In this Valentine’s Day episode of the Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy discusses why fresh starts are the best way to love yourself more deeply and the power of beginning anew. She emphasizes the strength and wisdom in adopting a motto of consistently starting fresh, challenging the perception that it is a sign of weakness or failure.
Tune in to hear Wendy talk about the power of self-compassion & its significance from an emotional, spiritual, and scientific standpoint, and how it contributes to one’s ability to change.
Wendy introduces three key steps to living a life that embraces fresh starts:
- finding compassion for oneself, especially in the darkest moments
- understanding the ‘why’ behind one’s current parenting style / habits
- and educating oneself for growth
She also delves into the neuroscience behind self-compassion, the interplay between self-compassion and treating children with kindness, and the role of cultural norms in parents’ punitive reactions.
You’ll also hear Wendy discuss the importance of knowing how you got here, which dives deeper into the WHY behind so many parents’ reactive patterns, limiting beliefs, or overpowering patterns.
This episode also includes a beautiful discussion around the conditioning of our nervous systems from childhood experiences and the cultural prevalence of punishment models in parenting.
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Episode Highlights:
- Fresh starts and beginning again are signs of strength and intelligence, not weakness or failure.
- Developing self-compassion is key to changing parenting habits and nurturing one’s ability to handle challenges constructively.
- Understanding the ‘why’ is crucial, including the influence of strong-willed children, conditioned nervous system responses, and cultural norms on parenting.
- Educating oneself is the transformative step towards reshaping one’s parenting approach, with numerous resources available for learning and growth.
- Building a new family legacy involves dedication to positive change, inner healing, and consistent effort.
Resources Mentioned:
Fresh Start Family’s Firm and Kind Parenting Blueprint
Freedom to Be Weekend Course
Quick Start Learning Bundle: DM the word “freedom” to Wendy on Instagram at @freshstartwendy
Episode 199 with Shauna Shapiro on Compassion as a Superpower: https://freshstartfamilyonline.com/199
Wendy’s viral IG reel on our nervous system
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
0:00:36 – (Wendy): Well, hey there, listeners, 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. Happy Valentine’s Day. The day of the release of this episode is actually Valentine’s Day here in America. Is that a holiday that is celebrated worldwide? I feel like it’s a little bit of an american been created consumer holiday, but consumerism holiday, but that’s okay. I love Valentine’s Day because it celebrates love. And I am all about peace and love with a bit of a rebellious heart around here at fresh start family. So I’m so happy that you are here. Today.
0:01:17 – (Wendy): We are going to be talking about why fresh starts are the best way to love yourself more deeply. So really, the power of a fresh start, obviously, fresh start. Wendy. Fresh start family is my company. I am so passionate about just instilling confidence in parents that you can make a pivot and begin again and have a fresh start at any point in your life, any second of the day, any minute of the day, any week of the month, any day of the year is a beautiful chance to begin again. I actually just ordered a new t shirt from one of my favorite t shirt companies called the Bee and the Fox. I love their shirts so much. And this new beautiful little t shirt just says, begin again.
0:02:11 – (Wendy): And so I thought it would be fun to record an episode today for you guys to enjoy the week of Valentine’s Day because I want to just talk about why a fresh start is so important and why beginning again and really having a motto that it is wise and really smart to start again. Right. Beginning again, having that motto be consistent, just realizing that that makes you strong, not weak, and makes you smart, not failing. Because I just work with so many parents across the world who have a tendency to have the thought pattern of, like, why am I still doing this? Or I should know better by now, or why is this still so challenging? Whether it’s mindset or moving into compassionate discipline when they have, like, a knee jerk reaction to punish or shame or whatever.
0:03:08 – (Wendy): And really, I want to start off with helping you guys understand, really, the steps, understanding the why. And before we do that, let’s actually review what I’m going to cover today. Number one, so there are steps to begin again. There are actual step by step things you can do to live a life where you are fully believing in the power of a fresh start. And so let’s cover those first, and then I’ll go into each of those individually. So number one is you want to be able to find compassion for yourself quite often as a parent, as a human, as a wife, husband, sister, brother, person of faith in all areas of life, like, how do we build compassion, self compassion, and we’re going to talk about the power of that.
0:03:56 – (Wendy): Number two, you want to understand the why, like, really understanding the facts about how did you get here. If you are a parent, for example, who is realizing that you have some behaviors that you’d like to change and that your kids may be replicating, little kids of ours are such mirrors. And you realize, like, man, I’m really reactive or I’m really a people pleaser or I really jump to conclusions or have aggressive tendencies, right? Like all that kind of stuff. But I want you to be able to understand why that’s happening and how you got there, and that’s going to help you have self compassion. So we’re going to talk about that, and then we’re going to talk about the importance of educating yourself. So those are the steps.
0:04:48 – (Wendy): Find compassion if you want to begin again and have this, like, live this life of understanding the power of a fresh start. Number one, find compassion. Number two, understand the why. How’d you get to where you are right now as you are learning to begin again each moment of this life? And then, number three, educate yourself. All right, so let’s first start off with finding compassion. Finding compassion. Oh, my goodness.
