Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I am Darlyn Childress. I'm a

life and parenting coach. And today on the podcast, we are gonna talk

about leadership energy. And what I mean by leadership

energy is really Sort of the energy that you

bring to the decisions you make and to the

moments with your kids and how you Kind of

feel when you are telling your kids, hey. Get your shoes on

or get in the car or it's time for dinner. And what I've

noticed is that some parents, particularly moms, come to

that moment without a lot of leadership Chip Energy. They're a

little bit more like, hey, everybody. You guys wanna get in the

car now or whatever? A little more casual, A little less

confidence. And what, you know, I wanna talk about in this

episode is what ends up happening to you, to your kids,

and how those moments often don't go well and give you some

tools and strategies that will help you cultivate that

internal leadership Energy and show you all the benefits of what that what

will happen when you bring that kind of energy to these parenting

moments. So before I get into, like, all the strategies, Jeez. I wanna talk

to you about like, the 1st time this dawned on me, this

idea of parent leadership. And I was actually driving in the car with a

friend, and we were talking about parenting. And this was years ago. And

we're talking about how some moms seem to have their kids

listen to them and some moms don't. And I was just really thinking

about, like, What is that about? Like, what what is

it that makes some kids

listen, follow directions, and have like, that parent Has a lot

more ease in those moments. And then what is it when,

you know, those don't go that way? The kids argue a lot, complain a

lot, You know, negotiate, ask

for bribes. And I started thinking about what

sets, You know, these 2 types of parents or parenting

strategies apart, and I got came up with this idea of leadership.

And there are some People

who internally have a leadership energy about

them. And that means you know? What what is a leadership? What

does that look like? It's like the there are certain individuals

that seem to be able to get people

To work together towards a desired outcome that they are

the person with the vision and the person with the plan,

and they also can motivate the individuals to have people follow

them. And that's cool. Right? We love leaders,

and we some of us are and some of us aren't in our regular lives.

But when you bring that leadership energy into

your parenting, That is when I

see a lot more compliance and ease and

less chaos and less, you know, arguing and all of

that in a family. I wanna talk about this for a second because it's

like, for a long time, for previous generations, women

We're really cultivated to become leaders. Right? And if

you are a strong personality and you have a leadership energy,

It can be hard sometimes because people can interpret

women who act that way as being bitchy, as being bossy,

as being difficult, as not being on the, you know, team player,

being too direct, all of that. Like, for sure,

I have been accused of those things throughout my whole life, and I'm learning

to recover and separate sort of the,

patriarchal, you know, feminist Beliefs like that, you know,

how it is to be a woman in the world and separating that out from

my own personality and my own strengths and really allowing myself to Cultivate, you

know, who I am inside. So I know I'm a natural leader,

and I know that that has created pain for me, and that's Squashed, and it's

been redirected and all of that. Now some of you might have the same experience

as me. You have a natural leadership tendency, and,

you know, it's been squashed or or, you know, you've been kind of

guided towards believing that that's not valuable. Or

you weren't really ever told you were a leader or no one saw that in

you or you just are like, I'm not like that. I'm you know? That's not

who I am. Okay? That's fine. I don't want you to change your personality.

As a parent, you get to be who you are. You you are the

perfect mother for your children. You are the

perfect person to lead your life. Right? I absolutely

believe in your innate ability to be an excellent parent.

What I wanna bring into this conversation, though, is

that for some of us, we can be a little bit too

passive or passive of in our parenting with our kids.

And some of that is personality. Some of it is people pleasing.

Some of it is a lack of belief that our children will listen to

us, and we show up in these moments. And like I said, we

bring in sort of a, Hey, everybody. Do you guys want to

have dinner now? Or, you know, we'd bring the nice voice

of like, come on. Come to dinner, please. And there's

underneath that, sometimes there's confidence. Sometimes there's

leadership. Sometimes there's a little bit or a lot of,

like, Now is dinner. Dinner is coming. This is the time for

dinner. Take it or leave it. Right? Now is the time for shoes.

We're getting shoes and socks on. We're Getting in the car. We're leaving on time,

and that's just inevitable. Right? Or at least we're leaving. You can't

always control the time. So for some of us, we bring in this

confidence, this undercurrent of leadership energy of, like, this is what's happening.

