Eps 107: Casey is Solo and Homework is on Fire

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Joyful courage parenting podcast episode 107,

Hey everybody, welcome back to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I'm your host, Casey o'wardy, positive discipline trainer and parent coach, I'm thrilled that you are listening in. If you find yourself laughing, taking notes and or excited about what you hear on the show today, do me a favor and pay it forward. Share this episode with your friends and your family, people that you meet at the library. Your sharing is the reason I'm able to show up for you each week, and I'm so honored to do so, and I know that a lot of you are in mom's groups, tell them about the podcast today is a solo show, so you just get me today. And something that I am really excited about doing more of is being an advocate for podcasts. One of the beautiful things about being a podcaster is being in community with other podcasters. So I'm going to take time every now and then and share with you other shows that you might want to check out. This week, I'm highlighting a show called The intuitive woman podcast, I really appreciate that the host, Tina Conroy's come from, is really similar to mine. She works with women to develop their intuition and connect with their inner guidance and create a passionate spiritual life. Here is Tina sharing about why she podcasts. Oh,

Speaker 1 1:43
yes, hi everyone. Tina, here, I am the producer of the intuitive women podcast, and let me tell you why I podcast. I podcast because each and every woman has intuition. Yes, we are all told that intuition is the sixth sense, and I'm here to tell you is the first sense. Why is intuition so important? Well, intuition is so important because it empowers us to listen to that inner voice, that gut feeling, that spirit, the GPS of the soul, and it is for everyone, not just for the select few, and not just for the gifted. When you listen to your intuition, you can gain clarity, confidence and trust in your inner wisdom and the life we are meant to live is purposeful and beautiful. Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for being a supporter of podcasts.

Casey O'Roarty 2:41
Thank you, Tina. I'm so glad that you are out there doing what you do. You all can check out Tina's Show at www dot get intuit.net, that's G, E, T, dash, i n t u i t.net, or you can find her show the intuitive woman on iTunes. Okay, today's show is going to focus on a share from the live and love with joyful courage community. So you know, sometimes these solo shows I pull directly from our community and tease apart some of the challenges that show up. And the reason that I do this is because we don't have individual challenges. We think we do right? We feel like we're the only ones challenged by what we're challenged by. But in reality, parenting is really a collective experience, so that is why I love to pull straight from our community and play with some of the sharing that goes on there. So this comes from Mama Tanya, and she writes My 11 year old boy just started middle school, and they gave him homework to do over the weekend. He said he didn't think it was fair to have homework on the weekends, which I agree. But on Saturday, he set fire to his homework, took the lighter when no one was watching, went outside like he was going to go play, and set it on fire, burning half the page and dunking it in the pool. When I found the half burned sheet of paper in the pool, I kept my cool, but was obviously shocked that he would react that way to homework. I let him know that I thought it was a poor decision to one light something on fire safety and two refused to do his homework in such a permanent way. Internally, I felt helpless and frantic to solve the problem. Externally, I let him know that I get it. Homework sucks, and I reminded him that he could ask for help. I asked him, What made him set it on fire. Was he feeling overwhelmed or angry, or both? He was visibly upset, both about being caught and about homework. So I didn't preach or press the issue until later that day, when he was calm. I talked. To him about how sometimes we have to do things we don't like, like washing dishes, but we can learn to do it anyway. It doesn't have to be perfect, and we can ask for help. I also explained that between two extremes, one being setting the homework on fire, the other being staying up until midnight, doing homework, neither of which are healthy, that he could find a happy medium. He said he had not done his best and that he would try to do his best this week, I felt like I handled it positively, all in all, but when he told his father and CO parent who lives elsewhere, over the phone, his dad immediately started saying that he wasn't going to send him something previously promised that he would take his computer and phone away if he ever did it again and really went into punishment mode. So what would you do? I thought about saying he couldn't do his electronic time until he completed his homework, or I would give him extra electronic time every time he completed his homework. But I'm super conflicted. I feel like homework issues shouldn't should be dealt with by the teacher, natural consequences. Of course, I want to help the teacher, but not sure how, and that's the end of her share. I asked mama Tanya again if I could use this share on the show, because there was so much here that we can tease apart, right? And before we do that, let's just take a moment to acknowledge the skill and level headed, the headedness that this mom shared. It is so easy to flip out when our kids, especially our adolescents, engage in, you know, what could be considered high risk behavior, right? Mama Tanya, easily could have pulled, been pulled into future tripping a day where she had a pyromaniac on her hands, or the possibility of something going wrong and her son burning the whole neighborhood down, right? I mean, I'm a child of the 80s. I've seen the after school specials about the pyromaniac kids, and I am no stranger to future tripping, that's for