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Welcome to a deeply meaningful episode of the Fresh Start Family Show, where Wendy Snyder invites us to explore the heart of parenting during the holidaysโa time often filled with both joy and unique challenges. Together, weโll dive into the art of creating connection and calm amidst the hustle and bustle, as Wendy shares powerful tools to regulate your nervous system and navigate the complexities of family gatherings, social pressures, and parenting in the spotlight. This conversation is a gentle reminder that you are capable of cultivating harmony, even during the busiest of seasons.
In this special “Say This, Not That: Holiday Edition,” Wendy unpacks practical, actionable strategies to transform moments of stress into opportunities for growth and connection. From addressing feelings of overwhelm or judgment to rewiring those inner dialogues that so often drive our reactions, this episode equips you with empowering language and a mindset shift that will help you show up with grace, courage, and compassion. Whether itโs learning to pause, practicing kindness toward yourself, or leaning into authentic connection with your kids, this episode is an invitation to approach the holidays with a full heart, renewed resilience, and a clear intention to build a season filled with love and joy.
What if you could be an effective, firm & kind parent WITHOUT relying on fear, force, bribery & rewards?
Imagine learning a new way of firm (AND kind) parenting so you can end painful generational parenting cycles and create family legacies & memories YOU are proud of?
All while getting your kids to cooperate with your rules and boundaries with ease.
IMAGINE โฆ
Parenting your kids with calm & confidence each day in a way that causes them to do whatโs asked of them because they WANT to (not because they HAVE to) โฆ because youโre helping to build essential life skills that have them behaving well & being respectful when youโre NOT looking!
The Firm & Kind Parenting Blueprint is your step by step plan & video training to help you build the family of your dreams. Click HERE to learn more now!
Episode Highlights:
- Nervous System Regulation: Understanding your own emotional triggers and practicing self-regulation can significantly improve your response to children’s behavior.
- Feelings of Fear and Judgment: Acknowledging the fear of being judged and addressing it with compassion can transform how you react to challenging situations during family gatherings.
- Intrinsic Motivation: Replacing threats with empowerment prompting strategies will nurture self-regulation and cooperation in children.
- Self-Compassion for Parents: Shift from a mindset of self-blame to one of learning and growth which positively influences your parenting approach.
- Communicating with Intent: Replace reactive language with expressions that build teamwork and support in family dynamics.
Resources Mentioned:
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Ep. 249 – Why Your Nervous System Feels so Rattled When Your Kids Misbehave
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Not able to listen or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!
0:00:03 – (Wendy): Hello, families, and welcome back to a new episode. I’m so happy you’re here. Today we are going to be talking about some say this, not that, tips to give you some creative ideas to redirect yourself during this busy holiday season that we are just embarking upon. It is a time of year where many of us, we look forward to this time of year. Right? It’s a fun time of year. We’ve got Thanksgiving here in the US, and then we move into Christmas and Hanukkah and New Year’s. And there’s just often a lot going on.
0:00:38 – (Wendy): And a few episodes ago, I recorded a podcast to episode for you all around why you feel so rattled when your kids misbehave. Often because you are in a state of dysregulated nervous system. And so if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, please make sure that you do because it’s really important information to head into the holidays with so you understand what’s actually going on, that you’re not just failing and the worst parent on the planet because you react like a volcano, it’s just because your nervous system is dysregulated.
0:01:11 – (Wendy): But a lot of times I know that when we get into larger social settings, so to speak, social settings in any regards, we often will get more triggered by our kids misbehavior because there is more triggering of the feeling of scared, often of being judged or failing as a parenthood. I just wrapped a weekly coaching session with my fresh start experience members, and we were talking about how common the feeling of scared is that many of us are just not aware of.
0:01:45 – (Wendy): We skip right over that feeling so fast because we were never taught how to feel scared in a healthy way. We were never taught that it is actually a strong emotion, that bravery and courage is on the other side of feeling scared. And that feeling scared doesn’t make you weak. It actually makes you strong. And the only way to be brave and courageous in life is to feel scared first. So many of us just will do anything not to feel scared.
