In this episode of The Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy sits down with the incredible Michelle Icard, author, educator, and middle school expert, to talk about why failures and mistakes are actually GOOD for kids – and how we can turn them into powerful learning experiences (without the shame or guilt!)

Michelle introduces her game-changing approach to parenting through challenges, including eight common “failure archetypes” – like The Rebel and The Loner – which help parents understand what’s really going on when kids mess up. She also shares her simple three-step framework for guiding kids through tough moments, teaching them to bounce back, grow stronger, and build resilience for life.

If you’ve ever struggled with how to respond when your child makes a mistake, this episode is packed with real-life wisdom and practical tools to help you parent with compassion, confidence, and clarity. Tune in now and learn how to embrace mistakes as stepping stones to success!

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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!

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Episode Highlights:

• Understanding that failure is not only unavoidable but also beneficial for a child’s development.
• The eight archetypes of childhood setbacks provide valuable insights into typical patterns that children may exhibit.
• Michelle outlines a three-step process to help parents guide their children through failures: contain, resolve, and evolve.
• The importance of parents addressing their own fears and emotional responses to support their children more effectively.
• Building resilience in children by encouraging them to take action and learn from their mistakes rather than solely focusing on the negative aspects.

Resources Mentioned:

Grab a copy of Michelle’s book 8 Setbacks That Can Make a Child a Success: What to Do and What to Say to Turn “Failures” into Character-Building Moments

Follow Michelle on Instagram

Michelle’s website

Catch this full episode on YouTube!

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Unable to listen, or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!

0:00:02 – (Wendy): Well, hey there, families, and welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. I am excited to have Michelle Eichert here today on the show us. And we are going to be talking about three steps to turn mistakes and failures into character building moments for both our kids and ourselves as parents. Welcome to the show, Michelle.

0:00:43 – (Michelle): Hey, thank you so much for having me.

0:00:46 – (Wendy): I am excited to talk about this subject matter and get to know you a little bit more today. What you write about and teach about is so important. I feel like it’s one of the most essential lessons in life that we can teach our children that mistakes are opportunities to learn, that they don’t make you a bad person and they’re just essential. Right. Like, failure is just unfinished success. So I’m really excited to be here today with you. And we always kind of kick off our episodes with just hearing more about your story. How did you get here? How did you become an author and passionate about this subject? What part of the world do you live in?

0:01:28 – (Wendy): How many kiddos? How old are they? Tell us all the things, Michelle.

0:01:33 – (Michelle): So I am in Charlotte, North Carolina, as we talk, and I’ve lived here for, I don’t know, 25 or 30 years. I’ve lost track. I grew up in Boston and went to school in Boston. Well, in Cambridge, just outside of Boston. Not college, not Harvard. I was like, oh, high school.

0:01:54 – (Wendy): That was my first thought. I was like, dang, are you a Harvard girl?

0:01:58 – (Michelle): Like a humble, like, way of saying it? No, I’m, I’m. Prior to college, I lived in Boston and went to school in Cambridge and then went to college in Ohio and thought I would become a teacher and sort of had dreams of becoming a college professor maybe. And I, so I got a degree in education and I student taught. And then I, my first job out of school was with a legal company and that morphed into a consulting job. So I really became a teacher, but in a corporate setting. So I did all the corporate training kind of stuff.

0:02:32 – (Michelle): And then the Enron scandal hit. I was working for Arthur Anderson at the time, so I was without a job. And I said I had a baby then and I was seven months pregnant and I had no maternity leave, and I needed money, and so I was panicked, and I thought, well, I really do love teaching. I. Everything I’ve done in the corporate setting has been a kind of twist on being a teacher. You know, I would. I was like, hey, I think we need a training manual. Hey, I think we need some kind of a training day on this. So I was really drawn towards that.

0:03:06 – (Michelle): So I started a tutoring program, worked with kids who were in middle school, began to write curriculum for middle schoolers. And from there, things just snowballed. So out of a really yucky situation evolved this job that I love, and I’ve been doing it now for 20 some years.

0:03:25 – (Wendy): Amazing. And. And so it sounds like the teaching started to happen, and then when did you decide to start writing? Because, I mean, you’re three books deep now. Is that right?

0:03:35 – (Michelle): I am. 2015 was the year that my first book came out, and that came as a result of having launched the curriculum, and the curriculum was being used in schools across the country. And I was working with kids mostly, and their parents were saying, we love this. We love what our kid is coming home and telling us about this, but we need more direction. We really want to support our kids through the sort of social world of early adolescence, because that’s what I focus on.

0:04:05 – (Michelle): But we don’t know how to do that. So I thought, all right, well, I’ve written stuff for kids. I can write something for parents. And that’s where the first book came. And then that one’s Middle School Makeover. The second book is 14 talks by age 14, and that came out during the pandemic. And then just on the heels of that is the newest one, which is Eight Setbacks that Can Make a Child a Success.

0:04:28 – (Wendy): Oh, so good. And so you really started writing when your kids were in, what, season of life? Because they are young adults now, right? Are they in their 20s?

0:04:37 – (Michelle): So they are. So my kids are now 21 and 23. I have one who’s a senior in college and one who is smack in the middle of law school. So I started doing this work when they were 2 and 4, and I started writing. The book was 2015, so my daughter would have been 15. It’s so easy to do the math when you have a kid born in 2000, right? Yeah, she would have been 15, which means my son would have been 13. Actually, when that book was published, I would have been writing it for a year prior to that, at least.

0:05:06 – (Wendy): Cool. So, yeah, so you were, like, in the. The. You said 12 and 15, right?

0:05:12 – (Michelle): Yeah. 13, 12, 13, 14, 15. Writing and publishing.

