Breaking the Cycle of Fear-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder
From threats and punishments to connection - this one goes out to the parents of strong-willed children. In today’s episode, Gervase welcomes Wendy Snyder, certified parenting educator and family life coach, to discuss the power of positive, connection-based parenting. Together, they explore the challenges, myths, and opportunities of this parenting style, particularly with strong-willed children. They discuss the impact of healing generational trauma cycles, the role of self-awareness in parenting, and the importance of letting go of shame and perfectionism.
Packed with personal stories and valuable insights, this episode is a must-listen for any parent seeking to nurture meaningful relationships with their kids.
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Breaking the Cycle of Fear-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder
Episode Full Transcript
Gervase: Welcome back, everybody. I have somebody special for you today. Wendy Snyder. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. You ready?
Wendy: I'm ready. I'm excited to be here.
Gervase: This is going to be a parenting focused podcast. So if you're not interested or you do not have children, this might not be for you, but probably all of you are going to be like, yes. Okay.
Wendy Snyder is a mom of two, certified parenting educator, and family life coach who inspires parents to learn and grow through connection-based positive parenting strategies. As the host of the Fresh Start Family Show and founder of freshstartfamilyonline.com, she helps parents ditch the threats, yelling, and harsh punishments so they can live life as a joyful and confident parent with kids that listen and cooperate great. Families who take part in her learning and coaching programs experience radical shifts in their hearts, minds, and souls that help them to create rock-solid relationships with their kids, while at the same time teaching important life lessons and helping to raise the next generation of leaders, changemakers, and important human souls.
No pressure.
Just raising the next generation of leaders and changemakers.
It's a pretty rad responsibility, right?
Wendy: But it's a good one. Yeah.
Gervase: Yeah. So how old are your kids now?
Wendy: My kids are old now. They're 13 and 16, almost 14 and 17. It is so much fun having teenagers. I know people usually dread it, but when you do this kind of parenting, it's lovely. It's crazy and intense, but it's so fun. So yeah, I got a driver in the house now. It's wild.
Gervase: I love hearing that. And I kind of want to dive in with my curiosity, which kind of guides this show with two things. One, you were like with this kind of parenting for teenagers, and I'm kind of like, what does that mean? What does that look like? And also, what's fun about it?
Wendy: So this kind of parenting, what is it? What does it look like? Okay. So when people hear the word positive parenting, and over the years, I've started to play around with the term powerful parenting. When people ask me what I do, I'll say, I'm a powerful parenting coach. And then, of course, they're like, what is that, right?
I think, unfortunately, positive, gentle, even conscious, a lot of times people are just really, they just really misunderstand what that means. And they think it means permissive. They think it means you never say no to your kid. They think it means you go get training on how to ask your kids really, really nicely to put on their shoes and clean up their room. And it really couldn't be farther from the truth.
So the work that I teach is firm and kind connection-based parenting. And really, the power that you have as an influential soul in your children's lives, it comes from relationship, and it actually mostly comes from what you model.
And so there just comes a lot of healing and personal development and growth work within this style of parenting because hypocrisy is something that we're just trying to eliminate in our homes, like truly eliminate. Of course, we're not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes and we learn how to handle those mistakes with grace and dignity and self-compassion. Because even when we're handling mistakes, we're teaching our children how to do the same.
But we are looking to eliminate hypocrisy in our homes. So if we are trying to teach our children something, we do want to look to ourselves first and just say, how am I doing with this life skill? Whether it's self-regulation, self-control, emotional literacy, getting what you want without overpowering someone as simple as like, hey, you're trying to teach your kids how to keep their hands to themselves. You're looking at your own patterns first of like what happens when they won't get in the car or sit down at the table, especially when they're toddlers. That's when I found this work and I thought I was going to lose my mind.
My little girl is my beautiful, strong-willed soul. And it has served her so well in life to the point now where she is actively pursuing a D1 beach volleyball scholarship. And I can't even imagine the world that she plays in and the tenacity and the perseverance, but she's got it. And she, you know, you can see how that personality just helps her and will help her secure a spot wherever she ends up going to college.
But it's really, it's just all about connection. It's all about relationship and it is very firm and kind. So a lot of people, like I said, they think, you know, you get into a positive parenting class and you're going to be trained on like just how to ask your kids nicely to do what you want them to do. And really a lot of times we're teaching parents how to stick to strong boundaries. We're helping parents say no more, especially with a lot of like big ticket things that are happening in the world today, like technology and cell phones and safety and all the things.
But we're actually a lot of times spending more time helping parents be more firm in their boundaries and roles. And we teach them how to follow through with consistency and connection versus the threats. So many of us just get handed a hand-me-down parenting toolkit, right? It's like the classic for fear, force, bribery, and rewards.
Wendy: Yeah. And it's all external controls, right? So it's like we inherit this belief system that in order to make a child behave or do what you want, you either need to make them feel worse or you need to dangle a carrot in front of their face.
Gervase: When you say it like that, Wendy, it just sounds real bad.
Wendy: I know, right? Well, the thing is people who just, you know, unfortunately, I think the people who real, who use the classic model and just kind of think that it, whatever, even though it creates stress and disconnection in the home, they're like, whatever. The second decade is where you really pay the price, right? Like when you have children in the second decade of their life that have not developed the intrinsic control muscles, who have not developed the emotional literacy, who have not developed the peaceful conflict resolution skills, but instead just been in a team environment where overpowering is how you get your way, then the teenage years often go really in a different direction for a lot of parents.
