Eps 69: Laurie Prusso Hatch Helps us Understand Hurtful Behavior in Young Kids

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“Joy is the essence of being centered in truth. Courage is heart. I try to live so my life and heart are centered on the things I know are true. I have limited knowledge so I’m continually looking for that. I draw on my courage so that I can speak out in active ways that are in harmony with what I believe. Joy is not fleeting, it’s not like happiness. Joy is a constant and a choice in life. If you have joy in your heart, you’re able to endure challenges and adversity because you have this constant centered on truth.”

 

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Hey everybody, how's it going? Casey here, hostess of the joyful courage parenting podcast, wanting to make sure that you have already signed up for the joyful courage 10 Holiday Edition. Right Today is Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It's only gonna get crazier moving into December. So I want to come together in our community and really get intentional about creating a holiday season that feels good, that feels loving, that feels nurturing for everybody, right? I want generosity to not just be something we think about and want our kids to lean into I want it to be alive. Gratitude alive, right, togetherness, alive inside our body. So before you listen in on this podcast, or after you listen head on over to joyful courage.com/jc, 10. Joyful courage.com/jc, 10, and sign up. Okay, I know you've been meaning to do it, so just do it. All right, enjoy the show. Joyful courage. Parenting podcast episode 69 you

hey podcast listeners, welcome back to the show. Welcome, welcome, welcome. So happy to have you back. Yay. Yeah, super excited for the show today, I want to give a big shout out to all my new listeners. Hi, hi, welcome. Welcome to the tribe, welcome to the community. I am so happy that someone told you to check me out, because we have fun here, don't we. I love podcasting. I am so honored and grateful that all of my guests say yes to being on the show. I am humbled by the feedback and response I get from the people who listen. So if you're new, right on, let me know what you think. And if you're not new, if this is the 10th joyful courage podcast that you've listened to today, I love you, but maybe you should pay more attention to your family. Kidding. Well, not really, but I'm just so grateful every time there's another download of the show. So thanks for being here. Today's guest is Lori pruso. She is a positive discipline trainer. She is my friend and somebody that I have grown relationship with over the last few years with my work with positive discipline. She has been a parent educator and a trainer for many, many years, raised many, many children, and has worked in the community college early childhood arena. So she's going to tell us a little bit more about who she is and what she does, she's fantastic. And today we are talking about that behavior in our younger kids, that sends us through the roof, right? So the biting, the hitting, the kicking the hair, pulling the throwing of blocks. I laugh because Ian, you know my boy, he has always had a great arm, like he can throw hard and it goes right where he wants it to go. And there was this running joke that we always would have to put the toilet seat down when he was little, because if he walked by the bathroom with anything in his hand, or even if we are carrying him by the bathroom with anything in his hand, and the door was open and the toilet seat was up, whatever was in his hand was gonna make it into the toilet. So, yeah, right, what do we do when our kids are biters? What do we do when our kids are hitters? And Lori's gonna really help us deconstruct the why behind this behavior and help us with our language around it as well, and coaches us on how to coach our kids, both preventative tools as well as how to respond tools with our youngest kids, who are getting really bugged and hurting each other. So if that sounds good to you, listen up peeps. You are going to love the show, and after you listen and you think I did love that show, let me know. Show up in the live in love with joyful courage page, write a review on iTunes, send me an email. Casey at joyful courage.com let me know what you think about the podcast. I'd love to hear from you, but I'm done rambling now. Let's meet Lori.

Hey there. Lori, welcome to the podcast.

Laurie Hatch 4:51
Hello. How are ya

Casey O'Roarty 4:53
I'm really good. I'm so excited to have you on

Laurie Hatch 4:56
to me too.

Casey O'Roarty 4:58
Will you please share with the listeners? A little bit about who you are and what you do,

Laurie Hatch 5:02
I will. I'm thinking newly of myself as radical grandma.

Casey O'Roarty 5:08
So awesome,

Laurie Hatch 5:10
strong ideas and opinions about how children should be raised and treated and educated and and I got some degrees, but my real credentials are that I survived raising six boys and a dog named bear. Oh my gosh. And then I married a really good friend of mine who had five sons, so now we have 11 grown sons, and I've worked in early childhood and education at almost every level but, but really, I learned most of what I learned from, you know, my my cumulative hundreds of years experience from my family. So right now, I just retired from teaching community college for 20 years, and I'm doing a lot of consulting and training and playing with grandkids. And when we're not doing that, we're riding our Harley Davidson into the sunset. So I'm excited to be home today and be with

Casey O'Roarty 6:03
you. Me too. Oh my gosh, did all of those boys live under one roof

Laurie Hatch 6:09
at any they did? No, oh, they did not. We got married when the youngest was 25 okay, so and we have 44 grandkids.

Casey O'Roarty 6:18
Oh my gosh. Lori, that's wild,

Laurie Hatch 6:23
yeah, but they did all grow up together. We same community, and they've they've grown up, they went through scouts and sports and all that together, so they've known each other their whole lives.