0:05:16 – (Wendy): Yes. Yeah. So that’s a perfect time to put this stuff into action.

0:05:22 – (Michelle): I was drowning in middle school. I was living it at home. I was writing about it all the time. I was researching it, I was giving talks on it. I was, you know, that was my 24 hours a day was middle school. And it was deeply fascinating and, and I try to make it very funny because I think the awkwardness and the angst of it can. Can be really a good opportunity to laugh if you can kind of get over yourself a little bit about it at least when you’re an adult. Hard to do when you’re a kid. I wouldn’t expect a kid to be able to just have that same sort of reaction.

0:05:56 – (Michelle): But it was really fun to be immersed there for a very long. The majority of my career I was middle school.

0:06:02 – (Wendy): That’s so cool. And gosh, what a, what an essential age to. I mean all, all ages are so important for children to understand that mistakes don’t make you bad and they always are opportunities to learn. But especially that middle school season and those conversations that you can start having once your kids are old enough to really comprehend. Right. Like, it’s so beautiful. But just again, what, what an important subject. It’s like if we can come a. As a, as a nation, as a. As a world, as a community culture and really like embrace this idea as just knowing that, that mistakes and setbacks. There’s always a beautiful lesson to be learned. It’s why we are so passionate about teaching compassionate discipline here versus punishment. Because if you can stay from like a teaching perspective, then there’s just. Especially for us because we specialize in helping families with strong willed kids.

0:06:59 – (Wendy): If you can stay in that teacher perspective and, and what did you learn from this? M. And how are you going to do it differently tomorrow? Those kids are so much more likely to actually like retain the message. Right. So talk to us about just the general idea that failure is not bad. And like, especially just as kids navigate adolescence, like, why is this such an important lesson in your opinion, that we need to teach them that failure is not bad?

0:07:29 – (Michelle): Yeah. Failure is not only not bad, failure is great. And it’s not only great. In my opinion, failure is the key to becoming a good adult. And so I really came to this concept of studying failure through the side door. I didn’t go to my publisher and say, okay, I really want to research failure and think about failure. For my third book, what I wanted to do was talk about Rites of Passage. And I wanted to pair that with the sort of inherent rights that young people have as they grow up, as they make mistakes, as they sort of flounder around in figuring out who they are and where they belong and all of that.

0:08:08 – (Michelle): So I’ve always been really interested in how different cultures and communities across time and across the globe have ushered kids through adolescence into adulthood. I just find that fascinating. And I think we’ve gotten really far from what works in doing that. And I think we’ve, we’ve reached a point where we’re sort of like, I guess it has something to do with their age and their privileges. So when you’re 13, you get a phone.

0:08:36 – (Michelle): When you’re 16, you get the keys to a car. You might get a big party. And those don’t make you a good adult. They’re fun, they’re great, they’re nice, they’re important. But they are not the key to becoming a good adult. So what I learned through all of this is that really the key to becoming a good adult is having a challenging experience that causes you to learn something new and to grow. And then you bring that back to yourself and to your community and everyone’s better for it.

0:09:05 – (Wendy): Ah, I love this. And throughout your teachings and your writings are like, are the mistakes and the setbacks we’re talking about that you speak to, are they like you failed your test or you like Stella, my poor 16 year old, she’s a smart cookie. She is like straight A student and she this darn driver’s ed or the learner’s permit test, it’s, she’s failed it twice now. And I’m like, what? Like she’s so smart. And so it seems like they sure make it very tricky here in California. But there’s those type of setbacks and mislike things. But then there’s like, because we work with so many strong willed kids.

0:09:45 – (Wendy): Yeah. Like mistakes and setbacks in their world is like, whoops, I punched my brother again. Like whoops, I didn’t listen. And like I refused to wear my helmet and I crashed really hard and I’m really hurt now. Or like all those types of mistakes. So like tee up the mistakes and the setbacks, like what you’re talking about some examples that you speak to and are we talking about all of them or are we talking about setbacks of like, you know, or we had to move schools and now you’re like starting over again.

0:10:18 – (Wendy): As far as like setbacks and mistakes.

0:10:20 – (Michelle): It’s such a good question. And, and, and these Terms failure and setback and even mistake, they’re subjective. So they mean different things to different people. And it can be sort of vague and confusing, like, what is this really about? So the way that I structured it, the, the sort of failure aspect of this is I interviewed families from all over the country. I have a parenting group on Facebook. We’ve got 12,000 members.

0:10:44 – (Michelle): So I talked to them and said, you know, what are the things that are causing you the greatest concern right now in your child’s life? What are the biggest challenges or setbacks that you’re dealing with? Where do you think they’re having a failure to thrive or to do well or, you know, whatever it might be. Then I sort of took all of their answers and found the eight that were most universal and I gave them each an archetype, so sort of a character type.

0:11:10 – (Michelle): So there’s the rebel. That’s failure to follow the rules. There’s the daredevil. That’s failure to take care of your body. The misfit is failure to perform in. In a way that adults see as valuable. So maybe you’re just failing out of school or you just can’t connect with, with school the way it’s set up. Ego is failure to show concern for others. The loner has a failure to connect with their peers.

0:11:36 – (Michelle): The sensitive one has failure to handle their feelings. The black sheep has a failure to fit in with their family. And then the bench warmer, failure to believe in themselves, failure to have confidence in themselves. So they are broad in scope, but the examples in the book are case studies. They follow real families whose kids experience these failures.

0:12:00 – (Wendy): That’s so cool, Michelle. I love that. I love. And those are the failure to thrive. Okay, I get it. So, yeah. So the strong willed kid, let’s say for example, is going to be in that rebel category a lot. Like, they’re like failure too. Another way to put it is learning to follow rules, to feel safe within rules, to understand that rules are set up for them too. Rules help keep them safe. Rules help them thrive.