I have thought about it. I know what's best. I'm the grown up. I'm in

charge. And then for some of you, that is really hard to

catch inside of you. Maybe socially

or, You know, in work or whatever, you're not like that. It's hard

for you to use a strong voice. I want you

to start to separate out How you are kind of

in the world or, like, with your peers and bring

in how you are with your kids while we talk about this.

Because I just think about all these parents in

homes, right in between 4 walls, and they're working

within a system with their children, you and the children, or you and your partner

and the children. And Someone has to be in charge.

Someone has to be the leader, and it needs to be whoever

is taking care of the children. Right? The children Should not be

in charge. The reason that your kids shouldn't be in charge

is because it actually is upside down because they're children. They don't know what

bet what's best. They don't understand time. They don't understand money. They don't understand diet

or nutrition or sleep or anything. Right? They're

kids. But also because biologically,

neurologically, they are wired to look

to the adults around them for safety and to be

taught taught. They actually want to be

guided. They know on a primal level

that they are kids. They understand that they

need grown ups. They are wired

to attach to the adults around them so that they feel safe and

that they can survive in this world. Right? Because they're

vulnerable. They're little kids. Now When we ask them

to, you know, put your pajamas on, get dressed, go

upstairs, get your you know, get in the bathtub, clean up your toys, get ready

for practice, do your homework, When we tell them what to do,

they are also human, and they have their own authentic selves and their own

desires and their own interests and their own personality, and all that,

and they don't want to. And that's what I call resistance

and a little bit of protest. Now what I see is that when

moms or dads, tell their kids what to do

and their kid Sort of resists, and they ignore or they say no

or they complain or they start negotiating or they whine,

that it can bring up inside the parent this feeling of

powerlessness, this feeling of, oh my gosh. Like,

they'll never listen to me, and I, you know, I don't have control over these

kids. And it might not be conscious thoughts. You might just have, like, a subtle

feeling of powerlessness. And when that happens,

you are starting to slip out of your leadership energy. When

you're starting to Feel that powerless feeling, that overwhelmed

feeling, that anger, that resentment. It really is

coming from this place of, like, I'm not in charge here. I don't have I

don't, you know, I don't have con quote, unquote, control over this

situation. And you then, often,

the parent, Will end up trying to get

compliance or get their children to, like, buy in

to agree and and do what they're being asked

to do. So what does that look like? We

I call it convincing. So it's like convincing or coercion.

Okay? And what that looks like is, like, explaining. Hey. You've

gotta eat because if you don't eat, you're not gonna have your belly full, and

you're gonna be hungry, and then you're gonna wake up. Or, like, you know protein

is really important, and you have to have protein before you go to school. And,

like, you start explaining things. Right? And you start

to try to convince your kid that your rule or your com

you know, your your direction, your The thing you're telling them to do is

valuable and important. You're trying to convince them that they

should buy in. And sometimes,

you know, that works, but a lot of times, it doesn't. They start to argue

back with you. Right? I'm not hungry. I don't need protein. No. No. No. No.

Right? Or you you could get into this persuasion

energy, which is also part of convincing. It's like,

Okay. Well, listen. If you get your shoes and socks on right now, then I

can promise that we'll, you know, get a sticker or, you know, I'll

We'll go some do something fun after school. Like, you sort of promise

some sort of future benefit to them, some sort of I think of

it as a bribe. And what happens, a lot of

times if you use bribes often, your kids will start to negotiate on the

bribe. They'll be like, well, 2 M and M's or, Like, I wanna go

to the park and get a, you know, a Starbucks cocoa or whatever. I

wanna do this and. Right? And now you're in this negotiation, which is

just It's infuriating. So you're

explaining. You're persuading, or you could be coercing,

trying to get them to comply based in fear. Like,

listen. If you don't put your socks and shoes on right now, we are not

going to the park today. Right? So you trigger sort of

this this change in their behavior by

triggering them into some sort of fight flight mode. Or

you could be you could go into shame where you're comparing them. You know, your

brother's got his socks and shoes on or, you know, all the other kids at

school get to school on time, and you're trying to tap into that,

like, you know, you're not good enough the way you are, measuring up, comparing

to other people. K. Now All of this

is all normal. I don't ever want you to feel bad for parenting

strategies that are ineffective because You're in a corner

sometimes. Like, you're like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to