Casey O'Roarty 6:35
Wow, cool. Well, today we are going to talk specifically about kids under five and how to handle aggressive behaviors. And I'm I'm guessing, I'm assuming, that you said six boys were you started with the six boys, right, right? So I'm guessing there may have been a little bit of rolling around. And yeah, a little Yeah, a little tiny bit, yeah. Well, and in my work, and I'm sure in yours as well, this is something that really triggers parents, and I think it's I have yet to determine if it's worse to be the parent of the aggressive child or the parent of the child who's taking on the aggression, right the receivers or the givers. And then, you know, when it's between siblings, you as the parent, get to be navigating both of those roles. So let's just start by talking about development, right development at this age, this under five, that can lead them to aggressive behaviors. And when I say aggressive, I'm thinking like right hair, pulling, biting, kicking, hitting,

Laurie Hatch 7:41
the holy trilogy. We call it hitting, spitting, biting, and then there's the pulling hair and the throwing things and the knocking things over and all. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah, development is really the key to it. So I'm actually reluctant to use categorical terms like aggression, just because, okay, kind of gives parents permission to separate ourselves from the child, and then it justifies us acting in our frustration and anger. I actually have parents that call me and say, you know, my three year old is really violent, and our vocabulary says something about what we believe. So I'm going to invite our listeners to think about the vocabulary that they use to describe behavior and what that means to them, because it will help them unravel this trigger that it is for all of us love that. Yeah, so children, especially siblings, and then kids in group care are going to hit, kick, punch and destroy things for lots of reasons, but the but they're almost always provoked by something that's going on around them, and that happened immediately before that behavior that we don't like. And so as soon as we name it aggressive, then then we're likely to forget right to look at what really happened. And I see this all the time, and I read literally 1000s of observations from early childhood classrooms where that child that hits would be told this is not acceptable, and then they get punished without any exploration of the why or the what happened before, it just isn't we just believe that we do not tolerate hitting and then it's and that it is associated with aggression and violence, and in early childhood, that just isn't the case. So So I have grandsons named Dylan and Jack, and they lived with me for four years, and which I loved. And so Dylan was two when Jack was born and just a little over two, and this is what happened. This is the typical thing that happens in families. So Dylan was playing with his blocks on the carpeted floor, and when Jack is about nine months old, riding could crawl and move and get toward him. He's attracted by what Dylan. One's doing, right? That's the human thing. We want to be connected to our older sibling, and we see we're enticed by what they're doing. So Dylan sees him coming, and he yells, Mom, get Jack. He's gonna mess up my blocks. But Mom was busy in the other room and didn't hear him. And Jack got closer, closer, and Dylan yelled, mom, Jack's getting my things. But mom didn't come. And finally, Jack made his way across the room and started grabbing and so Dylan tried to position his body between Jack and his tower that he built, but Jack got in and pulled some blocks down, and the whole thing came tumbling down. And so then Dylan hit jack right. He's not Dylan's not quite three at the time, I guess if Jack was nine months and then mom heard the baby crying and came running, right? So Dylan gets accused of being aggressive and hurting his little brother. Mother's very frustrated and angry and loses it and yells at Dylan and takes him firmly by his arm and puts him in his room for some downtime, right? And then Jack crawls around happily on the floor mid blocks, picking them up and chewing on them. So, so the dynamic that that occurs there is the beginning of how we actually create sibling rivalry. So impulsive behavior will always happen. But this is, this is a dynamic that we actually occur and play a role in. In fact, um, Daniel Siegel calls it sibling chess, and it always gets worse when adults get involved. So mom believes that dog, that Dylan, is becoming a mean child, and he always hits and he and he does hit often, because Jack provokes him often, so her once loving and sweet firstborn has now become, in her mind, an aggressive monster that's out to get the baby, and she needs to protect the baby. That becomes her role, right? And then Jack begins to believe that mom's always going to step in to protect him, and he'll win if he provokes Dylan, and Dylan's feeling the loss and grief of being rejected by someone's loving and caring mom. So do you see how this begins to play out totally so it's a big trigger for us, and we know that something's a trigger if we have powerful emotional response to it. So certainly a child hitting, usually talking back, sometimes not eating or food, those triggers are related to how we were treated as children. So what happens? This will happen whenever there are two or more children, and the only real antidote to it is an adult sitting on the floor for the whole time that the children are interacting. It's, as Jane Nelson says, It's supervision, supervision, supervision, and we don't want to do that at our homes. We want to get the laundry done. We want to get the floors. We have things to do, and we leave our kids alone in a room, and somebody's going to provoke somebody, and then somebody's going to lose it,

Casey O'Roarty 12:55
right? So we do have things to do, and we do have small children in the house. So what are some ideas that you have, and some are coming to mind right now? I mean, I remember folding laundry amongst the children. I remember setting up we had a drawer that was full of plastic Tupperware in the kitchen that was available when I was in the kitchen,

Laurie Hatch 13:16
right? And those are all great things to do. So whenever you can be with. Being with is the first solution for everything. It's preventative and it's interventive. So whenever we can be with and have our children with us, whenever we're doing if we're one of those that's in that mode, I remember my mom giving me all the washcloths to to essentially play with. But she, you know, made me believe I was helping her fold them while she folded the other stuff, right? And then she would show me corner to corner and corner to corner to to fold things. And that that certainly is a preventative thing that we can do. But there are times when we when we need to leave the room and it's going to happen. I we had some kind of not immediate relatives, but in law, relatives that would come and bring their kids, and they they were older when they had kids, and their MO was just wherever the kids are, that's where we're going to be. So all the adults would be doing their thing, you know, whether it was a holiday dinner or whatever, but one of them was always where the kids were. It was fascinating to me. It was like a huge sacrifice on their part. But then that kind of stuff didn't happen because, because they were there to help mediate any of those kinds of of issues. You know, whether it was reach and get the taught the crawling baby and put put him on their lap for a while, or or provide a different toy that distracted, or whatever, and and that prevents the hitting. So,

Casey O'Roarty 14:50
and I had Laura Dr, Laura Markham, come on and talk about this too, and she talks about being on the floor and coaching and recognizing that there's a really important. Important opportunity there, when our kids are really young, to be in the role of coach and guide and helping them to develop skills and learn language. And so, yes, there are things to do and to add to that list I think would be like floor time with kids. Yeah, floor time with kids that

Laurie Hatch 15:20
that idea of coaching young children in developmental psychology in the world of early childhood, we call it scaffolding. So you're taking the child where they are and and with the language and behaviors, helping them kind of get a better cognitive picture of what's going on, and moving them to the higher level. But some of that ability just simply isn't going to present until, until the development occurs, because it's really tied to immaturity. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 15:47
right. So parents hearing that, listeners, hearing that, hearing that, yes, just because you sit on the floor on a Monday and coach around language doesn't mean Tuesday your children have mastered how to share.

