Eps 397: Parenting teens while staying connected with Andee Martineau

What does joyful courage mean to you

Oh, this is so good.  Courage is a word that I used to think was this easy emotion, but the more I’ve explored what emotions are – it takes a lot of courage to have courage!  That doesn’t accurately describe it, but it can bring up a lot of negative emotions to be courageous.  We have to really confront ourselves.  We have to be willing to look at the parts of ourselves that aren’t so pretty and uncover those parts to be courageous, and to be willing to look at the parts maybe of our kids that we don’t want to look at either.  When I think of being courageous but having it be in this joyful framework, it’s learning to enjoy the process of continuing to evolve and grow as a parent, which is a really beautiful journey.  I’m glad you’re talking about it; I don’t think it’s talked about enough.  Joyful courage is a beautiful phrase.

 

Resources

Andee’s Instagram 

Andee’s Website 

Andee’s Free Course 

Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s Website

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Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
parents, love, kids, realise, work, feel, emotions, relationship, mom, interrupt, talking, happened, thought, conditioning, baby powder, andy, tweens, beautiful, experience, brain
SPEAKERS
Andee Martineau, Casey O'Roarty

Casey O'Roarty 00:04
Hey, welcome to the joyful courage podcast a place for inspiration and transformation as we try and keep it together, while parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people and when we can focus on our own growth, and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact. My name is Casey already, I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent lead at spreadable. I am also the mama to a 20 year old daughter and 17 year old son walking right beside you on this path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting. This show is meant to be a resource to you and I work really hard to keep it real, transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is an interview and I have no doubt that what you hear will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please pass the link around snap a screenshot posted on your socials or texted to your friends. Together we can make an even bigger impact on families all around the globe. I'm so glad that you're here. Enjoy the show.

Casey O'Roarty 01:25
Hi, listeners. Welcome back to the podcast really excited as usual to introduce you to my guest today. Her name is Andy mark now, Andy is a mom of six a reformed yeller a best selling author and the creator of connect method parenting a breakthrough parenting framework that leverages connection as the primary mechanism for influencing children you guys know, she's speaking my language. Her approach helps parents discover why their kids don't listen, and shows them the step by step process of regaining influence, and building relationships that will last a lifetime with hands on experience raising her own kids, ages 14 to 23. And over 10 years of experience in parenting coaching. Andy has helped over 10,000 parents learn the parenting methodology. Yeah, 10,000. Well done. Thank you, and the parenting methodology that gets their kids to want to listen. Hi, Andy, I am so happy to welcome you to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I'm so excited to talk about it. And knowing that we both share similar perspectives on parenting, it's gonna be a fun conversation or you know, now well, and it's so validating, right. Like, it's so valid. I'm hoping it's validating for me, I'm not waiting for the listeners to be like, oh, yeah, it's not just Casey, right? claim to be the only person that's talking about this. So it's so fun. When I get to talk to people who are, you know, that influence piece right influences everything. That's the most powerful tool we have. Yeah, for influencing behaviour, right is that relationship and that connection? So I would love it if you would be willing to share a little bit about your story of doing the work that you do and your bio I mentioned you are a reformed yeller. Yeah. What was your wake up call? Yeah. And learning? Yeah. Um, you could say it all started with something I now called the Great baby powder blizzard of 2006. It was this moment where everything in the morning seemed to be going fine. I had five of my six kids. I was pregnant with number six at the time, and I had six kids in eight years. So it was just really fast. And I put the pressure on, you know, I had to figure out how to do this. And I was failing at the time, but this particular moment, I remember thinking I was doing a good job until I realised it had been 30 minutes till my I'd heard my younger kids make a peep. So I peeked into the playroom, which was right off the kitchen, cuz I had done the laundry, the baby was asleep, all the things it was like, Yes, I'm doing it. You know, all the things I thought meant I was a successful mom, you know, and I walk into the playroom and they had found the Costco size bottle of baby powder and my now 20 year old says, Oh, Mom, we also got the big thing of flour in there too. But my brain was made because the smell I don't even know if they do baby powder anymore. I think it's a hazard or something. But at the time it was so long ago. You know, they had downst Everything. And we called it the blizzard because we were in Arizona so that, you know, blizzards don't happen in Arizona, but it looked like a snowstorm had come through. Everything was by and destroyed. And I mean, I had many moments of yelling and just losing my mind. And I did the same thing in a situation I started just going right into that consequence punishment, you know, taking things away, you know, experience and there was something that happened oh my he was about three or four at that time. He's now my

