Eps 30: Setting Limits with Sarah MacLaughlin

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Joyful courage, parenting podcast episode 30.

Hey podcast listeners, welcome back to the show. I am so grateful that you have tuned in to listen to today's episode. I have Sarah McLaughlin on the show today. And Sarah is a social worker, a compassion coach, a play promoter and a warrior for kindness. She's going to tell us more about those things later on. She is the author of the book what not to say tools for talking to young children, and her work is based on 20 years of experience working with kids and families, and she supports moms and dads through one on one, work in groups and through online programming. Sarah has a seven year old son who gives her plenty of opportunities to take her own advice. So she is walking her talk on a daily basis, and she's going to be on the show talking about limit setting. I feel like there's been a lot of chatter on social media and in my life around how to set limits in a way that continues to foster connection and relationship. And you probably listened in on my conversation with Serena. What episode was that she was on a few weeks ago, and she talked about parenting styles, and we talked about how we can often be engaged in that dance, right, that dance between being super rigid dictator and then flipping over to permissive and how it's It's tricky, little thing, isn't it? It's tricky and hard to find that body of firmness and kindness at the same time. It's a practice, it's doable, it's available, it's possible, but it's definitely a practice. And when we throw in, you know, stress, emotion, what the model is that lives inside of us that we were raised with. You know, it gets messy, so Sarah's gonna talk to us more about limit setting. We're gonna talk about brain development. And she's really fun. So I think you're gonna love the conversation. Let me know what you think when in the comment area, or giving me feedback via iTunes or an email. [email protected] I'm super excited that you're here. Let's meet Sarah.

Hey there, Sarah, welcome to the joyful courage podcast,

Sarah MacLaughlin 3:02
thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. Me

Casey O'Roarty 3:05
too, glad that you're here. Will you please tell the listeners a little bit about you and what you do?

Sarah MacLaughlin 3:11
Absolutely I consider myself a compassion coach and a play promoter and also a warrior for kindness. I help parents to understand how their children's brains work better, so that they can have more connected relationships and get more connected behavior.

Casey O'Roarty 3:29
Oh my gosh. Will you say those titles again? A compassionate coach. I love those

Sarah MacLaughlin 3:34
play, promoter and warrior for kindness.

Casey O'Roarty 3:38
Oh my gosh, awesome. I'm so excited to dig into our topic, because I've read a lot of what you've put out there, and I love that you couple the brain science in with the practical tools and limit setting. And that's really what we're going to focus on today, is the limit setting piece and how to show up connected, while also firm with our kids. I'm going to make sure that there's good links in the show notes to some of your articles. What has inspired you to explore this topic?

Sarah MacLaughlin 4:16
Well, so what inspired me was that I looked around and I was trained as a teacher, and I saw the different ways in which, you know, some teachers that I admired, you know, had worked really effectively with children, and some who had more kind of older school approaches didn't. And so I just started really researching and and digging in and wanting to find ways to support not only myself if I ever became a parent, but also other parents out there, because I could see how tough of a job it was, and I had three quarters of my own book written before I had my own child. So I had pretty much, you know, told the whole entire world how I felt children should be treated and how they should be spoken to and respected, which I firmly believe, and then got dumped in. The reality of, you know, being a parent and getting triggered and having it be really way harder than I thought it was. So then I had to, I had to seek out even more information and ask for help. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 5:09
it's, I have that same, well, similar story as a former school teacher, figuring, like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 5:15
I got this. Yeah, I

Casey O'Roarty 5:17
got this. I'm highly educated, so this will probably be really easy. So when you so what were, so you have your child, the emotional triggers, the fact that they're not actually robots, and they have their own human experience that's playing out before. You sure, what were some of the biggest things that kind of were blown out of the water for you, as far as your beliefs before and after.

Sarah MacLaughlin 5:41
You know, what's interesting is my beliefs didn't really change, but, but how I wanted to come at the execution of having a close relationship and the amount of internal work that needed to happen from my side of the street. And, you know, noticing that if I had a hard time being kind or holding keeping my temper, that that was my job, and it wasn't, you know, I would fall into the a typical Parent Trap of, you know, feeling victimized by my child, feeling like I couldn't. I didn't. I honestly didn't realize how much more difficult it was going to be to set limits with my own child versus another person's child, how much more, because it's you're in it for the long game, and you're so invested in this little human how much that would shade and color my viewpoint and my ability to stay calm and regulated. It just I had no idea.