Laurie Hatch 16:00
Is using it right now. Find something else, right, right? Get that. It really doesn't occur until at the earliest, between the second and third birthday. So we call that the third year. There's this huge leap in self regulation skills and maturity between being a two year old and being a three year old, but really isn't in place, then until that next year, the year between the third birthday and the fourth birthday, see huge gains in inability and self regulation and language is such a key, yeah, for children, being able to negotiate things

Casey O'Roarty 16:35
and gains, huge gains or huge leaps, is not the same As mastery, like, that's something I really because I noticed that when I work with parents, you know, the frustration really is in that, I mean, we've said it so many times, we've done it so many times, and there's this expectation that there's a certain amount of quote times that we say or do or model or practice, that Then we're gonna have children with, you know, mastery of skills when, gosh, man, look at the emotion that's alive right now in the adults, right, you know. And so I want to go back to your model, or to your example, though, with Dylan and Jack. So if you could go back in time and that situation played out, and mom didn't hear Dylan, because I think that's a really common obviously, that's such a common story. So Lori, if you were going to be able to rewind that scenario and play it out in a way that mom could, you know, recognize her part or whatever, or handle it differently after the fact, once it's the hitting has already happened. What would you say would be an effective and helpful way to handle that? Oh, that's

Laurie Hatch 17:46
a really good question. So after it happens, then the I call it the universal solution. It has to do with listening to everybody that was involved in the problem. Now, Jack's not going to have much to say in using curiosity questions, you know, tell me about what happened here. Oh, what just happened? I wonder, you know, those kinds of open ended questions to get the child to express if they have language, what happened if they're too young and they don't have language? Then you tell the story, right? You just start giving them the words. And when we do that when kids are two, by the time they're three or four, they're really good at problem solving.

Casey O'Roarty 18:24
So could it sound like, oh, wow, Jack crawled over and knocked over your blocks and you were calling for me and I didn't hear you. Yes, and that's really disappointing, yes and frustrating.

Laurie Hatch 18:35
It is. It's the naturalistic, observational report that we learn in school, you know, in the anthropology and psychology.

Casey O'Roarty 18:42
Wait, I have to write that down. That's naturalistic, naturalistic

Laurie Hatch 18:45
observation, observational report. So we teach in our early childhood classes, we teach our students to just sit and observe, and then when they write the report, it has to be absent of all judgment and assumption.

Speaker 1 19:02
I so

Laurie Hatch 19:07
I actually, I actually have an example here that it was coming up later, but let me, let's see. Okay, so here's what, here's an example. So you know, as I said before, young children aren't good at playing with each other, and they're and in fact, if I could, if I could teach parents one thing, I would say, Never expect your children to share. Children do not share until between the age of four and five, when it's important to them to have a playmate that stays with them and collaborates. Sharing is one of the most inappropriate expectations that we have in early childhood, and it is a huge trigger, because we were all taught to, quote, be nice and share, and we grew up believing if you don't share, you're not nice, and we describe it as selfish and things like that, but it's that's incorrect, so I. Here's two year olds together, and Maria's playing with the doll, and Lizzie comes and takes it from her, all right, and and so we intervene after everybody's crying and all that. And this is what we could say, Maria, because they don't have language. Maria, you were playing with that doll, and Lizzie took it away. You really wanted it, and you got frustrated, and you hit her, and then you turn to Lizzie, because she's part of the conversation too, Lizzy, you really wanted to have that doll that Maria had. You wanted the one Maria had, and you took it from her, and she hit you, and now you're crying. There's no blame, no shame, no humiliation, no judgment, we just state what happens and connect it to an emotion. So if it was two year olds and I knew what happened, I would take the doll and give it back to Maria. I said I'm going to give this to Maria because she had it first. But with Todd, the gift with toddlers, until kids are two, two and a half, it really is okay to just go get her another doll right right after that, once they have language, then that's not an effective thing to do. But with toddlers, you just, let's go find a doll for you and and you help them to repair that, or you just let them cry and be unhappy, because people need to be able to deal with their emotions. I think one of the things we're seeing today in our society is that when people don't get their way, they get really mad and and, you know, I'm all about nonviolent, you know, protests, but there's something else going on here that I didn't win, and so I'm going to have a tantrum. And it's, it's interesting, from my educational perspective, to be watching, and people are saying, yeah, it is very, very fascinating thing.

Casey O'Roarty 21:51
So in this scenario of Maria, and what was the other little girl's name, Lizzy, and Lizzy, okay, so I love, I love that example. I think the languaging is really important for parents and listeners to hear. And so I'm going ahead into the future, and I'm imagining the same scenario showing up over and over again, and Maria doing the hitting, and Lizzie So, and then the parent, you know, the the adults saying, Oh, Maria is never gonna learn not to hit, right? That's the fear, right? Yeah, so we talk a little bit about that.

Laurie Hatch 22:29
Okay. So, so behavior is this wonderful dance of interaction between the rollout of development, which we call biological maturity. So every year, we get a year older and the internalization of the experiences that we have, and in early childhood, those are really focused on relationships. Those are our experiences. It's how we interact with the world, but our world really revolves around the people that are taking care of us, and we call those parents, and I still call them parents. So maturity is the number one predictor, and we can look at these behaviors and see that universally, they appear and then kind of extinguish in a predictable sequence. For instance, most, not all, but most children bite between the age of 18 months and three years old. They bite at some time, they either bite their mom on the neck or they bite another child. But that is a a purely developmental behavior, and then based on the experience that the child has about it that stage either gets extended or it diminishes very quickly.

