On this episode of the Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy paints a beautiful picture of what a long term gift it is to build a relationship with our kids that is built on unconditional love and trust, and the many gifts that come from that.
Traditional punishment – based on fear, force, punishment, etc – might seem like it works or that it’s easier, but it really doesn’t “work” in the long run. Compassionate discipline may take some practice and a little more effort, and it really does yield the long term results we are looking for – connection, honesty, intrinsic motivation and self-control…the list goes on and on.
The time and effort we put into parenting with integrity really does give us the most beautiful gifts in the long run!
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Episode Highlights:
- Traditional parenting is a quick fix, but doesn’t bring lasting results
- Traditional punishment leads to disconnect and leaves kids either searching to feel powerful and belong in unhealthy ways or become passive people pleasers who don’t have a voice
- Relationship is key in getting our kids to respect the rules
- Making amends shows our kids that they deserve to be treated well – we all make mistakes and we take ownership of them
- Showing our kids we trust them and believe in them empowers them to stand strong in challenging situations (bullying, drinking, drugs, sex, etc).
- When our kids can trust us to not punish and shame and mistrust them, they feel safe to be honest with us and come to us for help when they need it.
- Finding things you have in common with your kids creates a bond that keeps your relationship strong
Resources Mentioned:
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Sign up for Wendy’s Newsletter!
Uplift Kids trial – and don’t forget the special discount code freshstart
Free Guide to Raising Strong Willed Kids
Special thanks to Uplift Kids for their continued support of the Fresh Start Family Show!
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Here is the episode transcript!
This episode is brought to you by the free Fresh Start Family Learning Guide. How to raise strong-willed kids with Integrity so you don’t lose your mind. We understand what it’s like families to raise kids who push back a lot, maybe push buttons often and say no more than they say yes. And we’re here to help. You can download our free learning guide at Fresh Start Family online.com/ strong-willed kids.
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 love and 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. I’m your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach, and I’m excited you are here for a new episode.
Today I wanna chat with you about the gift of long-term results. It’s obviously December, we’re all gearing up for Christmas and New Years and it’s this gift giving season and I always wanna be one to encourage you to really think about the, the effect of your parenting and the way you are choosing to raise your human little souls because you guys, oh my gosh, I get it. It takes a lot of work, a lot of intention, a lot of focus, a lot of perseverance and a lot of courage to parent your children in a way like we advocate you to here at Fresh Start Family, right?
And there are just days when you probably think to yourself, what the hell am I even doing? Like, is this even working? Am I like just taking crazy pills? Thinking that compassion and patience and empowerment and you know, slowing down and, and get like all the things like is it actually working? I remember back in the beginning stages when I was just learning about positive parenting and, and figuring out how to implement all the strategies and tools into my daily life as a mom. I just remember having moments where I really thought like, what if I’m just drinking the Kool-Aid and really I’m gonna actually raise entitled brats who think the world revolves around them and you know, don’t how to don’t know how to actually listen if someone’s not treating them with dignity or whatever.
I would just have these moments and they always came after a rough bout of misbehavior, right? Like it was always right during or after a big mistake that had been made by my kids. So whether my daughter pushed her little brother or you know, when she was really, really little, you know, she would bite her brother or break something or run out in the street, right? Those like big moments. And Terrin had many, many moments of misbehavior too, where I just really kind of would become worried like, is this even working? Oh my goodness. You know, you just get scared. You just, you you believe in it so deeply it makes sense, right? I think positive parenting, when you look at all the strategies and the concepts and the tools that we, we use in practice, they all make logical sense.
Like in our logical brain, if you want your child to be responsive when his brother ticks him off and he doesn’t get his way, then we have to model and teach our child self-control and self-regulation strategies, right? Like it makes sense in our head why punishment and making a child feel worse in order to make them behave better. Like why that wouldn’t work, why it would have detrimental long-term effects, right? Logically we get it and I just know that there are those moments where you, you just want the fast results, right? We all come from this culture and this conditioning that has a lot of systems and things and practices and habits in place that kind of guarantees the long, like the the quick fix, right?
I recently did a poll on Instagram and it was really wild. I asked all of my followers, I mean, you know, normally there’s about like 50, 75 people that engage in my polls on Instagram and I asked everyone, do you feel like when you use traditional punishment, like you threaten a spanking or you threaten something’s gonna get taken away or you threaten a timeout, when you threaten a punishment, do you feel like you get like fast results? And almost everybody and I, and I said for those of you who do punishments, right? Of of course if you’re a student in our programs, if you’re part of the Fresh Start Experience, if you’re in the Foundations Course, if you’re in the Bonfire, many of you are actively practicing compassionate discipline and just kind of re refining your tools so to speak, and making it more and more effective every single day or more and more flowing so to speak.
So you’re working on it, right? But I was asking this poll of people if, you know, asking them if you’re still in this punishment kind of lifestyle, which is the way before you learn a different way, right? Timeouts, spankings, taking things away, groundings like, you know, removal of things that kids love, like TV and technology and all the things. But I said, do you feel like it gives you really fast results? And most of the people who are using punishment like that said, yes, I feel like it gives me really fast results. And then I asked in another poll, do you feel like the behavior when you use like traditional punishment like spanking, timeouts, you know, all the things, do you feel like the behavior goes away for good or do you feel like it comes back a week or two later and almost everyone said it always comes back a week or two later.
So I thought that poll was so significant because it, it shows us that we like a fast fix. Like we want those kids to be like, yes ma’am. Like I will not pull the dog’s tail anymore. I will stop hitting my brother, I will eat my vegetables. Like there’s no doubt about it, you guys, that feels good as a parent, right? And I just know from being an educator and also just a fellow human being, that when you have strategies based in overpowering, intimidation, fear,\\ force and all that stuff, like the sustainability, the, the chance of it having the long term effects that we want are low.
Because so many kids, by the time they become teenagers, they have such a strong desire to feel powerful and to feel like they belong. And many kids who are raised in a punishment or a reactive or autocratic household, by the time they become teenagers, they just rebel and they revolt, they revolt and then all of a sudden we realize that the long-term results of our parenting was not what we wanted, right? So I’m here to speak to you today about really being rooted in confidence that the way you are choosing to parent your children with responsiveness, with compassion, especially in your discipline with a seeking to understand mentality, with a, you know, sharing the power in your home and unconditional love, all these things that I promise you, you are going to have massive, amazing transformational results in the long run.
Okay, so here I am, I think I added it up. Am I at 12 years now? So Stella’s almost 15 and I started practicing pos learning positive parenting when she was three and Terrin was born. That was when that really tough season hit for me, where I thought I literally was gonna lose my mind. She’s almost 15 now. So we’re going on 12 years, right? Over a decade of learning and applying this work and then obviously, you know, going on to become an educator and a teacher and a life coach and all these things. But now we are in this season as parents where we are just floored almost every single day, almost every single weekend with the, in your face long-term results that are so beautiful.
Terry and I most nights look at at each other as we go to bed and we’re just like, wow, we’re so happy that we chose this route because the relationship we have with Stella, the the way she is in the world, you know, and this is the same strong-willed little girl who like kicked our butt when she was 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. I mean, we just really thought like, is she gonna even be able to go to a public school? Is she gonna kicked out, be kicked out of kindergarten, like something wrong with her? All the things. And now we just look at the way she is in the world, sports, music, grades, friendship, resisting peer pressure, staying healthy, not like, you know, getting into drugs, alcohol, sex, like all the stuff that so many oT her friends are knee deep in already.
It just feels like a million bucks. And so I just wanna share some stories with you today to remind you that what you’re doing matters and the long term results are absolutely amazing when you are a positive parent. Okay? So this month we, we’ve been talking a lot about responsiveness or we’re, we’re going to be talking a lot about responsiveness. I’m doing a lot of teaching over on Instagram. I really feel like that is one of the best gifts you will ever give your children, your spouse, your family is if you realize that you have some reactive tendencies, how to really switch those up, heal from some of the things that may have happened to you that caused you to have those type of habits and turn them into responsiveness.
So for me as a mom, my journey has always been to change my reactivity into responsiveness. That’s like my number, my number one thing. I think over the years I’ve realized I needed the most help with in the beginning. I mean for a long time that was what took me the longest to switch up. I always joke, it took me, well I don’t joke, it’s just a fact. It took me eight years to stop yelling. And nowadays like I really don’t yell anymore. Like even the other day when the Husky puppy got out as I was recording a podcast, Stella’s little buddy accidentally let her out the back gate. Our, she’s a little over a year old and she’s a pain in the butt and we love her.