And that's why we have a common belief system or like a common myth in our world, so to speak, that the teenage years are going to suck. They'll quite literally suck the life out of you. And many parents are miserable in the teenage years because the connection and the relationship was never quite formed the way it should because there was fear and force present. There was punishment. There's all these things that really slowly but surely over time tick away at their relationship and you just end up losing power in that second decade of life.
Gervase: Hmm. So interesting and compelling.
Gervase: You asked me why it was fun.
Wendy: Right? That's the second question you had. So it's fun because it does turn into a bit of an adventure when you open the grip a little bit and you realize that at any given moment, there could be a life lesson for you. Right? And like, once you start to see how mistakes and challenges and hiccups are not the end of the world, like again, a lot of us were conditioned to believe that mistakes are dangerous, that there is like something really bad that's going to happen on the other side of that, whether it's being judged, condemned, hit, harmed, you know, someone's going to be disappointed with you.
So like, but nowadays it's like with this style of parenting, we get to realize that mistakes are just opportunities to learn. And all the time when you have a, like a compassionate discipline model versus a punishment model, peaceful conflict resolution, like true power type of dynamic in your home as a parent, the challenges and the mistakes, they always bring you closer to your child because you have the ability to work through it and really truly become the teacher instead of the correctional officer.
And so it's just really fun. Like your kids end up talking to you. They don't hide stuff, which can feel crazy at times because you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're telling me this. But it's just fun because you like get to, you know, you get to hear about what's actually happening in the teenage world right now. Right? Of course, I'm speaking to teenagers now because my kids are older, but this all started when my daughter was three, right? Like the relationship I formed stacked over the years. And then now you can just see how there's full transparency, there's full honesty, there's full emotional literacy. And so, you know, the conflict stuff is like, it's still a lot, but it's actually, I mean, I'm not going to say enjoyable, but it's like, it's actually really beautiful. It's really beautiful to be able to work out real things with your kids and work through things and just always feel like you are like the tightest unit with your family.
Gervase: Yeah. No, I can absolutely see how it would be fun because I personally have not been a person that was like, oh, the baby years are like the best and I want to like hold my baby all the time. I just was like, got to slog through this part because this sucks. And the older my kids get, the more I find it to be very rewarding because of exactly what you're saying, which is interesting. I never thought about it from the connection and relational standpoint, because of course it's fun. And of course it's rewarding. If the older your kids get, you have more and more years in this really gratifying relationship, right? And relationships are not perfect and they're not without conflict and, you know, rupture and repair. However, if they are thought of as relationships that get to have that like same, I don't know, that gratification that like a friendship has, or, you know, even like with my partner, it's like, you just really enjoy each other. I feel like that for me has felt like the secret sauce. Like when I'm like enjoying being with one of my kids as the person that they are, which is honestly tricky and confusing because the information overload, I think for, I don't know, like mothers, our generation, there's just so much information, right? And I'm not here to say that like your information is bad or wrong or that any information is bad or wrong, but what you're saying makes perfect sense. And I love this idea of like encouraging parents to see their kids as these long-term relationships that they get to enjoy forever. I said that to my husband this summer, I was like, I just keep thinking about the fact that when our kids leave the house, they're only going to come back and hang out with us if we are people they like hanging out with, right? Like I don't want them to come and hang out with us because they feel obligated, because they respect us, because it's the right thing to do, which are all things that I have both done or heard tons of people my age say about spending time with their parents. It's like, how do we raise these kids in a way that they actually want to hang out with us? And I guess that leads to my question for you is like, what do you think is the biggest obstacle to parenting this way?
Wendy: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind, it might be outside the box, but it is what it is. So the biggest obstacle to parenting that way where you're really learning to love your child for who they are, not who you wish they could be or were, is to like go to that place where you learn to love yourself like so deeply and so compassionately. Cause we know in this work that the harder you are in yourself, the harder you are in your children. So ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, right? So it's like, if you're really good at beating yourself up, which most of us who were raised in an autocratic setting, so autocratic just means it was like that kind of my way or the highway, like do what you're told or else, like, you know, children, they need to respect thy authority. And, and we grow up and we're like, you know, we just are really good at having the inner critic. And it is our knee jerk reaction when we're imperfect, when we make a mistake, when we don't get everything done in a day, when our children are misbehaving in the grocery store aisle. Like really often what's driving it is usually like a pretty deep, like scared. We're not enough scared. We're failing. And so it's just so much harder to have the compassion on them and the empathy when they're all out of sorts or they show up in a way when they're like three, four or five, that is like aggressive. And you're really worried that like, are they ever going to have any friends?
Like Stella, I was like, is she going to get kicked out of kindergarten? I don't know. Do we need to go to a private school? Like what is going to happen? Right. And this work like saved our lives, right? Like none of that happened. She, she ended up being great in school and it was fine. But during those, that season where you're just like really trying, because we, we all know parenting is like tough for everyone, right? It's like wild, it's intense journey.