Casey O'Roarty 23:49
So based on the way the world around them responds, right, got

Laurie Hatch 23:54
it right. So maturity is that number one predictor. And you know, some of the things that happen in those first three years are the hitting, spitting, biting, throwing things, lots of tantrums, because they really don't have any other way to deal with their frustration and irritation. Saying no rolls out at that time when language comes after the no stage, it initially is what, what we call talking back, which is a child learning to share their opinion and their desires. And it's the way we manage that that predicts kind of how, how quickly the appropriate behavior is going to follow. That immature, I call it the immature example of desirable adult behavior? Yeah, so talking back and saying no becomes being outspoken and being an advocate and being a public speaker, right? Those are good, desirable adult behaviors. So I read some funny book early on. It might have been children to challenge. I did read that, and it might have been that, but I learned that when my kids said, yuck, I don't want to eat, that the desirable adult behavior was no thank you. I don't care for any

Casey O'Roarty 25:14
right.

Laurie Hatch 25:14
It's a totally different

Casey O'Roarty 25:15
I love this, yes, well, and want

Laurie Hatch 25:19
them to be able to do?

Casey O'Roarty 25:22
Yes, and I feel like this whole under five period is like the perfect training ground for the parents, absolutely, for what's coming ahead, because here's these kids, and they're exhibiting these behaviors that are that get under our we get to learn what gets under our skin. What are we attached to? Where are we projecting into the future? We get to learn all of these things with these little humans that have no agenda, right, right? They don't have an agenda. Like, with, like, I love what you just said about the yuck. I don't want to eat this, because that is one of those places where, in my experience, I take it so personal, like, I'm very quick to want to say, I do not make gross food, yeah, so

Laurie Hatch 26:07
and so that's a trigger for you, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 26:09
yeah. But hearing that, recognizing it as you know, them exploring advocacy and not necessarily having the tools or the skids or the skills or the even the understanding that there are ways of saying things that are, you know, to lessen the blow or to get more specific around what you're trying to say, you know. And as the parents, I love, love, love, even when. And Julietta has been on the podcast a few times, and she loves to talk about this, even when they're non, you know, when they're non verbal, it's great, because it gets to become the practice of, how are you going to speak with them? How do you want them to speak to you start when they're babies. Yeah, right. Yeah. And the biting thing. I love this. I have a great story about biting. I had a parent in one of my classes who had four kids at the time, had four kids. The oldest was six, and the youngest was, like, probably nine months. He was this cute little Roly Poly baby named Walter. And yeah, he was so cute. And then child number three, every chance, who was maybe two, I think she was right around two. Any chance she got would bite Walter on the toe, sure. And mom was, you know, out of ideas. And she, I remember her saying things like, I just don't know what to do. I've done timeouts. I've bitten her back. I've slapped her hand, you know, I've yelled. I'm trying not to yell, but I get so triggered. And this is the baby and and I said, Okay, so you've tried all those things, and I'm going to invite you the next time that it happens, because you know that it will yay. You know, you're going to get a chance to try something different, sure. And I invite you to bring her in, because we talked about, you know, the perception, interpretation, belief, decision, right? And how this little two year old was the baby, and now she's not, yep. And I said, pull her in and tell her that you love her. And this mom looked at me like, Are you kidding me? And I kept, she kept, like she really resisted this. And then finally, I said, Hey, you know you might just try it. You've tried a whole bunch of other ideas. And so she came in the next week to class, and she said with tears right in her eyes, and said she bit Walter. I put her on my lap, and I gave her a hug, and I said, I love you so much, and it's not okay to bite, yeah, and she hasn't been the baby since perfect.

Laurie Hatch 28:46
Yeah, exactly what I say to do, pick them up, go to the rocking chair, read a book, cuddle with their blank comfort them and say, I don't like it when you bite,

Casey O'Roarty 28:56
yeah, and I love you and you matter to me. I

Laurie Hatch 29:00
have to tell you, I got a two year old living with me.

Casey O'Roarty 29:04
Oh, lucky you. I have a puppy, so it's kind of the same thing. Yeah, with 11

Laurie Hatch 29:07
kids, right? We always have somebody that needs, oh my gosh. So we have our, one of our sons and daughter in law, and their little Millie. And Millie is a hot tempered Latin girl. She just adorable to die for, but she gets mad and and she started biting. And yesterday she her mom was in the shower. She was a nurse, so when she gets home, she showers before she has any interaction with the baby and and so her mom was in the shower, and she got mad and she wanted her mom, and she had her hand wrapped in the shower curtain, and she bit the curtain, but she bit her finger so she actually left marks. You know, it's just, there's no language, and they get mad, or they're not again, they're not getting what they want, or we're expecting them to do. Something that they can't if there's always a provocation and and using that language and nurturing, nurturing is always the answer. Anger and and separation and rejection are never the answer. Yeah, are never the answer.

Casey O'Roarty 30:17
And when you talk about nurturing, what does that look like, well,

Laurie Hatch 30:21
for a baby, you know, it would be to pick them, picking them up, putting them on their on your lap, telling them that you love them for even for a three year old, you know, oh, this was really hard for you when your two friends came to play and and they wanted it, to play with your things and and you didn't like it, and you and really giving them good language, you felt threatened, or you were irritated and frustrated, and then you wanted to act in anger. It was really, it was really hard for you so that, so that they're not creating mistaken beliefs about what's going on, right?

