Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlene Childress,

and this is the become a calm mama podcast. And today I'm

going to talk about being value led

instead of child led. So I'm gonna give you the difference

between value led parenting and child led

parenting. And the reason why this is important is because

oftentimes as a parent, you're gonna be faced with

decisions and you might not be clear about what you should

do. Like, should your child continue

this friendship? Should you encourage it? You don't get to control your kid's friendship, but

should you encourage it? Should your child go to this kind of camp or

this kind of camp? This is a really helpful thing also

to keep in mind when you have resistance because

you've set a boundary, because you've said no, like no, I don't

do sleepovers, or no, I don't do video games,

or no, we're doing a digital detox this summer, or no,

we're not going to the beach after all, or the lake, or the pool.

If you tell your child no, they are going to have big

feelings about it And you then may start to question

yourself of, like, oh, did I make a good decision? My

child's very upset by this. Was I being impulsive? Should I

give in? Should I not? And what I've noticed with a lot of parents is

that it's very easy to make that, emotional decision

in the moment and give your child kind of give

in to your child because you are feeling

uncomfortable. Like, well, why did I say no? Why don't we do

playdates? Other people do. Why do I have these screen time rules? My child

is complaining about them. And you may feel

emotionally upset and dis uncomfortable because your child's

resistance creates that discomfort. And it might lead you to give

in. Now, I am not gonna tell you that giving in

is wrong necessarily, but I want you to be

clear about why you are giving

in. Do you have a very good reason?

And in this conversation today, I want your reason

to be led by your values, by the things that

are important to you, by the things that your family has decided or

you have decided are important to you. So on last

week's episode, I talked to you about how to create a

value system or statement for your family and walked you

through. It's really simple really. It's just kind of writing out what is

important to you and what your values are. In my family,

kindness is a high value. Resilience is a

high value. Honesty is a high value. That's part of integrity,

curiosity, compassion, joy, fun. So

I have this value system that I'm working within and it it can

be a little nebulous. It can be a little vague. You don't have to, like,

drill it down to the very, very core specifics. This

conversation today is more about how

you might feel when you are

making a decision or you're setting up a boundary

or you're saying to your children, we go to bed at eight and then your

child's like, I wanna go to bed at 08:30. And you're have a high

value for sleep and you have a high value for staying

in a sleep habit and a good rhythm and you want your kids to have

a good healthy strong body. Now, of course, everyone wants that.

But what if you also have a high value for

connection, and you have a partner who comes home from

work really late, and you wanna encourage that relationship?

You may need to change up your limits and your routines in

order to accommodate your value. And some people might look at that and

say like, well, don't let your kids go to bed that late. That's wrong.

But if you know why you're doing it, you're gonna have a lot more clarity

within yourself of why you do the things you do.

One major example of this from my life is that my husband

and I had decided early on that we wanted a play

based childhood. We wanted our children to have a lot of

time for creativity and that meant a lot of time for boredom.

And so we wanted to facilitate an environment where our kids were bored

so that they would be kind of pushed into finding something to do.

And we wanted to create space for them to be creative. We wanted their

brains to develop in a healthy way. We want to create as child

focused home as we could. Childhood focused,

not child led. And what that meant was that I had a very

strong boundary about when my kids could play video games, like,

on a console or on a desktop. And it was 12

years old for Lincoln and 10 years old for Sawyer. I had

to split that in the middle. I felt like around 10 or 11 was about

the right age, but I knew that the minute one of them did it, the

other one was gonna do it. And so I really the youngest for me that

was I was comfortable with was 10. So Lincoln had to wait a lot of

years and he was very upset by it. He really

didn't like it. He didn't think it was fair. He was the one of the

oldest in his class. And so he was, you know, hanging out with kids who

were younger than him and had privileges that he didn't have. And

he was frustrated by it, but my values made it

possible for me to hold that line and hold that

boundary because I knew that the thing that I was going

towards that the long term vision I had for my kids

was important to me and I wanted that to be true for

them. And so I had that boundary. Now if I were

child led, then I might end up giving

in because I would be focused on his relationship to his

peers. I would be focused on his relationship to me If I

wanted my child to like me and I wanted him to be

friends with me, it would be harder for me to set

value based limits. It would be harder for me to hold those

boundaries if I felt like his emotions

and that his attachment to me was going

to be threatened by these decisions. So

that's a quick example to show you how your child is

going to not necessarily agree with your

values and the limits that you have that support those values.

