Episode 84: Conscious Parenting Basics with Sidu

I am so excited for this episode because I have been talking about this topic in my community. Actually, this is the center of what I have been teaching which is conscious and respectful parenting. And so, I have brought a new friend and colleague to help us dive deep into what exactly conscious parenting is.

To help me in this conversation, I would love to introduce Sidu Arroyo-Boulter. She is a licensed professional counselor associate specializing in relational issues, anxiety, and parenting. She has pursued additional education in perinatal mental health to support new families. Additionally, she offers parenting support through her online community Instagram (@conscious.parents).

Here is an overview of our conversation:

  • Conscious parenting and what it means

  • How to handle kids' resistance

  • Importance of conscious parenting in relationships

To know more about conscious parenting, check out Sidu's website and follow her on social media. Website: newseedcounseling.com
Instagram: @conscious.parents
Facebook: www.facebook.com/theconsciousparents


TRANSCRIPT

Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.

Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go! 

Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen,  and I'm really excited for this episode this week of the balanced parent podcast because we're going to be talking about, a topic that I've mentioned in passing and that we do a lot of here but I've never actually formally introduced it and so I've brought in a new friend and colleague to help me frame this conversation and we're going to be digging into what exactly is conscious parenting like what do we mean when we say that and so to help me out with this conversation, I would love to have you all Welcome to the show Sidu Arroyo-Boulter. 

She is a licensed professional counselor and she specializes in relational issues, anxiety and parenting and she is the genius behind the wonderful Instagram account conscious parents. So I'm so excited to have you here with us. You do, thank you for being here. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do? 

Sidu: Thank you so much Laura. Yeah, my name is Sidu Arroyo-Boulter. Like you mentioned, I'm a therapist, family therapist. I specialists in relational issues, anxiety. I've done additional training and preparing natal, mental health and I work with adolescents, individuals and families.

Laura: Cool. I always feel a little curious about how people get into conscious parenting because I don't know what your story is with it, but it was definitely in my training and my PhD program. This was not what we were taught, not a lot of what we were taught in terms of parents. Maybe my emotional and social development class got into some of it a little bit, but not a lot. So I feel curious about how your story, how you got into conscious parenting and kind of what it means to you. 

Sidu: Your point is very much similar to mine. I don't recall much in my graduate program. Many conversations really around parenting certainly talked about child development and these aspects, but there wasn't much on the parent child relationship or at least nothing that went beyond infancy for me. I think conscious parenting that has been on my mind even prior to having children. 

Laura: Oh yeah, your mom of two.

Sidu: Yes, I'm a mom of two. And so I have a background in education. I was a teacher and then school counselor for many, many years before moving into a family therapy. And there I worked not only on the academic part, but I was thrown into doing a lot of almost like parent coaching without really knowing much of what I was doing a side of from the few courses that I had taken in my undergraduate program at that time. And so I would have a lot of conversations with parents, a lot of concerns and my child doesn't, is refusing to do schoolwork or these sort of aspects. 

And so we would talk about it brainstorm together and I think it kind of just formed for me from those early days and understanding more of what children need and at that time I think I had an understanding of if you will like the respect that children need to be the worst that children have, regardless of whether they're two ft tall or whatever it may be and that they are still fully human, but I think my approach even then it was still forming, it was still developing. 

So while I knew all those things, I think there was still aspects of how I was teaching parents if you will or brainstorming together this idea of well children still need to respect you and then I became a parent, I was also doing my graduate program at the time and I just began to learn more not only of children development but also just the relationship, that aspect of what, how much we come into parenting with our own, if you will condition ing's our own experience of our own parents perhaps.

But even going beyond our own parents also what our society was like, our culture, our religion and all of these different messages that we receive from all over how we bring all of those into parenting and oftentimes we are not aware of these things were functioning with all of these aspects, all of these conditionings, we may be responding to our child in ways that we may not want to, if you will almost like ingrained or it's just something that we do out of 

Laura: Habit, pattern.

Sidu: Habit yeah, something like that. I think conscious parenting is a lot of reflection on what are the areas that I need to grow and how can I honor and respect my child and then how can I continue to foster the relationship because at the end, I think that is what ends up driving a lot of what we hope is a relationship we have with our children.

Laura: I had very similar experiences. You know, I became a parent during my grad program as well and you know, so I was in a human development and Family studies program which is very much systems oriented. Was this big focus on becoming aware of your lens, in your research and your work with families, your position, al Itty in the world, all of the different layers and systems that influence you and influence your client and influence the parents that you're working with and that influence the child that you're working with. 

