Episode 178: Parenting Beyond Power with Jen Lumanlan
/Welcome to another episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast. We are joined by a distinguished guest and author, Jen Lumanlan. Jen, who holds an M.S. in Psychology (Child Development) and an M.Ed. Jen is not only the esteemed host of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast but also the author of the beautiful book, "Parenting Beyond Power” which delves into the importance of recognizing parents' needs, advocating for oneself, and finding a balance between family obligations and personal well-being.
Here are some of the takeaways:
Jen's self-identification as autistic and its influence on her parenting and podcasting perspective
Exploring the importance of identifying and understanding both our own needs and the needs of our children
Distinction between needs and strategies in parenting
Parents struggle to prioritize their own needs and its impact on parenting
Recognizing and advocating for parental needs
To connect with Jen, visit her website yourparentingmojo.com and her Facebook group Your Parenting Mojo.
Resources:
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 Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast, we're gonna have one of my oldest colleagues and friends on the show to talk about her new book, Parenting Beyond Power. It is a gorgeous book, super helpful and detailed and with these lovely little shifts and the way you see your child, their behavior and yourself and your own behavior. Oh, I loved it. You must run out and get it today. But please welcome to the show, Jen Lumanlan. She's, I just, I'm so happy to have her back. She's been on the show before. We kind of grew up together in this kind of parent coaching world. Jen, it's so nice to see you again. How are you doing?
Jen: I'm okay. Thanks for asking. I'm really glad to be here. I got COVID about three weeks ago and yeah, I was prepared for the COVID period and then I found out, oh, there's actually like a month where you're gonna have a cough for a long time after that. So I'm still sort of in that phase. So not quite up to a full capacity but really happy to be here.
Laura: Are you able to use some of the, the wisdom you've gained in writing your book? You know, your book dives into kind of recognizing your needs, advocating for yourself, figuring out how to balance your needs and your family's needs and the needs of the world. Are you able to use some of that right now? I'm sorry. This is like a total off the cuff question.
Jen: Yes. Yes. It absolutely helps. And I think, this, this may not sound like a very restorative practice. But we, we were in Vancouver for the book tour where that's where I got COVID and we were staying in, in quite a small one bedroom apartment and my daughter kiss was having a really hard time with it. And just so it was, you know, in a basement unit and there's something it didn't, it didn't really affect me, but I could see her bouncing off the walls. And so when we came down to Seattle, I really made a strong effort to connect with the local homeschooling community here because we're, we're homeschooling. And so we've been going out a couple times a week and there's also a, a family here that we are friends with and we've been seeing them and, and so meeting her needs more of the time, right? For socialization, for fun, for play with others, helps me to meet my need for it because it's harder for me when it's, when she's bouncing off the walls. So, sort of really stepping towards supporting her and meeting her needs ends up helping me and yeah, that's absolutely, you know, all throughout the book.
Laura: Beautiful. Okay, so why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and just for the folks who don't know you, I feel like everybody should know you already, but in case they don't, you are the host of the, Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. You are the person who hosted me on my very first podcast interview. Yeah, I know so fun like so long ago now. But why don't you tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do and then we'll dive into talking about your beautiful book and how we can move beyond power in our parenting.
Jen: Thanks. Yeah. So I launched the podcast. Gosh, it's gotta be almost seven years ago now and I started it because I was getting all of these emails when my daughter was a baby from, you know, all the baby websites that you sign up for. And I would get these clickbait headlines like five reasons, you know, five ways to tell your child has a developmental delay. And it's, you know, it's clearly designed to get you to panic, to click through to see the ads. And if they ever did reference an academic study it was, you know, study says growth mindset is key and then here are 20 ways to get growth mindset never actually helping you to understand. Okay is growth mindset really a thing we should be paying attention to. Does this latest study fit with the body of research that came before it. Does it completely refute that body of research that came before it, we have no idea. And so I started the podcast to, to really be the resource that I wanted to have in the world and to look at academic research and use it as a guide for parenting because I realized that I'm, I'm, I don't have much parenting instincts and I don't have amazing parenting role models.
And so I'm gonna need something else to guide me. And so that's why I started the podcast. And then I was sort of on this journey where I started to understand a bit more about my white privilege as a parent, I started looking at patriarchy and capitalism and realizing that the, the researchers are swimming in that same toxic cultural soup that we all are. And so when the researchers are saying, you know, success looks like this to, to raise a child who is successful, you need to do X, what we're ultimately talking about is raising a child who is going to be successful in a white supremacist patriarchal capitalist culture. And that if we want to have a culture to be in a culture to raise our children who are in a culture that is run according to different principles than that. Then the academic research doesn't really get us all the way there and we actually have to do things a little bit differently even than the research points out. So I'm still research based, still using that as kind of a grounding but always looking at it critically saying is this really ultimately where we want to go?
Laura: I love that. I just want to say I've loved the shift that's come in your podcast in the past 2 to 3 years, seeing, seeing more of you come out into your podcast too. More of the kind of.
Jen: In so many ways.
Laura: Yeah, I, I just, I, I really loved and enjoyed that. I, you know, I left academia with a little bit of disillusionment about the research process and what it meant to people who were actually living the lives of parents. That's why I left in a huge part. And so it's really lovely to have a conversation with someone who is, you know, using the information as a good starting point and then teaching parents how to filter through their own understanding of what's right for them, their own values, what's what they want for their kids, they want for their family, what they want for the world and using that information to, you know, but still having a, a good understanding of themselves and just trust in themselves too. I just, I've really loved that from you.
