What if the most powerful parenting tool you had… was a pause?

In this episode, Wendy and Terry dive into one of the most life-changing skills a parent can learn, how to interrupt reactive patterns in the moment and choose a different way forward.

If you’ve ever felt yourself snap, yell, or say something you wish you could take back, this conversation will meet you with both honesty and hope. Because reactivity isn’t a character flaw, it’s a nervous system response. And when you learn how to work with your body instead of against it, everything begins to shift.

Wendy and Terry walk you through what it actually looks like to “hit the reset button” in real time, how to create space between trigger and response, and why this one skill can transform the way your kids experience you.

This is about becoming a parent who leads with intention, even in the hardest moments.

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Episode Highlights:

• Reactivity is a nervous system response, not a personal failure
• The pause creates space between trigger and response
• You can interrupt generational patterns in a single moment
• Slowing down leads to more effective, not less effective, parenting
• Kids benefit more from regulated leadership than fast correction
• Repair matters more than getting it “right” the first time
• The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness and practice
• Small shifts in the moment create long-term change in your family

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Resources Mentiond:

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

Hello families and welcome back to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. We’re so happy you’re here with us. I’m Wendy, positive parenting educator and family life coach, and Terry is with me again today, co-host and dad extraordinaire.

As you know, he’s in so many of the Foundations Course role plays and is making a huge appearance on the podcast this year. So welcome to the show.

Terry:
Yeah, that was a few haircuts ago, but I’m still the same guy.

Wendy:
Yeah. We’re coming to you live from Oceanside Sanctuary today, so if you hear any singing or anything in the background, it’s a real live place.

Terry:
Yeah.

Wendy:
It’s a beautiful place. We’ve gotten into a rhythm of recording these, and we’re having so much fun recording these episodes as we kind of travel through all the chapters of the Fresh Start Your Family book that comes out in May 2026, officially available for pre-order, which is so exciting.

Terry:
That’s cool.

Wendy:
We’ve gotten into this rhythm where we’re recording before church every Sunday, and it’s been so much fun. There’s a lot of action here the hour before church. You might hear kids running around today. We have a really fun morning. What is today called again?

Terry:
Jubilee.

Wendy:
Jubilee. So our pastors are dressed up, all the staff is dressed up as kings and queens, and the kids are all coming in fun dress-up. So you might hear a lot of action going on. Thanks for your grace on the sound.

But we’re excited to chat today about the topic of hitting the reset button on reactivity. This is in part one of the book. We’re still in this section where we’re really helping you change your paradigm and start seeing what’s happening in your home through a more accurate, psychology-backed lens so you understand why your children misbehave, what’s actually going on, and what your contribution to the dance is.

From that place, you become way more empowered to actually create the changes that you want. So if you want your children to behave better, cooperate more easily, get better grades, sit still at the dinner table, clean up their crap, we’re going to talk a lot today about cleaning up, meaning stuff, trash, belongings, then you’re going to want to be empowered to see what’s happening accurately and also be able to see your own contribution.

So chapter four of the book is called “Hitting the Reset Button on Reactivity.” This is where I teach readers about what I call the stop sign. For many years I called this the pause button. Now I really like the term stop sign. I’m a very kinesthetic, physical person, and so the visual of a stop sign just really makes a lot of sense to me.

In this chapter, we’re teaching around how we can create a space between the stimulus and the response. And within that space is really our freedom to choose how we show up in parenting, the legacy we create, and the impact we have on our children, not just their behavior, but actually their souls.

So I’ll start by just reading a little section of the book, and then Terry and I are going to kind of riff on this subject today.

From Fresh Start Your Family: Powerful Parenting to Restore Peace in the Home, part one, chapter four:

“Why Your Body Feels Like It’s Under Attack.

Your central nervous system is your body’s communication network, made up of your brain, spinal cord, and nerves working together to control what you think, feel, and do. But I want you to think of it as your body’s personal security guard. It’s constantly scanning for danger and deciding whether you’re safe or need to protect yourself.

When it senses a threat, real or imagined, it floods your body with alarm signals that make you want to fight, run away, or shut down completely.

Here’s the thing. Your nervous system often can’t tell the difference between a bear chasing you and your toddler having a meltdown at the grocery store or your teenager not picking up their wrappers and the dog eating them.”

