Today on the show Wendy has a conversation about “triggers”with marriage therapist and licensed psychotherapist, Susan Stiffelman.
The goal of this conversation is to help parents recognize their triggers with their children and learn to respond with integrity and not react … in order to create deeper connection and more harmony in their homes.
This conversation will help families respond to triggers by teaching them to:
1. Recognize triggers (when your kiddos ‘push your buttons’}
2. Reflect & respond vs react to triggers
3. Step back to see things from your child’s perspective
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Episode Highlights:
- Being present & reflective as a parent
- Children as our greatest teachers
- Our triggers are (often) not what we think they are
- Recognizing our triggers & reflecting on them
- Creating distance between our triggers and our reaction
- “Why does your child’s behavior make sense?”
- Looking from your child’s perspective
- Having grace with yourself
Resources Mentioned:
Sign up for the newsletter over at: susanstiffelman.com
Parenting without Power Struggles Podcast
Join the Bonfire Waitlist HERE!
Join the Freedom to Be waitlist HERE!
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
This episode of the Fresh Start Family Show is brought to you by our free one hour workshop, how to respond versus react to misbehavior with calm confidence, AKA, how to keep your cool and not lose your marbles. When your kids push your buttons or make mistakes, you can save your seat over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/freeclass.
Wendy:
Well, hello, listeners. And welcome. I’m so happy that you are here for a new episode of the fresh start family show. I am your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach. And today we have Susan Stiffelman on the show and we’re going to be talking about parental triggers, what to do when our kids push our buttons.
Susan is a marriage and family therapist, a credentialed teacher, and a licensed psychotherapist. And she is just a wealth of knowledge. You guys, when it comes to creating more connection and harmony in our homes and today’s conversation, I think is more important than ever because as parents, we continue to be just stretched thin. And I think in just a stressful season of life. So at the time of this recording with Susan, we were still in the thick of the pandemic. And now thank God it’s lightening. At least it is here in Southern California. I know that’s not the case in some other countries, but I think so many of us are honestly just recovering and healing still from a very traumatic last few years.
And I don’t say that to be dramatic, but in reality, the stress of what we’ve all been through over the last few years is just going to take some time to dissipate. And in the meantime, I think we’re all just susceptible now more than ever to being triggered into acting in ways that we, we really, we later regret. So this month here at fresh start family, I’m teaching a ton on responsive parenting. That’s why I thought it would be great to have this episode during this month, but both inside my bonfire, private support community, which by the way, you guys, you can always learn more about and join the wait list for the next time we open over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/bonfirewaitlist.
Or you can just click the community tab at the top of the website, but that is our focused lesson of the month. Over there is all about responsive parenting. So we have video lesson, we have live streams, we have Q and A’s. We have recipe for successes. We have family activities. We just have a ton around how do we get to a place where we’re more responsive as a parenting plus over on Instagram, I’ve been doing a ton of engagement and encouragement and tips over there. That’s kind of a fun place to get bonus content, whether you’re a student of mine or you just listened to the podcast, but make sure you come find me. I’m at fresh start, Wendy.
I love, love, love Instagram. It’s my chosen kind of platform to, I think that it’s just easy to, to engage with you guys and have personal conversations in the, the DMS and all that good stuff. So, so on top of that, I’m also hosting a free one hour workshop this month on responsive parenting, but anybody can join me for where I’m teaching tips and strategies to not lose your ish when your kids push your buttons, which is just so in line with this podcast episode conversation with today with Susan. So I, by the way, I love just reading all that because I’m like, dang, I’m finally to the point where I’m able to line up all of my teaching for awhile there, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m teaching all these different subjects to all of my different community members in different areas.
Right? I have my private students in the bonfire. I have my students in the foundations course. I have you guys who listened to the podcast who many of you are also students, but then I have people who just find me on Instagram, but this month is one of the first months where I’ve been able to line everything up where we are all talking about responsive parenting. And it just feels really, really good to have been able to do that. But anyways, the free back to the free workshop, if you’re interested in joining me for that, it’s super easy. You can go save your seat, frustrate family, online.com forward slash responsive parenting. It’s totally free. And it’s just one hour. And I really do promise you that you will leave feeling more calm, inspired, empowered, creative, and just hopeful as a parent.
But on the morning that I’m recording this intro, it’s the night after the Oscars, you guys, we had the best night over at grandma’s house, eating a wonderful healthy meal. I’m in the middle of a fast for church and just, just have been taking such good care of my body lately. And it feels so good, but we enjoyed the Oscars together. I love the Oscars mostly for the fashion, but I also love the artistry of filmmaking, Terry, who you guys know, co-host the show he’s on many episodes with me, but he is a creative he’s vice president of, of creative for a sunglass company, but he does commercials and big ad campaigns and just creative marketing.
And so as a family, we really love the artistry of creation and, and filmmaking and marketing creation and, and all those types of things. So we had fun watching the Oscars, but anyways, when it comes to reactivity, the instance where you guys probably all know about this by now, but where will Smith walked up and smacked Chris rock in the face and then yelled expletives at him from the front row of the Oscars, like, dang talk about reactivity that later led to regret, shame and sadness. Like what a great example of that, right? And actors are human just like us.
