522: Permission to Be Human
Hunter Clarke-Fields
What is Mindful Parenting? Hunter talks about the importance of being present, self-compassion, and effective communication in parenting.
Hunter emphasizes that parents are human and will make mistakes, and that it's crucial to model emotional intelligence for children. The conversation also addresses the challenges of reactivity, the need for self-care, and the misconceptions surrounding gentle parenting.
Ep 522- Hunter
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Hunter: We know that teaching this emotional intelligence is great. We really want to do it for our kids, and we really have to do it for ourselves in order to be able to do it for our kids. Because we can't just do it for them and not do it for us. It has to come from within.
You're listening to the Mindful Parenting Podcast, episode number 522. Today, we're talking about permission to be human with a special reverse interview with me, Hunter Clarke-Fields.
Welcome to the Mindful Parenting Podcast. Here, it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. In Mindful Parenting, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training. And I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Yesterday I was on Zoom answering a question from a mom who had started a mindfulness practice and was struggling, and I realized how much I love that. I love connecting with people. I love answering these questions, and I want to do more of that here on the Mindful Parenting Podcast. Starting right now, you can leave me a voicemail with your mindful parenting questions. If you have a current parenting challenge, if you're frustrated with some behavior, if you want to know more about mindfulness and how to get started, you can leave me a voicemail with your question. I'm so excited about this. The URL is MindfulMamaMentor.com/VM. That's MindfulMamaMentor.com/VM. If your question is picked, I'll let you know and it will become part of the Mindful Parenting podcast. Leave your voicemail now, MindfulMamaMentor.com/VM.
Hello, welcome, welcome to the Mindful Parenting podcast. I am so glad you're here. Happy New Year! Happy New Year! It's so this episode comes out on New Year's Eve, so this is first episode of the year, and we wanted to do something special, so I was so happy to have Dena Farash come and do an interview with me. And we're going to talk about what is mindful parenting. We're going to talk about the importance of being present, self compassion, and effective communication, parenting, and you're going to hear that we're all human and we will make mistakes. And that's important. That's crucial for modeling emotional intelligence for children. So we'll also talk about the challenges of reactivity, the need for self care and the misconceptions surrounding gentle parenting.
You'll hear me call BS. Oh, yes, taking a big stand here. Before we dive into this conversation, I want to let you know that my schedule is filling up this year. I'm doing some talks around at different places, and you can also bring me to your workplace or school as a speaker. In the last few years, I've done talks all around the world for groups. We have so much fun. I'm known for offering evidence based learning in a way that's easy to understand. Clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful. So you can go to MindfulMamaMentor.com/Speaking to book your dates. And now join me at the table with Dina.
All right, we're here for a special episode of the Mindful Parenting Podcast where I'm going to be interviewed today, dear listener. by someone really cool in my life, who is Dina Farash. Dina, do you want to tell the people who you are?
[00:03:47] Dena Farash: Thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor, Hunter, because you are the leading expert on Mindful Parenting, and you and I connected almost a decade ago when I actually hired you to work with me one on one to help me feel better in my own motherhood and my parenting journey because I had no idea why I was losing my mind all the time.
[00:04:12] Hunter: Yeah, we get confused on that. We're like, what's wrong with me? Why is this so hard? Yeah, it was such a great pleasure to work with you. And Dena's super cool and has done some super cool things with us like emceeing our book release event for “Raising Good Humans Every Day” and stuff like that. So yeah, that's why we're here.
[00:04:30] Dena Farash: It's so interesting. I reflect often on the relationship that I've been able to create, that we've created together. And when I think about how it happened, it was because I was in a place that didn't feel good within me. I knew that motherhood was a big trigger for that, and I didn't know what I needed, I just knew that I needed to feel better as an individual and as a mom.
And when I found you, I didn't even know what mindful parenting was. I just knew that my life was not feeling good, and I desperately wanted it to feel better for myself, for my family, for my children. And so I think it's a great place to start just by sharing what mindful parenting actually is.
[00:05:14] Hunter: Sure. So mindful parenting is I think of it as it's the place where it's like the crossroads of three things. And those three things sort of the framework of it, the foundations of it, our mindfulness to help parents reduce our stress response and be less reactive, and then skillful communication because parenting is about communication.
