile, I was taking

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child's behavior as communication, for instance, and they were just responding to it.

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And I knew these parents loved their children, would do anything for their babies and their toddlers, but they didn't have the information I did.

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So that's when I realized I needed to start talking with parents about information that we could make intelligible to them.

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They weren't going to read a thousand studies, but we could take the science and translate it into practical

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tips that parents could use every day in their homes for all the struggles that parents and children end up having daily.

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Wow.

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What an amazing start.

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Yeah.

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I mean, I feel so envious and jealous knowing that, you know, there's like all these resources when you start parenting and, and there's some parents today that are maybe just starting out with a baby or they have a toddler and they're really at the beginning of their parenthood.

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And I just wanted to highlight for them that you have an amazing website with a thousand articles, which are based on all of this understanding and science that you've studied.

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I don't know if you want to share a little bit more about that, but it's really filtered down all this science to practical and

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You know, nobody really maintains that kind of a website.

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Even, you know, magazines like parents.com don't maintain that kind of a website.

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I do it as a public service.

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And there's a section for parents of each age child starting with pregnancy and going through the teen years.

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And there are

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basic articles about everything that you could imagine.

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And a lot of back in the early days, I would, I had more time to answer questions from parents.

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So there are a lot of questions and answers.

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So whatever you're struggling with, you can put it into the search box and it will come up.

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So it's a really good resource for parents.

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And as I say, it's a public service, but I also have a weekly newsletter that is designed to

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keep you inspired.

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Because the thing about parenting, it's a grind all day, every day.

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And so often we're just worn down by the end of the day because it takes enormous patience to keep ourselves aligned with our highest values, to keep ourselves

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rested and resourced enough that we can stay calm and patient and to actually, you know, there's so many pressures on us to be productive and we're so busy.

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It's almost like sometimes we're parenting in our spare time and we don't have time to pay attention when our child is trying to tell us something, you know, and when our child,

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does something that we have to remind them for the hundredth time, pick up your backpack.

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Don't, you know, raise your voice to your brother, you know, all the different ways.

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Don't throw your food.

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When you're done at your high chair, you can tell me done.

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Don't throw your cup or whatever, all the, you know, we remind them over and over and over again, because their prefrontal cortex is still developing.

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So at the end of the day, we're exhausted.

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So parents need a regular

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source of inspiration so that they can stay connected to what they really want as a parent.

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And when they do that, when they are able to stay inspired and show up more as the parent they want to be, they connect better with their children.

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And that is what puts the delight back in parenting.

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As you know, the delight in parenting, delighting in your children is one of the most important

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predictors of how that child is going to do in life.

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Are we delighted?

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What's the takeaway?

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When we delight in our child, that child, they feel delighted and they're a source of delight.

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They feel loved and like they are a blessing to the world.

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And they don't have to scramble to prove anything.

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So their ego is not leading the way to make them compete against their siblings or their

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peers to put the other kid down so they can be on top they already feel delighted in they're already able to feel good about themselves so they can then feel good about sharing their gifts with the world and also enjoying other people's gifts they come in with such a head start on empathy and social skills and self-confidence and so that's what we're all trying to do right is do the same work of raising a human being who can be their best self in the world

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and bring their best gifts.

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I love it.

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I love it.

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And I know that your newsletter gives us the what to do and what to say.

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So it's very practical in its application for parents.

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And I love reading weekly articles because it kind of puts me back on the game and it helps me pick up where I left off.

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But I also want to highlight for our viewers, you just mentioned like it helps the children develop empathy and social skills.

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All of this is based on the neuroscience of peaceful parenting.

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And I'd love for you to talk to us about what is peaceful parenting and your theory that you've really created based on the evidence you've

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and the research of child development, what helps raise a child that is resilient and thrives, not just survives?

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Well, as you know, there are many thousands of studies out there about child development.

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And that's a lot of sort of signal noise, you know, coming at us as parents.

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And you can find any study that you can find a study that can tell you

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anything, one study, right?

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There was a very popular study for a while that said spanking is good for kids.

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It helps them achieve.

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But when you looked at the study, what it actually said was children who were spanked at a certain age, they would, when they were given the study, like 10, they would fill out the study that they aspired to go to college.

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They aspired to do well in their studies.

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They weren't actually more accomplished.

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In fact, when they were followed over time, they were less accomplished.

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but they said they aspired to be good, upstanding people who would do well.

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Well, of course.

