Ranine is an entrepreneur and single mom of a 7 year old girl and 8 year old boy. The family is high energy; however, Ranine finds she has less energy by day's end. Ranine is from a broken home and as much as she didn't want that for her family it seemed to end up that way. She tries in everyway to improve herself and better the life of herself and her children.
365 [On-Air Coaching] Help! My child won’t listen
Ranine is an entrepreneur and single mom of a 7 year old girl and 8 year old boy. The family is high energy; however, Ranine finds she has less energy by day's end. Ranine is from a broken home and as much as she didn't want that for her family it seemed to end up that way. She tries in everyway to improve herself and better the life of herself and her children.
[On-Air Coaching] Help! My child won’t listen [365]
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Hunter: So you are in the Mindful Parenting membership. You know that this is how we start all our calls. What are your wins lately?
[00:00:15] Ranine: My wins. I find that I'm not triggered as quickly. And my octane is coming down a little lower. I try, I it's good for a little while until they absolutely don't listen.
And then it's ah, I'm talking to you. So then, but yeah it's gradually getting there. Yep. and I'm actually trying to get onto their level. Now and get down and talk to them eye to eye and in a calm
[00:00:46] Hunter: way. So awesome. Those are good wins. Yes. I like those wins. We celebrate the
[00:00:54] Ranine: wins. They give me lots of
[00:00:56] Hunter: times to practice.
Yes. They give you a lot of practice. That's generally how this goes. Do you wanna tell us about your family and who are the major players in your family and what's happened in these days?
[00:01:11] Ranine: So I would say I'm pretty major in the family cause I am the the only parent. Yeah, I've got a six year or a seven year old girl.
She just turned seven on Canada today and I have an eight year old boy that turned eight in April, so they're pretty close together, 15 months apart. So I believe there's some challenges with that. So close together and you love him more or heard more, but no, they they're in camp over the summer.
I've got them separated, so they will. Hopefully miss each other a little bit and get a little bit along a little bit better when they get home . But no, they're both doing very well in that. It also helps 'em with education and keeping up on their reading. So they're doing very well with that.
He Phoenix has already been up level in reading, so that, that helps. And so yeah, they don't get to see their dad very often. He is. Not really in the picture. He was supposed to have them every other weekend and he's got medical stuff. And so that's a challenge as well. As he's not a role in their life.
However, I got my ma mayor, we call her ma mayor she's French. So ma mayor and her husband. And then I also got a boyfriend that really helps me out. And he's actually more. Patient than I am, and actually is able to be more calm than I am. So that's goody, they've got a good male figure there. And we also have my my sister, so they're Toan fauna and and uncle Stewy and they help out and they got their two cousins over there, so awesome.
They help out.
[00:02:59] Hunter: Sounds like there's a little support. Yeah. There's a nice, there's some nice support around, that connection to your family is, really needed and sounds like. You're dating a cool guy who balances your energy. That's how bill is for me. He's like the naturally like calm and chill one.
And I'm like, I'm the one who really needs to work on it. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. Cool. My
[00:03:27] Ranine: babysitter too. My I found a really good babysitter. It took me a long time, but I she's excellent. She's there whenever I need her. And she always backs me up, so I really like that.
[00:03:39] Hunter: Yay. Yeah, I think we all need like good babysitters.
In our lives, right? Yeah. Like we didn't evolve to raise small children just in these like tiny households. And as a single parent, that's even, more so right. We're we, our kids so much that the tribe is what's needed. So I love that hearing that you're like building that tribe around you, you have Allo parents, which are caretakers that are not biological parents, the babysitter. And so that's really great. Those are good steps.
[00:04:14] Ranine: Yep. Yeah. And we have a church family as well. So we go to church every Sunday and they really enjoy that. And my sister is the one that does the children just ministry.
So they get to hang out with tau fauna and learn about the Bible and loving . So that's fundamental with their family as well. So we like to do that every Sunday and the kids love it as well.
[00:04:39] Hunter: Oh, awesome. Awesome. So there's like anchors of rhythm in your week. There's anchors of community. And and it sounds like you're not trying to do E everything constantly, or asking for help and reaching out to your community, which is smart and wise thing to do.
We all need that to keep ourselves sane.