Jen: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I will say I get a lot of criticism for it that I get people who leave me reviews on itunes saying I just want the data, I just want the science, I don't appreciate the bias that this podcast host brings to it. And to me that's kind of a fundament fundamental misunderstanding of what science is because the bias is still there. It's under the veneer. Yeah, there's just this veneer of objectivity that says this is science and so it's value neutral when actually the, the bias is baked into the way the researcher asked the question and what their sample size is and who they're sampling and how they and all of it. Yes.
Laura: Yes, one hundred percent.
Jen: So, yeah. So it gets me in trouble sometimes.
Laura: Well, I think, I think it's good to piss people off sometimes. Like I, you know, sometimes that tells us that we're doing something right. You know, if we are wanting to challenge the status quo and I mean, most of us are doing parenting in a different way, we're wanting to raise our kids differently than how we were raised, right?
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. And you may have heard on the podcast that 18 months this year ago, I self diagnosed as autistic and a parent reached out to me and said I knew you're autistic a year ago and said something like, you know, you dive deep into it, research and your willingness to buck the social norms and there was something else as well, all characteristics of my favorite people. And so, yeah, so I didn't know that at the time. I know that now. But yeah, so I think some of it is linked to, to the autism.
Laura: I'm, I think that's a beautiful example though, of modeling how to be in the world and the delights that our neurodiversity brings to the world, the beautiful gifts that we have. My daughter was recently diagnosed as autistic, too. And the oh gosh, just the process of her coming into her kind of autism identity, how positive it is. But, but it's just is a, this beautiful thing is so different than what it was like growing up in the eighties and nineties. The way she's accepted and out kind of out in her school and it's just a beautiful thing. And so I, I love that you are feeling vulnerable and that or I mean, safe enough to be vulnerable in that way and to talk about yourself and accept yourself in that full, in that full capacity and it's beautiful.
Jen: Yeah. And I kind of wanted to use it as a model for other parents to be able to say, oh, if I'm seeing some things happening, maybe understanding more about myself can help me fit these pieces together. And I, I mean, ultimately, we're all kind of telling stories about our experience that, that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it can be really helpful to us when our stories have more coherence. And so the the autism piece kind of helps to give my story a bit more coherence. And yeah, I did actually get another email from another listener saying, you know, conceptually, I knew before that everybody has value, that neuro divergence has value. But it wasn't until you said you're autistic that I saw how much value I get from how deep you go into the research. And so now I, you know, I truly on a, on a bodily level, I get the value that neuro divergence brings to us. And so that was a really a really sweet moment for me.
Laura: Oh, that must have been really meaningful to hear. Oh gosh, good. I'm so glad. Okay, so kind of a little on this, this topic of worthiness. I, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about, sorry. I'm wanting to word this question. Well, so, you know, I, I, for me just personally, I, I received an an a ADHD diagnosis over this past year and it helped me see in my world some things that I had been shamed for, blamed for that I thought I was just bad at and kind of a bad person for being bad at. It helped me to see them in a completely new light with lots more grace and compassion and it helped me shift quite a few areas of my life where I was still pretty hard on myself. I don't know if that's been a little bit of your experience too. Yes. Yeah.
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it has allowed me to lean into sharing it with others. Right. So I'll, I'll, I'll often be in workshops and the particular way the autism shows up for me is in social communication and kind of reading body language and reading subtext of what's being said. If the, if the subtext is different from what, what's actually being said, I don't catch the subtext. And so when somebody is sitting with me in a workshop and they kind of sitting there with their arms crossed, I now have the capacity to be able to say to them, you know, I'm autistic and I'm having a hard time understanding if you're like not aligned with me or if you're just cold, can you help me understand that? And so it's really helped me from that perspective to be able to see when I don't understand things happening, which previously sort of happened just below the surface.
And it's also helped in my relationship with my husband and an example of that is when he, he likes to have air purifiers on in our house, when we're at home and the low hum of that just drives me batty. It's like constant mental energy to hear it. And so I would walk around the house, turning them down or off and he would walk around the house, turning them back on. And once we found that, oh, this isn't just Jen being awkward. This is, you know, this, this is a part of autism all of a sudden he would sometimes turn the fans off. And so, you know, I think there's part of it is like, why couldn't this just be a conversation we could have had before, right? Why wasn't it okay for me to want quiet before when now I have the self diagnosis. It's suddenly okay. But at least we're now able to understand that better and, and he is now supporting me more effectively in some of the ways that it's really meaningful for me to be supported.
Laura: That's wonderful. So I feel like that brings us to a really important part of your, your book. So your book spends a lot of time on identi identifying needs, the needs of others, our own needs and teaching us and children how to work together so that everybody's needs are being met in creative ways, as opposed to using kind of more traditional approaches to, to discipline, to kind of get the obedience and control that many parents are seeking when or think they're supposed to be seeking.
Jen: Yeah.
Laura: And so what you were just talking about is, was an interesting piece of that because I think that it's really difficult to know what your needs are.
Jen: Yeah.
Laura: This new piece of self understanding helped you understand why a need for quiet is a valid need for you. But even if you didn't have this diagnosis, it's still a valid need, right?
Jen: It kind of is. Yeah. And it always was to me.
Laura: It always was right. So what is it what, you know? So I feel like we could, we could totally talk a little bit about, I would love to talk just a little bit about identifying needs, our own and our children. And then I would just love to dig into how we can trust that our needs are valid and, and go a little deeper in there. So first let's just talk about needs and, and why it's so important for us to understand our needs and our kids needs in order to have a peaceful collaborative, harmonious home.