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So studies, you also have to read the study to know if it's really proving what it says it proved.

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But the reason I'm bringing up studies is that you could pick studies, cherry pick about any one thing.

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What you really need is a body of research that says over and over again,

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researchers find, for instance, that spanking is actually bad for kids, that it lowers their self-esteem, that it lowers their ability to self-regulate.

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For instance, there are so many studies that say that, that now we can consider that proven science.

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So when I began to look at the research while I was in grad school, it became apparent that we know a few things about parenting.

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We actually know that children come into the world primed for connection to

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a significant other who can protect them.

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And they, that's called attachment.

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And, you know, Dr. Sears popularized this as an idea of we would wear our babies or sleep with our babies or nurse our babies.

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If those things promote responsiveness, great.

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But that's not what attachment is.

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What attachment is, is responsive parenting.

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The child knows, the baby knows, and it goes right through childhood.

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And in fact, in adults.

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Attachment is triggered when we're sick, so we need someone to take care of us, right?

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But for babies, they come into the world primed to look for an attachment protector who will be responsive to their needs.

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And parents who are less responsive to their child's needs might well raise a child who doesn't have a secure attachment, right?

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If parents are erratically responsible, less secure attachment, they need to know they can depend on us to be responsive to their needs.

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That's a basic given.

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There are so many studies that prove that, that at this point, that's one of the

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foundational tenets of child development.

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So, okay, so we know that.

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We know it's all about the connection between the parent and child and that that connection needs to be about the parent responding to the child's needs, which sort of means that you need to see what those child's needs are because every child's different.

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Right?

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Not sort of.

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It implies that.

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It's very clear.

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You have to know who that child is.

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And being responsive means you soothe them when they're upset.

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That's pretty basic because you mentioned neuroscience.

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When humans are upset, they can't think well.

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They're in fight, flight, or freeze.

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A baby...

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is screaming for help or they're shut down, like frozen because there might be a tiger near.

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Seriously, our genes are from the Stone Age.

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They don't evolve.

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And so babies in fight, flight, or freeze, right?

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They're not able to think and learn or digest well their immune system.

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Immune system, yeah.

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The whole science of parenting is

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start by responding to your child's needs, soothing them when they're upset, see what those unique needs are, right?

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So...

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you know, Dan Siegel talks about the child needs to feel seen, they need to be soothed, they need to be secure.

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You know, all of those S's are lining up to a specific thing that all babies need, no matter who that unique child is.

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The child can be neurodivergent, the child could be, you know, highly sensitive, anything.

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And that child will need to be seen, will need to be soothed, or they do not come out securely attached to the parent.

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So that's sort of the basic foundation of

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peaceful parenting is that it's not a set of strategies.

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It's about the relationship.

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It's all about connection.

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But when that's your basis, what do we have to do to make that work?

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You realize as you see parents and children interact that we can't connect with the child if we're in a tizzy ourselves.

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If we're running around like a crazy person trying to get a

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If we're beating up on ourselves, if we just screamed at our three-year-old, we are not in a position.

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First of all, we're not connecting.

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We're not in a position even to do a repair.

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And by the way, everyone, three-year-olds can be a handful.

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Everyone has at some point lost it with their three-year-old.

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Understood.

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We can make a repair, but you can't make a repair until you calm yourself down.

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Take that breath, get aligned with your own higher values and reconnect with your child.

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But remember, to do that, if you've just lost it with your thrilled, you're beating yourself up usually.

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You can't do it.

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You can't do better when you're feeling worse.

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So what does that mean?

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You have to have self-compassion.

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In all my many years of work, what I observed in parents is they had to first forgive themselves for exploding at the kid and remind themselves that

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It makes sense that they exploded.

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They're under so much pressure.

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Everyone loses it sometimes.

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They can do better next time.

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They're not going to beat up on themselves.

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They're going to give themselves more support.

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They're going to get a better night's sleep.

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They're going to not doom scroll tonight.

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They're going to go to sleep on time.

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You know, they're going to take better care of them.

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give themselves more support.

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And if they need to learn some skills to manage their explosiveness because they grew up in an explosive household, power to them.

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That's the deeper work of parenting is turning around what we came in with so that we can give our children something better.

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That's what every parent wants.

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And it's hard work.

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So what does that mean the parent has to do?

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We have to change how we relate to us.

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It's all about self-compassion,

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and learning to self-regulate, and learning to do self-care.