[00:05:06] Ranine: Let me tell you it can get overwhelming, cuz I own my own business as well. So whenever you do, I have my business aspect and then you leave there and then you come home and then it's the hustle and bustle that, I'm the, especially now that school's out cuz it's more structured with school.
I do. I do. I do miss the school structured life but now they're going to camps and I'm the one that drives 'em here and there. And you know then when you come home from work, it's. You have to make the supper and you gotta clean, tidy up a little bit and but. I do it.
[00:05:42] Hunter: Yeah.
Yeah. There's a lot. And seven and eight. There are also one thing we can talk about, thinking about is seven and eight. They can start to be really helping out a lot more too, which is nice. And it's good. It's really good for kids to be doing chores and things around the house. It's like something we should encourage, but awesome.
So you've got this beautiful family. I'm, these kid seven year old girl, eight year old boy. I, it sounds like beautiful. I'm sure you have zero problems whatsoever and yeah. Parenting is so easy all the time. handsome in the course. What are some of the challenges that are rising?
[00:06:27] Ranine: Every, there's a challenge, quite things pop up and you just, that's out of control.
So we lost our, my, I guess you'd call her my stepmom. I've never really called her my stepmom too much, but my dad's lady friend for 33 years. So my dad's an alcoholic and that has been more of a challenge to try. Help him out at the same time, trying to keep my life going, cuz the kids do know that he's an alcoholic.
And so when we're driving him around, the kids are like, maybe you should stop drinking so much pop . It's not really pop it's rum but yeah. So this is a new challenge that has arisen. But anyway my little girl is she's I'm sorry. She's a handful already. But. I would say she is the yeller.
She also almost take after her Mama. So she's already challenging me here at age seven. She acts like she's 17 .
[00:07:40] Hunter: Okay. So let's talk about your daughter then. So she's seven years old. She's yelling. She's obviously having some resistance to stuff. And she's pretty vocal, strongly vocal about it.
May. It's really helpful. If we can look at like kind of a specific situation, can you think of something recent and what happened and what went down? So then we can look at it more carefully.
[00:08:05] Ranine: Oh, let's say cause okay. So we're getting ready in the mornings. Cause usually mornings are pretty good.
They usually get up not too bad. She would be the one that would wake up cranky quite often more so than her brother. He just asked her to get ready and she. And moans and groans and doesn't want to, get on with the day and in a timeline I say here, and she would then yell and then go on.
I'm like, okay if you're not gonna listen, you're going to not have electronics cuz you know, electronics always works, and So then I would say, you won't be able to watch electronics for the first couple hours when you get home or, and then she get, then she gets all upset and I don't wanna do it.
And now I'm upset you ruin my day. Cuz now I can't have electronics. And anyway, so I always do give her a chance. That was just last night. So she come home and I told her, if you can tidy up your bedroom and not make a big fuss about it, and don't just throw things everywhere and do a really good job, like I showed you and put your dirties in the laundry.
And maybe then once I see it, then you can watch, some TV, but. Yeah, so she just wants to have her
[00:09:22] Hunter: own way. Okay. All right. Cool. Then she doesn't get it. She gets a little so sounds like you, are you're like using the, the threat of the, of taking away her screen time, her electronics as a way to get her to take action.
Yeah. When, so it sounds, it is probably been like this for a while. I bet.
[00:09:45] Ranine: Okay. Has it been, yeah, it has been for a while. Yeah. yeah, she's been doing it probably for about a year now.
[00:09:56] Hunter: Okay. All right. So when So the threat using the threat and using the kind of, if then language is what I'm seeing here, it could be a big piece of this puzzle.
So the, when we threaten our kids with whatever they. They feel threatened, right? So their whole fight flight or freeze stress response is activated. So just as we learned, like in Mindful Parenting about our own stress response, right? Like kids obviously have that same stress response. So that response is fight flight or freeze.
So it's an involuntary. Automatic response, like within milliseconds, that she's gonna have a response to really push back against that threat to fight you, which is yelling right. Or even to flee or to withdraw right. Affection and things like that. So the threats that have been happening for her over time are really setting her into a pattern of resistance for.
For resisting any of your requests and things like that. So using if you do this and then you do that, the kid, the, our kids really feel that manipulation, they really cha against it. So yeah, just like you would, if I said, I'm only gonna let you have your babysitter come. If you do X, Y, and Z, you would be like, excuse me, what are you talking about?