0:12:26 – (Wendy): So it’s funny how though even the world, even the word failure, like, as. Because of my. I’m an educator, you know, like what I do. It’s funny that I shy away from even saying that, right? Like it’s. They’re on a journey, they’re learning, but it’s like, it shouldn’t be a bad word. It’s like failure to thrive. They’re not thriving right now. They’re failing.

0:12:45 – (Michelle): That’s my, really my mission. And it’s so funny. We had so many rounds of discussion. When you write a book, you don’t get to pick the title. I mean, you can say, here’s the title I like, here’s the title I want. And then your publisher says, we don’t think that’s gonna sell. We don’t think people are gonna really get. So there were rounds and rounds of figuring out the title and everyone was like, failure makes parents itch. We can’t put failure right there in the title. So the title has setbacks and then failures in the byline. But failure is throughout the book. I wanna, I wanna make it not a dirty word. I want it to be.

0:13:21 – (Michelle): I want us to get to a point where we could say, oh, I screwed that up, I failed that. I. Oh well, it’s kind of like to me, I think of it like exercise. Like if you don’t tear and repair muscle, you don’t get stronger. If you don’t tear and repair, sort of your core understanding of who you are, you don’t develop a strong identity. So I want kids to have moments that feel like failure and crisis and disconnect because that’s where they really learn who they are.

0:13:50 – (Wendy): Yeah, especially strong willed kids because so many of them, you know, you can tell them all day long, like if you don’t wear your shoes, you’re going to step on a bee and stub your foot. Right, like, but stub your toe. And so much of the time that they are the doers, they’re the touchers, like they just, they experience so much growth through the actual experience. Right. So for them especially, failure is so important and to be raised in a home where it’s not shamed and like punish out of them but more just firm limits. Of course, firm boundaries. We’re going to learn from the mistake.

0:14:31 – (Wendy): But for them especially it’s just like, you know, I just remember when Stella was little, she. And still to this day, like we even Terry and I joke that like Stella needs to really, like, she’ll understand and learn really, really well when she either thinks it was her idea, like so you get good at like, like helping her see how it the rule or the boundary or the lesson pertains to her or serves her right. But like after, like you can drop a piece of wisdom with Stella, it always comes best if you share from your perspective, like this is what I found really helps me. Or this is, you know, before when I ran into this hiccup or couldn’t find success in this area. Right. If you frame it like that she’ll still accept it more. But you can drop a piece of wisdom.

0:15:16 – (Wendy): But then we see her learn the best lessons when she goes through the hardship. And then on the other end is like, oh, okay, I see what you’re talking about, Mom. She’ll never. She doesn’t say that often. You were right. But she. You can sense that’s. I see. I see why you have such a strong rule, or I see why you this. Require this, or I see why my teacher wants me to do this. Like, they just have such an experiential need, and so teeing up failure in this capacity is, I think, especially important for these little souls.

0:15:45 – (Michelle): I agree. And I think it’s really hard for parents when they know what’s right and they know what will. Cause if their kid did this, it would be the path of least resistance. So can I just force my kid. Can I try to get my kid and I. A story that I sometimes share about my son, who was also a very experiential learner. He had to experience it, to retain it, to believe it, right? So he had braces for about six years growing up. And it was a long, painful, expensive process.

0:16:19 – (Michelle): It just took so long. And in part because he wasn’t great with the rubber bands and, you know, all the stuff that could speed it along, we just sort of went through it at his pace. And when he got to the end of it, he was so sick of having stuff in his mouth, he didn’t want to wear his retainer. We could have had a massive battle of wills. I really. We could have just locked horns and I could have been like you. But you have to, like, we spent so much money and time to get here, and your teeth are going to shift.

0:16:49 – (Michelle): But really short of like holding that thing in his mouth at night, there. There’s not a lot that you. I mean, I could have tried threatening. I could have tried taking away everything he loves to, like, sort of get him to try that. But for me, I think developing and maintaining a relationship is so much more important than being right and teaching the lesson. So I just said, okay, I’ve done what I can do.

0:17:13 – (Michelle): Here we are. And now he’s much older and he has regret. And I really wish I had more. And regret teaches you, you know, we don’t want kids to feel shame. But having regret is such a great teacher because then you say, oh, I don’t want to do that again. He’s much better about making these decisions now that he’s experienced the disappointment of not doing what he should do.

0:17:36 – (Wendy): Yes. And I mean, that’s a great example of a natural consequence that we teach in our compassionate discipline programs. Because now that he’s older and will be having a job and paying for his, like, he might invest in Invisalign and pay the five grand. And, and like that’s okay. Like that is okay. We don’t need to judge it or shame it. And every Thanksgiving be like, you know, you should have listened to me. Right. So, so I love. That’s a great example because it does feel very like, well, the stakes are high. It’s going to waste this 3,000. We actually just got a quote for Terrence Orthodontist yesterday. And, and now we don’t have insurance for ortho. And.

0:18:17 – (Wendy): Excuse me, what did you say? They were like five, six hundred dollars? And I was like, that’s impossible.

0:18:23 – (Michelle): I know, it’s just. And, and then every time you have to go in for those 15 minute checks and it’s like it eats away at a lot of your time pocketbook. So you can be making a decision based on that rather than on preserving your relationship and on your child actually being allowed to. If, if, if I made him somehow I couldn’t, but let’s pretend I could, he would be so mad at me. He would be right now. He wouldn’t have learned the lesson of, boy, I regret not doing that.

0:18:55 – (Michelle): But what he would have learned is that we don’t get along. You know, what we do, and it’s great. It’s so much better. So, yes, we need to let kids feel, feel the failure a little bit.