0:05:16 – (Wendy): This is so important from both really an emotional and a spiritual point, but really also from a scientific viewpoint. I want you guys to understand. We did a podcast episode with my friend Shauna Shapiro. Let me actually find out which episode this was. She’s been on the fresh start family show twice. But our last episode we did was around teaching kids, actually, about how self compassion is a superpower. So it was actually episode 199.
0:05:52 – (Wendy): So you can just head to freshshirtfamilyonline.com 199 if you want to listen to that one. But Shauna is actually a mindfulness expert, but she’s also a professor who brings in a lot of neuroscience around how the brain works. So she’s a bestselling author, clinical psychologist, and expert in mindfulness and self compassion. But in that episode, you’ll hear us talk so much about how the brain is so plastic.
0:06:22 – (Wendy): It is able to pivot and learn and change and develop new skill sets. And the biggest contributing factor of if a parent is able to change the way that they want to is whether they are able to show themselves compassion or not. Because what happens to a lot of parents who realize, again, maybe they’ve become a yeller, and they never thought they were going to be a yeller. Or maybe, as I mentioned, they’ve got these, what we call protection behaviors, which is just like when you’re triggered, how do you respond to challenge, right?
0:07:02 – (Wendy): And a lot of us, when we find this work, we’re highly reactive. We might have aggressive tendencies. We might intimidate our kids, puff up, get bigger, jump to threats, use punishment. That creates disconnection and just pain and suffering and humiliation. Those are some of the behaviors that we may have when we find this work and we realize, like, crap, I want to do things differently. This is never what I had dreamed of that parenting was going to be when I decided to have a family.
0:07:35 – (Wendy): But a lot of people will have a pretty well conditioned neural pathway by adulthood that when you realize that you’re doing something that’s air quotes wrong or out of your moral value system, if you’re doing bad things, then that means you should really be hard on yourself. Because so many of us were raised in parenting systems, autocratic parenting systems, where punishment and shame were just the way you influence kids, right? Like, that was just the way it was.
0:08:13 – (Wendy): And so then we become adults, and we have awareness. Awareness comes to us, and we’re like, oh, dang, it’s not pretty to hear that your child is mimicking you when they have a tantrum and they don’t get their way. And it’s actually awesome, right? Like, once you start to build your awareness and you’re like, oh, I actually can see what’s happening here. I see that my child hasn’t mastered this life skill because I haven’t mastered the life skill. That’s what happens for a lot of parents. But so many parents move to like, well, that means something’s wrong with me. That means I’m failing.
0:08:49 – (Wendy): Moms are notorious for feeling like they’re ruining their kids, or it’s too late because they’ve already jacked them up. I get messages all the time on Instagram where someone will just be what seems like in tears on the other side of the screen, just saying. I’m just so sad that I spent 7810 years trying to make this outdated parenting model work, and I just feel like it’s too late. I feel like I’ve ruined my kids.
0:09:19 – (Wendy): We have all this kind of chaos happening in the home, and of course, I always respond with, it is never too late. Never too late. And there is nothing wrong with you when you have trouble making outdated, externally controlled parenting tactics work. It’s the parenting tactics. It’s the hand me down, outdated parenting system that is broken, not you. But when parents beat themselves up, we find a few things happen.
0:09:51 – (Wendy): A even though they want to change desperately tomorrow and be able to actually have the patience that they want to stay neutral and guide their kid to better behavior instead of try to force them, which strong willed kids will react very negatively to quite often. But even though they want to change, what happens when they beat themselves up is they stay stuck so they’ll keep waking up. And even though they might say something to themselves, like, oh, my gosh, I’m going to do better today.
0:10:24 – (Wendy): I’m going to not yell, because good moms don’t yell. And I really need to check myself. Like I’m out of control. And if anyone were to see what’s happening behind closed doors, then they would judge me or whatever. And so they say, today I’m going to be better. And then by noon, sometimes 10:00 a.m. They’re yelling so loud in their kid’s face that their kid is crying, right? Like, trust me, I’ve done that before with my sweet little guy. He’s 13 now, but I remember one night after the bath, he had poured the entire bubble bath in the organic bubble bath, the coveted, honest organic bubble bath, into the bath.
0:11:06 – (Wendy): After I told him many times not to do that, he poured the entire bottle. And I’d gotten, like, the big bottle, too. I’d invested in the big bottle. And I remember I yelled at him so hard that he just looked at me, froze, and just started bawling. He was, like, three years old at the time. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I was so angry. I watched him just look at me and just start crying. Like, shaking crying.
0:11:30 – (Wendy): And I walked out. I went into my bedroom, had a full just tear fest myself. And I will tell you with those thoughts of, what is wrong with me? How could I overreact that much? It’s freaking bubble bath, wendy. And I went back in, like, 5 minutes later, 10 minutes later, after I had gathered myself a little bit and self regulated as best as I could at the time because I was very new to this work when Taryn was three.
