Episode 144: How to Avoid Passing Your Anxiety on to Your Kids - Part 2
In today’s episode, I am talking with Renée Mattson, parenting expert and owner of Child in Bloom about helping our kids with anxiety.
There is so much pressure to be the perfect parent.
My clients tell me all the time that they consistently feel they have to be “perfect” and be all the things to their children. That anxiety infiltrates everything they do—and that anxiety can also impact their children.
One thing we can do to decrease not only our own anxiety but our kids’ anxiety, too, is by being honest about what we have time for, what our expectations are, and own up when we fail. It’s important not only for our children but also for ourselves.
This week, I’m continuing my interview with parenting expert and coach, Renee Mattson about anxiety in children and how as parents we can help raise our kids with more resiliency and less anxiety.
If you missed it, I highly recommend listening to part one where Renee shared helpful ways to not pass along your anxiety to your children and why clear boundaries, empathy and compassion are so important.
Renee is the owner and founder of Child in Bloom, a coaching business for parents and teachers. She’s a mother of three, a licensed intervention specialist for children with specific learning and behavior needs, licensed educator for elementary and gifted children, parent coach, adjunct faculty member at Xavier University, and trainer and coach for educational professional development.
Listen to the full episode to find out:
Why it’s so important to follow your gut as a parent
Creative ways to support our kids without accommodating them
How to solve the ultimate problem: wanting to spend as much time with your children but not having any time
Why putting your children ahead of your marriage can lead to increased anxiety
Resources mentioned:
+ Read the Transcript
Renee: I think we're so busy reading and looking up things and watching our friends, what they're doing with their kids and thinking I have to be just like them and In your little house in your little community, in your little world, making it right for your kid to function so he can leave your house and be a good little citizen and survive this week.
Nancy: I'm continuing my interview with Renee Mattson, parenting expert and coach. We are discussing anxiety and children. If you miss part one, I encourage you to listen to episode 1 43. First one thing Renee talked about in part one was recognizing that we as parents need to talk our kids through the anxiety, but not in the anxious moment, which is what we tend to do.
We need to be helping our kids through anxiety in the moments when all is good. Which is also very true of ourselves. We need to be building skills around anxiety and the times when everything is fine, not just when we're feeling anxious, you're listening to the half year approach. The show that pulls back the curtain on the need to succeed, hustle cheap at the price of our inner peace in relationships.
I'm your host, Nancy Jane Smith. We continue our conversation about anxiety in children and how as parents, we can help raise our kids with more resiliency and less anxiety. In part two, we dive into why it is so important to follow your gut as a parent creative ways to support our kids without accommodating.
How to solve the ultimate problem, a lack of time and wanting to spend as much time with our children, but not having the time to do and putting your children ahead of your marriage and how that can lead to increased anxiety. You shared with me that when your oldest daughter who she's 19?
Renee: 19, now
Nancy: your mom said to you, oh, just throw those damn books away.
I refuse to let you raise this baby in the age of anxiety, the books, can't tell you what you already know what to do. What did she mean by that? And how did that influence your parenting?
Renee: Definitely influenced it. And at the same time, I had a pediatrician that told me almost the exact same words that you can do this.
You could give her ice cream every day. You could never give her ice cream and she's going to be fine. Just follow your gut. You could nurse her for zero days. You could nurse her for four days. For four years. She's gonna be fine. Follow your gut. I was like, oh, I have a gut. I I don't think that anybody really says that to moms.
Like you've got this natural instinct. And you and the natural instinct goes. And that's what my mom, I think was trying to say is just follow the child, follow her, look at her, see her, hear her and get to know her because your nose is in this phone. We didn't have a phone by the way, when I was raising him, he, we didn't have phones.
But what I'm trying to say to moms is your nose is so busy. Phone reading up on all the ways to be a parent that you're not looking at this little person. Who's trying to tell you how to be a parent. Trying to know you. Look, watch me, follow me, see me, look me in the eye, hear me know me. And put that book or phone away.
Now, obviously I'm talking to parents, so then that's like the whole but what I mean by that is you're going to hear things that I say or Nancy says, or. John Roseman says or love and logic says, or whatever parenting book you read says, and you're going to your guts going to go. Ooh, that, that goes with me.