0:02:12 – (Wendy): Because growing up, it was like, don’t be a wuss. Don’t be scared. Don’t be silly. It’s not like there’s nothing to be scared of. Look, I already checked under the bed. There’s no monsters, right? Or whatever it was, there was a lot of don’t be silly, there’s nothing to be scared of. Or here’s a cookie, just stop crying. You don’t need to be scared. So we’re just learning how to do that as adults. And again, a lot of times we will feel so scared of judgment.
0:02:42 – (Wendy): So this is why it feels like a higher degree of difficulty to respond with firm kindness and compassion in the grocery store aisle than it does when you’re, like, home alone with your kids and it’s winter, so all the windows are closed, right? Or this is why it feels like a higher degree of difficulty to respond versus react when you’re at a Thanksgiving dinner and aunt Sally is there, who you know is entrenched, entrenched in unhealthy religious circles, or just is so outspoken about how she doesn’t think that you’re parenting the right way. Or sometimes it’s your mother in law, or sometimes it’s a cousin or a sister in law or something.
0:03:27 – (Wendy): But we can just get into that state of feeling really scared of judgment that if our kid is not behaving perfectly, that means something’s wrong with us. And therefore you go into protection mode, which is often that kind of dysregulated, nervous system reactive state. Okay, so today I’m just going to give you some tips that when you start to hear yourself say something. So it could be internally or it could be like, oh, that just came out of my mouth.
0:03:54 – (Wendy): Or I’m tempted to say that to my kids. You can just remember that these are some things that. Some thoughts, some verbiage tweaks that you can engage with to experiment with doing it different. Okay. I always want you guys to think of this as not right versus wrong. Worse, better. I want you to think of this as I’m going to give you ideas to do things differently. The goal as a parent is to feel like you are settled and regulated and confident and empowered as a parent, versus frazzled, stressed, annoyed, irritated, frustrated.
0:04:34 – (Wendy): Feeling of powerless. Right? Like, so what is effective at helping you not only feel how you want to feel as a parent, but also to get your kids to cooperate the way that you want them to. Okay? So the first tip is you may be tempted to say to your kids, cut it out. You’re driving me nuts. Has anybody ever said this? You’re driving me crazy. You’re driving me crazy. Okay. Instead, I want you to just start practicing what it might be like to say after a pause button. If you’re in any of our programs here at fresh start family, you know what a pause button is, is just to remind yourself, my nervous system is needing some love right now.
0:05:19 – (Wendy): It is dysregulated. I feel like I could kill a kid because they’re bugging me so hard, or they’re not like listening, they’re jumping off the couch. I’ve already told them not to. Like, you’re driving me nuts. We teach a lot around, especially the tone of irritation and annoyance in our freedom to be program, which we, by the way, just solidified our dates for. We’re going to be in person in San Diego March 21 through 23rd, 2025.
0:05:50 – (Wendy): It is our favorite deeper healing and personal development program that we do every single year. We do one online, one in person, but our in person one is in beautiful, sunny San Diego, right on the ocean at one of my favorite resorts called Cape Ray in Carlsbad, California. And we’re gonna be doing that. So if you want to get on the waitlist or look into getting tickets for that, you can go to freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse.
0:06:19 – (Wendy): But we do a lot of tone redirection in that program, and we guide students to become empowered, to be aware of their tone. And when we have an irritated or annoyed tone, it often will come out as you’re driving me crazy. When really what’s happening is from the story we are telling ourselves, which comes down to module one of our foundations course where we teach you to have a healthy, accurate paradigm about your children’s misbehavior.
0:06:48 – (Wendy): But oftentimes we will knee jerk into an old school paradigm. A misbehaving child equals a bad child, equals a bad parent. And then all of a sudden we have a story that’s driving us crazy. So we say to our kids, you’re driving us crazy. But what’s actually happening is we are driving ourselves crazy. So instead, just remind yourself, it’s not them driving me crazy, it’s me driving myself crazy. And I have the power to walk away for a minute and take care of my nervous system or tag in my spouse, if, you know, the jumping off the couch is like, bothering, you know, has me triggered, whatever it may be, you know, give yourself 2 seconds, two minutes, if you can, to go into the bathroom, go to the, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, take some deep breaths, and just remind yourself, nervous system, you are safe. Again, if you didn’t listen to the episode I filmed did for you guys two weeks ago, please make sure you do that because that nervous system education is really important.
