Welcome back to become a calm mama, and

happy new year. I think this is the 2nd episode of

this new 2024 year. So I hope it's off to a

good start. I always know it Feels good when the kids get back to

school and you get back to your routines and your rhythms.

And I just wanna Mind you that that 1st week back is a

transition week. Your kids are still recovering from, like, sleep

deprivation. They maybe have, You know, had a

lot of, like, boredom, so they've been dysregulated

over the past week or you've had a lot going on. They might

be really overtired. They might not have eaten well. There's a lot of

colds going on, so your kids might show back up at school and get sick,

and then you've gotta have them home again. So I just wanna remind you that

you are in a transition as you head back into

getting back into your rhythm. So give yourself patience. Give yourself

A lot of grace as you, transition back.

So this episode today is It's

called resetting crappy moments. And

I really wanted to talk about this because

I think this happens to a lot of us as moms

is that we're sort of doing a pretty good job

staying calm, And everybody is, you know, sort

of half listening. You know, they're complying, and things are a little

bit easy. And you're, you know, you're just, like, in your mom mode, and things

are going well. And then somehow, there's,

like, a flip a switch gets flipped, or

I've been thinking about it like you trip over your own nervous

system or your kids, for whatever reason, get super

chaotic or dysregulated all of a sudden, And you're in,

you know, sort of what was going well all of a sudden

goes to crap. And that

ends up looking like, you know, your kid has a

major meltdown for no reason, and you can't figure out what the heck is going

on, or they just not aren't listening to you,

or you have, for whatever reason, hit your threshold, you

didn't realize that you were starting to get overwhelmed and that your

window of stress tolerance was, like, at capacity and

you were about to blow your top, and you just lose it. Right?

So when do we see this happen? I see it sometimes

at restaurants. So your kids are doing fine.

They get in the restaurant. They're ordering their Food, and you're

waiting for the food to come. You're sort of they're occupied

while they're waiting. They're hungry. And then they get the food. They eat it,

and they eat it really fast, and then they start to act out.

And your brain is like, all I wanted to do was sit here and enjoy

myself. And now my kids are super wild, and I don't know what to do.

And I do we leave? Do we not leave? Or you're at the grocery

store, And they're putting stuff in the cart or they're crying or they're asking

for things over and over again. And you're, you know, you're managing it

well, And then all of a sudden, you're you're not.

Like, they're running away from you, and you're just it feels out of control and

out of bounds. And, Other times,

like, not to be be labor the experiences,

but, you know, you're at a fun outing. I remember one of my clients was

At this really cool place, and they had to wait in line for a

long time. And the kids got bored, and they got upset, and they

got annoying, and they weren't listening, and they were Fighting with each other and that

it's like, you know you're about to do something fun or you you

know, maybe a grocery store is not fun, but, like, it's temporary.

And you're able, because you are an adult, to, like, calm yourself and move

through it and, you know, occupy yourself, but your kids can't.

Right? At the restaurant. They don't know what to do when their

belly's full and their body has all the,

you know, Calorie's ready to, you know, move, and

we want them to sit still. Or they're at the grocery store, and they have

to pay attention and stay close to you. And, You know, they're bored

and they're dysregulated, or they're waiting in line, or a

family event. Maybe there's not, you know, or a birthday

party or something, and they get overstimulated. You know? At pickup,

we see this. Like, when your kids come out and you're talking to the moms

and your kid is like, Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama. Right?

You know? And they're grabbing at you, and you're like, stop interrupting. That's enough. Don't

be disrespectful. Right? So

we have these moments with our kids that are

just kinda crappy. And

Sometimes, like, you can leave. Right? You can be

like, okay. This isn't working. We're leaving the restaurant. We're leaving the grocery store.

We're, You know, not gonna stay at this place or, you know,

I you know, you can stop and you can leave, but then sometimes you can't.

So I wanted to help you today understand

how to, like, reset One of those

crappy moments. So the example

or the story that I shared this week in with my

email list is imagining that you're at the grocery store

and, you know, the kids are young, like, 57, 79. It doesn't really

matter. 5 5 and 3 or whatever.

And you say because your plan it's not like a bribe. It's not

a a reward. Your plan is after the grocery store,

They're gonna you're gonna, like, make some popcorn and watch a movie show

movie or whatever, or you're gonna watch TV.

And so you have this idea in your head, like, how your afternoon is gonna

go. And so you say to the kids, hey. As long as there's no

problems in the grocery store, I'm happy to, like, make

some popcorn, and we can all cozy up on the couch and we can watch

a show. And this is your plan, and you communicate your limit to

them. And it's That's classic com mama

limit setting. So I'm happy to make

popcorn and let you watch a show this

afternoon as long as there are no problems at the store.