They have triggers and fears and limiting beliefs and protection behaviors, just like we do, by the way. Those are all things. When you hear me say like triggers, fears, limiting beliefs, protection behaviors, if you’re like, yeah, I have those, but what the heck do I do about them? Remember, those are all things that we teach deeply about in our very experiential life coaching weekend course called freedom to be that one here at foster family takes place twice a year, once online, usually in the fall. So anywhere anyone from the world can join us. And then usually once in the spring time in here in beautiful sunny San Diego, that’s an in-person live event.
But if you are interested in doing those types of life, coaching weekend courses with me, they really are just the most transformational. I think coaching programs and experiential programs that we offer here at Fresh Start Family. I love all of our programs, of course, but that one, I just really see parents walk away just, they’re almost like completely different human beings and it’s just magical and, and an honor to facilitate. So you can kind of learn more and join the wait list for the next time that one opens up over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse. And of course I’ll link all of these in the show notes pages too, but will Smith.
He’s, he’s just been a really fascinating person for me over the last few years, as I’ve kind of watched him lean into becoming very vulnerable with what he’s sharing with the world, his recent book, I think is phenomenal. And he talks a lot in that book about how abusive his father was to both him and his mom and how one of his biggest regrets was that he never stepped in and stopped his father when he was abusing his mother. And so it makes sense, right? Why he was so triggered by a bad joke about his wife who is struggling with a sickness called alopecia, but it makes sense, right? Why he reacted so strongly to that bad joke that Chris rock made about her bald head.
And at the same time, obviously it was super out of line, right? It was very evident afterwards when he went up to when his, or except his fricking Oscar, it was like the biggest night of his life, but it was so evident how much he regretted what he did. He obviously knew he could have handled that so much differently and still taken a bold stance to stand up for and protect his wife. Right. But here’s a guy who clearly stands for like, again, if, if you read his book, if you see interviews with him, he clearly stands for love and non-violent aggressive ways of solving problems and really, you know, him, and as a couple, I’ve watched over the years, how they parent their children and they really are.
They practice positive parenting. They have shared before how they are based with it. You know, their parenting is based in respect, respectful connection based firm and kind ways. And over the years there’s been some really nasty articles written about them, just lighting them up about how they don’t punish. And therefore they like are raising these like crazy kids that are, you know, going to do whatever they want in the world. And we know those of us who practice positive parenting that most of the world has no idea how intentional you have to be as a parent to parent with compassionate discipline and teaching strategies versus just punish your kids.
And so it’s one of those things over the years that I’ve just been like, whatever, you know, but I do admire them as a couple, but anyways will Smith. It just seems to me like he’s a really good guy. And he has put his heart on his sleeve over the last few years and he gets triggered and make mistakes makes mistakes just like we all do. So this conversation, you know, it’s just interesting that it’s being launched or, or releasing the night after that happened, just because it is such a really good conversation piece to show you that, you know, 99% of humans we’re, we are all working on being responsive versus reactive.
And so this conversation, I hope it will inspire you to just keep the curiosity dig going for yourself. And if you are someone who is on a journey to become more responsive and really look at why you have triggers and what you do when you’re so triggered, you know, when your kids push your button or, or anybody pushes your buttons, then you just, you know, just know that you’re in good company. We are all in this together. And every day is a, is a date to fresh. It’s a chance to fresh start fresh, right? Every day that you learned something new, you pave a little bit further down a new neuropathway, you know, you’re clearing away the cobwebs, so to speak, you’re clearing away the weeds, so to speak that are just kind of auto programmed into you, that you have to react in a certain way.
And you’re just creating new paths of like, you can do this. You can, you can respond with cool, calm confidence with intention, with creativity, with, from kindness, instead of intimidation, like all those things you are just paving new neuropathways. So you’ve got this and I’m over here cheering you on always one last thing I wanted to highlight about this conversation that I love so much before we officially welcome Susan to the show is you’ll hear Susan refer to some of her mentors, or actually I think she, she actually refers to some of her colleagues and fellow authors who talk about our being our greatest teachers.
And you guys know how much I love the idea of this. And I really believe with all my heart that this really is the case. We actually recorded an episode on it for the fresh start family show it’s episode 105. If you want to learn more about my thoughts on this gratitude for our kids being our greatest teachers, freshstartfamilyonline.com/105. But I truly believe the same thing. And triggers is really just part of that process where our kids are teaching us how to develop skillsets, like paint or not even skillsets like traits, right? Like skillsets traits, call them whatever you want to, but patience, compassion, kindness.
Even when someone doesn’t treat you kindly, right? The ability to forgive, like all of these things are really hard to develop as a human being and learn. If you don’t have someone testing you and giving you the opportunities to develop that practice. So for me, as someone who has a Christian faith, and honestly like I’ve even started to use different words around that, right? Like I’ve even started to call myself a Christ follower instead of a Christian, because still, you know, I’m just navigating how I am still. So saddened by so much of what is portrayed in the Christian world as what Christian is that I’ve started to use the word Christ follower when people say, oh, where do you go to church?
