Welcome to the Parenting Roadmap Private Podcast. I'm Erica Voell, a confidence and wellbeing coach, and a certified human design guide. Okay. These short supportive episodes are here to help you understand how you and your kid are wired, and how human design can bring more confidence and connection into your parenting. Today's episode's a little different because you're not going to just hear from me. You're going to hear from one of my clients who used human design to understand her family in a whole new way, and we talk about how learning her own design and the designs of her partner and kids shifted everything from communication to expectations to how she supports her people. I you will love hearing her story and how things shifted in her family and for herself in our work together. Welcome Natalie to the Parenting Roadmap podcast. Thanks, Erica. I'm super excited to be here. So. So before you learned human design, what was parenting and family life like for you day to day? Well, we are a family that's together all the time. We are a ranching family. We all work our, uh, business together. I homeschool my kids. So we spend every day, almost every moment together kind of learning how to cooperate. And before I learned about human design. I just thought like the parenting struggles that I was having were just communication gaps that happened, you know, as my boys were getting older and, we of course had our conflicts. I'm a very busy person. I like to just get stuff done and I have a youngest that we would call the resistor. Um, because I felt like it was always a big ordeal to get him to do the things that we needed to do in the timeframe that we needed to do them. So that was always a little bit of a rib in our family where we had expectations and they weren't always being able to be met by everybody. So I know that there were a big few, there were a few big aha moments in our work together. So what stands out for you in, during our sessions? I think the biggest thing was. For me, identifying who I was as a generator and then learning about my kids and my partner, two of which are projectors and just learning that we don't operate in the same way. Like I am a hundred percent on the go all day long and I have two humans in my house that need their rest and they need to be like invited. And especially with my youngest, the resistor, I realized that he wasn't just. Not doing the things that I wanted him to do, and I wanted them, wanted him to do them out of rebellion or disrespect. It was that he wasn't getting enough downtime in his day and that I really needed to ask him to come and participate in his own unique way to be helpful, not just like this is the chore that we have to do. So once I learned who we all were in a different way. I was able to respectfully like meet each person where they were. And it has exponentially lightened like the stress load and the communication barriers that we had. I do feel like our house is just a lot more peaceful now than it had been in the past. Oh, I love that. So can you share an example of how knowing your kid or your partner's human design changed how you interact or communicate with them? Yeah, so I'm, I mean, I think the biggest win that. I've had through, this is my youngest, so I'm gonna speak to my projector child,, because my older son is a manifesting generator, so he is able to run at the speed that I am. He's also able to multitask a lot better than I can, which is always very confusing for me. I could never understand how he could be eating his cereal, doing his schoolwork with an open book next to him that he was also reading while holding conversation with me. And be able to absorb any of it. But I've learned that that's just how he operates. but my youngest, the conversation has changed a lot because instead of me being like, we have to go clean the barn, that's what we have to do. And it's the next thing on our list. I'll say, youngest, you are really good at taking really good care of Pete, our horse, and I know that he wants to see you today. Can you come down and be in charge of. Getting peed in and getting him brushed and making sure he settled in for the night. And like him having that specific task that is for him only because he's really good at it, makes him feel like he's not just maybe a part of like the operation, but he is an individual that is doing his part to keep everything running. And also I noticed that. He and my husband both have moments where they just zone out and completely disappear from the world, and it's almost like they pull their invisibility cloak over them. And before that used to really frustrate me because I'd be like, stop ignoring me. I know that you hear my voice, I'm trying to talk to you. And now I look, can look at him and say, oh, you are just like getting your little rest in and that's gonna help you be able to do the next good thing that you're gonna do. And so I've stopped taking offense to the midday naps or like the really long reads where nobody's listening to me and I've been able to recognize them as part of what they need to do similarly to like why I have to get on the couch at the end of the night when the kitchen's done because I'm just exhausted. And that's like my end of the day treat. Oh, this is just makes my heart flutter. So what shifted for you when you started working with your design? Oh man, so much. I think that's been the biggest eyeopener for me is that I'm a big ideas person and I've always just been like eternally optimistic. Well, I shouldn't say always. I was born eternally optimistic, and then I went through a big long phase of people telling me that I couldn't be that person and that I couldn't believe in like a greater outcome or, you know, even like my faith and my connection with Mother Nature and the universe and all of those things being intertwined was so like too whimsical and my optimism was naivety and all of those things. And after working with you and like learning that that is. Exactly who I am. Mm-hmm. Gives me so much authority to