Okay, we’ll talk about that. That’s not from the book. I just added that.

“Both situations trigger the same internal alarm bells. When we grow up in homes where mistakes meant trouble, criticism, and/or harm, our nervous systems learn to treat imperfection as danger.

As the ancient philosopher Aristotle is often credited with saying, ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man,’ meaning the crucial formative years of early childhood significantly shape the adult a person will become.

No wonder today when our child spills milk, talks back, or says no, our body literally thinks we’re under attack.

Since most of us were raised with a parenting model that used some level of fear and emotional manipulation to coerce us into compliance, it’s no surprise that our bodies are often on edge as adults. Even the most loving parents of past decades didn’t realize the long-term impact this would have on developing nervous systems. Feeling rattled when kids misbehave is a result of a nervous system conditioned to believe danger is always lurking. So quick, act fast. Lay the smackdown. Try to be an octopus with eight arms. Fix it. Do it all or else there’s no time to think.”

I’ll just read one more section and then we’ll chat.

“The beautiful opportunity for change.

Here’s probably the most important thing you need to know when starting fresh with your parenting. New equals danger to your conditioned nervous system. You will most likely have doubt and resistance flow in when you learn and go to implement new ways with your kids. Don’t be surprised when your knee-jerk thoughts go to, What if this doesn’t work? What if this makes my child think he can act like a maniac? What if I look weak?”

Then I go on to talk about Dr. Gabor Maté’s work. I love this chapter. I also, in this chapter, tell the infamous story that I wrote an article on that, I swear, in 18 years of this business, I’ve never had such a strong response to. The article was “I Left Bruises.” I tell that whole story in this chapter about the night that I, shamefully or regretfully, reacted versus responded to Taryn’s misbehavior when he was about four years old and was really sick and had steroid treatments and just wanted to go play with Nolan down the street.

I do love that story so much because I think it just helps parents understand that they’re not crazy. We all struggle with reactivity in our own ways.

In this chapter, I also teach about the power of repair and how important that is. It’s way more important than perfection in our parenting. I think we’re at the point now, Terry, where you and I are actually really able to see those rhythms. We’re not perfect. We still lose our cool sometimes. But now we have this power of repair that feels like it’s stronger than ever. I feel like it is very connected to building your humility skills and your ability to take responsibility for where you didn’t behave exactly like you would have wished you behaved once you’re cooled down.

But to be able to do that without shame or blame, just to be able to say, “Hey, this went a little sideways. You didn’t deserve that. Let’s try again today to do it differently. Here’s the lesson I was trying to teach with integrity.”

The crazy thing is that I swear God has a sense of humor because what a week to record this particular episode. I had, really, yesterday, one of the biggest blowups I’ve had with Taryn, our 15-year-old, in like a decade. I don’t think I’ve yelled at him that bad in a long time. And you kind of had a flare-up with him a few days ago. And now a day after, now that I’ve cooled down and I’m more in that stable place, which in the book we really teach you, you want to make sure that you’re teaching or trying to influence your children’s behavior once you’re in that neutral state.

Now that I’m back in my neutral state, I can see why I was so triggered in that moment.

So everyone, this is a full public service announcement. Oh my gosh. I literally got scammed yesterday. Thank God this caller did not get any of my money, but I’m a 48-year-old, extremely tech-savvy woman, and I had someone call me from my bank. It said they were calling from my bank. It was the bank phone number. I have my bank’s phone number saved in my phone. And it was like, “Yeah, they’re calling from your bank.”

They were like, “Oh my gosh, someone’s trying to charge your card in New York. Let’s take care of it. Don’t worry. We’re going to help you pause it.”

And I completely fell for it.

Thank God I didn’t give them a crazy amount of information before I realized, “Shoot, this is a scam. I need to call the bank right now.” Long story short, I have to go into the bank tomorrow. I have to reset like 13 accounts. It is such drama.

Yesterday I processed so many emotions about humiliation, infuriating rage, anger that there are people in the world that do this. But right in the moment that I got this call, and I was in the moment of, “Someone is taking advantage of me,” it started with the concept of, “Someone is taking money from your account in New York. Someone is trying to withdraw money from your debit card.”