That really helps. That goes with what, how I see the world that helps me to figure out what I, my system's going to be. And my system will not be what my neighbor's system. We are going to parent differently because my husband's different. My background's different. My child's different. So I'll give you an example with Evie.
So they're our daughter, so she's the baby. And I don't tells me that. I'm like, okay, I don't have to be perfect. I don't have to read every single thing that really helped me to like, almost cut the cut. Perfection thing, cause I have a perfectionist, so you don't have to be, I don't know what I'm doing.
You didn't either just don't eat all the books like, and so that helped me because I could have read a thousand bucks on it. So I just kept reading of course, because I can't help it, but I would just start to read only a page, just open up the book and read a little bit and Ooh, I like that idea or that it'll give you an example with Evie.
She was when she was little. And we would go to play group and all of these moms were there and we'd walk in and there were loud and noisy. And Evie was between my legs and under, like under me, like literally hiding, super shy. She's a girl like in her preschool picture had her Lammy over her face in the picture, just no attention.
I do not want you paying attention to me. And I don't want, she's still that way. In college but I was trying to fit her in to what the world was saying. You're supposed to do. You're supposed to go to playgroup and you're supposed to go do this. And I knew it was a teacher. She needs social skills.
So I had to find a balance between what the world is telling me what's wrong with her. I literally had a mom in the group say, does she talk. Does she even talk? I've never heard her talk and think, she talks a little bit time at home and she's here and she's like overwhelmed by you guys talking.
So in that moment I realized, wait a minute, this isn't working for her. Like I got to follow my gut in her gut. And so we started going early. I would always call a little bit early if that's okay. And I told the mom, I had to be honest, I had to name it like every just does better if I get there early.
Settled she's in that when you, when all the kids are walking into the house at one time overload on the social anxiety for the two year old. So we would get early, she'd start playing. And one by one, her friends are coming in and she's feeling way more comfortable. I my stress went down because as soon as her anxiety is up, my anxiety is up and I was like, Ooh, I'm so much nicer when I'm walking in with the whole crowd, because I probably have the same thing she does.
So with that, but I hope that I had to follow my gut and hers. I had to follow the child, not pretend to make her be like everybody else's and do what she needed, not what I needed. Sometimes go. Two. I just wait until they all, if I couldn't get there early, I'd be like, we're just going to go really well and come in once they're all settled.
And then she's the one person walking in. That makes sense. But that's the deal is that you don't have to do what everybody else is doing. Follow your gut and follow the function because you want to have fun and you want to function like Evie needs to function it, social groups. I needed her to do that.
Like I'm not going to keep her home. I
Nancy: Cause that's what was thinking. It would be the accommodating thing.
Renee: . No, we're going to playgroup. We're just going to go to playgroup, which is power. We might get following her guts. No one told me how to do it. I just felt like this isn't working.
And when I got called on it by a friend that said, what's wrong with her, I was like, nothing's wrong with her? But it made me my gut talk louder. I think so. I think so busy reading and looking up things and watching our friends, what they're doing with their kids and thinking I have to be just like them and no in your little house, in your little community, in your little world, making it right for your kid to function so he can leave your house and be a good little citizen and survive.
Nancy: Okay. Now, did you talk to her before you would leave? She was only two. So
Renee: I know she got overwhelmed by the kids' behaviors. Honestly. Now I can look back as later in her life, it'd be like, mommy, they were really loud. They yelled, things like that will be.
When she started to talk, I knew what it was. And she was just like, whoa. Like my kids being kids, we used to say she's more mature than we are. Even as a baby. Oh, she's more mature than her mom and dad are. So I think that might've been what it was that she was just looking at them. Like, why are these children acting like children?
So we might like on the way home and be like, yeah, did you see them scream at the, like I might talk about how it went. How did that made you feel as she got older? Definitely. What I remember being in the car with her and her baby brother Mick later and saying, talking to them after a social situation or before I don't remember drawing.