get these people to listen to me. I don't know how to get these people

to get their socks and shoes on. What I'm offering to you is that

you do know how. They do it all the time. They you have

you have tons and tons of evidence of times when your kids have listened to

you. Does it do they always do it on your timeline? No. Do they always

do it without protest? No. But the result is

always the outcome happens. You do get what you want. You

do get these children to school. You do get these kids to bed. They do

eat food. Right? So you have a lot of

evidence that you are the leader. Now when you get

into that convincing energy, Unfortunately, what you're doing is

you're actually telling your kid, you're communicating

on some subconscious level that you feel out of control, that

you feel powerless, that you're not sure how how this

is gonna go. Right? That you're overwhelmed. That Yet you're like, I don't know how

to handle this situation. When you when you dip into those parenting strategies

that are, more, like, emotional manipulation strategies,

That is really like, you're revealing to your children, I'm out of my league here.

I'm out of my depth here. I've gotta get you to comply. I've gotta get

you to buy in, and I'm gonna resort to these different

strategies to get you to do it. And

that actually Makes your kids feel very unsafe.

It it's like they're like, wait. You're the grown

up. Why are you negotiating with me. Why

are you bribing me? I'm 7. Right?

On some level, they know that this they that they shouldn't have this

much Control. It doesn't feel safe. And I'm

using control not in, like, power over or controlling them or manipulate

I just mean, like, you're the grown up, and they want you to be the

grown up. They really do. They wanna have some autonomy. They

wanna have some say. Really, what they want is that they want

their their thoughts and feelings to be acknowledged. They want their

their, you know, frustration to be seen.

So that's why connection is so much more valuable than coercion.

That's why connection is so much more valuable than persuasion.

And we only connect when we believe that our kids

are going to follow directions. Because a lot

of us, we don't wanna connect. We don't wanna say, yeah. You

do not wanna put your socks and shoes on, do you? You were just, like,

not in into it today. You're just frustrated

by the whole thing. You wanna stay home. You wanna be cozy at home. Going

to school stinks. I get it. A lot of us are

afraid to validate and acknowledge because

then we think we're supposed to Fix it by changing the

circumstance, by negotiating the

circumstance, by bribing them out of the circumstance. That

comes from a deeper insecurity, a deeper lack of trust, a

deeper lack of leadership. I

promise you do not Have to change the circumstance just

because you acknowledge it. That's not what a leader

does. A leader doesn't walk into work and say, None

of you guys wanna clean up. You know, I was thinking my son, he worked

at In N Out. It's like, you know, none of you guys wanna bust these

tables and take all these trays. Let's just not do it today.

Like, no. Right? The leader comes in

and is like, we gotta get this done. Let's do it fast. Let's do it.

Let's do it with some energy. Like, You know? Who wants to do it

1st? You cut they kind of bring in these strategies, but they're like, at the

end of the day, the the tables are getting bust. The trays are getting

put, you know, by the trash cans or whatever. So

a leader doesn't think they have to change the

outcome in order to get compliance. They work within

the energy that the person is experiencing. That's connection.

So the cool thing is that When when

you are in your leadership energy, when you feel

that confidence I think of the the opposite of convincing is confidence.

Like, 100% these people are going to school. 100% this

kid's going to bed. 100%, they're gonna eat or not eat. Like,

100%, I'm putting this food on the table, and, like, that's what I'm doing.

A leader Has clarity about

what is happening, what's best. They have, like, a big

picture idea of what's happening,

What needs to happen? What's best? Right? And she's com you're she's

committed. The leader's like, this is inevitable. Like, I'm I

don't know how many times I'm gonna get you know? Like, I don't know

how long it's gonna take necessarily. You can't always control the timing. But it's

like The inevitability of the thing that is going to

happen is happening. Like, that

means, like, Of course, you're gonna take your kids to school. Of course, they're gonna

go to practice. Of course, they're gonna put their pajamas on. And, actually, that ends

up happening most of the time even if if you really observe this

Pattern in your family will be like, oh, yeah. No. I do get what I

want. Like, I do get the result. Like, I am

capable. I am the grown up. I do know best. Right?