And when you get a strong wheeled kid or you get a really intense feeler, right? Like we know that the degree of difficulty is much harder. We also know that the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree. And so most of the parents I work with who have a strong willed child, either them or partner were strong willed, right? Or strong willed. I am. I like through raising Stella, it has shown me, oh my gosh, I have the most badass, beautiful, strong will. And it took me many, many years to learn to love that about myself. And I still have moments when I'm like, am I too much? Am I too aggressive? Am I too this? Or am I not enough? And so the journey to have compassion and fully love myself for exactly who I am, that has translated to the children more easily. And so that's where we really do a lot of our teaching work is. And then that opens up the ability to really seek to understand, assume integrity in your children, have compassion and empathy, be able to get in their shoes to understand what's probably going on for them when it comes to what need are they trying to get filled or what are they trying to communicate? So it's kind of like the same thing, but a lot of people don't connect to that.
Gervase: No, I'm so grateful that you brought that in. You know, you can only love and accept another as deeply as you loved and met yourself. And what I'm wondering is, what do you do when you know all the peaceful parenting or the connection-based strategies, right, for your kid? And you feel emotionally attuned to a kid. And also you're still really not doing so great at loving and accepting yourself. Because that is something that I see a lot. And I almost wonder if it's like a plague sweeping the nation. Because there's so much education about how to parent, quote unquote, better, like the right way to parent. And not as much of an emphasis on like, hey, it starts with you being in right relationship with yourself, like being self-aware of what's, how this is a mirror and accepting your mistakes and, you know, all of that, that inner stuff. And so then what, what do you do? Because I'm sure you see this all the time when you have these parents that are like learning all the information, learning all the strategies, doing all the right things to give their kid the best, most compassionate scripts, right? When they do this, I'll say this and da, da, da. But they actually can't do the other half of the job, which I find is so important, which is to deeply love and accept who they are, period. Even without the scripts, before, during, and after the scripts, when they mess up, you know, you're talking about mistakes. And I was like, whose mistakes are we talking about? The kids' mistakes or the parents' mistakes? Because I think there's a lot of parents that it's like, oh, the kid makes a mistake. They're like, mistakes are fine. You know, there's so much understanding and so much compassion for their kids' mistakes, right? But then when they make a mistake, when we make a mistake, we're like, how could I do that? That was so stupid. So what, what do you say to that?
Wendy: Well, I'm going to answer that in one second, but I will say this, just, I love to be like real transparent. And like, I mean, I look at the business that I've created over the last seven years, the, the, the, the educational worldwide program, the community, all the things that I'm like, it's so interesting to see what you create, right?
Cause you're like, as an entrepreneur, you know, you're like, yeah, you go, you just, you naturally create things that are like very you. And so for me, vulnerability and humility are like top traits for me that I know get parents massive results, like massive results. So I will say that when it comes to mistakes and, you know, being an imperfect parent and, and you're going to be so freaking imperfect, especially if you have a strong-willed kid, cause you will be pushed to your edge. Right. But like, I just try to be as transparent as possible as a teacher.
And so I've written some pretty intense articles. I I've written an article once called, I left bruises.
Gervase: You what? Oh, I left bruises. Ooh.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah. Still to this day, when I say that without explaining, you know, there's this little pocket of like, Ooh, do we want to go to shame? And it's like, no, thanks. Like that. Yeah. There was a season where I just, I didn't know what to do. And I would grab extra hard on purpose, right? Like little arms. There was an article that I wrote called the night I threw a book at my kid. It was a soft cover. Thank God. But like, I just tried it. Like the first 10 years I was teaching, I always just try it.
Cause the kids were littler now. It's just like a totally different, but like, I just made so many mistakes. It took me seven years to stop yelling. And I would just always like, after a while I would, you know, I would have a big blow up or something. And then I'd be like, Oh, well now I get to go tell the community because it just was like a flushing of like, Hey, just so you know, there is no perfection here. And we are all on our path to live authentically.
And as I've seen you speak about show up on the outside as we are on the inside, like what we want intuitively is wise. It's wise. And it might take us a while to get there, but you just got to trust that like, if you want to be someone who compassionately addresses misbehavior with firm kindness and connection, you will get there. You just got to be willing to be humble. Like you got to be willing to be real about what's actually happening behind closed doors. And then we can get somewhere.
So back to your question about if you're like, you've got all the tools, but the self, what I call self-acceptance piece. So we really teach like, there's got to be two things, self-awareness and then self-acceptance. And I'm going to say it very frankly, if you don't have the self-acceptance piece, you will keep falling flat on the tools and you will go insane thinking that, or you'll just quit because you're like this BS parenting stuff doesn't work.
And really what I find, and at this point we've helped tens of thousands of parents, but what I find is that people usually aren't quite doing the tools that they think they are, right? They might read a book or do a podcast and they're like, oh, I know how to do this. And then it's just a whole different ball game when you actually go to execute a strategy.
And then the other side of that is when there's like so much that comes with it, when you don't have the self-acceptance piece yet, which again, takes us many of us many years with mentorship and coaching and, um, and helpers to help us shed the layers of shame and habits and protection behaviors. But when you don't have that, the harshness will come out on your child. And as long as that, like judgment tones, harshness, or it's the other side, right? Like we have a lot of, um, students who they withdraw, they go within, right?
Like I'd say the majority of my students are like replicate my path a little bit where the harshness will come out, like the big puff up, the overpowering comes into play at some point or another. But for some, it's definitely the withdrawal or becoming permissive, so to speak. But as long as there's that beat up and, and really all it is is shame as if there's shame present, which is like the lack of self-acceptance, we see parents stay stuck in the same behaviors. And so that means they, they end up repeating the same generational cycles.