Right away, looking back, I realized that I was catastrophizing in that moment. I was like, “It’s the end of the world. They’re going to take all my money. I have to deal with this quick.”

Then 10 minutes later, I realized, “No, this is a scammer. This scammer, there’s no one taking my money. This is the guy on the phone with me trying to take my money.”

And right in the middle, Taryn had left two muffin wrappers on the couch. I had asked him like 10 minutes earlier, “Come clean up the wrappers,” because our black lab will literally eat anything, including rocks if they have food on them. He’s crazy. And I said, “Please come pick up your stuff.” And he was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, later,” which is such a theme that we’re working on with our little boy right now.

And I lost my shit because three minutes later the dog came in, ate the wrappers, gobbled them down. Of course I’m scared he’s going to get sick and then we’re going to have to deal with it.

Long story short, I realized that in that moment I was feeling hurt and like I was being taken advantage of on the highest level. I felt like I was being disrespected. I felt like things were being taken from me. I was like, “I give so much to the world. Why is someone taking from me?”

That was the feeling, but it was from the scammer. Then I radiated it onto my child in that moment. I see it so clearly now. But in that moment, I lost it on him, yelled at him, cursed at him, which is really rare for me these days. But holy smokes.

I know you had a situation the day before where you lost it a little bit. Not bad. I think your level of losing it is like a level two. My level of losing it is like a level nine. You have different ways, I think, of reactivity. Yours, over the years, tell me if you would agree, more is like, “Fix it. If there’s an argument, let’s smooth it over. Make sure everyone’s happy.” I don’t know. Maybe your reactivity in other areas has showed up differently for you.

Come back to me on that one.

Terry:
I’ve got to think, because I’m in your story right now and I don’t know what the equivalent of mine is there. I know you were saying I had a thing with him the day before, which was more of a tone thing that he was calling me out on. But what you’re talking about, I think, was like you had these alarm bells going off in you for one thing, and then he coincided with that by not cleaning up his stuff, and then there was the dog, and there was the danger.

So I don’t know. There was an element of danger, I think, in yours that feels different.

Wendy:
Yeah, and I think that’s the thing with reactivity that I want everyone to understand when they read this chapter. There are a few chapters really on reactivity. There’s a lot in this book on reactivity because it is the number one pain point for our parents in our community. Number one.

We have polled so many times, thousands and thousands, and emotional reactivity or feeling like you’re being hijacked by your emotions is the thing.

But for all of us, it is different. So many of us in the Fresh Start community have similar reactivity like I do, where you grew up in the super autocratic home with punishment, spanking, yelling, fighting, and then some people were not. Their reactivity is more permissiveness, people pleasing, uncomfortableness with conflict.

And that’s where I think you are a little bit. You don’t freak out much. You don’t. Even with a tone with Taryn, you’re not… you get reactive once in a blue moon, but it’s very rare for you. You’re able to keep it pretty cool. But you’re fast to move, I’ll call it, when there’s conflict. You are happiest when everyone’s happy. It feels like that’s faster for you. Your knee-jerk is to do something to fix it.

Would that be an accurate way to say it?

Terry:
Yeah. That makes sense. I sometimes see something coming and I try to head it off.

Wendy:
Yeah.

Terry:
It’s like looking down the road a little bit and being like, “Okay, I don’t want to end up there. Is there any way we can head it off early instead of getting there and being like, how did we get in this argument? Why are we arguing about this?”

Wendy:
Yeah. Well, I think, and the point is, everybody on the planet has reactive patterns. There is not one of us that gets out of parenting or life without your own reactive patterns. It’s just the question is, what is your most common go-to thing that the relationships in your life signal to you?

For me, that is very clear. I get really angry and rage fills my body and it makes sense. I grew up with a brother who was full-blown Hulk mode by the time he was 14. I’m pretty sure he was on steroids by the time he was in high school and literally put people in the hospital. It was bad. People wouldn’t even look at me because they knew I was Pete Edwards’ sister. I was just known as that.

There was just rampant rage in my family. It’s wild to me how long it takes to shake it because here we are 15 years into this journey and I’m still like, wow, okay, the reactivity is still there. I hear this from my students. They often say it feels like something is taking over your body, like you cannot stop it.