I did not draw it out for her
Nancy: . Okay. Yeah. Because I like that addition because I would say one thing, and I've talked about this before in the podcast, my mom gave me a ton of strategies for dealing with my anxiety. Like that one, come late or go early. And I still do that to this day, but she never talked to me how she was.
She was only on the strategies. She wasn't on my feelings around it. So she never normalized it for me that this is okay that you need this. It was just like, you're a little goofy. And so here's what you need to do to survive it. She never said those words, it's we're a little socially awkward in this family, and this is what we do to get around that instead of normalizing the anxiety or the feeling, or, that I was okay needing these ways of doing it
Renee: . I think that Toby, my husband and I, we both. Anxiety walking around with mild to moderate anxiety and talk about it ourselves. Maybe we can't help it talk about it. Like the other day I literally said to our whole family because had been together so much, I was like, I'm taking my lunch and I'm going in the other room and eating by myself.
My body's telling me that's what I need right now. So we might openly, we've been doing that for years. So that's just a natural way. We talk around the house. I'll get Peter's our youngest. And he, when he was. Waiting for the school bus was a very anxious time for him. I would say, buddy, I can tell you got your worries.
Get through worries. No big deal. We got to run in place. We got to throw the ball. We got to do something. He would be, you asked me a lot of questions about things like when what's it going to be like riding the best mommy. This is before kindergarten. What's it going to look like? And I'll never forget.
I do have that piece of paper someplace. I literally put a piece of paper down and drew here. And here's the school and here's your friend Peyton's house and here's this guy's house and here's the, and they're going to stop by all the tests and pick them up and they're going to get on the bus. And then there's Mrs.
Blank, your teacher, and she's going to be there and she's going to walk you in and that's oh, okay. Like he, we talked out loud about all this stuff to him. He needed to see it. It like we do have these adult conversations. Plus he had older brothers and sisters are like, oh, Peter, it'll be fine on the bus.
It'll be this deal. This is what's going to happen. And he's I'm not picturing, I don't know what you're talking about. But as soon as I drew that picture, he's oh, I feel safe. I know where I'm going to.
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. I'd love that piece of paper idea. A, because it helps, they don't have to make eye contact with you.
I think that's brilliant, but also because it's just, it relaxes both of you and you've come into the moment.
Renee: It's not you. It's not you. It's not me. It's just this thing. It's just a scene in a story. I really don't want my kids or the kids I work with to ever feel like it's you, this is who you are.
It's like a thing. You've got a thousand things. That's why I drive that circle with the parents. Let's write out, oh, there's so many cool things about this kid. And you're going to bump against the world a couple of times. Yes.
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. So we had But also I've been talking about it. And one thing I wanted to cover was, the time again, we're back to the time crunch.
And then the parents, the working parents and then the kids at daycare, the parents bring them home and they got, or school or whatever. And then there's the three hour, two hour rush to do dinner, homework, get them to bed and everything gets. Messed up because they want to spend as much time with the kid and to have the kid be as happy as possible because they haven't had enough time with them.
What are your thoughts on that?
Renee: So here's the deal when we said you have to be I say this all the time, so maybe I didn't say it, but I didn't feel like I said, you have to be a teacher. You are not just. So you're like, oh yeah, I got the memo. We're teaching now right now. But before this happened and for forever, you're a teacher.
So just you need to make them dinner. Even if you're a working mom and you only had two hours with them at night, you're not going to forget dinner. Most of them don't forget to give them a bath. You're not going to forget to pack their lunch the next day.
You're not going to forget to give them breakfast in the morning or put them to sleep. You cannot forget that you're a teacher and that you have to carve out the most important time to connect connect, connect four. They need your. Eye ear to ear, body to body. I need you to see me. Mommy, hear me, look me in the eye.
And even if I'm 15 years old, I need you to connect with me, even if it's your punched me on the shoulder and go, Hey, dude, I need you to know me. And if you're so busy, too busy to teach, you're too busy. Ah, if you're too busy to connect four times more than you're correcting, you're too busy. If you're, if you are connecting and you're too busy to correct, you're too busy because that's your job.