And the idea with that kind of limit is that you are

really helping your kids understand that their

behavior has an impact and that they

can manage their Big feelings

and their energy while they're at the store,

and you can kind of, you know, Remind them while you're there,

like, uh-oh. Remember, I I'm looking for no problems here.

Come sip and then give them directions. Come stand by the cart. I want your

hand to be on the cart here, or give them a little task. Give them

a job. Listen. Can you look through all of the yogurts, and can you pick

the one that has the orange or you can pick the one that says mango

or whatever. You know? You give you involve them. You engage them. You

make the task, The the grocery store, the shopping

part of your your day with them. So you're like super good

calm mama. Okay? Imagine It all works out. Your kids are

fine. You're really engaged. You're con you're calm. You're connected. All

good. You get home. Everything's great. You're gonna bring in the

groceries. You're You're gonna put on the show. You're gonna make the popcorn, and then

you're gonna put the groceries away. You're gonna have 30 minutes to, like, you

know, prep dinner. All yay.

But what happens is you get home, and your neighbor

sees you, and she decides to come over and talk to you.

So you're in the driveway, And, you know, the neighbors

sort of unaware that your kids are waiting for you inside to do

something or they're standing right next to you.

And one of your kids starts to complain.

Mom. Mom. You said you were gonna turn on the show.

What's going on? You know, they're being, like Like, literally rude, but

they don't know that that's not acceptable behavior because they're

young. The feelings of of worry

that you're not gonna get it done, the impatience, that inability to

delay their own gratification, that's part of their

Biology. They're young. Their brain is immature. They don't have the

tools yet to self regulate, to cope, to communicate with

themselves. She's talking. This is temporary. It's not a

problem. She's I can trust her. She's gonna get the show going.

I can wait. Right? All that internal self talk

doesn't exist for your kids when they're little. They need you

to self To regulate them, to coregulate with them, to

soothe them, to help them in that moment.

And I think of that, As, like,

you know, connection really is like

pausing and turning to your child while they're interrupting.

And what we most of the time do is we say, that's rude. Don't be

disrespectful. You should not talk like that to me. Right? Because we

feel a little bit embarrassed that the neighbors seeing our kid act this way. We

also just feel that they're being disrespectful. And in that moment,

instead of Giving them the

internal talk that they need to calm and soothe

themselves instead of modeling self regulation

and doing the process of of coaching them through that

moment, you're trying to teach them a lesson or

discipline them or threaten them. Now the

bummer is that in that crap in that moment when you

are, Go you know? Like, that's enough. Don't talk like that.

Don't interrupt. Don't be rude. You know? You give them that dirty look, that stare

face. I I know because I I know I've done this before too.

Your child in that moment, some of

your kids might just, like, you know,

Fine. Okay. You know, go inside. But a lot of the ones that you know,

people who work with me, their kids have a lot of trouble self regulating. They're

just immature or well, The all kids are immature, but some

kids have more trouble than others. And so if you have a kid that just

goes out of bounds really easily or you go out of bounds really easily, you

know? That's why you listen to this podcast. That's why you wanna help. So

if you go into your child's

moment there and you become harsh

or threaten, you're

going to almost create a crappy moment.

You're escalating that moment.

Your child's Amygdala, the part of

their brain that activates the stress response,

is sounding an alarm When they're at

the restaurant, it's not necessarily fear. It's

boredom, so they dysregulate. When they're at the grocery

store, They're, you know, they're restless. When they're in a

waiting in line, when the plans change, you

know, whatever kind of situation comes up, I

really wanna help you see that your child in that moment,

their behavior is a strategy that they are using to

communicate Their feelings or communicate

their discomfort or a strategy to cope

With that discomfort, right, they're using they're hitting, they're kicking, they're

grabbing at you, they're pulling, they're whining, they're using these

behaviors as a tool to regulate themselves, to calm

themselves. We always use our body to calm

ourselves. So your children are gonna do that too.

We use relationship to calm ourselves, so they're looking to you to calm

them. They're coming to you. Are they coming to you graciously?

No. You would really love for your kid to be like, mom, I'm

feeling quite overwhelmed and Stressed. I feel disappointed because

I anticipated that we were gonna walk in from the grocery store, and the

television was gonna turn on immediately. And now there's a pause and a delay,

and I'm very disappointed. And I would like your help to calm

myself. Like, no. That's Not what they're

gonna do, but they are that is exactly what they are doing

in that moment because they but they're doing it through their

behavior. Their behavior is a communication

of their emotion.