Andee Martineau 05:00
team just so crazy, it's been that long, but he was so excited to show me, you know, when they're little toddlers, they think their messages are these beautiful creations, you know, really, those grin fell to, you know, just despair and he started crying. And I had this moment, this magical pause moment, I took me years to figure out, but it was that moment where I was able to pause and relax, and apologise for yelling, and I remember I knelt down and I looked at them in the eyes and gave him a hug actually took a picture of the moment, because I was able to regain my composure, and what I thought would take six or 12 hours to clean up and some of the things, you know, granted, never recovered, like the DVD player and never worked again, you know, right. But what did happen was this shift, and that was the moment for me, where I decided I've got to figure out how to do that every time, like what caused that? How did I drop into that space? You know, it was like a little magical moment, you know, in that experience, but I wanted to make it reproducible, and figure out what was it. And yeah, it shot me on this deep dive of trying to figure out another way to parent because what I had found where the punishments and the, you know, the rewards, and all of those things would happen regularly. And they would have short term impact, you know, they never were sustainable. But what then always called disconnection, but in this moment, I could put my brain, you know, when I put my brain to it, I could realise there was something different, our relationships grew stronger, the cleanup happened faster. So I didn't know what it was called. But I'm like, There's something there. And I'm My background is in nursing. And I saw I wanted I like science and research and data. So I was on this quest of what can I find that will prove this? What studies have been done? What is this called, I don't even know what this is called. But there's gotta be validity. But I needed to find in my brain at least at the time, the validity to it and the process for it so that I could justify it and have confidence in it and then figure it out myself. Because it Yeah, it just wasn't working to dive into the I call it corrective parenting, which, you know, yeah. It's not that we don't need to give feedback to our kids. But that corrective typically is, you know, a little bit laced with frustration. Yeah, judgement and frustration.

Casey O'Roarty 07:18
Yeah, I have a super vivid memory of like, being so pissed at my three year old, my sweet little kid.

Andee Martineau 07:29
My story too, I know.

Casey O'Roarty 07:30
Yes. And like realising, oh, first of all, having compassion for my mom, right, who was a young and reactive and knew what she knew and didn't know what she didn't know. And But realising like, Oh, this is this is actually conditioning showing up. And I had been able to say, I don't want to do that. But realising like, oh, this lives inside of me, yes. Not enough just to say, I don't want to do that. Right, you know, and then fast forward, right, doing all the work during that younger years in the elementary years, fast forward into the teen years. For me, it has felt like, Okay, I got it all handle, right. And then the teen stuff shows up. It's like, oh, shit, I still have quite a bit of conditioning living inside of me. So what have you noticed, you know, about your personal work and your personal experience? Because, you know, I talked to a lot of people. And I think one thing that I always want to make really clear to the listeners is, it's a daily commitment, right? Yeah, it is. It is. I don't ever want anyone to hear my story and think, oh, yeah, you know, I got trained and positive discipline and everything was great after that. Yeah. Right. Like, is commitment. It's a choosing in sometimes multiple times a day. Did you find that there was like, the grand finale of the teen years? Like how did all of your work show up to their, like brain development, and individuation and stuff? Oh,

Andee Martineau 09:06
this is fun, because I feel like this is when you start to it changes, like you said, they become teens, and they're just hormones and they need to pull away and they need to become autonomous because I have now four of my six, I just one of my kids just had a birthday, just last week. And so now I have four of my six that are adults, you know, as far as the world, you know, the 18 Plus, I'm in brain development, my

09:28
car. Yeah.

Andee Martineau 09:30
Well, and if you look at the brain development, it's like 25 for females 30 For males, I mean, but a grind to the law. They're now adults. And what I have found is that the more I have, well, I want to just circle back to what you're saying. It is really our work. You know, like we put all this responsibility on her, like teens to manage. This is easy to do, right? We want our teens to manage our emotions for us. Like don't do that. It just makes me upset. Like they're not gonna have you know, But the more we can own our emotional state, the way we are thinking and interpreting and judging, hopefully less judging, you know, bullet we're making it mean what they do. They just, it's such a joy to parent, a teen in so many ways because they're fun. And when they feel, at least in my experience, and most, you know, moms I've worked with and dads, that when we lean into that trust, and when I say trust them, doesn't mean we let them just do whatever, you know, it's, you know, put aside our responsibility as a parent, but it's really beautiful when they feel trusted. And we really believe that they are these brilliant, you know, humans that have amazing potential, that the good choices they'll make. And when they make about, you know, a choice, that's maybe not as beneficial to their growth, how they course correct stick quickly, and they see it when they feel supported, and not judged by us parents, which, you know, sometimes it comes out, just like you said, we have that conditioning society has taught us the way to do it, and our parents had that same thing happen, you know, conditioning for them, and they were doing their best. And so when we mess up, and we slip back into it, just having integrity and honesty with them and saying, Hey, sorry, that was and owning our stuff, you know, as quickly as we can, not over functioning, you know, for them, but being honest about I'm not 100% on my stuff, I'm not going to put that on you, they really respect that, especially as they get older and they you know, that prefrontal comes on and they're starting to, you know, have more rational thinking and all of those things, it really pays off with the team's when you've laid the foundation. And it's not perfect, but it's really beneficial. Really, really beneficial.