They will have feelings about them, and they will want you

to go against your own value system, your own integrity,

and give in to them. Another example could be maybe

you don't believe that children should wear high end clothing, or you

have a value for more sustainable clothes, and you don't wanna be

someone who participates in fast fashion or constantly

buying the next new thing, whether that's fashion or toys or

whatever it is that you have a value around sustainability and you have a value

around quality and you have a value around, you know, using the

things you have and not so much consumerism.

Now that is a very strong value for you and your

child is going to want stuff. Right? They're gonna compare

themselves to their peers. They're gonna look at what so and so has

and they're gonna ask for it. And then you're gonna have to say no,

because it doesn't align with the values that you have. And

that is going to create a rub, a resistance, attention.

And if your child led, you're gonna wanna give in so that your

child feels good. That your child feels good about you.

That you're letting your child decide what they're

doing, what they're getting, how they're acting. Instead

of you deciding what the boundaries are and teaching your children

how to Of course, a boundary no one likes a boundary. They push

against that. Limits are challenging for kids. But when

you push against that limit and you have it be based

on your values and you hold that, your children sort of

rub up against that value and they that friction that

they feel is good for them. That

friction and then overcoming that feeling and shifting

emotion and moving on and adjusting and accepting,

That's part of resilience. Pivoting and being able to

be emotionally flexible is

part of resilience. So what I'm seeing in the

parenting world is there's a lot of child led parenting

happening and I'm not judging it. I understand it

because a lot of us have heard over the years, the last ten years,

especially even really specifically the last five years that we need

to validate our kids feelings, that our kids feelings

matter and they do. And we do need to validate them.

But often what parents are confused about is are we supposed

to give in to those feelings? If your

child is sad that they are not

playing a lot, like they're not getting picked to play on the team

or they didn't get picked to be the lead performer in the dance

routine or some kind of structure

based resistance in the system that you're in. Maybe

they weren't chosen to be star of the week or whatever it is

going on in their lives. And then they start to say, well, I don't wanna

go anymore. I'm not going I refuse.

Well, we want our values to be underneath that if we have

a commitment to integrity, and we have a

commitment to showing up when we say we're going to do

something and following through and developing work

ethic and developing resilience. If those are our values

and our child is saying, oh, I don't wanna do that. I wanna give up.

I wanna quit because this is uncomfortable for me. If

we give them that out and we let them quit and we

let them because of their feelings, we let them decide what's gonna

happen. What ends up happening is they miss out on a beautiful

opportunity. One, to grow in your value system, to understand

why it's important to you. Values are more of a lived experience.

You have to live out your values in order to understand what they

mean and why they're important. And so when you have

allow your child that experience to overcome their

discomfort and move through in a values based limit and you

hold that boundary, you say, no, you're gonna continue to go until the end of

the season because this is how our this is our family

value is commitment. Our family value is integrity.

Our family value is showing up for our teams like sportsmanship.

So you can say these are our values and so we're gonna continue to do

this. Even if you're uncomfortable. I believe in you. I know you can handle

it. Then your child goes and does that hard thing.

You're not being permissive, you're being firm. Oh,

with tons of love and tons of compassion, but still firm with the

boundary, and you hold your child to it. They

go and they learn about themselves that they can handle hard things.

You know, Glennon Doyle is always like we can do hard things. We can do

hard things. We have to actually do them though. We can't just

say it. We have to let our kids have opportunities to

do that, to do the hard thing. Now,

sometimes child centered child led parenting

is called horizontal attachment. It's instead of

a vertical attachment between you and your child where you are the guide,

you're the mentor, you're the adult, you're the parent, you're the leader.

In a vertical attachment, there is a, I guess,

a hierarchy. I don't, you know, I don't like to think of it that way

because everyone's emotions matter. But as the adult, you are the

wiser person. I am glad that seven year olds don't rule

the world. It's a good thing because they're impulsive and

they don't know a lot about time and money and the future

and relationships, and they don't really understand their

value system yet. Right? They're not supposed to be in charge.

Like children are not supposed to be in charge. And they instinctively

know that deep down inside of them. They know that they're little,

they know they don't understand how an ATM card works.

Like Apple Pay, that's magic to them. They know

that they don't get it. And so then when we are permissive

and we move into a horizontal parenting where we are on the same

level in terms of decision making power, it actually

creates insecurity for our child. They feel,

uncomfortable, they feel nervous, it makes an insecure attachment.