Jen: Yeah. Gosh, I mean that, that just, that cuts to the heart of what the book is really about. And that when we understand what our needs are and we get those met and we understand what our child needs are and we're able to help our child meet those needs. We're just in a fundamentally different relationship than we are when we're telling them, you know, this is how it's going to be done. This is what we're gonna do and this is how you're going to do it. And I think that it can be confusing for parents in the early days because we tend to use the word need as a way of kind of absolving ourselves of responsibility for the thing we're asking them to do, right? So I might say I need you to get in the car. That's not actually a need, right? I might need have a need for a competence in my work if I'm dropping my child off at daycare and then going to work. And I've said I'm going to be there at a certain time and I have a meeting. I might have a need for ease, for calm, for peace, for harmony in the morning, for collaboration with my child. All of those are needs. And I, I think that I need, you too is a really key indicator that the next thing about to come out of your mouth is not actually a need.
Laura: Yeah.
Jen: So, so when we, yeah, so, so when we understand what our needs are and then write the critical piece also understanding what our child's needs are. Why are they resisting this thing that we're asking them to do? It's because they have a need that they're trying to meet and resisting is the best way that they see to do that. And and this is, I think another way that my autism comes into play is I'm a master pattern seeker. And so I'm always looking for patterns in behavior, right? So is this pattern only coming up on school days? In which case, maybe there's something happening at school with a teacher with another child at school that is difficult and and and our child is trying to postpone that moment of entry into school. Maybe it's the separation. So we see it coming up on school days and any time you the child off at grandma's house. And so they have a need for comfort and safety, maybe it's happening every day and it doesn't matter where we're going, even if we're going to the park and then we're looking at things like, well, are their clothes comfortable? Are they resisting, getting dressed because their clothes are uncomfortable. Are they not wanting to get in the car seat because they're feeling bored or, you know, they're looking for a sense of joy and play.
So we're so we're looking for these patterns to help us understand what are our child's needs even before they can start articulating them to us. And then when once we see both of these needs, we find many, many, many ways to meet both of our needs. And, and so it's not that sort of, you know, I'm suddenly a permissive parent who is doing everything to meet my child's needs. Not at all. That's just perpetuating patriarchy, right? Where I'm the caregiver and I'm just getting walked all over. What we're saying is you have needs as a parent and you deserve to get your needs met and your child has needs to and they deserve to get them met. And it is possible the vast majority of the time to meet both of your needs.
Laura: Okay. And one of the things that you talk about that I really like in the book is helping parents differentiate what between what's a need and what is a strategy that we're currently employing to get the need met. And I really love when you talk about how we are often don't have actually a conflict of needs, but really a conflict of strategies. Can you tell our audience, teach our audience a little bit about that because it's really a helpful way to frame things.
Jen: Yeah. So I, I've done training in what's called nonviolent communication, which is basically what this method is, right? It's, it's nonviolent communication. And for some reason, most people don't think to apply to children and I'm not really sure why because it really makes parenting easier.
Laura: Because children are humans.
Jen: Yeah. Oh, yeah, we got that part.
Laura: We don't think of children as full human beings worthy of dignity and respect.
Jen: And so, so that's why we don't think about doing this kind of communication with them. So, pretty much whenever, I mean, virtually always, whenever we're having a conflict with somebody we're having a conflict, not over our underlying needs, only over the strategies we're using to meet our needs. And sort of a touchstone example that I come back to over and over again is a time when I just got sick of unloading the dishwasher at our house and it, it's been broken for a long time. So this hasn't happened in a while. But, I would put my oatmeal on for three minutes in the microwave. So I would, I would know it wouldn't take that long, right? It's not uh an objectively difficult task. It's three minutes to unload the dishwasher and I just got sick of doing it. Why am I doing this every single day? And my husband would swan out of the bedroom at 9:30 or 10 in the morning and make his fancy coffee and sit there with his Instagram and his coffee and his toast. And I'm like, but I've already unloaded the dishwasher. I've done two hours of work. I fed myself, I fed my daughter, right? Why, why, why is this happening? And so I picked a fight with him over why he doesn't unload the dishwasher?
And in the back of Parenting Beyond Power, there are lists of needs, list of feelings and you will not find anything related to dishwashers on that need list. It did not exist. And what were so what were my needs, right? My needs were for collaboration, for partnership, to feel like we're on the same team. And I had latched on to that strategy of getting him to unload the dishwasher as the only way that I would find acceptable to have that need for partnership. And if I had instead gone to him and said, you know, I'm, I'm kind of feeling overwhelmed and I'm wishing that I could feel like we're more on the same team. Would you be willing to, to help me think through some ways we could do that? We would have come up with things like him doing grocery shopping, him doing more cooking, him taking our daughter out to, to go play so I can get some work done, right? 100 strategies we could have used maybe three of which have anything to undo with unloading the dishwasher. And so, so that's what we mean by, by fighting of a strategy. So anytime we're saying to our child, I need you to or you have to or even we have to, right? We have to go now. Well, no, we don't. Maybe I have a need for, for nourishment, for food. And I can see that you have a need for joy and play and how can we meet both of those needs, right. That's the kind of conversation that we're moving towards.
Laura: I love this. Okay. So one of the questions that I get from parents all the time is, okay, but at some point, they just have to put their dang shoes on and get in the car because I can't be late for work every day of my life.
Jen: Yeah.
Laura: So what do we do? What do, what do parents do?