They just continue to pass it down. So the self-acceptance piece is massive and it is equally as important as the strategies. So like in our programs, we have like a hundred lessons or something. And I think probably 70 are strategy based. Like what do you do when your kid has revenge misbehavior? Like kid threw a Lego brick at your head or just told you, I hate you and this family sucks, right? Or bit you, pulled your hair. It's like, here's like seven strategy steps.
And we know with revenge misbehavior that there's like also probably like 30% of our lessons and our coursework is the self-acceptance piece because there's just so much more under the rug, so to speak, when you have a child that has revenge misbehavior. So you can't just do the strategies. You got to be willing and able to go there, which I really tell my students, it becomes an adventure and it becomes beautiful because it gives you power.
Every time that you unlock something new about yourself that comes from within, that is like, oh, like as soon as I can heal from this or change this, like you gain power as an influential parent with your children. So it does become a bit of a fun adventure to heal. I know a lot of people avoid healing because they're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to cry.
Gervase: Not my people, Wendy.
Wendy: Good. Not these people. Good. So yeah, that's my two cents about that.
Gervase: I love it. It makes so much sense to me. And when you were talking about like the puff up response, you know, the whatever you want to call it, I'm going to call it the puff up response versus the withdrawn response. I'm just thinking, oh, here we go. Here's like the fight response, the fawn response, the freeze response. And so it makes me think about traumatized nervous systems, right? And so how many of us are parenting with traumatized nervous systems, which is not to say it's bad or wrong, which is not a judgment, but is also to say like all of the tools in the world is not going to be able to change a pattern if your system is activated, right? And if your system is activated, that is its own thing. That is likely has very little to do with your kid. And I say that, I mean, as somebody who has both deep feeling and strong-willed children, of course, it's both and like it has something to do with your kid, of course. And also so much of it, like you're saying is like under the rug. And so it makes so much sense to me that without that component, all the strategies in the world are going to feel like they don't work.
Wendy: Well, and I can riff on why they don't work too. Like, especially with strong-willed kids, because strong-willed kids are like hypocrisy sniffer outers. They catch things.
Gervase: Yes.
Wendy: Like they're often the deep feelers. So they catch things. And so if you've got shame present, they catch it. They might present like, hell no, like they get bigger. They're like these confident beings, but really they catch shame too. They start to believe things about themselves that come out in our worst moments. Like the things we say stick, right?
Like I know I've said some pretty shameful things to Sella when she was little and we've been actively like repairing that. I'm so thankful to be in a world where I have tools to repair relationships and help her understand that the things I say aren't, you know, are more about me than her, always more about me. But any human will stay stuck in their misbehavior when they've got shame present versus the ability just to see the behavior, be in a learning state, which a child is when their parent is teaching versus punishing them.
And then tomorrow that child can make a different decision on how to behave differently in the classroom or with their sibling or the way they clean up the house or not. But there has to be an absence of shame or else they stay stuck in the behavior. So it's kind of interesting how in parenting, like we think logically that children learn from us teaching them, but you know, 99% of what children learn is caught, not taught, which is just another reason why we want to, we want to do the work to eliminate the shame.
Gervase: Yeah. Do you find that shame is often coupled with anger?
Wendy: Yeah. I mean, let me think about that. So it's like, I think for me, I go to a little bit more scared. So scared, I mean, I just finished teaching a pretty deep healing weekend workshop over two weekends. And I'd say the majority of people in my world who carry shame, which is like all of us, it's scared.
Many of us have anger. And I think behind anger is scared quite often. So it might present as anger, especially with children, you know, whether it's like, you know, holding kids down, yelling at them, threatening, like lots of threats, right? In my world that parents are like, I want to change this. And quite often when we get to the bottom of that, it's scared I'm failing, scared I'm not enough.
Sometimes it's scared this kid is going to grow up and have no friends or be an entitled maniac. But a lot of times it has to do with them, like scared I'm not enough, scared I'm failing, scared I'm going to get judged, especially if it's in a public place. But even like when you think of kids fighting, and someone coming in so angry, right? Like maybe you were a younger sibling and like your older brother was like a total jerk to you growing up. And like, there's a lot of triggers underneath that, that that will cause you to like real get real puffed up with a sibling fight.
But then once we slow it down and break it down a little bit, a lot of times it comes down to why have I failed at this? Why have I failed at teaching these kids how to not put their hands on each other? Like what is wrong with me? A good parent would not have kids that fight. And so a lot of times it comes down to like just scared, scared of not being enough or scared of being too much, like scared. But I think they're interconnected.