Casey O'Roarty 30:55
Well, and I love that too. And I think it's important to point out that sometimes, and probably a lot of the time, nurture is not at the top of our list in the moment, right, right? It's not necessary always for some of us, depending on the models that we've had and the experiences that we've had, you know, it's It's Cha it can be challenging to move into nurture when everything in our body is Are you kidding me, that you just did

Laurie Hatch 31:22
that right and and there's multiple factors at play. One is our own triggers and how we experienced and and internalized in our own childhoods. And the other is just the, you know, the societal stuff that we've been taught about. If there's not a negative consequence, you're being permissive, right? The operant conditioning and rewards and punishment systems that we've dealt with really can interfere with our ability to step back and and look at that and say, but what do I want this child to be able to do. In fact, I love that. The thing with Biting is that we actually, if we, if we interpret biting or hitting as aggressive, and then we react to our child in a harsh way, we are being aggressive. We are actually being what we're telling them we don't want them to be, yeah, and, you know, we have that little activity that we do the do, as I say, where, where people really learn that? And then I often invite you know, it's the old adage, you know, if you if you hit your brother again, I'm going to spank you, because I don't want people in our family to hit right don't until we step back and listen to that objectively, we really don't understand. We're responding. We're reacting really from our own experience and from this belief paradigm that's that that we have chosen to follow, and we really don't know what else to do,

Casey O'Roarty 33:05
right? That's when we're that's when, you know, you're desperate, right? And I was going to ask you about spanking. So this is, and, I mean, I can already guess what you've already said, and, you know, and that's just a hot conversation, right? In the parenting arena, to spank or not to spank and and, you know, I want everybody who's listening to know that, you know, we're all I cut my come from is we're doing the best we can with the tools that we have. And I remember my son, he was four, and he went through this period of time where he thought it was really funny to to slap us on the bottom, and it was so cried. It was so annoying, annoying, yeah, and we, you know, it was like we tried all the all the tools, right? And it just kept happening, kept happening, kept happening. And then one night, one morning, it was an early morning, and we were in our we were camping, and so we were in our camper, and he had crawled into bed with me, and I had, I was leaning up to open the blinds, and I gave him the perfect target, right? Oh, yeah. And he gave me a little, well, not a little. He gave me a great big SWAT on the bottom. And, I mean, I just completely flipped turned around and he's laughing, and he's in his little naked body, he's curled up in a ball at the head of the bed, laughing. And I mean, without even thinking about it, I gave him a SWAT on the bottom, and my kid is super pale. Okay, he is super pale, and it left the perfect handprint. Oh, and he was so shocked that that is how I responded. His eyes got so big, and he looked at me and he said, You're

Unknown Speaker 34:50
not. My mom

Casey O'Roarty 34:55
proceeded to fall apart, of course, because it hurt him, yeah, you know. And then I. I was just like, oh my gosh, you have pushed me kid over the edge to this place where I never want to be. And so then I got to navigate my own like, I'm a terrible mom, you know? I got to play in that and, you know? And we were able to make it right and, and it did stop the bottom slapping, and sometimes it will, of course, and it's absolutely not. I was I am absolutely not okay with how I handled it. I am grateful, though, that we have tools and models for then repairing relationship, right? Because that's exactly yeah you and it took a while for him to hear me and for him to to and it wasn't like, well, if you wouldn't have it was really like, wow, I am so sorry that I hit you. Yeah, because it's not okay to hit people, and I did that, and I'm and I just want you to know that I'm really sorry, and you know, and once he was able to hear that, we moved on. And he thinks, now he's 11, and he says, because what followed, you're not my mom is Sitka is my mom. Who is our was our dog at the time. And so now he'll be like, Hey, Mom, remember when I said that Sitka was my mom? And, you know, we have a little laugh about that. But, you know, I just, I want to share that story, because I think it's so important for parents to feel like, if you've been there, done that, it doesn't mean that you know, there is no opportunity to learn new skills, yeah, and to make it right and to shift and to try something new. I think the window is always open for better and for growing and for evolving as human beings in relationship with other human beings. So please don't listen to this show or any of my shows and think I've already wrecked my kids, right? Because, you know, I want to be really transparent in my own practice as well. And,

Laurie Hatch 37:02
you know, it was hard. Fortunate thing for you is that you had, you had already learned some replacement skills, and you recognized it, and you were able to to recover, as we call it, or, you know, Daniel Siegel calls it repair, pretty quickly, to support your child in their own healing. And you learn so much from it. I didn't learn this stuff until my kids were were much older, but I was spanked as a child, and I'm sad to say, I sometimes did spank my kids more often. I just threatened and kind of swung around a wooden spoon at them, which they love to tell horror stories about. And I didn't learn about positive discipline and other tools to use until some of my kids were almost out of the house. But I can honestly tell you that when I was spanked as a child, and I was spanked once so badly, I'd have ice packs put on me and and I carried a pillow to school so that I could sit on the chair. And so there were, there were many times that I was spanked like that, but I was terrified and emotionally detached from my parents, and I didn't trust them, and I never believed that I could share my needs or concerns with them. So imagine that as you're growing up, there's nobody you can turn to or talk to about what's going on your life or that you're sad or scared. So I don't recommend spanking ever, because of my own and I think that is the rule of thumb when, when most children are spanked, it's a terrifying thing, right? So I never recommend spanking. And there

Casey O'Roarty 38:36
are, nor do I, for the record, nor do I, right? That

Laurie Hatch 38:39
was clear, yeah, there are 100 other things that we can learn to do, but we have to learn them, right? So as a grandparent, I can tell you that it's it's even harder, and most of our kids don't spank, but some of them get pretty harsh. It is an impossibility for me to be in the presence of that. It's so hard children have. My grandchildren have a smallness and a powerlessness that as a parent I didn't realize, because they're kind of growing with us and we think all those things we said before, they should know better. I've already taught you this. Why aren't you listening to me? But as a grandparent, you see how little they are. Even eight year olds are these tiny, little things that can't mine can't even ride on another rides at Disneyland yet, right? Yeah. Um, so, so I have this other radical perspective of it, but in reality, when when we as parents scold and hit and threaten and spank or anything like that, it's because we are feeling frustrated and angry. It's the same reason children bite and it's the same reason children hit and and we they haven't yet learned effective ways and appropriate ways to behave, and we haven't either, and so we make a mistake. Mm.