0:19:06 – (Wendy): Yeah. And you really could have, you could have used threats, you could have used bribery, you could have head, you know, just knee deep in rewards or stuff like that. And, and it’s a beautiful choice that you made to allow that. So I love that. Well, let’s get right into these three steps, Michelle, to turn mistakes and failures into character building moments for both our kids and ourselves as parents. And so as we talk today, I think there’ll be so much connection.

0:19:38 – (Wendy): Right. Because we know that it’s all the same, whether it’s us that blew up and yelled at our kids or grabbed their wrist too tight or shamed them. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you just be easier or, you know, wish you weren’t so difficult. Like, we all make mistakes as parents. Right. We have those moments and then our children have the moments too. So I think our, our entire conversation today is going to be a blessing to be able to apply to both of us. But I think most of the book is catered towards like seeing it in our children. Right.

0:20:08 – (Michelle): So yeah, that’s right. But you’re right, you can apply it towards your partner, towards you, towards really anybody who’s human.

0:20:17 – (Wendy): Yeah, human. This is a human book. Okay, well talk to us about step number one, which is the idea to contain.

0:20:24 – (Michelle): Right. So let’s say that you notice your child is feeling to you like one of these archetypes I mentioned earlier. So maybe it’s the rebel, maybe, oh, they’re not following the rules or maybe they’re having trouble connecting with their friends as you said, because they are strong willed and that might be sort of off putting to other kids or who knows what. But you say, ah, I’m starting to feel like this is becoming more than a couple incidents.

0:20:47 – (Michelle): It’s feeling like a trend here. And I think we have a problem, a sort of a crisis or a failure to connect or to follow the rules or whatever it might be. So three steps. The first is contain. So contain is when you say, okay, we have a problem, we’re willing to say it out loud that this is an issue for this kiddo. And now we need to essentially put a band aid on this and stop the bleeding so that the problem doesn’t get bigger and bigger and bigger. We’re going to address it right now.

0:21:17 – (Michelle): And sometimes that looks like containing something that’s coming at your child and sometimes it’s containing your child because they’re making decisions that aren’t safe for them. So if your child is, you know, a teenager and they’re going out on the weekends and they’re starting to experiment with substances and you’re like, this is really dangerous, then you may need to contain the kid and say, you know what, we’re just going to hunker down this weekend and talk and sort of figure out what’s going on. Or if your child is starting to be targeted by a bully or they’re receiving messages online, then the kid has done nothing wrong. But there’s still something that needs containing.

0:21:57 – (Michelle): You may have to put up some technological boundaries so that people can’t reach your kid or whatever it may be. Contain is sort of the tourniquet you’re going to stop the bleeding. At the moment, a lot of times what I see is parents go, okay, done. We, we did it. We put up the, the soft spyware on the phone or we called the counselor’s office and said, hey, can you separate these kids, the class that they’re in or whatever it might be, they of that as sort of a one and done problem solving.

0:22:29 – (Michelle): What I’m suggesting is that that is the. The very first step, and that’s your step to take, to contain. The next step is your child’s step. So it’s resolve. And that means your child needs to take some action to either learn something or fix something. To make amends, to apologize to, to reconnect, to rebuild trust. But this is when the ball is in their court. And in the book, I’ve got a huge menu of things that you can choose from, so you can look through it and have a talk with your kid and say, okay, we’ve done this first step.

0:23:09 – (Michelle): Next thing is, we need you to take some action here to sort of move forward, right? Because the ultimate goal is your child does one or two things so that they begin to learn how to react and respond when they are feeling deep discomfort or pain. If they don’t do that, the stakes are really high. If they don’t figure out how to cope with discomfort, how to take action during times of pain, then they can really quickly develop learned helplessness.

0:23:41 – (Michelle): There are decades worth of studies that the default reaction to pain and discomfort is giving up. And we want our kids to know that they bounce. So I don’t think what they do next is as important as doing something right. Doesn’t have to be the perfect apology, doesn’t have to be perfect retribution. Doesn’t have to be that the light bulb goes off and they learn a beautiful lesson right in front of you. But they have to do something so that they learn that they can do something.

0:24:11 – (Wendy): Oh, that right there. Okay, that is so huge. Michelle. Just that, that last phrase when you said so they learn that they can do something is so different than what is normally. Like 90% of the time comes into our brain like, because we’re culturally conditioned, the way parenting has always been done, that you can’t do this. You cannot hit your brother. You need to understand that. You cannot talk to me like this.

0:24:42 – (Wendy): You cannot be failing math. Like, there’s so much emphasis put on the. Like, you are not allowed to do this. This will not be accepted. You cannot do this. And there’s less emphasis put on, here’s all the things that you can do to make amends, to admit where you went wrong. Like, and when you. When a child is in a. In an environment where there’s not shame or fear of being hurt or humiliated, then they’re more likely to come forward with like, okay, I admit it, I punched him.

0:25:17 – (Wendy): I lost my cool, like, but the making amends, repairing the relationship, all that kind of stuff. Like you. It essentially is like, empowering a kid in this moment versus, like, the traditional way. Right. Is like you kind of. You beat them down a little bit more. You, like, it’s like the. I think of it as, like, the dog. Like, I grew up in a house where the standard was like, if the dog had an accident on the rug, you, like, took its nose. I watched my parents do this forever. And you, like, rubbed it in the pee and you were like, you don’t do that.

0:25:50 – (Wendy): And it’s like, that’s a lot of times what happens with modern, you know, normal parenting. Traditional parenting is like you kind of rub their nose in it and you make sure they understand how much shame and discomfort is associated with it. Whereas what you’re talking about is really looking at all the things you can. You can do tomorrow. And, like, this is where the learning comes in.