Or, or, you know, what’s, what’s your faith like? And I’m like, oh, I’m a Christ follower. And I just talk about how that is the basis of my faith versus the Christian world, because yeah, I just continue to be kind of mortified sometimes about what is represented as a Christian, which you know, is a conversation for another day. But I really kind of think of myself as a little Christian, right? When you look at the, the kind of root of the word Christian in kind of the original Greek meaning or, or word or translation, it’s two words, Christian Christ, N tin, and really the word Christ means anointed and chin.
That means little. So the word Christian literally means little anointed ones. And during his life, Jesus was called the Messiah, which meant the anointed one. And we are his little anointed ones who have been anointed by the holy spirit to represent him in the world. So for me, it’s like thinking about always being a studying human being. Like I am always studying how to be more Christ-like and my children give me an opportunity to do that every single day. And you better believe that when I’m triggered by their behavior or their misbehavior or something, they do, they, you know, they don’t or, or do whatever that is an opportunity to become more Christ-like.
So I think so many religions across the world that have this similar belief system, right. That our, that our children, or that, that we here on earth just get sent these almost little angels, right. That are like, meant to teach us that we are studying that we are students. And I just couldn’t agree with that more because it’s really become a basis for joy in my life for handling the struggles. Right. Like, I really believe that we have the ability to see the struggles in our life as gifts. And I do believe that God strengthens us through those struggles if we allow him to.
So that’s just a little bit of a, a sneak peek into kind of my faith side of how I view this too. But since Susan mentioned that, I just wanted to chime in that. You’ll hear us talk a little bit about it, but it’s, it’s just, it’s just so true. So as the triggers come your way, you guys, as you realize, like, man, that really lit me up, or that caused me to like, just want to like grab a wrist or yell at my kid or retreat to my room and just like sink in and give up on this whole parenting thing and never like, or come out of my room again or run away. Like I literally had a few days ago, just a morning where I was like, I don’t want parent today.
I don’t want to come out of my room. I just want to hide. And I don’t want to parent a teenager today. It was processing all these feelings of hurt and sadness and anger. So those, those days will come. You will have triggers, but just remember, as Susan says, like, you know, and she even shares like a slightly different viewpoint of it too, but it really like these kids are often our own unique little teachers and angels. One more thing I’m going to say about that. I had time to do a little bit more longer of an intro today since Susan’s episode was a little bit shorter, but there is a book called the little soul and the sun it’s on our website.
We have a shop page. That’s curated with all of my favorite books and resources that I’ve kind of collected over the last four years that I’ve either used in my own journey as a mom or my students have used, or I just use in my own personal life. I mean, like literally I have my blender on there in addition to all of the books that I recommend, but this is one of the books that I recommend all the time, the little soul in the sun, you can get it from our shop page where you can get it from, you know, requested from the library. But it is a story about how God sends this little, this little soul down this little angel basically. And he wants to experience what it’s like to be like kindness and light and all these things.
And God basically says to him like, okay, well, if you want to, if you want to do that, you actually need to experience like the darkness. So you can assist someone to experience the light. And so it’s kind of hard to explain it, but you, you have to just trust me if this sounds like an interesting subject and you want to lean into this idea, then go get that book because it’s a beautiful book to share with your children. And it’s one of those books that’s really meaningful for adults too. So without further ado, please help me in welcoming Susan Stifelman to the shell.
Stella:
Well, Hey there, I’m Stella. Welcome to my mom and dad’s podcast. The fresh start family show. We’re so happy. You’re here. We’re inspired by the ocean, Jesus and rock and roll and believe deeply in the true power of loving kindness together. We hope to inspire you to expand your heart, learn new tools and strengthen your family. Enjoy the show.
Wendy:
Well, hello there families and welcome to a new episode of the fresh start family show. We are so excited to be here today with Susan Stiffelman. Welcome Susan.
Susan:
Hi, glad to be here, Wendy.
Wendy:
Yes, you guys. All my goodness. This episode is going to be so good. We are talking about triggers today and Susan’s just going to share so much wisdom she has for us around this topic specifically in regards to parenting. But I’ll tell you a little bit about Susan and then Susan, I’m going to pass the mic to you and let you kind of introduce yourself a little bit more. But families, Susan is a marriage and family therapist, a credentialed teacher, and a licensed psychotherapist for over 30 years. Susan has worked with families to create greater harmony and deeper connection between parents and children. She also delivers weekly parenting advice for the Huffington post as their parent coach.
And you’re the author of the parenting without struggles book, right? Susan
Susan:
Parenting without power struggles and parenting with presence, which was with . Yeah,
Wendy:
I love it. Well, take a moment. I always like to start off my interviews with just, if you could tell us a little bit about your journey, how you got to where you are now, why you’re so passionate about helping families in this capacity. And we would love to just learn a little bit more about you before we get to our subject of the day.
Susan:
Okay. Sure. I was a teacher. I worked with children even, you know, started out babysitting. It was always going to be my destiny to work with kids. And then I became a teacher and then the course of doing the work, I did both a tutorial and enrichment. So I became an educational therapist. I realized that a lot of kids had emotional overtones to the challenges they were having with learning or their learning differences. The way that they processed information was impacting them emotionally. So I went back to graduate school and got a master’s degree in clinical psychology. And then I became a licensed psychotherapist after many years and many hours of training and those things sort of blended together. And I started doing parenting workshops and parents would say, oh gosh, you please come home with me.