You would really chase against that. And so our kids. Are exactly the same way. And I'm not saying this to blame you or shame you or anything like that. This is how this is like the, what we're taught from our society and our culture. And like threats are like, for me, that's like, when I get really frustrated, I'm like, oh, I wanna threaten you so much so bad right now.
It's like my sort of go-to default one. I'm like, ah, I really wanna threaten you. But it's counteracted. It's actually like putting her, it's setting her up in opposition to you. It's putting you in a battle and it's making her less and less likely to cooperate with you in the future. Okay. So that's the bad news.
[00:12:26] Ranine: What are the tactics? That's the bad news.
[00:12:29] Hunter: So one of the things that. I'll I'd wanna ask you to do right away is to stop using threats and punishments that have the, these things that have nothing to do with what you're trying to what's, you're trying to achieve in that moment.
They, you gotta try to stop them as best you can. Cold Turkey. And so that means you'll get in a moment with your daughter where you're like, oh, I want her to do X, Y, Z. So let's think about a typical thing. You said you, you talked about getting outta the house, but then you talked about getting home at night.
What are some typical things that, where she has resistance and what you're trying to get.
[00:13:23] Ranine: Oh, cleaning her room. she? She will wear and put on a few different outfits and just keep it on the floor. Yeah, her room is yeah, the disaster room, but I know she's only seven, but still . Okay.
All right. That would be, asking her to do something like that would.
[00:13:46] Hunter: And cleaning her room. Let's just think about this. So this is interesting when we look at a problem, and we talk about this in Mindful Parenting, right? We say who owns this problem? Whose problem is this right?
Whose stomach does this make hurt? So you want her to clean her room because why.
[00:14:09] Ranine: Cuz it looks like a disaster. It's a smaller room and it just, it's hard to get anything done in there. It's hard to, if you have, if you wanna go in and clean, to vacuum really quick or to mop or and we had actually I would say about two months ago, maybe a big ant problem, a car coming
We had to get the house all sprayed on the outside and on the inside. And so that really freaked her out cuz a lot of them were coming in her room. so anyway, if it was just a little tidier maybe they and mind it wouldn't. , it's not really that the ants would've came in anyway, but yeah, but okay.
There was a lot of dead ant bodies around. And do
[00:15:06] Hunter: you have to use her room typically?
[00:15:09] Ranine: No. No, not really,
[00:15:13] Hunter: because the thing about the room is right. If she came into your bedroom and she took off her clothes and left her clothes all over your bedroom, you'd have a problem. Because you wouldn't be able to use your room and you wouldn't be able to enjoy your space and you'd probably have a real problem, right?
Yep. Okay. Put your stuff up. But if it's her room it, you can, the reason why I say this about the room is the room. You can close the door. This is a place where you can reduce conflict. It's not it's, it doesn't have a direct consequence or impact on you. Does it?
[00:15:53] Ranine: No, I suppose the door
[00:15:55] Hunter: would be closed.
So it's not your problem. Do you
[00:16:00] Ranine: think we could say, do you think she, do you think she'll change? Am I gonna raise
[00:16:05] Hunter: a swab? So I'm hearing your fear, right? You're like if I don't force her to clean her room, I'm gonna raise a SL. She's gonna, there's that fear and that fear.
That's your stuff, right? That's not her that this is just right now. And this is just a seven year old with a messy room, right? This isn't it doesn't mean she's gonna be a slob for the rest of her life. No. And in fact, if you model. Keeping things tidy. If you model keeping the rest of your house tidy, if you model keeping your own room, tidy chances are she's gonna absorb that lesson sooner or later, but right now she's in a big place of resistance against you because you've been forcing her to do stuff and threatening her.
So we wanna start to shift things away from this resistance and being able to drop some issues that are not essential. Is gonna be a way for you to what, because what hap what we need to do and let's think about it this way. So if she's seven and she's, we've been, you've been using the threats and things for a long time.
So she's used to now resisting your requests. This is a habit. And so she's like in a train, that's going 90 miles an hour in one direction. Slow, not only slow that train down, we gotta stop, but we gotta turn it around and that's gonna take us some time. And for her the tools of the threats and punishments, those are extrinsic motivations, carrots and sticks. And we wanna start to shift towards where she wants to cooperate with you and your ha and help around the house and do all those things with you because she's intrinsically motivated to do it because she. Cares about you and wants to, so the thing that makes her want motivated to, to help out around the house to be cooperative with you, all of those things that make life easier is her.