And I hate to say that maybe I'll get in trouble for saying this, but I don't care what your job is. I don't care if you're a neurosurgeon or a you're going to go. You're Jane Goodall. I don't care. You are going. This is the most important job you'll ever have. And obviously that's why I do this because I care deeply about it.
So it is more important than anything. And if you will, it will bite you. If you don't, it will come back to bite you. If you're doing too much connection, cause you just can't bear to correct him. If you're doing too much correction, because you don't have time to connect with him. If you're doing too much.
Like distancing yourself from them because you're so busy with work. It's just it's or whatever it is that you've got to carve it out, you have to teach him and you have to model and you have to practice. So I have a working mom, a great working moms story. I can tell you if you want me to. Yeah.
Three kids, they have three kids, they have twins. And then an older daughter, twin girls, and an older daughter loved this family. Both working hardworking people, they get, have to get the kids off to daycare in the morning and get them home at night. And it's so stressful. I know they're stressed out, but they have to do it and they are doing it, but they called me and they want me to come to our house and help us.
Cause we're struggling. They're having a hard time over dinner. So they, we met and we walked through the dinner routine. So they were just really open to we, this is us. We have to do. Like my mom and dad, aren't going to come in here and teach them how to do this. Like the grandparents, the babysitter at school is not going to do this.
The daycare is not going to do it. We got to do this. One of the things that they're really struggling with is they got to go to the store on the weekend. Cause they don't have time during the week to go to the store. So they go to target every Sunday. And the three little girls are a total mess, a target, like it's horrible, it's exhausting.
And the mom hates it and dreads it. So we talked it through and I said, so it looks like this is a problem. It's a thing. It's one of those dots on the circle. That's bumping up against the world. You got to get girls that can function at the store. You gotta go to the store. So we said, we need to teach it outside of the moment.
You need to model it and you need to practice how we behave in a store. And then we're going to go pro when we're going to go in there and we're going to. So at night time, play time, connection time after work between dinner and bedtime, let's play grocery store. Let's literally get the little cart and put the baby downs in it and let's talk it through.
Let's walk it through. Let's go through this about how do we behave at the store. Let's draw even rules and put them on the store so we can talk about those. Of how we behave, what are the go behaviors at the store? So they did that at night and then I told them, you need to practice, but you can't take all three of them to practice because they don't know the skills yet.
So you need to take one and your husband can stay at home with the other two at a time. And literally. Being a skill. If you're going to teach them how to tie their shoes, you wouldn't teach them all three to tie their shoes. At the same time, you would take one at a time. So you're going to take them into that store.
And my mom, if she heard me saying this, get whatever, get them in the cart and take them to the stupid store and think about them. If you did it, like she would never say what I'm saying, she'd be like, come on when you're going to do this, but it's a skill they're not mastering it. Put them in a situation where they can, you've taught it to him.
You've modeled it. Now you've got to practice it. And then you've got to praise and specifically praise. Wow. You were mad. You wanted that toy and you started to scream, but you didn't practice the recovery, practice the growth. Then you're going to weave in, bring in the other one, teach her, then teach the other, then bring two at a time.
Then through time, I don't see. But that changed their life. Not because the store changed their life, but they realized when something comes up, we have a tactic. Now we seek outside of the moment when the next one's upset about something, we gotta teach it, set up the rules. Model it, practice it, come up with the consequences, next steps, positive consequences, negative consequences.
And we got to follow through every time
Nancy and the whole time you're talking, like I am, I'm just thinking this is true for adults. This is true for adults. This is, like all of this stuff, anytime you're learning something new. Yeah. Even the stuff I teach my people about self loyalty and it's all about practice and putting yourself in different situations and trying it and patience, and it takes time and, not doing it in the moment where you're super stressed.
Like it's just fascinating. How it, how I think so much of what I do is because parents didn't do it.
Renee: And it goes back to the whole and they might not have done it because of what you asked me first is that they were too nervous to walk through that. You know what I mean?
To feel that feeling in the stores, it's easier to leave the store or it's easier just to give them whatever they want us to be quiet in the store. Rather than to stop and honestly, in the store, what I might've done is just be like, we'll stop. We'll stop. I'll move the car right up to the front cart, up to the front.
