On this episode of the Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy gives some inspiration on looking at the bad days as a blessing in disguise. There are many positives that can come from a bad day when we stay open to what they can teach us.

Wendy teaches on the importance of finding a way to be grateful even for the not so great moments. All the moments in our lives can be learning opportunities, and we don’t need to look at mistakes as something shameful. We can find the silver linings in even the messiest of days.

---

Want to learn how to respond vs react to misbehavior with calm confidence?

Strategies taught in this workshop work with kids of ALL ages to decrease misbehavior, increase cooperation & build connection in your home!

Click HERE to save your seat!

---

Special thanks to Parent Playbook and Tonies for their support of

The Fresh Start Family Show!

Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!

This episode of The Fresh Start Family Show is brought to you by our free one hour workshop, How to respond versus react to misbehavior with calm confidence, aka, how to keep your cool and not lose your marbles. When your kids push your buttons or make mistakes, you can save your seat over at freshstartfamilyonline.com/freeclass.

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, hey, there families and welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. I am your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach, and today we are going to be talking about how we can have gratitude for the bad days.

And I’m really excited to chat with you guys about this subject that was on my heart and just laughing as I come to the microphone today because if you’ve ever, ever wondered, there’s real life parenting going on over here. There is, I had about an hour to record this podcast episode, it’s a Sunday afternoon right now and had my husband take my little boy down to his beach volleyball practice and my almost 15 year old daughter has a few friends over and I was like, You know what? This message is on my heart. I just wanna take a little bit of time to record it for you guys. And I was about maybe five, just five minutes into it. I was just at the beginning of recording it and my daughter comes in and says, Mom, oh my gosh, one of our dogs, our white husky puppy.

She got out the back gate when one of my friends went to get to their bike out and she’s run all the way down to Target, which is like right next to our house, but it’s a good half mile away. And her and I had to just go book it. I was barefoot and we just had to book it a half mile down. Thank God the dog didn’t get hit. Thank God two of her buddies had run after the dog. Probably didn’t actually help it, the dog was being chased, but thank God the dog’s okay. So as I push record, I’m a little sweaty and a little like, oh my gosh, feel, feel a little traumatized. But what’s so funny and so cool to me is that I’m gonna be able to use this opportunity to actually share a little bit today as we have this conversation about why this is an example of a messy moment that was no fun, but it’s actually gonna really serve me in my parenting and my relationship with my daughter.

And so we’ll get into that in a little bit. But welcome to a new episode. I’m happy to be here with you guys today. It is November, you guys, it is November. And here in America during November of course we have the Thanksgiving holiday. So we love, love, love to – inside of our communities and of course inside of our families – really look at how we can practice gratitude this month, how we can express and solidify how much thankfulness we have for all the good things in our lives from, you know, having roofs over our heads to our marriages, to our children’s healths, to extended families. And our careers are our jobs or learning communities, right, like fresh start family or mentors and pastors in our lives that we love or all of the above.

There is just so much goodness to be thankful for when we slow down and intentionally look at and bring to the forefront of our mind how much there is to be grateful for. Because you know, it is an odd human condition that I think it’s easier and, and maybe it’s just the human condition, maybe it’s just conditioning right from from generations of culture, but it is oftentimes a lot easier to see the negative in our lives than it is to see the positives. So when we intentionally create practice around this, I think it’s just such a beautiful thing to add to our lives. So inside of our private Bonfire community this month, we have an annual challenge that we do with our members where for 14 days straight, we share 10 things every single day that we are grateful for.

And it doesn’t have to just be, you know, food house like this, that it can actually be moments of growth that you had or moments where you actually did step to the side and take a pause when your child was pushing his baby sister or pulling the dog’s tail, whatever it may be. Like. We share a lot of things that are outside of just the normal gratitude things like where we actually create practice around seeing where we are growing, seeing where our children are growing. But it’s just a beautiful contest that we do every month. We actually have a contest inside my private community every single month where families, when they enter, we have three families that win hot seats with me, which means you get very focused individualized time with me to go through, it’s basically a mini private session.

Most of our learning that we do inside of the Bonfire community is group learning, right? I’m a big firm believer that when you learn with others beside others in a group environment, not only does it reduce shame from your life because you realize that you are not the only one with a kid who is having that type of misbehavior or you are not the only one who has disconnection with your, with your husband when it comes to discipline or whatever it may be. I just think when you learn in a group environment, it is amazing for shame reduction and really to be able to create positive change in your life. Most of us, we need to let go of shame that a lot of us carry around. So for that reason, it’s great. It’s also just great because you get to learn from other people, right?

So when somebody asks a question and you may not have had trouble this week, say it’s potty training or keeping your kids in bed or getting them to eat their vegetables or keep their hands to themselves, but you still receive, you still are able to hear and see coaching that happens or another family’s learning that all of a sudden you didn’t even realize that you need. So the group aspect to our programs is phenomenal. And at the same time there is nothing like having some one-on-one Wendy time, right? So every single month we have a contest where families, families win one on one time with me. But then this is a contest that we do every single year. We’ve done it now for I think three years, this 14 day gratitude challenge we call it.

So we are all about it this month as we prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday, which by the way is one of my favorite holidays. I think it’s tied for Easter because the meaning behind it is just so beautiful, but there’s just not all the requirements, right? Like the stress of like having to buy all the, the gifts or the financial replications of our replications. That’s not a word, is it? The financial effects, right? Of all the gift giving and purchasing and then having all this extra stuff in your house. There’s just a lot that comes with Christmas. I love Christmas, don’t get me wrong, but Thanksgiving and Easter are just so beautiful and simple and so Thanksgiving I love it.

And November is all around gratitude. But today what I wanted to chat with you guys about and what’s on my heart is that, you know, there’s a lot to be grateful for just on the surface level of all the things that go well in our life, of course, and on a deeper level, all the things that go well and are beautiful, but really you guys on, you know, a really, a really important thing when it comes to having a gratitude practice is making sure you’re looking at how and why we should be thankful for the messy moments, for the misbehavior, for the awful days that you know, you’ve blown your lid and it’s, you know, not even 8:00 AM when you swore you weren’t gonna yell today.

Or you know, the moments where your child did really have a significant misbehavior that caused, you know, a major disruption in your day or your week or with your cousins or whatever it may be. That’s what we’re gonna talk about today and I think this is a really important part of being a human being. And so I’m just gonna share with you a few reasons why we want to be thankful for the bad days, thankful for the messy moments, moments. And the first thing we’re gonna talk about is that these really messy moments often turn into being those pivotal moments that we finally decide to get help or create change in our lives.