0:11:58 – (Wendy): And I said, taryn, I’m so sorry that I yelled at you. I was just really upset that you poured the bubble bath in. And I’ll never forget, he looked at me, and by this, my little boy was born with this work. So, Stella, my 16 year old, we switched into this model of parenting when she was three. So for a year and a half, we were like, doing the traditional stuff, and it wasn’t working. But with taryn, he was really born into this, like, lucky boy, right?
0:12:25 – (Wendy): And I remember he looked right at me with his little three year old precious eyes, his little naked body in the bath, and he just said, mama, it’s okay. Everybody makes mistakes. It is one of those moments that I will remember for the rest of my life. Right. And this is just one opportunity of children leading the way. They are so naturally forgiving when they’re young, before they learn our ways, before they’re hardened by society or cultural conditioning.
0:12:55 – (Wendy): But it’s just natural for them to give grace when they’re little. And so he looked at me and said that, and I said, thank you so much. I don’t want to be someone who yells anymore, and you never deserve to be yelled at like that. And next time, please don’t pour the bubble bath out. Right? But anyway, that’s the first thing we find with parents who beat themselves up, is they stay stuck, and then they end up just repeating the same behavior day in and day out, thinking that if they continue to beat themselves up, they’ll do better tomorrow. Right. It’s like buying into the cultural norm of parenting the way we were raised. Many of us, that’s like, in order to make a child behave better, you must first make them feel worse.
0:13:47 – (Wendy): So we were raised for 18 years with that. Right? Like, it makes sense why, when we make a mistake as parents, then we’re like, what’s wrong with you? You’re an awful parent. You’re failing. Someone’s going to find out. Like, you’re going to get judged, whatever it may be. So when you bring in self compassion, that just looks like, okay, so you yelled again. You yelled so loud that you made your little boy, like, tremble and cry.
0:14:13 – (Wendy): And you’re exhausted. You’re carrying the invisible load of motherhood right now, which a lot of people don’t realize is burying you with decision fatigue. Everything from meals and insurance and sports and playdates and preschool sign up and deadlines and your strong willed toddler and changing into a positive parenting model. Like, you’ve just got so much on your plate. No wonder you got overwhelmed.
0:14:43 – (Wendy): No wonder you were triggered. You made a mistake. You’re learning. You’re growing. This is real life, right? Like, that’s kind of what self compassion looks like for a lot of us, it turns into remodeling, because many of us weren’t given that type of message when we messed up when we were little. Right? So now we’re learning in our third, 4th decades of life to be able to speak to ourselves with that kind of compassion.
0:15:10 – (Wendy): And it really changes the game. That’s when we see parents then be able to wake up the next day and say, okay, you swing out your legs, you put them on the ground, and you’re like, it’s safe to begin again. I am not failing because yesterday I swore I wasn’t going to yell, and by 10:00 a.m.. I was screaming. I just am a human parent. And today I want to use the self regulation strategies that I’ve learned inside the fresh start experience program, or I want to use the nervous system regulation techniques that I’ve been learning with Wendy inside the fresh start experience, like I want to.
0:15:51 – (Wendy): And I’m going to recommit to doing that today. So I’m able to stay calm and handle misbehavior in a way that I feel proud of. At the end of the day, self compassion allows parents to change. It enables parents to change. Okay, does that make sense? And then the other side of this is we really find that when self compassion is absent, then parents end up being very hard on their children because they are so hard on themselves.
0:16:22 – (Wendy): So one of my favorite scriptures of all time is Matthew 22 37 through 39. And basically, this is when the Pharisees challenge Jesus. And they’re like, well, teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And that’s my Pharisees tone. Do you like that? And Jesus replies, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
0:16:56 – (Wendy): And then he says, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. And a lot of people focus on the fact that, yes, we should love our neighbor. We should love our enemies. Like, yes, kindness, compassion, self control with all the neighbors, right? And I actually teach inside of our Jesus guided parenting program, which all of our students get for free when they come inside our fresh heart experience program.
0:17:28 – (Wendy): If you’re a family of christian faith and that floats your boat. If not, then 98% of our work is non religious based at all. But I do have that special program for families of christian faith. And I teach a lot about how actually our neighbors are our children, because many of us have three, four bedrooms, five bedrooms in our house. And right next to you every day for 18 years, lives a little neighbor who one day, all of a sudden you realize is bigger than you. Like I just realized, Taryn, now at 13, both my kids are taller than me. My son’s 13. My daughter’s 16.
0:18:06 – (Wendy): Taryn is, like, growing like a weed makes him want to solve. He’s so much taller than me all of a sudden. So one day, these little neighbors become big, and then they’re your big neighbors, right? So I teach inside Jesus guided parenting. I riff on that a little bit of how love your neighbors is not just the people outside your doors, in your community, on your street, in whatever circles. It’s actually the children in your home that live next to you in bedrooms. Right?