There was so much awareness of this and then there's so much beautiful awareness of child development and attachment theory, but very little like putting together of those two things I found in my training that that for me that's what lots of the work of conscious parenting has been is figuring out. Okay, so if we bring this level of awareness of all of our lenses, all of our conditioning, all of the things that we thought were true, that we grew up thinking like this is what our internal working model of ourselves and others is this is the truth. 

Our experiences are our truth. If we start thinking about these things, really looking at them from a little bit of distance learning to hold them out a little bit away from you, take a look and examine like, okay, so this is what I believe my whole life, maybe even what I had to believe for a long time to be safe and well taken care of. And then is this really true? And is this true for me, is this what I'm going to choose to pass on to my kids? That is a little stickier, right? So like what does that look like an action? You know, I don't know if you grappled with that a little bit yourself? 

Sidu: No. Yeah. You know, you bring up such a great point right there as far as the so we have these lenses, you know, these conditions that we're observing and I love how you stated right there. It's like we can observe them almost. I often refer to it as like we created this little bit of space between this is what I have if you will known the internal working model and now I have a choice by creating just a little bit more space between what I have known and perhaps now what I can choose to do differently if something is not working for my family. 

Now for the relationship I have with my child, I think that's a lot of the framework from when I work with families. That's one of the very beginning, things not only being aware of this systems that we have, but then creating a little bit of that space. Yeah, that's are able to choose. 

Laura: It's so critical. So I feel like there's like two directions I want to go here. So hopefully we'll have time to go to both of them. But so the first one is, you know, thinking about lots of the time when parents come into my world and I'm sure when they come into your page there's this sense of, okay, so what do I do, What do I say? What do I say to my kids? 

You know, they're resisting me, they're not putting on their shoes, they're not brushing their teeth. What do I do and what I always say and what I find so beautiful and lovely about conscious parenting, the way that I think we are aligned and approaching it is that there is not one Right way to approach this. There's you and your child and there's a million different combinations of scenarios and it's about awareness and trusting yourself and trusting your child. But oftentimes parents aren't there yet. 

So for those of us who are listening and thinking like, okay, but yeah, what do I do to get my kid to brush their teeth? Can you speak to that kind of that tension of, I just want to know what to say. We're saying. There isn't necessarily a script to follow. 

Sidu: Yeah, I 100% can relate to that. I do think that we both kind of approach it in a similar concept in there isn't necessarily this right or wrong or as I've been reflecting with parents just this week that a million different topics such as brushing your teeth, praising my child power struggles. There's so many different topics in parenting are many of these topics are Gray areas where there isn't necessarily one thing, one response, one answer. But there could be a variety of different responses. 

There could be a variety of different ways of engaging with our child. Perhaps engaging with ourselves in those moments when my child is not brushing their teeth and possibly pausing and saying maybe I'm expecting too much of myself right now. That's not to say that we won't get to brushing their teeth. But what are perhaps what am I telling myself when my child is refusing to brush their teeth? Am I telling myself like everyone else is doing it better than I am or why can't I do this correctly?

These post on Instagram or these parenting, You know, people are saying to do it like this, but it's not working for me. There must be something wrong with me. That's where noticing that noticing even our own what we're telling ourselves is crucial to this idea if you will of conscious parenting because there isn't necessarily a right or wrong way and it doesn't mean that we're messing up or that we're ruining our child or that we have failed. If it doesn't go according to the scripts that we often read or see on a blog or watch YouTube video.

Laura: Deep in this one more level. This is the beauty of conscious parenting. It's also an opportunity, every single one of those moments where there is a resistance and pushback is an opportunity more deeply understand yourself to understand these stories and meaning that you might be making like you were just saying like this, there must be something wrong with me. Well, where did you first hear that?

Like when did you first think that you know, oftentimes we heard that very messages kids, you spilled your juice again, what's wrong with you? We heard like the very message. And so each one of those opportunities as an invitation to deepen our own understanding of ourselves to offer ourselves compassion and kindness and in doing so, be more able to very, very authentically be more open to connecting with our child and seeing them clearly were aware of those things and we're healing those things. They don't get in the way anymore. And then we're able to see our kid.

Sidu: Yeah, No, I, I'm 100% on board with that. Absolute. Yeah, I think that's very true. That has been my experience as a parent. That has been, my experience is just in working with other families and that we are able to reflect on our areas if you will of growth, the way that we're understanding ourselves, the way that we're understanding our child, then we are able to authentically respond to them, which may not go according to the script that someone gave us. 