Casey O'Roarty 11:38
Yeah, what you're saying reminds me of like, when parents will say, Oh, you know, the team, your show up, and all of a sudden, the parents don't know anything. And when I think about that, and I play with that, it's not so much that we don't know anything, but it's the ruse is over, in our teens are aware that we don't know everything, right? Right, and that we are imperfect. And so to stand on, you know, to stand in this idea of I am the you know, I know everything, and you should just do it the way I'm telling you, like, that's really bumping up against what the teams know to be true, which is true. Like, ultimately, we don't know everything. And, you know, I just what I really enjoying, and it's taking a minute to get here, what I'm really enjoying is just watching my kids pick their path, you know, and to, you know, there's been some little branches of like, oh, maybe I'll try this. And then like, ooh, not gonna, yeah, that actually doesn't work for me. Right? Or, you know, that didn't really work out very well for me. But just watching them, like, collect experiences, and then learn, have them in their back pocket to learn from and to reference and to remember, I love that. And I love that. So when I think about trust first, like, send me that message. Like you said, I believe in you. I know you're capable. And, you know, I think that trust for me is about I trust that whatever you do, you're gonna learn from Yeah, right. Yes, you know, The Good, the Bad, and the ugly. And I am grateful that the damage

Andee Martineau 13:20
it does get more as they get older. I mean, the damage can increase.

Andee Martineau 13:25
Yeah, like that it

Casey O'Roarty 13:26
can feel like that I dug into your Instagram is one of the research spaces for me to check you out, Andy. And I so appreciate that. As a coach, you are talking so much about the internal experience of parenting. Really, it's about being humans in the world, right? It's so deep and big and so much more useful than, like, three tips for limiting screen.

Andee Martineau 13:53
I know like, yeah, you know,

Casey O'Roarty 13:55
I mean, great. Yes, we have to talk about screens, because they're a big pain in the ass. But even that, how are we showing up to those conversations? Who are we being with our kids in response, you know, and who are we being in the face of our kids response to talking about screens to talking about curfews to talking about, you know, big things like sex and drugs and substances, and recognising who we be is so much more important that, like, what am I supposed to do? Or what am I supposed to say? Because that's where things can get really muddy, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit about that. How you support people in recognising that internal experience.

Andee Martineau 14:37
Yeah, that conversation that's happening in their head. It's so important. I'm so glad you're bringing this up. I'm so glad you noticed it on my feed too, because I wasn't little you know, when I first started sharing, you know what I was learning with people. I was a little hesitant because to talk about, you know, their internal stories that they were having in the meetings because I never want any mom to feel like they're intentionally trying to be this way. Because it's it's just conditioning. It's our nervous systems reactions. It's the way we were raised and all of those things. So I always say, as we look, internally, we have to do it so kindly, and with so much compassion, really understanding, we're doing the best we can. And if I don't like the results I'm getting, then I might want to move that up a few notches. But I first have to understand where I am. It's a map, right? I can see really clearly if someone's like, I, you know, you want to have great relationships with your teenagers or you're tall or whatever you want them to want to listen to you. I can say yes. But if I don't know where I am right now, there's no way I'm going to get to that destination. You know, Google Maps is not very helpful if it can't figure out where I am. And so this is the power I think of understanding where we are. So the way I break it down is I have a framework I call steer, and it's not spelled correctly spelled wrong. So it's Ste AR, so I do realise it's spelled wrong. This isn't a not a, that I'm missing, especially in column one. I want to point that out. I mean, they totally can. The grammar beliefs can point it out. But they're, it's intentional, I'm intentionally misspelling it. But the way I like to help mom start to understand this is to look at a situation that didn't turn out, well actually could go either way. But typically, it's the situations that didn't turn out the way we wanted them to turn out, you know, something happened. And at the end, you know, there was more distance in the relationship than there was, you know, before.

Andee Martineau 16:36
And so I start with the s, which is situation, so we look at just the facts, and I try to distil it down to facts that can be proven and agreed upon by a large group of people. So no adjectives No, take away all the descriptive words possible. Like to say like in a court of law, Could everyone agree, you know, this is a table, we're like, yes, we could agree this this table, but it's a beautiful table. I don't know, some people might think it's beautiful. Some people might not like that style of table. So just being very clear. And that helps distil down to what actually happened and takes the story out of it. And then I say, Okay, now that we have the facts of the situation, then we can go to the second part of steer, which is the thought and so the thought is the meaning. And there's no shame. I'm always like, moms, there's no shame, like, get let that toddler brain come out, you know, and v as you know, just unfiltered and it might sound really immature. And that's exactly what we need to see. Because that subconscious brain, those neural pathways that have been entrenched because of social isolation, because of conditioning, because of all sorts of things. So we look at the thought, so

Casey O'Roarty 17:41
I'm gonna pause you so some other thoughts might be right, like, how dare they? Yeah, they're so rude life. They're so rude. They're so clueless. Right judgments, right? Lots of judgement, to judging criticism, okay, right.

