Speaker 1Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
Speaker 2Hello. And welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 35, and today I want to try something slightly different to my usual format. Now, I want to regularly answer your most burning questions as parents, and give you, in return, my usual practical solutions. So, I'm going to start off with our very first help question with help. I've completely lost it with my children. Now, we've all been there, right? Me, massively included. You know, those times when we become some sort of mum or dadzilla. Unleashing anger, fury, frustration, in a way which almost feels like a slightly out-of-body experience. I can very vividly remember times when I have so completely lost it with my children, I was hurling comments from everywhere. How ungrateful they were, how much sacrifice I had made, how entitled they were behaving. You name it, I threw it at them, and then some. And all the while, I was aware of this crazy lady. And I was almost looking down at myself saying, What the hell are you doing, Mary-Han? You know this isn't helping. But I just felt I couldn't stop myself. Bet you're all thinking very differently of me now. Well, the reality is, every single parent at some point will completely lose it with their children. And first off, you aren't going to psychologically scar them by doing that. Certainly not if it's uncommon. Getting to this point regularly, as in weekly, isn't helpful for anyone. But you're certainly not going to hear from me that you are a bad parent. You are simply human. So, what do we do when these situations happen? Because these situations will happen. And I want to give you my advice. And my advice is going to take the usual format of sort of bullet points of certain sort of things. And there's basically five things. So, here's my advice. And this question is a question that I am commonly asked because it is something that we do as parents. But it is often something that we do and feel incredibly ashamed of because we believe that we are the only people doing it. But it is common. And every single. Every single person does it. And as I say, I can say quite wholeheartedly, this is something that I have done. Number one. First and foremost, you need to own it. Don't try and blame it on anyone else. Yes, the children have been arguing. Not doing what you've asked. Or acting in an entitled way. Or not listening. Or whatever it is which has triggered you. The reality, and you know I say this with love, is that you were the one who lost it. You made that choice in that moment. And we should totally own it. Now, I'm not saying by first and foremost owning it. I'm criticising you in any way or calling you a bad parent. But I think so often when we do something that we feel quite ashamed of, we can try and find excuses or in that moment really do a little bit of finger pointing. Whereas actually the best thing that we can do when we're modelling it for our children is to simply own it. Remember that children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So if we can demonstrate that we are human beings, that we have moments where we make poor choices, where we lose our temper and we say unkind and hurtful things, and then we own that, then we are modelling to our children that that's great aspects of behaviour. But there is also nothing to feel ashamed of. That this happens and that this is how we best handle it. So the first point is, first and foremost, own it. The second piece of advice I would say is apologise. And do that immediately and unreservedly. Because children's biggest fear is our rejection of them. So in that moment we need to provide them with the reassurance that our children need by saying sorry for shouting, saying unkind things, or maybe we've been forceful with our grip of their arm. If we have found ourselves in a situation where we've been forceful with our grip of their arm, maybe we've found ourselves maybe manoeuvring our children in our frustration in a slightly forceful way. No judgement, just being honest. So do not at this point, when we're talking about apologising, do not at this point try to justify, explain or elaborate. You simply need to let your child know that you have done something which you regret. So, I'm sorry that I have shouted. I'm sorry that I've said some unkind things. I'm sorry that I was forced. I'm sorry that I've been forceful with your arm as I asked you to move. That is the extent to what you want to do. So first and foremost, we need to own it. Second, we need to apologise. And then the third is we need to create some space and distance where possible. Now this doesn't have to be physical space or distance, but you do need to be able to give yourself some space between you and what has happened. Obviously, if you are able to have some physical space, then take it because it's really helpful to be able to remove yourself from that situation. But if not, then simply giving yourself some thinking time and some breathing space is enough. So say something along the lines of, I need to sit somewhere for a moment to think. Or I know I have been very angry. I need a little quiet time so I can think. Something along those lines. Interject, change the wording so it suits you. As I often say to children when I'm giving them suggestions, what they can say and what they can do is change it from a Mary Han-ism to something that sounds like you. But in essence, we want to create that space. We want to make sure that when we're sort of saying something to our children about finding some space, we want to make sure that we don't labour the point here. We have reassured our child that they are safe. We have got angry and now we are telling them that we need to take ourselves