You're going back and forth. It's all communication. Everything in parenting is communicating. It's body language. It's language. It's, that's our whole relationship is in that communication. And then compassion. So mindfulness, compassion, self compassion included in there. Very important.
And communication, because it all came from, there was, there were, I was so frustrated. I was like, I was like, what's wrong with me? This is so hard. And I would listen to really great experts who have been on this podcast that I have had the utmost honor of talking to over the years, so many great people.
And I would just be like, okay, so that's how I'm supposed to respond to my kid. in these moments where I'm not responding well. Okay, I'm gonna try to do it, and then it would all fly out the window when I was reactive, and I just needed this, like, how? How do I get to a place where my brain is gonna be cooperating with me when I can use my whole brain?
And so I really had to go back to that mindfulness piece. Mindful Parenting. really acknowledges that parents aren't just yeah, I don't know, automatons that can just say the perfect thing at the perfect time, like we have no stress and we can just do everything right. It acknowledges that parents are humans, with a lot of stuff going on, with a lot of triggers maybe, with maybe not enough sleep, all this stuff happening.
And to acknowledge that our best parenting is in modeling, and this taking care of ourselves is a huge piece of it, outside of responding to our kids. And then it just helps responding to our kids. Then what do we say to them then? And then, of course, self compassion because, yeah, again, parents are humans.
We're going to be human. We're going to mess up. We're going to make mistakes. So we have to have a practice and a process to be able to bounce back again because it's just we're beginning anew again and again. And mindfulness, we know, helps us reduce stress, helps us to all, helps us to be less reactive, all of those things.
So that's why it's really at the core and the foundation of it.
[00:07:46] Dena Farash: You touched upon something really interesting. You said that as parents, we need a practice to help us come back to this place of feeling centered in our own lives, in our own parenting. Can you share a little bit about what that looks like?
[00:07:59] Hunter: Yeah, so it can be a mindful, that's where mindfulness and skillful or self compassion work together really well. So a mindfulness practice and a self compassion practice both involve mindfulness, which is really about the idea of self compassion. Bringing our attention back to the present moment with an attitude of kindness and curiosity.
And when we can come back, when we have a practice, when we practice this every day, when we practice coming back to the present moment, we are feeling our feet on the ground, we're feeling our breath coming in and out of our nose. We're saying, okay, this is the moment I'm alive, this moment right here.
Then what happens when we're in those tough moments and our brain spirals and we start future pacing and we start, doing all these things that, that actually exacerbate any kind of bad feeling, that exacerbate any kind of conflict, that, that make it spiral out. We can stop that process and say, okay, I'm here.
I'm right here. With my air coming in out of my nose, with my feet on the ground, I'm feeling it. So we're, it's a practice. of interrupting the pattern. And then the self compassion practice is a practice even if you've been super hard on yourself your whole life, even if your inner voice is really a b-i-t-c-h and is just mean, nasty person.
Words coming into your head is a practice of being kind to yourself. And it may feel weird, and it may feel awkward at first, it may feel like something that you, it just is so unfamiliar and something you don't want to do, but as we practice it, we grow stronger. And so when this combination of becoming present, okay, I'm here, and my feet are on the ground, my air is coming into my belly.
And then pairing that with kindness. Okay, this is a hard moment. I'm aware that this is a hard moment. I'm struggling right now being, and I'm touching my hand to my heart as I say this. You can see it if you're on YouTube, you can see. And that practice of doing those things, even though it feels weird and awkward, these are the things that give us the, fill our bucket to be able to just come back and be there for our children again and again in the ways they need us to be.
[00:10:23] Dena Farash: I feel or I'll speak for myself, I know that I entered motherhood. with no conscious awareness of how it was going to shift things inside of me. And so when I had my challenging moments, and for me, I'll be honest, it was really when I was transitioning from one to two children where I really started to slip away from myself and my reaction, my reactions felt completely out of my control.
I never thought to think of how I would control myself as a parent until I was in those moments where I couldn't take it anymore. And one of the most powerful things that you have shared with me is that you only know how to parent the way you were parented. And I will only speak about myself because that's the only fair thing to do.