Andee Martineau 17:55
They should do their homework, they shouldn't be more responsible, all of those kinds of things. And those are just in a ditch. They're gonna be dead and they're gonna be homeless if they don't go to school. Right? All losers. Yeah, the worst case scenario, lots of catastrophizing. Moms brains are amazing at catastrophizing situations. So the thought that comes almost instinctually, as soon as that situation happens, but I want us to help moms say like, they're different, right? Because there's options. And so, but once we can trace the thought that they had, then the emotion that is linked to that thought, which they might have three or four thoughts, but if they had a thought, like, He's so rude, they're probably not going to feel peaceful. So we want to be like, what is the thought, you know, that is linked, and everyone's a little different. And it doesn't have to be, you know, 100% accurate, it's just your best hypothesis of or memory or descript way you can describe the feeling. And, you know, we can go into where they're feeling in the body and the sensation of it as well. But at least describe the word you would name it. And then we trace it

Casey O'Roarty 18:58
to I'm gonna pause you for a second. Yeah. What I noticed in my work is we talk a lot about thoughts feelings decision. Yeah, yeah. And in positive discipline, it comes from Adlerian theory is yes,

Andee Martineau 19:10
yes. Yeah. Love theory. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 19:13
And I noticed working with people, humans, that we are not very good at naming our emotions.

Andee Martineau 19:19
No, no, right. The first one is usually

Casey O'Roarty 19:21
why I feel really frustrated. Yeah. Yeah. And that doesn't really give us very much information. Right, frustrated, doesn't really dig in. So how do you encourage people to broaden their vocabulary around emotions? Yeah,

Andee Martineau 19:40
great question. There's a couple of different ways one is just starting to pay attention. So many of us just literally haven't paid attention or it's been so uncomfortable that we intentionally push it aside. unconsciously. So paying attention. I actually will give there's, I'm sure you use them too. But there's a motion wills and there's just a lists of emotions, because our emotional vocabulary is pretty low. So just even talking about it. And sometimes when someone just sees a list of emotions, all of a sudden, they'll say, oh, it's more irritation or annoyance or actually resent. I'm feeling a lot of resentment, you know. And so then we can get it dialled in a little bit more, but they've just gotten accustomed, like you said, to calling it frustration or something, you know, anger, which is fine, but like, let's dive it in. So just practice, I tried to stay every day, some of the moms I work with, you know, try to just document or write down some of the i columns, stairs, which I'm explaining right this, like, see if you can write down some and just start to notice what those emotions are. And then I love saying, Where is it in your body? You know, because it's the somatic part is so important. And something I feel in at least Western society is a little underdeveloped most of the time. And so a lot of times, they're like, I have no idea where it is in my body. I'm like, Well, if we stopped for a minute, and just pay attention, and we can all find it, but typically, it takes practice, just like anything else. If we haven't done it very much, then it makes sense that it's hard to get clear on that. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 21:12
So situation, thoughts, emotions,

Andee Martineau 21:16
right. And then I just like to trace those to the action. So I love Gordon Neufeld. He's a developmental psychologist, I just think he has just done such beautiful work in this field. And he talks about how emotions are the engine to maturation there, the I like to think of him as the energy right. And so when you put it in the context of like going to the actions in this part of the steer, it's, you have this emotional reaction to the story or the thought you have, and they're fueling these actions you're taking. So everything you're doing is fueled, or I like to say flavoured season, whatever you want to call it, scented, smells, stinks of your irritation. That's why going back to what you mentioned at the beginning of the call, that's why three tips to getting your kids off the screen isn't enough, because it's the words, I could say the same words, with the same script from a place of irritation, and from a place of maybe compassion or confidence, or commitment, totally different energy. So it's not the words we say, it's the energy or the emotion that's behind the words that matter. And our kids can map that I talked to sounds like you probably can relate. But moms are like, No, I was totally, you know, I had a smile, and I was using a soft voice. And but like underneath, they are boiling, you know, boiling, and I'm like, oh, but your kids can see through that. They can see through that. And it doesn't, it doesn't feel the same as when, if we can get you to a place where you can neutralise the fact that they got on the screen or overrode the password. It's not saying that was okay. It's like, let's just neutralise it so that you can intentionally create a belief and a thought, and then the emotion and the actions, you know, that will limit that behaviour or help put some safeguards in place. So yeah, so then you have the actions, and then all of that ends up creating this result, which is basically, it's proof of the thought it's the you know, the outcome of your actions. It's your life. It's the interactions you have with your kids. So it's really just a way to pick apart or, you know, pull things apart of what's happening already, in a concrete way. Because we have to be aware and see something to be able to shift it.