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It starts with us.

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So parenting, what we think of is how you relate to the kid, but truthfully, it all starts in here and in here.

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That's the work.

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So that made perfect sense looking at it.

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And as I started to look at the research, all of the research is very clear.

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Number one, parents who are more self-regulated.

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Raised children who are more self-regulated because they're not getting yelled at, right?

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And because all emotions are allowed.

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And we'll get to that in a minute when we talk about coaching.

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But basically, parents who are self-regulated raise kids who are healthier.

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Because the parents can do a better job showing up and connecting and also because they can coach it, which I said we'll get to.

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So all the research is very clear about parents self-regulating, but we know to self-regulate, it doesn't help to beat yourself up.

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You have to give yourself support.

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And then lo and behold, Christine Neff came along and said, guess what?

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I've been talking about it as unconditional love for yourself.

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And as a longtime meditator, you know, meditation creates self-acceptance.

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And so I've been talking about it in those terms.

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And Kristin Neff said, let's call it self-compassion.

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What a great name for it.

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And she did an enormous amount of research and pulled in a lot of research that other people had done about how self-compassion is so foundational for self-acceptance.

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And that's a short leap from there then to self-regulation and to being a better parent.

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So what I've done is I've put together

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the chain of studies that gets you from self-compassion to better parenting.

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That's what's all there in the research.

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And we can't do the connection without that.

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We can't be the humans we want to be.

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So the great news on that is in addition to connection, putting the delight back in parenting for us.

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So there's something in it for us, not just the kid.

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When we do this hard work on ourselves, heal our own triggers, change the way we relate, we're happier people.

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We're not just better parents.

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We're happier people long after our kids are grown.

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So our children, we do hard work we wouldn't have the courage to do without our children.

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Our children give us so much when we do anything for them.

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They give us the incentive to do this hard work.

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So you've got the neuroscience.

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This is all the neuroscience.

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And the third part of peaceful parenting, there are three ideas.

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Connection, parents, self, which is self-compassion, self-regulation, self-care.

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And the final one is coaching.

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So what the research has always shown is that parents who are punitive, authority-driven, basically, harsh, does not work for kids.

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Gives kids anger management problems.

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Kids rebel early if they're strong-willed.

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They can be cowed and never think for themselves.

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There are all kinds of things that are bad about it, and including it makes them more susceptible to the peer group.

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There's all kinds of things that are bad about, I mentioned spanking, but even about any kind of authority-based parenting, basically.

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But if you swing in the other direction and you go for a permissive, your expectations aren't high enough.

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And you're also, you're basically trying to keep your kid from getting upset.

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So kids learn that emotions are not safe.

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They become more anxious.

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The research shows that kids who are permissively raised often don't learn self-discipline because they're not asked to.

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And they also don't necessarily, they're not healthy emotionally because they become more anxious.

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So permissive parenting doesn't work.

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The long time, and I mean five decades, six decades now worth of research on this, they called this authoritative parenting.

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And basically what it is, is parents who have high expectations, but instead of yelling at the child to meet them or being harsh to get the, punishing the child,

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They uphold them, unlike permissive parents.

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They uphold the expectations, but they give the child support to meet those expectations.

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That's authoritative parenting.

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So that's well-established in the research.

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But the change I made, as I said, if we're actually seeing this child

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We're going to know how much support they need to meet our expectation.

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And sometimes that expectation doesn't work.

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We're not being permissive, but we're noticing we have a neurodivergent child.

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They can only handle so much stimulation.

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There's no amount of support you can give that child to meet this expectation, whatever, you know, going out to...

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dinner at the crowded restaurant when they've already had a full day sightseeing as their grandma, you know, there's no way you can get them to meet that expectation that's not a virgin child.

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You have to lower that expectation and give them support to meet that, right?

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We're going to have a quiet dinner at home or whatever it is.

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So the point is, it's not permissive parenting, but if we're really seeing that child and we're really

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responding to that unique child's needs, we're going to know better.

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It's a dance.

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It's not a science for each unique child.

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We're reinventing.

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But we know how high to set the expectations, right?

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We know what kind of support we can give.

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And we also learn more about different kinds of support.

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We learn, for instance, that children can meet our expectations better if they're more able to manage their emotions.

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to calm themselves down, to have fewer upsets, to not get as upset when they get upset.

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Those are three parts of being upset, right?

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Don't get as upset, calm down faster, don't get upset as often.