Laura: Yes, absolutely. And this allows for quite a bit more flexibility and room to be human and let it be a little bit messy and have it be okay and not perfectly scripted. Okay, so then another question I want to ask you that I get often, I think that you know, folks who are new in this area are kind of starting to dabble into relation based relationship based approaches to parenting is this idea that the relationship is the focus, not obedience, not compliance, not necessarily even necessarily discipline, but that the relationship is the focus and that's where we get, you know, that connection is the source of influence. And so I was curious if you could speak a little bit like how do you see the focus on the relationships, the importance of it and what that actually looks like in practice? 

Sidu: Well, first I guess let me start off by saying that I do believe that we are wired for relationships right off of the bat as humans. We are wired for relations. We are not meant to be in our own little island and this isolated from people or whatever that may be. And so with that framework, we do need our child needs that relationship with us in a similar way that I need, that we as adults need others. 

I guess the phrase of the village hard right now in this pandemic even more so for being able to create villages and so with that in mind then, you know, if when I'm approaching as well with families or people who are new to this world, it's a huge mindset shift for families to move away from this idea that my job as a parent is to ensure that my children will obey that my children, you know, and if they don't, then there's punishment or isolation or whatever it may be. And I think that comes back to, if you will almost like once again, a mindset shift where sometimes I do wonder whether or not with our systems, which we had already talked about behind some of these, there's an underlying sense of children are not good in their being. 

And so it's my job to get them to be good, which from my approach, children are already good in there being and they already are worthy of everything that you and I are. And so then we do approach our child or from a relational approach. That's where these other aspects. If you will this idea of like more compliance. When I ask you to brush your teeth or when I ask you your shoes on all of these things come from, if from the child's perspective, if you will, my parents sees me, they accept me. I feel safe with them of course. 

Like I want to continue to be in a relationship. And so perhaps when they asked me to brush my teeth, I'm more willing to comply. Not 100% of the time. Because let's be honest how often sometimes we as adults, we may have a very long day. They say, you know what, I'm not washing my hair today. Maybe we're going on 56 days or whatever it may be. The you just say I'm not going to do it. And that's also that part of understanding that's also going to happen with our children. Some days, they may say I really don't want to brush my teeth and so we have to navigate. Okay

Laura: It should not be radical. But what you're saying is that kids get to be human. They do. They get to be human, just like us. What is it then about having a connection, having a solid relationship, a solid sense of my mom or my dad sees me, they understand me, they value me, they want, you know, they really accept me and love me. 

How is it that that in your in my experience, that sense of a child feeling very firmly rooted in that can on some days lead to more pushback and freedom to resist. And but then on the other hand also leads to beautiful cooperation and willingness to kind of come along. What's up with that dynamic that happens sometimes.

Sidu: I would say that that pushback is there's certain times when we may need to be clear on our boundaries and if you will hold the boundary or hold the limits perhaps, but if my child is giving me pushback, I view it as the sense of my child really, truly does know what they want. And I want to encourage that I want to encourage their sense of autonomy, their sense of self because that's something that we all have a desire to do. Especially children. They have a desire to differentiate from their parents and it starts young.

Laura: And not even necessarily a desire, which I feel like sometimes parents misconstrued to think that this is like something that's willful, it's a biological drive to CS autonomy. Absolutely. I think sometimes creating a safe relationship allows a child to know that they can resist and advocate for themselves and part of our job is to recognize when that's happening and help them tune in to themselves, listen to themselves, figure out what it is that they actually need and figure out how to get their needs met in a way that works within the family because that can certainly happen. Do you also see though, that when the relationship is steady and firm, where there's this kind of mutual sense of reliability and security that there can be more cooperation too?

Sidu: I think so, I have seen that, I would say it could be no different than any other relationship. Sometimes I'm thinking of even, you know, adult partner relationships, it's there's no show Asian there sometimes they're still conflict. All of these aspects are very normal, relational aspects, 

Laura: Healthy.

Sidu: Healthy. 

Laura: Yes.

Sidu: We're preparing as well, our child for all of these aspects. So sometimes there may be conflict with our child and that's okay, that's healthy. We want to navigate that conflict in a way that they are expressing perhaps what they need or want and we're problem solving together. Perhaps they don't get what they want or they need. But even within that there's still a sense of, we're cooperating, we're working together to figure out how everyone's needs primarily can be met within this family and and other times perhaps there's certain wants that can't be met and that's okay as well. 