Casey O'Roarty 6:34
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about setting limits. When would you say the best time to set limits is,

Sarah MacLaughlin 6:42
well, it really depends, because I think that it is important, certainly, to set expectations for you know, your home. Everybody's expectations in their home are different. I think it's important for parents to understand developmental norms and milestones so that they can set appropriate limits and set their children up for success in the environment that is the home. I know that if you're a former teacher, you know that we do that in the classroom all the time. We set up the classroom so there's as many yeses as possible. You don't have to step in, you know, let the environment be your limit setter as much as possible. And parents don't have that training. They don't, they don't, you know, they keep going straight for that thing that's on that table over there. That thing shouldn't be on that table over there. But the other thing that I think is important to remember is that the limit also depends on where we're sitting as a parent, you know, sometimes I use the silly example of jumping on the bed in that, you know, maybe on Thursday, when I have had a good night's sleep and my three year old is like, I want to jump on the guest bed. I might, and I have, I have, I'm well rested, I feel great, and I can give that my attention, then sure you can jump on the bed. That's fine. But if on Saturday, I am not well rested, and I have a headache and I don't have it in me to monitor that so it's safe, then I might say no. And so I think the limit really is within us, and we need to be able to be firm and flexible in our limits, and that children are gonna have the feelings that they have about those limits and that consistency. I sort of have this love hate relationship with consistency, because consistency is important. It helps children know where where they need to push, or where they might push. And we always want to set things up so that they're pushing less obviously. But sometimes something's okay one day and it's not the other. And that it's important for us to get steady before we hold limits, so that we can hold space and make space for upset, because that is inevitable. Upset around limits is totally inevitable.

Casey O'Roarty 8:47
Yeah. And I, you know, when I think about consistency too, I embrace the importance of it, and it really easy, can it's, it's really easy for it to turn into something that's really, becomes really rigid inside my body, right? Like I've already said this, and now they're pushing, and now I've gotta, you know, how do you how does the compassion coach, yeah, talk to parents about

Sarah MacLaughlin 9:12
that? Well, I think that, I think that it is important for them to understand your authority more than your rigidity, like I wrote once about an example where my son, he was probably a toddler, preschooler, he wanted to play in the pantry, you know? And I was just like, nope, nope. We're not gonna play in the pantry. And he kind of persisted, and I certainly could have just said, nope, nope, nope. We're not going to play it in the pantry. And held the limit. But I checked in with myself to see if I knew where that no was coming from, so that I could assess it, so that I could decide whether or not it needed to be a no, like, so I went to the worst case scenario. Like, okay, he's three. He wants to move the CANS around. Like, what's the worst? Thing that can happen. Well, he might, like, drop a can on his toe. Like, I kind of, like, went through the ramifications of moving my boundary and moving my limit and allowing for something that my initial response was a no, and so I said, Oh, well, I changed my mind. I It looks like you're really interested. And so part of it is, I think making your flexibility your idea, and owning your authority in it. And that's what I recommend to parents, is if you are going to be flexible in your limits, that you own the idea of the change and say so, I said to him, I changed my mind. I think we'll give it a try. We'll see how it goes. And he played in that pantry for, you know, like 40 minutes, you know, like pretending to doing a little pretend. I don't even know what he was doing in there, but I was in awe of his ability to just like he never dropped a can on his toe. He, my three year old self, entertained for 40 minutes because I was like, You know what? Let's see how it goes. And even sometimes, when their emotional upset is so great that we feel worn down by it, and we were like, Oh, I wish. I wish I wouldn't have said no, because at this point I'm too tired to keep holding the no that it is a slippery slope and it is a gray area, but sometimes it's better to say, You know what, I changed my mind. You can have that popsicle. Let's rest on the couch together and have popsicles. I said no at first, but I changed my mind, and it's all in the tone of your steadiness as a leader. Because if I change my mind about a popsicle when there's been a 20 minute throwdown about it and and I hold firm, even though I'm totally worn out holding the limit, then I might lose my cool and blow my stack and yell, or, you know, get really explosive when I don't want to. I lose my cool. I lose my ability to regulate myself, instead of just couching my changed mind from a place of authority, which is very different than, Oh, fine, right, you've worn me down. Have the popsicle like I would never recommend that you change your mind in that tone of voice or with that body language, because that sends a really different message about flexible limits.

Casey O'Roarty 12:01
Yeah, well, and, you know, it's interesting, because, you know, parents get really hooked by the meltdown or the response, right? I was working with a group last night, and one of the moms was talking about her daughter having such a hard time when she couldn't get something at Costco that she actually took the toy and that ran away and found a place to hide, and was really quiet, and the mom really wanted to talk about that, like, how can I prevent this runaway in this and I, and I helped her, you know what? What showed up in the conversation was, what are the missing skills? The Missing skills are that your daughter's having a really hard time navigating the flood of emotion around the No. So how about we're proactive, and there's a conversation beforehand, and we talk about the fact that disappointment is going to show up, and what can we do differently? And you know, from that place of authority, like you're talking about, I love that place of authority, we are leaders in our family, right? We're not. We are leaders, correct?