So I ended up writing a book that kind of captured a lot of the ideas that I had started to teach in the workshops. And that was parenting without power struggles, raising joyful resilient kids. It’s all about connection. It builds on attachment. And of course we teach what we ourselves need to learn in the course of, of my career. I also became a mother and I it’s so funny how you can be so trained and if so many credentials, and then when you become a parent, all the things you thought you knew, kind of, you get very humbled. And so isn’t that funny? Yeah, I, and so I was able to grow so much just personally, as I became a mother, of course, it’s very different when you have a baby and a toddler.
So these, these ideas that were going into my book had been shaped by experience. And of course by the work I was doing clinically with clients in my office and I had started working more with children, but soon I started to shift to parents because I felt that you just got more change throughout the family. I then wrote a second book a few years ago with Eckhart Tolle is imprint parenting with presence. And that book kind of embodies a lot of what I’ve learned in my life because I actually started meditating when I was about 17, 16 or 17 years old. And that’s been such a cornerstone of my life that I wanted to fold it in more, more openly to the work I did with families about just being present, staying connected, knowing what’s going on for ourselves being reflective and aware.
And now, you know, I think I’m known for straddling both the very practical world of raising children with pragmatic guidance and support. I have a podcast parenting without power circles. I have a membership program. I work with co-parenting with a narcissist. We have a lot of classes every month classes on chores and mindfulness and anxious children and homeschooling and distance learning. And then I have the work that I do in situations like this, where I, I get to talk to wonderful people like you that are helping to amplify this importance of connected parenting and present parenting
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Wendy:
Oh, I love it. And how old are your kids? Now?
Susan:
I have a son who is 30. He is just an exceptionally wonderful person who I love to pieces. You just got engaged and I love his fiance and you know, yeah. It’s been quite a beautiful, beautiful journey.
Wendy:
Oh. That’s so cool.
Yeah. It’s so funny to hear you say you were a teacher and then you were surprised with how tough parenting was. I hear that all the time. I have quite a few teachers in my membership program called the bonfire where, you know, they say, gosh, I really thought that I was going to be awesome. This was going to be so easy. I can go to class all day and manage like 25 first graders, but then I come home and I just flip out on my own kid. Yeah. Yeah. It’s such a universal. And I’d love to hear about your meditating practice. What type of meditation do you do? I do TM. Transcendental meditation.
Susan:
Yeah. You could probably say mindfulness, but it’s it’s, you know, it has its origins. I’ve followed several different teachers over my gosh. Almost 50 years, 50 years. I can say just about, you wouldn’t know it sometimes I still feel like a novice, but it is, it is a real anchor. And it’s funny because in the initial phases, you said you talked about my writing for the Huffington post. I kind of compartmentalize that in my work for a long time. And then I realized how integral it was. And of course it became more and more mainstream and popular. And now, although I don’t think you can meditate your way, your parenting problems. I do.
Yeah. I, there’s no doubt that when we’re more anchored to something inside ourselves, we show up with more stability and presence for our kids.
Wendy:
Yes. Yeah. I’m still in the journey of making mine a consistent practice, but I know I’m going to get there. Mike, have you had years where you’re weren’t as consistent as you want it to be?
Susan:
There are phases for sure. Especially what I had a young child. He would just be sitting in my lap while I got my five or 10 minutes, but I just noticed that I’m different. I’m different in my skin. I’m, it’s pretty important to me to maintain that.
Wendy:
Cool. Oh, I love it. Well, talk to us about triggers. Gosh, this is obviously at the time of this recording, we are still amidst a world pandemic. And I feel like I hear it all the time from my parents that they’re more on edge than ever right now. Right? We’re all just balancing so much. And there are those situations where you realize later, oh my goodness, that triggers me or you’ll hear parents often say like, my kid knows exactly how to push my buttons. Right? So talk to us, share your wisdom with us, Susan, about this area and what we can do to really be empowered.
Susan:
I’ve done quite a few interviews with well-respected goodest or meditation, mindfulness teachers, Jon Kabat-Zinn for instance, Trudy Goodman, Jack Kornfield. And one of the things that has come up in those conversations is the notion that we’re living with these little Zen teachers, these Zen masters.
Wendy:
Yes. Kids
Susan:
That the reframe is that our children are potentially our greatest teachers. And I love that because it, it presumes that we’re students. And so this idea that our children are attempting to push our buttons. Yes. It certainly looks like that. I choose to think about it a little bit differently. And I’ve done a few, well, gosh, quite a few collaborations with a woman named Byron Katie who wrote a book called loving what is, and who looks at the cognitive process that we engage in when, when we’re stressed or upset. So I won’t go into that right now.
But if you, if you look at the, let’s say a child refuses to look up or who a child ignores you. When you say it’s time to turn the iPad off, buddy, I’ve made this nice dinner. Okay. And you get no response, right?
Wendy:
Trigger.