I think it’s worth pausing here for a second because you mentioned it before I read the passages out of the book. I don’t want to assume that everybody is familiar with this concept. It’s worth really going over this whole idea of stimulus and response and the space in between. If you’re immersed in Wendy’s community or you’ve been part of this work, you probably know, but I think it’s worth talking about because this is the concept.

We’re telling these stories, we’re reading these passages, but this is the concept. If you have no takeaway other than this, it’s this:

The stimulus is the child doing something that you’re annoyed with. So the stimulus was the wrappers on the couch for Wendy. The response is what do you do about it?

Now for most people that aren’t intentional about how they act, the distance between the stimulus and the response is going to be really short. So there’s going to be this knee-jerk reaction. What’s your gut instinct? Where do you go to?

So Wendy is acknowledging that after looking at situation after situation, if there was no space in between there, her response is going to feel like an explosion. There might be yelling, cursing.

For me, what she’s highlighting is if there was no space between the stimulus and the response, I’m going to go into, “How can I clean this up so that we can move on?” There you go.

So for you guys, and there could be more than one, but while you’re sitting here listening to this, get curious around what yours is. Because I think that’s going to be the opportunity for you in all of this. Once you shine a light on that, that there is a reaction and that reaction isn’t exactly the way you want to show up, and that there’s often cleanup that should happen after the fact, and you want to do things better the next time, you can actually create a space in between the stimulus and the response that gives your response a much more in-line-with-your-integrity feeling.

It also becomes a model for your kids or anyone that’s watching of what you’d like to see in the world.

So you want to watch what your normal response might be, understand that there is a space in between the stimulus and the response, and that you can widen that space to make a different choice or to clean up what that response is so that you can preserve and grow these relationships. You don’t want to constantly be like, “There, I did it again. I hit the kid or I yelled at my kid or I kicked the dog,” or whatever.

Wendy:
Yeah, or tried to fix and then it created an argument and all the things. I think that’s so good to highlight, babe. Thank you.

It’s also just coming from a conscious place, living your life from a conscious place versus an inherited belief system place. That’s what I think leads to this feeling of being kind of a victim in life when you’re just repeating the generational cycles but you’re not aware of them. Then you become very frustrated because you’re like, “What the heck? I’m not getting what I want in life.”

We go over this so deeply at Freedom to Be, which is our weekend healing program. We do it every year in San Diego. This year it’s March 14th and 15th. It’s so good.

But we look at this in a deep capacity. Like, do I want to keep carrying forward with this kind of knee-jerk patterning, or do I want to be the one who chooses to behave from my values and my belief systems?

So I think just a huge component of this that we talk a lot about at Freedom to Be and in our Fresh Start Experience for sure, and I talk so much about it in the book too, is there has to be a raising of self-acceptance and compassion, and that is basically the opposite of shame. So the continuous release of shame.

And Terry, it’s been so fun with you and I to journey through the years of like, what does it look like for us to reduce and release and heal from shame? We both have our own fun little backpacks of shame rocks, and I think it has continued to be exposed to us. And it really is good news every time you and I realize, “Here’s a place where I’m holding onto this. It shows up here. Let’s do some healing work. Let’s do A, B, or C to release that.”

Because in order to do what we’re saying, and so much of this work, I always say to my students in the beginning, but look, I’m 15 years in and I’m still looking at the situation yesterday from the rearview mirror, and that is very effective to change behavior. So even though I totally lost my cool yesterday, that happens.

I think, again, it’s been 10 years since that happened with Taryn. I might be forgetting something, but where I really lost it on him. I really lost it on Stella at Easter. So it’s not like… but when you do this work, it happens less and less and less and less. Then when it happens, you don’t beat yourself up. You don’t think you’re an idiot. You get into a place where you stop defending yourself and saying, “No, no, no, that’s not happening. That’s not me. That’s their fault.”

Shame and blame, the more you let go of those and realize, “I have this pattern. My parents had this pattern. Isn’t that interesting? I bet you my grandparents had this pattern.” Then you get to decide, do I want to keep passing this pattern down to my children, or do I want to do some work so I can change the patterning and then get different results in the relationship?