That connection to you and the quality of that relationship and connection to you. So it's like the relationship bank account, right? You gotta put in a lot of deposits in that relationship bank account before you take any withdrawals. And right now you've been putting in a lot of withdrawals. And so you're trying to, you do so many withdrawals that the bank accounts, like not, there's nothing, there's no cushion there.
So to start to turn things around with her. We wanna think about this relationship where she's been feeling manipulated and pressured and had a lot of resistance. And so that natural connection and desire to wanna be close to you and desire to wanna please, you has been shifted into this sense of resistance for her.
Yeah. And right now may probably over at least maybe the next six months or so you don't, I don't know. It depends how long, how, kids can get in a habit. There's gonna be a time of trying to really build that connection, build that, really put those real deposits into the relationship bank account.
And before you're gonna be able to withdraw. does this make sense, Rene? Yeah,
[00:19:33] Ranine: I see it with probably most of the things would be her resistance. Yeah.
[00:19:39] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah so let, we'll talk about, let's talk about some of the ways like you can talk to her that will cause less resistance around things around the house, but before we get to that, like the thing that comes before that is to build that connection back up again.
When I think when I suggest that idea to you of really building that connection and building that relationship that together again, what does anything come to mind to you as far as like how you can go about that?
[00:20:15] Ranine: Oh, yeah, we could sit. Oh yeah. She wants me, we got a little inflatable pool where I could just sit in there with her, or we sometimes share a bath together with a bath bomb and bubble bath and stuff like that.
Yeah. Oh yeah. And, or we could sit down and watch a little movie or have more. One on one
[00:20:35] Hunter: time, yeah. Yeah. Those all sound awesome. Those sound like really good ideas. And the thing is it's true. Like J our kids, our relationship with our kids is just like any other relationship where, you can't, we have to we have to like, Have date night, right?
Like we wanna date our kids. Like we wanna give them that one-on-one time and pay attention to that relationship. And then when we have things like that, we need, we have those withdrawals, we have some cushion, so yeah. And and it can be. You can say, okay, but babe, you can do like that special time where you say, Hey, babe, like I'm gonna set a timer for 10 minutes.
We're gonna do some special time. The next 10 minutes, we can do whatever you wanna do. Accepting screen time. And I'm yours completely a hundred percent. And you'll practice what we talk about in those first modules of Mindful Parenting. Will your practice like just being at our level, just observing her, being curious.
Being interested, looking at her with fresh eyes as if you've never seen her before loves doing crafts. Yeah. She loves doing okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So if you can you try to do special time, like every day, give it, just give it 10 minutes and you can do it also with your son, you can say, okay, I've got 10 minutes for you.
I've got 10 minutes for you. If you have the, and this is this is. Obviously, it may not happen every single day of your life, but we're just gonna be realistic, but this is something that you can do. And especially cuz your kids are so little that they'll, it'll build that back.
That connection with her. Yeah. So fast. And when you're connected, when you're really seeing her, you'll start to see in some of the other moments, like when she wakes up in the morning and she's grumpy, you'll start to bring some of that. You'll have more understanding about who she is and you'll start to bring some of that curiosity to some of those moments.
Huh? I wonder what's going on with her? Did she sleep well enough? Is there something, disturbing her sleep? Does she need to go to bed earlier is, you'll start to bring that curiosity and just that sense of nonjudgment into some of those more challenging moments.
[00:22:58] Ranine: Yeah. Yeah.
Cuz we do I do quite a bit. Now. My mom's not gonna like that. Not cleaning the room part but I used to have my mom come over and she was the one that I, that used to clean the house. But now my mom's knee is two beds. She don't come over. But yeah, I'm just gonna have to tell her the door's closed.
It's not your room.
[00:23:25] Hunter: Absolutely. And one thing you can do is you can say to her like, Hey babe, I know I've been fussing with you about cleaning your room and you know what I've decided you could say, I've decided it's not my problem. It's your room. You live with it. You know it, but I'm here to help if you wanna clean it and you can also offer I'm here to help you.