Casey O'Roarty 23:30
Yeah. And I love that. I love that model. And I think so I like to talk about. So where do we interrupt? So if we're looking for a different results? Where in steer? Yeah, where's the interruption? Because we're the situation's gonna happen. They're gonna override the password. Not because it's there, because it's a puzzle to be solved. Right. Right. Right. We have the thoughts and the emotions. Yeah, we're how do we interrupt?

Andee Martineau 23:58
Yeah, I love this question. Because it can be at any point, what I love to say to moms is wherever you gain the awareness, that's where you interrupt. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So it doesn't matter. You know, even if it's after I'm boiling, I'm so angry that they did this. They feel like oh, my gosh, you're going to, you know, my catastrophize the whole thing. But if I notice, all of a sudden, wait, I have a choice. I have a choice. This isn't I don't have to do this, I can still set a limit. I can still be a responsible parent without doing it with this energy that interrupted the emotions. But if I've already started my baby powder Blizzard, right. My interruption was the actions. I was in the middle of dishing it out. And all of a sudden, I had this pause and I thought, oh, shoot, that's not what I want to create here. And then I was able to create a new thought and start a new steer. And sometimes for a lot of us, especially the beginning for me, and for most of the parents I work with it's after the fact at the beginning, like when they first show for sure it's two days later or that night when they're wanting to cry themselves to sleep because they yelled again. And that's a beautiful place to interrupt to, because you're still interrupting the pattern, and you're still gaining awareness. And so it doesn't matter. It's just a tool of awareness that you're going to start interrupting somewhere. And, you know, eventually, we want to interrupt right at the beginning, right, right after the situation, that's where we want to go. But to your point earlier, this is a daily work, this is daily work. So if I've had a stressful day, if something my kitchen flooded, or you know, some of the other circumstances happened in my life, my nervous system is going to be more stressed, my capacity might be lower. So I might have to just face the fact that I messed up that day and interrupt at the end of the day, or maybe I'll interrupt later in the steer. So we just have to take all that into consideration. And also just be really gentle with ourselves, as we're interrupting. Because the beating ourselves up just retriggers us and then we just stay in our old patterns.

Casey O'Roarty 25:54
So yeah, and something that I've said to clients before, too, is like the fact that you know that how you handle that was not the most useful way to handle it is a positive step. Right? Right. Without awareness. We're just doing the same thing over and over and over. But with awareness, and I love what you said about the interruption could be happening at night, when we're oh my gosh, I can't believe we can interrupt that and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, of course, that happened. Today, I'm in the beginning of trying to show up differently. And it's hard, right? And the pattern, the dance, the conditioning is solid and strong inside me. So this is going to take some time, I don't need to beat myself up right now. And tomorrow will be I'm sure a new opportunity. So I love thinking about the interruption really being at any point. And even, you know what you said like, okay, so you interrupted the emotion or you interrupted the action and you create a new steer, right? Because you are now altering the situation into one where it's shifting into what I'm guessing you would encourage parents to do, which is like, validate, problem solve, right? Listen, get curious, find out all of those tools that you and I both talk about with parents around, you know, like the practical tools, right. But without that internal awareness, that energetic engine, I love that visual, too. You know, those tools fall flat. They do we hear what didn't work.

Andee Martineau 27:31
You're like, Well, you had the wrong fuel. It'd be like putting diesel in a car that takes unleaded, right? It's just like, it's not going to be very effective. Am I completely stopped working?

Casey O'Roarty 27:40
So yeah, well, and on that note, I'm sure that you have clients that say this, I do that talk about how hard this is. Right? Like, okay, I know, I want to change. I know, I need to do things different. So hard, it can feel. I mean, just this morning, I was talking with a mama around this like the relentlessness of it. Right? So how do you support parents and being with the work of shifting their patterns? And styles?

Andee Martineau 28:10
Is such a good question. I mean, the number one thing I try to help moms or dads when I'm working with them at the beginning, is to just get curious, I think that's the superpower that our prefrontal cortex is offer us that doesn't offer all mammals, right other animals is this ability to think about our thinking, and to get curious, and to be the scientists that gets to create hypothesis and ideas of, you know, experiment, I'm going to try this experiment today and see how the kids do or how I do when this happens. And dropping into the curiosity of the journey of parenting. I also love to talk about it as attempts. So because somebody who was were so worried about getting to the I know I am, I'm such a perfectionist, I want to get to the end, I want to make it I want to get it right. But if I can think about it, maybe this is a way to gamify it for myself, but it focuses more on how many attempts it's going to take for me. And it's okay to have infinite number of attempts. Because ultimately, this is my goal, no matter what, even if it takes me two years, my goal is to stop reacting this way. Or to have a better relationship with my children, or to be you know, whatever it is fill in the blank. So if I can extend the timeline, make it an infinite timeline, and get curious and just say, Okay, this is my theory of what will work better today. And I'm okay with how many attempts it's going to take like, maybe it'll take me five attempts, or maybe it'll take me 10 attempts, and it's okay, because it's about the process. It's about the journey. And every time maybe I'm getting closer to where I want to go or maybe I'm backsliding some days but even then I can say, oh, there's a reason if that makes sense. So I love focusing on just the journey trying to get our brains focused on the journey instead of on the yeah, sometimes the relentless the groundhog day feeling day one cuz like, if not changing, you know, what do I do? Right?