She got out and ran like a half a mile down across a very busy street to Target and I full blown thought she was gonna die, get hit by a car, all the things. And I, I definitely was like very firm as we were running down barefoot. Like I was upset for sure before I learned the full story about Stella’s buddy. Like it was just a mistake, right? Like she didn’t, there was not even any carelessness involved, it was just a simple mistake. Our back gate doesn’t work very well and her buddy didn’t know that. But I was definitely like very firm and bold with the way I was reacting and talking to Stella on her way, ho- way down. But I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t yelling. And I just kind of realized later that night, I was like, dang, I handled that really well.
Like I wasn’t perfect for sure. And to be totally frankly honest, I did drop an F bomb or do it some point cuz I really did think like, oh this, this dog’s gonna be hit. We’re gonna be facing like a $3,000 surgery to anyone else. Have a tendency to catastrophize when you’re scared. Yeah, I know. But anyways, the point is it took me eight years to stop my yelling habit. So my protection that kind of flares up is, is usually based in kind of the aggressive controlling yelling. I flare up really big. And that’s also what I saw a lot of in my home. So a lot of times we mimic what we saw in our homes, right?
Like we, we see it in front of us, it becomes almost like ingrained in our brain how to do that. And so I just think back to when Stella was little before I learned and really committed to, to the work of positive parenting and like getting into life coaching programs to really change my heart and the way I saw everything and the way I acted. I can imagine how scary that was to be my little girl back then, right? Like again, I just had highly reactive tendencies that I’m just, I thank God every day that he put this work into my life so I could learn a different way. So it just felt so good once I did learn a new way and I realized that I don’t have to do that stuff anymore to get my kids to listen to me, to get them to comply, to cooperate all the stuff.
But I will say you guys now that still is almost 15 years old, I have witnessed some of the things that happens with her age group nowadays. And oh my goodness, like I, I know I’m just always so interested in human behavior at every level, right? And of course because I’m a parenting educator, I’m always looking at kids and I’m just wondering, right? Like a lot of times I think kids who are highly reactive probably do have parents who highly react to things they either do, you know, or are in a deep punishment state. I’d say most of Stella’s friends at this stage of life, again, she’s almost 15 years old.
There seems to be a high level of punishment going on. And there also is a high level of disconnection and stress arguing and then a low level of empowerment. So what I see happening with teenagers in, so we’re in southern California, this is the like e-bike, I swear, capital of the world. So like I see kids out on e-bikes going 30 miles per hour on big roads all the time, like not wearing their helmets, like obviously disobeying the law, disobeying their parents, like all these things, I see stuff everywhere. I hear the stories of like what’s actually happening on the beach on Saturday afternoon or what’s actually happening after dark when the kids hang out, right?
It’s wild, it’s crazy. So I think what happens to teenagers often in the long term when the traditional parenting is used again and that’s 90% of the world. Those of you who listen to this podcast and especially those of you who really show up to learn and use these strategies and tools in your life, you are like a very small minority of the world, right? So the people you meet and what I’m seeing my daughter surrounded with right now, they fall into the traditional parenting role. Like they just, it’s a traditional parenting household. So there is fear, there is force, there is punishment, there is intimidation and overpowering and threats. There’s checking on kids, there’s questioning them, there’s not trusting them, there’s all that kind of stuff.
So what I see happens with teenagers is they either develop like a people pleasing tone of almost defeat and fear, depending, depending on their personality. It’s like some kids go the direction when, when a lot of like reactivity, autocratic punishment style stuff is used, some of them go this like people pleasing route. Like fine, whatever you say, I’ll just do what you say. And again, it’s almost with a tone of defeat and fear. And I do see that in some of her friends now, but a lot of them develop kind of just a fuck it mentality. And as soon as they are out the door and their parents can no longer have eyeballs on them, they’re not buckling their helmets, they’re smoking pot, they’re like stealing booze, they’re like, you know, cheating on exams, they’re, they’re stealing.
Like this is just, I am well aware that this is very common teenage behavior in our particular community. And you may think it’s not going on in your community, but trust me it is. I grew up in Maryland, like a small town in Maryland outside of Washington DC and I look back to like our age when we were 14, 15 years old and it’s no different today, like this is going on for most kids when they’re teenagers, unless they really do have this incredible relationship with their parents, they feel empowered, they’re taught like how to control themselves. They’re, they’re just dealt with with respect. Cuz Terry and I look back at some of our friendships in high school, and again, this all ties back to like the long term results, right?
Like we look back to our friends who were like these steady, stable people in high school that really like were able to avoid peer pressure, well dealt with conflict in a really healthy way, had healthy relationships, all of them had great relationships with their parents and there was really like this steadiness in their homes. Most of our friends who did not have that really had this unstable behavior, which, you know, we’re talking a little bit about today. And so that’s, that’s what I’m seeing right now. And so what I, what I wanna speak to today is how I’m now realizing that the things that we purposely and intentionally chose to focus on and trust over the last decade plus with our kids and, and that I teach you guys to do the same, it has worked.
So things like trust and safety in our home where we still have firm boundaries, rules and limits, but it’s enforced with kindness and connection. Never fear, never humiliation and pain and suffering. Like Uhuh, we decided a long time ago, hell no now, but doesn’t mean we didn’t make mistakes over the years, you guys, I made plenty of mistakes, but we just made a commitment and 90% of the time we hit the nail on the head and we, we had massive amounts of trust, mutual respect and safety. We also moved from punishment into compassionate discipline very, very early on in our, in our parenting journey, right?
So we found this work when Stella was three and it probably took us like six or eight months to really like fully, actually it was probably a little bit less maybe four to six months. And by that point we were like a hell yes. Like we are no longer using overpowering fear force. Like I spanked Stella’s twice in my life and it was the worst mistake ever. One of the biggest, you know, regrets I ever have as a mom. And we just committed, we’re not gonna do that anymore. And we poured our heart and soul into learning what compassionate discipline looked like and we used that with her and TerraS for the rest of their days. Like until till now. And we still use it now.
We don’t have to discipline much at all anymore, but when we do, it’s enjoyable. It’s connecting, it’s teaching life skills and it always brings us closer. We also learned how to make amends really well over the years. And I think, you know, that helped teach our kids, especially my daughter, that when you have a conflict with someone and someone treats you in a disrespectful way, so for example, I would get like really aggressive sometimes, but I always wanted to teach her once I learned a new way, which again we teach her at Fresh Start Family, but I always wanted to come to her and make amends and say, Hey, you did not deserve to be treated like that.
That is not what love is about. When I grabbed your wrist or I yelled at you or I put my finger in your face, like that is just me like healing from my past and creating new habits and I’m a human mom who makes mistakes but, and I’m working on it like I’m still seeing my coach, I’m still going to my life coaching weekends. Thank you for your patience with me. I’m a work in progress just like everyone else but you daughter, you never, ever deserve to have anybody treat you. And that is such an important lesson that I feel like we taught her very early on that I want you all to teach your kids that so many people really get wrong.
I don’t like to use the word right and wrong often you guys, because I don’t think parenting is about right or wrong, but when you are using any type of discipline, aka air quotes, discipline, which is actually punishment in your home or reactivity where you are sending the message that there is pain associated with love, that there is humiliation associated with love, that any, at any point your children made you act a way. I really wanna make sure that you’re getting some support because it’s just not true From Chrissy Powers tells a really heartfelt story I I still wanna get her on the podcast about she grew up in a home where there was this like very toxic Christian rhetoric.
Use this like way of disciplining that many, many, many families get fed this lie that you have to discipline your kids by spanking in order to be a godly parent. I work very hard to dispel that myth. I have many, many colleagues Flourishing Homes and Families, Connected Families, my friend Christina over at Gentle Christian Parenting. Many of us are very committed to changing this narrative and helping families find the truth.