I'm also here to help. If you want to declutter it, if you wanna make things simpler and prettier. So just let me know. And then just back off completely. And your mom You can say to her mom, I backed off the room thing. We're gonna let it go for a while. We don't wanna make it a battle.
And then she can have her relationship with your daughter. And that's fine too. Yeah.
[00:24:13] Ranine: She don't have to go in the room. We'll just keep the door shut and she won't even have to look at it.
[00:24:20] Hunter: Sure. But yeah, for the moment, as you focus on your relationship with her, so then you mentioned some of the challenges are like in the morning, getting out the door in the morning, you. A
[00:24:31] Ranine: little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I, now I don't know, mostly because it's they've been staying up a lot later or a little bit later than what they usually do if they're in school, the day laid out more. So they're up a little bit later than usual, but so I could see that they probably just a little bit more overtired now than what they would.
During school
[00:24:53] Hunter: structured hours, and sleep is so essential. You know how prob I know how I am. If I lose like an hour of sleep, if I wake up an hour earlier, I am such a miserable lunch to be around so it might be good. If you could do anything you could to get that bedtime back.
So it's really ideal. Especially at ages seven and eight, these young ages like that sleep is so crucial for their brain development. It'll really, it can, I've talked to the experts about sleep and it's really can make a huge impact on a lot of things. If you can get like blackout curtains, if you can start to yeah.
Like turn, turn the lights down low, as things start to get, as it starts to get closer to the bedtime, all of those things to make it a super soothing, calming, sleepy environment as best you can. I would really try to, if you can bring that bedtime down, that'll certainly help you a lot.
[00:25:57] Ranine: Did some of them like to. Like a snack and I almost like a full on meal before they go to bed. So I don't, I don't, I know I don't I know that it's not good for us anyway, to have a lot to eat. I don't know about children, but I know as for adults, it's not good for us to have a bunch of things to eat and be all in our digestive system whenever we're going to bed.
So I'm not, yeah, that's a hard one to try. Because they love to have a good meal and full stomachs to go to bed. And
[00:26:27] Hunter: So that's something you can teach them about. You can say that when you go to sleep, if you have a lot of food in your belly, it makes it, to teach them about how it keeps your body up doing digestion, where it should be disturb your sleep and make you grouchy the next day.
And just start to teach them about that. And you can say, let's start to. Let's start to have a little bit less snack at night and a little bit more to eat at dinner and just start to instruct them in that, but not in only. So what we're gonna start to aim for is not like that super forceful manipulative way, but we're just trying to teach them so that they understand what's going on so that they construct a care in that way.
[00:27:09] Ranine: Yeah. Cause I think that. Doesn't help either. Whenever they're so full and they're going to bed and their bodies are digesting probably more than. We are supposed to heal our bodies at night. Yeah. And that's what our body's supposed to be doing when we're sleeping anyway.
So instead of digesting,
[00:27:30] Hunter: but so in the morning there, you wanna think about you, if you were like, if you could almost look at your family in the morning and you were like the coach for your kids about how to get out the door and how to. If you were coaching them rather than having to make them get out the door, how would you, how are some ways that you could teach them and work with them to get out the door a little bit more easily and happily for everybody in the morning?
[00:28:00] Ranine: They actually do go out pretty good. Phoenix is really good. I've decide. I now I just go lay down with them in. And I rub their backs or I sing to them or, and if I hear one kind of, eh, then I just, oh, you're a dinosaur today or so I just do a character thing with them and it seems to be a little bit better why I don't I don't and then I'll say, do you need five more minutes?
And then I give them that chance to try to wake up and stretch and do their thing. Yeah. But they're actually pretty good. Getting up and leaving the house. Yeah.
[00:28:42] Hunter: Okay, good. So that's not a big challenge. What are the moments with your daughter that are more challenging?
Maybe we can break out, break down some of the ways to approach some of those moments,
When she yells.
[00:28:58] Ranine: So when we're, she's just okay. So here's when we were at the pool the other day and That's one of my things, cuz they don't they're not avid swimmers. Like I don't have them in any swimming lessons yet and I get a little panicked.
Right. because then they wanna take their life jackets off. And then that's just a lot more scarier to me.
[00:29:25] Hunter: Sure. Yeah. Phoenix.
[00:29:27] Ranine: Anyway, what was it? So the life the lifeguard was there and there's them floaty things that they have for the water now. And so she was on, she was jumping into the pool onto that.