just continue to spread like that positivity and light. Not because I'm naive or hope that that's the way things are gonna turn out, but that's just my role. Mm-hmm. In like the human race here. And that has brought so much joy because learning to trust my gut and like knowing that, when I have that feeling that comes in, that I can trust it and trust myself, and that when I feel the resistance of somebody asking me to do something, or even me asking me to do something that I just don't want to do, I can trust myself. And I just feel so much more centered and balanced in knowing that like I'm on the right path, even when it's completely different than anything I had ever expected. It's definitely the way that I'm supposed to be walking. And that's been, that gives me all the heart flutters. Just a note for listeners, we are on Natalie's farm and you might hear, her dog in the background who has a very, it's snoring very loudly, so we're, we're really in it today. So was there anything about the process working together that surprised you or felt different than what you expected? Um, I wasn't expecting to feel so emotional about really learning the ins and outs of like the intricacies of human design. 'cause when I first heard about you on another podcast, I immediately went and like, took my test and I looked at the things and I was like, oh, this all makes total sense. And I felt pretty content with that information. But then when you and I started working together and you know, you took me into a deep dive on what everything really meant and still things I'm trying to understand, but the channels and all of that, um, it just makes a lot more sense to me now when I interact with people. I feel like certain connections with certain people or even this season of my life, like how you explained that I'm, you know, like in an education and learning season, that now every time those things appear, I'm like, oh, that's because this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. So I wasn't expecting quite as much alignment as I'm experiencing now. I also wasn't expecting to feel so emotional about it, like just, but knowing that I knew who I was when I was younger. And now like allowing that full self to be here today. That has been,, definitely its own little healing journey in itself. It's, it's can be an intense process. Yes, it has been. Yeah. But a good one. Yeah. So what made human design really click for you once we started digging into your chart? I think when we brought in, because I'm a all in learner, so you were talking, I was learning. I also asked a million questions and I think when we brought in the family component and I was able to not only use what I know for myself and how I operate and how that can create some resistance with my people, but then just kind of blending everything that I've learned from you. And allowing myself to be just a much better mother. I'm just so content now with being able to communicate with my kids and my husband, and that has just brought so much joy because I just always thought, well, this kid is just like this. Mm-hmm. And this is who he is. And I was stubborn growing up and maybe he's just stubborn too. And I've taken, you know, the negative connotations out of the. Communication barriers that we were having. And I've started honoring who my kids are as individuals and through their design. And it's just been so much more playful. 'cause I'm like, oh, this is just you doing your octopus thing where you can do 87,000 things at once and I can't. And that's okay and good for you. Can you also do the dishes with one of your hands? You know, it just has made it, um, a lot more playful to be a family again. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you are really where I started to see this come alive. Like I had done it within my own family, but seeing it with another client and then you would say, oh, I, I recognized this. And we, when we would meet and I was like, oh, there is something to this. That's what I really love. So what would you say to a parent who's just getting started with human design and feeling a little overwhelmed or unsure about this? Yeah, so I, as a, as part of my design, I love to share everything that I'm learning as I'm learning it. And I've had a lot of experiences and conversations with other moms that I homeschool with, especially because, you know, we spend so much time with our kids that it is really important to be able to like, communicate and work effectively, especially on sticky things like kids that don't wanna do school. And so. When I first started learning about this, we were talking about our own designs and who we were, and then I started sharing my experiences with how, diving into the kids has really allowed me to grow as a parent, which is really, you know, very important to us. And. I think for somebody who is just getting started and feeling overwhelmed, I would say just start with the basics. Like just take the surface level stuff and just try to apply one little nugget at a time. Because I tried to go into the channels and the emotional authorities and all of that with the boys, and I was like, no, I just need to recognize like these very, like the things, our sticky points are the things that I need to be able to recognize and resolve. First and then after I can like do that without any thought or any changes in my behavior, then maybe we can go to the next level. I think knowing all of those things about yourself are really important. And then, you know, once you can really peel back the layers of your kids and your partner, probably your partner and then your kids, then um, it starts to not feel quite so overwhelming. Well, thank you, Natalie. This has been such a pleasure and I know so many parents will love hearing your story and hear themselves in your story. And just a quick reminder, the parenting roadmap, PDF and the booking link for a free intro session are in the show notes if you need them. Thank you for joining me today, and thank you, Natalie. Thank you.