Susan:
It depends. It depends on how tired you are. It depends on what kind of relationship you’ve enjoyed or had, or connection or interactions you’ve had recently with that child. If you’ve just been laughing and goofing around, you might not take it nearly as personally as if that child’s been challenging all day long, if you’re really tired or hungry, it’s going to be different. If you feel unappreciated by your husband or wife or employer, you’ll, you may project that frustration out onto the child. So the trigger in and of itself is not what we often think it is. I’ve had parents come into my office to say, you know, I’m here because my kids drive me crazy. And I immediately, I, the children out the door because I don’t want kids to feel that they have that much power over us.
Yeah. So we look at the trigger. The child let’s say in this scenario has been ignoring you. It doesn’t look up, won’t turn off the iPad. Doesn’t seem to show any appreciation or interest in the dinner you’ve prepared. And you, you know, I like to invite parents to just start by noticing what’s going on. And I know this is what I’m going to ask you to do. As you’re listening is move this conversation or this dialogue into slow motion that you would have with yourself. Because of course the reactions happen in lightning fast. You know, you get the stimuli of the child ignoring you and you get the reaction, but let’s slow it down. Let’s see long gate time for a minute. And you see what’s happened is the child hasn’t looked up.
And if possible, once in a blue moon, if you can notice, oh my gosh, my heart rate just went up and what am I thinking? I’m thinking he doesn’t appreciate anything. I do nobody around here. In fact appreciates anything I do. Why do I make all this effort? I’m going to throw that friggin iPad across the river. You know, all these reactive thoughts. And when you think them, I talk about thinking of our thoughts as thought pills like little pills, you swallow the pill and like any other drug you’re now under the influence of that pill and the pill in this case.
How do you feel when you swallow the pill? My kid should appreciate me and isn’t well, if I believe my child should appreciate me or should turn off the iPad, the first time I ask invariably, I’m going to feel angry, frustrated, invisible, maybe I’m overwhelmed, sad, depressed, worried. What kind of kid am I raising? He’s so self-absorbed, but we get to create a little distance. So, so it’s just a function of having believed this interpretation, assigning that particular meaning to the child’s reaction. And so we get triggered. In fact, if you see it as a neutral event, I said, Tommy, please turn the iPad off and come to dinner.
And Tommy did not respond in and of itself before we assign or layer meaning onto that. Or we interpreted it a certain way through a certain lens. It’s just a neutral event, a reporter wouldn’t impose some kind of meaning to it. So if we can start to create a little distance between the trigger, which is the child pushing our button, as we say, and not turning off the iPad, and we start by noticing what’s going on here. Oh, I feel so frustrated. I feel like nobody appreciates anything. And, and sometimes I’ll advise parents just put your hand on your heart or stroke your face, the way you wish a loving parent would do. In other words, we can use that moment, not to focus all this frustration and anger onto Tommy.
We might that we might get there still, but to start by staying present with ourselves, what are we thinking? What are we believing? What if we made it mean when the child does this upsetting thing, what do we need? What do we need in that moment? Now, Tommy’s not going to give you what you need, but you can give yourself what you need, or you can excuse yourself and, you know, let this go. If it’s really a bad day and go call a friend or go put your feet up or journal for three minutes or ask your partner. If you have one, can you just give me a hug? And then these are more healthy ways of changing the pattern, sort of breaking this pattern. I know I’ve said a lot, so I’ll stop there, but that’s sort of an overview.
Wendy:
Yeah. I love it. Well, and I was excited to chat with you today about this, because just last night I realized I had a triggering situation with my daughter. So my daughter is 13. Now my son is 10 and my daughter is my beautiful strong-willed. She is one of my greatest teachers in life. She’s the reason why I became an educator and a life coach, but, and we ended up having the most beautiful conversation last night, after this all happened. But reflecting on it today, actually just recorded it in a podcast episode about this too, is I realized that I was triggered and I’ve always learned, you know, about triggers being our own, almost like our own little, little newborn baby. We get to snuggle their hours. They’re ours only. But we were sitting there talking about, she has an indoor volleyball tournament coming up in Las Vegas and in her life, she’s had a tendency to like really want more.
Like if I took her to Disneyland and we were leaving at 10:00 PM, she’d be like, why can’t we stay until midnight? And it’s always been a trigger for me. So we’re talking about this volleyball tournament last night, she found out we’re driving the six hour drive. And she was like, what do you mean? We’re not flying? All my friends are flying and you can tell her dad. And I were like, you know, the trigger was like, you’re so ungrateful, we’re scared that you’re going to grow up to be an entitled, you know, person. And it got messy for a little bit in our conversation. And then again, it came together. It was so beautiful because thank God we have the tools to be able to talk to her in this and also remain humble because there was some things she pointed out that we had said that we’re like, oh yeah, that’s not okay.
But afterwards, what I love is, as I’m listening to you, I’m really trying to process it all in regards to how I felt in that moment. Because as soon as it does something, the trigger happens. You do you feel it immediately? And the thoughts start happening and they’re not fruitful. Light-filled thoughts. And as she pointed out, cause I had said to her, I just feel scared that you’re going to grow up to be someone who isn’t able to be grateful for what you have. And she clearly pointed out to me, mama, that is not motivate me. That’s not inspiring. It’s like, that is like a harsh way. And I, afterwards, I was like, you’re right, you’re right. I think I’m going to rephrase that.