And so I always tell people there’s, there’s a few different times when I give this analogy of there seems to be this like threshold of pain that as a human you can endure and then at some point the pain level becomes so much that you finally go and get yourself supported. You finally make the decisions to hire the coach or do the program or go see the doctor, whatever it may be. But many of us have a pretty high threshold for pain and it actually takes a really crappy situation for us to realize, dang we, we need to do something, we’ve got to create change in our life because we can’t go on living like this anymore.

So I was gonna tell you a few stories of what this looked like in my early years when I was a young parent and I really started to realize about the age of two and a half. You guys probably know my story, but just in case you don’t, just in case you’re new around here, I found this, the work of positive parenting when Stella was, let’s see, Stella was I think a little over three years old. So I had just had my second baby, he had colic just like my first, So the first three months of newborn land was just miserable around here. My babies just cried nonstop. But I had just left my career in the action sports industry. I did event planning and worked for the president of our organization and I loved it, but I decided I wanted to stay home, be with my babies and really felt this calling in my heart.

And so I really thought it was just gonna be this beautiful thing and that, you know, the kids were gonna take these long naps every day and we were gonna be at the beach. We live about two miles from the beach here in Southern California and we were, I was gonna have time to exercise and the house was gonna be clean and it was just gonna be amazing. And before long it was a total crap show and I just felt like I was miserable. And there were some moments when I looked back that really, you know, it was probably, I’d say maybe six months from the time I just, you know, we let our nanny go, which our nanny was like a freaking rock star. She was like literally the best nanny on the planet still to this day. We keep in touch with her, we love her so much and I just thank talk about gratitude man.

I thank God for her in our life those first few years was Stella because man, I was able to have this beautiful career that I loved and she just, she was so impactful. I know on Stella’s early years as far as her development and just being unconditionally loved by someone who we trusted so much. But I, it was probably about six months after we had said goodbye to our amazing nanny, Annie and I started to realize like, wow, this is really getting bad. So Stella was in timeouts what seemed like 50 times a day. If I told her to go right, she would go left if I told her to, you know, pet the dog gently. She would like literally pull clumps of hair out at this point, like, you know, it was just, it was just bad.

It was just to the point where I, like I said, I felt like I was in this stable misery cycle and I just felt really ashamed about it too because I thought no one would understand me. Like there’s no way, like anybody else has this so bad. Like I, I just was blaming Stella’s all Stella’s fault. If this kid wasn’t so crazy and wasn’t so disobedient, then I would be able to really enjoy my new experience as a stay at home mom. So I started taking parenting classes and I actually like the pivotal moment for me when some really bad days happened was actually what caused me to say yes to extra coaching and the life coaching side of my journey, my growth journey as a mother I should say.

And I’ll tell you those two stories. So I had actually already said yes, I’ll attend a par positive parenting class, Stella’s preschool at the time and still does to this day. They’ve offered this super supportive positive parenting program for local families for now 30 years. I will like always have so much gratitude for the preschool director at that time who set this up. She was there for I think over almost 25 years before she retired and she was really an important person in our lives, especially when it came to supporting us with Stella at the time. ‘Cos Stella got in quite, you know, quite what seemed like quite a lot of trouble when she was in her first years of preschool. And that director had told us numerous times like, Hey look, don’t worry Stella’s, there’s nothing wrong with Stella.

She’s actually gonna be like a force to be reckoned with in this world. And all you gotta do is really expand your toolkit and really learn how to work with her. But there’s nothing you should worry about. And I just, I hope, I hope that I am that for all of you guys, right? Like I hope that, I know a lot of you guys do have like, the reality is you guys have a lot of people in your life that may be like, well why don’t you just spank ’em and that’ll real, that’ll that’ll fix everything or you’re too soft or you’re too permissive or you’re too this or you’re not doing this or that or that. Or they might say to you, yeah, something is wrong with your kid. Like I just had a student last week who said she has Bible study peers who are calling her boys bullies and not from the angle of like, Hey, how can we support you?

What can we do to help? But like your kids are bullies and they know that they’re pos, they’re parenting in a positive parenting way and they, a lot of the people at their church really just want ’em to do heavy punishments and spankings and this family just keeps saying like, No, we’re not gonna do that. Right? So I know on some level many of you have people in your ear that’s like, yeah, something is wrong with your kid, something is wrong with your parenting. Like yeah, you better change or, or you’re going to raise this entitled brat. Like I’ve had students before who were in Trader Joe’s shopping and just trying to have like calm confidence through a tantrum with their three year old in the middle of the grocery store island. They had like an 80 year old man walk up to ’em and say, Hey, you’re doing it all wrong.

Like if you just took that kid in the back alley and give them a good spanking, then everything would be fixed. But if you don’t you’re gonna raise like the next generation of entitled children or something. So I just know it’s all over the place and I just hope that I am that voice for you. Like Miss Sandy Hatter was for me back in those preschool days where I’m telling you like there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s nothing wrong with your children. Like you just need to expand your toolkit. You just need to learn new ways, especially if you have a strong-willed child, especially if you have a strong-willed child, there’s nothing wrong with that child. There’s nothing wrong with you. We’re just trying to use these outdated hand me down parenting tactics on these kids that so clearly and boldly raise their hand and say, hell no, I will not be overpowered, I will not be humiliated, intimidated, harmed hurt, it just doesn’t work for me.

So thank God they raise their hands, right? But I think back to those days and I started taking the parenting class, thank God because it was offered at the preschool, but I was still really having difficulty applying what I learned at like in class when I walked in the door or when things got really heated. So for me, these two stories I’m gonna tell you, they came at a time when it was pivotal to get me to say yes to the full weekend personal development program and also yes to extended learning, extended private coaching with my coach and just to really also get involved in the program that I was in. I think before these, these, these two stories that just come to mind are examples.

But I think before that I just wasn’t, I wasn’t like super involved. I would go to class but I wasn’t super involved in getting the support that I needed and showing up in a way where I was dedicated and the pain, like I was gonna get a handle on it. Does that make sense?

---

Parents, let’s talk for a minute about Tonie Boxes, which are the coolest interactive learning toys that I am just the biggest fan of. Designed for little listeners, ages 3+, they are the perfect story time companion for tiny hands and active imaginations. The Tonie Box is a screen free digital listening experience that plays stories, songs and more. 