0:07:47 – (Wendy): Okay, second tip. Instead of saying, I can’t handle this right, these, it takes one to know one, by the way. So all of these are thoughts in my own head from the past 14 years, and I can’t handle this as often comes along with like I’m done, which I’ll get to in a minute but I can’t handle. This is something we will often say to ourselves, or we’ll say it out loud in frustration. And we are giving ourselves the message that we’re incapable, when really we often just need a little space.
0:08:23 – (Wendy): Our brain is so smart to be able to remember the things that we’ve learned in a program like fresh start family education resources, the foundations course, the fresh start experience, the firm and kind parenting blueprint. Or through a podcast, right? Or a book that you recently readdez. Our mind is brilliant to have retained that information and it does not thrive in this like super rushed environment all the time.
0:08:51 – (Wendy): And what I’m realizing is every year that goes by in this world, we are becoming a more busier and busier world. And it’s leading so many of us to feel overwhelmed all the time. And so that’s where the feeling of incapability comes from. Because everything feels like a four alarm fire. It’s actually not 99% of the time. Yes, there are four alarm fires. When your child is running into a street. Please yell.
0:09:18 – (Wendy): Please yell when they’re about to touch a hot stove, please grab them quickly or yell danger, you will get burned. Right? And most of the time it’s not a fore alarm fire. And you can handle it if you just give yourself time to walk away to resource calm. So something you can say to yourself is it is safe to walk away for two minutes to resource calm. We’ve been learning so much in our fresh start experience program about nervous system regulation techniques and tools, and accessing nature and resourcing nature is a great way to do that fast.
0:09:56 – (Wendy): So if you can step out into the backyard and look at the clouds, listen for a bird, look at the trees, touch a tree trunk, put your hands in your garden like nature is one of the best ways to quickly kind of de escalate your nervous system. But walking away and just giving yourself a moment to think about how you want to handle it and do a pause button, right? Which again, we teach in module two of the foundations course is essential. Just try that out.
0:10:26 – (Wendy): Okay, next thing that you might be tempted to say, and I want you to try this, not that is do it or else you’ll get your iPad taken away and you could enter in whatever your favorite threat is here. But just remember that kids who are consistently led through external controls and fear will never learn self control. So the sooner you can learn to take a break from threats and instead move into empowerment prompting strategies to influence your kid through connection and firm kindness.
0:11:05 – (Wendy): You are going to be a happier camper in the second decade of your child’s life. Trust me. My kids are now 14 and 17 and it is the coolest little petri dish experiment to see my kids who have been raised with this powerful parenting work that from the get go, right. Taryn was raised with this from the time he was born. Stella got it from the time she was three up, so we did the total switcheroo with her.
0:11:30 – (Wendy): But it is all these methods are based to teach in, or are designed to teach intrinsic control. So we are trying to help our children feel motivation from the inside out, do the right thing where we’re not looking, have self control, be able to monitor themselves, do things because they feel inspired by people and truly respect authoritative figures, rather than feel scared that they’re going to get hurt or harmed by them.
0:12:02 – (Wendy): But to see the difference in the way that my kiddos are operating in the world with their friendship groups, whether they’re able to stand on their own 2ft when it comes to peer pressure or not. Like all these interesting things that happen for teenagers, it’s just night and day from 80% of their friends that are being still right now. Raised in the traditional external control, fear, force, threats, punishment, very disconnected relationships, often brushing stuff under a rug, never truly having or making amends, repairing relationships, teaching important life lessons. Parents just are thinking that if you just punish, then the kid won’t repeat the mistake, or if you just threaten, then they’ll do what you want, right? And so that only works for a certain amount of time. And even when kids are little, I would argue that the strongest willed kids, it just creates so much havoc and chaos that it’s not worth it.