Sarah MacLaughlin 13:06
So we are, we are. They're looking to us for our leadership at every moment, yeah?

Casey O'Roarty 13:09
And I, you know, and with limit setting, you know, and what showed up in this conversation with this mom was, you know? And she said, Oh, do I have this conversation at Costco? And I said, No, no, this is a conversation, yeah, that you have before you go to Costco. And so I find that the more proactive parents are, you know, the better the outcome in the end. So what's your thoughts on that? Yes,

Sarah MacLaughlin 13:34
definitely, pre teaching, as we used to call it, in the classroom, or even with parent, you know, just giving the most heads up, or have a friend who calls them pre minders, which is totally cute. You know, those kinds of things definitely can pave the way for more smooth outings and interactions and and it's not, it's not always going to solve the problem, right? Because, and also, you know, choosing when you take a child to do Costco trips, you know, and whether or not you can assess what their emotional barometer is looking like and if their tank is full or empty. So that we are again trying to set them up for success.

And but the piece that you said, that I also think is really important, is to help them, not that sometimes the disappointment, and particularly with young, developing brains, because they don't have a prefrontal cortex yet that's allows them to have any sort of bird's eye perspective. You know, they're gonna they're gonna flip their lid, and they're not going to be able to hold those sometimes they're not going to be able to hold those pre teaching moments in their mind. They're still going to flip out and melt down. And that that and framing, I like to frame that for parents as valuable as well, that sometimes, you know, I have a friend who calls it emotional potty training, like, you know, sometimes there's. Just this holding of emotion and disappointments and hurts, you know, they stack up and they back up on three year olds and 30 year olds, and sometimes she's got a blow, you know. And then, if we can, and if we can frame out and a meltdown as a beneficial loosening of pressure, offloading of stress, you know, there's that fascinating research about how tears have cortisol and adrenaline in them, because they actually are detoxifying our body. My friend and fellow parent educator and author, Pam Leo, says crying is the healing, not the hurting. Like we have this, we have this belief that when children aren't crying, that they're in pain, and we want the pain to stop. And if you if you consider instead that the crying is the processing of a pain and a hurt that already happened, then we would never want to shut that down. We would always want to help children move through the feeling. I say that only way out is through. Yeah, you can't, like, think your way through it. Or, you know, some emotions defy verbalization. You know, helping children gain the confidence in themselves that they can survive really difficult feelings that feel crummy, like disappointment, like grief, like jealousy, all of those are very human, normal feelings that most of us didn't get any coaching through. And so when we see them, we're like, Ah, it's bad. It feels icky. Shut it down. And I come at that emotional intelligence piece from a totally different perspective, that this is, this is great. This is learning ground. My three year old is grieving the fact that I don't have a blue bowl in the cupboard. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm gonna help him through that feeling we don't have a blue bowl today. We only have green. That's really hard, you know, and like the balling, the balling that will come right with the wrong cookie or the wrong bowl or whatever, and that that's setting them up to know how to process bigger griefs. Because I think if we skirt them around those smaller, bite sized child like disappointments, then when they have bigger ones, they don't know how to handle them. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 17:00
Jane Nelson, the positive discipline founder, she talks about that as building their resiliency muscles, yes, allowing them to go through getting to the other side of a big emotion that you know, when we, you know, entertain them out of it. Or Yes, distract, distract. You know, it's just keeping them from building those muscles,

Sarah MacLaughlin 17:21
it is? It atrophies them, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 17:25
so quit doing that people. I know, I know it's so hard, and I think today, yeah, well, and it's the discomfort that we feel, right? It's the discomfort that we feel in seeing our kids. So I really appreciate what you said, like having a little celebration inside, like, all right, processing emotions, remembering that, watching them as hard as it is to see our little people in distress, there's some really important learning and growth and development going on there. So let's talk more about the brain. I know that once parents become more informed about how their child's brain works, they begin to handle those highly emotional situations differently, typically. So what would you say is an important place to start? If I'm somebody listening who really doesn't have a lot of information about the developing brain, where would you start? Yeah,