We'll just wait. I'm good. I've been five. I don't have to. And so I can just hang out here. Maybe I'll buy myself a coffee and I'll just wait until we're ready to go back. So it's a, maybe a halfway immediate medium between my mom and what they would have done what I taught these other people to do, but yes, cause that's my gut.
How I might parent anyways, I think the time part for those families that work so hard as you have they realized they had to. Out. They had to say, this is that important, as important as soccer practice and piano practice. And they were getting into that we need to put them inside or, science cloud afterschool, and this afterschool and this.
So they were like giving themselves less time. This is way more important than science club, way more important than piano lessons and making sure I'm up to par with all my neighbor's kids. No, you got to get them to go to Tara.
Nancy: Totally. That's 1 0 1. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because I do think that no, I totally agree with you that, I love how you were like your parents that's your job and this is why you signed up for this and you're teaching them.
And in, I think we're like it, you have to make a choice. And I think that's, so that isn't said enough in our culture, it's always here's a hack and here's how to do it differently. And here's, I could teach you how to do two hours of amazing things in two hours. And you're like, no, I really can't.
You got to make the time. And I think that's, what's really powerful. And one of the reasons I, I actively chose not to have kids is because I knew being a parent would consume me and I didn't want that. And so I think it can fall both ways,
Renee: I just think also too. I really think anybody can do it, so I know you could have, you've been awesome parent.
I'm saying like, literally anybody can do that.
Nancy: Yes. I didn't want to spend my, I selfishly didn't want my aim. One could argue with selfishly or not. I didn't want to put my time into. A parent.
Renee: I'm saying that because I feel like a lot of parents are like, maybe I shouldn't do this.
Maybe I'm not cut out for that. Maybe I should never have been a mom. I don't know what to do. You know what to do? You're the teacher, you know what you like, what you don't like, you got to teach what you don't like a new thing to replace them. That's it. And it's a pretty clear cut system actually, when I go and speak to groups, it's so interesting.
I don't know if it's a bad girl thing or whack, but people who, a lot of men, like what I say, I think, and they like give me a system and an order. Oh, I do this okay, clear cut. Then if you're a systematic woman, you might do the same thing. You want, give me a order to this, put it in a system in a sense.
Nancy: it's very clear which I think is cool. Okay. So my last question to you is I see this all the time in my practice as well is the trend of sacrificing couple times. For the good of the kids. And I know that is something that I really valued growing up, that my parents were together. They went on date nights. They always picked each other over us. I know that, like they were
Renee: I know what you were about to say, “I know that sounds bad. “
Nancy: I was going to, yes. I was going to be like, no, that sounds bad. But they did. And I found comfort in that
Renee: It's not bad.
I think it's so good. What you just said, you felt comfortable, right? You felt safe, like it put border to the family, like that's them first, then us. And the kids just want order. They just want to know the hierarchy. They just want to know what's going on here. Who's in charge. Makes me feel safe that you guys like each other enough to leave us at home with a babysitter or whatever.
We're the same. I grew up, my parents are in your parents are the same age, same generation. I mean they're so that generation over age. So there's 80. Now. I know that grandparents now may not have done that, but our, my parents did the same thing. They were best friends. And I'll tell you what, if they're going on a three-week trip or a one week trip or a weekend trip who cares what the kids thought about it we're going because they knew they hadn't take care of them.
I'm telling you that is so crucial to this. It's crucial. I don't I, the parents I work with that are tagged team. Where they say, ah, you're on, I'm off. Like it's Saturday morning. You've been gone all week at work. I get to go out for the whole day. You take care of the kids, so we don't ever see each other.
So it's you're on, I'm on, you're on, I'm on. The kids get total attention all the time. Bad whammy, if that makes sense, because on, does that make sense? There's all, they're always getting undivided attention. The child gets exactly what they need and want. There is no suffering. There's no but I don't like this situation and I need to survive it.
So there's none of that. Cause give him what he wants. I'm leaving. Make sure he gets what he wants. So that's the first thing. And if there is any downtime, it becomes maybe the only thing that's downtime is the screen, which is another whole conversation. But but then there's the thing of it is that we're in this together.