It comes to life when paired with their whimsical collection of Tonies hand painted characters with hours of stories to tell, worlds to explore and songs to sing. My own little boy has one and loves listening to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Despicable Me Stories, as well as meditative nature sounds when he needs a little help falling Asleep. Plus Tonie Boxes allow you to record custom content, which makes it so cool for parents and grandparents who want to connect with their littlest loved ones from near or far. Which also means that these make the perfect Christmas gifts for your little ones from their grandma or grandpa, just an idea. 

By the way, a few months ago I got the sweetest message from one of my Bonfire private support community members that said, Look, I shared about my love of Tonie boxes with my sister and she got one for her kids and this was her husband in the backyard this last weekend recording Creative Tonies for his kids before he leaves on deployment, and then a bawling crying emoji and a picture of him with a giant stack of books next to him sitting in the backyard. Oh my gosh, my heart just melted. Those little kids of his will be able to have their daddy read books to them at night or whenever they want, even as he’s halfway across the world. I just love it. 

Tonie Box is currently offering our community of Fresh Start Family Show listeners 15% off a Tonie Box starter kit using the discount code Toniepodcast – you spell Tonie, T O N I E. So that coupon code is toniepodcast. You can head to tonies.com to learn more T O N I E S.com and get your kiddo their first Tonie Box. I can see this being the perfect Christmas gift or just an investment into your own sanity cuz you know you love it when your kiddo is actually able to entertain themselves so you can sneak in a hot shower, maybe a Pilates workout or even a holiday meal planning. Imagine that! 

All right you guys go check out Tonies after today’s episode ends. But for now, let’s get back to the show.

---

So here’s the first story I remember there was a moment where I was like, I think trying to apply what I had learned when it came to self calming with Stella and I learned the concept in class and I was like, okay cool, we’re gonna move from timeouts to self calming. And so we went and we got all these like trinkets from the dollar store. I remember it was like, it was, now that I look back, I’m like, oh my gosh, this was not the way I would recommend clients do it now.

And it’s, it is not the way, not the way I teach students to do it, but I went and probably spent like 50 bucks. I had her pick out like I remember like plastic trains and like little trinkets from Michael’s in the dollar section and we got this big plastic case and I guess, I guess there’s three stories I can tell you today about this. And then when it came time when she was having misbehavior and there came time to actually like say, okay, I think it’s time that we take a calming break. Like you’re not, you’re not doing well with this situation. I’m not doing well with this situation. I think we both need to take a calming break. I would use this tone that was just absolutely horrendous. And she, she did not take it well because of the tone that I was using.

This is tone is something that we go over tons inside of our Freedom to Be weekend personal development course, which is actually the course that changed my life once I said yes to it. And this was one of those pivotal moments that I realized I just really need more support. But I would use this tone and I would be like, you need to go calm down now, right? So still with intimidation, still with a little bit of aggression. And this one day she took that common kit that we had created, the $50 calming kit and the beautiful clear plastic case and she just picked it up over her head and threw it down the stairs. And I remember it almost hit the dog. I think the baby was sleeping and I just freaked out. And you know what I’m, I’m recalling now. This is all part of one story.

So it’s not three stories, it is actually two stories. So she did that and it just exploded everywhere. And I just remember like the fire immediately started coming outta my head and I was like, holy smokes. And I just freaked out in return. So I went up to her room and I remember getting her favorite, like to this day you guys, she still remembers this story so boldly, but she had this little toy that she had, I wish I could remember the name of this little stuffed animal, but she was super obsessed with the grabber machine at this age. So she must have been like three, three and a half by now. And I swear this kid has always been super skilled at like, she’s brilliant.

Like so many of your strong-willed kids are brilliant and they’re really good at sports, they’re really good with like hand eye coordination. And we would go to these pizza, this pizza place called OGs and she loved to play the grabber game and she was so competitive that she would be like obsessed with this grabber game and she would win toys a lot. But I remember this was the first one she had ever won and it was this very special toy to her. And I marched in that room and with my punishment mindset that I knew really well how to do, I was like, that’s it, you’re done kid. And I took her stuffed animal, I put it in her face and I was like, this is going in the trash. And I walked downstairs and I threw this stuffed animal in this big trashcan that we had in the garage, the one that like the trash truck comes and gets.

And I was like, there take that right? And like that’s like such a great example of punishment mindset and she flipped out you guys, she flipped out and oh it’s like my stomach like sinks when I get to this part because it was just so chaotic and really this is where it shifts and it feels like trauma to me where it’s just, it, I just have so much guilt around that because the purpose was like, the reason why I marched in her room and got that is because I knew it would hurt her. I knew that this would be the thing that really stung. And if I like, you know, rationally when you’re in the moment, you don’t necessarily think of it like this.

But I know looking back like the intention was to scare the shit out of her. The intention was to make her understand that if you hurt me, I will hurt you back. I am bigger, I am stronger. Like do not mess with me because I will annihilate you, right? Like that was the tone. And so she comes downstairs and I just remember it went from like angry crying to like, she was like hyperventilating, sobbing. Like please don’t throw that away. Please don’t throw that away. Like the, the type of crying where you’re like, you know, you can tell a child is having trouble breathing through that crying. And I’ll never forget she got the step stool out and she was like, her little belly was like halfway hanging over this trash can in the garage with the big lid open.

And she was trying so hard to reach the bottom of the trash can where this stuffed animal lied. But she couldn’t like, she literally couldn’t and she wasn’t, she didn’t, I think have the courage to like, like jump in the trash can. It was a huge trash can and this was a tiny little girl at the time and it just was so chaotic. And I just remember my like nervous system was going like on fire, her nervous system was on fire. And even though I was like starting to learn a different way, especially when it came to discipline, I still would revert to that old school crap like all the time. And I don’t remember exactly what happened afterwards, but finally somehow she calmed down and I calmed down and, but I stuck with it and I was like, no, you’re never getting that stuffed animal back.

And I almost, I can almost like remember the day the trash can came, the trash man came and I was just like, okay, that’s what you have to do to make this child learn, right? But like for years and years, she’s almost 15. That happened when she was three. And I know it may sound like this silly story, but it was just a crappy moment where I was like, this is life, this is parenthood. Like this sucks. And I realize like I’ve got to get help. Like I’ve got to change this dynamic in our home because I cannot deal with this type of stress anymore. This type of drama, this type of like, I wanted this hour while my child was napping just to be relaxing or bonding with my child and instead it’s freaking full blown chaos, full blown chaos.