Sarah MacLaughlin 18:19
I would advise people to Google, you know, Dan Siegel video on the triune brain, which he teaches, which I teach in all my classes, at the handy little hand model of the brain that just shows how we have our thinking human brain. We have our emotional mammal brain, and then we have our, exactly. We have our, you know, fight or flight, fear, survival based lizard brain and helping children understand that when helping children, helping grown ups, understand that when children are behaving emotionally or worse, you know aggressively, that you know emotional, emotion, and that emotional is a step up from aggressive, like sometimes we get more triggered by things that children do or say in their emotional brain, because they can often verbalize better when they're in their emotional brain. And older children will intentionally try to hurt our feelings when they're in their emotional brain. But if we keep in mind that that's actually a step up from a child who has lost all control, which is that fear fight or flight. You know, aggression is the fight in fight or flight, and helping reframe children who have really lost control of themselves as children who need our support and need our help, and not that they need a moralistic, punishing, punitive response. You know, there's that meme that goes around, goes around and around that your child is not giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time having the solid knowledge of like, what, what kind what brain is my child, and getting better about assessing what brain state your child is in, so you can tailor your response to that brain state. And then also, I try to. Really help coach parents around first assessing where they are. Like to assess yourself first. What brain Am I in? Is this behavior driving me totally batty so that I'm already triggered when I walk into trying to problem solve? Oh yes, I am. Let me take a few deep breaths to try to get steady before I move in as the leader in this situation. So helping parents to understand how it works and then apply it to their own physiological responses, their child's behaviors, and it also helps parents see how much they really have to prioritize taking care of themselves, because any one of those hungry, angry, lonely, tired gets too triggered, and we our ability to regulate, which I define self regulation as being able to stay in charge of yourself when you're upset, it's being able to hang on to your green prefrontal cortex in the face of, you know, a cortisol, adrenaline, emotional rush that's Trying to physiologically take over your body. And that's hard. That's really, really hard. It is. It's, I'm on a progress, not perfection, road with that one, yeah, and

Casey O'Roarty 21:09
my son and I call it the emotional freight train. Like the first step in getting off the emotional freight train is to realize that you're actually on the emotional freight train, right? Perfect. And something that I do with parents when I'm working with them is to invite them into noticing how their body feels when they're triggered, because we spend so much time in our heads that recognize, when we start to recognize like, oh, wow, I start to get tense, and I start to feel heat, and I start to feel sensations like before I've actually flipped my lid. Then there's some information. Like, oh, maybe I should walk right away, right now, and talking to about that with my with our kids, like, what does it feel like when you Yes, you know, what is your what are your legs feel like? What do you you know? So because, I think, as a culture, we just spend entirely too much time in our head.

Sarah MacLaughlin 22:01
Yes, indeed, almost exclusively some of us, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 22:05
and it's there's so much wisdom in our body, and when we can like, and I encourage people to actually practice noticing what a calm, centered body feels like. And the more we can actually be an awareness of that, then it becomes more available when we need it, which is regularly

Sarah MacLaughlin 22:25
on a moment by moment basis. Yes, things that used to be so easy are suddenly so difficult. Yeah, I invite people also to just kind of engage in that witness bearing part of their brain that can simply notice what's happening, because that's a part of your brain that you can that's a muscle you can build. And I think one of the tricky things for parents to fully grasp is that there's no blame in any of this, and this information about the brain just simply did not exist when most of us were growing up and being parented. And there's a lot of forgiveness in our families of origin and self, forgiveness that can pave the way for, oh, yeah, I, I'm, I'm now of the generation that has this information, and I get the blessing and curse of being able to know this and decide to reparent my own brain so that it has a better regulatory system. And then I get to bring up the next generation of children who aren't going to have to go back and reparent themselves, because they're going to have a brain that is parented towards the kind of resilience and, you know, emotional freight train awareness that you're speaking of like it's that's a you could consider it an Honor, even though you also could be angry about it, like, it also is a huge honor. Oh, this is amazing information that now I get to use. I get to use it on myself, and I get to help raise a generation of children who aren't gonna have a lid that flips quite so easily, or they're gonna have better tools for getting back into their green brain quicker. Like, there's gonna be small progress here over, over the generations to come because of this information. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 24:04
I think that's really important. And I think that it's, you know, I think it's easy to hang on to that victim, poor me. This is what I was dealt early on. And you know what? It's all part of our path. I mean, I know I would not be sitting right here right now, talking to you and be passionate about what I'm passionate about. Had I not had exactly the upbringing that I had? And I have great relationships with my parents. They're really proud of me. So very sure, so in positive discipline. Well, let me see so setting limits with the brain and mind. So what I I'm pulling out of what you're talking about in my own knowledge around Dan Siegel's work, which I always tell people, if you're only going to read one book, read the whole brain child, because it's just insanely helpful and written for the normal person. So I'm hearing you say things like, you know. So when, when our child is in the emotional brain, or in the fight or flight brain, that is not they're not available to have conversations about either the limits that they've pushed or why they can't push that limit. So in those moments, like the in the moment, limit setting, connecting, like being there for the child, what are the steps that you encourage parents to take in those moments?