It was such a challenge for me to figure out how to parent with kindness and compassion towards myself and towards my children. How to parent without reactivity, or in all honesty, less reactivity.
[00:11:24] Hunter: Yeah.
[00:11:25] Dena Farash: Because while my parents did the best they could, that wasn't modeled for me. And now here I was an adult.
With little lives to be responsible for, trying to figure out who I was in the midst of motherhood. And it was such a challenge. Can we talk about why it's so hard?
[00:11:45] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Parenting podcasts right after this break.
[00:12:18] Hunter: Yeah, I feel you. I felt the same way. We have this erroneous idea that we can just choose how we want to respond to our kids. We say, oh, look, here is this wonderful parenting coach saying, crouch down, touch them gently, look them in the eye, speak in this way.
I'll just do that. That's great. Sounds like a plan. Good. Good to go. And then we don't realize how challenged and triggered that all the different behaviors and situations may make us feel. We don't realize that, that we have baggage that we carry from our upbringing and maybe even from our grandparents and generations before us who suffered, right?
We know that is passed down genetically now. We don't factor in the reactivity factor at all. We just think, okay, I'm myself now, I'll be myself in that moment, and I'll be able to choose how I want to respond. And it's completely erroneous because we get into those moments, this little being is throwing their third temper tantrum of the day, they're freaking out, you have to get somewhere, you're tired, you haven't eaten enough there just are so many factors that are happening.
Also these inner factors, and then you don't have the resources, your stress response is activated, you don't have the resources to use your whole because we know, and this is just You know, we know this, but it's it just bears repeating that we know when our stress response is activated, fight, flight, or freeze, it, it, it gets activated by the amygdala in the emotional center of the brain and the brainstem.
It cuts off access to the slower parts of the brain. It cuts off access to the prefrontal cortex, the seat verbal ability, impulse control, problem solving, creativity. Verbal ability, right? These are the things that we're wanting to use to respond, like this wonderful parenting coach said we wanted to respond, and it's gone.
You just don't have access to it. Your brain is hijacked when you're in that stress response. And so you're in this impaired place. So we have to factor that in, that we are humans, and this being wired for reactivity, this nervous system response. It's like the number one thing, system that is developed in your body when you're bored.
And as we know from our babies is the number one system. And it's what keeps us alive. It's great. It's what helps that parental arm slide out. If you have a kid in the front seat and you have to stop short, it's what, it's all, it's wonderful. But we have to factor in our nervous system when we think about how we're going to respond in the tough moments.
And so if we can plan for that, if we can prepare for that, if we can resource ourselves for that, then we'll really be able to, be able to model for our kids. We all know now that emotional hell, right? Like your kids, Being able to take, respond effectively to your child, being able to support them emotionally, and to be able to accept all their different emotions.
We know that teaching this emotional intelligence is great. We really want to do it for our kids. And we really have to do it for ourselves in order to be able to do it for our kids because we can't just do it for them and not do it for us. It has to come from within.
[00:15:52] Dena Farash: That's a great point. And almost the vision that I get in my head when you say that, because I know I've done this myself, is I could have a great day with my kids
We can have a challenging night, and then when I go to bed, I'm replaying all the things that I did wrong with them. I'm feeling guilty for letting them go off to sleep in not such a great place, and I'm thinking, or at least at times I've thought, I am messing these kids up for life. And for me, I think the self compassion part can be really the most challenging.
So if we've not been wired to give ourselves pats on the back take care of our own inner states of emotional well being, how do we really start to shift that internal dialogue so that we're more calm and confident? in the fact that we're not messing up our children for life.
[00:16:41] Hunter: Yeah, I think that's an important question. Because also all of us are told that the first year, three years of life are so important. And I hate when people say that because it's the first three years of the, maybe the first three years you've ever been a parent and you're going to be bad at it because you have no practice. Of course you are.
But yeah, we can begin again. I know our kids, we're not gonna mess up our kids by having some bad nights going to sleep where they're mad at you and they say, I hate you. It's, that's okay. It's just that repeated again and again. Our kids need what do they need from us?
They really need to feel a sense of unconditional love of I'm here for you. I'm here on your team and I see you and I hear you. And if we can give our kids that, over 50 percent of the time, that's great. And actually, they've done some studies on kids and parents responsiveness to kids.