sure. This is a classic example of a situation where we can be sidetracked from addressing the actual problem, right? I mean, kids and fire, hello, trigger. So let's really think about this. There are so many things that our kids do in response to how they're feeling, and mostly it's things we wish they wouldn't do right, things like hitting or kicking or swearing or breaking stuff, name calling, lighting things on fire. I mean, all of these things are kind of those impulsive I'm overwhelmed by my emotions. I've got to release them, I don't know how, and it's just like, I mean, I to me, I imagine like a string attached to my belly just kind of pulling me along. It's like their emotions are pulling them along. Or, as you've heard me talk on the podcast, it's that emotional freight train. It's in charge, right? I mean, think about all the things that you do when you are po and that you later regret right, things you say or do, I know it shows up in parenting right? The mistake that we make is assuming that our children are in their rational brain when they're making those decisions to act right, as if they have the capacity to think, Hmm, is this a good idea or not? Right? We think, how could you make that choice, right? Didn't you consider the consequences? Well, I've had some amazing guests on the podcast talk go in depth about the brain. One was marceli Smith Boyle, who was on episode 75 she talked a lot about how brain science really supports positive discipline. And of course, episode 100 I had Tina Bryson on, who is the co author of the whole brain child. So and I talk about the brain a lot, right? And brain development, our kids brains are in development, right? And here's, here's the deal. There is this awesome video online of Dan Siegel, Dr Siegel, he's the other author of whole brain child, and he has this, what do you want to call it? Is it a tool? I guess it's a tool called brain in the palm of the hand. I'll put a link to this in the show notes. So brain in the palm of the hand, you know, you put your fist in the air with your thumb tucked in your fingers, and you this is your brain, right? This is your brain on a good day with plenty of sleep and good food and everything going your way. And then, and the our palm and our wrist is the brainstem. This is where our survival instincts live, freeze, fight, flight, the oldest part of our brain, our thumb is the midbrain.

The limbic system lives here. All of our emotions and memories live here. Fears our amygdala, which is. Our safety radar lives in the midbrain, and then our fingers over our thumbs. This is the cortex where all the you know, all of our standard thinking happens, all of our senses send messages up to the brain through our cortex, and then our fingernails are our prefrontal cortex. And our prefrontal cortex is like the switchboard of the brain. It's the it's, it's, it's the most important well, it's not the most important part, but it's where all of our executive functioning happens. So remorse lives here, being able to read a situation, assess a situation, those skills live here. Relationship skills live here. Um, you know, empathy, morality, problem solving, all of those things live in the prefrontal cortex. And do you know how long it takes for the prefrontal cortex to be fully developed, 25 years, give or take, a few months, right? If in and that's in a typically developing brain where it's had optimal, you know, optimal environment for growth. And so what happens is, sometimes everything's great, we're feeling good, and we have access to our developing prefrontal cortex. And then sometimes things go really wonky, like, for Tanya's son, he gets his homework and he gets home and not to mention he just started middle school. So there's probably some underlying like, oh God, you know, emotional, social stuff happening, transitions happening. It's a bigger school, more kids, different classes, plus puberties right there inside of him, right? And all of these things he's not fully aware of these things happening. What happens is it's like this underlying energy that exists inside of his body. So it's like being on edge already, right? And then he comes home and mom says, How's school? And he says, I can't believe it. I have homework. This is so stupid. And what happens to the brain if you flip your fingers up and what's exposed is that thumb, we lose our prefrontal cortex. We're all emotion, we're all limbic system, and we're on the emotional freight train, right? All we have is how we feel. We don't have the ability to think like actually, you know what? It's probably only going to take me about 20 minutes. I can probably find 20 minutes this weekend to do this. Or, you know what, my grades are important to me, so I'm going to make sure that I do my homework right. We don't have that kind of logical thinking skills. In the moment when our lid is flipped. All we've got is how we feel, right and so you know, back to mama Tanya and her post, it would be super easy to get sucked into the fact that her son set his homework on fire,

and to be really freaked out by that, right? But what mama Tanya recognized, and what I was super thrilled to see show up in the feedback that she received from the group, was that the problem was her 11 year old's lack of skills to navigate the expectation of homework and really navigate the disappointment that he had homework, right? The overwhelm that he was going to have to figure out how to get it done, right, not to mention just that underlying, like I said, that underlying discomfort around, oh, man, things are kind of a big deal now, right? Things are different in middle school, so there's all sorts of opinions about homework and its effectiveness for kids and learning, and I'm not going to debate that those of us that have our kids in public school really have to figure out how to support our children to be successful inside of that system, as well as help them to advocate for themselves. Now I am all for running for the school board, going to school board meetings, meeting with the teacher to find out how you can be