My kid hates me, I hate her and I have to essentially hurt her. Whether it’s through taking something away, throwing something away, or the other story I’m gonna tell you was about spanking and it just was this awful feeling. So I look back and I’m like, man, that was one of those moments where I was like, I’ve gotta change this. I’m gonna change this like this the pain, the threshold of like being able to tolerate pain in my parenting walk, I remember it just felt like the pendulum like swung and it was like, okay, this is it. I can’t, I can’t do this anymore. I need to get some additional help. And I don’t know if I called my coach that night, my teacher Susie Walton that night or from the next day at class, I was like, ugh, you know, I just, something’s gotta change.

And I think that’s when she started inviting me to the Freedom to Be personal development course, which I now teach here at Fresh Start Family. We just had an amazing round of students go through it in October and it was absolutely such an honor to support all the students through that program and it’s just ended up changing my own life, which is why I became a teacher of it and now offer it to my community. But okay, the other, the other story is, I remember one of the two times I spanked Stella was again one of these moments where I just realized like I need, I need help. Like something has got to change and I’m gonna do whatever I can no matter how much work it takes to change this dynamic in our home because this is not the relationship I want with my kid.

This is not how I wanna feel as a parent and this is not fricking working. And so we were at gym gymnastics class back in the day. This was like when I was working for Reef sandals and when I was in the action sports world and I used to work from home on Fridays, this was before working from home was really a thing. And so I, I would carry around my big laptop and I had this like very special plug-in stick that would give me wifi and allow me to like answer emails and stay on top of my work for the 45 minutes that she would be in her gymnastics class. But looking back, I’m like, oh my gosh, that is so much pressure. It was just a lot. I was pregnant at the time. Stella, you know, just was a toddler, right?

She was going through the many challenges of toddlerhood. I had a job that I was doing and it wasn’t the type of thing where I was just like, Hey boss, I’m gonna like clock out for an hour and a half so I can take my daughter to this class and enjoy it. Like I was always trying, I I always have been like someone who just naturally moves to juggle instead of like do one thing at a time. I’m, I’m still working on that to this day, but on that day, yeah, I would be like juggling work and then I would usually be leaving the gymnastics to come home and be on, be on a call, like be on a meeting with either my boss or someone, you know, some type of planning meeting. So that day I remember Stella would often get in trouble at gymnastics and whether it was for not sitting still or touching someone, I remember at that age she used to like tackle hug her best friend TT and it was just like, there was a lot, there was a lot to handle and we went to leave and she wanted to run around the like grassy knoll and I was like, No, you need to get in the car.

And she was like, no. And that was standard for still at that age, but the, the pressure was extra that day cuz I knew I had to be home and like 20 minutes to be on a call. Again, looking back, it was me that was responsible for the chaos of that morning. I had packed too much into the morning. It was too high of expectations for this little girl, especially this strong willed little girl who just, she needed to be out in nature, she needed to have her feet in the grass and on the earth and all the things. But on that day I didn’t quite realize that yet. So she was like, got in the car and she was just like playing around still like not getting in her seat. And I was like, Stella, you need to get in your seat now. And she was like, No, no, no, blah blah blah. And finally I was like, that’s it.

And I remember I turned her around and I hit her on her bottom and she just freaked out. So again, you, you prob you may have heard me tell these stories, maybe not, but I spank Stella twice and both times she revolted and I call it beautiful now, but she was not having it. Like she freaked out, her nervous system just went on fire and in response my nervous system would go on fire and she just started screaming and crying and going crazy. And at that moment I was like, okay, now, now you’re gonna get in your buckles. And she was still screaming, crying like she would not get in her buckles. So I eventually had to do the car seat squish to get her in these buckles.

And so it, like, it didn’t even work. And so I remember just driving away being just like, oh my gosh, this is miserable. I was again just like my nervous system was on fire, my heart was beating a million miles a minute and she was just crying the whole way home. Again that type of like hyperventilating cry where I look back now and I’m just like, oh man, here’s, here’s this kid that just God gave her this most beautiful, strong will and here was this moment that I was just like doing everything in my power to break it out of her and it was not working and she was just again probably traumatized by it because she just wanted to be a child in that moment and run around on the grass and have 10 extra minutes after gymnastics class.

And I was like, hell no, you’re getting in the car, right? But again, I remember that evening just being so angry to my husband and just being like something wrong with her. Like this is ridiculous. Like she needs to know she can’t act like this. And I just, I can remember like the look in my husband’s eyes that night of just like, Honey, we gotta get you guys some help. You know? And it just again was like one of those moments where I look back and I’m like, that was, that was one of those, the tides were changing and I realized like, this can’t go on anymore. And I, I’m pretty sure it was like after that I had gotten a bonus at my job and I took that entire bonus- I feel like it was like a $2,000 bonus – and I invested it the entire thing in the life coaching weekend course private sessions and like more learning when it came to positive parenting and support for myself.

And that was one of those decisions I look back on and I’m like, oh yeah, that changed the future trajectory of my life. But it wouldn’t have happened. Do you see? It wouldn’t have happened if it wouldn’t have been such an awful day of regret. So just remember you guys, I know everybody has them, everybody has these days. Like I, and I even have more stories now that like I think of it, I’m not gonna tell them right now, but there’s just a lot where if you have gratitude at the forefront of your mind and if you have the ability, even if it’s afterwards we’re gonna talk about this af like this after component in a minute here. If you have the ability to just go, God, what are you doing here?

What are you up to? Like that was a really crappy day. It was a really crappy mo morning, whatever it may be. But I’m confident that something good is gonna come out of this. Like I can’t handle this pain anymore. Like I’ve gotta get into the program, I’ve gotta book the session, I’ve gotta say yes to the class. Like whatever it may be. If you can stay in that place where you’re, you know, for me being a person of faith, looking to God and just going, okay God, what are you up to here because I know you’re up to something good. And looking back, I now know for sure what he was was up to. He always has used the awful moments of my life and and done good with them, right?

Because cuz I I, I was cognizant and I wanted to and I allowed him to. So does that make sense you guys? That’s the first point I wanted to cover was just remembering that a lot of times these really bad moments, they can be the turning point that causes you to stop dabbling in positive parenting. Like, I’m gonna listen to this podcast, I’m gonna read a few books. Like no, I’m gonna actually get help because my marriage is on the brink of divorce. I’m freaking miserable, I have anxiety every day. My child is like literally having moments where they’re like crying so hard, they can barely breathe, we feel disconnected, I’m worried there’s something wrong with my kids, whatever it may be, right?