And they're, they had, they rated the parents on how well they were responsive to the kids. And the kids who had the most secure attachment were With the best and most responsive parents, have parents who are responsive to them 30 percent of the time. 30 percent of the time. So we don't need to hover over our kids.
We don't, we can ignore them sometimes. We don't need to play with them every day or every hour. And we can have some bad nights. But if overall you're saying to yourself, I want to have a good relationship with my kids. That didn't feel good to me, the way we went to bed last night, that, tonight, and I'm feeling really bad about it.
And then we can have a practice. This is where the self compassion as a practice comes in, because we know that the brain is always rewiring with whatever we practice growing stronger. So you can literally rewire your brain as you practice, even though it feels uncomfortable to say, okay, all right, this is what I'm feeling.
I'm feeling guilt. Hello, guilt. I see you there, guilt. Whew, that was a hard moment. Oh man, I, I wish I had done better, but I, it was a hard time for me. And it was hard for them and it's, I give myself, it's okay for me to not be perfect. And we like, even if the words feel awkward and strange, we practice say, saying to ourselves what are, what maybe we'd say to our best friends, say if we might be feeling something like that.
And we just practice that. And that over time, that muscle grows a little stronger. And what's really good about this, it's not, I wouldn't necessarily call it pats on the back, but pats on the back are good. They're fine. It's But it's more like just being kind to yourself when you're down. And that is really important because when you're down, you've had a rough night, you yelled at your kids and.
They're crying and you feel terrible and all that, and then you go into your bedroom and you say, I am a terrible parent. I suck. All, we say like terrible things to ourselves, then it gets worse. We feel like we've gone a little spiral, right? Like we dig ourselves in a little hole. We feel like no one else does something like that.
There's something wrong with me. All of this BS in our heads. And that doesn't leave us ready to start again, and reconnect, and repair, or any of that stuff. It leaves us in a pitiful blob crying on the bed or whatever, right? It just leaves us incapacitated. And there's actually research that shows that as you practice self compassion, you're able to bounce back.
You can respond, you can recover more quickly. You give yourself a soft landing, you can recover more quickly. And our kids need that, right? They need us. We want them to be able to, recover from their big feelings because they're a part of life, like big uncomfortable feelings are part of life. So we have to show them how to do it.
And how do we do it? We do it by being kind to ourself, feeling that feeling, and then saying, Hey, babe, next morning, I'm sorry last night was so tough that was no fun for me. And I wish I hadn't yelled and I'm going to try not to do it again or whatever we're saying. And do you want a hug? And then we reconnect And yes, some relationships, you could actually create a stronger relationship for having that conflict than you would have if everything was hunky dory, because that really makes that bond stronger.
[00:21:08] Dena Farash: Because you have the opportunity to repair then to acknowledge and then to repair with your child. I want to highlight the metric that you shared because I think it's really important. You said 30 percent of the times you have to be very responsive to your kids. And I think when I heard that, it's almost like a sigh of relief because the way I digested it in my head was that meant, that means that 7 out of 10 times, I have permission to get it wrong as a parent.
And I think that takes the pressure off a lot. I know it did for me when I heard you say that, because we all beat ourselves up. I won't say we all, I know myself, I beat myself up for not being a perfect parent. But I did come into it with no guidelines and instructions. And so for the mom or dad who is perhaps going through this and beating themselves up and not giving themselves the permission to get it wrong seven out of ten times, Where do they start?
Ray, where do they start and what do they do?
[00:22:06] Hunter: I mean, I think that practicing self compassion is an absolute great place to start. They practice that, giving themselves permission to be human. And you know what? Once you do that, Once you say, I don't have to be perfect. I just have to be real.
That's where I would like people to start. Just stop being, stop trying to be the role of the perfect parent, and just be you. Be, there's a book on my bookshelf by Annie Burnside called “Soul to Soul Parenting”, and she says, not role to role, soul to soul. That's so much, because it's that's what our kids want most is like you to be really real and authentic and really present with them.
They don't need you to have the perfect response every time or be the perfect role of mom or dad. I don't know, my kids like me most when I'm like, wacky and goofy. That's like when your kids like you most and that's when we're often most or when we're most relaxed or most ourselves, we can be silly, like that's when our kids love that, right?