As I feel scared that that behavior will continue. And I want to support you to develop the life skill of being able to find gratitude, even at the same time of wanting more. It’s okay to want more. It’s okay to have big dreams of flying on airplanes and staying in suites. And I would love to help mentor you to, to develop the life skill of being able to engage with those thoughts that are like, wow, we get to drive our awesome Sequoia six hours. So, but it was definitely a trigger and it continues to be a trigger for me, Susan, of like this, oh my gosh, I don’t want to raise a child who is ungrateful. And I think a lot of it is reflected on myself.
Does that, does that make sense?
Susan:
Absolutely.
Wendy:
I worry. Am I grateful enough? Or do I focus on what I don’t have? So I’m hard on myself about it. So it does that, is that true? Like that it’ll trigger you if you’re hard on yourself about it. Talk to us about that.
Susan:
Sure. And this is what I love about Katie’s work. Byron Katie’s work because she looks at these, you, you ask a series of questions. You can find out about her work thework.com, but then you do something called the turnaround. So the very thing that you’re judging my daughter should be more grateful. One of the turnarounds becomes my daughter should not be more grateful. So in that scenario, you might come up with three reasons why it makes perfect sense that your daughter had the reaction that she had. And I talk about this in terms of a very powerful sentence that I encourage the parents in my membership to ask when they’re struggling or frustrated, why does your child’s behavior makes sense? It doesn’t mean you like it.
It doesn’t mean you want it to keep going happening, but why does it make it’s own kind of sense visit your child’s planet for a minute? You know, leave your own consciousness, your own way of thinking your own little world and go visit their planet and, you know, walk around on their planet to get a sense of the atmosphere. So from their vantage point, why does it make your, your daughter’s should shouldn’t be more grateful. Why does that make potentially make some kind of sense? The second would be, well, let’s say my daughter should appreciate the things I do for her might become my daughter should not appreciate the things I do for her. The second turnaround might be, I should appreciate the things my daughter does for me, Because there might be something juicy to work with there.
Wow. Am I guilty of the very thing I’m pointing my finger at my daughter for, as you pointed out about gratitude and the third might be very, just personal. I should appreciate more of the things I do for myself. So instead of having this externalized with another person, Tom shouldn’t lie to me might become, I shouldn’t lie to me. I shouldn’t lie to myself. I’m upset with Tom for lying. And yet I’m lying to myself about certain things. So we use the triggers. They’re almost always going to be something. If we have a big reaction to something now, again, putting aside fatigue, thirst, hunger, lack of support, fear, anxiety, putting those things aside you’ll notice.
So the issue for you of gratitude might be related to not that you should be more grateful, cause I’m not, I’m not sure what that would look like, but that, is there a part of you that judges yourself for wanting more and that there might be something interesting there you might’ve gotten mixed messages as a child. So on the one hand, go for art, go for broke. You know, be all that you can be, but then there may be some voice in your head from a grandmother or a parent, whatever saying, you know, you should be satisfied and those things might just be playing out some kind of conflict that’s getting manifest in, in the conflicting way that you’re reacting to your daughter.
Wendy:
It’s so cool. Like I’m always like, God always put stuff in my life that I need to to learn. And this is this perfect example last night of completely that, because I do look back at my childhood and I do remember like having the same exact thoughts I was telling her last night, I remember being a teenager and my dad would drop me off at school in my grandmother’s 68, yellow Nova. We called it the banana and it smelled awful. And I was so embarrassed and I remember I would make him drop me off across the street from middle-school and because, you know, he just didn’t have the same tools, right? Like we have access to a different set of tools in this day and age and he didn’t have the tools.
So he took such great offense to it. And just, it was kind of like the beginning of the split of our relationship. Now we have a great relationship, but it’s not like connected where we work things out. We it’s just, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s just not a deep relationship. So that was kind of the beginning where he was like, he really just thought that I didn’t like him. That probably I was ungrateful that I was just like, you know, all the things that I feel scared that she’s going to become were things that I felt he probably felt about me. And later in life, my mom did say to me like, your dad just thinks you didn’t like him. And because he just never had the ability to talk to me and say, how do you, when you, when that happens, like tell me about it.
Like, how does that feel? You’re you’re 13. It makes sense. It makes sense that you’re embarrassed of your grandmother’s old car. There was none of that. It was like, it was just this silent. So it is so fascinating to me, how, as I reflect on it, it’s just such a beautiful lesson. And lately I’ve been doing like all this cool mindset trading around finances, and I realized how much there was that I picked up as a kid about this, like wanting more and how that was always like, that was for like people who know, like people who had money was like, they were entitled. And they were right. Was just terms. There was like a lot of like, we’re, we’re like, I can’t think of the terms right now, but it was very like the, the, the man like tries to take advantage of you.
And we’re just like these lowly folk. And so you could tell it was very like a mindset of, if you want more, if you have more, if you drive nice cars, if you have big houses and you want these big things, then you’re part of that society. That’s like bad in some sorts. So now what I’m reflecting, Susan, it totally makes sense why it would trigger me that my daughter wanted to fly to Las Vegas instead of driving in our, like, because it’s about me, it’s about me, right?