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That's what we're always looking at with upsets.

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And guess what?

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Children who are emotion coached by their parents

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are able to self-regulate earlier so they meet your expectations more.

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So we've learned that not only do we change our expectations a little bit based on the child, but also we give support in better ways that our children can meet our expectations better because punitive parenting doesn't really help them meet it better.

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In fact, the research shows that clearly.

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So what helps them?

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More support.

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So one really important source of support is emotion coaching.

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And what emotion coach is in a nutshell is we accept all emotions and we limit behavior.

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No, you can't hit your brother.

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I see how mad you are.

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Tell your brother in words what you need.

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And we're there to support them and teach them skills.

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And if we had said, don't be mad at your brother, that wouldn't help, right?

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If we said, don't you raise your voice to me?

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No, that seems like an obvious thing.

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Don't raise your voice to me.

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But we're basically telling the child their anger is not welcome.

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If instead we say, you are really mad.

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You're raising your voice.

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It's so loud.

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It's hard for me to hear what you're saying, but I want to hear.

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Let's take a breath.

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I'm right here listening because you're really connecting.

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You're really not getting defensive.

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You're on your center.

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You're connecting.

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So you're doing your self-reg, you're connecting and you're saying, I want to hear, tell me.

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So all emotions are allowed, but your child is expected to handle those emotions well as they get older.

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A three-year-old is not going to be able to modulate their voice.

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Your 13-year-old is going to have a hard time, but she's going to get better at it, right?

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And if you raise her this way, she's going to be okay at it, good at it, in fact.

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So those are the three parts of it.

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And that's all the neuroscience.

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In a nutshell, it's all based on research.

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But these are the three most important.

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Like you could talk about a million things in the research.

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And if you drill down and talk about any given one, like sleep or wearing your baby or whatever, there's plenty of research.

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But I'm saying the three most important things that allow us to raise kids who are healthy emotionally, that's what the neuroscience says.

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And that's the basis of this approach.

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I love that.

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So if parents can really drill down and spend the majority of their parenting focused on these ideas, there's there's a payoff.

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I mean, there's like you're getting you're more effective, more efficient with supporting your children's brain development.

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I'd love to talk a little bit about how I think sometimes there's this.

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misconception that like you know gentle parenting or soft parenting or emotionally open and supportive parenting is uh maybe more permissive or it does or or it raises kids that are not as resilient they become more fragile if the parent is more gentle with them and can you clarify a little bit about how you know considering the framework of emotional intelligence as well like how you know we think about leadership um people are more likely to follow a leader that's more

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in tune with other people's emotions, more empathic because they feel understood as adults, right?

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Whereas if somebody is beating down on you as like your supervisor or whatever, like you're not as likely to bond to them, to attach them, to follow their guidance.

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So it's almost like we accept this as a leadership skill in the adult world.

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But in childhood, children need a firm hand.

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They need to know who's in charge or they're going to act chaotic and crazy.

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And so maybe you could clarify for us how

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It's really more intelligent parenting to do this in childhood because that's what we're raising adults essentially, right?

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I think that's a great question.

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You know, we, in the workplace, we now know that the most effective leaders in a workplace, the most effective bosses are people who absolutely are more empathic and understanding and respect the folks who work with them, who work for them.

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But

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They also take responsibility that the buck stops there.

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They're not people who say, oh, my subordinate did that, so I'm not responsible, right?

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The buck stops there.

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And it's the same with children.

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Parents actually are in charge in their homes.

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Kids know that.

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Kids actually want that.

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Kids are aware that it's a scary big world from a pretty early age.

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They're, I mean, as I say, they're designed as babies to want you to take care of them.

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They're scared when they're not taken care of, when they're left alone, right?

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If you leave a toddler in a crowd and they can't see, or even if you're on a park bench at the playground and you see your friend at the next park bench and you move over, all the research, there's studies on this that they show.

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The toddler's like, where's daddy?

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Where's mommy?

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And they're looking.

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And it's better if you go to your child and you say, I am going over there, see?

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Mrs. So-and-so, I'm going over there.

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And you go to sit down over there and your toddler's like, okay, I know where she is.

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So we know they need to orient around us, right?

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Or it's very scary for them.

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They know that we are in charge.

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If they were alone to navigate the world, that would be a terrifying place for children.

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They want us to be in charge.

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They may argue, they may all be lawyers in training, but they do want someone to be in charge and

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be responsible for keeping them safe and for guiding them.