And What we tend to do is

we bypass the emotion. We don't address the

underlying reason, And we just look at the behavior, and

we try to discipline the behavior and get them back in

line. And then the moment gets real

crappy. Right? All of a sudden,

everybody's escalated and, you know, your kid doesn't comply and all

of that. So when you have these runaway moments,

what ideally I want you to do is just recognize

that they've happened or that they're happening. So in the moment,

you've got your little kid, and they're on the driveway, and the

neighbor's still standing there. And you are

looking to your neighbor, and you're like, excuse me for a second.

Okay? And you You actually interrupt your adult

conversation to address your child's emotional

upset. When you are at the restaurant.

Excuse me for a minute. And you take the child aside

or you you sit next to them. If

you're at home and everybody's out of bounds,

go into the situation and calmly say,

We need to talk here for a second. Come over here. Right?

If you're if you're in line and everybody is starting to get

wild, I want you to regroup. I want you to come back

together to take a pause break. You know, I teach

the pause break For you as the parent to

regulate yourself and to, you know, calm your

nervous system, It's the pause break is, you know, stop what

you're doing, reset your body, reset your mind, and

then start again. So I want you to

think about, like, a pause break as a mom with your

kids and really taking on some

leadership and some energy of, like, I'm actually in control

here. I know how to do this. I know how to reset

these moments. I can come back and

connect with my kid. So you're stopping

Whatever's happening, and you're taking your child aside, I

can't I can only tell you how many times I have done this with my

kids. Even now When we have

runaway moments and everybody's starting to get tense or

I'm starting to get tense, and we pause And

we regroup. So I take a pause break as a

family sometimes or as a mom with my kids or with 1

kid. I pause and I go, hey.

What's going on here? I validate

The circumstance, the emotional, what's happening, like like, really

narrating what's happening. So when the this is the connection tool

in action. So it's like narrating the circumstance, narrating

what's happening, and then naming the emotion.

So the connection tools narrate, name, Now

what? It really is a process of resetting a crappy

moment. So we are stopping. We're

regrouping. We're connecting back, And then we'll look at our

child. So imagine the driveway situation. Right?

Instead of, you know, threatening and things like that, you

turn to your child and you say, hey. Right? Were you

excited to watch the show and you're worried I'm not gonna start it?

Could really say the thing out loud. Narrate the

circumstance. Narrate the situation. Give some

words to it. I'm thinking

about, you know, my family vacation

this past week in San Francisco and How many times

we had a lot of, like, really crazy things happen with our

rentals, and they were pretty disruptive for our family. And

so we had to do a lot of regrouping because emotions

got high, feelings got high, and it's like

Just stopping and looking at each other and being like, yeah. This is

hard. We thought it was gonna go one way, and now it's going this

way. And this is a really challenging circumstance.

So let's just get through this and move forward.

That that's leadership. There's so much value in doing

that. And I I think we get overwhelmed in the

moment. Not I think. I know we get overwhelmed in the moment, and it

just feels like Fix it, change it, stop it, solve it. Do anything I can

to get control back and power back over and shut these kids down

and, you know, and I don't wanna judge you for that. Like, that's so

normal, but you see it. It closes sideways.

It gets worse. It gets even more crappy. So

whenever you start to sense that that's happening

or it's already happened, what I'm inviting you to is to

go, Okay. Let's pause.

Let's connect. When that connection is narrating what's

happening, naming the emotion. So on the driveway,

you say, I understand it's hard to wait. I am going to

put on the show after I'm done listening to our neighbor

Tell us her story. You can wait next to me as long as

you wait quietly, or you can go inside, get set up on

the couch, and wait inside. I'm coming in. I Promise.

So you're really narrating it out. What are you gonna do? And then you turn

your shot. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna stay here and be quiet,

or are you gonna go inside? He gives them empowerment.

You soothe that anxiety.

Now a lot of times, Especially if you've done this, you

know, throughout like, once you take the course and all of that and you've, like,

have the skill, your kids kinda trust. Like, okay. She saw

my need. I feel validated. I feel seen. I'm soothed. I'm

okay. I'm gonna go inside. I'm a go inside. Right? They might be grumpy about

it. That's okay. Right? It they they

they might be like, no. Come in now, mommy.

Right? They it might not be something they're capable of doing

at that time. And so that means just looking back at your

child your the Neighbor or whatever on the driveway and just being like, hey.