Families I want to thank Uplift Kids for supporting the Fresh Start Family Show and give you a discount code. Uplift Kids makes it easy for families to nurture spirituality, emotional health, and timeless values, which we talked about when we interviewed them for the Fresh Start Family Show episode 130 titled The Benefits of Spirituality for Kids. I think what they’re doing is pretty special, so if you’re a parent who wants to create a culture of meaning, acceptance and reflection at home, head over to Upliftkids.org and use the code freshstart to get a two week free trial and a 10% off description. The trial gives you immediate access to their entire library for teens, kids, and littles so you can easily talk about values like kindness, gratitude, and humility along with emotional intelligence, spirituality, wisdom practices and more. So if you’re looking for engaging ways to nurture values from the world‘s wisdom traditions and the latest psychological research, check out upliftkids.org and use the code freshstart – all one word. You’ll have a year’s worth of meaningful and transformative conversations at home. Once again you can find them and learn more at upliftkids.org. OK back to the show.
But she grew up in a home like this. Her dad was a pastor and she tells the story of how one I think she, like, she lied at preschool one day and she had like taken a little doll or something and she like didn’t tell her parents and she had put it in her backpack or something.
And that night he came home and he was like, well now I have to spank you. And she basically after like a really beautiful healing seminar that she did, realized that a lot of her adult anxiety really stemmed from these moments where she had so much anxiety about her, their father who he loved. She loved so much her harming and hitting her. So he would come to her and then he would hit her and then he would cry afterwards and say, oh my gosh, this is awful but you made me do this. I do this because I love you and because I have to. And then her mom would be crying and say, your, your dad’s, it’s so sad that your dad has to do this, but it’s all your fault.
And so she just realized this last year, like how much that effed her up and I just really have such a huge desire to teach you guys how to do it differently because it’s just not okay to send that message to children. Okay? So we did, I especially really did a lot of mess-ups over the years, but I always really worked hard to make amends with my kids and now I’m dedicating to teaching the parents I work with how to do that too. And then also I let my kids see me, you guys in my really low moments and I turned them into my confidants instead of like thinking I had to hide my weaknesses or flaws or vulnerabilities from them.
Like, you know, I tried to strengthen my practice of being able to cry in front of them if I had strong emotions or let them know after I yelled sometimes that I really was just very, very scared of judgment by someone around us when they were fighting at the local farm. I, I tell a story about a day where I really unleashed pretty hard on them, especially my daughter because they were fighting in public and the trigger was when I looked over and saw these two people just standing there with their hands on their hips and I thought for sure they were judging me and it was like faster than you could even blink an eye. I went full blown, aggressive finger in your face, get in the car.
But so I’ve just over the years really tried to become very vulnerable and humble and real with my kids. And if I do have a situation where I’m scared or someone’s hurt me, I try to come to them for support. And then the other two things I’m gonna, I was gonna mention are just the whole tone of empowerment, you guys and unconditional love has been something that we have like really, really deeply invested in. So for Stella, especially being our strong-willed child over the years, searching and seeking for ways to help her feel empowered, her whole life has now resulted in her truly understanding what true power looks like versus what I’m seeing is a lot of girls her age right now who are getting power and belonging, which we’re gonna talk about here in a minute, they’re getting power from drinking, like being outcast essentially.
Like rebels, they’re getting power from that where their parents are like, okay, bye, have a good night, be a good girl. And they’re like, okay. And then they leave and they get to a party and they’re just downing like they’re doing shots, they’re their, their power is coming from rebelling, their power I see often also is coming from being a total like, I don’t know, I guess I shouldn’t even use that term. I was about to say mean girl or or biatch, but let me rephrase that. I can see they get their power from acting with massive levels of unkindness towards other girls. There’s a practice in teenagehood called dropping where they literally gang up on each other and they just decide that we are no longer gonna be your friend.
So groups of four or five people, I watched this happen to Stello this last summer. They’ll be like best friends, like literally hang out every single day and then all of a sudden if they get into an argument or something happens, they just, they’ll gang up and they’ll be like, screw you, we drop you. And then no one will talk to them. They won’t invite ’em to parties. Sleepovers, all the things and it’s gnarly. It is gnarly. I see them getting power from drugs, like I said, being a rebel just about anything where like a lot of them, you know, they leave their house, they might buckle their helmet as they get on their bike, but then as soon as they’re out in the world they unbuckle their helmet. And I, it’s, it’s like I have to watch my tone when I talk about this with Stella cuz it literally drives me insane.
I should say I drive myself insane with the tone I have. I, I’m a life coach, so I teach about the tone of irritation and annoyance and it’s usually a tone where you drive yourself crazy. So I should stop saying that I get really angry and also scared. That’s what it is. I get angry and scared and I just get like infuriated when I see these kids riding around Encinitas, California on their e-bikes going 30 miles per hour on roads where cars are going like 60 miles per hour and they have their bucket, their helmet, unbuckled. I saw a kid the other day, he had, he not only didn’t have his helmet buckled underneath his chin, he had buckled the helmet on top of his helmet.
So he literally had to go the whole, the out of his way to take the buckles and put them together on the top of his head. And it was just like, as an educator is so clear to me that little teeny moves like that is a way to like middle finger the world, middle finger, your parents middle finger, like the system of control. It’s like you can’t control me. I am out on my own. Like, do you guys feel that? And so there’s just a massive difference in the way I see Stella operate in the world and the way I see these kids operate in the world. And trust me, I got this kid who pushes back on most things, right?
Like she, she is a no girl, right? Like she, she always has been. She has a strong voice, she has a strong opinion, she knows exactly what she wants, she goes for what she wants. Like, so if I’m like, Hey, you know, do this, she might be like, no mom, why do I have to like, it’s not fair. And then we hold space for each other, we see it through, we might have conversations and then the point is like she follows through she com, she cooperates in the end. So it’s not like Stella’s like this easygoing pushover kid, it’s just that she’s actually adhering to the rules and understanding why the boundaries are so good for her out in the world.
So, you know, over the years we’ve developed a practice of just trusting her very, very deeply. And so that I think has stemmed too from the compassionate discipline side of things. So when you like decide to stop punishing, and again that includes everything from spanking timeouts where you’re externally controlling a kid, you sit in the corner until I say come out lock you in your room until I say come out, you’re taking away their phone, you’re taking away their iPad, you’re externally controlling things. And it is from this like, you know, when you misbehave, when you are bad, there is a price to pay and by making you feel worse or making you feel the pain associated with your mistake, that’s what’s gonna actually make you behave better tomorrow.
And it’s just a false ideology, it doesn’t work. I mean if it does, it’s just because children are acting out of fear. And many times the long-term results of that is that fear goes away once they develop a confidence that someone can’t control them anymore. But over the years, I think having compassionate discipline versus punishment has created this trust where Stella can tell us the truth, she’s not gonna get in trouble. Yeah, there might be a learning activity involved. Yes, there might be a redo, yes, there might be a role play, yes there might be a makeup, yes, there might be a long discussion and she’s not gonna be in trouble, she’s not gonna be hurt, she’s not gonna be humiliated, she’s not gonna have her iPhone, she didn’t get an iPhone to high school, but she’s not gonna have her iPod taken away or iPod iPad taken away.
She’s not gonna be grounded. Like those type of things. So it’s opened up this respectful line of communication where she just knows she can trust us and we can trust her and she thrives in that empowered state. So I, I can tell, like I noticed it so much lately because it’s on my radar so much with seeing all these kids in our community, in her friendship group that her, their parents do not trust them. Like they, you can tell there is a heavy level of like they check their phones every night. Many of her, like she knows a lot of kids who are drug tested every week, her, her parents are going through drawers, closets, underneath beds.
And then when they get caught with something or when they get caught lying or there was an inappropriate text, whatever it may be, they get punished, they get their e-bike taken away, they get one kid lately, she’s now being sent to like another high school and she has to go live with grandma. I’m like, I feel so bad for grandma. Grandma’s like the punishment, that’s not cool. Grandma should be like the, Oh my gosh. But anyways, the trust factor is missing. So, but when you think about like classic teenagehood years, that is the like the common thing like parents think teens are gonna lie, lie and hide things from them. And we just have not been practicing that way of life for the last decade, 12 years with Stella.
Like we really have leaned into understanding that we, we trust her and if she lies, if she makes a mistake, we have many, many stories of over the years she comes to us and says, Hey, I made a mistake. Hey I lied. Like and it hasn’t happened many times but it’s like there actually is a conversation from it. Does that make sense? So nowadays I can tell if she even sniffs for a second that we’re not believing her about something, she kind of flares up like you can tell her body kind of like, what, what the heck mom? And really quickly I’m like, oh yeah, that’s right. Like we don’t do that. We don’t question our kid, we trust her fully.