So when you the this parent leadership, like, what what am I talking

about when I talk about leadership energy? It really is

these 4 Traits. I'm gonna go through them.

Clarity, commitment, confidence, and calm.

Okay? So I'm gonna break those down. Alright. So clarity. I've kind of already talked

about it a little bit. It's like you are

in your leadership energy of, like, I know what's best. I know how I want

this, You know, afternoon to go or this week to go or, like, this

moment to go. Like, you have a lot of experience. You are

a grown up. Right? You know better what is good for your

kids than their kids do. And, like, if you don't know what's

best, you you know how to get answers. But in general, you

know, You kinda know what what should happen. Right? Like, kids should go to

sleep around this time, and they should get up, and they should eat, like, around

this time. They should have this food. They should probably wear socks when it's raining

outside. Right? Like, you're grown up. You gotta know how things should go.

And so when you're clear and you are in that, like, Yeah.

No. I know what's supposed to be happening here. Then your

kids can actually borrow that feeling of,

Like, confidence and clarity that you're bringing to the

moment. They might protest. They might, You

know, resist a little bit. They might show some of their their feelings

about the thing. But as a parent leader, you

know that feelings come and go, that feelings are

okay, that there's no problems with feelings. You can acknowledge feelings

without changing your goal. You You can acknowledge

feelings without having to negotiate with them or make a

bribe or a promise or threaten them or coerce them in any way.

You're just like, yeah. I know. This is hard. Of course. Yeah. You can do

it. It's so amazing when you do that, how quickly the

child often, especially after a few times

of being the child being in the calm mama process. They're like,

yeah. It's not okay. I'll put my Socks on. Or they'll be like, I'm gonna

put my socks on over here, or I'm gonna put my socks under the car.

Like, they kind of, like, wanna get their little agency and autonomy back, then they

create a little, You know, like, way that they're gonna do it is like, okay.

Great. So, you know, get in the car. Great. No problem. Put your socks

in. Great. Do Look over there. Fine. Right? We don't have to win or, like

you know, it has to be exactly our way. It's like, as long as the

big picture's happening, we have clarity about the big picture. We know how the moment's

supposed to go. It's like, don't sweat the small stuff. Yep. Move forward.

K? So that clarity is part of

being a leader. Another part is commitment. Just

being committed to the outcome. And I wanna talk about this for a minute. So

it's like, you know, yes. We're going to school. Yes.

You're going to practice today. You know, you signed up for this class. You're going

to this class 7 times, like, because we signed up for it, whatever.

And you have clarity, like, what you want, why you signed up,

and then you have commitment. Now I'd wanna

allow you some flexibility in these Moments because

sometimes we get more clarity in a

moment, and we're like, okay. This person, I cannot take this

person to Framics today. Like, they are a disaster.

They are crying, you know, screaming.

Like, I might need to bag it. Like, I might need to just, You

know, recalibrate this moment.

And sometimes you might feel like their the kid is getting away with it or

you're not being enough or you're being too permissive. I think of it

as rescuing. I think of sometimes we rescue ourselves, and

sometimes we rescue our kids. And that that's okay,

that some rescuing happens in families all the time, and it doesn't

ruin anything. You're not, like, Happy to start all over from

scratch with your limits and with your you know, teaching them,

you know, how to listen to you and all those things. Sometimes it's

just like, Things aren't gonna work out, and that's fine.

But beyond to yourself, if you're committing if you're, like, going

against your commitments over and over and over, like, if you Keep rescuing,

then that means that probably you're lacking some confidence and

some leadership, and we wanna work on that. Like, you wanna join the

emotionally healthy kids class or if you've already taken the class, like, sign up

for one of those calm mama club private sessions and get support.

If you've not been in the programs, you know, book a consult with me

because there's there is some parts for all of us that we

need help growing this leadership energy. We need

help figuring out clarity. Like, sometimes I sit with moms and

I'm like, what what do you want your morning routine to look like?

And I start By asking, what do you want?