Gervase: For sure. And I love hearing what you're seeing. Obviously you see more than I do. I also wonder about this, like fear that you're not doing it right. And I say this with a lot of nuance because of course you hold the keys to the kingdom in this conversation where it's like, oh, you have all these strategies that are quote unquote, right. And I'm curious for you if you found that also sometimes right is a little messy. Like sometimes we sloppily stumble into what's best for all and there's not necessarily right or wrong, especially as a parent, because you as a parent are part of like a larger system. You're part of you and the child have your own little system happening. You and the siblings, you as a family, you and your larger family, the culture you're living in. There's so many dynamics at play here that factor in. And so I just wonder how many parents feel afraid to do it wrong. You know, like I'm not doing this moment right, or I didn't do that moment right. And how you bring in a tolerance for the journey of imperfection and sloppiness and how everybody's going to be different on any given day. Right. And so it's like even age appropriateness, it's like, well, she's different this month than she was last month. And so, you know, the way that we had that conversation is different and deserves to be different. And so sometimes you kind of, I know for me, I find myself like stumbling into these moments where I'm like, oh, this is interesting. And I feel really grateful that fear, it's always present for me as a parent, but it's definitely not driving the car. I'll say like, if I'm being really honest, I'm just thinking about it on the spot here. I for sure carry fear in my parenting about like wanting to do it right. But then I remind myself that right is just a construct that's, it's like trying to catch the air. It's like, it's like constantly shifting and evolving. So what if I don't have to be afraid of like getting this right, but I can just be present and meet the moment with as much compassion and love and self-awareness as possible and be willing to meet the child where they're at, which is going to be different every day and kind of finding that gentle, I don't know, like evolving nature of the work. What would you say to that?
Wendy: So a few things, I love all that. It's so beautiful. And I totally am with you on all that. Two things I think of is, so when we look at the emotion of scared or afraid, it's actually a beautiful emotion. And on the other side of it, I always call it like the rainbow is when you allow yourself to feel scared, you will, something you will find bravery and courage about, right?
And so in this work that I teach, the parents who allow themselves instead of suppressing or putting it under a rug of like, I'm scared, I'm failing, I'm scared, I'm going to get it wrong, I'm scared, like, they will find the courage to be quite different. But you cannot be brave and courageous in this world unless you feel scared first. Like, it's just impossible. You will never, you will never get there.
So scared is really in my world, not a bad thing. I think the journey for many of us is to learn how to feel scared and not hit the panic button, right? Like, but just more have it give us information. And, and then again, when you live a life of connected, firm and kind parenting, you will be the black sheep, you will be or the rainbow unicorn, however you want to say it, like, nine out of 10 of your friends will continue on with the fear and force and external control model.
And so it'll take courage, right? It'll take courage to be this the parent who says no to the iPhone till high school, because nine out of 10 of your children's friends will have an iPhone in their hands by the age of 10. Right? Like, so you're just gonna feel scared, you're gonna feel scared, that kid's gonna get judged, you're all the all the all the places, you're gonna feel it. And it's okay. It's like a beautiful emotion that I think empowers us to live a life that we actually want to live, but you got to feel it.
Second, right or wrong. Yeah. In our world, I quite often my coaches and I, we will have people re say that. So we actually have them practice. When they say right or wrong, or even better, will quite often say, we want to just to write because we do a lot of written coaching in our programs is, we really like to look at it as effective or ineffective in line with my moral compass or out of line.
So it's like, is this effectively changing the behavior in my strong willed kid? And the fear and force stuff, like yelling might get them to put on their shoes or stop hitting their brother today. And is it effective three weeks from now? Right? Like, if you've been asking the same question, or, or stumbling on the same misbehavior for quite some time, you're going to realize that what you're doing is ineffective.
And so you you want to, you don't have to, you don't need to, you can continue, it's legal to hit kids in this country, you can continue to use fear and force your whole life if you want, like literally, you don't got to do anything. But most of the students, we work with all of them, I will say, they want to find a different way, they want to learn how to influence and teach without hurting and harming and forcing their kids into submission, or like moving into that permissive model that so many do move into when they're like healing from an autocratic upbringing.
So like we kind of say the same thing with better, we take away the better and just say different, right? Like if someone will say, how do I do this better? It's like, well, there's no better here. Because we just want you to ask us, like, how do I do this different? Because what I did? And I'm not sure if it felt quite right. And in line with like, what I believe, and we are all growing every year, like, I've loved watching your journey as you've really stepped into things that are very important to you in the world. I share very similar things like me today versus me four years ago, like, I've now found the courage to become outspoken and advocate for things that wasn't on my radar years ago.
But better, you know, is just everyone loves the Maya Angelou quote, right? Like when we know better, we do better. But and at the same time, we just want to see it as different or more effective. And so I think that that helps parents kind of free up some energy and some brain space to just remember that there's no judgment of the past. It makes sense why we all do this stuff.
Like it makes sense from a nervous system perspective, right? Like we all know the imprints on our nervous system are usually set by the age of seven. So the feelings in our home or the temperature, so to speak, in our homes around mistakes, that's what we end up parenting with, like the same exact until we heal our nervous systems until we learn a new way until we figure out how to signal safety to the nervous system and realize that it's actually not a four alarm fire. There's not a bear chasing you when your kids are fighting and hitting each other. It sure feels like it, but there's not.
Gervase: And I mean, when I think about the difference between the verbiage, the language around like different or effective, I also am like passionate about being effective. Like when I have conversations, whether it's with clients or like my partner about parenting, I'm like, listen, I'm just like, this is ineffective. It's not working. So we don't need to like decide who's the bad guy and who's the good guy and blah, blah, blah. Let's just try something new. But the idea with different kind of reminds me of, there is going to be, I have found this to be true. I don't know. You might disagree, but there have been situations where more heavy handed parenting has come into play that I've been like, oh, I wasn't expecting that. Right. And I don't, I mean, I'm not talking about like physical hitting or anything like that, but I think I was talking to my teacher, Joanna Miller on the podcast. And I think she gave this example where it's like, for example, yelling at your kid, ideally on an average day, there's no reason to yell. Like that's not the quote unquote right way. But when your kid runs into the street, it's actually appropriate to yell for their safety.