Like I had a student a few weeks ago, she contacted me and she’s like, Wendy, oh my gosh, she’s been out of curriculum for a while and she said, I really like, I need help. I need to come back, I need to do something because my husband’s still not on board. You know, he’s on board maybe a little bit, but not really, but like our marriage is really struggling. Like we just need the extra level support. What can we do? She said tonight I held my nine year old little boy as he full blown almost had a panic attack because he was scared that his dad was gonna find out that he lied about something and she said he could barely breathe and she said some something’s gotta change and like, you know, and so that’s when I was like, get back, get back into the work, come back into the community.

And so again, it’s just those pivotal moments that can be beautiful catalyst for change if you allow them to be okay. So number two of why it’s great to have gratitude for the bad days, not just the good days and the good things is they serve as incredible learning and teaching opportunities. So I think when you have these bad messy moments or misbehavior that’s really tough to understand how to handle or you handle it in a way that you later realize, gosh, that just wasn’t the way I wanna handle it, but I still reverted to that old school method or whatever it may be. If you have an attitude of post reflection, it’s always going to give you information on what you wanna do next time and how you wanna handle it in a different capacity.

So I always encourage my students to look at those really messy moments that didn’t go so well that didn’t give you the results that you wanted just as data, right? So we work so much here at Fresh Start Family on helping parents reduce and remove really the shame when you do lose your cool and do things in a way that you said you didn’t wanna do. Because shame is different than guilt. You guys remember shame is like, man, something is wrong with me, I’m an awful mom, like I’m incapable again most of the time it’s what’s wrong with me, I should know this by now. And then guilt is like, dang it, I did that and I wish I wouldn’t have done that. Like it’s just a, a simple difference there, but it’s a big deal.

So when you’re able to, to look at things afterwards and say, okay, did that A give me the results that I wanted and B, is that what I want moving forward? Is that what I want my parent child relationship to look like? And then also like let me spend some time actually figuring out what was going through my head. Why was I so triggered? What was I maybe protecting myself from? This is a concept that we teach inside of a lesson, inside of our Bonfire private library of curriculum. And we also teach at our Freedom to Be personal development weekend course. But protection behaviors really are usually what happens when you’re triggered and you say or do something that you later regret or you don’t say or do something and later you regret that you wish you would’ve spoken up, you wish you would’ve been firmer, whatever it may be.

But you know, being able to look at it afterwards is a really important part of the journey. Okay, so this is where the saying like hindsight is 20/20 comes from like once our emotions have leveled, we can see things with clarity you guys. And that is what’s so important because a lot of us learn by doing, we just learn by doing. If someone tells us, like especially you guys, remember all of y’all that have strong-willed kids, the apple does not fall far. Either you or your spouse or the kiddos parent is a strong-willed child. So you know, many of us are the types that if someone tells us like, Hey, you should really do this differently.

Like I can tell you all day long, you should really embrace and learn how to compassionately discipline your child instead of relying on punishment tactics. But many of you are not going to actually understand and actually create changes until you cr you feel the hardship around what it looks like to have stories like I just told you, right? Like if you’re, say for example, if you’re a new li, like if you’re a new parent and you don’t even have a toddler yet and you haven’t even run into many situations where you have to discipline, then many of you who have that strong will or not, even if not, it’s just a human thing. Like you’re gonna actually learn the most when you go through it on your own, right?

So that, so it’s always best case scenario for families to be able to learn the information and do it from the beginning and just so many of us learn through doing. So we have to experience kind of that pain associated with the way that we, you know, it might be the hand bound parenting tactic, it might be what we know what to do, whether it’s yell, take stuff away, bribe, reward, punish, ground, whatever it may be. But until we actually experience it and have the data that shows us, oh that doesn’t feel good, it didn’t work to influence them, they’re still hitting their brother a week later, they’re still pulling the dog’s tail, they’re still having trouble keeping their, you know, staying quiet in class and the teacher talks, whatever it may be.

So a good example of this was a few years ago, my staff members, my assistant Laura was working for me and she was learning a lot of new things at the time. She was learning how to do podcast notes, show notes, and she was, she was just learning a lot. And I would give her a lot of feedback and I would say, Okay, this is great, but I want you to do this a little differently and this design or whatever it may be, or the writing needs to be a little bit different. And sometimes it would entail doing something like, I mean she had a big tech job like behind the scenes here at Fresh Start Family forward facing, were positive parenting, family life coaching, education company, an organization. But holy smokes, behind the scenes there is a lot of technology that my staff members have to learn and understand and become familiar with.

So there was one day where she had tried to build something, whether it was like a registration page for a free challenge or one of our show notes pages or something. And then she built it. She basically got it wrong and I came in and I was like, Great try, I’m gonna have you try again. And then instead of me doing it for her, essentially I asked her to go back and fix it all and try it again. And I’ll never forget she voxed me it’s like a little walkie talkie app with my staff and I, and she was like, Wendy, oh my gosh, I get it. Like I realize why I should have compassion with my children now who learn by doing. You’re always telling me a lot of kids learn by doing. And she’s like, I just realized I learned best by doing.

She’s like, I was really intimidated by that task and like unsure if I could do it or not. And then I realized once I did it and then I had to redo it, she’s like, now I get it. I totally feel like I could do it with my eyes closed. That’s that task is like, but it took her doing it, getting it wrong and then doing it again to learn like really how to do it. Does that make sense? So that’s how a lot of your children are, that’s how a lot of us are as parents. We have to experience it for ourself. We learn by doing, especially if you are a kinesthetic person, okay? Just know that there is so much magic in the afterwards, you guys, you don’t have to be perfect, like just, just have a heart to learn from the moments that didn’t go well and just really get your journal out.

Like I am on a journey in my own personal world. So here we are, you know, our family has been practicing positive parenting now for 12 years and our relationships with our kids are rock solid, parenting is like the best thing ever for me in my life, right? My marriage, my parenting and career to some extent. Like I love what I do, I’m so passionate about what I do and there’s a lot of challenges. Like I’m running a team and like the whole digital marketing world and finding new customers and I mean, it’s a lot, right? So career has its challenges and I love it. And then on a personal personal note, like I have my own stuff that I’m working on just like you guys do do. And one of the things that I’ve been working on over the last year and a half is emotional eating and drinking and really making sure that when I put anything in my body, it is from a standpoint of am I nurturing my body?