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And by the time they're 12, they want to be able to blame us when, you know, we won't let them do something that they were secretly somewhat afraid of going to do this thing anyway, you know, with their friends or whatever it was.

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So that is, I think, a misunderstanding.

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about parenting that's more respectful.

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The misunderstanding is that we shouldn't be in charge.

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Of course we're in charge.

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If you're a parent, you have to guide your child's behavior all day, every day.

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It doesn't help your child to let them hit their brother, to let them run into the street.

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I mean, to even to let them, you know, dump over their juice cup.

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You know, of course you can't stop them from dumping their juice cup over when they're a toddler, at least not initially.

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But

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You do need to guide, oh, oops, cup spilled.

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You want to give them the idea of what's acceptable behavior and what's not.

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Of course, we need to do that.

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There's nothing wrong with setting limits.

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What happens for most parents is they grew up in a home, not most, but many parents grew up in a home where the limits were set in a harsh manner.

25:46

They don't want to do that.

25:47

So they find themselves with their child who doesn't want to put on their shoes and

25:53

And they think, oh, how can I make this palatable?

25:56

And they say, please put on your shoes.

25:58

Would you please put on your shoes?

26:00

Well, nonviolent communication says, we need to leave the house in five minutes.

26:07

We all need our shoes on.

26:08

Would you be willing to put your shoes on?

26:10

But nonviolent communication is designed for adults.

26:12

You can say to the adult, would you be willing to leave the house with me in five minutes?

26:15

You cannot say that to a child who's in the middle of looking for his lost car or playing with his Legos.

26:21

Say, I need you to put on your shoes.

26:23

Or it's time for you to put on your shoes.

26:25

You need to put on your shoes now, right?

26:27

You're giving the child a direct order.

26:29

There's not even a please there necessarily.

26:31

It's respectful.

26:33

I use please a lot.

26:34

But when it's a non-negotiable order, you give it as an order.

26:39

There's no reason to say, oh, would you do this?

26:42

That's not clear communication.

26:43

Then the child's like, no, I would look for my toy car, right?

26:46

It sounds like a choice almost, like they have a choice.

26:49

And if you're in charge and they don't have a choice, then don't give a choice, right?

26:52

Yeah.

26:53

Exactly right.

26:54

So I was just hearing a podcast from a mom who was saying how bad gentle parenting is.

27:02

And she was quoting parents.com and saying, you know, she read this article on parents.com and it said, you're trying to get your child out.

27:09

And you say, would you, do you feel like putting on your shoes now?

27:12

No, I'm sure parents.com didn't say, do you feel like it?

27:16

But they might've said something like, would you please?

27:19

that's even that I'm with her.

27:21

That's not helpful to getting the child out the door in the morning.

27:24

If it is a negotiable thing, would you rather have peas or carrots for dinner tonight?

27:29

That's completely, you're, if you, if a choice is okay and you've got both peas and carrots, you can give them one or the other or both, right?

27:36

Would you like both or would you like one or the other?

27:38

And that's fine.

27:40

But I think the problem, um,

27:44

with the way this is perceived in the public eye is.

27:47

And I don't know what parents.com actually said that, you know, the writers at parents.com are interviewing people like me.

27:53

I get interviewed once a week by people like, by them and people like them.

27:58

So there, I would have to see what expert that got attributed to, or maybe this person had just misread it or mischaracterized it.

28:06

But I will say peaceful parenting is when you don't know about it,

28:11

often parents or people assume, oh, that's permissive.

28:15

There's nothing permissive about it.

28:16

We're enforcing our expectations all day, every day.

28:20

We're not enforcing them with threats, right?

28:22

We're trying to help the child meet them by giving the child more support.

28:25

That's the difference.

28:27

And

28:28

What usually happens to parents is they find themselves there.

28:30

They're trying to get to work desperately.

28:32

They have to get to work on time.

28:34

They have to get the kids' shoes on to get them out the door.

28:37

They're stuck.

28:38

They don't know what to do.

28:39

So they're either yelling, threatening, if you don't do this now, you won't, whatever, if there's a threat, or they're bribing.

28:50

If you do this, I'll give you an M&M when we get in the car or whatever, right?

28:53

They're trying at their wit's end.

28:55

And I would say,

28:57

What support does your child need to get those shoes on and get in the car on time?

29:01

And I'll tell you the answer.

29:04

Cut to the spoiler here.