off to think. Our tone needs to be clear. We need to be calm and reassuring so that our children then do not feel that they are being punished further by our need to remove ourselves from what's just happened. This is about us stepping aside rather than us banishing our children or removing them from the situation. It's really important. If we remember this notion that our children's greatest fear is of abandonment, then it's really important whether we're handling our own emotional outbursts or whether we're helping our children manage their emotional outbursts, is that it is always ourselves that we remove from the situation and not our children, which is one of the real reasons why I'm not a fan of timeouts or naughty steps or things of that nature because what typically happens in those scenarios is that the child is removed from the situation rather than removing us. And we can, you know, if you want a little bit more about. My thoughts about that, you can read, read, you can listen to the episode specifically about why punishments don't work. So the three bits of advice I have said once we have totally lost it with our children is first and foremost, we need to own it and don't try and blame anyone else. We need to apologise immediately for our children. We don't need to elaborate, but we need to apologise for our behaviour. The third is that we need to create some space and distance where possible, obviously physical space is most ideal, if not, then at least some headspace. The fourth piece of advice that I have is that we need to revisit what has actually happened with our children and we need to make amends. So what we say in those moments when we are totally losing it with our children can have a really big impact on our children. And what they need to know is that we were angry or frustrated, tired, upset, overwhelmed, or whatever it is. emotion might be and in that moment we a poor choice. It was a moment where we made a poor choice. So we said unkind things. We might have hurt their feelings. We may have raised our voice and we may have frightened our children or we might have become physical in a way we have never done before. So we need to go over all of it and apologise with the reasons why these things happened and then make amends in the most appropriate and related way possible. Do not, do not under any circumstances make amends through purchases because it eases our conscience. I know how guilty we feel in those moments. I know how ashamed and how we cannot believe that we have done that and we are in our eagerness to make amends. We may make a decision in that moment that we're going to buy our child maybe the toy that they've nagging us for or we'll purchase something for them but that really isn't the way that we want to model how we handle these situations. So please do not get tempted with these situations to ease our conscience by buying something for them. Instead we need to remember that we are modelling to our children how best to respond when we have made bad choices and that isn't to buy back someone's affection. It's to apologise and to make amends. That's what we're ultimately modelling for our children so that that might, the analogy I use every time, we're helping our children build, we're helping them be the scaffolding to their rising building and that this building that ends up becoming the home in which they inhabit needs to meet building regulations and so that's why it's really important that we apologise and make amends. So this might sound something like this in terms of what we might say to our children. So I'm so sorry I raised my voice and shouted at you. That must have felt really scary. I said some really unkind things about you being lazy which I didn't mean. I know I didn't make the best choice and I should have spoken to you more kindly. I'd like to show you how sorry I am. Can I sit with you and play a game with you maybe now if you've got time as in if you've physically got time certainly don't make in your attempt to apologise try and make, create a scenario in which you're going to have a scenario that you can't honour but you might say can I sit and play with a game with you now or you might say to them can I sit and play a game with you after lunch or before dinner or whenever that might be. Now again I've given you some suggestions in terms of how you might phrase it but the scenario is going to be different in different families and in different situations so tailor it but in essence what you can see is that we're being really clear about the behaviour that we exhibited which we are apologising for. Remember when I've talked about descriptive praise we talk about we say what we see because if we're really clear with our children about the behaviour that we have seen which we want to praise they are much more likely to do the same and we want to do that on the flip side when we're apologising for a pattern of behaviour that we've exhibited we want to be clear what it is that we did which we are apologising for. So let me read that out to you again so that you can see what that is because we're modelling to our children what it is that we want to change. So I am so sorry I raised my voice and shouted at you that must have felt really scary. Can I sit with you and play a game? Can you see? And that's a really important aspect to this is we really need to be clear about what it is that we're apologising for how that pattern of behaviour is something that we do not necessarily want to repeat.
Speaker 1Nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life. Grow is therapy that works. Covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters. Sessions average $21 with insurance like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability.