And that leads to such empowerment that remember when you, when you, especially if you have strong-willed kids, you guys, when you pour into their need to feel powerful bucket, they will misbehave less. So yes, when your child feels empowered from like, Hey, I am powerful, my parents trust me, they feel like I’m capable. They don’t think they have to do it for me. They don’t think they have to check my phone to make sure I’m not doing inappropriate stuff. Like I get it you guys, we’ve had many, many tech experts on the show about cyber safety and all the things. However, like there is a trust element with children and I just am going to always be the one to teach you strategies that builds trust in your home so you don’t feel like you have to be the policeman of your kids.
If that makes sense. Okay? And then one of the other big things that has I think led to such beautiful long-term results is the unconditional love aspect. I think unconditional love leads to such a deep belonging. And so when I, I look at Stella and where she is now and and how she is so different than a lot of the kids her age. I think a lot of it has come to, she just knows she belongs in this family. Like she is not the black sheep of the fam sheep of the family. Now there have definitely been many, many situations where I’m like, dang it, some of the things I said to her when she was little, like over the years, some of the mistakes I’ve made where I’ve said shameful things, right?
Where I’ve like been like, dang it, why can’t you just be different or why do you have to be so difficult? Like there is plenty of moments you guys where I have said shitty things to Stella, especially that again, I, I’ve had, I had the honor to come back and make amends and explain my habits. Like I, I had a mom who said shame on you. Like that was the main thing, right? So it makes total sense why I’m still shaking that habit, why I’m still paving new neural pathways, right? And so I’ve had the honor to explain that to her. So there have been plenty of moments, you guys, there’s no perfection ever going on in my home or the homes of my students. And I will tell you that I know that Stella has also been told, you know, over and over again how much our family is like complete with her.
Like her personality, her strong, strong-willed go-getter, like type A put me in coach, I wanna be on the front lines. I’m the competitive. I want straight A’s. I can’t stand to come in second, you know, I’m gonna fight for what’s right. I have a huge justice button. I love to feel powerful. I love to lead, you know, I love for people to do, to follow along with what I say. I like to drive the bike. Like over the years, it’s always been so funny. Stella, when she was little she always liked to give wagon rides but she would never, ever, ever get in the wagon, ever. She always had to be the one who was controlling the wagon.
Now at 15, it’s so funny because a lot of times the kids will, they’ll like to go to like lunch or something. Like if she’s, if they’re gonna go down to the center on a weekend, they’ll hop on one bike and they’ll go down together. They’ll like, cuz the seats are big on these e-bikes and it’s so funny cuz even if they take another kid’s bike, they, Stella will still drive the bike. And Terry and I just think it’s so funny because it’s always been like that, but over the years we’ve, we’ve helped her realize like that is, that is you are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly and you have a place in this family. You inspire us so much, you help us be on time for things.
You inspire us to go for what we want. You inspire us to stand tall for when we, we see something that is like unfair in the world or if there is an injustice. Like we’ve just really worked hard to help her understand that she belongs deeply in this family. But a lot of strong-willed kids, you guys, they end up feeling like the black sheep because they’re always getting in trouble, they’re always getting corrected. They’re the ones getting punished. Like there’s a lot of families who have stories of the one kid that got spanked the most. Like I hear from a lot of families who are like, well I didn’t have to spank her that much but I had to spank him a lot, right? Like that will f with your head.
If you are a child and you’re growing up in a home where you are getting hurt, humiliated and like having suffering in like a pain and emotion, like a physical and emotional standpoint and then your sister never does, like I’m telling you, you become the black sheep so easily and then you have this very low sense of belonging. It’s like no one gets me. I don’t belong here. I hate this family. I’m gonna go search for belonging in other places. And remember like the core, like the core aspects, the foundation of what we teach here at Fresh Start Family, which we cover in module one of the Foundation’s Course is every single human being has a strong desire to feel powerful. They have a strong desire to belong.
Those are just two of the, the basic human needs that we teach here. But when your children feel like they belong in your family, no matter what their behavior is like on a day-to-day basis, when they feel like you fully unconditionally love them no matter what, when you feel like, when they feel like you get them, you understand them and that you’re on the same page as them, they will misbehave less. Okay? So trust me, like Stella is a normal teenager these days where, you know, if I drop off like Tylenol cuz she has cramps one day or something at school, she would prefer me to be like on the other side of the parking lot, right? Like she’s a normal teen.
Like, she’s like, mom go, you know, go over there. I don’t like, I don’t wanna whatever you, if you have teens or if you remember being a teen, right? My, my dad used to drive my grandma’s 67 yellow Chevy Nova when I was in eighth grade and I remember I used to ask him to drop me off across the street from my middle school and that was about the age when he started taking everything so personally. And he decided basically my mom has told me this later in life that he just decided that I hated him. And so I think that’s when it like a rift started between my dad and I where it was just like, it was hard to relate and connect because he had this idea that I like hated him and, and I was like this obnoxious teenager, blah blah blah.
And then I got this idea of like, my dad is distant, like he’s judgmental, like those type of things, right? So if you have a teenager, just remember it’s so common for teenager teenagers to have that type of behavior. It is literally normal human, healthy brain development when they are showing like all these ways that they’re embarrassed of you. But when I look at like our family and I see this happen in so many families that I coach and I teach inside my programs, but they create the belonging within their home. So for us, like this looks like all four of us. So Terrin, Stella, Terry and I we’re really into rock and roll. You probably heard us. We, we go to a lot of rock and roll shows, especially metal.
We’ve taken our kids to see Metallica Ireland. We’ve seen, gosh, this year alone we’ve probably seen, I don’t know, seven shows, we’ll probably see 10 big concerts by the end of the year, right? Like we all enjoy live music, we enjoy the art of it, we enjoy the show of it. Like we bond by doing that together. We also all love the ocean, we love nature, we love being physical, we love sports, we all have a strong faith. Like my kids are kids, right? But like we all love Jesus and we like helping others. We like making the world a better place and we just love having fun. I have in my notes here that we all love to party so we just try on a consistent basis to, to get a lot in common with our kids.
And so that’s been something that I think has given us long-term results because even if when the kids were little and we were like, oh my gosh, this is so weird that you’re into this. Or we always just tried to like humble ourselves and be like, sure, you know what? Like I remember when Stella was into this little, this clothing brand called Justice. Did any of you have girls that were into that brand or maybe they are now and it was the most obnoxious thing on the planet. Like emoji t-shirts and like, like fluffy. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, but I just remember being like, oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing. Like, but just realizing like, you know what, she’s really into this right now. So like how can we share in this with her?
Or when she was really into princess dresses, like that was in the beginning of my journey where I was like, my kid’s not gonna be the one that wears princess dresses everywhere. And I finally had like a friend say to me, Wendy, like maybe you just should relax. And like if she’s really into princess dresses right now, like do you understand that? Do you get that? Like she’s a little girl, you know? And I love bold friends like that who courageously point things out to you. She’s the same friend who pointed out to me that, you know, I should stop calling still a sassy cuz she was gonna start to own it. And she was so right. So anyways, so really that deep sense of belonging I think has created this long-term result that we’re just in awe of.
So I think as, as the years have progressed and I’ve witnessed some of the things that have happened in my daughter’s social circles, like I said, I just see a lot of kids seeking to feel powerful and feeling powerful in unhealthy ways. I see kids seeking to belong in unhealthy ways. Like the full gang mentality happens in teenagehood. If your child doesn’t feel like they belong in the home, like they gang up on each other, they also get belonging and partying, right? Like if you feel like your parents don’t get you and then you go out out and everyone’s getting high or everyone’s drinking and everyone’s like, but I feel like our, my daughter, I mean knock on wood, everything’s an experiment, you guys, right?
Like that’s what’s interesting about sharing when you share your life so openly like I do, you know, I really, I know that every day is an experiment and I’m not, I’m, I don’t share this stuff to be like, look at us like it’s worked and just follow my way. I just honestly want more children to like thrive in the world. And when I see a child thriving, it makes me so happy. Like when I see my daughter and successfully be able to go out and go to a party and not get annihilated wasted and actually be there to help her friends or like be the voice of reason when someone’s like, yay, we should do that.