Uh, so I truly believe it's better to do nothing in the moment, if I'm feeling that frustrated and angry. This is what I learned when I began to learn positive discipline. It was better for me to do nothing, which probably meant I went and cooled off, than to hurt a child or humiliate them in any way. And I'm a changed person who has asked for forgiveness from all of my grown children. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, it's a new thing, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 40:33
oh yeah. For sure. For sure. There's so many other ways to be right? And I've seen there was a great so the positive listeners, the positive discipline Association has an annual conference where we get to see and practice and play with new activities. And one of them that was demonstrated this summer was the facilitator, Kelly Pfeiffer, who's actually also been on the show. She drew the outline of a child and asked the crowd, you know, what are the, what are the, you know, what are the tools that kids, the undesirable tools that kids have for handling conflict and and frustration and so, of course, biting, hitting, kicking, screaming, yelling, whining, you know, all of those things came up. And she put them on post it notes inside the child. And then, and so we you have this visual, and then she says, do we want them to engage in these behaviors? And the answer, of course, is no. So she takes all the post it notes off of the child, and she says, Okay, so this child, so we tell them, no hitting, no biting, no kicking, no whining. You know, all of these things that she's taken the post it notes off and she says, So what are they left with? Nothing, right. So the the visual is really powerful reminder that as we invite them away from these ineffective, uncooperative, hurtful ways of handling challenges, we also have to add in what to do, right? So, can you talk a little bit, since we're talking about this, you know, kind of hurtful behavior, behavior that is, I'm see, do you hear I'm trying to move away from aggressive here, right? Um, so when we're teaching about being gentle, when we're teaching about speaking into our needs. What, what does it look or sound like? And you have that example with Maria and Lizzie as the non verbals. But even as you know, maybe because I think that we our minds get tricked, as we see our kids grow from waddler to toddler to preschooler to now they're four, and a half, and some of our our four year olds are big, yes. And I think that messes with our sense of what they should or shouldn't be able to do or handle or navigate. It does? It changes our expectation? Yeah, yeah. And I would say a lot of times it's we have inappropriate expectations because they seem so big, especially if we have a new baby, then they're like, you know, grown

Laurie Hatch 43:04
true. It's true. So I think one of the things that was an epiphany for me, because all these things in my life kind of converged at the same time, is that in every situation where, where we're going to be invited to feel frustrated and irritated with children, there's a story, and I think it's it's really important to to recognize those stories for so for Maria and Lizzie, I told you the story, right? But as children begin to get language, then what we want is for them to tell the story. So one of the things that often happens, and I have to tell you, that I speak to hundreds of people. I probably spoke to 300 people last week, when I say in most settings, when I say, when you have children that are hitting, what do you want them to be able to do? The answer I get is, stop hitting right, which leaves the child's body without any post its on it, right? Exactly. What do you want a child to be able to do? And then I say, what is the story? If, because most of the time, especially in early childhood, in classroom settings, we don't see what happened, right? If children have gotten to the point where somebody erupts and screams, I hate you, or or hits, we probably haven't seen what was leading up to that, or we would have gone and intervened and gotten on the floor with them. So listening to the story, when we listen to the story, if, if we're rational and objective, what we realize is that there was a mistake that occurred and somebody got provoked and and hitting or saying, I hate you are the things that young children do when they're very frustrated and they don't yet have sufficient skills, and then I can. Help the children figure out, from their own suggestions what to do. So do you want to stay here and play together? Do you feel better now that you've talked about what happened? Is there a way to negotiate that? Would you like to be apart for a while? And usually, usually, they hit their really good friends and they say, I hate you. You're not my best friend anymore. You're not coming to my birthday party and things like that. They're really good friends. That's that's those are the situations in which those things happen, and when they are able to hear each other's stories, then we're helping them be able to, in the future, do really good perspective taking and be respectful and realize that everybody sees from a different point of view. And so that that universal, I call it now, the universal process, is listening, validating listening to the other, validating listening as often and as long as you need to, which usually takes about a minute and a half and then inviting them to have a solution. And the solution, in my mind, now replaces the word consequence. Yes, that is what they're going to do. So they're going to find that second doll, or they're going to get another tub of blocks out, or they're going to go outside because being inside is too hard for them. They want more space, or whatever their solution is. It's that conversation that happened before it, which I call conflict resolution or problem solving or solution mining. That's the value.

Casey O'Roarty 46:39
And I think art had learned, yeah, and I can hear, so I have this tendency to hear all the yeah betters that are out there listening in the future. And I think it's really this is so important and so powerful. But what I, what I, what I know you also the part of the context of this is also that when we ask, tell me the story, we're coming from a place of looking for solutions and not blame, right? So if you are a parent and this, you know, the blame game has been Where you've where you're come from, has been like, I gotta figure out who actually started this. I gotta figure out somebody

Laurie Hatch 47:21
whose fault this is somebody needs to get in trouble. In fact, I used to start I taught a 16 week, essentially positive discipline class at the college. I taught three sections of it for about eight years. So that's six classes a year for eight years. But I started with an open ended sentence statement, and people had to respond to it. And that statement is, no one needs to get in trouble because I wanted to know what they believed about children's behavior. And universally, well, nobody needs to get in trouble unless they do something wrong, and then they need to get in

Casey O'Roarty 47:59
trouble, right, right? So then, when the when the conversation is, well, tell me what happens, right?