Sarah MacLaughlin 25:20
Yeah, it's all about timing and about assessing what brain state they're in. So the other way you framed up that question is really helpful in my day job. I'm a social worker, and one of the things that I teach is crisis de escalation skills to other to social workers in the field. And interestingly enough, you know, the training that I teach has been around for 40 plus years, and it teaches basically these same ideas that, you know, when somebody is flipping their lid, and I'm usually teaching people who are working with grown ups, because grown ups flip their lids, and it looks just like a two year old they're in there. You know, if the yellow brain, the yellow emotional brain, is the toddler brain, and then the red brain is the infant brain, like people regress to those brains on a regular basis, and that, you know, the teaching from this training is when people are really flipping their lids, is that the staff response, or the social worker response, is the least amount of interaction necessary to maintain safety. There's no, there's no teaching that should be happening when your child is freaking out at all. None. Right? This is not, this is not, not the teachable moment

Casey O'Roarty 26:23
well, and they're not being naughty. No, no. Don't even use the word naughty either be but it's amazing to me how it comes up sometimes in parent class, like, well, like, as if tantrums are some big manipulation tool that the kids have all gone out to the neighborhood park and said, Okay, this is how you get what you want, when, in reality, it's just lacking skills and flooded with emotion.

Sarah MacLaughlin 26:50
Yeah, exactly. And you know sometimes, because as a result of parents intervening in ways that aren't really developmentally appropriate during those times, we do set children up to to get into manipulative habits to get their needs met, because they get they get scared, they get nervous. Wow, when I'm most losing it, my parent comes in way more heavy handed than normal. What is that about? And so there become these sort of places of disconnection between parent and child when there's been habitual patterns of that type. And so then I think sometimes you do see, you know what, what's what you might call a shakedown, as opposed to a meltdown, right? And and, you know that's, that's a whole different story. But like, when people really are losing their minds, whether they're three or 30, it's not helpful. There's no learning. And so limit setting is just keep everyone safe, like, if you have a three year old that's trying to hate you, like, gently cradle them in your lap and face them away, so when they're swinging, they're not getting you, and there's no moralization of that behavior at that point, this is a child who has lost control of themselves, and you need to help them dump the emotion and regain their composure, and it's their job to calm themselves down. We can't. I mean, when I'm upset, if somebody tells me to calm down, it is not helpful, and it's not helpful for little people either. And so waiting and so part of that is called the crisis cycle. Part of waiting for part of the timing, is that you don't, as soon as they've composed themselves, jump in with the teaching either? No, we actually need to wait. We need to wait and have that teaching, that little, tiny, developmentally appropriate nugget that we offer our child be developmentally appropriate to their age. So like the younger they are, the shorter, the shorter it should be and timed, you know, well enough that it's not so far away from the event of explosion that they've forgotten what happened, and not so close that it will re trigger their, you know, upset. So you know, if my two year old loses his mind, and, you know, comes at me swinging, and then I just calmly cradle him, keep myself safe, convey to him that he's safe. I think there's the another piece from this training, which I found so useful in parenting, is, you know, to ignore the behavior, but not the child, because there's a lot of rhetoric around like, well, if you just ignore that bad behavior, it will stop. But what parents erroneously do, and even some practitioners erroneously do, is they ignore the child as part of the behavior. And that's never actually the goal, to turn away and be like, I'm ignoring you. Until you stop doing that, what you would do is actually ignore the fact that they're kicking you ignore the fact that they're hitting you, ignore the fact that they're calling you names, and connect with them and hold the limit. I'm right here with you. You're safe. They're hitting you and calling you stupid. You're not You're going to ignore that behavior, as in, not address it, not say anything, and continue to say, I'm right here with you. You're safe. I'm keeping you safe. I'm keeping me safe. And then when they've calmed down, you can say something, like, you were really upset. You were in charge of your body. I helped keep us safe. I know that you will continue to work on being in charge of your body when you're upset, and that's it, boom, little, tiny nugget, a word of encouragement, a word of the expectation, and then you move on it, and 1000 times in context, it gets wired in the brain. Love

Casey O'Roarty 30:13
it. I love that you just said 1000 times in context,

Speaker 1 30:17
right? Yeah, that's what they say.

Casey O'Roarty 30:21
It's funny, we're so good when it comes to like, learning how to read or riding a bike or walking, it's like, Oh, yay. We're gonna celebrate every mistake and oh, you're moving forward and you're catching on. But when it comes to behavior, Hey, I told you once, I already told you not to do that, and all of a sudden it's like

Sarah MacLaughlin 30:40
you should never bite ever again. Yeah, quit,

Casey O'Roarty 30:43
quit. Yes, quit climbing that bookcase. I've told you I slapped your hand and you still want to climb the bookcase.