You're trying to create a secure, strong, trustworthy

attachment with your kid. We're saying like, I've got you. I'm

the adult. I have your best interest in mind. I'm real

smart. I'm really good at being a grown up. You can trust

me. If you have that relationship with your child, and then

they give opportunity for them to trust you, they will feel

safer. So on the surface, it looks like children want to be in

charge. But actually what they want is they want to figure out where

the boundaries are and push up on

them. And as I'm saying this, like I know this is a podcast, but I'm

like shaking my shoulders, like, like a sweater that's too tight

or something like your kids kind of need to be pushed up

against a boundary, and then have that resistance.

If you give in if the boundary is porous and they just get what

they want, they get to not go to school, they get to quit, they get

to not go to birthday parties, all of these decisions that they

make, they are missing an opportunity to

grow in your values, to trust you, and to

build resilience. What we're seeing in parenting, not just me, but other

professionals that this child centered horizontal attachment,

this child led parenting or feelings led parenting is

leading to actually a self esteem crisis with kids.

We are seeing increased anxiety. Now, of course, we have the anxious

generation and comments about social media and the

phone and all of that is valid and true.

But really what we want is for our kids to

grow in their ability to handle discomfort.

And if we don't have strong boundaries, our children's our children aren't

given the opportunity to handle that discomfort,

to grow through it to realize that they can handle it to pivot

through emotion. I can validate an emotion, I can say yes,

you're sad. That is totally valid.

And sadness is temporary. When you

recognize an emotion, you acknowledge it and you allow for it,

the brain and the body will shift through to a

different emotion. That's kind of where resilience comes from. It's like a

mindset and an emotional regulation piece

where I have this discomfort, I have this sadness, and then

the mind and the body work together to move through

that negative emotion, release it, and then pivot

using different thoughts. And you've seen this with your kids where you're

you're holding a firm boundary. You're like you're going to baseball practice, you're going to

dance, you're going to school, you're still going to the birthday party. We said we

were going. Right? If you are holding that boundary,

and your child believes that you're true, because you've

held many boundaries before. You can watch them

go. They're crying, they're frustrated. And they maybe say this is stupid.

I don't like you. This is dumb. You never listened to me or

they're littler and they just cry and they throw things and they, you know, pick

on their brother and they, you know, spit or whatever. Or maybe they're a little

bit older and they just kind of go and they go to their room and

they slam the door. Most kids, especially

if you haven't been a permissive parent, will then

pivot internally. Wait for that

pivot, trust that pivot, trust their emotional regulation

is available to them. Trust that their nervous system can calm

itself and reset itself. And what you'll see is a

okay, fine. I'll go, but I'm not

gonna put my cleats on right now. Okay, you can put them

on when we get there. Okay, fine. I'll go, but I'm not putting my hair

in a bun. Okay, no problem. Their

mind will figure out a way to get a little bit of power back, a

little bit of comfort back, a little bit of negotiation just so

that they can feel a little bit okay. Or they'll come back and be

like, you know what? I don't mind going because I know that I'm gonna see

my friend. Their brain will pivot. It's

so amazing. You can trust that. Now you can guide

your child a little bit, but don't rush to give them

at least and soothe them by promises. And like if you go,

we'll give you ice cream afterwards. Like don't bribe, don't

promise, don't try to shift that emotion too

fast. Validating an emotion is allowing for it, letting it

sit, letting the nervous system catch up to itself,

work itself out. We work our nervous system out

through our body, right, through moving our body,

like, with a rhythmic way is really the best way to move through

big feelings Through relationship, right, getting a little bit of

oxytocin and possibly a little bit of

dopamine, which isn't like go to your phone and ding, ding, ding. It's a little

bit like getting a task and going to do something. Like,

okay, hey, listen, I know you're upset, but we're gonna leave once you

have grabbed your water bottle. So you give your kid a little task, they go

get their water bottle and the brain resets itself. So the brain

resets itself through rhythm, reward and relationship. It's

pretty cool if you believe it and you trust it. Now, what

happens to us as a parent is we feel really uncomfortable

with their big feelings cycle. We don't trust their ability

to manage their feelings. Now, if you're the parent and you don't

trust them and they're the kid and they don't know if they can handle

it, that's gonna make it a lot harder for them and they're going to

have more and more and more big feelings. So the pivot

for you, the mindset for you is going, this is temporary.

Remember when I teach big feelings cycle, I talk about it with the

word cycle, because I want you to know it has a beginning, middle and

end. What observe your child, watch their big feeling

cycle, because they will go through a big feeling cycle and then they will

come to a resolution. Now, a lot of times your boundary

creates that big feeling cycle, and then you validate that feeling and you

think, well, I've caused this big feeling because of my boundary.