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. So firstly, I would say let's not have that conversation as we're trying to get out the door because everybody's tempers are riled up. And is that a moment when you're going to be able to be a calm and empathetic presence for your child? Possibly not. Right? So how about we just get out the door today in whatever way we can. And then this evening when everybody's calm and well regulated and fed and feeling okay or maybe even this weekend if right, school is difficult the beginning of a school year. And, and, and there isn't really a really regulated time this evening, we could put it off to this weekend and then we hear to our child and say something like, hey, I've noticed we've been having a bit of a hard time getting out the door in the morning. Can we talk about that? Right. So, we're not saying, you know, I, I want to talk about how you're gonna put your shoes on or how you're resisting or how you're refusing to do this. Right? Because if I say those things, it's like, no, I don't want to talk about that. We're locating this as a problem that we both have that we both have a stake in would you be willing to have a conversation with me? We have to be willing to accept no, as an, as a, as a valid answer. Assuming they're willing to come along, we can try to understand, our feelings and their feelings. Right. I'm, I'm wondering what's going on for you when we're, when we're getting out the door.
It seems as though maybe you're feeling kind of frustrated and maybe even sometimes angry when I ask you to put your shoes on. I know I'm feeling really frustrated as well. And when I'm trying to understand what our needs are, and I'm wondering if maybe you have a need for autonomy, which means you get to decide things that feel really important to you. Does that feel right? And then you're looking for them to kind of come towards you with a Yes, yes. That, that, that's it. Or if that's not it, right? I'm wondering, are your shoes uncomfortable or are you? I know that means that we're going to drop you off at daycare and gosh, are you looking for a connection with me in the morning? Do you just want to be close to me? So we're looking to understand what, why are they resisting putting their shoes on? Right. And what are my needs, right? My need is not to get the shoes on. My need is for competence in my work for ease, peace, harmony, partnership, collaboration, all those things. So, I know a lot of parents will sort of come at this from the mindset of, but they're seven, they should be able to put their shoes on.
This is not that hard. And when we approach it from that mindset, we get into this conflict of strategies, right? But if we can see this as their real need, right. Maybe it's, maybe it is the need for connection and they are resisting because they know that every moment they resist is another moment they get to spend with you and they love you so much. So could we instead of telling them to put their shoes on? Could we kneel down and help them ease their foot in, you know, do the laces up, fold the velcro over or whatever it is and have that be a beautiful moment of connection and then lo and behold our child's need for connection is met while our need for competence in our work, for ease, for harmony, for collaboration, for partnership, all of those needs get met as well. If we can get past this idea that my child is extra years old and should be able to do this by themselves. Why won't they just co-operate?
Laura: I love this. Oh I and I love the idea of looking under these needs. So I think that so many times parents are, I mean, gosh, we have a lot going on. I I mean just they there's so many presses on our time and so little support for parents, really. And I, I think that it is so tempting for us to just want to ask people like you or people like me. Laura, Jen, just tell me what to do, tell me what to say so that they'll get their shoes on. And what you're asking us to do is instead of say a certain thing, read a script is to get to know ourselves and get to know our kids and develop an authentic 1:1 relationship with them where we go through life together as a team. We doing this, you know, you talk in the book about power with instead of power over and that's really where that shift comes in. I love that, so much.
Jen: It's found a different way of being in a relationship with other people.
Laura: It is, and the thing is too, is that you're gonna spend the time anyway, you know, really we're gonna spend the time anyway with these kids. You know, I was talking with a parent the other day. We were talking about teeth brushing and the, the dad was saying exactly what you just said. He, he should be able to do this. It shouldn't, it shouldn't have to be a battle. And, you know, and we were, we were talking about what his son is like what he might because I don't know, I don't know their kids, you know, they know their kids, but they might like and stuff and I'm like, it's so you could spend 10 minutes wrestling him, holding him down and brushing his teeth, or you could spend 10 minutes telling an entertaining story about all of the animals hiding in his teeth, you know, and that you're brushing away or, you know, the skeletons from dinosaur, the dinosaur fossils or whatever his kid is into, you know, like you're gonna spend the 10 minutes anyway, like it may as well be 10 minutes that connects you that fulfills the the child's needs and on some level at probably fulfills the parents needs too. You know, they, we have these higher order needs of, of, you know, getting things done, but we also need connection with our kids. So we have those needs too. We didn't decide to become parents just so that we could have little people to order around most of us. You know, if we're listening to those parenting podcast, most of us had kids because we wanted to have a really good relationship with them.
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. And I think the key to recognize in the toothbrush example is if the child is looking for joy and connection in that moment, then that strategy, right? The strategy of making it playful will quote unquote work. If the child is looking for autonomy,
Laura: Yes.
Jen: I get to decide what happens to my body. Then a very different set of strategies will work, right? Then we're looking at things like where are we going to brush? You get to decide that you get to decide which quadrant of your mouth we do first. You get to decide which toothbrush we use and which tooth uh piece flavor we use, right? We, we did toothbrush for six months in the living room because the resistance was just about, you know, I hear you saying this is really important and there's not a negotiation on whether toothbrush is going to happen. But I'm going to let you decide as much of it as possible. And that feels like a meaningful decision to my daughter. So, yeah, so we brushed with fluoride free toothpaste in the living room. So she didn't have to spit it out and eventually we transitioned back to the bathroom and it wasn't a problem anymore.
Laura: Yeah, I love, I, I love the, you know, there, there's so much that goes on with teeth brushing too because there's also a sensory experience, an incredibly intense sensory experience for kids, you know, so it might be things like exploring different styles of toothbrushes, you know, non filming toothpastes. My, one of my kids has to have a non filming toothpaste because the feel of the foam in her mouth makes her gag, you know, and for a long time.