It looks like I gotta go inside. Thanks for telling me your story. Let let

me touch base with you later. Or sometimes

it's like a restaurant situation. You're like, okay. This is way too much. I'm

gonna go sit in the car for a minute. I'm gonna call on this kid.

I'm gonna connect with them. I'm gonna Regulate their nervous

system. Oh, looks like we're not gonna be able to stay in line

here. I'm gonna get out of line. I'm gonna go to the back of the

line and just Start over. Like, can

you choose your peace

in that moment? Can you choose your kids' emotional

well-being in that moment? Can you Move

like like, let go of some of the plan in your head or

the circumstance in your head and just start over.

That is resetting a crappy moment, to be honest. It's like

you you pause. You regroup. You connect. You

limit set. Stay quietly outside or wait

inside. And then if they fail,

they can't do it. You then have a

child who's very dysregulated. That is not

the time to start consequences.

It is your brain is gonna tell you to start threatening and

punishing. And I'm saying if you

add more threat In the moment, you're gonna just

escalate it even more. So instead,

you turn to the neighbor, say, it looks like I'm gonna need to help this

one out a little bit. I'll talk to you later. You

go inside, and then you can reset again. You see, now that we're

inside, I'm happy to turn on the show as

long as we get these groceries put away or, you know, you

guys, you know, put your socks and shoes away,

get get your blanket set up. You know, as long as you go get the

popcorn out of the pantry and hand it to me, you you can pull

them in to a little task. Right? So

imagine you're at a restaurant, and you say, you know, Looks like we can't stay

inside this restaurant anymore. We're gonna go inside. We're gonna go in the car for

a few minutes, and we'll see if we can make it back in here. Or

you just, you know, have a crying kid and you grab the check and you

walk you know, you pay and you're just like, well, that was

Esther. Right? But then in the car, instead of coming

at this is why we don't go to restaurants. You guys are so disrespectful, and

how can you do this? And you never listen to me. Like, don't do that.

I want you to see that what happened in that moment is that your

child just couldn't cope. The self

regulation skill was lacking.

Your ability to soothe them in that moment wasn't there.

So we're gonna just keep moving forward and not creating

more junk. When

we have a circumstance like that And we have to leave the

restaurant. We have to move the line. We have to, like,

leave the birthday party, or we get to something late.

That is why I teach delaying a consequence.

Because if you feel like your kid is just getting away with it and

not having to, you know, make make it

right, you're gonna get resentful. You're gonna start

to feel really angry and And your child's

not gonna learn that their behavior has an impact. So

it's like the model is that Feelings

drive behavior, and behavior has impacts.

So your child, their feelings are valid, their behavior makes

sense, And they're still responsible for the impact of their

behavior. So in the model that I teach in the

calm mama process, that is all about, like, correction.

Right? It's like bringing the impact of their behavior back

to them, but we do that in a delayed way.

Because if you start adding consequences in the

car and threatening and doing all of that be you know, that

behavior that we do, You're not actually giving

your child a chance to let their nervous system calm down

and then talk it through And talk about yeah. That's

hard. In line, we're it's really difficult. At restaurants, it's really

difficult. At at grandma's house, When, you know, we're trying to leave

and grandma keeps talking, yes. That's really hard. Or when

I'm at when I'm at pickup and I'm talking to the other moms and you

wanna talk to me, that's Challenging circumstance. Let's talk

about what we can do in the future. So we're gonna

just really calm and reset all of

that Junk, a crappy moment, instead of bringing

it into the next moment. So this

Pause break for everyone, this, like, family pause break

is really for you to sort of calm yourself, connect with

everybody, Set some limits. See where their brain is at. See if they

can stay in the moment. And then if they can't,

you're gonna have to pivot. That's okay. And

then if the pivot costs you anything, it has an

impact, then we're gonna pass that impact back onto our kids

later. That's a topic for a different, podcast

episode, and it's also something that I teach in the 6 week emotionally healthy

kids class. It's like the whole model is I'm gonna call

myself. I'm gonna connect with the emotional situation that

my kid is in. I'm gonna set a limit and give them

some choice so that they can reset themselves. If

they can't and they create a problem, I'm gonna call you know, have a correction

later. So this episode that

I'm I'm sharing with you is all about kinda how to

maneuver through those hard moments,

How to take that take that beat. Right?

Regroup, pause, connect, limit

set. See where their brain is at.

When you do this, What you are actually teaching

your children long term is how to

pause and reset themselves.

We want our kids to be able to

notice that they're getting dysregulated, that

they are starting to feel overwhelmed, that they

are frustrated, that they're angry, that they're overwhelmed, that they're worried, that

they're stressed, that they're, hurt that they're sad.