Unknown Speaker 30:58
Yep, well, and I, and

Casey O'Roarty 31:00
like talking about kids that are saying really choice things, like, you're stupid, I hate you. You're the meanest mom ever. One of the things that jumped out at me, that I was glad to see in one of your articles that I read was the idea of not taking it

Sarah MacLaughlin 31:14
personally. It's not about you, it's not about

Casey O'Roarty 31:18
you. Nope. And tell me a little bit about what happens when we take it personally.

Sarah MacLaughlin 31:25
Oh, boy. Well, when we take it personally, we become, we go into our lower brain state, we we get emotional, we get mad, we get vindictive, we we get moralistic, and we It seems like a good idea to punish. You know, all of these sorts of things crop up, and none of them are helpful, none of them, and they all erode the relationship, which is really the biggest, fattest, most effective tool you have in your toolbox for affecting behavior change or behavior guidance, is, how connected does your child feel to you? And we have 70 years of attachment theory and work to back us up on that, but in the moment, if you take it personally, you just are mad and don't care. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 32:11
well, and I'm raising a 13 year old now, oh, yay, so I get to really

Sarah MacLaughlin 32:15
to the teen years.

Unknown Speaker 32:18
Whoa, another

Sarah MacLaughlin 32:19
just regularly as a brain state.

Casey O'Roarty 32:21
It's only been like 10 days, but it takes, right? Yeah, totally. But I think that, you know, they say that two year olds, the two year old brain is revisited in the teen years. And definitely that, you know, and I have one child, I have two kids, and one of them is definitely the one that I tend to take things more personally with. I don't know if it's, you know, the oldest, the oldest daughter being raised by a controlling mom who was the oldest daughter being, you know, I have some patterns in my own family, and so I'm sure that my own, I know that my own stuff comes up around that. But it is challenging how quickly I want to take it personally and I notice. I've trained myself, at least, to notice, so sometimes, sometimes I act before I notice, and then I get to come back and rupture and repair, yep, yep, yep, and make it right with her. And wow, you know, I took that personally, and I realized it wasn't about me and you know, and I love you, moving on, but I think that that's really important for parents to hear,

Sarah MacLaughlin 33:28
yeah, and it's impossible to execute 100% of the time. It's just we're we're all human. We all have this easily dysregulated brain for survival sake. Like, that's the other piece that I keep in my pocket is when I lose my below my top, or whatever. That's my brain protecting me. And when my kids, my kid blows his top, or other kids blow their tops, that's just their brain protecting them. And if I can keep the lens or the frame on, what's happening as normal, part of resilience, building normal part of, you know, flexing that muscle that helps him be more regulated in his life. That's great. And if I can't and I get triggered and I take it personally, then, you know, you there is that wonderful, as you mentioned, opportunity to say, I blew it. I took it personally. I lost my temper, and I'm sorry, modeling the apology. Modeling that another parent educator, whose name I can't remember, but she talks about modeling graciousness. You know, when your kid refuses to pick up their playroom, you could get mad and say, well, it's just going to be messy then. Or you can just model the graciousness of saying, All right, well, I'm just going to do it for you, and eventually I know you will. You know the graciousness, along with the encouragement, I know that eventually you will, you will get there, you will offering that positive regard, that showing them, that you believe in their ability to step up and grow.

Casey O'Roarty 34:55
So something's knocking on my door right now in my mind, and. And it's that kindness and firmness piece, which I think, that graciousness, it's slippery, uh huh, right? Because it's I model for it, we don't have a model for it. We didn't have a model for it. And so in our firm and angry, yeah, and in our quest not to be angry all the time not to be yelling parents. I think that there's because we don't know what to do. We don't do anything, and it becomes really permissive, yeah, and yeah. So actually speak into that

Sarah MacLaughlin 35:30
problem too, for sure. For sure. Yeah, definitely. Well, it's been, I think that there was a, you know, it's really interesting to look at it all historically, and to take a bird's eye view of it, of the, you know, there was just this authoritarian, you know, thing that then, you know, a while ago, maybe a generation ago, there was and bleeding into this generation. Still, there was a pendulum swing to, you know, being overly permissive and because they because it felt yucky to be raised under that more authoritarian view. I've written a lot about these three different parenting styles, and it's so confusing. The language is so confusing because we have authoritarian, but then we have authoritative, which sounds just the same, but really it's totally different.

