Eps 103: Solo Show Digging Under the Surface of Bedtime Challenges

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Joyful courage parenting podcast episode 103

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I am your host, Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer and parent coach, and I am thrilled that you're listening in today is a solo show. Today you're going to be listening to me talk about a challenge that has recently showed up in our community, and give some insight and feedback around that challenge. I encourage you to listen all the way to the end. I have a really exciting announcement about this fall and some really exciting offers that are going to be happening. If you find yourself laughing, taking notes and are excited about what you hear on the show today, if you're nodding your head yes, yes, yes, or thinking, ooh, I'm going to try that at home. Do me a favor and pay it forward. Just share this episode with one friend. Share this episode with one friend. Your sharing is the reason that I'm able to show up for you each week, and I'm deeply honored to do so, and I have to tell you, I have to tell you all something really exciting happened last week, which was my lifetime download number, which means from the very beginning, when I started podcasting, almost two years ago, or no, I'm sorry, a little over two years ago, I reached 200,000 downloads, 200,000 downloads. So oh my gosh. Remember impact, 1 million kids in 2017 it's happening. You guys, it's happening. So thank you for the way that you share my work. I so So, so appreciate it. So today, today, the question that we are going to be dissecting and playing with has to do with sleep. And before we get into the listener's question, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my experience with sleep and young children. I have two kids, as you know, mine are now 11 and 14, but when they were little, when they were little, we co slept. I nursed on demand. We had a huge bed. It worked for everybody. That was our choice. I also didn't really know how to make a crib or not nursing through the night worked. So it also felt a little bit like the path of least resistance, if I'm being fully transparent, having the second baby kicked my first out of the bed, we had a twin bed that was squished between the king and the wall that she would start off in her bed and then move into our room when she woke in the night. We were big routine makers, so we've had a variety of bedtime routines that the kids helped to create. We had pictures of them. We would always read before bed. We would sing songs. We had a really set rollout on what we did before bedtime. But it took a lot of time and training to get to the point where I'd be standing in the door and the child in their bed was awake, and I was saying, Okay, see you in the morning. So that was tricky. Now, my kids totally go to sleep on their own. We still, I still try to make sure to connect with them. My younger child still can use some encouragement, getting his teeth brushed and moving it along. But you know, like last night, he I had to go pick his sister up from a birthday party pretty late, and he said, Okay, great, I'm gonna go up and go to bed. And by the time I got home, he was done and sleeping. So today, in my experience, in my house, our biggest challenge is making sure that the teenager's phone is not in her room at bedtime, and navigating that special challenge. So today, today I'm going to share with you the request that came from Mama Christine. This came straight off the live in love with joyful courage Facebook page where the tribe connects around celebration and support and community. So here's what Christine wrote, oh tribe, apologies for the long post. I am in dire need of some help. My daughter is five, and it is brutal. Her bedroom is on the first floor. Mine is upstairs. She's often hungry before bedtime, so we usually do a snack like high fat yogurt and fruit after bedtime. Jobs are done. I read with her, we sing, we say our good night's generally 20 ish minutes. Nearly every night, she's out of bed for any number of reasons. Me. To say goodnight to the dog, still hungry, thirsty, needs to say something to me, needs to ask me a question, needs another hug, says she can't sleep, and the list goes on and on. Outside of her bedroom is a very short hallway, which opens up to the dining room, the kitchen, living room. Essentially, she knows I'm right here and wants to engage when I say no to her request after she's gotten out of bed, it often ends up in her melting down, crying, and I either have to go up to my bedroom, which sends her into a tailspin, and hold the door closed, or like right now, it's 9:40pm I'm sitting against the dining room door while she's saying Mommy, mommy, over and over again, I'm at a complete loss if I lay with her. She wants to talk and play, so it's not like a relaxing cuddle that will help her fall asleep. And as a single mother, the reality is that I need this time to myself. I know, of course, partnered parents do too. Someone suggested giving her three tickets for calling me in getting out of bed each night and when they're gone. That's it doesn't seem like positive, connected discipline. And I don't know if she's ever if she'd even stay in her bed, I feel sick thinking about how our days end, all too often negatively, with one or both of us crying. She goes to school and daycare, but with just the two of us at home, we connect a lot. So I don't think it's a matter of her needing more one on one. Time with me, I tell myself to hold the limit, but how do I do this without literally putting a lock on the door, which I don't believe is a respectful solution, but I honestly am at an utter and complete loss. I feel sick to my stomach about this. It's gone on for so long, and hope desperately for some suggestions. I know self care is important, and I do engage as much as I can right now, but right now, I would so appreciate some concrete ideas and support. Thank you. Oh Christine man, the struggle is real, isn't it? It is so the reason that I chose this challenge to share on the podcast, but there's a couple reasons for it. One is it got a lot of attention in the community, and that told me that this is a topic that a lot of us have struggled with, right? It's near and dear to us, and there's a bigger challenge here, right? There's that power struggle that's there's that need for influence and connection that's happening inside of this story. So it might be bedtime, it might be meal time, it might be getting out the door in the morning, but power struggles are no friend to the parenting practice, right? So I like to bring up the iceberg metaphor for this. And if you remember, I've talked about it before, I think, I'm sure, but I'm going to talk about it again. So when we think about behavior like an iceberg at the very tip, the part of the iceberg, we can see is the annoying behavior. So in this situation, it's getting out of bed, it's making requests, it's not being able to process the response that mom has,