Jen: We we're focused on just brush your freaking teeth. We miss that.
Laura: Or try to like you enough to like make it it playful enough to you know, to get you to do the thing that's still controlling, right? So, it's really about understanding our kids and their needs. So I guess one of the things I would love to talk about, that you kind of, you bring up in your book. Why is it so hard? So, we've talked about kids needs. I'd love to talk about the parents needs. You said before that, that we are able to have needs that we're entitled to have our needs that we're human beings, you know, worthy of having our needs met too. And I feel like that is something that is so easy to say and yet so hard for us to truly believe sometimes for some parents. Why is it so hard for us to really believe that?
Jen: Yeah. So I'm wondering if you'd be willing to to go on a little journey with me and I'm feeling a little hesitant about it because of the way that you raised this earlier. So you, you talked about your ADHD diagnosis, right? And how that had sort of put a different lens on characteristics about yourself you'd had a hard time with and I'm guessing that you were punished and shamed for doing some of these things and maybe rewarded for doing the opposite of some of these things. And I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share with us, what were some of the things that you were rewarded for doing and some of the things that you were punished and shamed for doing.
Laura: So I was, let's see, I mean, ii, I, as a sensitive person, I think I experienced a lot of things as shaming that perhaps were intended to be. I just want to preface that by like, I, I have lovely parents who made lots of human mistakes and we have a good relationship. You know, just in case they're listening, I love you, mom and dad. You know, they don't often listen. But I think, I mean, gosh, I mean, I was careless and disorganized with things, you know, like there was definitely morality, you know, as a part of tidiness and being able to keep things organized and not losing my homework or for getting my lunch box or leaving like money laying around. Like my parents had a an envelope titled Laura's found money that if they found my money laying around the house, they would put it in there and I would have to like, I don't know, like beg and grovel to get it back out in order to be able to use it. So, I mean, there those are some of the things, but I, I was also very, very shy, I'm extremely introverted. I know people find that hard to believe because I do a job like this. But um, you know, the speaking engagements take a lot out of me energetically. And so I was definitely pressured to hide that part of myself to be outgoing, what I didn't really feel like to be friendly to, oh gosh, to not be dramatic or so sensitive, you know, all of those things and I was highly rewarded for academic success and like athletic competence too.
Jen: Okay, okay. So thank you, thank you for sharing that.
Laura: Sorry, that’s a lot.
Jen: Sorry, you cut out. What did, what did you say?
Laura: It was too much. Sorry.
Jen: Oh, no, no, no, not at all. So, so I do, I've been doing a lot of workshops with parents and with teachers about the ideas in the book. And so we, we sort of in a way, we kind of started a little bit back to front in this conversation that we started out talking about the tools and the book starts in a very different place. The book starts by helping us to understand how we've been impacted by really big social forces like white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. And so the, the reason that I asked you what kinds of things that you were rewarded and punished for doing was because we can see how these fit within the framework of those social ideas, right? And so when we, when firstly, if we start with white supremacy, Tema Okun did some work. It was probably about 20 years ago now to to think about how white supremacy showed up in in organizations. And more recently, an anti racist educator named Amanda Gross has translated that into how it shows up in families. And and so I just want to be clear about what’s what white supremacy is, right? It's not about hating white people. I'm white, this is, this is a, a system of power and dominance where whiteness is valued and white ways of being in the world are valued. And so what are white ways of being in the world? Well, white ways of being in the world are perfect, right? You're perfect. You do everything perfectly every time. Things like being careless, being disorganized, being untidy, forgetting things. None of those are perfect.
Laura: No, definitely not.
Jen: Right?
Laura: Yeah.
Jen: There very often, I also see sort of this fear of open conflict as well. The idea that there are people whose, whose comfort deserve to be protected at all costs and it it's not like they even make.
Laura: My dad’s.Yes.
Jen: Yes. Okay. So, so now we're starting to see links with patriarchy, right? Very often. There's a male figure sitting at the top of the household who who is afraid of conflict, who is defensive when there is conflict. And if, if anybody raises a need or says the way that we're doing things right now is not working for me, then that person shuts that down at all costs, right? It's not okay to threaten my sense of comfort, my sense of safety. You are the problem. You need to stop doing this thing that is threatening me. And oh, now we put that little bit of ourselves in a box and we say, okay, I, I, I know I can't show that part of myself to my dad. I have this need, but I'm just gonna put it over here and kind of pretend that it's not there anymore. And then over time we forget that it's even in there. And then we're shocked that we have no idea what our needs are.
Laura: And okay. And so, oh sorry, I, you froze for a second there. So that makes complete sense. You know, we've put it in this box, we've walked things away. What is the, why do we do that? Why did as kids do we do we put those things away. It's not like a child is thinking like, oh I'm embedded in patriarchy and I need to make sure I do this, you know, like what if, what is going on in the child's mind when this is happening?
Jen: So the child is thinking I need love and care and acceptance and belonging more than anything else. And these parents, these caregivers, whoever, whoever my caregivers are the primary way I can get that right. We adults have other places, we can get that kind of support. We have partners, we have our own parents, maybe. We have friends we have therapists, we have lots of other places that we can get support. Our children basically have us and they look to us for this model of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And so, so I, I wanna be clear that our parents didn't do this to hurt us, right? They didn't say I'm gonna do this on purpose. I'm gonna hurt my child. Our parents looked out into the world and saw, oh my goodness, Laura is never going to be successful if she is this careless, this disorganized, this untidy, if she forgets this many things. And so I am going to train her, which may hurt her a little bit right now, but I have to do it, right? There's no alternative because if Laura goes out into the world with all of these capacities, right? The the shyness, the introversion, which is, you know, the opposite of what a good girl is like. Yeah, a good girl is supposed to be out there and making friends with people and managing everybody else's feelings, not primarily taking care of her own feelings.