0:26:12 – (Michelle): Yeah. Put a treat in your hand and take that dog outside and say, you can pee here. I’m going to reinforce that with a little treat. Because they don’t learn when you rub their nose in it. Right. They might get angry or afraid, but it’s. So if they don’t learn what to do, maybe they’ll learn to stop going on the rug. But do. Have they learned to go outside on the grass yet? So.

0:26:33 – (Wendy): And they’ll learn to be scared of you. They will learn to cower when you’re near them.

0:26:38 – (Michelle): Exactly right. And so that’s a re. That’s a great metaphor for this, really, that we want to replace all of that sort of shaming and brow beating and. And, you know, the. All the harmful disciplining with. Okay. I mean, and I’m with you. Like, there have to be boundaries. There have to be limits and the rest of it. And that’s what contain is about. We are going to say, this isn’t going to stay the same as it is. And depending on where your child is, you know, on that spectrum of archetypes, they might need really gentle guidance outside, or they might need you to, like, quickly rush them out there. Who knows?

0:27:19 – (Michelle): But giving them a new place to put their energy is, I think, so important for their brains to learn.

0:27:28 – (Wendy): Yeah. It’s so true. Yeah. Oh, I love all of that. Okay.

0:27:33 – (Michelle): Okay.

0:27:34 – (Wendy): So contain, we’ve talked about contain, we’ve talked about resolve. And I think already, like. So I’m just thinking about, like, all the compassionate discipline, teaching and. And tools that we use to teach kids and there’s always already so much of where it would come in here, but I have a feeling that a lot of it is also going to come in in the evolve state, I think so.

0:27:56 – (Michelle): So evolve. The ball bounces back to the parent side of the court. So contain you’re doing some work. Resolve. Your child really needs to take action. So important for them to know that they can. That they can move on, that they can cope, that they’re resilient, and then evolve. So once they’ve taken that action and they’ve. They’ve done the thing that you’ve sort of discussed or agreed upon, it’s time for you to move past this. If you continue to keep bringing it up, seeing the same thing I call it pressing on the bruise, then you’re only going to make that child begin to believe that that’s who they are, not something that they did.

0:28:42 – (Michelle): So, you know, there’s. There’s so many ways in which parents do this and don’t even realize that they’re doing it. And there are two where I see parents do this most often. They have an inability to kind of evolve past the crisis of what’s happened. One is with children who are failing to connect with their peers. Parents get so worried and concerned that their kids aren’t happy and connected with other kids at school that they every day will ask, who did you sit next to at lunch today? And did you talk to that nice kid you were telling me about in your math class? And it can start off sincere and sweet and well intended, and it can very quickly feel to the child like an expression of their incapacity, like they can’t do it on their own. Like, you don’t trust that they can figure this out and. And a lot of times kids do better if we just back off and let them sort of go through the muck on their own.

0:29:42 – (Michelle): So you can be sweet and you can be kind and you can have a great snack waiting after school, but to continue to ask every day about their social standing puts a ton of pressure on a kid and makes them feel like they have to perform well socially in order to make you happy.

0:29:58 – (Wendy): Yeah. So evolve, I’m hearing, is like, also probably includes healing for the parents. Right. So, like, I think what’s so fascinating and why it’s just such an honor to raise other human souls, even though it is insane, like, it’s the most wildest job we’ll ever have. Right. It’s just so complex and. But one of the coolest things is just you get. If you’re open to it. You get to see, like, all the areas that you need to, to.

0:30:28 – (Wendy): To heal and, and grow and, and change and, and model, like, model what you want for your children. And this sounds like realizing, like, that situation you’re describing is like, you know, a lot of, like, the fear, like, you’re taking action, as you say, back the balls back in your court of, like, why am I so fearful that they’re never gonna be able to do this? Right? And we do see that so much when we’re helping parents redirect inadequacy behaviors, which is like the separation anxiety or failure to thrive in social settings.

0:31:03 – (Wendy): Like, the more that they fear that a child can’t do something, the more the child believes it. Like, you don’t actually have to look at a child and say, I. I am so scared that you’re never going to have friends or never going to be able to leave my side and go to camp. They just know it. They, like, magically know that that is what you believe. And every single time, what you’re describing, like, as just one example of the, like, how’d you do today? Did you talk to someone?

0:31:29 – (Wendy): Did you, like, cry when I left? Like, they can feel that you actually don’t believe that they’re capable. So. And that would highlight the idea of, it’s probably good, a good time for you to get the support that you need, whether it’s through a therapist or a life coach or parenting educator or author. But really look at, like, what is the underneath happening here? Why am I so triggered by this? How can I move on a little or evolve or trust that my child is capable of this growth?

0:32:01 – (Wendy): Is that accurate? Like, would you frame it that or how would you frame that or riff on that?

0:32:06 – (Michelle): I think that it’s accurate and I think that there’s, like, there’s nothing to reframe there. I think that that’s exactly it. And I would add to it, I would say, when you are really invested in how your child is performing, whether it’s academically or socially or whatever, when you’re really invested in that, it’s too big of a burden for your child, they are likely already very invested in that for themselves.

0:32:33 – (Michelle): But if they think, you know, I’m so worried about being able to do well in this class, it’s hard already. But if I don’t do well, not only is it going to be embarrassing for me or disappointment for me or hard for me, but my mom is going to be really freaked out. So I have to now carry all of her emotions on top of mine. And I can remember distinctly from my own middle school experience. I had a classic middle school girl experience where I was in a friendship with three girls. And then suddenly the two girls were doing a lot without me. And it took me a little while to pick up on it. And then, then it was like, boom. I was kicked to the curb and I was so lonely. I was just desperate to make a connection and have a friend because I felt like we were soulmate friends, you know?