Susan:
Yes. And you could have such an honest conversation as you sounds like you did already have, but you said, you know, if you haven’t already, you could share what you just shared with me about your father and, and the fact that you know, that there’s conflict, that you have conflicting feelings that on the one side, you want her to be an aspirational person who, who doesn’t see a lid or limit. And on the other, you also simultaneously want her to be a person who lives with what, what she has with deep joy and gratitude. And you can talk about how confusing that B might be and how confusing your messages might sometimes be because it isn’t very straightforward. How can you be both things at once? And yet that’s something that you aspire to do is to be someone who’s always wanting to maximize the opportunity and at the same time, be deeply content with what you have.
And I think when we model for our kids, our own ambivalence, the ways that we’re still processing things from our own childhood, and we talk a little bit about it openly with them not putting them in charge of it or, or crying in front of them about our, our, our, you know, confusion or sadness, but just revealing that the inner working it’s complicated to be a human being.
Wendy:
Oh, complicated and so beautiful. Right?
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Wendy:
Yeah. Okay. One, one last little example. Cause I love to give our listeners examples of how to actually apply stuff in, especially if it’s a personal one. So another trigger that I feel often and because what we just spoke to, I feel like it makes sense if your kids are a little bit older, right? Like again, that conversation that unfolded last night was absolutely so such an honor to have with my daughter at 13.
Like, and I’m just so grateful that we have the tools and we have the ability because in the end we were so connected and there was so much goodness, but let’s say you have a younger, younger kids, right? Like 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever. And I know for a lot of parents listening, the kids hurting each other or being unkind to their siblings can be a big trigger. And the reason why I’m giving the example is because it’s a trigger for me too. So I had an older brother who was such a jerk. I love him. I love my older brother, but again, we don’t really have a relationship because we never got close when we were young. And he was just a stinker. Like he was mean to me, he would hurt me.
He would say unkind things. Like he would punch me when I walked by fart on my head, all these things and I laugh about it. Right. And at the same time, like there’s no doubt that it affected me and I’m still, I still kind of pissed about it to this day. So when I see my kids fighting, especially my older wife, I’m like, I, again, I think it’s, I know, I know it’s a trigger, you know? So if the kids are little, maybe just walk us through like any key little takeaways. I know this is such a deep topic and we can only cover so much in 30 minutes and glean so much of your wisdom. But just if you do have younger kids that maybe this is a trigger in your home, kids being unkind to each other or kids fighting what, any recommendations.
Cause this is a big, big trigger. I feel like for so many families, because a lot of us have underlying issues around it.
Susan:
Yeah. I love that. You’re aware of it. I think it’s so helpful to know that there are sort of S layers. So there’s the actual behavior that you could witness that anybody walking in the room could witness, you know, one child teases, a sibling, you know, says something awful or punches a sibling that’s observable. And then there’s, what’s going on internally that is influenced by our childhood. Or you might be an only child. You might’ve been an only child. And now you’ve got two, three kids and they’re fighting and you’re just, you’ve never been exposed to anything that chaotic and loud and messy. So whatever you bring to it, you bring to it. And it’s helpful to be aware of that. I did a whole three part series with Dr. Laura Markham, who I think is one of the best resources for siblings.
And I’m pretty sure it’s still on my citizens, stifelman.com website. So we just dove steeply into that. I’m always interested in the route. So a child who’s, you know, kids will annoy each other sometimes out of sheer boredom or, or to try and get the attention of a sibling, but sometimes there’s a chronic problem. And so instead of what do I do, or what do I say, if you notice that this is going on a lot, and especially if you notice that you’re really triggered you, can’t just look at it for whatever reason as sort of amusing or silly because it’s it’s happening too much or it’s too hurtful.
It’s really hurtful. It’s not as noisy, but it’s hurtful to one or both of the children. Then I encourage you to look at the, kind of the texture, the quality of the relationship between the kids. Because if kids are chronically fighting, it can mean that you could do some work to foster, kind of get some things out of the way that that one or both of them are re are harboring resentments frustrations. Oftentimes you’ll have a child who feels the other one will never play with her. Or you have one who feels annoyed. You know, you’re always annoying me. You’re coming in my room. You’re interrupting me. You want to always hone in on what I’m doing. These are very chronic. And so coaching kids is very powerful.
Coaching them to advocate for themselves. This is what we talked about a lot in our series, but coming in and you know, you see the fight first, you present yourself. So you deal with what you’re going through and it may be triggering old feelings from your own childhood. So you honor that you acknowledge it while this is really, this is really hitting a nerve. And you might even just take 30 seconds. If you can, to regulate yourself, take you a couple of breaths, putting your hand on your heart, talking aloud. I sometimes will encourage crowds, talk out loud, tell the lamp, tell the dog what you’re going through just to externalize it. And then you can walk in when you feel a little more steady and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, okay, something’s going on here?
This isn’t working and you will start to work with your kids. So of course, if they’re two years old, it’s going to look very different than if they’re six, but you could certainly start to coach young children to say, I w I was playing with that. And Billy came over and I don’t like it. What would you like Billy to hear? And you start to coach them. And then Billy, what did you hear them say? And you can start to work with your children that way. The other way I approach it, of course, though, is to just look at the bigger picture. And if you’ve got issues where, you know, one child feels favorite, a lot feels they’re getting, you know, that one, that their brothers, sisters getting too much attention or too many of your cookies or whatever that we like. Kids have a safe place to offload with us.
