Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast, the bucket-emptying episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Mary Han, psychologist and parenting expert. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. Before we get started on today's bucket-emptying tool, I just want to make a small request. This podcast is the success it is, downloaded in 80 countries, thanks to your amazing listens and your downloads. And other families, other parents, other teachers, educators, and those who support children, find the podcast based on suggestions that those podcast hosting platforms do. And those suggestions come from the ratings and the reviews that you incredible followers do. So, can I make a really small request that for a moment, maybe pause this episode now, or make a note to do it afterwards. When you rate the podcast, it's just simply a number of stars out of five, and then add a small sentence to review. What then happens is. That information helps your, whatever application you use for your podcast listening, it then makes suggestions. And when we review, and when we get feedback, and when we get emails from podcast listeners, that is how we, that's how so many people find this podcast. And if you have found it helpful in your parenting journey, then you'll know that other parents will also find it helpful too. And by rating and reviewing, which literally takes a couple of minutes, you'll know that other parents will also find it helpful too. And by rating and reviewing, which literally takes a couple of minutes, you help other parents, you give them a better chance of finding us in whichever of the 80 countries that we're currently being downloaded in. So, thank you in advance, and back to the episode. So, today's episode, I want to share with you a tool that is the power of one. So, it's like, why do I talk about this idea of power of one? Well, for this particular episode, I want to talk about why it's really helpful when we're in a bit of a rut in our life, in our parenting for our children. And maybe we've got a child where there just seems to be a multiple number of things that are proving super challenging. Maybe it's not just one child, maybe you've got two or three children, and amongst them all, you're just not enjoying parenting because you feel all you're doing is nagging, shouting, telling them off, pulling them up on something. And it's just creating this horrible atmosphere. We've all been that there. So, if you're not experiencing it right now, or have never experienced it, it is something that you will experience at some point. We could have a whole other episode about why these particular things happen. But when we're in that particular situation, either with one child, or it just is atmospheric, it could be with our partner, it could be a combination with our children. The power of one is a really great way of giving us a bit of clarity, allowing us to see a little bit of the wood for the trees, and allows us to focus on the things that we're doing. So, if you're in that particular situation, either with one child, or it's just multiple times at bedtime, and we're really struggling to get them to sleep. Maybe we've also, that child just doesn't seem to listen to us during the day, and we can't, you know, we're trying to leave the house, and it takes us half an hour. Maybe this child is also problematic when it comes to mealtimes, and it just feels that there isn't any part of our day-to-day life where we're not battling something. So, it feels like there's lots of things that we need to deal with. We need to deal with bedtime, we need to deal with mealtimes, we need to deal with getting out, getting out of the door, or even getting dressed as well. Why I recommend this idea of one is, for a start, it tries to lift that horrible sort of foggy atmosphere at home, where it feels like you are constantly on edge, you are constantly saying, don't do this, why have you done that, we need to do this. And so, you're constantly on something. So, it creates that horrible feeling within yourself, and it creates this atmosphere at home. But what it also does, really get clear on the one thing, is it allows us to get super consistent. One of the challenges is when we're trying to deal with multiple different things. So, maybe you're dealing with leaving the house, you're dealing with mealtimes, you're dealing with bedtime, and you and your partner, you're co-parenting together, and you've agreed certain actions. It can be really difficult to be consistent when you're dealing with these multiple things. This is why one can be really helpful, because it allows you to, just get laser focused, to get those blinkers on and say, right, we are dealing with this one behavior. So, I know that that's what I'm looking at. And the other things, goodness forbid, but I would highly recommend you ignore, bear with me, I'm not saying that we're going to be permissive about it, but we're just simply saying that our lens and our amplification, the spotlight we're going to be placing, is always on that one thing, because that's the one thing that we're going to be doing. So, I know that that's what I'm looking at, that we've agreed to focus in on. And I will help you in a moment, understand why that particular one thing can be particularly powerful. So, that's what we're going to do. And it means that we're much more likely to be consistent. It saves our energy, it creates real clarity, and more often than not, it diminishes this horrible sort of atmosphere in the house, where it feels like you're constantly