Like, perfect world, unicorn day, magic

wand, what do you want? That question

is so powerful. It's like, imagine you have super compliant

kids, no weather issues, no problems with your partner,

You know, no time constraints. Like, just picture it

done. Right? Like, what do you really want? And then we build routine based on

that, which is cool. So that's some of the things that I do with with

my clients. But you can do it by yourself. You don't need me. You can

just be like, okay. What do I want? Ideal day,

ideal moment, unicorn situation,

magic wand, like, whatever image you want. And then you kind of

design. How do you want homework to go? How do you want dinner to go?

How do you want bedtime to go? How do you want screen time to go?

How do you want to handle morning routine? You know, all of

those all those things that come up. Bathtime, whatever.

So I love to help you find

clarity and get committed by asking, what

do you want? Okay? Then once you know what you want and you're

committed to it, You build confidence in it.

We just trust that, of course, it's gonna happen. We use past

evidence of how we've already done this before, How you've you know, if

you have a 5 year old, you've gotten your kid to bed, like,

365 times 5 times.

Right? So You have, like I don't know how to do math in my

head, but, like, 3 times 5, 1500

times of putting kids to bed. Like, you have a lot of experience.

You can at me and tell me what the real math is. But, anyway, you

get my point. Right? That You have already done

this. You fed a kid many, many times. You've gotten kids in seat belts and

car seats. You've put you've taken you've done drop off at preschool. Like,

You've done it. You can look at old evidence of you

being successful and remind yourself, I've got it. I can do

this. Right? You can go into the future. I like to go into the

future sometimes where I've already succeeded. I go, like, a

year out or 6 months out or 5 years out. And I'm

like, oh, this kid manages to, like, learn how

to wipe their bottom. Like, I picture my 8 year old

when my kid's 4, and I'm like, oh, an 8 year old definitely knows how

to do this or, you know, your 8 year old doesn't. That's fine. You're like,

okay. Let's go to 18. Like, an 18 year old totally knows how to wipe

their bottom. So we're gonna build. We're gonna, like,

build in that confidence by looking at the past success or looking at

the future And feeling like it's

gonna get done and having that done energy. And when

you're in that done energy, You you are much more calm.

So that's the 4th c. So it's clarity, commitment, confidence, and

calm. Calm is like, I've got it. They've got it.

We're fine. This isn't an emergency. I can

slow my role. I can connect here. Let me get dig in a little

bit. Like, what's This resistance about tell me more.

You know? Let's talk about these socks and shoes. It's so cool when

you actually sit with a child, And you're like, what's happening?

I mean, even a teenager. Like, it doesn't have to be a kid. You know?

I do this with my I do this with my teens, my young adults. I'm

like, or my partner, my husband. I'm like, what's going on here?

What what's up? And, like, you

seem frustrated. Like, Is there anything happening?

And it's so cool with a little kid. You'd be like they're like, these socks

get stuck or My teacher yells

at me or, like, you like your my brother

more. You know? Like, whatever stuff comes up, And you

get to soothe that and, like, find thought errors

and limiting beliefs and really calm that down. I'd be like,

Yeah. Or just acknowledge, yeah. No. It's hard. It's hard being

7. It's hard being 9. It's hard being 19.

It goes a long way. I know some of you aren't

quite sure if, like, compassion is, quote, unquote, enough or, like, if

compassion works. And the truth is it does. It

does soothe the nervous system. It helps shift

emotion. We're not bypassing emotion. We're digging in, and

we're riding it out. So this leadership

energy, when you don't feel like you absolutely need them to,

like, Go pay and listen right now and, like, do what I said. Right? When

you're just like, hey. Let's slow

down. Let me Call myself.

Let me get into, like, what's happening here. And then

in my other podcast episodes and in the in program,

You know, I teach you how to set a boundary, set a limit, and the

limit setting formula is just like, you're welcome to get in the car

once you have your socks and shoes on. And That might

seem so dumb than rather just saying, like, put your socks and shoes on

and then get in the car. But for for some reason, the brain,

When it is kinda told in a permissive way what it can

do and, like, what's gonna happen next, it sort of

moves out of That emotional center and that you're

not tapping that back into, like, the primal part of the brain, the fight flight.