0:13:04 – (Wendy): And it’s just not in line with the students that I support here at fresh start family. That’s why it feels like it’s such cognitive dissonance and an alignment that it just feels very yuck, right? So instead of saying, do it or else you’ll get blank, taken away. Usually for parents these days, it’s technology. You can say, deep breath. All right, kiddo. I am feeling powerless right now and I need your help.
0:13:36 – (Wendy): We are capable of working as a team here and I can see that you don’t want to put it down, and we still need to plug it in and put it down in order to be on time for church. How are we going to work this out? How are we going to do it as a team? But the main takeaway is just the main replacement for you guys is I’m feeling powerless right now and I need your help. We are capable of working as a team.
0:13:59 – (Wendy): Then you move into empowerment, prompting strategies we teach you inside of our fresh start experience all these strategies. The best way to start to get engaged and entrenched in our work is to hop into our free quick start learning bundle that you can learn more and get registered at freshstartfamilyonline.com/powerstrugles, or just dm me the word freedom on Instagram. But in the beginning, just admitting, hey, I feel powerless right now.
0:14:29 – (Wendy): And I know we gotta, we gotta go. So how are we gonna work this out as a team? I need your help. It’s it. To so many parents, it feels so foreign. It seems like these kids would just laugh at you and be like, ha ha. Now I’m going to play the iPad for a million more hours. But it actually is very attractive and energetically, like, magnetic to strong willed kids because they love to feel powerful. And they also respect humans who don’t live in hypocrisy land, so they respect an adulthood who actually is willing to share power with them and kind of recruit them to be on their team versus force them into submission. So just try it again. This is an episode to get you just curious about some different options versus threats.
0:15:23 – (Wendy): The next thing you might be tempted to say that I want you to try this, not that is, you might be tempted to say, why am I such a failure? Right? I just was coaching a student this morning around her knee jerk patterns of beating herself up. And we know, I know as an educator, that the more, like, the better we are at beating ourselves up when we’re imperfect, the better we are at beating our kids up when they are imperfect.
0:15:52 – (Wendy): And so you just want to start with yourself as much as possible and remind yourself you are human. And so when you catch yourself saying, why am I such a failure? Instead, try something like this. Look, okay, you didn’t get it right there, but mistakes are opportunities to learn, and no one is perfect. My kids are resilient, and so am I. The easiest takeaway, in case you’re not taking notes right now, if you’re driving or jogging or pushing the stroller.
0:16:30 – (Wendy): Mistakes are opportunities to learn. And failure, quite honestly, is just unfinished success. So when I was coaching that student this morning, I actually told I was encouraging her to bring in comedy because I’ve been doing this now for 14 years. It probably was like, you don’t know, year ten that I started to be able to bring in comedy when these shame thoughts would, like, crash down on me and now I can just kind of laugh them off. If I say to myself, oh, I’m such an idiot. Or like, I would often say, like, I’m such a ding dong. I don’t know. Must have been a term my family used growing up.
0:17:11 – (Wendy): And now I just kind of laugh at it and I’m like, no, you aren’t. You just. You’re just human. Mistakes are just opportunities to learn. What are you going to do to clean up the mistake? How are you going to do it differently tomorrow? Again, we know that when you give yourself self compassion, you’re way more likely to change your behavior. So if you’ve yelled, grabbed your wrist too tight, threatened again when you swore you weren’t going to threaten, and it’s like only 07:30 a.m.
0:17:37 – (Wendy): just remember, when you are tempted to say, why am I such a failure to yourself, try to say something like, mistakes are just opportunities to learn instead. Okay, last one I have for you in this episode, all around what you can this, say this, not that ideas, is when you are tempted to say, that’s it, I’m done. I’ve tried everything and nothing is working. I actually have the funniest story of, we were at breakfast one morning and one of my biggest triggers with my kids has always been sibling conflict.