The the academic success, right? That's linked to capitalism and, and and how your your brain power was valued because it could get you success in the world because it could buy you things, right? Our parents saw all of the things implicitly or explicitly and they they may not have had the language to be able to say oh yeah, I see white supremacy. I see patriarchy. I see capitalism they may have just seen, oh, yeah, Laura. Laura's gonna get punished for, for, for for, for being careless, for, for forgetting things, for being too shy. So I'm gonna make sure that she doesn't do those things too much now and it may hurt her a little bit and, and that's an acceptable price to pay because I think she's gonna be better off in the long run. And so when I work with parents, the the this has not been a positive experience for the majority of them that this shutting their feelings down in a box has not resulted in them doing better in the world. This is a process that really hurt us even though our parents did it with the absolute best of intentions because they wanted our success.
Laura: Yeah. And how does, how does do the echoes of that impact us now as parents?
Jen: Yes. So, so very often what we see is that parents can kind of keep a lid on it and I was really good at this, keeping, keeping a lid on the whole thing until I became a parent, right? And then we become parents and then maybe our child gets to the same developmental stage that we got to when we started getting careless, disorganized, untidy, right? Forgetting things. And then all of a sudden there is this massive internal conflict inside the parent and it, and it's like, you know, if you're, if you're listening to this podcast and you believe in respectful parenting, you probably want your child to be able to express their whole selves and to know that their whole self is lovable and acceptable. And then there's that part of you that got shot in the box that, that's thinking, but I would have been punished for doing all those things. This is not cool. They're, they're never gonna be able to succeed in life if they don't learn now. But, but wait, I want them to be able to know they're lovable and acceptable. But, and so there's this massive sort of tension and that's where. Yes. Yeah, I, I, that's where I, I see a lot of parents show up in my taming your triggers workshop because that's when we start yelling at our kids that the whole thing just kind of explodes out and it seems like it's coming out of nowhere, but sometimes in our mother's voice and it's not coming out of nowhere. It's coming out of all of the feelings and needs that we stuffed down into that box for so long.
Laura: Okay. And so part of it sounds like part of the solution is starting to recognize our children's needs really committing to that as, you know, committing to our values and making sure that what we're doing, what in and what we're enacting in our home is conscious and aware and, and driven by kind of the child in front of us and what we value, where does it cut? Like where does our own kind of work come in to play? Because for me doing that kind of like, I don't know, like white knuckling through that is exhausting and impossible to do for a long term. So how can we make this? You know, I, I, again, I love how you talk about our needs but for a person who's been suppressing their needs, you know, not even recognizing that they have them for so long and that the needs of, you know, thinking what like you were just, you just illustrated the thinking that these needs that I have not only are, you know, do I have them? But having them makes me unlovable. The very act of having them makes me unlovable. That's why they were shut away. So then how do we go about accepting? Like, I mean, you do a great job of teaching us how to be aware of the needs that we have.
How do we go about accepting that we have them in the first place that we have that we have them and giving ourselves permission to advocate for them without so much guilt around it. In your book, you give this, I'm sorry. In this, in your book, you give this example about and setting boundaries around like the, the child wants. I don't know, a blue cup instead of the red cup and the parent who perhaps has been up four times and now just wants to sit, being able to say, you know, you're welcome to go get the cup that you want. I'm, I'm not willing to get up right now. And that feels, I know for so many parents reading that they are thinking to themselves. I could never do that. I would feel so guilty. I, that would, I could never do that to my child. You know, and at the same time, every time we don't set those boundaries, we're abandoning ourselves in the same way. We were forced to abandon ourselves growing up, you know? So what, what do we do with that?
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say not only are we abandoning ourselves, but we are perpetuating the cycle of trauma, right? We are teaching our own children. It is not okay for a parent to have boundaries. And then they take on that lesson too and then they struggle with setting boundaries just as much as we struggle with setting boundaries, which for most of us has not had a positive impact in our lives either. So, so I think maybe there's sort of three components to this. The first is, is sort of the insight and for some, for some parents that really shifts a lot. And I, I will say that I think that happens for me primarily I'm guessing because of the autism because I process things very cognitively. And I, I still remember an episode that I did on intergenerational trauma. This was probably like five years ago now. And it, it was actually in the interview when I realized the source of one of my biggest triggers is being interrupted and why that is and, and that it was because my father who was a teacher would, I, I mean, I remember this period where it was like every day for a month, he would come home and I would have done something wrong and I don't even remember what the things wrong were, but there would just be this lecture of upwards of an hour where I was not permitted to say anything. And, and, and I would just shut right.
I would just mentally, I was not there anymore. I would say yes and, and not at the appropriate intervals. And and I would just mentally disappear. And so, you know, that, that idea that I'm not allowed to have my own ideas. And so when my husband would interrupt me, I would just explode out of nowhere. I mean, it seems like it's out of nowhere and, and the, the insight that I gained through that conversation made me see, oh, that's where that comes from. And it's really weird, but I it's still irritating to me, but I do not explode anymore. I haven't exploded anymore since I got that insight. So, for some parents that insight is enough. Right? That, that makes sense. Now, I understand where it came from. Sometimes that's enough to really make a difference. Another big piece of this is, it can seem like this stuff comes out of nowhere but very often it doesn't. So when we, when our child asks us for the green spoon and we get up and we get the green spoon, we put our need for nourishment and for rest on hold there is probably something in our bodies that says, oh, this isn't right for you. There's a little tension in our shoulders, in our chest, in our stomach, in our neck, in our, in our head. Some, somewhere around those areas. Just usually this little twinge that says, yeah, that, that's, that's not right. It's not meeting your need. And then we go through our day and we ignore these things. We don't pay attention to them very often. We don't even see that they're there and then we get to the end of the day and it's bedtime and we have been busy all day and we're relying on that hour after our children go to bed for our self care time because we haven't had any of our needs met throughout the day.