0:18:36 – (Wendy): But what most people miss about that scripture or don’t kind of dig deeper into is it’s love your neighbor as yourself. And the thing is, so many human souls have extreme difficulty loving themselves. And from the outside, we all appear hunky dory, right? Like, especially those of us who might have a strong will. We have confidence. We carry ourselves, like, shoulders back, just confident beings. And then once you start to do this work, and especially once you’re a parent who gets into this kind of work, you start to realize, like, oh, my gosh, I am so hard on myself.
0:19:28 – (Wendy): If I were to say aloud the things that I say to myself, it would be the opposite of love, right? Like, what is wrong with you? What were you thinking? These are also, like, inner critic thoughts that, for me, I grew up with that messaging, so it became my inner critic as I got older. But self compassion and self love, like, loving myself, I didn’t realize was drastically missing until I was like, gosh, let’s see. I had Stella when I was 30, so I was in classes, like, 33.
0:20:02 – (Wendy): No. Yeah, around 33. So 33 years old is when I first got the memo that I actually struggled with self confidence and self love. And this is kind of a funny story. We were in a parenting workshop with my incredible mentor and good friend Susie, and she taught this workshop on assuming integrity in your kids and why it is so difficult sometimes to assume integrity. And so we did this exercise where we kind of, like, revisited a time where our parents did not show us, did not assume integrity. And what that means is they jumped to conclusions.
0:20:39 – (Wendy): They assumed you were purposely trying to be a pain in the ass. They maybe punished fast. They just were like, what were you thinking? Shame on you. You should be better. You’re in trouble. And we just looked at it, and then we actually redid it. This is an exercise now that I do inside of our fresh start experience program, inside of our assuming integrity lesson, and is just amazing how it changes lives for parents when they do this exercise.
0:21:07 – (Wendy): But I did this exercise with Susie, and it was, like, around remembering this time where I was fighting with my dad. I was, like, 13 years old, I think, and he wanted to snatch the tv from my room. And at the time, it’s just funny to think back at the devices we had. I had one of those tvs that was super long. It had the huge. I’m dating myself here, but it had the huge back end, right? So it was like this square, big, big back end. So it was a very heavy thing. And he was trying to punish me and take my tv away. And that was, like, the beginning of the time when I really started to rebel and uprise against the external controls and the punishments, and I was, like, a straight a student, star athlete.
0:21:56 – (Wendy): But I rebelled big time behind the scenes and also fought so much with my parents as a teenager. There was not peace. There was not connection. There was not tight knit relationships. It was a painful season as a teenager, but we were fighting over something. And this is what’s funny about traditional punishment and not funny, more twisted and sad. I have no idea what I had done that day. I have no memory of what the life skill that I was missing. Like, had I rolled my eyes?
0:22:30 – (Wendy): Had I? I don’t know. At 13, I literally have no idea what I did. All I remember is the jacked up fight and twisted punishment that my dad tried to do to me that day. So he’s grabbing the tv, and I’m grabbing it, saying, no, you can’t do this. And it falls, and it falls on the back of my leg and cut my leg pretty good. And I still have the scar to this day. I think maybe I should have gotten stitches, but air quotes, I was fine.
0:23:02 – (Wendy): And whatever. The fight ended, and in our family, it was very, like, I love my parents so much, and they just never got the healing and education work to know to do, like, the work we do at freshart family. So we would have these giant fights, and then you’d hole up in your room and journal about how much you hate your parents and then talk to your best friend about how much life sucks when your parents don’t get you. And then the next morning at breakfast, it would just be like, good morning. Do you want syrup on your pancakes?
0:23:34 – (Wendy): And then you’d go to school, and then you would never talk about it again. It’s like, what I see. Stella has some buddies right now whose parents still do the same thing. Like, they’ll punish. There’ll be a huge fight. They’ll punish groundings, take their ebikes away. Their phones, whatever. And then they never talk about it. There’s never amends, there’s never repairing of a relationship. There’s no taking responsibility. Like, whoa, that got out of control. I’m sorry I lost my cool. I’m sorry I said those things to you.
0:24:05 – (Wendy): Here’s what I was meaning to say. Here’s what’s important to me. Here’s the life skill that I want you to learn. No, there’s none of that. It’s just like, okay, let’s move on. I punished you, so I did my job. And now you’re going to learn, right? Wrong. You’re not going to learn. Kids don’t learn that way, especially if you have a strong will like me. So back to the story. So this whole thing shakes down, and I do this story, I do this exercise, and I do the redo, like we were guided to do in this workshop. And then afterwards, I raise my hand. I’ve always been like, a big question asker, which is why I designed the fresh start experience full support program to allow for, like, I have always been a question girl.
0:24:48 – (Wendy): So I raised my hand and I’m like, okay, susie, cool exercise and all, but I don’t get it. I was like, I don’t realize that wasn’t a big deal. I moved on from that. And it’s like, I feel like I’m fine right now. I feel like I’m fine. And she goes, oh, you feel like you’re fine? She goes, oh. She just asked me one question. She said, how’s your self confidence? And I just stopped. And I looked at her and I was like, it’s freaking great.