And that's what our kids really crave. And we're allowed to have bad feelings. Sometimes parents are afraid of, if you're in that space where you've been feeling bad and you've been hard on yourself. and you're having a hard time, sometimes you want to just pretend like you're fine or pretend that you're not upset and things like that because you don't, people don't want to put their feelings on their kids.
That's what I've heard a lot. And the truth is, You're right. You should have some people in your life that you can talk to that you are sharing your feelings with and unloading on. You should not be unloading your feelings on your kids, but guess what? Your kids already know, they can feel what you're feeling.
They can feel that something's off. They can feel that you feel sad or that you feel whatever you feel. And so for you to say, yeah, I'm feeling a little sad right now, or I'm feeling frustrated right now, or I'm feeling stressed right now, or whatever it is you're feeling, it just acknowledges what's already there, and actually it really teaches your kids healthy emotional intelligence, and they can all, they already know something's up anyway, so when you just say it, they're like, oh, something's going on with mom or dad, and they can Maybe they might even adjust accordingly if you're really lucky.
You never know. But it gives them a chance to see you as a human and that is a real gift to them, actually.
[00:24:37] Dena Farash: So beautiful. One of the things that you shared with me years ago when I had the opportunity to work with you one on one was that I had permission to walk away. And that blew my mind because as a mom, I never realized how much I would have to give myself permission to be a human being, to have emotions, to go to my default emotions and escapes when I was in overwhelm.
And one of the things that you shared with me was that when things are too much, as long as my children are safe, I should just walk away. And it really blew my mind because. It allowed me to have more grace and it allowed me to model the fact that I still struggle dealing with things like anger and overwhelm.
But if I'm able to walk away, I can reclaim myself and come back to reconnect. Can you share a little bit more about giving ourselves permission to just be or to take our time or to care for ourselves in that way without guilt?
[00:25:38] Hunter: I love that because you are showing your kids how to take a moment to take a breath and center yourself and just really that you are feeling overwhelmed and you need some space. That's beautiful. That's, then, I bet. I bet, some time has gone by, I bet you might have even seen them do something like that in their lives. She's nodding. Yeah, because they've seen mom do it. So they know how to do it. That's such a beautiful thing. So yeah, I give a, I've given a talk all around the world on how to stop yelling.
And I talk about the three R's. Recognize what's happening. I'm feeling frustrated, right? I feel like I might even be about to yell. That really takes the temperature down, gives you a it's like a ding, ding bell to do something about it. The second R is optionally remove yourself because yeah, if your kid is safe, you, it's better to walk away than it is to scream at your kid.
Yeah, ideally, if your, everybody's feelings are upset, you could stay there and be this calm mountain and they could borrow your feelings, but that's going to happen maybe, I don't know, 12 percent of the time, right? It's not, or maybe less, who knows, whatever, right? It's not going to happen all the time.
You've got to be in a really resourced place for you to be able to do that, or practiced a whole lot. So yeah, it's better to just take a break than it is to yell at your kid. It models for them the healthy thing to do when you're feeling overwhelmed. And then the third R is use your resources. Those longer exhales, cliche, because they work.
They help our body to release, to take that temperature down. I like the one, this is not an emergency, or I'm helping my child. Those are my, those are like my top three mantras. But yeah, we want to recognize what we're feeling, remove ourselves maybe, and use our resources. I do, I definitely remove myself plenty of times.
I, the, I've told the one about when I remember putting Sora in her crib and then watching all the way out to my balcony. So I was like, oh my god, this kid, I need a break. Ah. But then another time when she was I don't know. She must have been nine or so. We had a family movie night. And we're, we're just tired.
And she was like ramped up after that. And I was like, okay, she's nine. I'm just going to ignore this kid. She's going to go away and go to bed. I start like flipping through my library book on the couch and she said something and then she started laughing at me. And I was like, Laming Dragon of Rage starts coming out because she's laughing at me.
I was like, wow, this is a new trigger that I They hadn't discovered till Sora was nine. But I have Laugh at Mommy. Boy, does it drive me crazy. Anyway, I was so angry, and I, but I, at that point, she was nine, and her sister was older, so I'd had these years of teaching this and practicing this, and it wasn't like this flaming anger was gonna go anywhere anytime soon, so I stood up and I was like, I'm really angry right now.