Casey O'Roarty 30:02
I mean, we talked so much about kids having like this short term attention span or an eight wanting instant gratification and how, like, how annoying that is? And yeah, you know, well, I tried it once and it didn't work. So it must stop the practice. For me it it's so interesting. Listening to your talk and thinking about what's coming up for me is a quote from Jane Nelson, who wrote all the positive discipline books, and one of the things that she says is, sometimes things get worse before they get better. And our kids, especially if we're coming into this work, you know, later on, maybe they're not toddlers, maybe their school age, or maybe, you know, for a lot of the people that I work with, it's like, oh, my gosh, my kids a teenager, I know, I've got to do this different. I wish I would have done this before. And they're trying this on and doing this work, I have to remind them, you know what, your kiddos are not going to buy it until you can show them with action, that this is truly something that you're working on changing, that you're truly working on showing up differently, and you're gonna have to work for that. Right? You're gonna have to work for that. That's just real. How many times have we declared something to our kiddos and not follow through? I mean, I would love to say, not me, but you know, it's like, okay, well see. And we get to take the challenge as the parent, right, we get to stand up to the challenge and say, Yeah, we will see. And I also think about, you know, one of the things, especially because my people are all parents of tweens and teens, and some of the parents who find their way to me, really in the weeds, and really in the gauntlet of some tough, tough teen years. And and one of the things that I try to remind people to because I was under the illusion, that, well, I'm going to raise my kids with positive discipline, the teen years probably aren't going to be that hard for me. Right, lo and behold, the teen years, I've been very challenging minor, 17 and 20, my 20 year olds doing great everybody's heard are all about my 20 year olds, so I won't go into it. But we had some tough years.

Casey O'Roarty 32:19
And I think it's important to remember too, that even when we're doing all the things writing or paying attention to steer, and we're interrupting our patterns, and we're taking care of ourselves, and you know, we're noticing and conscious of our internal experience, even then, things could be falling apart with our teenagers, right. And I just want to say that out loud to people that are listening, who are like, I do the things that I'm trying to things. One of the results that I strive for in parenting is feeling good about how I've navigated something, not putting all of the weight in, and then my kid did what I said, right like that. Yeah. But really, like, navigate that in a way that felt really good to me. Am I still feeling connected to my kiddo? Right? Was I able to handle their hard emotions and just be with them in it instead of trying to fix it? Which is my pattern of like, Yeah, this is a lot for me, let's just fix it, or make it go away? Yeah, yeah. So what are your thoughts about that?

Andee Martineau 33:23
I love all of that. This idea of learning how to not validate our success as parents with our children's behaviour, or their successes, it's so important, it's so so so important to stop thinking that we can control another human, we cannot control another human and I love asking myself, at the end of the day, or after maybe a difficult interaction, or if one of my kids really struggling and my heart wants to just make it all better. And I want it to go away. And I want to just take away all the pain to ask myself, you know, looking back and I respect the person I showed up as like, if somewhat if the person I admire the most was in the room, would I be proud of how I acted? And that's success, right? And then our kids get to do whatever they choose to do. And I used to want to be the puppeteer.

Casey O'Roarty 34:15
You know, I still wouldn't mind it.

Andee Martineau 34:19
It wouldn't be the kind of nice, but the older they get, I actually would be a terrible puppeteer, I think for them, because I really, even though I know them, they're growing and they're expanding. And I don't know, it's arrogant of me to think I know all the things that they need for their growth. And sometimes I think that teens and tweens as your kids become adults, you have an adult want to is they make decisions that sometimes you think, Oh, that is not going to be beneficial for you or that's not what I would think would be beneficial for you or whatever. I have to keep asking myself who might even say that because I actually don't know because maybe that's the exact thing that they need for that emotional growth. Maybe they need that hard being you know? Amen, right? I mean, it's just a man, it just so I really love just saying, if I get into that, oh, I want to go to control, I want to go pressure them. And there's a healthy pressure, right? But like the unhealthy pressure or I want to really push, I'm like, no, no How arrogant of me to think I know what's best for them why job is to show up. And to be an example of what you know, like, if I want them to be more patient, I gotta be more patient, right? It's awesome. When we're like, be more patient or stop yelling. We're, like, exuding the opposite.