You didn't cause it. It's just true when people have

boundaries, they feel they have feelings. Feelings are normal,

feelings pass. There's no problems with feelings. But I want your kids

to learn how to deal with those feelings without trying

to bypass them by giving in by be by you being permissive.

You may be bypassing their negative emotion and then they miss the

opportunity to process that emotion and learn how to deal with

it. In life, there are so many

difficulties. There are so many times

that our plans change. It rains on our

picnic. Right? We think we're gonna have something when it doesn't

happen or we end up we have this plan to buy a new couch, but

then the hot water breaks, the hot water, whatever it's called,

tank breaks, and we have to buy a new one. And now we have to

wait because we can't buy the thing that we thought we were gonna buy. Like,

that's part of life is having emotional upset. And when you

teach your kids when they're little how to deal with that emotional upset,

they are going to be emotionally healthy long term. When we

are child led and child centered instead of

value led, value centered, we miss that opportunity

for our children to grow. The other thing that ends up

happening is because your child doesn't know whether you're gonna

be permissive or not, whether you're gonna change your mind or not,

that they will stay in that negotiation

longer because the boundary does not appear to

them as firm. So if you're just kinda starting

boundary work with your kids, you know, you've been permissive, you know, you've been

rescuing, you've been child led, there's no problem.

You get to be the leader of your home at any point.

You are always able to become the leader

in your family. You've gone from child led to values led or

child led to parent led. When you become parent led, when

you become values led, what ends up happening is

your child doesn't believe it. So you change, you're

like, I'm staying strong, I'm staying committed to this boundary, they are still

going, you know, to whatever it is or we're still committed

or, you know, they're whatever the routine is or the limit that you've created.

Like, this is how it's gonna be. I'm no longer making five different

meals at dinner. This is our new boundary and value. We're having

one meal, family led meal, eating one thing.

Right? I'm gonna offer healthy food and the children are gonna have this

is their option. Okay? So say you decide that your child

is going to go through all their resistance strategies. They're gonna

complain, they're gonna insult you, they're gonna compare to

others, they're gonna whine, they might start bother bothering their

sibling. They're gonna try to get you

to change the boundary, Not because they're manipulative,

not because they're entitled, not because they're jerks,

but because they don't believe that they can handle the discomfort

of not getting what they want. So when you believe that

they can handle it, you believe first, you

hold space, they eventually learn they can.

And over a couple of boundaries, a couple of nights of not giving

everybody their own dinner, a couple of nights of firm bedtime,

a couple of times of going to do the hard thing even when you don't

want to. Your child will learn, oh, she's

serious. He's serious. It's not fear

to believe that someone has values and will stand

by them. I don't need to be afraid in

order to have respect. I don't need to be afraid

in order to trust that my parent does what they say they're going

to do. This is not a fear based model. I've never taught a fear based

model, I teach against a fear based model. This is a

logic based model, where feelings are validated,

but boundaries are real. And our boundaries are based on

our values, not on power, not on manipulation, not

on control. Our boundaries are based on our

values. If you notice that you have boundaries that are based

not in your values, they are just to manipulate or

punish your kids or hurt them or something, then

take a look at that and you can change your boundaries. So for some

of you listening, you might need to change your

permissiveness, your giving in ness. Some of

you might have a very strong sense of boundary, but you don't

validate emotion. You wanna shut it down.

Some of you have boundaries that don't make

any sense that aren't aligned. They're not developmentally appropriate for

your child. They're they're almost to keep you

in control. That could be because of your own anxiety.

So looking at yourself and going, am I overly permissive?

Am I overly rigid? Or am

I or not making space to validate feelings while still holding

boundaries? It is complicated sometimes when

you wanna be firm and you wanna hold that leadership energy

to understand how to validate emotion. It can be a

little bit confusing because a lot of us think if we validate emotion,

then that means that we should give in. So a lot of us don't

even wanna validate the emotion. Some of us validate, give in. Some of

us don't validate and stay firm. And some of us are overly rigid

and our boundaries are not aligned with our actual values.

So take a look at yourself and figure out maybe where your

error is and course correct a little bit. So like I

said, the downsides of child centered parenting, child

led parenting is that the kids aren't resilient,

that there's a leadership vacuum so the children will fill it. That

creates insecurity for them. And then when they

are insecure, they may be defiant, they may be hyperactive,

they may be stubborn or obsessive, they might be cliquishness

or gang up on you, like with their siblings or their friends. They might

be over apologetic or people pleasing. So we don't want our

children to have maladaptive strategies to cope with negative emotion.

We wanna give them opportunities to have negative emotion like

life because life is full of life is pain, highness. Anyone who

tells you otherwise is selling you something, that's from the princess bride.