a team around homework, like do what you need to do. But ultimately, if our kids are in the public school system, it's our responsibility to help them to navigate that so that they can feel successful. Right? So I really think that Tanya was on the right track. When she got curious, she said, I asked him, What made him set it on fire. Was he feel I'm sorry. I have to laugh. I'm sure it was not funny Tanya when this happened, but I'm just imagining my own love and 1111, year old, setting something on fire. And I would hope that I would be as graceful as you or Tanya. So she asked him, What made him set it on fire. Was he feeling overwhelmed or angry or both? Now here's the beautiful thing about curiosity. Curiosity really allows us to move past assumptions and to get into. Our child's world to find out about their experience directly from them. Curiosity also requires us to let go of the idea that we know all the answers and what it is that our kids need. And if you are like me, and you think you know everything, and if everybody would just listen to you, the world would be so much better. You know that it's really hard to let go of the possibility that we have all the answers. It's hard to let go and to consider that our perspective is not necessarily everyone's perspective, but we got to do it, right? We got to do it. I promise you, if you do it, you'll learn so much about yourself and your kids. And I really love how Tanya, you know, she shares that she felt really good about her response until her son's father reacted from a place of punishment. And isn't that so typical, right? We feel good about something parenting wise, and then someone else jumps in and strikes our insecurity cord, just enough to make us question ourselves. I mean, it happens from the very beginning, right? You feel good about nursing. You feel good about co sleeping, until somebody's like, Well, did you ever hear that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah happened, and this is how it the result. Or don't, you know, that's not good for babies, right? I mean, there are time after time after time where outside voices can come in. And really, really, I don't want to say, inspire us, but really, kind of invite us to question ourselves. And sometimes, you know, sometimes that's helpful to get an outside perspective, and a lot of times it's not, especially when we are moving from our own intuition and we are making choices around parenting that we feel really solid in, right? And then somebody comes in and says, Hey, that kid needs a consequence, that kid needs to get smacked, that kid needs right? And then it's like, Oh, does he I don't think he does, but gosh, right. So trusting the process in the positive parenting world can be really challenging sometimes, when there are other voices that are challenging the choices that we're making. And yeah, so again, just recognizing how hard that is. And in the end, Tanya asked, What would you do? What would you do? Right? And she was questioning the electronics and and the punishment and what should she do? And Tanya got so many supportive answers from our community again, well done, all of you. And what I noticed again is that they all stuck with the heart of the issue, building skills, skills for navigating homework right. Middle School is a huge transition, socially, emotionally, physically, like I just said, and the expectations increase academically, and you know, there's facts and figures that our kids need to learn to move on to higher level classes, but what's really happening in middle school is that they are learning and practicing life skills along the way, like when I think about keeping my eyes on the prize, that's what I think about. I think about life skills. Because anytime I start a parenting class, or any positive discipline trainer starts a parenting class, we do, we make two lists, and you've heard me talk about this, but you know, the first list is all the challenges we're dealing with, and the second list is, what are the life skills that you hope that your child will one day learn to embody? Right? And you know, naming the 50 capitals and all their state or 50 states and all their capitals never makes it on that list. Mastering geometry never makes it on that list. What? What makes it on that life skills list is, you know, things like time management, organization, communication, problem solving, skills, creativity, humor, adventure, right? Patience, humility, self control, self regulation, homework actually can be an opportunity to practice some of those skills, right, skills that include, again, responsibility, ownership, organization, time management, accountability, self advocacy, resilience, perseverance. Nobody wants to sit down and do homework, and every time we do, we're practicing perseverance. We're practicing resilience. We're getting better at those things. So it's bigger. It's bigger than the homework, right? It's bigger than than what at the. Surface becomes challenging for kids, right? Sorry, I'm totally distracted because my speaking of middle school boys, I've got one. He hasn't started yet, but it's just days away. So Tanya, I will be with you in that transition, you know. And the life skill list. It goes on and on, the things that kids develop over time, through navigating school, you know, the list goes on and on. We don't want to assume that our children have these skills because they don't. They're skills that are in development, you know. And that's another thing that gets in our way. I think it gets in teachers ways too. Is when we think, you know, they're well, they're 11 now they should be able to, you know, keep their backpack organized, or keep their folder organized, or keep track of their homework. Yeah, you know, we can hope that they've mastered that by age 11. However, if we parents have been doing have been taking on that job of organizing backpacks and making sure homework is in the backpack and they go off to middle school, guess what? They don't magically get that skill. So they're going to need to be supported in developing that. And