And anyway, the lifeguard told her Lily, I don't want you doing that. Cuz she heard us call out her name a few times. So she knew her name. And then she looked right at the life. and did it again. I was like, oh, , that is so disrespectful. I would like them to have respect, for, other people.
And anyway and so
[00:30:07] Hunter: what was the consequence of that then?
[00:30:11] Ranine: I, I told her if you weren't gonna listen that the lifeguard is trying to make sure that she's protected and safe and that she's not gonna listen, that she will not be, I will be taking her.
[00:30:22] Hunter: Yeah. And I think that's makes sense, right?
That's a if you don't listen to lifeguard, I'm gonna take you home. That's one that really makes sense.
[00:30:33] Ranine: Yeah. Yeah. And I wouldn't, and then I don't know. I don't know if I kept God saying right. And I won't let you come back until you learn how to keep, your life jacket on a play safe.
Because really, they're just trying to keep her safe and, so I do tell her the consequences of, you could hit your head on the side.
[00:30:53] Hunter: So this is great. Yeah. So this and this is, I'm so glad you brought this up. Because this is such, there's such a fine line here between Between like threatening and teaching, cause like those are true. Like those are all those consequences. So it might be a good idea to have a talk with them at home in a no problem zone, right? Like where we're not like about to maybe have to leave the pool, which would be terrible. But have it at home and just say, just explain of course why all those things are so important and what you wanna convey is.
Is how it affects you. So when I see you without your life jacket on, I feel so scared because I know you don't know how to swim, or I feel maybe you don't wanna say so scared. You don't wanna scare them. But you may wanna say, I feel really worried cuz we don't have, you don't know how to swim so we can it's because it's not safe.
Drowning can happen so easily. This is something we have to do until we, you learn how to swim. And just, when you're at the pool, we have to wear this life jacket. And that's just, you can just hold that boundary with kindness. You don't have to yell about it, nothing like that.
Just hold that boundary. It's just a matter of fact, this is just how it is. And. And then if they have some pushback, which they might, because it's so much more fun to do it without a life. Check it on. You can say, you can then respond with your reflective listening oh yeah. Like I get it.
It's a lot funner. I know it stings. Yeah. I know. Just. Be empathetic to their concerns. And then that the, if you can listen to them and see, and be, show their feelings, respect, they will also be much more likely to listen to you and show and be respectful of your feelings. Does that make
[00:33:02] Ranine: sense?
Yeah. And I have to tell them more about my feelings because yeah. That is something I'm really worried about, would be, you bumped her head or I seen her cuz when we were there, she's followed water a few times and she's choking and I'm like, are you okay, Lily? Are you okay? And then yeah, cuz so then the next time, I said, we're not gonna go to the pool unless you're gonna wear your life jackets, the whole.
Because the pool goes gradually and then you're having fun. You don't realize you're not, I know the life there is there, but
[00:33:36] Hunter: so I'm just gonna interrupt you here cuz I, so instead of saying, we're not going to go to the pool unless you do this. Yeah. Don't say it that way. Say when we go to the pool, you have to wear life jackets.
Okay. Okay. It though you can see how the first one sounds like more threatening. Yeah. And is using that power over. And the second one you say, when we go to the pool, we have to wear, that's just a matter fact does that? Yeah. You see the difference from that. So I want you to think about starting to, you're gonna start to notice like that the use of these threats, like the, their communication barriers, they stop that. You're gonna start to notice them and I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you to practice, cuz you're gonna practice to stop using them, but you're gonna start to notice. The, when we start to pay attention to how much we use these barriers, it's amazing how much we do it. Don't be like mad at yourself.
This is all of us. We're all. It's just part of the air. We breathe that we're threatening our kids in our culture, but they will be so much more receptive to everything you say. If you don't use threats.
So there are some things that you'll want to request that happen. And you wanna think about, are there any of those moments you could think about here and then we can practice how to say them without using threats. Can you think of any ringing time to turn the
[00:35:16] Ranine: electronics off and get ready for
[00:35:18] Hunter: bed?
okay. Awesome. So how much screen time do they get a day?
[00:35:25] Ranine: Not too much. My eight year old boy, he has started his own company at eight years old, which he wanted to do. He bought himself, we were at a friend's house and he had one of them push lawnmowers. Just the blade. Yeah. Yeah. He's the power anyway.