We should hop on a bike or we should do this. Or nowadays in Southern California, like the whole risk of like kids taking pills is like a really big deal when you’re a teenager. Like it’s not like, oh great kids are now smoking weed. It’s like no kids when they’re seeking to feel power and they don’t belong, they are literally taking drugs that can kill them so fast, right? Like that are laced with fentanyl. So just seeing my kid be able to operate in the world where she still thrives in friendships and social settings and is able to hang out with anybody she freaking chooses to without having to act like them, think like them, talk like them, behave like them, it just feels so good.
And that’s why I kind of share this stuff with you. But I really do see like the way that these kids are operating in the world. There’s, there’s a lot of revenge misbehavior happening. I always teach you guys that for parents who use punishment, especially punishment is basically all based in this concept that in order to make my kids behave better, I must make them feel worse. But it’s also rooted in the feeling of hurt. So a lot of times when a child does something that is like, whoa, that was a big deal, like it often will embarrass a parent and the parent will feel hurt and instead of like processing that emotion in a healthy way, they will lay the smack down so fast back to make sure that kid knows like, you will not mess with me.
Like I am stronger, I am bigger, I can hurt you way more than you can hurt me. And this is, this is this cycle of revenge misbehavior. So revenge is really based in this concept that when I feel hurt, I must hurt back often because that is what’s been modeled to me. So I see the kids her age operating in this capacity and it’s so clear to me that they’ve probably had punishment done on them year after year after year after year. And then finally they get into these settings where they have the power to hurt someone. And in this weirdest way that doesn’t make sense, but it also does make sense to me as an educator.
They have the ability to hurt people and so they do revenge with behavior and they just get this sense of power and belonging in that. And so, yeah, I just see Stella doing it differently. I’ll give you an example. About six months ago she had a situation happen where she had a group of friends. I actually took them to like an amazing weekend event to celebrate the graduation from eighth grade. We went to a rollercoaster park and I just got to full on witness and like full like firsthand knowledge, right? Like I always tell my students, Hey, you know, be careful when you’re, or use be full of care. I should say. When your kids tell you about something that happened, remember that like you weren’t there, right?
So unless you actually witness something happening, just be really careful how much you’ve come down on other children, how much you blame other children, right? How much you speak poorly about other people, especially children. We do this a lot where we’re like, oh my gosh, that is so mean. But a lot of times we don’t see it, right? And sometimes our kids can exaggerate or not tell you the whole story, right? Especially if they’re not well versed in taking responsibility for their own mistakes and contributions without shame. But the point is, this weekend that we spent together with my daughter and four of her best friends at the time, I witnessed everything. I witnessed every phone call, I witnessed every interaction at the roller co rollercoaster park.
We stayed two nights in a hotel. I witnessed every single, like everything I witnessed with my own eyes, the behaviors and what had happened. And it was awful. It was awful the way these girls talked to each other, the way they, they like, I mean I felt like I was hanging out with a bunch of toddlers. I was like literally what is happening? And looking back, I always think that God’s in everything is my opinion. And I just think it, it was time for my daughter to depart from this group. And so, you know, I’d never thank God that God does anything. He doesn’t make bad things happen. However, when shitty things happen, I feel very firm in my beliefs that God will use those things for good if you allow him to.
And so what happened after that weekend is all of her friends basically ditched her. So they had some arguments, there was some like really weird things that went down. Stella had to be at like a volleyball tournament super early one morning at like 7:00 AM So she wanted to go to bed early, the girls would not go to bed, they were just like calling her names and all these things. So, but after that weekend they ditched her. They were like, peace out, we’re not your friend anymore. You’re annoying, you’re high maintenance. Like blah, blah blah. And so after that, basically it was like, it was a rocky four months, but now here we are in high school and she has a completely different set of friends for the most part. And so it, it was one of those times where you’re like, okay, God, thank you for getting us through that tough season and thank God she’s found new friends now.
Like maybe it was just what needed to happen in order to say goodbye to those friends. But the point is, during that whole thing I watched her and I heard her the way she handled the peaceful comp negotiation or peaceful conflict resolution afterwards when she was trying to make amends with this set set of girls. And you know, there were conversations that I would hear in passing, like, I would, like, there was one night she had her phone on speaker and I was just going into the, the kitchen to like get my water and go to bed for the night. And I did stop for like a quick second because I just like thought, okay, I just wanna make sure, you know, I just wanna, I, I was not snooping. But at the same time I did, I did stop to listen for just one second cuz I just was curious, right?
And the way my daughter was leading the conversation and saying like, Hey, this is how I feel. This is what I want and this is what I take responsibility for. I realize that my tone or my behavior or whatever I did, like I’m here to say that I apologize for that and I think we can move on from that. And these girls were like, hell no, no, we’re done with you. You’re annoying, you’re high maintenance. And then when she would share things like I feel sad, they would be like, oh you a baby, you feel sad ’cause you’re a baby. And I was just like, dang, these girls are ruthless. Ruthless. And so basically like I just got to witness her trying with all her heart to create this situation where they could move past the conflict that they had.
They could make amends, they could repair the relationship and they could just like, you know, like move on and they were just not having it. So it was really interesting. So interesting and painful as a mom to watch for sure. But the biggest deal I think I learned from that weekend is just how different I could see Stella operated in the world. So I could really see that she had this desire to really like, take care of her body that weekend in ways that these other girls had never been taught or just had never learned. So for example, I mentioned it earlier, but she had a volleyball tournament really early and just wanted to get enough rest.
She’s always been a kid that like wants to get enough rest so she knows she’s gonna feel good the next day. And they wanted to stay up till like three, 4:00 AM She was able to like make sure she was hydrating her body that weekend. It was like 104 degree heat in LA and she was rem like she would remember and ask the kids like, Hey, can we go fill up our water bottles cuz I, I gotta make sure that I stay hydrated. And they would just either make fun of her or refuse and be like, whatever, we’re fine. But it was just something I I saw all weekend long was there was this difference. Another thing I noticed after that weekend was just that she had this ability to be kind, respectful and ma and mature with adults and other parents.
And of course that weekend those kids were all with me. But then after that weekend, it really started to, or it’s really started to realize that that was a big difference. Like she’s able to hold conversations with, with adults and always treat other parents with respect. Whereas these kids, you could tell, I mean they were putting on a happy face to treat me with respect, but I could feel like when I closed the door or when they closed the door that there, it was not a high level of respect or you know, there just wasn’t a lot of gratitude and there just wasn’t a super, it just wasn’t very mature when it came to how they were dealing with me.
And we see this also with like, when we have friends over and stuff, you can just tell the kids who have been raised in these homes, in these environments where they’re treated with respect and like expected to be mature and given a high sense of empowerment. They’re just able to show respect and hang with adults a lot easier. I also witnessed her ability to have peaceful conflict resolution talks afterwards, which again, just did not seem to be a high ability in that circle of friends that she was working with. So whether it was like conversations afterwards about like, hey, you know, as I mentioned earlier, it’s like, hey, I’m sorry I’ll take responsibility for what I did.
How about you take responsibility for what you did? Let’s move on. You could just sense that the, the conversations were very one-sided and there was even times where I know that they made fun of her for handling the conflict in the way that she did. Also, I witnessed that there was a lack of revenge behaviors or biting back. And so you could really see that my daughter had this ability to feel hurt without hurting back again. Where I just kept witnessing them over and over doing revenge things on each other from what they would say. Like, you know, if they would call each other an idiot or sometimes they would smack each other in the back of the head on the car ride and if they got mad at each other, there was definitely like this revengeful type behavior.
And then of course we saw it after we got home and just wasn’t being mimicked with Stella. And then her ability to just actually open up and talk about the whole situation was a big deal. And I, I, I know is a difference than a lot of what that group was experiencing when they go through challenges. And then also lastly, the thing I have in the notes here is just I witnessed her ability to, to have grace, compassion, and forgiveness with these girls without being a doormat. And so that again, was hard to witness because you know, I’ve mentioned before a few times, we’re a family that we really like peace and love and kindness and respect are like high on the totem pole for us.
And you know, we look to Jesus as our ultimate role model. And you know, we’re also a little punk rock where we do not like to be like nobody does, right? But as my favorite sweatshirt says, we do know harm, but we also take no shit. So watching my daughter navigate that, it was a lot for me to sit back and just watch it without feeling like I needed to, to intervene at times. But I could tell that she had this very strong ability to forgive and to have compassion and give grace, whereas that was definitely not being returned on the other side of this conflict with this group of five girls, if that makes sense.