just like mama Tanya got curious with her son, we can all get curious with our kids to help them, help themselves, find tools and systems and routines that work to hold them in a way that they can be successful. And from this place, we can look for solutions together. Right now, do we need to take away electronics until homework is done? For some kids, this is really important for others. Doesn't really matter. Well, how do you know? Well, is your child spending two hours a day playing video games and no time on homework? Well, then you have a problem to solve, right? Is your child unwinding with electronics and then fighting you when it's time to get off and transition to homework? Then you've got a problem to solve. I really appreciate, um, Mama Liz, chiming in and talking about the when then concept so it could sound like when your homework is done. Then you can have time on the computer right, when, when your chores are finished. Then you can grab your phone and check in with your friends on social media, right when? And then it gives our kids hope, and it holds the structure and the boundaries that this is going to happen, right? This is going to happen. Homework is going to happen, chores are going to happen. And some of you might be saying, Okay, this is all well and good Casey, but what about consequences? And that's a great question. So

consequences? I was just writing about consequences to my membership group because this month, the month of August, this show will go out at the very end of August. But this month, we are focused on solutions. And one of the things that my one of my favorite mentors, Jody McVitie, says, is that solutions are always consequences. Consequences are not always solutions, right? So we always want to be in forward movement towards solving problems, looking at what the life skills are that are missing, figuring out some kind of system or plan to help our kids in growing and practicing those life skills in a way that solves problems right? And so when we do that, that is a consequence. When we when kids are held accountable and have to make things right, that's a consequence. When kids get behind in school and have, you know, eight different homework assignments missing and one week to get them in, finding a system to help them navigate, that that's a consequence, right? And it might look like, gosh, you know what? We're not going to turn the screens on this week because you really need some time to catch up, right? It sounds different like that than it, and it's a whole different vibe than well, you are behind on your homework, so no screen time for you, right? That doesn't feel connected, it doesn't feel helpful, it's not supportive. And then it turns our kids from, yeah, you're right, I gotta get this done to oh my gosh, mom and dad are so horrible, and I am not sitting here saying that, sharing that the first way, like, hey, I want to support you, so we're going to keep screens off this week. Means that our children are then going to respond by saying, Oh, great, thanks. That's so helpful. I'm so glad that you're not gonna let me on my screen this week, right? But guess what? It's okay for them to not be that excited, right by that. It's okay for them to feel uncomfortable. It's okay for them to not be so happy when we set boundaries. Yeah. Uh, like that, and it's okay for us to be uncomfortable inside of that as well. Right as my friend Sahara mentioned on a post that I made on my personal Facebook page. She said, You know, it's time for parents to quit worrying so much about their children liking them, and to start being okay with building their own resilience, right? Building their own resilience for when kids are not so happy with us. So that's what I say about consequences. Now I am you know. So what Tanya said about the her son's father and his approach, like that, feels really a lot more like a punishment, like you did something wrong. Now I'm going to do something to you, and that's a short term that's a short term fix, and it's not even really a fix. It's basically you did the wrong thing. Now I need you to feel bad about it, in hopes that that's going to be enough, right, that that's going to be enough for next time, so that Tanya's son can navigate his overwhelm in a way that's more effective, but really that's only going to happen if we look for solutions and we support the our kids In finding systems and routines that help them with, you know, self regulation and self control and navigating the big emotions that show up in life. So that's what I got for today. That's what I got. I'm super grateful for Tanya that she took the time to share this post and that she was willing to go there and be vulnerable. Not everybody wants to write a post on a parenting group talking about how their kids set something on fire, right? So good for you. Tanya, thank you for sharing with all of us. This is a collective journey. We appreciate you. All right, everybody. I want to make sure that you know which I know that you know, because I've been talking about this for the last few weeks, I've got some really amazing, amazing offers coming out this fall, live workshops, live workshops in the Pacific Northwest that I want to make sure that you know about, Specifically today, because we are just a few days away from the early bird price going away for the mother's journey to joyful courage. So if you're interested in spending the day with a group of moms that aren't that are deep, diving into the purpose of their parenting journey, if you're looking for the opportunity to be held and supported as you explore what's keeping you from being that mom that you want to be for your kids. If you're looking for tools and practices that are going to support you in being more connected, more connected to your family and showing up better, then you're going to want to come join me. You're going to want to join me this fall, a mother's journey to joyful courage is an invitation for deep personal inquiry, while learning tools for deepening relationships with our family, resulting in more cooperation