So he wanted to buy one. He bought, he bugged me for about two weeks, so I said, okay. We took the day we took the afternoon and I said, okay, let's go to Canadian tire. And he bought him. Out of his own account, a $200. Troy built. Wow.
[00:36:00] Hunter: Real Mueller. That's so impressive. And he, I
[00:36:03] Ranine: know, and he wanted to. Make real money, like natural people.
He told me okay. He does go out and he does my yard for free cuz I drive him to other places and I asked him if he wanted me to pay him or to charge him gas for me driving him. And I'm always with him. So no. They go to camp all day. They And then he does his little lawns every once in a while.
And so they, they get probably they get over than what they're supposed to really though they get about an hour a day, depending on if it's raining, if it's raining and a miserable day, I do let them sit and watch a movie or do watch the internet a little bit longer than usual, but,
[00:36:52] Hunter: okay.
All right. So they get an hour day and it's usually after dinner is the same time.
[00:36:57] Ranine: No. It's different times. It, depending on what time? Yeah. Like sometimes after supper or if they see their friend come down the road, then they're definitely outside to play, yeah. They're really outdoor kids.
Yeah. But they like that quiet time of watching their own little show. Probably a little bit before bed. I always get them to watch a super book. It's a, like a little Bible series. , right before bed to try to. Good stuff into their brain before you know why they're having a snack.
okay. Yeah.
[00:37:30] Hunter: So the SCR, yeah, with our, with the kids screen time, we wanna have it like at least if we can an hour or two hours before bedtime to have no screen time, because the light going into their eyes right. Can affect their security rhythms and their sleep and things like. So just to give you an idea about that and and It can, I would definitely encourage you to don't, don't do anymore screen time for them at the, at this age, if you can, because it can interrupt a lot of things as far as the dopamine levels in their brains and things like that.
And we're just learning more and more about that, but so how to stop from screen time? That's a huge one. That's a big question. What I would encourage you to do is, and they're so it sounds like they're on their own device, right? They're each on their own device kind of thing.
One would
[00:38:36] Ranine: be watching my little iPad and one would be watching the TV at the
[00:38:40] Hunter: living room. Okay. Mostly. All right. What I would encourage you to do is to sit down, I would sit down with them and again, in a no problem zone, say you take a, you could even have something nice, but say, I'm a little frustrated with, when we have to stop screen time, what is, how would you.
Like to know when screen time's over and what are you needing around this? So it might be nice to talk to them ahead of time so that you can say, Hey, but Hey guys I don't like to, I don't like to yell. I don't wanna threaten things. And you guys don't want me to do that either. How can we make this work be better?
And so I encourage you to sit down and talk about it with them so that they can. Understand, so that they can maybe help you with some ideas, right? You don't necessarily have to solve this problem all on your own. And maybe they'll just say, oh, I don't know. I just want you to tap my shoulder or something.
And so you can try that for a little while and see if that works. But then. So I would, first of all, talk to them about how we can make this better to, as a family, cuz it's really frustrating for you. But then when screen time's. What you really wanna do is just gently, but firmly insist and not let it get you grow.
and this is the biggest thing is to practice, to hold that boundary firmly, but kindly, right? So you're like, I'm sorry, screen. Time's up. We have to stop now. Sorry, babe. Screen. Time's up. We have to stop. So you're just gently gonna insist if you, if they're. If you've given them a minute or two and you've insisted a bunch of times, and they're still not doing, you may have to take the device away.
And what you're gonna really practice to do is just not let that freak you out. You're gonna be like the super calm mountain. You're gonna just be like, oh, like I'm Zen mother, as best you can you're gonna picture your, you're gonna say to yourself when they yell, get calm when they like, when because there's gonna be yelling.
And you're just gonna, you're, you don't have to respond at all. You're just gonna practice staying calm, I'm sorry. It's time to stop. And then. If this is like a consistently a huge, big deal, it may be they're showing like those signs of grasping and like being almost addicted, to the things. And then you may wanna even practice this isn't working for us, like we're gonna take a week off. And then we'll, we can come back to it and see if we can do it again another time. But I would just do all those things, hold all those boundaries with just, you're just gonna be as kind as possible.
