Ep #110: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children with Darlynn Childress | Becoming You Again Podcast
Learning to parent as a newly single parent after divorce has its challenges. In this episode I am joined by Darlynn Childress who is a parenting expert to talk about how to raise emotionally healthy children.
Darlynn opens up about her four step parenting process. She talks about why learning to emotionally regulate yourself is a key to creating an environment for true connection with your kids.
Listen in as we talk about parenting from a feelings first lens instead of a behavior first lens, while learning the balance between feelings first and then behavior instead of focusing solely on one or the other when it comes to your own parenting style.
You’ll learn why it’s important to look at your child’s behavior as a form of communication and that underneath all behavior are big feelings. Once you learn to understand better what their behavior is communicating to you as the parent, you can use that as an opportunity to connect and strengthen your parent child relationship.
To learn more about Darlynn Childress and working with her click here.
To listen to Darlynn's podcast "Becoming A Calm Mama" click here.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself (your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it show up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
I'm Karin Nelson and you're listening to Becoming You Again, episode number 110.
Welcome to Becoming You Again the podcast to help with your mental and emotional well being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the trauma of your divorce by reconnecting with yourself creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life, so your life will be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, Karin Nelson.
All right, welcome back to the podcast, my friends today we have a very fun treat. I am joined by Darlynn Childress. She is a life and parent coach who spends most of her days helping moms stop feeling like crap and actually enjoy their kids. That sounds amazing. First of all, she is the host of the become a calm mama podcast. And she is the founder of the online calm mama club community where she shares practical tips and tools for parents. darlin, thank you so much for being here on the podcast today. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you. Me too. I love this, Karen. And I love your podcasts becoming you again. And really, what you offer to, to your clients to the people you work with a lot are moms from what I understand. And you talk a lot about their nervous system and regulating their their own stress response and how to take care of themselves and heal. And I love all of that. It's a lot of the work that I do. And so we're like kindred spirits. Yes, yes, I love it, too. I think that I mean, obviously divorced women who is my main, you know, audience for the podcast. Most of them have kids, and most of them struggle as a parent. And that is truly the reason I wanted to invite you on so that you could speak to those women who might be really struggling with trying to navigate what it's like to be a single parent, what it's like to co parent. And you know what it's like to try and figure out what do I do with these kids now that I'm on my own, I don't have somebody to lean on. And especially in those situations where, you know, you might not be on the same page as the parent who's parenting in the other house? Can you kind of speak to that a little bit about maybe your take on? Where do you even start with parents when they come to you and they're frustrated? And they're not really sure what to do with their kids? Yeah, well, I always start with calm. My I have a parenting process that I teach. It's four steps, and the steps are calm. That's step one. And that is about the individual, the parent themselves, calming their own stress response and the nervous system and regulating themselves. So that we can do what is step two is connect. And the Connect tool that I teach is a lot about emotionally coaching your children through their stress response and through their big feelings. And we, we can talk a lot about that on this. I hope we talked about this on this episode. But we can't really offer our children genuine compassion, and help them regulate their nervous system when we are activated. Oh, I totally, totally agree. And I can totally relate to exactly what you're saying. Because for me, like this has been something that I have struggled with, I feel like I'm in a good place right now as a parent, where I am able to really step into the space of allowing my kids to feel their emotions and giving them the space that they need to be able to do that and not having to try and fix their emotions or, but I have a daughter. And you may not know this, but I talked about this on the podcast a little bit. She is clinically diagnosed depression and anxiety. And so sometimes previous to learning about the nervous system and learning about myself being calm first.
When you know if she has an anxiety attack, I would be very anxious about her anxiety and I would be showing up as like this frenzy. We've got to fix this. Calm down. Why are you feeling this way kind of a person and it was stressful for me. I'm sure it was stressful for her. And so I totally understand that idea of really getting yourself to a calm place first. So that then you can show up for them in a very connective way. Yeah, yes. Exactly. In that that connection piece is really when you think about what what is gentle parenting, connected, parenting, conscious parenting, there's so many different labels compassionate parenting. When I was trained as a parenting educator, I learned nonviolent parenting it's all the same ideas of approaching our children from that feelings first lens instead of a behavior first lens. Yeah, and it's not feelings only. And it's not behavior only it's feelings first, then behavior. So when I teach my parenting philosophy, we'll go all the way into it, but we go calm connect, limit set correct. So I do teach a model, a parenting model that includes limit setting, and setting boundaries, and I teach parents how to set boundaries. And where that comes up with the co parenting of like, what door limits need to be the same in one house or another house? In? The truth is no, it doesn't, it doesn't need to be. That way. I like to think about it how kids know what it's like to be with different teachers, especially middle school and high school, you have six different teachers. And then you go to those different classes. And you know what to expect when you're in that one classroom, you know, you can get away with with this teacher, you know, what this teacher likes and how, you know, this one doesn't mind if you're late, and this one killers a lot. And this one lets us out early, and this one doesn't have a bathroom pass. They know, if they're able to move through the different environments and know what to expect and know what the boundaries are in those different rooms. Yes, that is such a good analogy, because it's so true. I have so many women who come who are coming to me and who are so frustrated with the either very strict parenting or lack of parenting, they feel that it's happening at the other parents house, and then they get their kids back and they just don't know what to do. They're like, do I set even stricter boundaries? Do I get upset with my kids for acting this way? Do I just let the boundaries go out the window and not have any control over my kids, they're just so confused on what to do. And that analogy just in and of itself, really lays everything out of like, you know, this is possible, like you can go parent, even if your other parent is not on the same page as you at all, it doesn't really matter. And learning to set those boundaries. Because I think sometimes with parenting, we think we either have to be very strict, and you know, laying down all the rules, or we try and connect with them through their emotions, and then we don't have any rules at all, because we just don't become a parent at all, because then that might make them feel a certain way or you know what I mean? And so I love these four steps that you've laid out where you connect first through emotions, but then you also have limits and you learn how to set those boundaries. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Exactly. I was just thinking about the ex