Casey O'Roarty 36:15
Well, the good news is I just released an episode. Well, will be released before that ours is that is with a parent educator, and we're talking all about those three parenting styles. All right. Well, I won't go off on a tangent about that, but some but I have a

Sarah MacLaughlin 36:32
colleague of mine introduced me to the idea of using a marshmallow, a rock and a tennis ball to, kind of like, give parents a tangible thing to hold in their hands around. You know what's what's too hard, what's too soft, and then what's that kind of firm and friendly in the middle? And then now you know how you can riff off that is, is very fun, and that there's the tennis ball really embodies the the the flexibility and squishiness and comfort of a more marshmallow approach and the firmness and structure without being too rigid and with having some bounce, which represents that resilience. And it's, it's a game. It's fun, you know, like there's no reason that's that, you know, sometimes you can set limits and use humor. Sometimes you can set limits and, you know, be silly about it, depending on the age and, you know, depending on how you how much you know everybody knows their child best. That's the other thing too, is I don't write prescriptions for parents. I help them understand the development of how things generally go in a growing mind and and help them figure out how they're gonna connect with their special little people and know how to guide them best. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 37:47
well, and I too, thinking about the limit setting, you know, and some of the examples that you gave, you know, if you are finding yourself responding with that graciousness and encouragement, and you know, I'm gonna, I'll do it for you, and I know that you're gonna learn these skills. And you know, maybe a little while later in the day, you come up with a plan for getting toys picked up. And I know, with my son, we had this poster, and it was his missions, and I and he had pictures of all the different kinds of toys that could possibly be on the floor. So like, cars, books, Legos, right? And so I'd say, Okay, your mission, and it broke down the task. So, yeah, right, right. So we can't expect, just because we say out loud, like, I know one day you'll be able to do this, that they're gonna Yeah, sure, but it's also that's that skill building piece, and that is part of, I think setting that's part of the puzzle of setting limits too, is taking time to train them so that when we ask them to do something, they actually have some skills to lean into, whether or not they want to. Is another story I

Sarah MacLaughlin 38:58
have to tell you. I'm just now figuring out how that whole like place for everything and in its place thing

Casey O'Roarty 39:05
background, yeah, I'm probably

Sarah MacLaughlin 39:06
not the right person to to offer my child skill building around that. Do

Casey O'Roarty 39:12
you want me to make a poster for you with some

Sarah MacLaughlin 39:14
issues? Yes, I totally need a poster. Yes, it's so true well, and also just trusting that like you know, I that what I value is really different from what lots of other people value, and that I can have ideas about what I want my child to grow up and value, but that I don't really have control over that, and trying to kind of like, check my ego and keep it out of it, that, you know, I can have a laundry list. And actually, I actually ask parents to create a laundry list of not necessarily values, but qualities that they want their grown up children to have, because we can get sort of bogged down in the developmental pieces, um, of childhood without losing sight of the big picture. Yeah, and you know, when I ask parents to brainstorm 10 to 20 qualities they want their adult children to have. I never get obedient or follows direction on the first request, or any of those kinds of things. You know, I get creative, confident, you know, contented, generous, grateful. You know, all of these wonderful qualities that when we get into worrying, you know that projecting to the future and worrying about how our children are going to be in the world, that we feel desperate to teach them all of these skills that they might need. And the other reality check that I offer parents is we have no idea what the world is going to look like in 20 years, like the the you know, the landscape of our social constructs, or our job market, or any of these things are ever shifting at crazy, astronomically quick rates, and that we can think we know what we want to prepare and we should prepare our children for, but we really can't possibly know that. Yeah, as far as those bigger picture things, and so that's where I think that the piece that makes children and grown ups are always going to need to know how to get along with other people, how to problem solve and so, and I'm a big proponent for, you know, homes and teachers and schools teaching children those very, very foundational pieces first, yep, I think they're really important.

Casey O'Roarty 41:18
I am with you on that. So what's a baby step that we could leave the listeners with here? If that encourages them, baby steps they could take as they work towards setting limits without punishment or shame?

Sarah MacLaughlin 41:33
Yeah, I would watch for the either or thinking that you have, like, make it a practice to just hang out in your own brain with a detective hat on, an observer hat on, and see what you find. Because a lot of times we don't even know is the water that we're swimming in, and we don't even really know what we think about about our children and their behavior, and because a lot of it's really automatic. And so I would say, pay attention to the places where you know you see that you can't. It feels impossible to be connected while you're saying no, where it feels like you have to. Sometimes I use the I have parents pay attention to whether or not they're turning away from their child or turning toward their child. Because physically, physically, literally, physically in your body. Because if you are saying no, a lot of us have a tendency to withdraw when we say no, like when we said, I'm just using the term say no, but really, when you set any limit where you're imposing your will, which is what we have to do as leaders, you know that's just part of it, for nothing, if nothing else, than safety, like even the most permissive parents have to set limits about safety, right? Yeah, but we, I noticed that myself and many, many other parents that I work with have a tendency to with that, know, or with that limit, to turn away, to distance ourselves from our child, because that's kind of how we were raised. And to work, if you just took the baby step to work, to effortfully flip that like, to turn towards your child and make eye contact when you say no, when you set a limit and say, I can't let you do that. And to have that softened, compassionate voice that alone would be something I'm sorry on it months and years later, you know? It's I still want to be like, just do it, you know, or just stop doing it, you know, whatever it is, and be more reactionary and I and to distance myself instead of connecting. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 43:29
it's a practice progress, not

Sarah MacLaughlin 43:31
perfection, right?