So it all, it all actually was really cool the way it worked out. All of these girls ended up, you know, about a month after they completely ditched her and said, you know, we never wanna be friends with you again. We’re done with you. They all came back, they all said we’re so sorry. We acted really out of, you know, reacted like, you know, teenage words. And they all like, basically were like, will you forgive us in the end? And they all wanted to be friends again. Now thank God most of them went to a separate school. She’s not friends with them anymore. She still hangs out with, with one friend. One ended up just really kind of going down a spiral and, and continuing to get in a lot of trouble and just kind of heartbreaking. But I think as, as I mentioned earlier, it all seemed like it was meant to be like God really used that opportunity just to help her move on in her friendship group.
But definitely at the end of the day, you know, the point of telling that story is to just let you know that I could see the long term results of the way we’ve chosen to parent her very, very clearly in that weekend where there was so much conflict, so much kind of what felt like chaos so much, so much disagreements and just, it was just so in my face. So I don’t know about you, but for me, forgiveness and compassion is one of the bi biggest elements I wanna teach my children. And strong-willed kids are notoriously famous for their cactus or kind of hard shell, but I’m telling you that when you use compassion, empathy, connection, and forgiveness long-term with your kids, you then see them use it flawlessly when real life struggles happen in the world.
And so I hope that makes sense, but that was one of the coolest takeaways was just like, wow, this is a kid that might like, have a super hard shell from the exterior, especially as we’re, we’re her parents. Like we just, we’ve always called her like she’s our hard ass kid. Like she’s just like, what’s up? You know, she doesn’t candy coat things. She’s like, she will tell you what she’s feeling. She goes for what she wants. All the things that I know you guys understand if you have a strong-willed kids kid, but then at the core of her is this forgiving, compassionate, empathetic, incredibly kind human being who knows how to forgive and forget and is well practiced in it, right?
Because she’s had parents who have forgiven her and given her grace and compassion over and over and over again in her life. Okay, so this conversation is definitely obviously a great example for like long-term results with girls. And I’m giving you, you know, a 12 year trajectory of what I’m seeing the results like come to as far as my daughter goes. But this definitely, you know, this happens for boys too. Of course I noticed it when in my son, especially with peaceful conflict resolution, he had something happen about six months ago, or actually it was a little bit longer than that because it was in his fifth grade year of school.
He’s now in sixth grade. But there was a full, full blown fist fight on the recess grounds one day. So Terrin started to play a lot of football this last year and they started to play football every single day. And they had a group of fifth graders and they had a group of sixth graders. And the sixth graders were notorious for just being like super jerky to the fifth graders. And they would do things, some sometimes that, you know, were super unkind. And so one day they started fighting, they started yelling at each other and something happened where fists started to get thrown, which obviously is a super common thing with boys. And again, something that we’re really working diligently here at Fresh Start Family to change that narrative to help young men feel powerful and strong and courageous in ways other than just using their fist and their muscles.
And this like whole rhetoric that has been fed to many, many men over many, many generations that if you can kick someone’s ass, then you’re a real man, man up, right? So anyways, they had this conflict and he was telling me the story later and I was like, gosh, wow, what happened? And he’s like, I don’t know, but so-and-so got punched. I saw him afterwards and he didn’t have a black eye, but his whole face was swollen. And I was like, oh my gosh, what happened? Tell me more. Like who swung the punches or whatever. And he goes, I don’t know mom, I wasn’t there. I went to Mrs. Grasley’s class like right away to go talk to her about like what we can do to get, like to work this out. And then by the time I left they started throwing punches.
So he had diligent, like he had thoughtfully and intentionally looked at the situation and said, all right, like we need some support here and we’re gonna go find our, so her, her name is Mrs. Grasley, we’ve had her on the show before. She is incredible. She’s like our full-time social emotional literacy teacher. She was back in like the first 10 episodes of Fresh StartFamily Show. You can Google it if you wanna hear more about what she teaches in our school system. But he had gone to her to say, okay, can you help us peacefully solve this conflict because it’s getting really heightened. And by the time he came back they had already thrown punches. But that just was cool to hear that he was like seeking, seeking to use a win-win agreement with all these boys.
We call it Win-Win or Peaceful Conflict Resolution. It’s kind of terms that we use simultaneously here at Fresh Start Family. And then I’ve also seen over the years he’s had friends over more so when he was little, but if they’re playing Legos or something and they don’t wanna, they don’t get their way or there’s an argument that comes up, right? The, a lot of times the little boys that we’re visiting would be like, fine, that’s it. Like I don’t wanna be your friend anymore. I wanna go home. And so that’s, that’s an example of like a revenge tactic. It’s like I’m done with you and it’s giving up. It’s very, it’s like an example of how a lot of times we become very uncomfortable with conflict if we’re not trained in and like normalized that conflict happens and we can, we are capable of solving what solving it, you know, it’s also like I’ve just never seen him do that out in the world or at home, wherever it may be.
And I really do tie that to be a long-term result of never being threatened by his parents. So kids that threaten other people usually have a history of being threatened at home. So that’s an example of a long-term result there. I also think I’ve witnessed in him and like all of this goes to the same with my students. So we have students from all over the world in our private support community and in our Foundation’s Course and we have this huge success story document this Google doc that’s, that’s around 800 pages now. But I know that that document is just littered with these stories too. But these kids, they don’t like Terrin, they just don’t engage in the name calling.
So especially around sports abilities or bodies you know, that you see a lot of little boys do, whether it’s fat, ugly, stupid. And I think again, it’s a, it’s a long-term result of the parenting because you know, I think parents lose their cool and they say things to their kids that are super hurtful. I know an example is I’ve seen or yeah, well we were at a shopping well together, but you know, she may have thought she was joking, but this was when Stella was 13. We had gone back to school shopping with her and her friend’s, her and her friend and her mom, and they got into like a slight argument and it was playful but at the same time kind of serious.
And she called her a jerk face and it was like, oh, okay, so I get it. We all have our reactive moments, but I could tell that this was probably, if that’s what someone was doing in public, then there’s a good chance that behind closed doors things are being on said on a consistent basis. Even if it’s things like you are acting like an entitled brat right now. Or you know, I’m not gonna let you get away with being so mean or you are so mean, right? Like if you’re saying those things to your kid, know that I can help you change that pattern. You don’t need to say those things to your kids to get them to listen better or cooperate or stop doing whatever misbehavior they’re doing.
Hey there, families pausing for a quick moment because I wanna check in with you and ask your question: are you on our email list and have you grabbed our most popular learning guide, How to Raise Strong-Willed Kids with Integrity? It is the educational document that gets downloaded the most here at Fresh Start Family, and I created it to help those of you who are raising strong-willed kids and pulling out your hair some days because your kids seem to say no way more than they say yes. Or maybe they push your buttons a lot or challenge boundaries and rules more than you’d like to admit. And you just need some support and some new ideas on how to work with them.
So I’m gonna teach you in this free downloadable PDF that is easy to read and I’m gonna give you some prompts, some new ways to look at them, some new ways to think about how you’re approaching them, ask you questions about if things are working, if they’re not working. And I’m gonna give you some new ideas on some strategies and some tools that you can put in place this Holiday season to make the holidays more enjoyable so you’re actually feeling like you’re connecting with these strong-willed kids. Okay? So I want you to hop on over to the website when this episode is done, freshstartfamilyonline.com/strongwilledkids, and you can grab your free copy, okay. That’ll get you started with learning. It’ll help you understand some of the strategies and the tools that we teach here at Fresh Start Family, especially when it comes to strong-willed kids.
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Those are just some examples. I have so many more stories from Stella obviously cuz you know, I’ve been doing this work with Stella now for 12 years, right? Terrin was actually born into this work, so he’s now almost 12, I guess I’ve been doing the work well just as long with him. But you know, he’s my more easygoing kid. So I feel like a lot of my stories are with Stella and especially when I’m talking about this idea of the gift of long-term results. Because I just think with her being almost 15 years old, we are clearly seeing the fruits of the labor. Okay? But here’s the point, you guys inside many of the lessons inside our B-onfire support community and all the time on live feeds and in student submitted success stories, I share about the moments where you think, my gosh, is my child like even hearing me?