0:25:19 – (Wendy): And I remember I had this cheetah jacket on, this very fuzzy cheetah bomber jacket on, and I looked at her and I laughed. And I was like, susie, I wear cheetah jackets. My self confidence is great. And so a synonym for self confidence is like, self love, right? Like loving yourself. And we just all kind of laughed, and she was like, okay, cool. And then we just moved on with the workshop. And I tell you, that was a seed that got planted in me, that grew in the most beautiful way. And God, over time, exposed to me year after year after year how much I actually struggled to love myself.
0:26:06 – (Wendy): And it wasn’t until, honestly, I’m 46 now. It was about, I think, four years ago now. I did, like, an embodiment workshop with my friend Chrissy Powers, who’s like a beautiful, somatic teacher, and she’s a licensed marriage family therapist, too. But I did this workshop and all of a sudden, God just started showing me over and over again how much shame I had and how much I doubted myself and just everything from my emergency c section I had when Stella was like, both of us, it’s a miracle we’re here. And, like, I realized I even beat myself up for not being able to deliver a baby.
0:27:00 – (Wendy): Air quotes normally. And there was stuff that was revealed to me in that workshop I did with Chrissy. And that was really kind of the beginning of the deep shame reduction work of my life. It started back in that story, in that workshop with Susie when I was 33. And it took me, like, a full ten years to really keep receiving the memo that I was struggling with self confidence and to love myself and to believe in myself and trust myself and show myself compassion when I wasn’t perfect.
0:27:37 – (Wendy): And I will tell you, the more I’ve done that work and the deeper I dig in and continue to release the shame, I feel healthier, I feel freer, I have less headaches. I’m able to respond more easily to my children instead of react. And it’s really just all compassion based, which then helps me live out that scripture. I’m able to love my neighbors more easily when I love myself, when I make a mistake and I say something awful to someone, when I then later that night, say to myself as I’m going to bed, you’re not a bad mom. You’re just human. You’re just unlearning 18 years of conditioning where shame was used on you. Of course, you repeated that to your daughter today.
0:28:28 – (Wendy): You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re loved. Tomorrow is a new day. We will begin again. Right? Like, it just feels so good, right? Self compassion. Loving yourself allows you to love your neighbor and to love your children more easily. Because when you are able to redirect misbehavior with compassion and connection and empathy and capital a and d, firm kindness, you become more confident as a firm, kind leader in your home. Okay.
0:29:07 – (Wendy): All right. So let’s move on to understanding the why. How’d you get here? Well, first off, how’d we get here? How do we get here to a place where we are really hard on ourselves and we have big dreams, right as we’re building our family foundations and legacies, many of us are perfectionist, right? Which, I will tell you, is often related to carrying shame. The more you heal your shame, the more you start to be okay.
0:29:37 – (Wendy): Not getting it all done in a day or having your house be a little messy sometimes or just not being perfectly put together. Perfectionism lifts when you heal your shame. But when it comes to understanding, how do we get here? Remember that in my experience, the majority of you who listen to this podcast and really dive deep into becoming fluent with firm and kind connection based strategies, those of you who really commit and are dedicated to living this style of life, it’s because a strong willed kid puts you on your edge, right? Like, there’s so many families who don’t get a strong willed kid, don’t get blessed with a strong willed kid. I believe they’re blessings, not hindrances to the world.
0:30:31 – (Wendy): And you can get by like raising kids and having pretty good relationships and they’re having pretty good behavior. But man, when you get handed gifted, blessed with a strong willed child, the degree of difficulty of parenting goes way up. So I’m a springboard diver, I grew up competitive diver. And there’s different dives, right? Like a front dive in the pike position is like a 1.3 degree of difficulty. If you want to do a two and a half in the straight position with three twists, that’s like a 2.7 degree of difficulty. That’s what happens for those of us who are raising strong willed kids.
0:31:13 – (Wendy): So of course this is freaking hard. We have children who are blessed with the need to feel powerful, and boy do they have big buckets. They thrive when they feel powerful. And so doing the average hand me down parenting tactics on these kids, it doesn’t work and it just creates chaos and stress, right? And if you don’t feel like you have a strong willed kid, then you probably are here because you at least have a child who’s in a power surge stage of life. So that is usually two to six.
0:31:50 – (Wendy): And then again in the tween years and again in the teen years, so tween teen and then between the ages of two and six, toddler preschool. And that’s when it’s really developmentally appropriate. When your kid is seeking autonomy and testing boundaries and learning how to be independent on their own, that’s a good thing. I’ll never forget when Stella’s preschool director, who was so pivotal in my life, Miss Sandy Hatter, she said to me one day when I was like, oh my gosh, I’m at my wits end with Stella. Like, what should I do? I think I had been called to come get her one day. Again, we had to leave early and I had to pick her up early because she had like behavioral issues. Issues. Air quotes.
0:32:38 – (Wendy): When she was three, her first year of preschool, and Sandy looked at me one day and she said, wendy, you got to listen to me. Stella is amazing and there is nothing wrong with her. You don’t have anything to worry about. She said, you do need to get yourself into that parenting class. And let me tell you, I listened, and that’s where I started. My parenting journey is at Sandy Aguido United Methodist preschool. Thank God to Sandy Hatter, who gave us free parenting classes once a year there or twice a year.