Wendy: Right. Amen.
And so I think that's why it's so important that we unhook from this like right, wrong, good, bad, better language. And because it's like an ingrained mindset that we have as a culture, when really I have no idea who I'm going to be tomorrow, who they're going to be tomorrow, what situation I'm going to stumble upon. But I know every time I decide, like I've figured out the right anything, anything, it always changes.
And I'm very humbled to find that, you know, something I was judging or perceiving as wrong turns out to be something that's valuable in this season or in the nuance of the cosmos. So I love that. Yeah. The other thing that I just want to respond to is back to this idea of the nervous system, which is so interesting to me. It's so interesting. I do a lot of nervous system work. So I'm like, oh, yes, of course, this makes perfect sense. Right. Yeah. So many women and I work exclusively with women. So, so many mothers that I know are parenting from this traumatized nervous system, right?
So we are perpetually either afraid, like you were saying, we're scared. We have shame. We have anger. We have all these things, which are not bad or wrong. And it sounds like the path we can take that is a little bit more gentle and nourishing and sustainable isn't to say like, I'm never allowed to feel afraid or like, I will never be angry or feel ashamed or whatever. Because again, my lived experience is like I'm all over the place with that stuff.
And it's just, can you increase your body, your system's capacity to hold mistakes? Can you be like a compassionate witness to your own fear so that it isn't creating this emergency? Like we have an emergency. There's a tiger. I need to scream. I need to control. Because I, I do believe that a lot of the times when we're in like this deep controlling way externally as parents, it is because we're like in that fight or flight. We need to instead tend to our systems.
And then we're like, oh, okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Right. And then suddenly you're like, I don't need to control, like wear whatever you want or don't put your socks on or whatever. And then of course you hold the boundary firm when it's like, well, actually, no, you can't have that iPhone, but holding their disappointment, holding their anger that they send back has been an interesting part of my experience as well to notice like, oh, they're very mad at me or, oh, they're very disappointed because I did make a mistake.
And I feel okay about this because I'm holding space for my humanity, which is pretty deep, important work that every parent could do that takes time and takes so many reps to really get your nervous system acclimated to there is no right or wrong. I'm an imperfect human. I'm just going to try to be an authentic version of myself and be okay with the fact that I will mess up. They will mess up. There will be rupture. You know, I can think of times in my life where I was just, I felt so physically unsafe when there was rupture in any relationship in my life. And of course, the nervous system holds that the body holds that. So then suddenly when your kid can't be controlled, you freak out when your kid doesn't want to, I don't know, whatever. I guess it's so funny. I'm like in a different season than you. I'm like, when the kid doesn't want to take a bath, you're like, we're not having those fights anymore. Right. But you, it becomes bigger. It becomes like this huge fire when really it's just like, you just need a little time out for a little resource for yourself.
Wendy: And that's where the education and the mentorship is just so important. Cause with like nervous system, healing stuff, a lot of times like community, whether it's just you and a coach or you in a group, we do our stuff in group work, but it does take a lot of reps. And when you, from the age of zero to seven, if you grew up in a home where mistakes were treated with punishment, shame, you know, even like the, the more mild homes that just had the disappointed, right?
Like that used to be like taught to parents. Like that's how, that's how you get your kid to become someone who wants to please you. Compliant. Compliant is you make sure that you know how disappointed you are when they make a mistake. And even that like leaves a mark on our souls and our nervous systems. And because it does create disconnection. And as children, you want to feel connected to your parents. You want to feel attached.
And like when you are left alone to like, and a lot of times the classic model was like, go to your room, timeout, you go think about what you've done. It just leaves a mark. So that compassion of like, oh, no wonder this feels like such a big deal to me. Like I'm just unlearning and I'm like unraveling the first seven years on the nervous system quite often is what many of us are doing.
And like, it might've formed in the first seven years, like the neural imprint, so to speak, but then we've been playing them out for decades. You know, like I went to traffic court a few months ago and cop didn't show up. So I got off hooray for that. But I had a case presented. I was like, ready to like, kindly tell why this had happened and drop my daughter off at high school one day in the wrong spot, $350 ticket.
But I realized as the judge was like, okay, cop didn't show up, you're off, have a great day. And I just pushed end on the zoom call and my whole body was shaking because my nervous system was prepared to be ridiculed. It was prepared to be condemned and judged. And like, you know, there's quite often a tone in that world of like, you should know better. What were you thinking? And I've had this happen many times with police officers.
There's so many wonderful police officers who are doing it different nowadays, but quite often you will find that response, right? Of like, what are you thinking? I would never do this. But I found it so interesting that my body was responding to the fear of getting in trouble, the fear of being wrong, the fear of making a mistake. And so it does stick. And so it just takes time. It takes mentorship. It takes reps.
As you said, I love that, that way of putting it to realize that it's actually safe to feel. It is safe to make a mistake. It is safe to get it wrong. And a lot of times those, all the times, the storms pass. One thing I did want to add is just, as we were talking earlier about right versus wrong, and then bringing up the like, sometimes you're going to want to yell at your kids, especially if they're there.