And then I opened up the front door and I slammed it as I looked down. I threw my poor library book down onto the pavement of my driveway. And I walked up and down the street for 15 minutes, calming down. But it's I had to take a break. I had to remove myself. I think it's a really healthy thing to do.
Yeah, it's fine. It's, you have permission to your listener, to your watcher, whatever. Take, to take a break if you need it. You have permission to be human.
[00:29:57] Dena Farash: I love that. It's and it bears repeating because we put so much pressure on ourselves as parents. And the world today is so fast paced that it's impossible to be perfect.
And I know for me, it breaks my heart when I watch my children struggle with perfectionism. And the only way that I can share with them that perfectionism isn't real is if I'm able to model that and show them every day that mommy makes mistakes. And that's so hard. I want to make a quick transition because one of the things that I see often that triggers me, and this is only because I've had so many opportunities to learn directly from you, is this meme that goes around on the internet that says that gentle parenting is only for gentle kids.
Can we talk about that and maybe dismantle it a little bit? And the premise really is, I can't be a gentle parent because I have, I don't have gentle children.
[00:30:51] Hunter: Oh. Oh. Huh, that's interesting. That doesn't make any sense to me. If you have a, if you have a rambunctious kid this is an easter egg actually for the listener if you have an exclamation point kid, who is really, wild and has a lot of energy and you just feel like, oh my they if you match that energy, you're both doomed.
You're both doomed. If you have a kid who's gonna yell and freak out, and you yell and freak out, it's just gonna make everything, more intense, harder, more difficult. It's gonna make it even harder for everyone to connect. calm down and have a conversation about whatever the issue is. So yeah, it, a non, maybe a non gentle kid, they actually need you maybe even a little bit more to be a little more, practice to be a little more grounded, to be a little less reactive if you can, to make it more, more, important that you, that maybe you have a practice where every day you sit for five minutes and you just breathe calmly and you offer yourself some compassion, right?
Because they're going to need to borrow your calm. If they're in a really overstimulating, escalating situation, it's going to make their feelings of overwhelm and overstimulation and, Reactivity Worse, if you can have, help them feel safe, secure, connected, if you can help them. These kids who are really sensitive to the world, right?
You're just, what we're describing are kids with big reactions and are really excitable, are kids who are really sensitive to the world, right? I have one of those. I have one of those. For sure. And they need us to show them how to use our resources, right? Especially if, probably, if you have one, you might be yourself.
Pretty highly sensitive. I'm, don't tell anybody. You need to show them how to deal with it. And you also need to have rhythms and expectations and, Pre time and down time to process all the things because they take in so much, right? Yeah, I call BS on that meme.
[00:33:03] Dena Farash: I like it. I like it. That's very bold I and I really think it's an older parenting paradigm that says if my children are loud, I have to be louder If my children are yelling, I have to yell louder, I have to be more firm and direct. And I know I've tried it, and it never felt good.
[00:33:21] Hunter: Yeah, you can hold boundaries kindly, you can just insist on your boundaries, right? There, I know that there's definitely some listeners who are gonna roll their eyes when I just said that, because I know I would've been like, yeah, sure, how?
That's a whole other story. But the thing is, yes, you can hold. your boundaries, and be kind at the same time. It's just the thing is it has to be not a problem for your kid to get upset. Is it okay for your kid to be upset? Yes, it's okay for your kid to be upset. It's okay for them to be upset at you.
That's fine. I don't know who gets through parenthood without having their kids say, I hate you sometime. It's heartbreaking, but yeah, it happens, but it's okay for our kids to be upset at the boundaries we hold. But we just don't have to, we still don't have to be mean or super loud about it necessarily.
Sometimes we gotta be loud. I'm not saying we're never gonna be loud, but we don't have to be mean.
[00:34:15] Dena Farash: I love that, and I love that distinction, too. And you reference something like this in one of your books, I believe it's in “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, where you talk about You cite a study, actually, that shares that parents do have to disappoint their children in order to prepare them for the real world.
And that was so profound to me when I read it. It gave me permission, yet again, there is that word, to say no. And to say no firmly, and to know that my children are going to be okay.