Speaker 2And what we're going to do to make amends. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that our children are going to completely paraphrase the same back to us when they make poor choices. But what is important is that we have been really clear what it is that we've done. And sometimes when we absolutely lose it with our children, there's a reason why we've lost it. There's a reason why maybe it's we've asked them to put their shoes on for the fifth time or we've asked them to go up to bed. So it's not that we're apologising. It's not that we're apologising. It's not that we're apologising for the request that we made or what we were trying to get them to do. But what we are trying to be really clear about is that the choice that we made in that moment, trying to deal with a difficult situation was not an ideal choice. So by being really clear about what we're apologising for and the behaviour that we exhibited and the commentary that we made, we make it much, much easier for our children to understand why we're apologising, but also to model to them what apologising and making amends really optimally looks like. So the advice so far, four different tips. The first and foremost is you own it and you don't try and blame it on anyone else. The second is that we apologise because our children's biggest fear is our rejection and they need to hear from us very quickly that we have done something that is not something that we that we are proud of. And that's why we're apologising. And that's why we're something that we regret. The third is that we need to create some space and distance where possible so that we can reconnect with ourselves. We can calm ourselves down. We can give ourselves that bit more breathing space so that when we go to the fourth point and we revisit what's happened and we make amends with our children, we've done it from a clear head. We've given ourselves that space and we're able to then approach it from that better space. And then the fifth and final is we must reflect. And this is the most important step at preventing these things happening regularly. We are not bad parents by shouting at our children or losing it with them. We are, however, overwhelmed, tired, frustrated or something else, whatever that is, something else is that has led to that incident being the tipping point. Understanding what led us to this point and what led us to this point is key to prevention. And this is why, as you know, for those of you who followed me for some time or have been in my world, this is why self-care is so important, because self-care allows us to notice when we are getting to that point of tipping and overwhelm, because we have prioritised our needs first and foremost above our children's, because by taking care of ourselves, we do the best job in taking care of our children and avoiding these scenarios which make us feel guilty and angst ridden and also causes a whole load of challenges for us in terms of making amends. So let me talk you through the bucket analogy, which I'm gifting you this week. Now, we have talked about the bucket analogy in previous podcast episodes because I just think it's such a great way of us being able to understand when things tip over so we can use it when we talk to our children about managing emotions. We can use it when we're talking to our children about managing anxiety, and we can also use it as a reflective practice for ourselves to avoid and prevent these specific scenarios happening. So let me talk you through the bucket exercise as well, because as I've said, if you've heard it before, repetition is the mother of all learning. So if you're hearing this for the second time, great. If you're hearing it for the 20th time, then even better. You are much more likely to be able to absorb a new piece of information about this bucket exercise that might make it even more usable for you. So we all have a bucket, and that bucket fills through the course of the day, the week, the month. And that bucket fills with all sorts of things. Maybe our alarm went off and we're feeling tired. Maybe we stubbed our toe. Maybe when we went down to make our delicious cup of tea that we've been so looking forward to, there's no milk left, Or no tea bags. Maybe somebody said something unkind to you. to us maybe we've had an argument with a partner maybe our children have been particularly challenging maybe deadlines are looming and overwhelming maybe you just feel too tired to cook dinner whatever that is these are the elements the components that begin to fill our bucket when we then lose it with our children that's the tipping point that's at the point that the bucket has become so full it's become overwhelmed and it's tipped over and the water is pouring everywhere and we often become tempted to examine really introspect at that moment of why did i lose it with my children over that one thing and quite often when you ask parents it's often something when they reflect back that is very trivial or appears very trivial so we can be barking up the wrong tree when we're very focused on what was that thing that happened just before i exploded because ultimately that might have just been the the the the the last drop of water that caused the overflow and ultimately the bucket's been filling for days hours weeks so what we need to be examining regularly and connecting with regularly is what is it which fills our bucket what are the key components the key elements the things that get in the way that create this challenge for us that begins to fill our bucket so we need to look at that now it may well be that we're juggling multiple things maybe we've got to do something maybe we're struggling with our relationship with our partner maybe we're having a bit of a head-on relate head-on and scenario with one of our children whatever it might be we need to become aware and regularly reflect on the challenges that fill our