You're really helping the brain reach towards cause and effect, towards

sequencing, like this then that. And the brain's like, oh,

okay. So first, I have to put my shoes on then get in the

car. And when it does that neural process, it the

brain is predeciding that that's what it's going to do, and then you have a

lot more compliance. So limit setting is magic.

And then we have consequences, the correction in the calm mama

process, and that's about just, You know,

delaying, waiting to see, is your kid gonna make a mistake? Are they gonna cause

a problem? No problem. Let them cause a problem. And then

later, we follow through. We're like, hey. Earlier today, that

didn't work. You ended we ended up being 7 minutes late. And so

how do you wanna, like, make that 7 minutes up to me? Here's 7

minutes worth of chores. Right? So we're just bringing that

impact back to them. So this

episode really is an invitation to you to

see The value of leadership, the value

of connecting inside of yourself with your

own leadership energy. Being

the leader in your home is a process. Right?

You're you I always think of, like, that parenting is my

opportunity for growth and to Learn more about myself

and to grow as a person. And this is an opportunity for you to

grow as a leader in your own life. You don't have to go lead

People, like, you don't have to do that. I'm not saying, like, you need to

be PTA president or something like that or whatever. Like,

if you wanna be, go for it. But, like, I'm not talking about

leading other people or leading your peers. I'm really

inviting you to sort of an internal conversation with

yourself of, like, am I the leader of my life, and am I the leader

of my family? Or have I bought into letting my children

be the leader. Am I relying too much on their

compliance? Am I trying to, you know, Get

them to buy in because I don't believe in my own personal ability

to get them to listen or to help them you know, to guide

them towards, You know, seeing that

eating dinner at dinner time is in their best interest.

So I don't expect you to have This all figured out, and I I

never ever ever want you to judge yourself when you're listening to a podcast

episode from me. All I want for you is to Just

be invited into deeper levels of self reflection and

awareness and growth so you don't have to have this all figured

out. Parenting is a journey, and we all start in

different places. And you will grow as a

leader with experience. That's why you talk to moms who've raised

their kids, and they're like, don't worry about it. It's all good. It all

works out. Like, calm down. You know?

Long days, short years, all the phrases that parents, you know, offer to

you. And it's because they have all that wisdom from experience

of, like, it does Kinda work itself out.

But that means that in the moments, we have to be confident that we can

work it out. Right? We're gonna be in those moments

teaching our kids and showing them, hey. I'm the boss here.

And I don't mean that their children aren't the boss. They're the boss of their

feelings. They're the boss of their thoughts. They're the boss of how they show up

in the world, but you are the boss of your home.

Okay? I kinda wanna, like, allow you the ability

to believe in yourself as the leader.

So What's that process? It's like getting

clear about what you want, what works best for your family, what's

ideal. So getting that clarity,

committing to your own goals, your own objectives, your own,

you know, ideals, Your own values,

committing to them, cultivating confidence, just working on

believing in yourself, believing in your kids' ability to

Do the things you want them to do, and then practicing

calm. Just going into these moments when things get rattled,

when things get off the rails, Like, no problem. I know how to steady this

ship. I know how to reset. And you reset by

calming yourself, connecting with your kids, setting a limit, following

through on consequences. That's the calm mama process.

Alright. Yeah. I have been wanting to talk about this

for, like, a long time, and I just hadn't done it on the podcast.

And, leadership energy. Just ask yourself, am I

in my leadership energy? And if you're not, See see where

you can grow. That's it. If you want help with this, of course,

I always have my emotionally healthy kids class. Those classes start kind of every

2 months. The next one starts, like, March 15th, I think,

or Thursday. Maybe it's 14th. And, meets

Thursday, 9 AM Pacific, 12 PM EST. So that

one starts in March. You're welcome to join the wait list. We're gonna

do some new things with the wait list where you get, like, little assignments while

you're on the wait list. Not assignments, but, like, you know, things to think about,

get ready for the class. So join the wait list. That's on

calm mama coaching.com, link in the show notes. Or you can

book a consult with me if you're curious about the program or just kinda like

the process or whatever. And that's also available at calm mama

coaching .com. Alright, mamas.

I I know you're a leader. I know you are because you're grown

up. And, I'm so glad you're listening to

this episode, and I hope it's helpful. And I will talk to you