That is the the definition of

emotional literacy is I know what I'm

feeling. I know how to talk about it, and I know what to do with

it. So with our kids, when we

are teaching them emotional literacy. That's the skill of

self regulation. It's like, oh, okay. I am aware

that I am Starting to get overwhelmed or upset.

And I need to communicate that, and I need to

do something about it. So when you pause and you take

a pause break and you reset a crappy moment,

you're setting your kids up for long term Emotional health.

It's so amazing. And my kids are

older, and I've I've been doing this process since Lincoln was

4. Right? That's when I first started to practice this type of

parenting. He's 19. So for 15

years of his life, I didn't do I did it clumsily in the

beginning, and I still do it clumsily sometimes. But

He is able and he has, you know, 80 severe ADHD and

was very dysregulated as a child and had a lot of behavior issues.

But now through the years, he's able to stop and

reset himself, take a pause break himself

because of the modeling. Sawyer too. He's a totally

different, you know, type of kid, and he's hot headed.

And he gets fired up, but he is able,

even as a young man at 17, to stop

and go, well, I'm just really upset, mom. This is

really hard. This is overwhelming. I don't want it

to be like this. I wish we weren't here. I wish it wasn't like this.

So he knows what he's feeling. He knows how to talk about it, And he

knows what to do with it. We are all always learning what to do with

big feelings. Right? That's like like life skill

forever. So this episode, I hope it really helped

you to understand, like, you know,

When you feel like things are starting to go off the rails and your kids

are escalating and things are just really hard and

feel awful, I want you to take a pause

break with everyone. That's your takeaway.

So for this week, just practice it. Just notice.

Hey. Everyone seems a little out of sorts. Come together. I used to think of

it literally like I'm gonna gather all my chicks under my

skirt. Like, I had this picture. I don't know. It was from a children's book

or something of, like, mama hen or whatever. I don't know. And then all her

chicks were, like, in her skirt, and And I would just be like, oh, this

is like me gathering my chicks moment. And and I

would just kinda hold that leadership energy and bring

my children to me and kinda I'm like even now while I'm saying this,

I'm like circling my hands together. And I would just be like, okay,

guys. This is rough. What's happening? What do we need here?

You're kicking. You're hitting. You're punching. You're spitting. You're complaining. You're whining. You're grabbing.

Obviously, you have some big feelings. What do we need? Yep. This

is hard. And then, you know, resetting, like, let's

let's play I Spy. Let's play Tic Tac Toe. Let's let you know? Let's do

I you know, Simon Says, whatever. Bringing

them back in and engaging them. Okay.

I Love this episode for you. I really think it's gonna

help you a ton to just kind of feel like, oh, okay. Them

having a crappy moment. Let's reset. I'm having a crappy moment. Let's

take a pause break. So that's what your takeaway is for this week.

And your other takeaway for this week is if you haven't signed up for the

emotionally healthy kids class, then you need to sign up. I don't know. I

I it's like the best program that I've ever put together.

It's 6 weeks. I teach you the entire calm mama

process. It's in a small group. We learn it live together. All the

moms in there are amazing. This upcoming session,

there's a few moms with, like, 3, 4 year olds and a few moms

with, like, 8 or 9 year olds, so I think it's gonna be a really

good mix of kind of, different

examples, and then you can really learn the process because the process is

always the same. We're always calming ourselves. We're always connecting. We're always setting

a limit, and we're always thinking about the consequence and correction. So I

love I love it. It's $500. You get the course, the 6

weeks that's taught live by I mean, you get the calm mama handbook, which

I'm currently sprucing up, and it's gonna be even better than

it already has been. And then you also get 4 months

of Membership in the calm mama club, which the biggest

perk of that is that you get to book private 15 minute sessions with me

every week. And so you get that just as a bonus as for

signing up for the class. So you get the 6 weeks, and then you have

additional time where you get to practice what you learn and get

support from me as you implement it all. And then when that 4 months is

up, you can renew and stay in the club for another $500 for the whole

year. So I love the program. I I I just if you haven't if

you're not signed up, just sign up. That's all I can say. If you're curious

about it, you can book a consultation with me. So go to calm

mama coaching.com. It's right there under programs, emotionally

healthy kids class. We start Thursday, January 18th.

So This comes out on Thursday, and so the following

Thursday is when we start. So you have a week if you're hearing this when

it first comes out to sign up, And I'd love to see you there. I'd

love to meet you, get to know your family, and just support you in your

journey to become a calm mama. Alright, mama.

I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you