telling your children not to do things. Now, how do we work out what our one is, is a really crucial piece, because the one thing that we've agreed to focus in on, the reason why we choose one is, we really try and focus on the one behavior, rather than it being bedtimes, mealtimes, and getting out of the house. We're focusing on one broad behavior, or attitude, or belief, which actually, if we could resolve that, would have the biggest impact and ripple effect on other things. So, for example, when we're looking at bedtime, when we're looking at mealtimes, when we're looking at getting out of the door, rather than them being three separate things, it may well be that there's an underlying behavior here of doing what we're asking our children to do first time. Or it might be about effective listening, or it might be about not being distracted. Maybe you've got a child who, it doesn't matter what you tell them, they go into their own little dream playland, and so they completely forget what you've spoken to them about or asked them to do. So, when we're looking at that one thing, that's why it's so powerful, because actually, we're not dealing specifically with the problem bedtime, mealtimes, getting out of the house. We're dealing with the skill deficit that our child has. And so, what we're doing is we're actually equipping them for lots of other situations, rather than just trying to put sticky plasters on, which we often do when we're just dealing with, I need to fix bedtime, I need to fix getting out of the house, I need to fix mealtime. Rather than, are there some common skill issues here? There's a skill deficit, there's a developmental gap that I can equip and skill my child up with to make them feel more capable and competent, which will then actually not only impact bedtime, but it will probably make mealtimes less stressful and might help a little bit in terms of getting out of the door. So, that's what we're really trying to do, is really focus in on what the skill deficit skill is. And so, I guess what I'm asking you to do is to really shift your thinking away from the problem to a skill, and really trying to kind of look at that. So, as is always the case with these things, I'm a big believer in taking a bit of a step back. You know, if you're planning a route, if you're going to go from Scotland all the way down to Exeter, you're not just going to hop in your car, you're going to plan your route in some way. You might not plan every minutiae detail, but you know that there are going to be certain steps that you need to do, because you need to see the landscape. So, you'll understand where there may well be motorways, where you can go quite fast, and you'll be able to understand where there are certain waypoints along that way. And that's exactly what I want you to do when you start considering what that one thing is, is take a step back. Where am I battling with my child around the behaviour? Where are the issues currently? And when I reflect and I sit on it, because I'm not in the situation at the time, so I've taken my emotions out, and I'm activating my prefrontal cortex, my logical problem-solving reasoning brain, can I sort of reflect on what are the issues at bedtime? What are the issues around mealtimes? What are the issues around leaving? Are there some specific skills here that are common that I can then focus on, some particular deficits? And it may well be of them, it all relates to. emotional regulation. Because with each one, the challenge is you're transitioning them up to bedtime, which they don't want to do because they were having a great time playing or on their device. You're transitioning them to mealtime when they were happily playing or on their device, and you're transitioning them out to do something when they were happily playing and on a device. So it's about emotional regulation and or transition. So that's where it can then be so much more powerful because rather than that feeling like you're banging your head against the brick wall, saying the same thing over and over again, instead, you've got some real clarity. My child actually is having real issues transitioning from something that they enjoy doing to something that we need to do as part of day-to-day living. And actually, that's about an emotional regulation piece. So how can I help them tap into their emotional literacy and their emotional regulation piece? And how can I help them tap into their emotional literacy and their emotional vocabulary to be able to articulate and understand that the transition is making them feel like they're missing out on something, how we can then help them learn ways to manage those particular emotions and then to be able to communicate it. And now you've gone to something so much more empowering for everybody because you've got something super practical. Right. I know that I need to equip my child with X. That's my focus rather than I need to scour through internet searches and thousands of books that will tell me how do I get my child to sit nicely at the table and eat their meal and or go to bed when I ask them to, when it's this underlying skill. So I'm hoping that that is, there's some real clarity in that. And that really helps a lot of you take that step back from a particular challenging situation that you're dealing with and get that real clarity. As ever, if you've enjoyed this episode, I'm going to give you another nudge, please, please, could you rate, review and follow this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.
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