I think about it all the time, like, it's inevitable that our children are gonna

have frustrating and hard things because life is

full of hard and frustrating things. And so we wanna give our

kids that chance to experience that emotion and

learn really healthy strategies to cope with that emotion. Now, of

course, being child led and feelings led

is a short term solution. It can create short term ease.

It can give you that perceived feeling of being liked or

being loved by your child. Like you're really strict and then you give in and

they're like, thank you mommy. That's so nice. You're so nice.

And that might feed into some kind of insecurity you have. Be

aware of that. If you are permissive every once in a while, who

cares? Okay? It's fine. You say, you're not going.

And then you're they're like, and you're like, I can't deal with this. Fine. You're

not going. Or you're like, you're going. And they're like,

and then you're like, okay. Fine. I you're not going. It's fine.

If that happens, don't judge yourself. If it's a one off,

two off, 10 off, it's fine. But if you find yourself

in a pattern of permissiveness, if you find yourself in a pattern

of child led parenting, recognize you're not helping

your child long term. So what's really cool

if you are value centered and you

are, you know, relating and bonding with your children,

but not giving up on being the grown up. You

have those limits and boundaries and you hold them. Of course,

there's gonna be tension and that short term discomfort that

you have between you and your child, it is worth it. So there

is a downside to it. It's harder to be values led

in the short term. But the more you do it, especially if you

have younger kids and you are firm but kind,

your children will know, oh, she's serious. Oh,

he's serious. And they will be less likely

to try to change the circumstance. And then you're in

a situation where you're just helping them cope with their negative emotion.

That whole negotiation thing, some kids can't always do it.

And that's their strategy for coping. But for most

kids that isn't a strategy for coping. It's an actual strategy

to change the circumstance so that they can get what they want so they'll feel

better. And I want you to understand if you just hold that

boundary and keep trusting, they will feel better. They will

get over it. You don't need to do much in order for

them to get over it. You can trust their nervous system and their brain. So

when you do this, your your children will become more resilient.

They will feel safer with you, which means they will be less

stressed, which means you will have less bad behavior.

They will know their place in the world. Children want to

believe I belong and I'm safe. And when they know

how the world works, and they know how to fit within those boundaries,

they will feel better about themselves. They'll

say I can handle life. I know how it works and I can handle

it. They're better behaved at school, they learn more,

they sleep better, right? There's so many beautiful

benefits to being value led. And

I do wanna recognize, of course, it can be hard.

And it's a process. You don't have to be perfect at all with

parenting. It does really matter, like, aggregate,

like, long term. So if you think of the course of six

months or five months or four months, like, if you were to

join the Com Mama Club and get some support and

within three months, we would look at, like, where are you at?

How often are you permissive? When you're permissive, why?

And looking for less and less of that permissive

parenting, less and less of that punishment

based parenting, less and less of not validating your

kids, you know, compassionate parenting. I'm just looking for you

to improve by very slight increments.

And really the pathway to improvement is always awareness.

So, for this week, I want you to be looking at when you set a

boundary, do you hold it?

When you're holding it, do you validate your kids feelings?

When you don't hold it, why?

That's it. Observe yourself, take a

look, and figure out how you handle your your boundaries.

And that will help you understand if your values led or child

led. And as always, I'm here to help you on your

parenting journey. You can join the Call Mama Club. It's $30 a

month. You can join at any time, quit any time. There's no

minimum requirement or anything like that. So you can come join, see if you

like it. We meet on Tuesday mornings at 09:30 Pacific.

There's usually, like, five to seven people there. And I

try to coach as many moms as I can, and we have some dads who

come. And it's a really beautiful community. We just talk about

parenting in a loving, safe environment. People share really

openly, and I'd love to have you in there. So you can join on the

website, commamacoaching.com. You can join the club

there. Or if you wanna work with me one on one, you can schedule a

complimentary consultation, and I'll talk to you about working with me one on one. I

use do a six week minimum when I work with clients privately.

If you wanna know what that's like. If you are just curious, you wanna talk

to me, you can also book a consultation. I love meeting people who love the

podcast. I love talking to you. I like to get to know you. I like

to find out what podcast you loved and how it's changing your

life. I love to hear all that. So you're always welcome to book a

consultation. Hop on my calendar. You and I will just meet on Zoom. You

get to say hi to me. It's really fun. And, I'd love

that. I love meeting all you mamas. Okay. This week,

be gentle with yourself as you kind of explore

whether you're child led or values led. And I will talk to you

next week.