29:06

It doesn't start the minute you have to get out the door.

29:08

It starts a half an hour before you have to get out the door.

29:11

As you're completely ready to go, you align yourself with your highest values and you're calm.

29:18

You reconnect with your child who you may have not seen for the last half hour because you were running around like a crazy person packing their lunch and

29:25

packing your own lunch and getting your makeup on or doing whatever you do in the morning, you reconnect with your child and you say, you're looking them in the eye, you're calm.

29:36

You say, today, what's going to happen?

29:40

Yes, you're going to go to so-and-so's for daycare, you know,

29:45

And then I'm gonna pick you up at three o'clock and what's gonna happen then?

29:50

That's right.

29:51

We're gonna do X, Y, Z. We're gonna go to the playground.

29:54

Whatever, so you're aligning with your child

29:58

There's a planned future where you two are a team, right?

30:03

In this day that you're about to do, they don't have a prefrontal cortex that can plan and that can see events lining up.

30:10

You're actually helping their brain develop by doing this.

30:12

But you're also giving them something to look forward to where they're in alignment with you, right?

30:16

You're reconnecting.

30:18

And you might be saying, oh, you're having such a great time with the Lego.

30:21

And now it's time to go.

30:23

What do you need to do before we go?

30:25

Anything, you know, and they're like, my car, I have to bring my car, right?

30:29

You're like, okay, let's find the car.

30:32

Now, if you can't find the car, better to know that now, 20 minutes before you have to leave the house so they can have their meltdown about no car.

30:38

And you can navigate that.

30:41

And then you're getting the shoes on 15 minutes before you leave the house.

30:45

Right.

30:45

And if the kid is deciding, the kid is like, no shoes, no shoes.

30:49

Now, maybe they're like my daughter was and they have sensory issues enough that they don't want to put those shoes on because it bothers their feet.

30:56

Right.

30:57

Maybe they're just not right now.

30:59

And the idea, I mean, they don't know it's snowing outside or they don't, you know, they're not really registering that there's going to be a climate change every any minute when they go out.

31:07

So maybe you bring the shoes with you to the car if that's what it takes.

31:12

There's all kinds of think outside the box options.

31:16

But usually what I would say 80% of the time, what parents find out is when they're calm.

31:22

and they reconnect with their child, there's no problem getting the shoes on.

31:25

They say things like, and let me tell you about the playground when we go.

31:29

There's gonna be a slide.

31:32

Are you gonna go up the slide here?

31:34

Oh, wait a minute.

31:35

This shoe wants to go up the slide.

31:37

Do you hear it?

31:37

Do you hear it?

31:39

See that?

31:40

Is this the left shoe or the right shoe?

31:41

Oh, let's put it on this foot.

31:43

Oh, and the couch is like, no, you're not quite there.

31:47

Your connection hasn't quite gotten you there.

31:49

And so you take the shoe and you say,

31:52

Joey doesn't want the shoe on.

31:54

Oh no, he wants it on the side.

31:56

Here, let's put it on your ear.

31:58

And the kid's like, that is silly.

32:00

It goes on my foot.

32:00

And then they let you put it on the foot.

32:02

So parents will say,

32:04

I can't do that in the morning.

32:06

I'm not creative enough.

32:07

I hear you.

32:08

That's why you go to bed early enough.

32:11

You can get up early enough.

32:12

You've had your coffee.

32:13

You're in a calmer mood because then you have access to your thinking brain.

32:17

When you're in fight, flight, or freeze, when you're triggered, you're late, everything is wrong.

32:23

You're feeling like a victim.

32:24

There's no way you can think creatively, of course.

32:26

But when you're in a good place, you can use this instead of

32:30

this being a crisis every morning, you're using it as an opportunity to build a closer relationship.

32:36

And every day it gets easier to get your kid to get their shoes on and get out the door because you've built a better relationship every single day by doing this.

32:45

Mm-hmm.

32:46

I love it.

32:46

And it's all based on the nervous system of both people, right?

32:49

The parent's nervous system and the child's.

32:51

And it's so clear when you're talking about the parents, if they're upset, they're in fight or flight.

32:57

They're no longer in their prefrontal cortex.

32:59

And when the child isn't cooperating or they're having a hard time, they're in fight or flight.

33:03

And so we know that for children to develop kind of resiliency, they have to spend a lot more time in the prefrontal cortex and

33:12

So that their brain can actually grow in areas that are going to support them and support them in learning new skills.