Boy, what a journey. But call me crazy, I love it. I love it.

Terry:
All I can think of is if your brother was the Hulk, are you She-Hulk? I’m picturing you turning green.

Wendy:
I know. I should be.

I mean, man, it is a weird feeling when it comes over you and you feel like… it is a weird feeling.

Terry:
I don’t think you ever get that because you didn’t grow up in a family with ragey behavior, but I definitely have the rage in me. I just… I guess I’m just… because like you see that my knee-jerk is to clean things up, I guess I would just be so scared of the cleanup that if I pointed it at a loved one, there’d be so much cleanup involved that I’m so blocked to even point that at any one of you guys.

I feel like I could point it at somebody else. Thankfully I don’t. But it’s not that it’s not there. It’s not that it doesn’t well up. I also try so hard to divide things into stuff that really, really matters and stuff that’s annoying or roommate stuff or whatever things. It can still make you upset, but I try to divide them so that it doesn’t stick.

Wendy:
Yeah. And I think it really is perfect that we’re so different because it is very clear when you look at the data. I know there are stories within your family lineage where there was maybe a shoe thrown at a head and that caused issues. There were little moments here and there. But in general, there’s not a lot of stories of full-blown expressions of anger through rage or yelling or cursing. It’s just not the way your family did things for the most part.

Again, I know there are a few minor things that happened here and there. But in my family lineage, there was so much of it.

And when that becomes normalized or that’s just the way it is, it becomes part of what’s normal.

Terry:
Well, and it’s your nervous system. That’s the thing that is so important for everyone to understand. This isn’t a conscious choice where you’re like, “I’m going to grow up and my knee-jerk is going to be like, fix it fast, because it’s unsafe for there to be a problem at all.”

And you weren’t consciously like, “I’m going to rage out and squeeze my kid’s biceps so hard it leaves fingerprint bruises or curse at him.” It’s not conscious. Our nervous systems absorb the temperature of our home for the first decade or two. It’s wild.

Whatever the tone was when there was conflict, misbehavior, problems, what was modeled to us, but more than even what was modeled to us, what was the tone? That is what our little nervous systems, especially before the age of seven, absorb. That’s where so many of the beliefs are set.

Wendy:
Yeah. And I always tell my students, don’t let that worry you. If you have kids and you’re doing this work and you’re like, “My God, the first seven years I did so many things, I said so many things,” sure. But kids have such plastic brains that when you’re actively in this work and reading books like Fresh Start Your Family and in the Fresh Start Experience and doing the work, you can help your children unlearn those belief systems and patterns so fast.

That is why the repair is so important.

Terry:
Oh, showing the repair, like yesterday with Taryn, was huge. That was the icing on the whole cake, just to come back together, unpack all the things and all the reasons why you reached a limit, went beyond that limit. You got a chance to humbly tell him that you didn’t handle things the way that you wanted to, explain to him how you were feeling, not as an excuse, but just as full transparency.

I think giving your kids full transparency of where you were at and what you were thinking when you were in that state of mind is important. Then being like, “And it’s not okay. That’s not the way I want to handle myself.” That is such a way to really not pass it down, and also not expect perfection, and also model to kids that they can’t expect perfection either. But the way to have a healthy relationship is when they showed up as something less than or other than who they are, that they have a chance to really come to the table and make it right and just be a human being about it.

Then you hold hands and step forward.

Wendy:
I’m curious about something. You were talking about the temperature of the home or the tone. Did you find that for your mom and dad, the temperature and tone were the same or different? When I think of conflict, imperfection, and money too, because that’s a big memory for me, my dad just held this general sadness around money and a bit of silent judgy criticism and blame.

So where did the reactivity or explosiveness come from? And then my mom was more very vocal. So my mom was more like the “shame on you,” “what’s wrong with you,” “I would never do that.” It was very much the tone of, “This is the end of the world.” Both of them had a lot of catastrophizing, but in different ways.

My dad was more silent, sad, and then he would have very explosive moments. I remember being chased around the wood stove with the wooden paddle. I remember the fights when I was a teenager and being in such a physical altercation that I fell off a chair and cut my leg really bad because he was trying to punish me by taking away my TV. So there were reactive moments for sure.