[00:34:44] Hunter: Yeah, it's an incredibly hard thing to learn. My daughter, my oldest daughter has been dealing for the last like four years with a chronic pain issue, and it's incredibly hard and all the reasons.
And there are all these, we have to, we can't for her to deal with this chronic pain, She has to retrain her nervous system. She's been in that process for a long time, and she has to retrain her nervous system not by taking it easy when it hurts, but by doing activity even though it hurts. And to watch to insist that she do things around the house to, to, to disappoint her when she's, she wants to she's had moments where she just wants to, just just, she's been in wheelchairs going in different places at times.
And to have, we've had these moments of disappointment. They're the hardest thing we go through, I think. This place of my kid's so disappointed, my kid's so upset. Maybe there was something I could have done to alleviate that, but it's not right for me actually to alleviate that pain.
It's actually better, I know it's better in the long run to disappoint my kid. And to watch and be there as they maybe suffer some consequences, it's so hard. But I can see now on the other side that it's better that's happened. It's really interesting.
[00:36:18] Dena Farash: Teaching our kids how to deal with discomfort and disappointment, right?
[00:36:24] Hunter: So hard. Yeah. It's inevitable. Yeah, they, there's certainly studies about, the surf snowplow helicopter. We know that's not good. We know that, our kids need to have challenges. They need to have failures. They need to have disappointments. It's so much better if they have challenges and failures and disappointments when they are in the, like 5 to 18 phase plus or 3 to 18 phase of life- rather than all of a sudden they're 18 and they go to college and they can't deal with anything, right? So you have, yeah, it's they need to have those. We don't need to manufacture them. Life's going to happen, but we do need to let them go out into life. Go do things. Make that phone call that they're uncomfortable making.
Talk to that person at the register that they don't feel like talking to. Go on the errand to get, a gallon of milk or whatever you need to, for dinner. They need challenges to do those things be out in the world and have disappointments All those different things. We really need them to do that before they leave us.
[00:37:31] Dena Farash: Yeah, and still be okay when they happen to us as adults, right? Still show them resiliency and bouncing back. And I think that kind of sums up what you've shared, which is modeling that imperfection, modeling that, that sense of self that doesn't get it right all the time, modeling how to move through discomfort for our kids.
[00:37:54] Hunter: Yeah. It's really helpful for us to say, I messed up, I'm disappointed. I'm feeling whatever those feelings are because our kids need to see that it's okay to feel those feelings and we're gonna survive it on the other side, right? They need to say, Oh, Mom and Dad, they mess up too. I'm, I don't have to be perfect.
That's really helpful. Like they, they're actually, experts who talk about let's talk about your failures at the dinner table and then see how you've bounced back from them. It seems to really go against the grain for us, but I think it, it's not like something that I think maybe, sometimes we get, then hear someone say Oh, talk about your failures at the dinner table or something like that.
And we think, Oh, I gotta think about, I'm going to make a list of my failures. I'm going to write them down. Make sure I talk about them at the dinner table because this is like the good thing to do. I think it's just, when it boils down to it, is be human. Be yourself. Be the person, not the role, right?
And then all of those things will naturally come out because you'll just you'll share with your kids as is age appropriate more and more as they get older about life, you can talk to them about different things that are happening in your life in an age appropriate way and That's fine.
It's good. We, there is an age where we do really want to protect kids from the outside world, right? I don't know, maybe, I don't know, whatever it is as they, maybe, I would say like seven and under yeah, don't. Don't watch the news around them, right? Protect them from the screens.
Don't have the difficult conversations about politics or an intense war around those little kids. But then, as time goes on, they're going to hear about it, and it's good for you to start to And, talk to them about the things in your life that are happening for you as a human, not in the way, and this is so hard to, this is why it's so hard to talk about because mindful parenting is always about the middle path, the middle way.
And it's, so it's, we are not, we're not oversharing with our kids. We have adults, friends in our life that we can decompress with and down, download and get things off our chest with. But we're also not just in this role of parent and we don't ever, we don't ever be real with our kids, right? We walk that, that middle path.
And I think that's part of the process of becoming more a more mindful parent is just have, build, building the capacity of awareness to understand myself and to also be, have more awareness of my child and where they are as well.