33:20

I mean, they're learning throughout childhood so much.

33:22

But if they're in stressful nervous system states, like through punishments, threats, spankings, timeouts, their learning stops.

33:30

So they can't even, even though they'd like to do better for you, they can't because they've been cut off from that development opportunity to learn.

33:38

to become who they're supposed to be as adults, right?

33:41

Actually, their development slows down.

33:43

You're stunting their development if you're not creating safety and that respect even while you're in charge, right?

33:51

Yes, respect creates safety, right?

33:53

Because all of these words, gentle, respectful, conscious, peaceful, all of these words about how we approach parenting are saying we respect this unique child

34:07

We're noticing who they are and what they need and we're responding to that, right?

34:11

That creates safety for the child.

34:13

Remember, kids are born looking for someone to protect them, which means someone to create that safety for them.

34:19

So what did that mom do who got up and had her coffee a little earlier so she was ready to engage with her toddler before she, half an hour before leaving the house instead of at the last minute in a tizzy trying to cram those shoes onto the feet, right?

34:33

What did that mom do?

34:34

She created calm, right?

34:38

And connection.

34:39

When children, when the parent is calm and there's a connection, children feel safe.

34:43

That's what she did.

34:44

And when there's safety, the child calms down.

34:47

They don't have to fight.

34:48

They don't have to flight, run, right?

34:51

So they cooperate.

34:54

It's all science.

34:56

I love it.

34:56

Yeah, so much.

34:57

So many awesome frameworks from the scientific perspective, from the practical way of applying this day to day and also like looking at the child as having needs versus trying to do things to you as the parent.

35:11

I'd love for you to talk about a little bit about what resources you have available for our audience about motion coaching, I think.

35:18

And a little bit about where I mentioned emotion coaching and why that's so important.

35:22

You know, when I when I said coaching, basically,

35:25

Coaching is the environment, right?

35:28

Because we calm ourselves down, we connect.

35:30

And then the third thing is, what's the environment with which the child is interacting?

35:34

So it might mean earlier to bed, less screen time, better food, more calm, that those could, you know, environmental stimuli, right?

35:44

More and less novelty, because humans, including small ones, need more and less novelty.

35:49

There's a continuum.

35:51

But there's another really important part of coaching, which we've already mentioned, and that's emotion coaching.

35:55

And most parents are raised with it, so they need a little extra support.

35:59

So we have a printable on how you actually emotion coach.

36:04

And it just takes you through the steps.

36:05

And it's, you know, a little cartoony.

36:08

It's designed to take you through the steps so you can put it on your fridge and you can actually refer to it and say, am I doing the right thing here when my kid

36:15

you know, says, I hate this dinner.

36:16

Am I doing the right thing here?

36:17

When my kid throws themselves on the floor and when they won't put their shoes on.

36:21

So it just helps you learn that skill because it's an invaluable skill.

36:25

You find that when you allow emotions, kids cooperate better and they develop more.

36:30

As you say, the brain development is faster with the prefrontal cortex.

36:33

So they're more self-regulated.

36:35

So yes, we'll, can we put the link in for people?

36:37

Yeah, we'll put it in the, we'll put in the show notes.

36:39

Yeah.

36:40

Awesome.

36:41

Thank you so much for your wisdom and your expertise sharing with us today.

36:44

Can you just share a little bit about the website name again for anybody that missed it in the beginning?

36:48

And we'll also link it below.

36:50

Perfect.

36:51

It's aha parenting.com.

36:53

Like, like aha, like full of insights, those aha moments.

36:59

But I will add that soon it's going to be changing to peaceful parent, happy kids, because that is the name of my book.

37:06

It's the name of my signature course, which is say, um,

37:10

It's a support for parents, a 12-week sort of bootcamp for parents, which is a very fun bootcamp that helps you, whatever's going on in your home, it helps you apply these practical strategies to use peaceful parenting to solve whatever problems are going on with every age child.

37:28

So Peaceful Parent Happy Kids is the name of my books, and it's also gonna be the name of the website, peacefulparenthappykids.com.

37:35

That sounds great.

37:36

Yeah, we'll link it below.

37:38

Thank you so much for your time today.

37:40

Really appreciate having you here.

37:42

Always a pleasure to talk with you.

38:00

a private community with parents just like you, and weekly group coaching calls directly with me, and so much more.

38:07

Go to delightinparenting.com backslash membership to learn more.