0:33:05 – (Wendy): But she said, you do not need to worry about Stella. She said, what I worry about is when the kids are not pushing boundaries at this stage of life, they should be pushing, they should be seeking independence, they should be developing autonomy. She said, I worry more about the kids who don’t. They are ones that I stop and I tend to and I work more deeply with parents. But she said, you, you’re fine, Stella.
0:33:34 – (Wendy): And it makes me, I get emotional thinking about this because, you know those people in your life that were so important? Miss Sandy was one of them for me because she literally looked me in the eye and said, stella is going to be one of the most amazing people in the world. You just got to learn how to work with her. But you trust me, she’s going to do something amazing one day. And like Miss Sandy, I remember I had a neighbor that was really intimidated by her. We went to the same preschool. She said, she’s so intense, and I always loved her intensity, but she really intensely almost shook me that day and said, you listen, Stella is going to be amazing.
0:34:20 – (Wendy): Almost like Stella is going to change the world type of messaging. And here we are 13 years later, and Stella is the reason why this company exists. We support thousands and thousands of families every year to kind of escape. Escape. Yeah, that’s a good word for it. Escape the twisted, toxic, handmedown parenting system and step into a connection based, relationship based, firm and kind parenting model. And it’s all because of Stella. Stella is the one who pushed me, so to speak, to my edge.
0:35:00 – (Wendy): Thought I was going to lose my mind when she was three. I was so triggered. I was so concerned. I was so perplexed on why every time I told this kid to do something, she would do the opposite. And she is the reason why I stepped in and started doing this work. I started learning to love myself more. I started learning how to be firm and kind without being aggressive or threatening to harm my child or punish or.
0:35:33 – (Wendy): I stepped into learning because of Stella. So just know that it makes sense why you feel like things are so hard because you have been blessed with this beautiful human soul that you get to raise. Strong willed kids are our next generation of leaders. Okay? The second reason of why it makes sense how you got here is because of nervous system conditioning. Now, I recently had a reel on Instagram go viral, and it was really cool because you never know when you create content on Instagram.
0:36:11 – (Wendy): I have our free content here on the podcast, and I have our free content on Instagram. That’s really kind of where I put my efforts when it comes to creating free content. I want to be able to serve the masses with education and inspiration. Right? And then, of course, the real work, the real deep, life changing, transformative work is in our full Fresh Start Experience program, where we get to support parents day in, day out with consistent education and coaching, support, the ability to ask questions, do the foundations course, like, all the things, right. But I love it. I do love it when something hits and really resonates with you guys when it’s in, like, a free format, because that means more and more families get to get exposed to the concept and get invited to step into learning. Right? So had this reel go viral about why your nervous system feels so rattled when your kids misbehave. And I’ll make sure I put it in the show notes. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can go check it out.
0:37:15 – (Wendy): But it’s basically all around why? Once we have kids, many of us, we realize that our nervous system is just frazzled. Like, every misbehavior ends up feeling like it’s a four alarm fire. And from a nervous perspective, like, nervous system perspective, I want you to understand that this makes sense as an educator, as a certified life coach with the training to understand the nervous system. This makes sense when you are raised with an autocratic, fear based model, which is essentially just, if you’re good, you’re rewarded. If you’re bad, there is trouble, there is danger. You are going to get in trouble. You’re going to get at least lectured, sometimes shamed, sometimes hurt, often humiliated, isolated.
0:38:04 – (Wendy): There’s danger. Right? I call them, like, emotional and sometimes physical. But most of us were raised with a parenting model that used fear and emotional manipulation tactics to coerce or force us into action or submission. And we have to remember, you guys, even the most loving and well meaning parents adhered to this model, and they didn’t quite realize the long term damage it would do to a nervous system that. Remember, our nervous system is fantastic. It’s brilliantly designed by God, but it’s designed to keep us safe.
0:38:40 – (Wendy): And it is highly responsive to sensing danger. So feeling rattled when our kids misbehave is a result of a nervous system conditioned to believe that there’s always danger lurking. So it’s like, kid spills their milk or slaps their sister. It’s like, quick, act fast, lay the smackdown. Jump in, save the day, try to be an octopus with eight arms. Do it all, or else you’re failing. Like, quick, go, go.
0:39:08 – (Wendy): There’s no time to think. Correct, discipline fast. Someone’s going to judge you. Right? Can you relate? That’s the kind of feeling, and logically, we may know that a child who refuses to eat their veggies or share a toy isn’t the same as a bear chasing us, but our nervous system reads it the same way, because we’ve been conditioned to respond to fear for 18 years with kind of that fight, flight, or freeze mechanism part of our brain, the amygdala. So it makes sense.