0:33:24 – (Michelle): And I didn’t tell my mom about it. I knew my mom would cry if I told her. She was very emotional and very invested in my happiness to a degree that it limited me. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I just was like, okay, I would get a tummy ache before school, but I certainly wouldn’t ever say, well, I’m not friends with these girls anymore and I don’t know who to sit with at lunch. And so I just floundered. Kind of figured out who I would hang out with.

0:33:52 – (Michelle): But I will say I did tell my stepdad, who I was much closer to my mom. But my stepdad was a highly unemotional person.

0:34:02 – (Wendy): Right.

0:34:04 – (Michelle): And so he would just be like, well, here is some very analytical advice I can give you. And I was like, great, I could use that right now. I could use the like non emotional. Just here’s what I. What I think might be a helpful way for you to think about this. I was like, cool. Thank you.

0:34:21 – (Wendy): So cool.

0:34:22 – (Michelle): Yeah.

0:34:22 – (Wendy): That is so, so cool. Yeah, I’m like, I’m thinking about my own journey and like areas that like right now it kind of shows up. And Taryn, my little guy, he’s 13, he’s broken his wrist two years in a row. One was skateboarding and then the next year was like half skateboarding, half snowboarding. It was our first day on the mountain. And this is, this is like one of those setbacks. Like I would look like, oh, this is a setback, right? Like, but you can come back. You can get back on the mountain. You can do this.

0:34:56 – (Wendy): And there is like, I can tell there’s still fear. He’s like my go getter. Drop in on at the bull at the skate park. Like, we’ll surf big waves, but I can. He’s also my kiddo that has a little separation anxiety and anxiety in general. Like that’s his little. That’s his deal, his journey, where Estelle is the strong willed kid. Like, they’re just such different journeys. But the reason why I bring this up on this step of evolve is because there’s a setback and there’s like, there’s the resolve part, which is like empowering him. Like, how can you do your best to avoid the injuries when you’re clearly in these board sports? And like we did that last year. We got the gloves that have like the wrist guard in them.

0:35:41 – (Wendy): And my job is to like hold the boundary because he’s already asking like, can I not wear the gloves because it’s a thing. But I can see how I still carry a fear that he’s going to get hurt. And here’s one of the reasons how. And I’m saying I would like to work on this and just maybe do some journaling to work through this or with my own coach. Because when he gets hurt. So he rides like an electric motorcycle too, called a surron. And when he crashes and he’ll say, mama, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Are you mad? Are you mad? I’m so sorry.

0:36:16 – (Wendy): I don’t think I’m hurt. And it was, and it’s been this really clear like, dang, he’s, he’s feeling some type of energy from me that I’m like a little bit still hanging on to this fear. So there must be things that I’ve said or something that are causing some type of like extra paranoia about getting hurt where I would like to work on that. I would like to have him just feel empowered to take care of his body.

0:36:44 – (Wendy): And if he, and if he gets hurt, he gets hurt. Like he’s doing these sports that are high, which all sports are. Right. Like, I see kids are having knee surgeries from soccer too. So. But there’s something there. And I can see an opportunity for me to like learn how to be more present, to just not live in fear because I can sense that he senses in me. Does that make sense?

0:37:09 – (Michelle): Makes so much sense. And it’s something personally that I’ve been thinking about a lot in my own life as well. Just, just we are empty nesters, but our kids come home for holidays or like this summer will, will be the summer after senior year of college. So my son will likely be here before he hopefully starts a full time job. And when, when transitions happen in my life, I am not good at them. I am not good at being like, I was alone and now I have a lot of people around me and then I get really used to a lot of people around me and then I’m not used to being alone. And I know that My kids pick up on it, and they’ve made little.

0:37:43 – (Michelle): Like, they can’t zoom into what it is. Exactly. So just like you’re saying, it’s my responsibility to figure out what that’s all about, you know, so that’s something for me and my therapist, and we are talking about that. And it’ll be. So the energy will be so much better with my kids home when I figure out what piece of me is struggling with that transition. So it’s a real gift for your kid when you can evolve, passed it for them. And also through doing, like, your own work and figuring out why you’re stuck, why you’re stuck, it’s over. They did something, you know.

0:38:20 – (Wendy): Yeah.

0:38:21 – (Michelle): Yeah. And the other one, I was gonna say that one about friends is really hard for parents to get past. And the other one is the one that you mentioned about. It’s the failure to take care of your body stuff. So it’s. It’s them being physically hurt, and it’s. It’s being really cautious that every time they leave the house. You aren’t saying, like, now, now, remember, I don’t want to get another phone call like I got before.

0:38:44 – (Michelle): I want you to be so careful. Don’t. Let’s not go through that again. Don’t. But that’s in the book. I have this child’s Bill of Rights. And. And it’s sort of like a little mock constitutional bill of Rights. And they are the rights that your kids should have and deserve to have, even when they screw up. And one of them is the right to continue making mistakes. You don’t just make a mistake, have an epiphany and move on to the next thing in life.

0:39:14 – (Michelle): Sometimes it takes trial and error and error and error until you figure it out. And so we have to remember that it’s really. Well, I don’t know why we, as the adults tend to think these things are one and done. Like, you had a big mistake. I got a phone call that you were drunk at a party and you spent the night throwing up and terrible hangover. And I think you’ve learned your lesson because. Because it terrified me that much.

0:39:41 – (Michelle): Right. But it’s not the same for them. They have to have the experience sometimes, many times in order to learn.