And that can often address the root of the problem. If we, if a child says you love Billy more than me, and you say, that’s ridiculous. I love you both to saying that’s not even possible. Then you’ve effectively shut down the conversation. Whereas you can say, I’m so glad that you told me it doesn’t ring true for me, but I want to hear every little thing about it. And you don’t interrupt and you don’t contradict or deny their reality, whether you agree with it or not. And the child might even move toward tears, feeling sad, not just about the sibling, but maybe about something else. And now you’ll often see a change in the behavior toward their siblings.
Wendy:
I love it. And, and in regards to like the trigger right around our conversation today, I love that you brought up like the awareness, right? The awareness is so huge. So many people, and hopefully now after they listen to this conversation, they’ll have a heightened level of awareness where you might not even have realized like before that your relationship, like my relationship with my own brother does affect the way I see the fight going down. So it’s like that idea that the world is not always as it is, but it’s how you have been conditioned to see it. And so that awareness, I think, is so huge for us to be able to slow down. And then I love the talking to the dog or the lamp and saying like, I can imagine me turning into my English lab, Herbie and saying, Herbie, I am acknowledging right now.
But this reminds me of when I was a kid and my brother like used to say really unkind things to me. And so I’m going to go in the kitchen. I’m going to grab a glass of water, take a deep breath, maybe go outside, look at the sky and I’ll be back. And I can imagine my kids being like, what the heck? Mom’s going crazy, but that’s okay. I’d rather appear crazy than just freak out. Right. Cause I mean, if we’re being honest, like even as an educator, I still have a tendency to be like, still at what? Why are you so unkind to him? Like he, he didn’t, you know, you get in the middle and then that’s like a whole, that’s not working, but it’s so fascinating. The triggers, we could talk all day about this Susan, but you have given us just so much to think about so much to look deeper into, right?
:
I mean, that’s the beauty of our children, especially our strong-willed or maybe the air quotes, difficult ones. Like they invite us to look deeper because the river run deep and the deeper we could get. I think the more we unlock as far as growing and healing from stuff and having, I think we’re always going to have triggers. Right. But to be able to be less affected by them all the time, maybe.
Susan:
I mean, and you do see it diminish. And you know, one of the things I think that we’re talking about the, the big picture here is that the more we’re stable and less reactive, then we do see our children’s behavior shifts. A lot of times our children push our buttons. So to speak, going, circling back to the beginning, to see how in charge we are and my work, I talk being the called captain of the ship. And they may, they may poke a bit or act out to see, can you handle this? So we don’t want our children to feel that we need them to behave a certain way so that we can feel that steady. It’s not a child’s job to behave in a way that doesn’t activate us or, you know, that’s our world.
But of course the more we do our work is a wonderful payoff is that our kids tend to want to cooperate more, want to behave better because of that deep connection in our steadiness.
Wendy:
Yes, they really do. Because honestly, like they really want to be just like us. Right? They are like my kids, at least they’re such mirrors. They may say to you like, oh, you know, Stella being 13, how’s she, she may say like, mom, I don’t want to dress. Like, don’t, don’t wear the hair hair, wear your hair the same as me, or I don’t want to dress like you. And then, but you’ll see it. I’ll hear her on some days where I’m like, oh my gosh, she wants to be just like me. And you know, and it’s like, so what we model and what we teach and our ability to stay calm, even when we’re triggered is like such a beautiful act of service towards our kids. So Susan, this has been a wonderful conversation. Will you leave our listeners with where they can find you. I know you had mentioned your website before, but just let everybody know again, and I will make sure I put everything in the show notes too.
Susan:
Thank you. Thank you. The best place is Susanstiffelman.com and there people can sign up for a newsletter. I hope you’ll all sign up for the newsletter because we have regular insights, inspiration, essays, updates, links, all kinds of good stuff. And then I do these masterclasses nearly every month. So they find out about that on all these various deep dives with wonderful collaborators. We’re coming up with Dr. Michelle Borba on raising children who thrive. So we cover all kinds of things. There there’s a monthly membership program. There’s a co-parenting with a narcissist membership program. And of course, there’s the podcast parenting with that power circle. So lots of ways to get help and support. It’s just a pure, pure joy for me.
Thank you.
Wendy:
Love it. And we will make sure we put your book on our fresh shirt, family shop page. We have a collection of all of our favorite books and authors who we’ve had the honor to interview. So we’ll make sure we add those. So thanks for being here,
Susan:
Susan pleasure. Thank you so much, Wendy,
For links and more information about everything we talked about in today’s episode, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/121. And if you haven’t grabbed our free learning guide to raising strong-willed kids with integrity without losing your mind, you can also grab that over at freshstartfamilyonline.com
For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening. Families have a great day.
Alright, families, that’s a wrap. I hope you love today’s episode. As much as I loved recording it for you. If you want to learn more from me, one of the best ways to do that is to hop into one of my free workshops this month. I’m teaching all about responsive parenting and you can join me by saving your seat over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/freeclass.