[00:40:35] Dena Farash: That's so beautiful. And I just want to take a moment to thank you for sharing some of your own personal stories.
Because I know I always learn from hearing stories of others, right? From recognizing the imperfection in others and their parenting and the way that you teach to navigate it with grace and ease. To me, you are the greatest resource of all time when it comes to mindful parenting. And I think so much of that is because You walk the walk and talk the talk and just for listeners, I have seen you in your own home with your own children.
The sense of calmness and connection that you have is a testament to the work that you do in your own self and the work that you share with the world. So thank you for everything that you do for all of us, because we all have a wonderful opportunity to learn through your willingness to share and continue to be our teacher.
[00:41:39] Hunter: I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it did something good for you today. If you liked it, listen to the number one most popular episode from 2024, which was 437, my live event from Laramie, Wyoming; “How to Stop Yelling” talk. You can also listen to episode 432. which is my interview talking about being less reactive and more present, and episode 411 where Carla Namberg interviews me about “Raising Good Humans Every Day”.
That was 437, 432, and 411. Check those out if you want some more. This episode is part of the “Stress and How to Cope” series. It's the first in the “Stress and How to Cope” series, and we have a couple more coming up that are going to be great for you. I have a really powerful episode next Tuesday on healing your trauma with Dr. Frank Anderson, and then we have two more episodes in the “Stress and How to Cope” series: “How to Be Nicer to Yourself” with Dr. Diana Hill, and “Parents Need to Laugh” with Arthur Meyer and Stephanie Drake- actually going to be released on their birthday, which is cool. And they make you laugh, which is great. And you get to hear a great Jon Hanson story. All this coming up in the “Stress and How to Cope” series. And then we're going to follow that series this year with a “Different Brains, Amazing Kids” series talking about neurodivergent kids. Lots coming up.
Make sure you're subscribed and I would love it if this episode has helped you, just text one friend about it. Send it to them. See what they think. Yeah. That's all that's happening. All that's going on. Thank you so much for listening. I hope it helped. And I'm glad you're here. And I can't wait to, I'll talk to you again soon. I'll be right back at you in the new year next week. Talk to you then. And bye. Wishing you all the best until then, of course. Namaste.
[00:43:44] Mindful Mama Member: I'd say definitely do it. It's really helpful. It will change your relationship with your kids for the better. It will help you communicate better. And just, I'd say communicate better as a person, as a wife, as a spouse. It's been really a positive influence in our lives, so definitely do it. I'd say definitely do it. It's so worth it. The money really is inconsequential when you get so much benefit from being a better parent. To your children and feeling like you're connecting more with them and not feeling like you are yelling all the time, or you are like, why isn't things working? I would say definitely enjoy it. It's so worth it. It'll change you no matter what age someone's child is. It's a great opportunity for personal growth and it's great investment in someone's family. I'm very thankful I had this. You can continue in your old habits that aren't working or you can learn some new tools and. In some perspective to shift everything in your parenting.
[00:44:47] Hunter: Are you frustrated by parenting? Do you listen to the experts and try all the tips and strategies, but you're just not seeing the results that you want? Or are you lost as to where to start? Does it all seem so overwhelming with too much to learn? Are you yearning for community people who get it, who also don't want to threaten and punish to create cooperation?
Hi, I'm Hunter Clarke-Fields, and if you answered yes to any of these questions, I want you to seriously consider the Mindful Parenting membership. You will be joining hundreds of members who have discovered the path of mindful parenting and now have confidence and clarity in their parenting. This isn't just another parenting class.
This is an opportunity to really discover your unique, lasting relationship, not only with your children, but with yourself. It will translate into lasting, connected relationships, not only with your children, but your partner too. Let me change your life. Go to mindfulparentingcourse.com to add your name to the waitlist, so you will be the first to be notified when I open the membership for a month. I look forward to seeing you on the inside. MindfulParentingCourse.com.
Support the Podcast
- Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: your kind feedback tells Apple Podcasts that this is a show worth sharing.
- Share an episode on social media: be sure to tag me so I can share it (@mindfulmamamentor).
- Join the Membership: Support the show while learning mindful parenting and enjoying live monthly group coaching and ongoing community discussion and support.