Laura: That's also part of life, right, disappointments are part of life and learning to navigate those things. Okay? So sometimes my listeners really like examples and one that I have been hearing from a lot of folks um around here is schools opening up. There's been quite a lot of school refusal going on. And so do you mind if I kind of put you on the spot and give you like a scenario. 

Okay? So let's say, you know, mom and dad are rushing to get out of the out of the house, the kids are back in school, it's maybe been a couple of weeks because they're going back to school and one kid just, you know, sits down on the bench in the mud room and says, I'm not going, what do we do? What is the first thing you would do in that scenario. So I'm not going to school today mama.

Sidu: The first thing and now in this scenario I'm imagining that there's still a little bit of time. 

Laura: Hopefully there's time, okay. 

Sidu: Hopefully there's if not either way we're making time now.

Laura:  First thing, If you know this is happening, tell them to put their shoes on at least 20 minutes earlier, just give yourself a buffer and then you can get your starbucks sale on your way. You're done early. Okay? Yes, okay. But so let's just say perhaps I and I think that when there is time parents handle things better. So let's say there isn't time we're late, we're like we're leaving right at time. 

Sidu: So let me give a couple of options. I said yes and then we go from there. Option 1, If you will we demand we let them know too bad listening to you, you don't want to go, you need to put your shoes on, we're leaving right now. Again. Obviously depending on the age, the child still could continue to insist, which means that now I as a parent and forced to physically either pick up my child and move them or something along those lines. That's one option.

Laura: It's so hard to force a kicking and screaming kid into a car seat.

Sidu: Another option is approaching it with a sense of curiosity, a sense of understanding, perhaps what my child is experiencing, helping them understand that this is something that we still have to do, we will have to go to school. But empathizing with their experience of them not wanting to go to school perhaps.

And so that may look like approaching the child trying to figure out, you know, why they don't want to go to school, asking, you know, taking if you will four minutes. Because in reality, if we're choosing the first option of the demanding, you know, and like get your shoes on now we're leaving, that's still taking time. The other option of empathizing with our child and trying to relate to them is also going to take up time.

So, either way, both options will end up taking time. Perhaps we need to pause beforehand and almost have like a mental little chat with ourselves realizing today we're going to be late. It's okay. It doesn't make me a terrible employer. It doesn't make me a bad parent. My child is not bad. I am not, I have not failed. This is a human experience. My child is still a good child, I am still a good parent or a good enough parent. And now I can empathize with my child. I can try to figure out why it is that they are not wanting to go to school that day. 

You know, I guess it depends on the child, Maybe they talk about they don't like their teacher, maybe today they just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and they're saying like, I just don't really want to go and you know we have a little chat.  I hear you baby. Like I know that you don't want to go to school today we will like we still have to go to school and you know we can offer something different like would you like to do this whenever we're in the car, maybe we can continue talking about it. 

Maybe we can talk about the things that we're going to do after school together and almost trying to help my child also de escalate probably from their dis regulated state that they might be in if they are saying I refuse to go to school, they may be dis regulated at that point and so we may need to bring them to a state where we can approach them with logic such as mommy has to go to work, you have to go to school. But in that moment that may not be an option.

Laura: Right, they may not have logical reasoning available to them. I mean three year olds have very little of that anyway but for older kids, if they're very upset. You know the rational thinking happens in the you know the part of the brain that usually is a little bit inaccessible right? When they're very upset. 

I feel like what I'm hearing you is slow down, check in with yourself, offer yourself a little bit of soothing so that you can be calm for them help them bring them down with some empathy, some meeting of the mind. I always like, especially with any, I like to get down low to getting your changing your posture. You know, it's, it's funny, I don't know that very many parents know how big we look to our little ones and so everybody listening in case you have never done this. 

It can be helpful to think of some things you typically say to your kid and then film yourself saying them while holding your hand holding the phone down at the level that your child is and facing up at you and look down at your phone just to give yourself a picture of what you look like to them while while we're panting. Even the most kindly sweetly delivered thing. We're imposing figures to these little beings. You know.

Sidu: Sometimes I remember when my oldest was two years old, I specifically remember what example when we were in the kitchen and we were talking and I'm looking at her obviously from my adult level and I just thought I wonder how interesting everything would look. And so I got down to her level. 

Like I squatted down on the ground and I'm just looking up and everything did just from, you know, the kitchen counters which are so high, the ceilings, the fans, the adults as well, even mom or dad, everything is so large for them. And absolutely sometimes just coming back coming down to their level is a way of I see you, I'm coming to meet you where you are. 