And our children resist getting into bed and we explode and we wonder why and, and a big part of it is that we have not had our needs met and we do not know how to recognize the signals our bodies are trying to tell us to say, oh little little need here. They need pay attention and, and so it builds up and builds up and builds up throughout the day. And so we can learn to start to pay attention to those physical signs that say you have a little need, like, you know, a little little flag here and we can start to pay attention to those things. And then I think the third piece of it is obviously the biggest piece is is, is the worthiness piece, right? I am not worthy of having needs. I am not worthy of expressing needs. I'm not worthy of getting needs met. And I mean, I think there is there is a role for therapy in this work, right? If that is a deeply, deeply, deeply entrenched belief, I do think that therapy can be helpful. I've been preparing a lot for a module of content in my membership on internal family systems and and doing some of that work myself as well. And and I think there's also value in seeing that this is, this is not all of me, right? This is not all of me that cannot cope in this situation, that is unworthy that there is a part of me, there is a part of me that is struggling with this. And I think sometimes seeing it as a part of you can help it to feel like that. Actually, maybe we can find some movement here that this is not a, a like a set in stone. And I'm always going to be like this and there's nothing I can do to change that. There is a part of me that is feeling like this and that maybe if I can witness that part and the pain that that part has experienced at thinking that they are unworthy, then I might be able to believe that I in, in my sort of my wholeness of myself is, is actually worthy of getting my needs met.
Laura: Well, I love that you brough IFS into it. I, I love that that's starting to get more play in the parenting world. I've been teaching IFS in my parenting from within program for years now. And I just, I, I love it. It's my favorite, like one of my favorite modalities of therapy, even though there's very little research behind it. You know? It's.
Jen: There is, it is shocking how little research there is.
Laura: It's one of those things that just makes such intuitive sense to me, you know, the, the idea of parts. When I first learned about it in grad school, I was like, oh, well, this all just makes sense, you know? But, you know, and.
Jen: There's that insight, right?
Laura: Yes. Yeah.
Jen: It can be a big help.
Laura: Yes. I mean, the, you know, for me, the, a lot of the work, you know, that people, I feel like inner child work and rearing is really having its moment in the parenting world too. And I see those two things as you know, largely interchangeable, finding the modality that helps you understand. And then doing that work is really where it's at. So I really like presenting people with a variety of modalities. Here are lots of the options, dive into the one that really fits well for you and you know, whatever helps you offer yourself compassion and see your humanity, your wholeness. And because that's what the part like, that's what IFS really ultimately is about is learning to see yourself the self as a, as a a being within you that helps all these parts kind of is leading the family system that's within you and seeing yourself as a whole being a multifaceted person where all parts are valued and all parts are worthy. What I love about IFS is that it really feels like respectful and conscious parenting on the inside as we are respectful and conscious parenting on the outside in our family. It just feels very like echoey and lovely to me. Like when that resonance is happening.
Jen: Yes, when it, when it fits right, when the pieces fit together.
Laura: Yeah.
Jen: And I just actually, I just did an episode on public vagal theory, shocking little research there as well and a lot of struggling.
Laura: Oh my goodness, you know, I, I listened to that episode and I was like, so scared that you were going to say like, so let's not talk about it anymore. And I was like, oh, but no, it's so helpful and I'm so glad you came to the conclusion that you did that. It is just so helpful in understanding ourselves and understanding our kids. And so I, I love, again, I, I do love the direction you've taken and kind of being willing to entertain, like, see the value in things that maybe aren't so supported, but make a lot of good sense. And help people, you know?
Jen: And helps you know where it landing.
Laura: Yeah.
Jen: Yeah. Is, is that if this makes sense to you, if this helps you to explain your experience, it doesn't really matter what it did for a statistically significant sample of other people, right? Especially if it's low cost, which IFS really can be, you can, you can just do it by yourself. And so, so I, I think that that's where the, the research becomes more important is if you're spending multiple thousands of dollars on a treatment, you sort of want some evidence that it's more effective than another treatment. But if this is, you know, 10 minutes of your time going into yourself and paying attention to yourself, it's probably gonna have some, some kind of benefit. And so the the research is less important than does this particular modality fit with your worldview and your belief in in what can help you and if it does, it probably will and if it doesn't, then you probably want to look for for something else, so.
Laura: Yes and so just to talk a little bit about kind of what that looks like in practice for me. So a again, like I continue to work on advocating for my own needs and setting those boundaries. A recent one that I've been playing with it, I'm having some hormone and health issues and my Doctor is like because of cortisol levels, I have to be in bed, like with the lights off at 8:30 every night. That's really hard as a parent, especially like my kids are getting older. They want to stay up later than that, but I have to be in bed. And so when my, you know, almost my tween child, I don't know, she turned 11 yesterday, so she's a tween now wild wants to stay up later and chat with me in bed, you know, because that's what bigger kids do. They want to unload their brains before bed. I have to sometimes set the boundary of. You're welcome to stay here, but I need to turn my brain off and I need to read. And so I won't be talking anymore, but you're welcome to stay here and read with me.