0:39:49 – (Wendy): Yeah. That phrase, that’ll come up often. And I’ll say, he. He or she should know better. They know better. They should know better. And then what we always see in our community is that the parent who is in a rhythm of saying that or thinking that quite often is Thinking the same thing about themselves. So we always say like, if you can learn to be more compassionate with yourself, which freaks people out because they’re like always been taught that like, you know, just be. You gotta be hard on yourself. Like you, most of us were, many of us were raised with like parents that they were hard on you when you made a mistake.

0:40:25 – (Wendy): So that’s like what was supposed to like, you know, in order to make a child feel better, you must first make them feel worse. You need to feel guilty, you need to feel bad, you need to be scared shitless that you’re gonna get hurt. Like scared. Danger, danger, danger. And then as adults, it’s like we learn like, oh, we’re supposed to be self compassionate with ourself and all of Brene Brown’s work on shame. And we’re just like, what?

0:40:50 – (Wendy): But it is a signal. We see that, like if you’re constantly having those thoughts about your kid, like, they should know by now, they know this by now or he should know better, then you’re probably saying that about yourself. And when you’re harder than yourself, then you’re hard on your kids. And when any type of like hardness versus firmness, like firm boundaries are good, following through is good.

0:41:15 – (Wendy): But like hardness, it just doesn’t work very well to change behavior because it’s like you, it’s like that should mentality, like you should know. But for me, I mean, it took me, I’m 13 years into this work and I mean it took me eight years to stop yelling. And I, and I still, I, I raised my voice like three weeks ago and it was pretty high. Like I was, I was, I freaked out a little bit three weeks ago. But I’m not in like a consistent pattern of that anymore. But for eight years I was still like slamming doors and, and I was an educator by that point, you know, so people think that like, I don’t know, we just got, I just feel like we’ve gotten the wrong idea and we, we have so many community members who are just like, I’m still not able to be patient or whatever. And it just, it does for so many of us. It just, it takes time, you know, it just takes time and to build that compassion of like, you’re just, you’re not, you’re not a bad person because you haven’t mastered this skill set yet. You’re just, you are learning and every time you tear that muscle a little bit, it will come back stronger.

0:42:29 – (Michelle): I absolutely love the way you framed that. That’s a, that is A style and a pattern of thinking that I come across a lot where people are just really remembering their own childhoods and deeply entrenched in like, but I can’t let them screw up. If I do, it’s an indictment of me. It’s an indictment of them. And similar to what you, the phrase that you just mentioned, the other one that, that reminded me of is why didn’t raise them this way?

0:42:59 – (Michelle): You know, they weren’t, they weren’t raised to do this. And I’m like, well, that’s a meaningless sentence. Like they’re impulsive, so they’re going to do a million things that, that you never anticipated or, you know, expected. And also they’re individuals and also they’re really tumultuous right now. And there are a million reasons that that saying is always a bit of a flag for me where I’m like, okay, this is an opportunity now to really think about what that means and if it, if it does hold true and also why does it matter?

0:43:32 – (Michelle): Yes, they did do it, so yeah, they did.

0:43:37 – (Wendy): So now we get to change. If our teaching has been ineffective, right? Then we just get to change. Tomorrow’s a fresh start. Like, let’s just teach differently tomorrow because have a feeling there’s shame and punishment in there. But anyways. Okay, well, let’s, we have about 10 minutes left, so let’s play around. I want to hear a little bit more about these archetypes. And you know, it seems like kids, what, what I found in my work is that children change, right? Like children change all through life.

0:44:12 – (Wendy): And we teach a lot in our programs about like the four categories of misbehavior. So there’s going to be kids that do power struggle, misbehavior. There’s going to be kids that are attention seeking kids, which is my son, my daughter’s power. And then there’s going to be revenge, misbehavior and like there’s going to be inadequate secrecy behavior. And all kids are going to do them all. Like all of them sometimes in one day, Right. And a lot of times kids will fall into one category quite often in their childhood. Right? So like, like I said, my daughter is pretty much always like every type of misbehavior we handle with her is usually power driven and then not always, but usually. And then Taryn, it’s usually attention driven or inadequacy.

0:44:56 – (Wendy): But with the archetypes that you talk about in the book, maybe you could review one more time and then talk to us about like, it’s Basically like, do you see that kids often fall into one? And I think you and I were gonna, like, just think back to our teenage years and like, did we fall into one more than other? I know these can apply to all ages, right? But, like, so we. We can talk about that, but maybe if you could review them one more time and then we’ll just kind of riff on them for a little bit.

0:45:23 – (Michelle): Okay, so there are eight. So we have the rebel, and that’s a failure to follow the rules. We have the Daredevil, and that’s a failure to take care of their body. We have the Misfit. That’s a failure to perform in school the way that adults or teachers would expect you to. The ego failure to show concern for others, the loner failure to connect with their peers, the sensitive one, failure to handle their emotions.

0:45:52 – (Michelle): The black sheep failure to get along with their family. And then the bench warmer is failure to believe in oneself. So this is very similar to the. In concept to what you were describing, that kids may be four in a day or they may be one you know, at a time. These archetypes are meant to be reassuring in the sense that, you know, an archetype by definition is a universal sort of truth. Right. So I want them to feel reassuring to parents when they can read this book and say, I recognize my child in this archetype here.

0:46:29 – (Michelle): You may recognize your child in two or three. You may say, last month my kid was really the sensitive one, and this month I feel like they’re the ego. I don’t know how we’ve gone from being overly emotional to not caring a thing about what the rest of the family thinks.

0:46:44 – (Wendy): Right.

0:46:46 – (Michelle): So they’re fluid. Kids will just sort of weave in and out of these. And part of that evolve step, that final of the three steps we talked about, is we don’t want to stereotype a kid and typecast them. And I don’t want a kid to have an experience where they have a failure of any sort and leave that thinking. I guess I am. I guess I am the rebel. I guess I’ll. That’s the role I’ll fill in this family.