0:18:11 – (Wendy): Right? How many of you out there are just like, oh, my gosh, my kids. And the fighting drives me insane. But this was like, well into my fluency around this work. It was probably just like, I don’t know, maybe four years ago. I think it was during COVID So, yeah, four years ago. And they started bickering and fighting and I just triggered into. I was triggered into, that’s it. I’m done. I’m walking home. And we were like 2 miles away from home at the beach at Panigan Coffee here in north County, San Diego. And it was like, no, I’m not.
0:18:43 – (Wendy): I’m not walking home. And I’m also not done teaching them how to have peaceful conflict resolution as kids. Like, I’m never going to give up on them. And it was just a moment where I was triggered and I said something that was now, you know, we very actually quickly saw it as very comical. And by that point, I was so fluent in not dipping into shame that I was able to laugh at myself pretty quickly.
0:19:10 – (Wendy): But a lot of people are still operating, a lot of parents are still operating out of this frustrated tone of, that’s it. I’m done. And then comes in the punishment, right? Like, that’s it. You’re going straight to bed. That’s it. No iPad for the rest of the week. So it’s a little bit of a combination, but it usually will begin with, that’s it, I’m done. And then the thought is, I’ve tried everything and nothing is working.
0:19:34 – (Wendy): So now I’m going to come in with the hammer, and you’re going to frickin pray the price, and then tomorrow, everything will be better, right? Like, you’ll finally learn if the hammer gets thrown hard enough. And guess what? It doesn’t work. The relationship gets teared, the behavior continues, and the frustration builds in the parent, right? And then the blame and the shame comes in. And so instead, I just want you to say to yourself, okay, I am tempted to be like, that’s it. I’m done. Instead, I’m going to say, I will never give up on my kids.
0:20:10 – (Wendy): And slowing down signals safety to my brain and fuels creative solutions. So it is that time of year when germs and colds are rampant. Go to the bathroom, wash your hands, put some warm water, and just take two minutes to remind yourself as you’re washing your hands, if you can bring some aromatherapy into it, that’s always a great idea. And just remind yourself, I’m never going to give up on my kids.
0:20:45 – (Wendy): It’s safe to slow down. What are some creative solutions here? What can I call on as far as my strategies? I am safe. We can do this. We are a team. Okay, so that’s it. I’m done. Is definitely a bit of a frustrated tone. Again, we teach this at freedom to be quite extensively, but a frustrated tone just signals to us that we’re giving up on something that we think we’re never going to get. And this is an opportunity to get in touch with. What are you giving up on in that moment? What do you actually want? And for me, when I threatened to walk home, I was giving up on my kids ever having a great relationship and getting along, and that’s just not who I am.
0:21:27 – (Wendy): I’m never going to give up on that. I don’t have a great relationship with my older brother, who’s five years older than me. And it is such an important value of mine for me to continue to teach my children how to respect each other and have peaceful conflict resolution when they are on different pages or disagree with something. So I will never give up on that. So just remind yourself of that. You’re never going to give up.
0:21:49 – (Wendy): Slow down. It’s safe. Families. I hope this has blessed you today. These tips that I give you. Let’s see, we did 123455 tips today say this, not that I’m calling it the holiday edition because we are getting ready to go into a very busy, bustling, often over overwhelming holiday season. And I just want you to be kind to yourself. Take care of your nervous system and remember that the way you speak to yourself matters and the way you speak to yourself often will get mimicked in the way you speak to your children.
0:22:22 – (Wendy): So it starts with yourself. Take good care of yourself this holiday season. Thank you so much for listening or watching. If you’re enjoying this now, we are now on YouTube. And remember, you can download our free quick start learning bundle, three secrets to thriving with strong willed kids and how to raise strong willed kids or kids in power surge stages of life. Those kids that say no very, very often and are really great at pushing back on their roles. But how do we raise them with integrity and a settled nervous system? That’s what I’m going to teach you inside of the free quick start learning bundle and you can download it at freshstartfamilyonline.com/powerstruggles
0:22:58 – (Wendy): or just dm me the word freedom over on Instagram. I’m @freshstartwendy and if you’re watching on YouTube, of course, just click below. All the links will be there. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you in the next episode.