I know this can become a little bit of a slippery slope for parents because we get a lot of questions around like, well, yeah, but you know, let's just say for spanking, right? Like we have a lot of people are healing from religious trauma, being raised in like kind of twisted, toxic, fundamental evangelical upbringings. And they'll be like, yeah, but when your kid's going to touch the hot stove, like that's when like you got to teach them that you don't do that, right?
And so we lovingly encourage people to step back from the right or wrong. And I will tell you that there are core tenants to parenting that most of us that are like-minded, we are down with. And that is that like one of them is we just don't hurt and harm our kids.
Wendy: And it takes a lot of support for parents to understand that actually you can teach a child to not touch a hot stove without hurting and harming them. But for a lot of parents, that takes a lot of unlearning, right? Like the mindset is very fixed again, because they were raised like that. But there are core tenants that I think when you're going through your whole life of parenting, if you can just like be clear about what you believe in as a human being and like influencing people through relationship versus guilt.
But there's going to be times when you're like, oh, my daughter's nine now. And I used to talk to her like when she was like this at six, and now I'm talking to her when she, but still like using guilt to manipulate a child into action, or if you just do it, I'll give you money, right? Like whatever bribery is not the end of the world, right? Like I trust me, like we joke that save it for the big things.
But for the consistency, we have core tenants that we want children to be intrinsically motivated to do whatever in school or keep their hands to themselves or use kind words or whatever, right? So right versus wrong, we don't play that game. And for many, it helps to have core core tenants that you are consistently asking yourself, does this align with that core tenant?
And when it doesn't, that's when we get to move to, okay, it makes sense why that's my knee jerk reaction to punish or manipulate through guilt, or pressure, right? And I'm going to choose to do it a different way. Because A, it's ineffective. B, it doesn't feel right with my nervous system. And C, I see that it caused disconnection. And so now let's get back to what do we really want? We want to be able to X, Y, Z with our kids.
Gervase: Yeah. No, I think that's a great distinction. I was thinking about, I was giving this example yesterday of like the bowling bumpers, you know, it's like just some boundaries around it. Like, okay, what are the limits within the parenting? My values, my yeses and nos. It is, I do think that's like always under the surface for me. I don't really think about it much. Cause yeah, like, I think ultimately what we're circling around is this idea of not shaming or blaming when it happens, because the reality is like, sometimes the bumpers don't hold and the bowling ball goes off into the next bowling lane, unless you're actually good at bowling, unlike me. And so just leaving a little bit of space and grace for our humanity as parents, I think it's like the ultimate place I want to land because it's kind of like, yeah, catch me on like a great day and I'm bowling great. And then catch me at my worst when I've just, when I've endured something really intense and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I can't guarantee that I'm going to bowl the same. And I'm not saying that's justified, but I am saying like, can I be a compassionate witness to my humanity in that moment while also acknowledging like, these are my bumpers. And I kind of like went out of the bumper and okay, I don't need to shame or blame myself. I can work on that first and then focus on the repair with the kid. Because I think what I see so often is like so much emphasis on the kid, so much emphasis on like the strategies and everything without acknowledging like, if you're not dealing with your own, like you said, the shame and the blame and the wrongness and the humanity, which is like, you are not different every day. I mean, you are not the same every day. You're going to have seasons that are more intense and less intense. Then all that work might kind of just be at the surface. It's like outer performatory work versus creating that internal connection relationship that I think all of us really are aspiring to, you know, that would be sweet. It's like the day we were getting Boba and I think my daughter was 12, my son was nine. And there's some bickering about Boba, the car ride, who knows, like, it was like minor, let's just say. And that day I said, I looked at my daughter and I was so pissed. And I said to her, can you just stop being you?
Wendy: Let me tell you, real fast, it came over me that is not in my core tenant. Yeah, I do not believe in speaking to my child like that. And it's so, like, against my internal moral compass. And so that's an example of like, the bumpers went off, right?
And so for me growing up, shame on you was like the statement of the house. My beautiful 75-year-old Irish mama that was raised in Irish Catholic school and was professionally shamed.
Gervase: Yes, same.
Wendy: Like, that was just the way, right? So then I got to go on and tell my daughter, like, let me tell you, this is a generational cycle. And it stops here because that was not about you. That was about me. That was about feeling scared. Like all the things, like we got to have a conversation and I just got to do whatever I could to repair that relationship and like heal the mark, so to speak.
Because trust me, I know that left a mark and it's not what I wanted. And it's one of the most, I've done a lot of stuff in my parenting. But that one was one that I'm like, dang it, I just wish I wouldn't have said that. And so much compassion for myself. And I believe that the imperfect moments, they also teach your children a lot. And so for her to hear from me, you didn't deserve to have that said to you. And it's just not true. Here's the truth about you.
You are a beautiful, strong-willed child. And I never want that to change about you. Right? Like here's the facts. Boom, boom, boom. And sometimes when you're a parent, you feel scared that you can't control a strong-willed person. Thank God I can't control you. I don't, you know, and here we are all these years later where she's like, I could never do what she's doing right now with this D1 beach volleyball scholarship pursuit.