and ease in our home. The first of these trainings is happening in Bellingham, Washington, September 24 that's three weeks from now, and following that, two weeks later, I'm going to be in Seattle on October 7. Two weeks after that, I will be in Portland on october 22 all of these trainings, there's six hours in the room, right? And then each one the all the gals that are in the room, sorry, guys, this is a mom's This is a mom thing. All the gals that are in the room will be invited into four weeks of follow up, facilitated coaching calls that are designed to support you in integrating what you learn in the room into your life. I mean, I love workshops, right? I'm a total workshop junkie. I love experiences. I'm really good at that. I show up, I give it my all. I love to reflect where I need support is in the integration, and I know that I'm not the only one out there that feels like that. So I wanted to make sure that with this offer, it comes with four weeks of facilitated group coaching calls or group calls right where we're going to have topics for discussion. We're going to talk about what's working, what's not working. You're going to be able to get support from the group and from me. Again, the early bird price for Bellingham and Seattle ends on September 1. So if you want to get, you know, $50 off on the tuition, you need to register before the first and if you're thinking, oh man, that'd be fun, but I don't live in the Pacific Northwest, you can fly in. You can fly in. I've already had someone from Southern California that signed up for the Portland training, and she is making it a weekend for herself. She's saying yes to self and soul care. So. So she's flying in, and then she gets to be a part of the group calls from the comfort of her home. So don't be afraid to travel for this, because it's gonna be really powerful, and I know that you will take away so much. So invest in yourself, invest in your family. Be a yes, you can find out more information and registration information at www dot joyful courage.com/ mother's journey. All right, check it out. Links in the show notes. I want you there. I am always so happy to show up for you. So much gratitude for you. Listening in each week. If this is your first time listening to the joyful courage podcast, oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you. Welcome. There are so many more shows for you to listen to. I hope that you have the opportunity to dig around in the podcast library and listen to more. And those of you that are my faithful listeners every week, thank you. Thank you so much. I am humbled by your support. Next week, you're going to be hearing from Meredith masonny, from that's inappropriate. Do you know Meredith? She her videos go viral and they're hilarious. She did a video a couple years ago for Mother's Day. All I really want for Mother's Day, like an open letter to her husband and everything ended with enema mimosa. Oh my gosh, she's a riot. She's going to come on and talk about the importance of humor and community on the parenting journey, plus her story to you know how she got to be this, you know, this internet famous person, right? Are you listening to the podcast through the website, or are you a subscriber? I want to know, because there are perks for being a subscriber to the podcast, and I want to make sure that you know how easy it is to subscribe. Shows magically show up on your device as soon as they're published, right? And I publish every Tuesday at 12:30am

that's when my shows go live. You get access to all the shows bonus episodes included. So there's been episodes in the past where they haven't necessarily been posted to my website, but they always go through my iTunes, right? So you get access to all those and you get to feel super cool when you say, Oh yeah, I'm a subscriber. I'm a subscriber to the joyful courage podcast, right? So think about it, and if you need support and knowing how to do it, I'm happy to help you as always. Humongous. Thanks to my team. Chris Mann at pod shaper, Thank you, Chris man, I totally appreciate you. I can't believe you and your family are moving to Budapest or Bangladesh. I can't ever remember where you're moving. I know it starts with A, B and my the behind the scenes. Mama Anna for all she does in support of my work. Anna, thank you for everything you do, big, huge. Thanks to all of you my community for offering such juicy questions to ponder and consider. Thank you specifically to Tanya for today's content. If you are not already a member of the live in love with joyful courage Facebook group, get over there. Get over there and join us. There's great conversations happening, and I just have to say, I'm really proud of the community that we've created there. It is safe. The support that people receive is just comes from a place of love. And I'm just, I love our community over there, so go check it out. You can also follow joyful courage on Instagram, I have a business page and on Twitter. Also, if you are haven't already, you can sign up for my newsletter, which comes out every Tuesday. It lets you know, hey, new podcast, plus any new offers, you can sign up for my newsletter at www dot joyful, courage.com, there should be a little black bar at the top of the page where you can click for subscribing to my newsletter. All right. Well, my friends, that is it for this week. I am super excited that the school bus is coming back to our neighborhood next week. I feel like this is the true New Year, right? I mean, January is fun and everything. But September, school year starting really feels like all right, I'm gonna set some goals, new routines. Feels so good if you're with me. I know a lot of you, your kids have already started. I am jealous. Every single one of those first day of school pictures is like a dagger, not really, but it does seem like it takes forever for our school district to kick it into gear. Big. Love to all of you. Take care of yourself this week. Love on your kids. Love on your partners. Drink lots of water, maybe do some yoga meditation. I'll see you again next week.