Andee Martineau 35:32
You have your phone can I like literally like, yes, crawling.

Andee Martineau 35:37
So you know, just taking it back to us, looking at what success really is staying in our lane, getting out of their lane, and knowing where our responsibility and stewardship is apparent lies and where we're stepping over that bounce. And then just to circle back, just to say it again, because I think we all need to be reminded, is just not using our kids for self validation. Like we have got to validate ourselves. And the way we are successful is just how we showed up? Did I do everything I could to help them fulfil their potential? Did I try my very best? You know, and that might be low in some days? Because we're stressed or we didn't have tools? Or we didn't, you know, but can I just honour that I was trying my best. And I kept trying to do better, you know, to the best of my ability. And that's, I think success. Not expecting our kids to do perfect. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 36:25
yeah. And remembering they're not fully baked at 18. When they leave, like I think about the personal growth, the level of growth that I went through from 18. To 30. Yeah, was huge, right? And just remembering that just all of you listeners out there that are like, Yeah, but will they ever have clean clothes? They're never gonna have a clean apartment like they will or they won't. And guess what, it's not your fault. Either way,

Andee Martineau 36:54
right? It's not your fault. Like, they'll only want it if they want it right. And somebody put so much pressure on it, they would want the clean room, but they might only know us back. And not yet because we put too much pressure. So oh

Casey O'Roarty 37:05
my gosh, we do that everywhere. We do that everywhere. We're talking about that in my six week class right now. You know, just talking about, they have to have room to be able to explore, you know, the natural consequences of their choices. And if they're totally full of like, oh my God, my dad won't get off my back. Right? Right. Or my mom is so strict in such a pain. There is no room for them to be like, Hmm, how did what I chose affect? Right, my experience and what I want to create because they're too full of us against them. Right? And there's like, I'm always trying to get ever more articulate and explaining that, like, I'm sure you have those things too, or Yes. Maybe weren't clear, like what's the elixir? Right? Stir up to really land this point, because it can feel kind of elusive a little bit. But it's so powerful once it lands, right. It's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you know, I mean, I find myself there to my 17 year olds a junior, so he still has some time for me to extract myself.

Casey O'Roarty 38:22
for me to pull out, right. And a friend of mine recently said, she was talking to me about listening to somebody else talking about parenting, and the person was like, you know, I want to parent for the year ahead. Hmm. Right. And when I think about my junior, who a year from now, we'll be graduating from high school and leaving the nest, you know, and we talk about like, just last night, I was like, Hey, how's your screentime these days? You know, like, I'm not very strict anymore. But it's very normal in our house for me to just check in. We all kind of compare. Yeah. Oh, and last night, he said, Actually, yesterday was kind of a lot. He was like, Oh, tell me about that. You know, and we kind of looked down, he looked at it. He's like, why was on Snapchat for this long and tick tock for this. He's like, this doesn't add up. Do the math. He's like, Oh, I guess it does add up. You know, and I asked him, because he's kind of grossed out when it's a big amount of time. He's like, Oh, I said, Well, how do you monitor yourself? Like, what do you do? I know what I do, what do you do? And he was like, Well, if I think about it, you know, I'll check in and cool off. I'm like, oh, so what prompts you to think about it? He's like, Yeah, you Well, that's maybe there's something you could create for yourself, where instead of it being me like you have like a reminder that shows up on your phone or something that's giving you a little poke, like hey, you're getting up there, you know, but because a year from now, you know, he's gonna be out in the world. He's gonna have to navigate school and life without some adult his mom being like, so what about this? What about this? What about this, so I want to give him this runway of practice. Yeah, for he's actually out there doing it. And I love that I love thinking about how can I pair it for a year from now?

Andee Martineau 40:07
Right? Yeah. So beautiful to have that perspective. And you're giving him the space to actually be able to make some choices. And to think about it, and when we're just beyond them and to feel it, right. But we're just on them and on them and on them. They don't have that space. They don't have ability, right to have a conversation. Like inspecting, really, how does this feel for me, when I'm on screen time for eight hours a day or whatever it ends up? It's crazy how quickly it can add that

Casey O'Roarty 40:36
it is? I mean, I look at my phone when I see for hours and like, hours what I've done time, my horse

Andee Martineau 40:44
cheesy. Yeah, but I love what you're talking about. Because you're we think as parents because we have this role as parents that it gives us the right to parent. But it doesn't, right. Tell me more, tell me more? Well, it's just it's not the role that gives us the right to parents the relationship, right. It's the respect, and especially with teens and tweens, because they're getting to that place where they can think about those thoughts. And they have people they respect and have people that you know, they like and don't like. And it's not that we all need to be pandering them or you know, their best friend all the time, we're going to do things that they're not going to love. But that's different than having that respect, or having a relationship with them where they choose us because they really have to choose us to be their leader, so to speak. I mean, as a parent, there is this cascading care right? Where the caretaker and they're the dependent for a certain period of time while they're in our home. And so they have to buy into that. And so what you're talking about with screentime, or just dropping the rope, we're not going to do the tug of war, we're going to drop it aren't, they might still try to pull but there's not a lot to pull when there's nobody else on the other side, pulling back. So releasing some of that allows us to actually have more impact and influence. And I think one of the reasons it's so scary, especially for parents of tweens, because it's more and more obvious how much they can just go decide to do like they could just leave, walk out the house. Yeah, they could just go get the drugs, they can just go do things, right?