0:39:41 – (Wendy): So, over time, our nervous system adopts the same tone and feeling of our childhood home, especially when mistakes were made or challenges presented themselves. And for many of us, again, we have so many lovely memories. Again, love our parents. Some of us have serious issues, and we’re, like, still struggle to forgive, but many of us are just like, we love our parents. We have so many great memories. And if you really look at it, there was so much of a tone and feeling in our home when challenges presented themselves, of stress, fear, danger, scarcity, and disconnection.
0:40:25 – (Wendy): And so you just have to remember that just by. Basically, for those of you who are here right now, listening, when you realize, oh, I no longer want to operate with a dysregulated nervous system when my child has misbehavior. Because your kids are going to be kids, right? This is called parenting for a reason. There is no perfect children. But declaring, like, I want to have a regulated nervous system, and I don’t want to pass the dysregulated nervous system conditioning down to my kids, really, you have to remember that the first step is just the awareness.
0:41:02 – (Wendy): Like, just being aware. Like, oh, I really do kind of have this strong reaction to the kids quite often, the awareness is beautiful because most people just stay unaware and frazzled forever, to be honest with you, again, I love my parents so much, but I watch the way they operate. At 76, I think my mom is, and 82, my dad, their nervous system is wrecked. Like, my dad will say about my mom, oh, her nerves are just really wrecked. She stopped smoking, like, five years ago.
0:41:38 – (Wendy): Her nerves are wrecked since she stopped smoking. And I’m like, I love you, daddy, but I don’t say it to him. But I want to say it’s actually because her nervous system is just conditioned to see everything as major danger. So it’s stressful in my house when I go visit home. Like, if the dog barks too loud or my dad doesn’t put a plastic lining back in the trash can when he takes the trash out, right. There is a fast, strong reaction.
0:42:09 – (Wendy): They bicker a lot. They’ve been, really have been happily married for, I think, 56 years now. They are the cutest couple in the world. They will dance anywhere you go to a restaurant. If there’s some good country music on, my parents will just start dancing. They’re so cute. But their nervous system is intense. It is stressful in our house, and it could be the same thing, like, when they’re watching the news, if they disagree with something, it’s just intense. Right? And that’s kind of the environment that I grew up in.
0:42:38 – (Wendy): So just the awareness and understanding that putting yourself into the state of self awareness, then you can begin educating yourself with compassion about how to change the rewiring and the imprint on your nervous system. And then the second step is really to recognize that resensitizing your awareness to your options is your goal. Remember, it’s not that you don’t have options to handle misbehavior in a way that works well and connects you to your child with a nervous system that’s regulated.
0:43:11 – (Wendy): It’s just that you were consistently being pulled down into a fear based response that keeps you out of your creative, logical thinking brain. Does that make sense? So that’s just kind of like a little bit of an overview of some of the things I was talking about in that reel. But it makes sense. Your nervous system is conditioned, and it takes time to recondition it and then add on to the fact that the punishment model is preached worldwide.
0:43:41 – (Wendy): Right? So instant obedience, which is, like, heartbreaking. I love, love supporting families who come into our program who are really escaping, like, churches where they’re teaching, like, really creepy, twisted parenting models that include punishment and hurting and harming a child and then making sure you’re doing it when you’re not angry, and then it’s godly. But if you do it when you’re angry, it’s not godly. It’s just so creepy.
0:44:19 – (Wendy): But even outside of the toxic evangelical teaching circles, and I do believe there are some evangelical circles that are beautiful and healthy, and there are many, many that are unhealthy and teaching a dangerous rhetoric that has become the most common taught, practice and system in the christian evangelical world. Now, I have a lot of students and staff members, too, who are in different denominations in the christian world. And they’re like, wendy, this is not taught in our denomination. And I’m like, hallelujah. Thank you, God. Right? So it’s really not everywhere, and it is very common, but the punishment model is preached there. And then with the instant obedience given as, like, that’s your goal.
0:45:15 – (Wendy): And then also just in the world, like, corporal punishment is legal. That’s what most parents who never step into parenting education, that’s what they fall upon for the most part. I think corporal punishment is still legal in school systems in, like, freaking 21 states or something crazy. And so this is the norm. This is the norm. So, of course, it is very confusing when you’re a parent and you’re like, I want to do things this way that Wendy teaches.
0:45:46 – (Wendy): But, man, it sure does seem easier just to threaten to take the phone away, or it sure does seem easier just to spank the kid, right? Of course it seems easier because this is what is culturally the norm. So, again, I’m just trying to help you understand why it feels so tough to keep starting again. And then also the submission model. My friend Sheila Ray Gregoir does incredible work through her podcast, bare marriage. If you’ve never listened to her and you come from a church that really teaches, the woman is supposed to submit to the man and purity culture and that kind of stuff, her work is fantastic. Go find her.
0:46:30 – (Wendy): Her books are incredible. We actually have a podcast episode with her. We have two podcast episodes with Sheila. Let me actually get that episode for you. But our latest one was all about her recent book on purity culture and, like, raising girls to not adhere to that toxic teaching. So it’s episode 162, raising girls to resist toxic teachings on self sex and speaking up with Sheila Ray Gregar. So I love her. But then you add in the fact that that model is taught, and it’s just, like, very confusing. Right.