Laurie Hatch 48:04
Then they got an obvious solution, yeah, so not so

Casey O'Roarty 48:09
obvious. But, and, and I think, because I'm also, I'm also hearing the conversation of like, well, when I asked that question, they give a really skewed answer that, well, recognizing that if, all of a sudden you are shifting your way of being as a parent, and you are going from this blame based to solution based focus, it's going to take a while for your kids to buy in to that, to trust when right right, to trust you. Because it's like, I know this. This question is a trap.

Laurie Hatch 48:38
Yeah, they're gonna, they're they're gonna think you're fishing for blame, right? So that's where family meetings come into play. Yes, love that. So in my mind, family meetings, I think the most valuable thing about family meetings is that it's the place where we can hear our children's interpretation of what's going on in their lives, and we can with reflective language and good listening skills, we can invite them, and we can even explicitly teach so that their mistaken understandings of things get an opportunity to be resolved. Love it, family meetings are the perfect way to be connecting. They should never be used for problem solving in the context of somebody's going to take this blame and and pay for this but, but rather, this process parenting is such a process of

Casey O'Roarty 49:41
such a problem.

Laurie Hatch 49:42
It's kind of I call, I think God has some practical jokes for us, and I think one of them is that about the time we start to figure out parenting, we're done great. Not that we're really done, but we are done in the sense that we don't have influence or. For as much proximity and things like that with our kids and and after they go, then we go, oh, but, but, people that are tuning into Casey and listening to her podcast and participating in her her face to face and online classes, we really have the opportunity to learn about this parenting process now. Well, yeah, I

Casey O'Roarty 50:25
love that for sure. And you know what I love too, is the Oh, I love it when parents begin. And it was a, you know, a journey for me. It was a process for me. But record like that day of, oh my gosh, they are actually here to teach me how to grow, then how to develop as a human being, you know, once we can, like, open ourselves up to that man, like everything shifts, and it doesn't mean that it's not, you know, frustrating and challenging and hard days and days where you just simply have to say, Okay, I need to reset, right and come back to what's important to me. Because I noticed that I'm slipping back into these old into these old patterns, like that's all just part of

Laurie Hatch 51:04
it. It is part of it. Yeah, yeah, the triggers are. Triggers are actually when our children's behavior pushes a button, we call it, right? They've been pushing buttons all day, right, right? Those triggers, right? And the function of those triggers is to invite us to go write a story about that trigger and figure out why we have it and what happened to us. Why do I feel so strongly, even we would say angry right when my children will eat what's put on their plate, and I, I can tell you, I've seen abuse occur when children won't eat what's in front of them that is our own problematic emotional baggage coming up like barf, and it's because we believe a certain thing about biting or hitting or how our children eat or or talking back, but it That is about me, that is not about my child, and as I as I experienced those triggers, and I go and journal about what happened when I exhibited this behavior, what did my parents do? What did I feel? What did I want to have happen? What did I believe about my place in my relationship with my parents, and then what is the behavior that I adopted as a child, and why is this a trigger for me now? Is that to me? That's the process for my own healing. And, you know, just always questioning, why is this so hard for me? It's hard if I have emotional baggage about it. Yeah, if

Casey O'Roarty 52:41
anyone out there is thinking you don't have any emotional baggage in here to say you are wrong, you've got some, you've got some well, and I appreciate that Lori, and I love the way that you I mean, what you essentially just did was you really broke down a process, a practice that can be so powerful on the parent journey, which is journaling. I mean, that's self care, yeah, right. Last week, I had Sarah Yao on, and she took us through box breathing and what that looks like and sounds like as a way to self regulate. And so I'm so appreciating that. You know, there's another practice that showed up on this show, so I could talk to you all day long anyways,

Laurie Hatch 53:22
to heal, there's so many things that we know about the mind, heart, body, soul connection now and actual practices or habits that we can develop that will help us to nurture ourselves and to feel love. We can't really give that nurture and love to our kids, if, if we don't have it and and until we look at ourselves, we we have this belief system that kids are aggressive or violent or bad or need to be blamed. And I tell you, I think I told you before, but when I got married, we've been married five years now, but one day my husband said, Oh, who left the hose out? Well, there's only the two of us that live here, right? And so if he didn't, then it was me. And I said, Oh, we don't use the F word in my house. And he said, I didn't use the F word. And I said, Yeah, you're you're trying to place fault. You're trying to blame somebody for this, and we don't do that. So if you don't like the hose out, go put it away. And and then, well, the hose is out because I can't park my car in the garage, because the two Harley Davidsons are in the garage, and so my windshield has ice on it in the morning, and I was, you know, I don't allow time to wash my car off before I go to work, so I was in a hurry. So when I was done, I dropped the hose and left for work, and then right. So there's a story, and it's not about whose fault it is, right? So

Casey O'Roarty 54:42
did he say, Thank you, dear, and head right out. Move the house. Good. Oh, good. What an enlightened husband said,

Laurie Hatch 54:48
okay, and I've only had it. I mean, he thinks that's just the funniest story that we don't use the effort. He tells it to everybody, but that's a shift for him, right in their family, in his family growing up, and the family that he raised there. Was a lot of that fault finding and also a powerful sense of kind of an undying love that they were all filled with, that that was able to balance those two things, but most people don't achieve that. So yeah, so once we stop, once we can stop ourselves from finding fault, which needs to be replaced by really kind of an idea of discovery, exploration and celebration. Oh, look, here's an opportunity to help my kids learn how to get along better or how here's an opportunity to help these children learn about friendship by listening to each other and and finding a solution.