But yeah. So anyway, it's just the bumpers come off sometimes and you get to realign yourself and you're not going to always get it right. But the core tenants, you can feel when they're off. Because a lot of people, they will just keep going down that route. They'll say it. Let's just say in that situation, right? Like the goal was to use shame to influence her to stop whatever, like being unkind to her brother or something in that moment, or be more easygoing or not be so air quotes difficult.
Like many people will just keep going down that path. They'll justify it. Even though it feels off, like they'll just, they'll dig their heels in and they'll be like, well, I wouldn't have to say that to you if you weren't such a stick in the mud. Right. But like, for those of us who really are passionate about being in line with who we truly are and we can just feel when it's off. We didn't like it when it was done to us. It's not the way we believe humans should be influencing humans.
And so then we get the help that we need to heal and then we choose a different path tomorrow.
Gervase: Beautifully, beautifully said. Thank you for sharing that, that really vulnerable story. Cause I know that so many people listening are going to relate. And it's just a reminder that if you're willing to look your stuff in the mirror, you know, and just be like, okay, I did that thing and I still am a good person and I know what I know and how are we going to move forward? You know, how many relationships I think about parent child relationships, but I just feel this is kind of like a, an epidemic of relationships period right now. They don't have the bravery to hold all that, like that example that you just gave, which in the end, I know for me, whether it's like with my partner or with friends that I've had where you say things and you're just like, Oh gosh, I, we can't never, let's just never talk again. Forget it. Yeah. No, that's just, it's like too embarrassing or there's too much shame or I just, I wish I hadn't handled that or like, you don't get me or whatever. And then it's like, can I be willing to own my mistake with compassion and also integrity and come back to this relationship and keep trying and make it this like imperfect, beautiful co-creation that I believe it can be. And it's just, I think that's what authentic relating is. And we kind of got a different memo and we're just trying to like build a new garden now. And so that's, to me, that's what it sounds like when you share, you know, an honest parenting moment like that. So.
Wendy: It's true. And since parenting strong willed kids in this episode, I will say that that's why I love strong willed kids is because they are these like beacons of change. Like they're like born with red flags. They will just put right in front of you this invitation to heal and change because a lot of us get so triggered by them.
Especially if we're similar, right? Like we often are most triggered by the kids that are most similar to us. Like my little guy that's almost 14. He's just like daddy. Daddy and I have been happily, like we're just young love, passionately loved together 30 years, married for 22 or something. And so Taryn, when he does stuff, I'm just not triggered. I'm just like, it's so easy for me to love Terry and Taryn.
But when Stella, when Stella does, it's very similar to how I behave again, you know, we're hardest on ourselves, but she was the one, she was the one that I was losing my mind over. Like, why am I so triggered? Why am I so reactive? Why am I now a door slammer and a wrist grabber and a shamer? Like that wasn't, I've never, the air quotes been like that. Right. And so she called me in and like the times I tried to spank her because 10,000 books and neighbors told me that was the way and that was the Christian way.
And she like puffed up and came at me hard. And I look back at that and I'm like, dang, this girl is a force to be reckoned with. And they are the red flag razors of the world. They are the system disruptors. And so when we get to see them like that and accept the invitation, like a misbehave, Stella had a misbehavior of like experimenting with drinking when she was 15.
And Terry and I looked at ourselves and we were like, we've been drinking for 30 years. And like, we cannot go to a wedding. And like the thought of not going to a wedding or a vacation. And so we were like, let's quit drinking. A year and a half later, we've never been happier. We sleep like babies and we're modeling to our kid, the behavior that we were trying to teach her like, hey, it's possible. You can go to a party and not be, you know, but like she's, she's just consistently always.
And then her, she's taught us how to do that. And now that's how we see parenting in general. Like if there's a behavior that we're not modeling and we feel really sticky, we'll just kind of analyze it and see what we can do to play around with learning the life skill or whatever. But yeah, the strong-willed kids, really good at giving us the invitation and it's up to us whether we accept it or not.
But if you do, I promise you, it's a beautiful adventure that will change your entire family legacy.
Gervase: So beautiful. Like the treasure hunters. They're like, hey, right here, there's some shit buried that you might want to dig up. It's a little sloppy. There's a little bit of like lack of integrity here. And I'm going to stand right here until you dig in this spot. You know, that's true. I love that. I love that. So relatable girl. I feel you. I feel you. Thank you so much for sharing your lived experience and your expertise. I'm sure it will just, you know, inspire and support so many parents listening. How can people keep in touch with you? Check out what you offer in the world.
Wendy: Yeah, please come find me. I do quite a lot of quick little tips and teaching over on Instagram. I'm at Fresh Start Wendy. And then we have a podcast, the Fresh Start Family Show that my husband co-hosts with me. I'd love to get you on the show sometime because I do think you are brilliant with the work that you're doing in the world. So let's chat about that.
And then I'd say when it comes to strong-willed kids, just get yourself into the classroom. We have a free learning bundle, we call it. It comes with a free one-hour workshop and parents can find that at freshstartfamilyonline.com forward slash power struggles.
Gervase: Amazing. And we'll put all of that in the show notes. I just want to close by acknowledging you, Wendy. Thank you so much for entering my orbit and sharing your, it's like you're an elder to me. And I really appreciate how wise and grounded and balanced your approach sounds to me and it really resonates. And so, yeah, thank you for who you are in the world. And until next time, thanks everyone for listening and see you soon.
Wendy: Thank you.