Like are you even freaking listening, right? Like how many times have you set your kid down and been like, look in my eyes, like you’re not listening to me. Like you need to listen. Like they’re not even learning like that type of stuff, right? And I promise you, like I promise you, you have to trust me. Like even in those moments when you’re thinking like does this kindness and compassion discipline stuff like even work and then I swear there’s gonna be a day when you’re fully entrenched in this work and you’re actually like really practicing it in your home. You actually have a support system. Maybe you invested in a in invested in a coach like me or a program like the ones we offer here at Fresh Start Family.
But after you’ve been practicing the stuff for a while, you will start to have these pockets where of situations that happen that pop up where you’re like, dang, not only are they listening, but all of a sudden they’re gonna say something or do something that you’re like, oh my gosh, they have been soaking in every single thing that I’ve taught them. An example is we see this happen a lot when parents move from using a punishment model in their home into compassionate discipline and then all, and, and by that you know, I mean they’re teaching their kids important life lessons through role plays, redos, makeups, those type of things, logical consequences.
And then all of a sudden, you know, maybe four, six months down the road they’re their child will make a mistake and then bef like maybe the parent walks away to do some self-regulation because they used to slap a wrist or slam a door or shame their kid. But now they’re actually like calming themselves down before they teach. But they’ll walk away to do that. And then before they even have to go back and teach a lesson so to speak, their child will come to them and apologize or do a makeup for their sister without even being prompted. Or their child will have gone and calmed down and then come back and fully taken responsibility for the mistake without lying or covering it up.
Or you’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna see things like where there’s a day where you know you’re gonna be like, oh my gosh, I just watched my kids in like your sibling kids, brothers, sisters who used to fight like cats and dogs and then you’ve been teaching, teaching, teaching, you’ve been using this work and then all of a sudden you watch them have an argument and then they walk away from each other and then they come back together and actually resolve their problem with respect. You know? Or you, you’ll see there’s situations where you’re like, oh my gosh, I remember there was a time where I had been teaching Stella and modeling, like trying my best to model it because it took me a while to learn how to self like calm myself down.
So for a while I was telling Stella, you need to calm down, you need to calm down, you need to calm down, but not actually showing her. And then I went to the Freedom to Be Life Coaching weekend course, which I now teach. The next time we’ll teach that is in February. You can join the wait list freshstartfamilyonline.com/freedomcourse. But I went to that program, I came home, I was like a new person and I actually started modeling self calming really well. And so I’d been teaching her for a while and then I finally started modeling it really well. And I’ll never forget the day that, you know, we had a chart for like months where it was like, here’s what you can do to calm down. You can take a deep breath, you can walk outside to get nature like the wind and the birds in your ear.
You can draw, you can do all these things, but you can’t hit your brother, you can’t pull the dog’s tail. Like you can’t throw things, right? You can’t bite like those. That was the lesson. And it just felt like, oh my gosh, it’s Groundhog’s day. Like I’ve taught you this a million times. And then one day and, and something else we had on her chart was that she could go in her and she could go sleep because we taught her that. A lot of times when you are really grouchy or you’re having trouble keeping your hands to yourself, it’s just that you’re tired, you’re either tired, you’re hungry, you’re thirsty, sometimes you’re getting sick. Those are the four things that we teach usually are like hap like the precursors to tantrums or you feel powerless.
That’s another thing that’s a precursor to tantrums. But we taught her from an early age at like, you gotta take care of your body. So if you, if you’re freaking out, if I’ve asked you to go calm down, then one of the things on your chart is that you can go take a nap or you can go lay down and just let your body rest even if it’s for five minutes. And so there was two instances that I was like, dang, I was floored one day I came in, I hadn’t seen her in a while, she was gone for like, you know, 20 minutes or something. Finally I calmed down and I didn’t hear her. And so I walked up into her room and she was asleep. She had gone into her room, put herself under her blanket. I think she was like five at this time.
And she had put herself to sleep. Like it was a lesson that I had taught her over and over again, right? And then to see her finally do that and then fast forward 10 years and she’s the kid who’s like, I need to make sure my body’s hydrated. I need to make sure I get enough rest. And also when I’m at a party, I’m not gonna do shots of vodka cuz I know that it’s super sketchy. Like it’s super sketchy. I rode my e-bike, like I’m not, I’m not gonna like disrespect my body, right? Like that you can see, can you see the like long term results there and the lessons that happen over time. There’s plenty other stories that I share about teaching Stellas self calming, teaching, teaching, teaching.
And then finally modeling, modeling, modeling and then over and over again finally watching her follow through with her own self calming. There was another time when I had taught my kids, you know, we were trying, I was trying my best, this was probably, I had been, no, I had known, I had been doing positive parenting work and probably had just started teaching at this time, but I came in the bath in the bathroom one night and Terrin was in the bath and he had this pattern, him and Stella both of pouring the expensive organic bubble bath out and it would drive me nuts. And so one day I came in and he had poured the whole thing of Honest Company. It was like the big bottle too, you know, those bottles are like $20.
And he had poured it all, poured it all out and there was bubbles everywhere. And I’ll never forget his like little joyous face. And I at this point had been teaching him like, mistakes are just opportunities to learn. He had probably heard me tell Stella that 1 million times cuz she just had a tendency to get, you know, a lot of misbehavior redirection because she was my beautiful strong-willed girl and he was just more like the mellow toddler at the time. So he had heard it a million times. He had seen me teach her a million times mistakes or opportunities to learn. And I came in and I just freaked out. I yelled at him and I’ll never forget it was like that a moment where I yelled at him so bad that he like shook and he started crying.
Do any of you have kids like that? Like Stella was never that kid. If you yelled at her and like put your finger in her face, she would rise up and basically like, like, I don’t know, try to punch you back or whatever. Like she was, she would not back down, but Terrin, if you yelled at him, like he would just collapse in tears. And I just remember feeling so bad and I just walked into my bedroom, I slammed the door. Stella was probably in my bath, he was in the other bath cuz I used to have to separate ’em cuz they fought like cats and dogs always, not anymore, but they used to. And I just collapsed into my bed and I just cried. And I was like, literally, who am I?
And, and again, I think I was teaching at this time because then the guilt and the shame was like double, right? Like we just finished a full seven month intensive mentorship program with seven women who just graduated a few days ago at the time of this recording from my Become a Parenting Coach program. And my goodness am I so inspired by these women, I just cannot wait to see what they do with their coaching certification as they spread the Fresh Start Family approach into the world in so many homes across the planet. It’s really inspiring. By the way, that program will start again in the spring of 2023. So if you’re interested in that seven month intensive mentorship program with me and a very small group of parents to become certified in the Fresh Start Family approach, you can go to freshstartfamilyonline.com/becomeaparentingcoach to join that wait list.
But you know, I counsel those girls on just remember like when you start teaching, you’re going to probably have a temptation to be double hard on yourself because not only are you just a normal imperfect human parent who sometimes loses your cool, but now you’re a teacher, so who the hell are you to be teaching others? Like that’s the inside voice, right? That you’ll hear when you make a mistake. So I had this double guilt going and I just cried and I was like, man, all right. And so I walked back into the bathroom and I was like, buddy, will you please forgive me? I’m so sorry I should not have yelled at you. You did not deserve that. You just made a mistake. And you know, we might have to do some extra jobs to make up the money to buy that bubble bath back, but you know, I really like, will you forgive me?
I really didn’t. I did, I shouldn’t have yelled at you and something like that. And he just, I remember he just looked straight at me and he was like, mama, it’s okay. Mistakes are just opportunities to learn – like in this little voice. And then he said to me, everybody makes mistakes, mama. And I was just like, dang, this kid is digesting everything that I’m teaching. And you better believe that now at the age of 12 years old, like there have and, even like, I think back to a few years ago, there was a kid who had like, so many behavioral problems that actually like punched Terrin one day. There was, there was a kid who bit him.
I remember there was a little girl I think that, that those are both kindergarten and first grade and he was just so forgiving. He was so willing to forgive and forget and show compassion and not be a doormat at the same time. But I don’t know that, that, those are just some examples that come to mind when I think of Terrin and how I can tell like the long-term effects for him or just really, really strong, you know, they’re, they’re in similar ways, but, and they’re also in different ways. So anyways, the more you practice this work, the long term results, you’re gonna see that your children, for example, will like speak up for a child who’s maybe being bullied on the block or they’ll repeat something you’ve said to them a million times and you never thought they were listening.