bucket so this is what goes into the bucket at the top yet our bucket has a tap which allows us to empty it and if we turn the tap one way we empty it and we've got to do something about it so we've got to do something to empty it and all the water flows out but if we turn the tap in the other way we think we're emptying the bucket but actually we're not the bucket remains full now let me talk about what that is so these are the things that we do to avoid to distract to numb which we think are actually helping us relax and unwind and empty our bucket but in fact actually they're just pause ourselves from what's building up that doesn't actually resolve doesn't begin to empty the bucket doesn't really do anything to help relieve things so this might be and they are not limited to mindless scrolling of social media which may take 30 minutes might take two hours so we think we're relaxing whereas actually it's turning the tap on our bucket but definitely not draining it might be that we've got into the habit of maybe pouring ourselves a glass of wine a gin and tonic or whatever it might be as a way of oh i've just had such an awful day and again no judgment it's just being aware and being mindful of what are the things that actively drain my bucket and what are the things that i'm thinking are draining my bucket that aren't so it may well be the mindless scrolling it may well be the pouring ourselves a glass of something it might be watching television that again doesn't allow us to deal with the issue at hand remember that if the bucket is filling because we're overwhelmed and frustrated if it's filling because we're unfulfilled in a job if it's filling because we're feeling that we're an overwhelm and are taking on too many tasks and we're feeling put upon then ignoring it and doing nothing to resolve that by just pausing and watching television or scrolling through or having a glass of something that doesn't actively change the situation so that bucket will continue to become full now that does not mean that there are times when we are overwhelmed and stressed that actually scrolling through social media can be a really helpful strategy where watching a film can be really helpful where enjoying a glass of something can be helpful in that moment but it's being honest about what are your go-to's what are you doing regularly and are they actively emptying your bucket so that was we've got a bucket it overflows we often reflect on that aspect we've got a tap that can go both ways one way doesn't empty the bucket but simply bides us time distracts us doesn't actually deal with the issue the other way if we turn the tap the other way it genuinely drains that bucket and we feel better for it so this may be exercise it may be a walk it may be listening to a mindfulness audio it may be sitting in a journal it might be talking through the issue with a friend it might be talking through the issue with a therapist or a coach it's things that we actively do to process and work through the aspects which are filling our bucket ignoring it is only going to mean that the bucket will continue to rise will continue to overflow and as a result of it our children our partner our friends will end up being in the firing line when that last drop of water pops into that bucket and things overflow and we lose it in that situation so my give this week is a bucket worksheet to complete over the course of a week so it's a checklist so you can use it for one week or you can photocopy it and use it regularly i would really encourage you to use this reflective piece if you want to avoid these situations from happening regularly it's so important to have a reflective practice and the bucket exercise and the bucket worksheet that we're providing is in the resources is such a brilliant way to be able to do this because it doesn't require long prose on what appears to be a blank empty sheet they're really succinct bullet points but it's only when we take time to really reflect on how we're parenting what's showing up for us remember parenting and being a parent is one role that we take on amongst many others and yet it is the one that we spend a disproportionate amount on we are individuals beyond our role of mum and dad we are friends we are colleagues we are employees we are aunties we are uncles we are nieces nephews sisters daughters sons we have multiple roles and if we do not take on this role we are not going to be able to do it and if we do not take on this role we are not going to be able to do it nurture to reflect to understand and to take care of ourselves then these scenarios are going to happen more and more often so head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you will find the link to download the bucket resources all you need to do is pop in your email address and you can get instant access not only to this week's bucket resource but all the other free resources across all my podcasts episodes now the help um episodes are going to become a regular piece so if you feel that you have a burning parenting question one that really connects with a challenge that you've got no matter what what do you think about it i don't want there to be any shame around the questions that you feel that you can ask then do email them in because we are going to regularly answer these i've just created this one because i know this is one that i get asked quite a lot and i know that there's a lot of guilt and shame around this one but if you can email them in to contact at drmaryhand.com then your question will be featured and i will answer it on the podcast and we will create a resource to help you with that so as ever if you have enjoyed this episode i would be eternally grateful if you could follow and even more importantly review this podcast because that's how other people find us so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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