Am I eating or drinking just because I’m hungry or I’m thirsty or I wanna enjoy a glass wine, not because I’m bearing emotions and this is a big deal for me. I want to get this right for many – not right. I want to grow in this area for many reasons ever since co like I guess, gosh, Covid was by the, if you consider it being over now, I guess it’s over two and a half years of Covid, right? I think we all had so much emotional strain and I put on 20 pounds, you guys, 20 pounds on my little tiny athletic body is not the way that I want to live. And it’s like, so I’ve been on this journey to shed excess weight, so to speak, in a healthy way.

Not because I wanna like look amazing in my jeans. I do wanna look amazing, but I mostly do it because I want to feel light on my joints. I’m an athlete, I don’t wanna have inflammation in my body. I don’t want to just live by habit anymore, right? Like Terry and I grew up like having emotional drinking in our life since the age of 15 in Maryland there was a lot of, if you have relationship drama with your parents or there are things going on that are hard as a teenager, like you just go to a keg party. That’s what you do. Like you drown your sorrows when you’re 16, 17 years old with emotional drinking. So I get why it’s been such a journey for me to let go of that and it’s just like, it’s a process.

So I’ve been really leaning into the journaling aspect of, you know, if I do have an evening where I eat like a ton of cookies or something, like Girl Scout cookies season is the worst for me, you guys. I’m like, why?! Don’t sell me any Girl Scout cookies! Because moderation is always my goal, right? Like I wanna have a few cookies, but then if I have like a hard day at work or you know, I don’t know, something happens where even like celebration wise, like I’ll be like, why don’t I just have 10 cookies? Or same thing happens with Chardonnay. I’m like, yay. I had like just a few weeks ago, I had like a really great speaking engagement for my friend Amy, who’s a professor.

And I was able to, you know, she asked me to come speak for her class, her leadership class. She has a bunch of master’s students getting their master’s degree in organizational leadership. And she asked me to speak and I was nervous and afterwards I just remember being like celebrating and being like, Yay, I wanna have glass of wine. But I’m realizing that I wanna enjoy a glass Chardonnay just because I enjoy the taste, I enjoy the experience, I enjoy sitting down, but I don’t want to drink anymore to celebrate. I don’t want to have 10 girl scout cookies because I had a hard day. So that’s been my journey. But the point is, I am growing, I am creating small steps towards like healthier choices and being more on top of my mindset instead of just like cruising through and I’m able to catch myself more and more, the more intention I put into it.

But the journaling afterwards experience has been very, very pivotal for me. So if I have a night where I have that extra glass of sauvignion blanc or something, and the next day I’m like, Crap, why did I do that? I said I was gonna have tea instead of having that second glass on a whatever Wednesday night, and I just, I still had the glass. I will sit down with my journal and ask myself what was I thinking like as far as not in a bad way. What, what was I thinking? It’s more like what was going through my head? What were the thoughts that I engaged with? Like was, was there a trigger? Like what was the trigger? Because there’s always a trigger like was I celebrating or was I like blowing off steam or was I like burying emotions, right?

Was I avoiding something? But my point is, it’s just been so good for me to have that hindsight, right? Of like, what’s the data here? And then B, what is the learning opportunity? So next time when I have those thoughts and those triggers that come my way, I’m just gonna be more aware of them. And it’s the same thing with you guys and your parenting. If you’re trying to change your behavior and you’ve had a bad day where you yelled, grabbed wrists too tight, still punished when you’re really trying to do compassionate discipline. Instead, when you shamed lectured or many of you have a tendency to move towards the permissive side, you give in, you didn’t follow through on a limit.

You, you know, people pleased your way through an event with your family. A lot of you have very triggering events coming up at the holidays where you really want to speak up and you have to put so much intention into not letting your family do and say things to you that you are no longer okay with as an adult, right? Like we all have the situations where the next day we’re just like, dang it, I wish I wouldn’t have done that, or I wish I would’ve done that. And so having that attitude of gratitude, thank you God, thank you for this experience and what am I gonna learn from it? How am I gonna learn from it? I’m gonna take the time to learn from this. Because again, it’s small steps you guys that creates big change.

Okay? Lastly is these messy moments, these bad days. Give us an opportunity as parents to show our children that we are human. This is what true humanity looks like. You guys, we need our children to understand that mistakes are opportunities to learn and mistakes are also opportunities to make amends. Our kids need to see what to do when we make mistakes. Okay? So many of you, all of us, all of us have kids like this, but so many of you, especially those with the strong willed kids, again, your kids are not like always gonna learn the best when you just tell them what to do.

You have to show them, they have to have it modeled to them. Like, and so just remember that when you are imperfect, when you lose your temper, when you say things that are unkind, when you, you know, talk to yourself negatively and then redo that the next day. Like there are so many aspects of this. It’s not just when we’re too firm, we’re too kind in our parenting. You know, I speak a lot of times to my Bonfire community about how much you can do if you have children going through inadequacy phases or phases where they have a lot of anxiety or they don’t believe in themselves or they’re really hard on themselves. Like you, if you start watching how you talk to yourself, a lot of times it is directly mirrored in your children.

They just do it in this outwardly facing way, right? Where they may feel like it’s impossible to go to that new soccer practice without you by them side or their side. Or it’s impossible for them to do a new music thing or join a new club or tie their shoes on their own, whatever it may be. Inadequacy and avoidance is one of the four categories of misbehavior that we teach inside of our Foundations Course and at our programs. But it’s just that idea that, you know, your kids are going to learn the most when you show them how to work through things, okay? And also our children need to understand that when we make mistakes that doesn’t have to be associated with shame and pain, okay?

It’s, it gets so confusing in this like cultural conditioning that we all have. And especially if you are in, you know, if you’ve come from a Christian background where discipline and pain are tied together and then love and Jesus are taught in the same thing, like it is so confusing and honestly like completely ass backwards. Like we, we really love cheering on families of all faiths, but especially Christian families who have been ha like a rhetoric has been jammed down their throat. And also a style of discipline has often been used on many of you that was traumatic and heartbreaking, that associated mistakes and misbehavior with pain and humiliation, right?