You're like, you're gonna envision your inner mother, Teresa. You're gonna envision yourself being totally unflappable. You're gonna blow it out, and before you even go to do that scream time limit, I want you to just sit for a few minutes quietly, put a hand to your heart, put another hand to your belly.
You're gonna take deep breaths long, slow exhales. You're gonna approach them slowly. You're gonna like really practice to make this, put all your energy into being, as genuinely calm as you can. You're not like fake calm, but it's just genuinely just practicing to not react to whatever fireworks and shenanigans they come up with.
But if they are having like huge issues with it and. and a lot of behavior problems can stem from like the, some of the challenges with screen time. Because it, it affects like our social pathways of the brain and it affects the way kids, dopamine. Works and their social pathways of the brain.
And I'm, I'll be getting some great guests on the podcast to talk more about this too, but it may be a good idea to take a break for a week, and just. When you're, I'm sorry. You're bored. When you were born. Something to do is right around the corner. and you'll see all their creativity come about because they're six and eight.
They're gonna have tons of creative play, but how does this land with you? This answer?
[00:43:24] Ranine: Good. Good. Yes. And I've already spoke to them before that. I wanted to take one day a. Have absolutely no devices at all. And I do tell my son, I think you're a little addicted to this Minecraft, Hey, all the kids are into this Minecraft.
[00:43:41] Hunter: Yeah. Even my 15 year old yeah.
[00:43:44] Ranine: And my son wants it on cuz they only got little tablets or whatever and they're hardly ever on it and they're not really good ones, but he wants to get it and I was like, no, the. Age is I think nine or 10 anyway. And I said, you're, I think it's 10. I'm like, you are not that age yet.
My friends get to do it. And this one gets to do it. I said that what they do at their house is what they do. I said, but at mine, I said, you're gonna have to be of age to even get it. So he just watches other people play it on YouTube.
[00:44:16] Hunter: So just don't you're. Feel, you're gonna be like, you're gonna wanna say your mouth is gonna wanna make the words.
If you don't blah, blah, I'm gonna take away this. And you are not allowed to say those words. You're just gonna say screen time is over for right now. Time to put it away, time to put away. And then if when you, if you notice there is a big problem, then you're gonna go back together and talk about it.
And you're gonna talk about, and you'll look at the modules, module seven win-win problem solving. And but you're, you are absolutely allowed to hold those boundaries and to, take this thing away. If you're seeing it's causing a lot of irritation, a lot of irritability and stuff in your kids then, oh,
[00:45:03] Ranine: See about after I, I would definitely say after a half an hour, if you would ask a kid to get off, they're crazy.
They're just outright, ah, hysterical. Cuz you ask them to get off of the devices. So yeah.
[00:45:19] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. So you are allowed to say guys, this is not working. We're gonna take a week off. And, or even two weeks off and maybe we'll come back and have a, a little bit less as we come back. But but yeah, you're, and it.
It'll help them like with their developing brains and all that. Oh my goodness. So much. Okay. So you had great wins. You're getting down on their level. You're staying calmer. These are awesome. Woo. I'm so thrilled for you. You've got a beautiful community around you. The babysitters, the church family got T and.
Grand mayor . And and you had some of these challenges and we talked about the threats and how they're making, how the, that is affecting your kids and that kind of unconditional stuff. We talked about the room, whose problem is it? And we talked about screen time. So I'd love to hear from you. What is your biggest takeaway from talking.
[00:46:26] Ranine: I would say the realization of the resistance whenever I'm doing the threatening to my daughter or threatening to both kids. But my daughter really resists. So I'm going to speak better. Couldn't use proper I'm not going to threat.
[00:46:49] Hunter: Awesome. I love that. I'm so thrilled. Yeah, definitely dive into those modules.
Five and six in the communication sections a little bit more review those, but it's been such a pleasure to talk to you. I can't wait to hear how it goes and thank you so much for coming on and talking on the air. I really appreciate it.
[00:47:08] Ranine: Thanks. And thanks for having me. It's definitely over my it's not in my comfort zone, but I think
[00:47:14] Hunter: I did.
All right. So you did fabulous. It was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Catch new episodes of the Mindful Mama podcast and other free resources, including the Mindful mom guide at Mindful Mama mentor dot. You can listen to every back catalog episode, including interviews with Dr. Dan Siegel, Yala, Vanzant, Sharon Salberg and get meditations.
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