Casey O'Roarty 42:05
That is a brutal realisation, right, because early adolescence, but all of a sudden, it's like, oh, God, I actually have no control troll. Yes. I mean, that is a tough Realisation to move. Yeah, hello, everyone who's listening who's like, yeah, I just realised that

Andee Martineau 42:24
my team just did whatever the heck they want it and didn't care about my opinion. But I think when we can really come to this, I mean, for me, that was a really big thing. Just like really understanding, I don't have the control, I think I have, it's just a facade. So I think I'm giving up all this control. If I don't harp on my kids, or, you know, just now, oops, or threaten or take away things, I think I'm gonna lose all this control, but there was really actually no control. In the beginning, the only thing that's actually going to make a difference here is the kind of relationship I have them allowing me to be impactful and influential in their life. That's what I want to value. That's what I want to safeguard. And so I think once we can sit with that for a while and realise the truth of it, which is really easy, like we said, with a team, because they literally can be really resourceful. Yeah, it can make it easier to let go of some of those perceived or the sense of control we think we have that's actually not really truthful, or actually accurate.

Casey O'Roarty 43:25
So I mean, Andy, when do you want to go on tour? Because

Andee Martineau 43:29
yeah, we should go together.

Casey O'Roarty 43:32
Talking about girl.

Andee Martineau 43:34
That message out there, right?

Casey O'Roarty 43:35
Yes.

Andee Martineau 43:36
One of my passions is more people aware of these beautiful tools and framework of parenting and a connective or conscious or positive however you want to frame it right? Totally this way that honours the relationship and puts us Yeah, in such a better place really, as parents?

Casey O'Roarty 43:53
Yeah, yes. Love it. Oh, my gosh, I knew this was gonna be fun. I didn't realise it was fun. I didn't realise. So is there anything else before we wrap it up that you want to leave listeners with is just kind of any kind of final thoughts, all the places

Andee Martineau 44:10
that we went, I feel like we touched so many beautiful things that, I would say, just remember that our job as a parent, like our success is really in how we show up, and how we are being with our kids and to focus on that. And when we focus on that a lot of the things that we think we need to fix with the kids, you know, we need to fix that behaviour. A lot of them just worked out. They just fix themselves. You know, we think we need to fix the kid. They just fix themselves when we let go of the control and the panic and the worry and all of the things that are so conditioned upon us, you know, and just trust more in the relationship and that everything works out when they choose to have us be a part of their life. Everything works out. So I guess that's what I leave is focused on the real relationship.

Casey O'Roarty 45:01
Love that. Yeah. My last question that I asked everyone is What does joyful courage mean to you?

Andee Martineau 45:08
Oh, this is so good. I think courage is a word I used to think was this happy, easy motion, the more I've explored what emotions are, it takes a lot of, I was gonna say courage to have courage, but that doesn't accurately describe it. But it can bring up a lot of negative emotions, to be courageous, we have to really confront ourselves, we have to be willing to look at the parts of ourselves that aren't so pretty, and uncover those parts to be courageous and to be willing to look at the parts where you have our kids that we don't want to look at either. And so when I think of being courageous, but having to be in this joyful framework, it's learning to enjoy the process of continuing to evolve and grow as a parent, which is a really beautiful journey. I'm glad you're talking about it. I don't think it's talked about enough. You know, this idea of having joyful courage. It's a beautiful phrase. Love it.

Casey O'Roarty 46:03
Where can people find you?

Andee Martineau 46:04
Yeah, so you can check out my website connect method parenting have a free course that someone can go through if they want to just check out how I frame up parenting and a lot of the things we talked about today I go deeper on there. And then Instagram is just by name Andy Martino. You can check out my comings and goings there.

Casey O'Roarty 46:22
Yes, do it. Listeners because Andy's got some great reels and some really thought provoking posts there that I love. And I'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. This was so fun.

Andee Martineau 46:36
Oh, thanks so much for having me. I loved it

Casey O'Roarty 46:46
thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you to my spreadable partners as well as Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected at B spreadable.com. Tune back in later this week for our Thursday show and I'll be back with another interview next Monday. Peace

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