But then you’ll hear them say it in like a public setting to either their siblings, like they’ll say or, or you know, their neighbors or like in a play date. They’ll just say it with ease and confidence and you’ll realize like, wow, I’m raising the kid who’s actually bringing peace to the world. Like I, I did that, like I chose intentionally to use strategies based in connection, mutual respect, and firm kindness, and it worked right? Or you’ll see like your kids do a makeup for somebody that wasn’t prompted. We have a Bonfire mama, her name’s Rachel, and one time her kids, she had told them not to play on the iPad, something about like not playing on her iPad, and they did it anyways, they made a mistake and afterwards she thought the keys were broken.
It turned out that they were like, something was on, like on caps lock, there was a button pushed, but she thought when she caught them that, that they had broken this iPad of her. So she was really upset and she went to take a calming break and she was like, I just, you know, everyone needs to separate and everyone needs to go calm down. I’m so upset. And within like, I don’t know, 30 minutes or something, the kids had come back and they said, mama, you know, we’d like to do this makeup for you. And I think they had even come up with ideas on how they can raise money to like get the iPad fixed and like we’re thanking her and asking her if they would please, she would please forgive them. Like that kind of stuff. And she just said her heart melted because to many of us, like, you know, forgiveness and compassion when there’s human mistakes is way more important than thinking we need to raise these perfect kids who have instant obedience and never mess up.
Like it’s just not reality, you guys, it’s, it’s just not gonna happen. I hate to break it to you. So in our world, we enjoy getting well versed in being like being able to forgive and show grace, over thinking like, okay, what are we gonna do today that’s gonna create perfect children tomorrow? So I love that story and it turns out that the keys weren’t even broken, right? So in the end it was all actually just one big learning practice for how these kids can take responsibility for their mistake. And then that just gives them also data to know that we should listen to our mom, right? Like we, we didn’t listen, we made a mistake. There was, there was something bad that happened and our mom didn’t chew us out and hurt us and humiliate it and, and cause suffering on us physically and emotionally.
So now as a child, I’m able to take responsibility without shame and actually change my behavior tomorrow. Okay? But this kind of stuff happens all the time. You guys, where all of a sudden you just see the long-term effects happening. And again, those of you who are early in your journey, you just have to, trust me, you’re not drinking Kool-Aid. I know sometimes you’re gonna be like, crap, this isn’t even working. My kid’s still hitting his brother, or my kid is still getting in trouble in the classroom or still pushing on the soccer field, whatever it may be. But you, you just trust me, there are no band-aids. Like there are no magic pills in life. If you think of anything, whether it’s getting a healthy mind, body, and spirit, or building a home that you wanna live in the rest of your life, like it’s gonna take some time.
Like you have to be rooted in like a strong foundation and faith in your vision. Okay? So the discipline and strategies we use and rely on in positive parentings, they do sometimes take a bit longer to air quote, see their results. And by that I mean instead of just share scaring the shit out of our kids that they’re gonna get punished if they don’t put the iPad down. Yes, you may need five extra minutes to use power struggle dissolving strategies, okay? But you will get your kid to put the iPad down. You’re just gonna do it with respect and true power. And then in 10 years you’re going to email me and be like, holy smokes, Wendy, I see my kid now doing that out in the world instead of threatening to punch someone in the face, right?
Like it’s just, it works, it works, it works. And sometimes it’s gonna, it’s gonna require you to be five minutes late to the dentist appointment. Sometimes it’s gonna require you to cancel the play date, okay? I want you to have confidence that when you do that and you spend time teaching in the ways that we teach you, you are investing in the future of your children, okay? Because these things, they stack and they stack and they stack and they stack. And before long you have a child that is really freaking different. Not because you spent their child entire childhood getting really good at not taking any crap from them or showing them whose boss through constant threats of things like spanking or popping or taking away their favorite toy or tech device or video games or tv, whatever it is.
But because you poured into relationship with them and used compassionate discipline to teach with responsiveness, not reactivity, okay? So just to review, these are some of the things that I believe are the gifts, the gift of long-term results. When you trust and use positive parenting in your home, number one, you’re gonna have open communication with your kids, children that tell you the truth and don’t hide stuff. You’re gonna have kids who admit fault and mistakes without shame and then know how to make amends, repair relationships and learn from their mistakes.
You’re gonna have children who know how to take care of their own body and listen to their heart, their mind, and their physical bodies too. You’re gonna have kids who have strong emotional literacy, the ability to know what anger, sadness, hurt, scared, and happy, feel like, and understand that these feelings are created from within in response to our experiences in life. And they are not something to be blamed on other people. People, you’re gonna have kids who adhere to limits and rules and boundaries because they want to and because they know the value of staying inside the fence because they’ve learned important life lessons from you. You’re gonna have kids who resist peer pressure like bosses and still can’t hang out with whoever friends they choose to without joining the gang or matching other behaviors just to fit in.
You’re gonna have kids who believe in themselves and have high self-confidence, but are also humble and vulnerable. You’re gonna have children who stand up against injustice and who aren’t scared of conflict. You’re gonna have kids who are fluent and peaceful, conflict resolution. You’re gonna have children who process the feeling of hurt with integrity and don’t engage in revenge misbehavior. You’re gonna have children who feel like they belong in your homes and inside your family units. You’re gonna have kids who feel like they are respected and empowered by their parents, and you’re gonna have kids who are trustworthy and kids who never give up on their dreams.
Okay, so you guys, I hope this is just a huge jolt of confidence and motivation and inspiration as you head into this holiday season to know that yes, you’re gonna give your gifts, your kids some really great gifts this holiday season, and the best gift you can give them is to really immerse yourself in learning, okay? In the new year, we always do a five year learning challenge that really gets you just refreshed, right? It’s a new year, there’s always the best energy as New Year’s happen, and it’s just a great time to commit yourself to learning and applying this work into your life, to really saying and raising your hand and saying, this is important to me.
I believe that the hard work that I do today is going to be have massive long-term benefits for my children, for my family, and I’m gonna show up, I’m gonna show up to educate myself, to listen to some new ideas, to challenge myself, to think differently, to act differently, to discipline differently. Like all these things. Just know that you are giving your family and yourself and your kids the biggest gift ever when you do that. So keep your eyes open. If you’re not on the email list, make sure you get on the email list. You can just head over to the homepage, freshstartfamilyonline.com. We always have a really great free learning guide for you to grab over there, or free workshop that’s happening.
We’ll open up registration for the challenge usually in mid-January. So just keep your, your eyes peeled. We usually send out emails and then we will of course be letting you guys know on the podcast too. But come make sure you do that with us, okay? And in the meantime, just have a wonderful holiday season and just know that every single minute of every single day that you continue to learn, you continue to expand your heart, learn new tools, and strengthen your family through this work you are giving your kids the best gift ever that will result in beautiful long-term results. All right, families, thanks so much for listening. Until next time.
All right, families, that is a wrap, but before we part ways for the day, I have a question for you. Do you follow me over on Instagram yet? If not, will you come find me and say hello? I’m @FreshStartWendy and I love to create a ton of free educational tips and resources for you guys on Instagram, so it’s a great place to come hang out with me, send me a DM after you follow my account and just say hello. I really think it’s a great way to get to know so many of you and we can chat a little bit in the DMs. I’m even, I’m known to send some voice memos here and there when you guys have questions or are just letting me know how our work has helped you and your family.
So I would love to connect with you over there. And as always, we welcome shares. If you have been really enjoying this episode or any of the Fresh, Start Family Show episodes that you’ve been listening to lately, go ahead and just screenshot right now on your phone and head over to Instagram and just share to your stories, letting your friends and family know how much you are really enjoying our podcast. And it just really helps us out when you do that. And again, it gives us a way to connect over on that platform. So I can get to know you and your family a little bit, so head on over, share on Instagram inside your stories, making sure that you’re posting me or that you are tagging me, I should say, @FreshStartWendy.
And I really look forward to connecting with you guys over there. All right, well as always, thanks for listening, you guys. I am so grateful to each and every one of you who supports our shows and who cares so deeply about your families. I’ll see you in the next episode.
For links and more info about everything we talked about in today’s episode, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/150.
Stella:
For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening, families, have a great day.