Then you add on the fact that my brother, I think, was a very strong-willed child. Nobody knew what to do with him in the ’80s. They just punished him, spanked him, yelled at him, shamed him, took away his crap, and he flared up from a very young age. So there was just a lot of ragey reactivity, fighting, and then no conflict resolution. Zero.

We never talked about stuff. There’d be huge blowups and then no recollection of anyone ever having a conversation like, “Hey, look, that went really sideways. I really lost my cool,” or “That must have been so scary for you.” That was the tone.

But it was not just the physicalness, because I know you didn’t have that. It was that conflict or mistakes or imperfection felt like they were catastrophized, and then there were high levels of criticism.

Terry:
Yeah, so that makes sense. It’s probably a combination of all of that then really. Because the instinct that we’re talking about that came up yesterday was the vocal one. I know you’ve also had the instinct of the withdrawal one too. That one sometimes has masked itself as “I don’t want to explode, so I’m going to withdraw.” It can look healthy, like “I don’t want to say something I’m going to regret,” but I can see what you described in your dad as an internalized sadness.

Wendy:
That is so good to point out. I don’t talk about that one as much. I don’t even ever talk about my withdrawal patterns in the book because the ragey stuff has been my big focus.

Terry:
Well, it takes center stage. It’s a little more fun and festive. It’s more Avengers.

Wendy:
But my students in the Fresh Start Experience hear a lot of those stories. You’re right. That was a pattern even early when we were dating. I remember I would withdraw for days. I must have been 19 years old, and it was very catastrophizing. It was very like, “This is the end of the world. This is not going to work out.”

Now that you say that, I realize yes, I watched that modeled in my dad. He never had the ability to ever talk through stuff. So it was just a silent anger.

Now 15 years later, I will say that when I have those moments, and I’m very honest with my community that sometimes I have a day or two where I’m just like, “Man, I hit a low,” and what I am actively doing in those moments is very different than what it used to be.

In those moments, I am actively walking myself off the ledge, I call it. I am doing the tools. I am doing the work. I am searching for the emotion. I am looking for my responsibility. That is literally what I’m doing now.

I wish I could just snap a finger and be like, “I’m good now.” Like the conflict happened, everyone took responsibility, and boom. A lot of times I can. But sometimes it feels like it cuts so deep that I just need to have some space.

Terry:
I think it’s going to be the trickier of the two. The yelling one is obvious. It’s like, “I just did that.” I can listen to myself. It happened.

The other one, when you internalize it, there are so many layers. You’re like, “Is this healthy internalizing? Am I healing? What’s the voice in my head saying? Am I being critical in a way that’s helping me or catastrophizing?” So I think it’s definitely the trickier of the two.

It’s interesting for everybody out there, and you don’t have to label it as “I got that from my mom” or “I got that from my dad.” It might not even be that cut and dry. But in this instance, is this the mom energy that I grew up with, or is this the dad energy that I’m reacting with?

Then just catching yourself. This is the thing. Back to stimulus, response, space in between. You want to catch yourself so that you can operate in the cleanest way you can. Again, it’s not perfection. You’re trying to be a better version of yourself every day, every week.

Wendy:
Yeah. It feels so good to have clean relationships where you are influencing people with integrity, where you are asking for what you want with empowerment instead of passive-aggressiveness or tones or yelling. It just feels good at the end of the day to be clean.

Funny examples, right now Taryn and I are not doing sugar for a month, and I’m not doing caffeine for a month. I can already feel that my body is like, it just feels so good to be clean of those things, even though it’s hard in the moment. I’m full-blown sugar detoxing for sure.

And then I joked on the couch yesterday that we’ve been in full vacation mode and I throw on sweatpants and pigtails and a beanie, and there were two days I didn’t shower. Stella was like, “Ew.” Eighteen-year-olds.

And I’m like, okay, whatever. So finally this morning I showered. It just feels so good to be clean, right? That’s kind of a funny analogy of this work. Some people may be like, “My God, I don’t want to do work and call out my own stuff.” But it actually feels so good when you are not blindly or subconsciously living your life in ways that are creating rifts and divides in your relationships.

It just feels really good when you build awareness because then you can do something about it if you choose.

