Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive Jen Lumanlan

Do you ever fight with your partner?

Do you ever fight with your partner about parenting?

(Pretty much all of the couples I work with do both of those things.)

And these arguments tend to follow a pretty well-defined formula:

Child misbehaves.
Parent A gets overwhelmed, criticizes the child and snaps at Partner B for not doing more to help.
Parent B and says that clearly Parent A's 'better parenting approach' isn't working, since the kids are still misbehaving - this is contempt.
Parent A knows they don't want to parent the way they were raised, and also knows they aren't doing things totally in alignment with their values right now. Parent A has done a lot of work to try to heal themselves, but worries that it isn't happening fast enough to protect their children. And isn't it better than the bribing and punishing that Parent B is doing? They're being defensive.
Parent B stonewalls - they are overwhelmed and shuts down, refusing to talk about the issue.
Both partners walk away feeling frustrated, wonder how on earth it got to this point, and feel hopeless that it will ever improve.

If your fights look like this, I'm here to let you know that there is hope!

Last year I did Levels 1 and 2 (of 3 levels) of Gottman Method training. The Gottman Method is basically the only evidence-based framework for couple's therapy.

Drs. John and Julie Gottman describe the main ways they see couples struggle in their communication, and named them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - you saw all of them in the example above.

How many of the Horsemen show up in your fights?

(Criticism is almost always the first Horseman to arrive. Interrupt that, and you can communicate in entirely different ways.)

If you wish there was a better way to communicate about these challenging issues with your partner so you could actually get on the same page and parent as a team, today's episode will show you how to do that.

You'll see a couple, Dee and Jono, who usually walk away from each other in frustration after they discuss their roles in the family.

In this conversation they use very different tools. We didn't completely resolve the issue, but they kept going with the conversation by themselves and gave me permission to also share Dee's report of what happened after the call - which was really magical!

Learn more about how you can avoid using The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and what tools to use instead so you can actually discuss these kinds of difficult topics with your partner.

It's really hard to learn these kinds of communication skills on your own. I'd actually read one of the Gottmans' books but didn't really see how to apply the ideas in my own relationship until I did their four-day training.

During the training I realized that they use basically the same set of tools I use to help parents with their children's behavior, but with a couple of key weaknesses. So I recruited couples from the Parenting Membership and created a series of demo videos so you can learn the skills and see couples practicing them.

There are cheat sheets, starter scripts, and quizzes to help you identify the Four Horsemen in real couples' arguments.

Couples who have used these tools report not just that they're able to address their disagreements more easily, but they're having fewer squabbles in the first place because things just seem to 'flow' in a way they hadn't before.

I'll coach you (live!) on how to use the tools with your own partner in the Parenting Membership. Enrollment is open between May 5th-15th.

Do you ever wish that you know the appropriate logical consequence to give your child (aged 1-10) for each different kind of misbehavior you see?

When your toddler empties the water out of the dog's bowl for the 10th time today...
When your preschooler climbs on the table three minutes after you told them to get off it...
When your kindergartener refuses to come to the table for dinner (and you know they're going to announce they're hungry in an hour)...
When your elementary schooler won't get dressed in the morning (even though you know they are FULLY CAPABLE of doing it themselves) without 300 increasingly nagging, pleading, and begging 'reminders' from you...

Wouldn't it be amazing to have the PERFECT logical consequence ready that would be appropriately proportioned to the misbehavior, and also just get your child to do the thing you're asking without you having to ask again???

But here's the thing about logical consequences: they essentially say to our child: "I don't care why you don't want to do this thing; I just want you to do it."

If we saw one adult saying that to another adult, we would call it 'emotional abuse.'

So why do we do it to our children?

Because it seems like we don't have another option to get through the day.

We actually have many other options; it's just hard to remember them all and which one to use in which circumstance.

In today's episode, I'll tell you the three main reasons why setting limits is hard (and what to do about each of them).

And if you want my complete framework for how to navigate misbehavior, with ALL FIVE of the tools we can use and guidelines on exactly WHEN to use each of them, sign up for the FREE Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits workshop.

We get started on the content on Wednesday April 24 but when you join early you can come and ask me your questions in our private community, get extra Live sessions, and extra chances to win cool prizes.

Sometimes when listeners write to me, fun things happen! 🤪

Listener Diana replied to a recent email because she had listened to quite a lot of my episodes (although more of the earlier ones than the recent ones) and she was generally on board with my approach.

But she was having a hard time! Despite doing a lot of things for her children, and trying to remain calm and 'unruffled' and show that she loves them unconditionally, but as pretty often when she asked them to do something they sometimes scream at her for offering to help, they attempt to boss her around, and they're inflexible and rude.

So what's going on here?

Have we (finally) met children for whom my approach simply does not work?

Of course, as soon as I received Diana's email I wanted to talk with her. She gamely agreed to come on the podcast, although she did want to protect her privacy so there's no video for this episode.

We talked through the kinds of situations she often finds herself in, and some of the reasons why her daughter, in particular, might be acting this way. It turned out that in her indecision, Diana was drifting into permissive parenting, which meant that her children didn't know her needs - because Diana didn't know her own needs.

We identified quite a few practical things she could try to consider both her own and her children's needs, and there's also a message in the episode that Diana sent me a week after we talked, sharing how things were going.

If you'd like help with your own parenting struggles, I'd encourage you to sign up for the FREE Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits workshop, which is starts on Wednesday April 24th. I'll help you set limits effectively - but I'll also help you set way fewer needs than you ever thought possible, by meeting your needs, and your child's needs, much more of the time. No permissiveness required!