0:47:12 – (Michelle): My sister’s a perfectionist, whatever. I’m the one who always gets in trouble, so I’ll be that.

0:47:17 – (Wendy): Right?

0:47:18 – (Michelle): I don’t want that to happen. So we. I. I found in my own kids, and I remember from my own childhood and certainly in the work that I’ve done with other families through this, that it’s. This is temporary. It’s a. It’s a normal part of adolescence to sort of skim through many of these at different times. I will say the most universal of all the universal archetypes here has to be the ego. Every parent of a teenager will say, here is a kid who’s failing to think about others. They are putting themselves by nature, by design. Yes, right.

0:47:52 – (Wendy): But the healthy development.

0:47:54 – (Michelle): Yeah, that’s, that’s good, that’s good. You don’t want it to cross a line to where it’s causing problems in your family. But really normal. All of this is totally normal. Typical sort of adolescent growth and development.

0:48:07 – (Wendy): Yeah, I’m looking at the list and just thinking about my journey because so I grew up in a home where my older brother, five years older, he’s really one of the reasons why I think I went and became an educator and a family life coach and, and I specialize in strong willed kids because I think he was the epitome of a strong willed kid. And back in the 70s and early 80s, like, like, you know, people just didn’t know what to do with that. Right.

0:48:36 – (Wendy): So like I watched how much he struggled in our family and how much fighting and chaos there was as he got older and became a very strong, huge teenage boy who just did like, did what he wanted no matter how much punishment. And I mean once you’re six three guy that like it was just a lot to witness. Right. And so I fell into this category of kind of like, like I was really, I was really smart, I got straight A’s, I was like star athlete, but on the back end, oh my goodness, I was a rebel. Like I was buying closed doors, partying and just all the things like I was really good at hiding because the shame cycle was set up so young. Like we just normal family punishment model, right. Where like if you mess up, there’s shame associated. So you just get really good at hiding the mistakes and hiding the misbehavior. So I can associate with the rebel, but really the key to me is the black sheep.

0:49:35 – (Wendy): So there’s like, oh my gosh, I love black sheep work. And I definitely have always felt like I was just different than the family. And I think you said it as failure to get along with the family. And I feel like I masked myself very well in teenagehood because he was so front and center, like chaos, the rebel. Like everything was troubled. He dropped out of high school. I was like very good at masking and like doing what I needed to get by.

0:50:06 – (Wendy): But inside I was just so different. Like such different belief systems. Such different. You know, just there was definitely a lot of arguments and disagreements and just felt like such a black sheep. So I don’t know. That’s the one I kind of associate with when I think back to, like, that. That second decade of life for me.

0:50:27 – (Michelle): Yeah.

0:50:28 – (Wendy): How about you?

0:50:29 – (Michelle): That. I’m happy that you said that because I had not thought about this black sheep thing before. I had sort of two distinct childhoods because of our family structure. So, yeah, there’s pre divorce and. And post divorce and pre divorce. Oh, my gosh, I was such a black sheep. I remember, like, it was like a bunch of feral cousins and drunk adults and nobody was watching anybody. And it was scary to me. I needed structure.

0:51:02 – (Michelle): And I. I now I can remember thinking, like, doesn’t anyone want to read a book? Like, I just really used to, like, tuck myself up with a little book and needed the quiet and needed that while it was chaos around me. So I was total black sheep in the early part. Then post divorce and my mom remarried, and then I was for sure the sensitive one. Highly anxious, overstimulated, nervous little kid. With all of these changes in my life, I had just an incredible amount of anxiety and fear and worry and worry about the adults in my life, you know, a lot of that.

0:51:43 – (Michelle): Which morphed into just like you, the rebel, where I was like, well, if I’m gonna become a be a teenager who has a normal teenage experience, I’m gonna have to sneak around in order to do it, because in this new, really strict family structure, which get, like, chaos came into this very strict situation. And then I was like, I do want to go to parties, and I would like to kiss boys, and I do want to have, you know, all this stuff, and I want to try a clove cigarette, like, stupid stuff, because I’m 51.

0:52:21 – (Michelle): So this would have also been like the 80s high school time and teasing my hair and trying to look hot and going to parties, and there was a lot of rebellion there and a lot of sneakiness that came with that.

0:52:36 – (Wendy): Yeah, that’s kind of fun to think back to your teenage. Yeah, I mean, it was like, it’s crazy. It’s wild, but it’s also just, you know, it. It’s nice for me right now because raising teenagers, I just find so much connection with them when I can think back and just get into your body a little bit and. And so that’s. That’s fun. So. Yeah. But all of it is just kids figuring out how to navigate life and, you know, this book and your work Michelle is so beautiful, and I can just see how supportive this will be and is for families. So thank you for being committed to supporting families in this way. And I’m really excited for all of our listeners to grab your new book. We’ll make sure we put we add it to our shop page. We have a huge collection of our favorite books over there, so we’ll make sure we add it. We’ll add it in the show notes, too. But will you finish us off with where listeners can find you and come support you and your work and learn more?

0:53:38 – (Michelle): Thank you. Yes, I’d love to. So find me on Instagram. It’s just my full name. So Michelle with two L’s and the last name is spelled I, C A R D. So Michelle Eichert on Instagram. My website is the same thing. Michelle Eichard. And those are probably the best two spots to come find me. I have a public page on Facebook. It’s Michelle Eichert, author and speaker. So if you just Google that very unusual name, you’re gonna find me pretty quickly.

0:54:07 – (Wendy): Heck, yeah. Oh, I love it. Well, Michelle, thank you again for being here. I hope you have such a good rest of your day, listeners. Thanks for being here. And go give Michelle a follow and support her and grab her new book.