Casey O'Roarty 43:33
So where can listeners find you and your work?

Sarah MacLaughlin 43:35
My website is Sarah mclaughlin.com and my Sarah has an H, and my McLaughlin is m, A, C, that's where I mostly hang out. I have, I have articles here and there on Huffington Post and a couple other places. My first print article actually is coming out in pathways to family wellness magazine, awesome. I believe in their spring episode or their spring issue.

Casey O'Roarty 43:59
Are you on social media,

Sarah MacLaughlin 44:00
I am, yes, all those links are on my website. I have perfect Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. I have a whole collection of parenting resources on Pinterest. Okay, well, I'll make sure only thing I

Casey O'Roarty 44:15
have, oh my gosh, Pinterest kills me, but

Sarah MacLaughlin 44:17
that's a whole nother show, no recipes or anything, just parenting articles, that's it. I will make sure

Casey O'Roarty 44:23
listeners that all the links that Sarah is mentioning are in the show notes. So I have one last question. When you hear joyful courage, what does it mean to you?

Sarah MacLaughlin 44:35
I love that question. I love the name of your organization. It is so wonderful to me. It means, I think my association with courage is that it is in the face of hardship, and so I love the fact that it is a total turn on that go to view of courage, that that you would could be joyful about facing something. Thing that might be difficult. And it's exactly the crux of what I was talking about earlier, of of having children build that resilience muscle that they would, they would be as open to a feeling of disappointment as they would be to a feeling of joy, because it's just a feeling, and that you would, it would be easy and joyful to courageously feel your feelings. That's what was my take. Oh, I

Casey O'Roarty 45:21
love that. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Oh, my goodness, thank

Sarah MacLaughlin 45:27
you. It was a pleasure. And listeners, you should know

Casey O'Roarty 45:29
that Sarah is in Maine, and I'm at Washington State, and I think it's really cool that we get to have a conversation like this and be so geographically far away. So and how many kids do you have?

Sarah MacLaughlin 45:41
I have one son. He's seven and a half. Okay,

Casey O'Roarty 45:44
I meant to ask that way earlier in the conversation, awesome. Well, you have a beautiful day, my friends.

Sarah MacLaughlin 45:50
Thank you very much. You too. Casey,

Casey O'Roarty 45:59
there you have it, folks. Sarah McLaughlin, I can't believe she's all the way in Maine. I completely would love to meet up and have some coffee with her. I would love to meet up and have coffee with all of you. Actually, maybe we can make that happen. I am going to be in Albuquerque later this week doing a teaching parenting, the positive discipline way. Training for parent educators. I am going to be in Boise, Idaho next week, doing that same training, teaching, parenting the positive discipline way. So I am part of the positive discipline Association, and we are training people all around the world to continue to teach and support and facilitate parents on their journey. So if you're in either of those places, hey, let me know. Maybe we can hook up and have some coffee, or local people be sure to get in touch. There are events happening all the time that I'm a part of, and I'd love to see you and talk to you and visit. I am also online a lot, so I'm hoping that everybody's in the live and love with joyful courage Facebook group. It's a great place to support each other, celebrate our challenges and our triumphs. You can email me at Casey, at joyful courage.com, and if you don't already know that, know this. My website, joyful courage.com, has on it all sorts of offers for parents. So of course, there's the podcast, there's the blog, which I need to write more. And I also have some online offers. I have a free chaos to calm. Video Training, I've got joy, a journey to joy, which is a three part series around finding our own Comm, our own center, and creating a practice around that. I have a family meetings. E course, I also have the centered parenting e course, which is a five week e course that is on demand, and you get videos, video trainings. You get audio meditations as well as worksheets. It's all inclusive. It's a really powerful learning experience. I would love for you to check it out or let me know if you have any questions. I'm also excited I have a few more spots for some one on one coaching this spring. So if that is something that interests you and you want to learn more about it, go to my website, www dot joyful courage.com/coaching, you'll get a little bit more information. And you can apply for an exploratory call, where we'll get on the telephone, and I'll answer your questions about coaching, as well as listen to some of your challenges and offer some feedback. So if you're interested, check those things out. And again, I am humbled, honored, amazed that you tune in and listen and appreciate and enjoy the podcast offer. I love it. I love providing it for you, and I'm always, always, always thankful to see the numbers of people who are listening, downloading and giving feedback about the show. So I'm glad that it's helpful to you. And until next time, have a beautiful week. My friends

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