It can be really hard to see what's happening in our struggles with our children. They refuse to go to bed at bedtime; we're at home alone all day with a baby who doesn't like being put down, and our older child who is now being aggressive, and there's no time for us to even take a shower, and maybe it seems like everyone around us is judging our parenting choices.

In this very different episode you're going to hear from parents who are in exactly these kinds of situations, and who joined me for a group coaching call to talk through them. We worked through a role play with one parent, Meagan, and then we saw how the same process could apply to lots of other different kinds of situations.

Several of the parents who joined the call were kind enough to record messages after the call letting me know how the experience was for them, and with their permission I've included these recordings in the episode as well.

So if you're struggling to find your groove as a parent; if you're struggling to find yourself, this episode will help.
And if you'd like to join coaching calls with me that are just like this one, I'd invite you to join the Setting Loving (and Effective!) Limits workshop that's coming up very soon. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible.

You can take the Setting Limits workshop on your own at anytime for just $7 on our FlexPath program. Or we have a Guided Path option where you get one email per day for 10 days starting Wednesday April 24th (with the weekend off in the middle). It's completely free to get the content and access to our private online community, although the content does expire at the end of the workshop for the free version. For just $37 you can upgrade to the Full Experience, where you can revisit the content whenever you like, and also get five group coaching calls with me over the 10 days, and those calls will look very much like the call you're about to listen to or watch in this episode.

I have to admit, I’m a bit scared to say it…

The P-word…

“Patriarchy.”(Phew! I did it!)I know some listeners find it hard to hear.

I’ve spoken with more than one woman who has told me: “I sent your podcast to my husband but then he heard the word “Patriarchy” and it was all over.

There’s some sadness there for me, for sure.

Every time I talk about patriarchy I talk about how much it hurts me and those of us who identify as women – but I also talk about how much it hurts men as well. And that’s not just lip service: I truly believe that patriarchy has robbed men of a full emotional life.

I was talking with a parent in the Parenting Membership recently who asked her husband if he ever felt truly seen and understood. He said ‘no,’ and ended the conversation. She cried as she told me: “I feel so sad for him that he doesn’t know that he could be seen and understood, so he doesn’t even realize he’s missing it.”

We can know these things conceptually, and we can think that patriarchy kind of sucks, but maybe we think there’s not a lot we can do about it. After all, isn’t the man the one who really needs to change?

Member Iris and I had had a conversation in the membership a couple of months before I was in Vancouver for the Parenting Beyond Power book tour, where she mentioned that she’d been thinking a lot about how patriarchy shows up in her life. We made plans to get together to record an episode while I was in town – and here it is!

Iris and I discuss:

The power and control that men held over women and girls as she grew up in the Philippines, including casting out female family members with out-of-wedlock pregnancies, while nothing happened to the men who got them pregnant (and lest we think this couldn't possibly happen where we live, men have very real power over women's pregnancies in the United States as well right now too...)
How she sees herself catering to her husband’s needs - adjusting her daily schedule to his; eating what he wanted for dinner even if she preferred something different; perceiving that he expects her to do more than half of the household, even though neither of them works for income;
Patriarchal messages that are being passed on to her daughter about the value of marriage, children, and meeting men’s needs.

Even though she’s no longer in the Philippines, Iris still sees patriarchy in her relationship with her husband and daughter. She even sees how it hurts her husband, who is looked down upon in our culture because he doesn't present in a typically 'masculine' way.

She shares the practices she’s using to pass on different messages to her daughter about a woman’s role in a family and in the world.

But I don’t think we should only have these kinds of conversations with our daughters. We should also talk with our boys about their feelings, and encourage them to fully experience their pain, hurt, and joy, and teach them that it’s OK to care about other people and not be an island that feels no pain and never cries.

Enjoy this beautiful conversation with Iris.

Sara has always tried really hard to not just be a good parent, but a really good parent. The best parent. (When I coached her and her partner recently to create some content for the Parenting Membership that you'll hear more about in a few weeks, her partner said to her: You hold everyone else to a high standard. You hold yourself to a higher standard.)

Sara put a lot of pressure on herself, and this was even harder because she she didn't have the most amazing parental role models. They often fought in front of Sara and her sibling (with insults and name calling a regular part of the mix), and they didn't repair afterward.

The difficult communication between parents extended to the children as well - Sara started to fight back when she was spanked, which escalated to physical fights as she got older. If she tried to talk with her Mom about previous incidents then her Mom would make out that she was the victim, while her Dad would whiz her down to Baskin Robbins for ice cream to win back her love. Sara withdrew, stopped sharing anything with her parents and isolated herself in her room - devouring books and the all the things on the early days of the internet.

So when she became a parent, it's not surprising she felt triggered! Conflict abounded! Conflict with her partner, and with her children - she knew how she WANTED to navigate it (in a way that modeled healthy conflict for her children), but how could she do that when she had no idea how?

We talk about conflict in this episode, and we also talk about needs. It turns out that Sara had needs (who knew!) and when she started to identify and meet them, the magic happened.

Spending time doing things for herself, to meet her need for creativity, created time to spend with her husband and children.

She realized she had been trying to do a lot of multitasking to try to fit everything in, but never spent time doing things she truly loved. Once she did, the background noise of that unmet need went quiet in her mind, and then she could actually enjoy spending time with her family.