Sometimes that is upsetting to her and they're storming out. And so then after she's out of the room. I have to have a little conversation with little Laura inside around it’s okay for me to have needs. It's okay for her to have her feelings and they don't necessarily mean that I'm being uncaring or unloving towards her. It's okay for me to prioritize my health and my sleep and, you know, just having this little, almost like a little, like I put my hand on my heart and close my eyes and envision myself like holding a little Laura, like in a little, like on my lap crisscross on the floor. That's what I do. And is the inner child work? Is it IFS, I don't know, but it feels good. It feels comforting because there's a little part of me that's really worried about my child, feeling rejected in ways that I was rejected as a child, you know? And so, I mean, but that's what it looks like in practice and.
Jen: Yeah, and I don't feel like. And then also maybe there are ways that you, maybe there are ways that you could explore at a different time, right? Not at bedtime and, and say, hey, I, I'm seeing that you're, you have a need for connection in the evenings and that's really important to me. I want to feel connected to you as well and I, I want you to get that need met. And, and also I know that rest is really important to me right now and rest often looks like this, right? It can look like reading, it can and these are all strategies you're using to meet your need for rest, right? Being in bed, reading, maybe having the lights off at, at, at, at a certain point. And so then we're looking for, how can we meet both of our needs? What kinds of things could we do that could meet our child's need for connection and also meet your need for rest and they don't happen to have, have to happen in that exact same moment. Right. Yes. It can be nice to connect right before bed. Connecting at other times is also nice. So are there ways we can build more connection earlier into the day so that we have more capacity for you to be resting later in the day.
Laura: Yes. Oh, we've had lots of iterations of that conversation and it's an on like a work in progress, you know, we're trying things and I think that that's one other thing that I, I appreciated it in your work is that we are not going to get it right every, you know, at the beginning, right? So just because one solution doesn't work right off the bat or if it works for a little while and then we have to come back to it. That's okay. Those are teaching really good skills for our kiddos to learn how to solve problems. See each other's needs, understanding that needs are changing all the time. And that when one, all the time and when one need is being consistently met, all of a sudden a new need, you know, starts clamoring for attention and then we have to address that one. You know, this is just part of being human.
Jen: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and so recognizing that wholeness in each of us, right? Is, is what we're doing here, which is what we were not allowed to do when we were children. And, and that's how this breaks the cycle of trauma for the next generation.
Laura: Yeah. And, and it does, I think it really does to be able to regulate ourselves and comfort ourselves in the midst of holding a boundary and kind of not abandoning ourselves. I think it is a really important modeling for our kids.
Jen: Yeah.
Laura: And it's still hard to do. And what's nice too about being an adult is that we have other resources where we can go and get that support and affirmation, you know, is there we can check in with our partners or with our friends around it. Am I being like, am I being too needy by saying I have by setting this boundary with my child and get that feedback, you know, from other people from outside sources, who hopefully will affirm your right to have needs and get them met. I, I think finding community is really important. I know you haven't a section on that in your book. But I, I know that the folks who are in my membership find that community and that supports here. I'm sure that the people who are in your membership also find that community. Do you have any other places where they can go to get support from you or kind of start building some of that community?
Jen: Yeah. So, I mean, I have a free Facebook group as well and I know you do too. So that's, that's one place. The taming your triggers workshop that I run can be a place to kind of process this stuff. And I often find that, that it's not so much that taking on new information that makes a difference. It's actually processing that in community with others because other people have questions that you didn't even know that you had. And you're like, oh yeah, that's a thing for me too. I didn't even know it until you said it. And it's sort of short circuits in a way the process of learning. And so, yeah, so, so workshops, memberships and that and that kind of thing. But I think the book is a, is a great place to start and I'm trying to live my post capitalist values. It's available on a gift economy basis on my website at yourparentingmojo.com/book. And so you can, if you would like to support my work and, and you have the financial capacity to do that and you would like to pay more than the cover price, you can do that. If you would like to accept it as a form of reparations for me, if you identify as buck, then feel free to pay a lower price or if you're having trouble affording it. And sort of trying to, to live my values every day. Even as I, I'm existing within a capitalist system where I also have bills to pay.
Laura: That's awesome. I love seeing you. I live it that way. Was your publisher okay with that? Like, did you have to negotiate that? Is it okay for me to ask that?
Jen: Yes. Yes, it is. Yes. And I hope that everybody hears this and says, oh, I can negotiate that with my publisher too.
Laura: Yeah. Right. That's so cool.
Jen: It had to be an ebook and not a PDF. I, I'm not sure why there was that condition on it. But yeah, I think there's a certain website where you can buy a lot of things that's named after a river that is less than happy about these kinds of things. But I think they figure, you know, there's probably not so much of a chance they're going to find out and that it's, it's okay. So, yeah, they, they're actually on the board with it.
Laura: That's awesome. Good. Good for you. That's great. Well, Jen, thank you so much for having this kind of, I don't know, meandering conversation. I always love chatting with you and picking your brain. It's really lovely to have colleagues in that sense that we're in this together. I know parents need that feeling too. So it's so good to be able to point folks to good resources where they can feel like they have support doing this really hard thing of learning how to parent in our values. So, thank you. I appreciate you so much.
Jen: Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was lovely to see you again. It's been a while.
Laura: It has. Hopefully it won't be so long. Next time I would love to maybe even have a deeper dive into like neurodiversity and affirming identities. That would be a really cool conversation to have.
Jen: Yeah. Yeah. I've learned a lot about that in the last couple of years.
Laura: Yeah. Okay.
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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 to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!