This idea, this, this false rhetoric, this false interpretation of the Bible, you know, essentially the whole ‘spare the rod spoil the child’ type of rhetoric that is spread and used on children, but it, it’s just really messed up. And now as adults we get to make our own decisions. We get to realize that we have fully developed brains and we don’t have to associate mistakes with shame and pain.

---

Hey families! Quick pause to thank Parent Playbook for their continued support of The Fresh, Start Family Show and to tell you about the wonderful work they are doing to inspire and support parents. You heard us interview them a few months ago, but I just love the mission they have to help parents feel confident in their parenting walk so that they can create a positive future for themselves. And the next generation.

So I wanna know, have you gone and downloaded this app yet? It’s free to download for both Apple and Android users and it’s free to use. All you need to do is simply head to the app store and search Parent Playbook. Founded with parent empowerment in mind, Parent Playbook is an app that puts the advice and expertise of parenting educators, life coach and family advocates into the hands of busy parents who are determined to get answers to their parenting questions and desperate to feel more peace, confidence, and empowerment in their daily life.

The social market platform takes all the good things from social media and combines it into one great app for parents. Think the organizational aspect of Pinterest, the community feel from Facebook and then the Instagram with all the inspiration, education, tips and motivation you love when you see folks like me post educational parenting content. Minus all the toxicity and cluttered random information that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and more unsure. Again, this app is free to download and free to use, but only for a limited time as the Parent Playbook team is capping the first round of downloads to help manage growth effectively and sustainably.

Once you’ve downloaded it, check it out and then drop me an email. I’m [email protected] and tell me what you think. If you love it, awesome, I’ll pass on the praise to them and if you feel like it’s missing something, I’ll let them know so they can make quick improvements. You don’t wanna wait another day to get this support system into your pocket. So go search Parent Playbook on the app platform or the app store and push download now. All right guys, back to the show.

---

Yes, there are logical consequences, you guys, I get it. Like we teach logical consequences as firm and kind discipline within our programs. Our students in our private membership program are bosses at implementing logical consequences.

Of course there is things that happen sometimes that in life, right? Like life does the teaching. Sometimes you call your friend a bad name or you’re disrespectful to your, your friend, you don’t get invited to their birthday party, you lose friends, right? Like that is an example of a painful and just a situation that is really sad to watch a kid go through, but it’s life that creates the pain, right? Like it’s not you creating the pain for your child. And discipline does not have to be like that. It does not like it just is does not have to be associated. So, so many of us now as adults, we have so much avoidance or fear of going for what we want in life because we are just so scared of making mistakes because for so many years there was such shame and pain and humiliation associated with it.

So now you know, as adults when we come in and we do it differently, we get to show our children like, Hey, I made a mistake yesterday or yesterday was awful. Like you full blown punched your brother. And today we’re gonna learn from it. Like, I’m gonna make amends with you because I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I shouldn’t have grabbed your wrist. I’m learning, I’m growing, I’m continuing to look to God to heal me from many of the traumatic events that I had as a kid that caused or led me to have these habits, an adult. So let me do this makeup for you, let me make amends. Like if you haven’t listened to our episode yet on making amends, it’s a really, really good one.

I highly recommend you listen to it. It is actually coming later in the month. So I just looked at my notes, I’m like, actually that one’s gonna come later in the month. So make sure when that one comes up you listen to it. Because I give some really great examples of what making amends looks like and how you can do that in your parenting walk. And I talk about makeups and role plays and redos and all these beautiful things, but we’re gonna be different. We’re gonna teach our children that. And one of the biggest ways that we’re gonna do that is we’re gonna do it by modeling. Okay? So your kids, you guys are gonna grow up to understand that conflict is something that you just deal with in life. It doesn’t scare you.

They’re not gonna avoid it. Like conflict again isn’t associated with pain and suffering. Conflict is associated with uncomfortableness sometimes, yes, but it’s, there’s dignity, there’s civil discourse that you are going to teach your children. And that is such a beautiful thing. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve witnessed my child, my children, both of ’em, not shying away from conflict resolution, but actually dealing with it with integrity and dig dignity. This last summer, my, when my daughter was 14, I saw her handle a really intense situation with four, was it four?

1, 2, 3, 4, Yeah, four teenage girls who were 14. And you guys, I don’t like to use the word mean, so I’m just gonna give you, I’m gonna say something else who were really unkind to her, like really hurtful and did some things that were, it was hard to watch as a parent, like girls, teenage girls, man, it is intense. Many of you listening, had these type of things happen when you were a teenage girl, whether it was middle school or in high school and I mean the whole like the mean girls movie, right? Like we just actually watched that a few months ago and it was really fascinating to see that again, I hadn’t seen it in decades, but it’s with Lindsay Lohan.

Yeah. But yeah, anyways, it was, it was intense. It was really sad and I was so inspired to see how Stella moved through the conflict resolution and also the making amends with these girls. Now two of ’em, thank God, went on to another high school and they’re out of the picture now because ugh, like watching my daughter, like, you know, here I am like, oh Terry. And I always joke that we’re like full peace and love here. We’re like fully rooted in Jesus. Like we are serious about our faith. Like we try every dang day to live and spread the light of Jesus. And we are also, we are punk rock.

Like we are not cool with, you know, people being stepped on. We are not cool with injustice. Like we obviously are like super into rock and roll and heavy metal and, and we’re just like really bold in our refusal to allow people to hurt us or step on us or hurt other people, right? And so mentoring my teenage daughter as she’s moving through these types of things, like it is so amazing to watch her. She’s full of grace, she’s full of forgiveness and she’s full of the ability to have phone conversations where she’s like, Hey, before you just ditch me. Like, how about we talk through this?

Like maybe I just made a mistake and had a tone or you know, whatever it may be. Maybe you just made a mistake and did some things that we can come together, we can make amends, we can forgive one another. Like I heard these conversations go down that I was just like, wow. Almost to the point where I was like, Is she being too forgiving and too compassionate? But I know that there is no too kind. There is no too compassionate, there is no too forgiving. I just wanna be able to always teach my child how to really stand tall for yourself and never let people step on you and abuse you, right? And so that summer, this last summer was really just beautiful for me to be able to support her.

But the point is, my kids know, and your kids are gonna know how to do peaceful conflict resolution. They’re not going to run from conflict because they’ve witnessed you doing it year after year after year where you have an argument or you have a big power struggle with your kid. Maybe you make some mistakes, mistakes, they make mistakes. And then the next day or that evening you come together and you say to each other, Okay, what do we learn from our mistakes? I love you unconditionally and I know you love me unconditionally. I’m gonna take responsibility for what I did. I’m gonna learn from it and tomorrow’s a new day. We’re gonna make agreements, we’re gonna make different decisions tomorrow. Okay?