0:47:09 – (Wendy): Okay, so the last part so far, when we’re talking about the power of beginning again, the power of a fresh start as a way to love yourself and really love your family. The third, so we’ve covered find compassion, is the first step. The second step is to understand the why. How’d you get here? And then number three is to educate yourself. And so this is where really, the pedal hits the metal. Now that you’re aware, you’ve learned to start giving yourself grace and compassion, but yet also decide that this is important to you.
0:47:47 – (Wendy): I will tell you that there is not more that I respect in the world than parents who raise their hand and say, I’m going to commit to building a family legacy that I’m proud of, that respects my children, creates safety in my home, heals myself and my nervous system, strengthens my marriage, brings peace into our home, which brings peace into the world. Those are the people that I respect the most. But there comes a time when you have to step into education.
0:48:20 – (Wendy): Like free content is fantastic. I hope you guys are so blessed by these podcast episodes. I love doing them for you. And books are fantastic too. Books are such a fantastic way to get educated, right? And I encourage you just to really step into learning. We have so many free resources here at fresh start family, our focused free resource of the month right now during the month of February, but pretty much this is always available is our quick start learning bundle, all about how to raise strong willed kids with integrity and a settled nervous system.
0:48:58 – (Wendy): And that free quick start learning bundle comes with an extensive learning guide and a workshop with me. And so that’s a really nice, easy way to step into learning and actually get into the classroom with me. Because once you’re in the classroom with me and you’re engaging with me, or after you do a workshop with me, actually maybe ask questions, or you take my key takeaways and you actually put them into action into your parenting life.
0:49:36 – (Wendy): That’s where we see families really start to get the results right. That’s where they actually start to see the changes happening. So you can learn more about that by heading to freshartfamilyonline.com forward slash power. Or you can dm me the word freedom on Instagram. So I’m at fresh start Wendy on Instagram, and if you just dm me the word freedom, I will get that freestart learning bundle into your hands.
0:50:04 – (Wendy): And that’s a great way to step into education. Another way to step into education is our signature, what we call, kind of like our entry level program here. So our full support program is called the Fresh Start experience. Again, I love the families who are in that and just so dedicated and consistent and just so on board. They’re amazing, right? And I also love the families who are just starting to dip their toes into education work. And our firm and kind parenting blueprint is where we love to start people because it’s an easy to finish and easy to implement 1 hour program.
0:50:42 – (Wendy): And it is like, okay, I’m going to teach you four steps to setting firm limits as a parent and following through with consistency and connection. Grace, compassion. Like that’s how you’re going to reach your strong willed kids and get them to listen and cooperate without the classic hand me down crap, fear, force, bribery and rewards, which is what we call external controls. So you can learn more about that [email protected].
0:51:09 – (Wendy): Actually, no, I’m sorry. Let me do that again. You can learn more about the firmandkind parenting [email protected]. And then lastly, we have our live event coming up in March in person in San Diego. I don’t know about you, but after years of being on lockdown and being so secluded during the times of COVID it’s so nice to get together in person these days and actually do some inner healing work together. And that’s what we do inside of our freedom to be weekend course that’s happening March 15 through 17th in sunny San Diego, California.
0:51:50 – (Wendy): We gather at a place called the Cape Ray Resort, which is on the ocean in north San Diego, California, and we learn and grow for three days. And this is a program where we really go a lot deeper with helping you understand what’s underneath your triggers. Why does it feel so hard to parent the way that you want to? With compassion, with compassionate discipline, with patience? We dive into what’s creating division in your marriage. We dive into areas in your life that you blame others and don’t really realize how blame keeps you stuck in you not getting what you want.
0:52:32 – (Wendy): We teach you how to hold space during conflict, which is just phenomenal and life changing. I’ve seen that exercise alone save like six marriages over the last 13 years that I’ve been doing that program. So, yeah, it’s incredible. And if you want to learn more about freedom to be, you can head to freshstartfamilyonline.com freedomcourse. All right. But just whatever you do, my recommendation when you step into education is just to create consistency.
0:53:00 – (Wendy): Fall in love with learning, growing and healing. That’s like really our specialty at the first short experience. And here everything we do at first strip family. We really try to make it fun and we try to help you understand that learning and growing is actually really joyful and so freaking empowering when you no longer feel like your back is up against a wall and you have to threaten, you have to spank, you have to yell, you have to just people please, like, no, you don’t.
0:53:32 – (Wendy): No, you don’t. You have choices. And when you heal and when you get supported you create a different life. Okay. So, families, I hope that this episode has inspired you to just keep the begin again motto consistent in your life. And remember that there is such power to starting fresh. It is such a great way to love yourself and to really love your family and your children. And starting fresh is strong, not weak.
0:54:08 – (Wendy): And beginning again is smart, not a sign that you’re failing. Okay? So thanks for listening. I pray that you have a great Valentine’s Day and a great Valentine’s Day week. And thanks for listening, and I will see you back in our next episode of the Fresh Shirt Family show.