Like mom and dad make decisions together. We're on the same page, us we're on the same page. A lot of the families I work with do some flip, a lot of flip-flopping. So one parents over here, or one parents over here. Scope of parenting and parenting this way. He's parenting that way. And then they're doing a lot of this, but see us where United front we're right in the middle balanced teaching modeling, practicing.
Now see us going out to dinner so we can talk about it. And we'll see you later, re like us to break away from this. Whether it be, we just go and talk about whatever we want to, or we're actually going to talk about our. And what we want and what we want this to be. And we have a plan in the system and an order we'd like each other enough to do that.
And it's more important than hanging out with them.
Nancy: Yeah. And that then, and also then when it comes to the babysitter thing, because I remember behaving being left with the babysitter. But they walked me through that. Mom and dad would be like, I know you don't like this, but this is what we're doing.
And you have your brothers and let you know, they'll entertain you. And this is how this is going to work there, obviously on record parent, my parents did not coddle me.
Nancy: There was no it's okay. To be scared. It was just a hang onto your head. Get over it. Hang on to your brothers suffer.
You'll be okay. We'll be home. And we'll give you a kiss when we get there and you'll see us in the morning. But it was suffering. I suffered,
Renee: it was okay. I told my husband. Recently, I don't know why it came to me because my parents did go away a lot. They'd travel. I remembered I actually might cry as an adult about it.
That's how much I remember it, but I remember laying in my bed and hearing them zipping up their suitcases at five in the morning and being very sad. Being very sad that they were leaving, but knowing that they will come back, does that like the whole and then as a kid, I may not understand it, but I can now as adult go, they loved each other.
They still love each other more than me. Which is good they're together. And we're not like exactly. I, my own life. And I didn't want to move home after college because they didn't make me feel like I needed to move home after college to make the family. They were complete without.
. So it's so crucial as I'm getting towards the empty nest, I'm like moving in that direction next right soon. It'll be an empty nest. And I thank God Toby night after dinner, every night, since the kids were little. They go do something. I actually don't care what it is. As long as they're not burning the house down in, sometimes they might even ask me a question like, mom, you might've been burned outside and I'll be like, sure, cause I'm not paying attention, but they go do something.
I actually don't care what it is. As long as they're not bothering dad and I, who were sitting at this table talking every night after dinner, that's been happening for years. It's important. Even if it's five minutes because you guys like Peter was little and he didn't like food very well. So we'd, he'd take his three bites of everything and then hop down and go play because we need to talk.
Not that it's perfect, but it's important. Sometimes we're arguing let's be clear, but we weren't, but we were, we needed to do that because I needed it. I was staying home with them in the morning. We, most of the time then I started working, I needed time to just be an adult.
Yes.
Nancy: Yeah. Yeah. What about the tit for tat
Renee: like keeping score with parents parenting? Yeah. Yeah. How do you get around that? Here's I don't call it. I don't know. I thought you were going to say this. I'm thinking like tap in, tap out. We definitely do that. Like we would say, Hey, tap in. I need you to.
Not doing this by myself. Do like tap in buddy Toby with me. Or tap out, I got this don't button. So that's our tap in or tap out. I don't need you to deal with this right now. I'm dealing with it and you might turn the table on it. So that's one thing. And then the score keeping of, I did this, you need to do that.
Is that what you mean?
Nancy: Like I've been with them all weekend. I've been with them all week. It's your turn. Or I went golfing last weekend. So I get to you and golfing last weekend. So I get to go to the school.
Renee: I know that's how, yeah, I think that's, I think that you do need your score captures a little bit.
I understand that score keeping, but I think that part of the score keeping has to be how much time do we spend together with these kids? If that, if you're doing so much, score-keeping that you're never together. That's a problem. I know that he, or she might say, I'm going out with my friends. I have been with them.
I need a break and you don't keep that kind of a score. You might get them back. Like someone might feel like I am getting the short end of the stick here and I need some time or, and also it's a call-out that I'm overwhelmed. I'm right. So I don't, I think you might need to keep some tally if you need to, but the tally has to include you guys doing it together.