We’re not trying to live perfect lives. That’s the thing. Fifteen years into this work, I had an explosive moment yesterday, and now I get to go home. I already know the makeup I’m going to do for Taryn. I’m going to get him these little juices that he wants for his mini fridge. I want to tell him what I just discovered and what I shared with you on the way here too, that deeper feeling I was having that morning of “I feel hurt. I feel taken advantage of,” and how that echoed into the behavior that we’re seeing with him, which is so minor.

But when you’re… I’m just going to explain it to him on a deeper level so he really understands. There’s nothing wrong with him. It really wasn’t even about him in that moment, that reactive behavior.

That’s what I think kids need to know, because when we’re growing up and we have parents who do things, a lot of times we think it’s because of us, or we think we are bad, and that’s why the family is struggling or a parent is sad or unhappy or there’s danger in a relationship. We just need our children to know, “You’re not the problem. You’re just part of a human family.”

Terry:
There are multiple layers here of things that get discussed in this moment. Yesterday, there was also talking about the wrappers being left on the couch. That’s a topic we’re seeing start to create patterns and habits that aren’t working for the household.

So we went through all that stuff too. We walked away that today he’s a lot less likely to leave those wrappers on the couch. So it wasn’t just about “I blew up.” We used that time to lay it all out on the table. Full transparency, put it all out there, and put it back together.

Some of it involved the cleanup that we talked about. And some of it was also just like, “Hey, you’re filling your time with a lot of distractions that are taking away from the basic things of this house. Don’t leave trash on the couch.”

Then it gave us an opportunity to talk about video games, YouTube time, time to get a job and contribute to his first car that he’ll get in October. There were massive, beautiful, important conversations that needed to be had that we got to have yesterday. We’re one. We feel like one.

From that place, I think we were able to influence versus when we were trying the passive-aggressive tones and yelling and shaming and just thinking he’s going to change because he sees how annoyed mom and dad are.

Wendy:
Yeah. Or angry or intimidated. That’s ineffective.

But I think adding the humility piece, taking responsibility, and then doing it in a way… I still wasn’t even perfect in that little family meeting we had because I still was feeling angry yesterday. This is a big topic, right? When you have a 15-year-old, you want them to learn how to contribute. He doesn’t quite have the same motivation as his sister. His sister is very strong-willed, very different. She was motivated to work since she was like 14 years old. I mean, obviously, the commitment it takes to become a Division I athlete.

Terry:
She sold rocks when she was four.

Wendy:
And she had her own website in elementary school. So learning as a parent to motivate and unconditionally love a kiddo that is not super motivated to work and not that motivated to clean up his own stuff is very new for us. We’re navigating that and figuring it out.

But I think that really is an important note to end on, Terry, to make sure people understand that you do what we’re talking about, looking at your own reactive patterns, in conjunction with setting the firm boundaries and limits. Together is the magic sauce. That’s where a kid actually wants to cooperate, pick up his own stuff, get a job so he can contribute to his first car.

They end up wanting to because they actually feel connected and close to you because they’re living with parents that are not just like, “Do what I say,” but they’re like, “Hey, this is important. This is why.”

These values are going to be held firm in our home, and we are taking responsibility for behaving in ways that we regret. We’re going to change that tomorrow. Here’s how we’re changing. Here’s the help that we’re getting. Here’s what we realized. Here’s the emotions that we suppressed. Here’s how we’re going to do it different tomorrow.

That’s the magic sauce, ladies and gentlemen.

Terry:
Can you smell what the Wendy is cooking? It is magic sauce.

Wendy:
Terry, thank you for being here. I feel like this one was a more vulnerable, intimate discussion. So I’m just so grateful that you always go there with me and have these awesome discussions, because this is the real stuff. This is marriage. This is parenting. It is the hardest job you will ever have in your life, and it is the most rewarding job ever, because man, it’s fun to have kids at this age.

Maybe we should call some of these kids in from the hallway and see what their parents’ go-to reactions are and see if we can clean it up live. That might be for another episode.

Listeners, thanks for being here, and make sure you go pre-order the book. We’ve got so many fun pre-order bonuses for you, so go check it out. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Love y’all.

Terry:
Thanks for showing up.

Wendy:
That could be my catchphrase.

Terry:
That is good, babe. I like it.