And even today, you guys, I had a situation with my son where, you know, he had made a really sweet birthday, birthday list. He’s at the point where he’s like moving into this age. He’ll be 12 this year in just a few weeks. And it’s so sweet because he’s like, he’s wanting still the little toys like, you know, he, he has on his list that he wants these fingerboards that you actually like. You put a wrist, you put a little thing on your wrist and then you hold it out the window and like the wind against like going in a car, like holds the surfboard against your hand and you kind kind of like do tricks. And it’s just one example of a toy that he has on his list this year.

And he has like Super Mario Brother game too, but he also has this big ticket item and it is a surfboard. It’s like a $800 surfboard that he really, really wants. And so today we could tell that he was like really having some strong emotions and was like angry at times and was communicating to us disrespectfully. And it was so beautiful too, to watch now, cuz me like on the microphone right now, I’m like zooming out and watching how we handled this conflict together. And yeah, there were some moments where I got flared up because his tone was disrespectful, but we stayed with each other, we stuck with each other. We, we continued to listen, we continued to seek to understand, we continued to ask questions and then we asked for what we wanted, right?

So by the end of the conversation, he had actually talked to us and shed some emotion around how he was really confused that our daughter had gotten like a really big present the the year before. And here we are like saying that he’s gonna have to like raise money to blah blah, blah. It was like this whole conversation, but we didn’t give up on each other. We stayed through it until he was actually able to talk to us and communicate what he was feeling. Because many of you have boys, you know, right? Sometimes it can be just an extra task for them to actually communicate what they’re feeling. It, it feels like culture feeds this feeds them this like BS myth that like it’s easier to stuff emotions than it is to actually show emotion or shed tears or actually talk to people about what you’re feeling.

And so today we just hung in there with each other and by the end we had had this beautiful, peaceful conflict resolution, you know, he was feeling better. We came to this like very creative solution that we were gonna sell some of his old boards. And we went and we found a new surfboard and we had the most amazing afternoon we hugged and I took responsibility for some of the like tone that I had had with him. He took responsibility for the way he had had like a disrespectful attitude with us about a few things. Terry took responsibility for some things. We just came together and we just realized that mistakes are opportunities to learn and it’s just really important for me that I am vulnerable and real with my children. And I know that I am going to teach them way more from my imperfect moments and then how I make them right than I’m going to teach them from the perfect moments where I like perfectly am calm or I’m perfectly handled in a way that’s like, yes, that’s the way I teach and that’s the way I handled it, right?

Like, yeah. So I hope that makes sense and I hope that encourages you guys. So just to, just to kind of review number one, when it comes to having gratitude for the bad days, the messes and the hard moments, number one, they can often serve as a turning point where you finally get the help that you need. Number two, they serve as a massive learning and teaching opportunity. So many of the situations you guys, especially when it was our kids misbehaving, like having things, I forgot to tell you this one story. I’ll tell you this and then I’ll summarize everything again. But I remember there was a time when Stella came home and she had told a lie. Essentially she had been staying with friends, her best friend TT, which I told a story about earlier.

And I think they were like a 12 at this time, this age, maybe 11 and a half. And her parents had asked her, Hey, have you seen the movie? What was it, Bird Box? I’ve never seen that movie yet. I heard it’s really intense, but it’s rated R. And she said yes. So she lied and she ended up watching this movie with them. And by the time she came home the next day, she was in mortified. She was in tears. Stella has always been someone who tells us the truth like all the time, no matter what. And I will tell you that that’s not just by accident. Yes, God designed her with this beau God designed all children, by the way, with a beautiful desire to tell the truth. It’s punishment that gets in the way of that. Just so you know, if you have a kid that’s lying to you, it’s most likely a relationship drift or disconnection and it’s punishment that they are scared to tell you the truth.

But she came home that day and she just melted into me and she was like, Mom, I’m so sorry I lied and this movie was awful and it was like the worst thing ever. And I’m terrified, like it was so scary and I shouldn’t have lied, but I wanted to tell you and I’m gonna tell Tandy and Matt. I’m gonna like let them know and blah, blah, blah. And it just opened up the most beautiful conversation for us to learn together. And it was that same conversation that she said to me, Mama, I now understand like why you’d say things and why you have such strict rules. Because they’re for my good. Like, she’s like, I understand why you won’t let me watch rated R movies and I really have learned from this mistake.

And it was just such a beautiful connecting moment where we got to talk more and more about those moments when you’re tempted to go against what your mom and dad have said, but then how this is gonna be such a great example for her to remember that we do know what we’re talking about, like when it comes to like our experiences that we’ve had. And then we have these firm roles. Like at the time, she was not allowed to have an iPhone out in the world. She was not allowed to have Instagram or any of those social media apps. And then of course one of our roles too was that she needed to not watch rated R movies, wear her helmet, all the things. So yeah, the learning opportunities that come from the big messy moments and the mistakes and the bad days are equally as important.

Okay, now I’m gonna summarize again. Number one, they often serve as a turning point to help you get the help that you need. Number two, they serve as a learning and a teaching opportunity. And then number three, they give you an opportunity to show your child that you are human. And this is what humanity looks like. The ability to actually teach peaceful conflict resolution and the ability to make amends. Not through just telling your kids, but actually showing them. So that’s what I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you as always for listening. Thank you for just holding space for these stories. I tell you, I pray that they are just helpful and all of the real life examples that I freely share with you about my imperfections and just what it’s looked like in my own world to be a, a real human mom, and in addition, be able to also serve and support thousands of families along the way.

I just pray every single episode serves you, encourages you, supports you, motivates you, inspires you, all the things. If you’ve loved this episode today, you guys please take a screenshot and share over on social media. I’m very active on Instagram, I’m @FreshStartWendy, and it would just mean so much to me if you just share in your stories and just tag me and say that you enjoyed listening today. And if you haven’t yet, make sure that you go grab our Responsive Parenting Guide. It’s a really great way to just start learning about the different ways that you can be responsive versus reactive in your parenting walk. freshstartfamilyonline.com/responsiveparenting. Thanks for listening, guys. I love you all. For links and more info about everything we talked about in today’s episode, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/144.

Stella:

For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening, families, have a great day.