Laura: Yeah. And we're in this together, like I'm not going to leave you hanging here. I find too, you know, one of my kids does a little bit of school refusal from time to time. And you know, there's times where I don't necessarily even know what to say because it catches me off guard, like, I don't even know, even just repeating, just to give yourself that moment of pause, like repeating what they've said allows you a little bit of time. 

So for those parents who are looking for scripts, simply letting your child give you the script can be really helpful too. So just kind of almost paraphrasing back, I'm not going to school today. Oh, you're not really you're not going to go to school today, huh? School sounds hard. You know, they just gives you a little bit of a jumping off point to repeat back a little bit of what they're saying with a not like not like, oh, you're not going to school today, but with a kind of gentle, curious voice can be quite lovely. 

Ok, so then, last question in this scenario, let's say we take option one, we get them in the car, you know, and it happens to the best of us that it happens at times. You know, we've got things we can't meet, you know, meetings, we can't miss whatever it happens, but we feel pretty bad about it, you know, that doesn't feel good to anybody. What do we have to do is repair? Look in the conscious parenting paradigm.

Sidu: The repair, I think I had touched a little bit on it already, but I'm going to go back and just reiterate the importance of repairing with ourselves. I think that part is something that is so crucial just in humans. But if you will something in the conscious parenting, that that sense of still reflecting back because if it didn't go the way that we imagined that we empathize and did all of these wonderful things. 

But perhaps it didn't turn out like that and maybe we did take that first option. And more than likely we're maybe in those meetings and now reflecting back and thinking, oh my goodness! Like I picked up my child, I put them in there like, what kind of parent does this? And we're going through everything 

Laura: We are  so hard on ourselves.

Sidu: We are so hard on ourselves. Yes, we are Laura. And so we're pairing with ourselves first, I think is so important, telling ourselves these things happen, I'm human this moment does not define who I am. It does not define the relationship with my child. And when we're giving ourselves that compassion and then when we see our child asking, letting them know, you know, that time earlier on today when you were having a hard time or when we were having a hard time leaving the house, I picked you up in a harsh way. 

And I just want to apologize for that. I'm so sorry that I did that it wasn't right for me to pick you up like that and I will be more mindful of communicating what it is that we need to do in a way that is not causing you harm. Maybe that's too wordy for a three year old in the scenario, three year old. But something along those lines to where I'm communicating that I am sorry, I'm not trying to justify my actions. That's, you know, so I'm not throwing back anything to the child of, well, if you had come, but the situation. 

Laura: You didn't ever say the word “but” in there good apology. A good rule of thumb on an apology or repair attempt doesn't include the word, but or however my vocabulary flexible people.

Sidu: And then we let that go afterwards. 

Laura: Don't just uh per separate on it and beat ourselves up for days. 

Sidu: I would encourage us not to, we might come back to in our own mind that's human as well. But yeah, as best as possible. Whenever that thought comes back up, then that's been taken care of, you know, and I'm moving forward. 

Laura: Oh, I love that you're so kind and sweet and I owe that invitation to just let it go is huge, I think. And what a gift to ourselves and to our relationships because when we burden ourselves with our past mistakes, we burden the relationship with them too. It's too much. It's too heavy to put on any one relationship. Um, being kind and compassionate and, and releasing and letting go and forgiving ourselves I think is so important. Thank you for that invitation was beautiful. Let it go so hard. I feel like parenting team has taught me so much about that and I have so much to learn still.

Sidu: As do we all learning so much every day. My children are always teaching me things. 

Laura: Same there are wonderful partners in this growing up that we're doing. Speaking of learning then. So if people I'm sure are hungry to learn more from you, where can they go to find you and continue this conversation?

Sidu: Probably the best place to find me is on Instagram. My handle name is conscious parents conscious.

Laura: I think there's a dot. Yeah, I have the link in the show notes so it'll be, you can click right on it. 

Sidu: Yeah, so that's where I'm most active. We also have a Facebook page. Same thing conscious parents, if parents are interested in working with me like one on one, they're welcome to go to my website. Also can be found on Instagram, but if not it's new seat counseling dot com and I believe those are the main areas where I'm at right now. 

Laura: Awesome. Well thank you. So you do for this beautiful conversation. It was so fun to talk about this with you and I feel so happy to have a colleague who has, I don't know, a similar educational background, it has, you know, it just is very nice to have, I don't know people who are figuring out how to put all of this into practice in a real way with me. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. 

Sidu: Thank you Laura. Yes, I enjoy our conversations. 

Laura: Thank you for being here. Yeah, this is really, really great and I hope that we'll get to hear from you again.

Sidu:  It would be my pleasure. 

Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review. That really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.

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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.