And I think you'll feel better about doing it apart. If you do some of it together. Yeah.
Nancy: Yeah. I always say, because I always want them to, I always want it to be like, instead of here's my score, I've been, you've been golfing the past five Sunday, so I get my own Sunday to be like, I'm overwhelmed on Sundays.
Can you help out? Not necessarily because of I've kept score, but because I'm coming to you and sharing what's really happening. And I think. Yeah, we just get so stuck in the score-keeping the justifying, why it's okay. That I need a break instead of just being like, I need a break because I said so, calling out to you
Renee: . Yes that's what I'm trying to help parents too. Sorry, this kind of reminds me of that when you've been with the kids all day and you're entering back in. Two things, oh, come back to another thing with that, the whole enter back in. But when you're entering back in to do positive gossip on purpose instead of negative.
So just to remind yourself, the good things really did happen. Even if he did knock his brothers total block thing down and scream in his face, he did it for 10 good things. And then he happened to do that. So in front of the kids, positive gossip, or if you're calling him and he's out at the golf course, you say, I should tell you some of the awesome things he did today.
It helps you remember that there were really were some good things. And then you won't like dwell on the negative. One thing he did, that was horrible. A lot of families will say like he does all this annoying behavior and I'll say about how many times a day does he do that? They're like two.
Then tell me about the rest of the day is ruling your life. You just written and just paid me to come to your house for two times a day. That really you should pay for two times a day. If you want that to go away. I'm just saying don't dwell on the negative as much because there's some really great things.
Yeah. So that helps with the shift of it. Wasn't the worst day. There was some really bad things that happened. Clearly. I hated some of this stuff, but he's doing pretty good in some other things. So just being more aware of the positive. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And then this is just for parents in terms of kids' anxiety at transitions.
There are there actually, there's a book and it's called the big disconnect and it's by, I can remember her name, but anyways, she the big disconnect. And she talks about that at transitions, we need to add transitions. We need to make sure we don't are not on our phones, that we are looking each other in the eye, especially children.
So when you're picking them up, dropping them off, you just came in, just tag teamed with your husband and you're taking over and he's no phone. They need to see you.
Nancy: we'll put all these books in the show notes that you referenced.
That would be great. Send them to me and I'll link them up in the show notes. So that would be cool. Okay. Renee, we covered a lot of this, man. I know there's a ton more to cover in childbearing, but how can people find out more about you and your services and what you are right.
Renee: Sure. So it's child in balloon child in bloom.com is my website.
And if you go there, you'll see, I do things for schools, churches, businesses, and individual families. So schools call me to train their teachers and come in and observe behaviors in the school and also run parenting programs through the school or PTO churches, call me to do the same kind of thing.
They might have me work one-on-one with a family that's really in need. They might have me do. Programs for parents and programs for teachers. And then businesses do this for through their human resource department. Will have me come and do things like that just to provide, work-life balance programs.
And then Obviously my big, my job really is to go into families homes and coach them, sit with them across the table. Go through this with their family and mind solve problem solve. So we do that. I also do small groups. I'm going to run a, some small groups this summer for like age appropriate, small groups.
Yeah. Parents of toddlers, parents of teenagers. So you can start to see those on my website. I have a newsletter that goes out every month. If you email me, I'll put you on it. Okay. And it's Renee, R E N e@childandbloom.com
Renee: So I love that you did this and Nancy, I just have it so much. Like I hope it's something that helps them, give them an idea. I always say to parents is one thing. Maybe just choose one thing you might do. Yeah.
Nancy: Thank you. Thank you so much for making this so clear and giving great examples and is awesome. Totally awesome. There is so much pressure to be the perfect parent. I hear it all the time from my clients, the pressure to be perfect and be all things to our children. Hopefully this conversation gave you some fresh ideas on how to decrease, not only your anxiety, but your children's.
One of my big takeaways was being honest with ourselves and our children. We tend to convince ourselves we can do all the things and have time for everything when there are only 24 hours in a day. So being honest about what we have time for, what our expectations are and owning when we fail is so important, not just for our children, but ourselves.