Casey O'Roarty 55:42
Love that. That's big picture, right? Yeah. So the last question that I always end with is, what does joyful courage mean to you? Lori,

Laurie Hatch 55:53
I that is just the most fun question. Yay, hey. So this is this is me. This is my life, right? Joy is the essence for me of being centered in truth. And courage is heart and from my perspective. And so I really try to live so that my life and my heart are centered on the things that I know are true I have limited knowledge, right? So I'm continually looking for that, and when problems or mistakes come up, then I have to dig deep and and search and find so I draw on my courage so that I can speak out and act in ways that are in harmony with what I believe and and joy is not fleeting. So so joy isn't like happiness. It's not what comes from writing screaming or Tower of Terror Disneyland. It's

Casey O'Roarty 56:44
although California screaming is a great bride, they're the best, right?

Laurie Hatch 56:49
That's excitement and that combination of anxiety and happiness, right? But joy for me, is a constant. It's a it's a choice in life, and it's not fleeting, and it if you have joy in your heart, then you're able to enjoy endure challenges and adversity and change that comes because you have this constant and it's centered on on truth. It's not threatened by every you know, wind that comes or problem that arises. So I just really try in my life to exemplify as much as possible. And I'm certain that there are people that would not think that I do that, but I do, and that's my intent. That is my intention. And sometimes people don't, I'm not able to express it in ways that other people perceive it that way. Or maybe that's their own crap, I don't know,

Casey O'Roarty 57:48
but yeah, well, that's the human being in us, right? But that, but,

Laurie Hatch 57:52
but to sit down and actually think about that question was really an interesting thing to me, and it and it brought me back to what that is how I try to live my life and I left. It's the title of your your your work. So thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 58:07
I love you. I'm so glad that you came on my podcast.

Laurie Hatch 58:14
It has been a joy. Yay,

Casey O'Roarty 58:15
good. Um, where can people find you and follow your work. Do you have a website?

Laurie Hatch 58:22
So I'm not tech savvy like you are, but I do have a website, and somebody actually complimented me on it the other day. So my daughter in law built it for me. She's a wonderful artist. So my website is just simply teacher laurie.com and I do lots of radical workshops and trainings and keynote addresses and a lot of fun things in life and and I'd love to do more now that I'm retired, I'm i i can do more. So you can reach me at teacher lori.com and I actually have a little blog I've started. Hey, it's things that I wrote when my kids were making me crazy so that I didn't hit them. So I posted the first one. It's about when you can't find the scissors or a flashlight that works. And it seems like one other thing. I can't think of it right now, but you know, by the time you find the batteries that work, you can't remember what you needed the flashlight for. That is so funny. Goes through that. So I'm just posting one of those. Every once in a while, it's, it's a column called this, too shall pass. And then it gets worse. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 59:27
that's, I just have to say, when I started blogging, my very first blog post was all about the toilet overflowing and having to get a router. Router is that what it's called, yeah, that you shove in there anyway, yeah, so you got a power hug. Oh, man, I was so mad that day

Laurie Hatch 59:49
for parenting, right? You have to power through this shit

Casey O'Roarty 59:54
for sure. Oh, well, thank you so much. And listeners, there will be a link. To Lori's website in the show notes, and it's just been a thrill.

Laurie Hatch 1:00:04
Thank you so much, Casey. Have a great day.

Casey O'Roarty 1:00:13
Did that disappoint? No, was that amazing? Yes, oh my gosh, I love Lori pruzzo. She's so smart. She knows so much. I wish I could just like, take her brain and put it in my head. Sometimes, yes, love, love, love, okay, my favorite phrase that came up in the conversation was naturalistic, observational report, right? So you can be like, listen, kids, I need a naturalistic, observational report on what just happened. I dare you to start using that language with your kids and see what shows up. I hope that you took a lot out of that conversation, and I hope that the main thing that you took away is there's always room for improvement. There is always room to grow. There is always room to say, Wow, maybe something that I've been doing isn't so helpful, and perhaps there is room to learn something new, because I'm here to tell you that every single one of you listening to this show is absolutely without a doubt, has everything you need to be the parent that you want to be. I totally, totally believe that that is my come from. You are already always whole, you are creative, you are resourceful, and you have support. So if this landed for you, if you're really feeling like, wow, yes, I want to be a parent who can engage in naturalistic, observational reporting and show up better for your kids. Then come join the tribe. You can sign up for my emails, which one day will show up really regularly if you go over to joyful courage.com the top bar, you'll see sign up for the newsletter. You can join the community on Facebook, live in love with joyful courage. This is a discussion group where everybody's coming from that place of wanting to show up really well for kids and wanting to be supported and held by other members of the community, parents that are going through the same things. And please, like I said at the beginning, sign up for the joyful courage 10. I already have 100 over 100 people saying yes to that. I'm really excited to lead you and to guide you through emails, daily emails, I'm gonna throw in either Facebook Live or meditations daily and a Facebook group where we can talk about, what does it feel like to bring gratitude into our space? Like really bring it, not just talk about it, but really embody gratitude, right? And be an invitation for gratitude for our kids as we move into the holiday season. So check it out. Joyful courage.com/jc. 10, okay, I am super excited for some upcoming guests, so keep tuning in to the show. And big love, Big Love. And Happy Thanksgiving, if you are listening, you're in the States, and you celebrate Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Two more days, hopefully, by the time this goes live, I will have already bought my turkey. I think that that's kind of important, but I'm hosting the dinner, and, yeah, I'll let you know how that goes anyway. Big, huge love to you. So so appreciative, so grateful for each and every one of you and that you keep tuning in and listening to the show. Big Love till next week.

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