right? And then the fall apart, the meltdown, all of that is the tip of the iceberg. It's what we see. It's what's driving us crazy. Under the surface are things like connection, significance and influence. So remembering that positive discipline comes from the theory of Alfred Adler, who found that human behavior is movement in the direction of belonging and significance, which means that our needs for connection and our need to know that we matter are always driving and that we have influence are always driving our behavior. So we're going to hold that right, and one of the ways, one of the misguided ideas, because here's the other thing that Adler found, is that misbehavior shows up when we have misguided perceptions around how to get belonging and significance. So in this example, right? In this example, it could be that Christine's daughter has the misguided belief that she counts or belongs only when she's keeping mom busy with her, or she counts or belongs only when she's the boss and in charge. We're going to hold both of those possibilities lightly because I have not spent time in Christine's house. I've not met her or her daughter. I'm just going off what she's shared, but either of those two can show up in this bedtime battle. And then, of course, there's the lacking skills, right? And so there's a lot of places at bedtime where kids need skills, which is, you know, navigating how they feel about watching the adult leave the room. Right? Figuring out how to go to sleep. Not everybody is born knowing how to go to sleep, knowing what to do when you feel wide awake. How do we move from wide awake to asleep? What do we do with the impulse to get up and to be with our parents? Right? So there's some lacking skills there. And so I would be really curious. And I would get really curious, if I was Christine with her daughter, tell me about what it's like when you're laying in bed and you feel like you can't go to sleep. What does your body feel like? What is it, you know? What are the physical sensations? So you can have a conversation around that gather more information and then come up with a plan. Same thing with sometimes you feel like you need to ask me questions, tell me about what that feels like, right? And then stating the expectation you need to stay in your bed. So what should you do if you have a question? What are some solutions? So being solution minded inside of this is really powerful as well. Assumptions really get in our way here, right? Because we assume that our child just wants attention or just wants to be difficult or is just trying to push our buttons. And I'm here to say that could be true, might not be true, right? There's a lot more going on for our kids than just I'm gonna live my life in a way that drives my parents crazy. They don't really care about driving us crazy. They are having their own experience, right? So, so I once I heard somebody say that children long for connection and will settle for attention. Children long for connection and will settle for attention. Those are two different things. Connection is present. It's it's engaged, it's eye contact, it's full body listening, it's being with. It's non judgmental. Connection is engaging in what the child wants to be engaged with, whether it's the conversation or the game you're playing or the activity that you're doing, connection is so much deeper than attention. So keeping that in mind, we assume sometimes when, especially when we bump up against a time of day that starts to become like a pattern of problem. We start to assume it's always going to be like this, right? We forget that the parenting, my client this morning said parenting is a marathon, not a sprint, right? Keeping the long term in mind, parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. It's not always going to be like this. Your child is having a problem, your child is not being a problem. And then also that that assumption, and I heard it in Christine's share of I can't give in, right? I can't give in. Chris Christine shared, I tell myself to hold the limit, but how do I do this without literally putting a lock on the door? Yeah, and Christine and others, I can hear that you're uncomfortable with some of the tools that you're using to help yourself during bedtime, and when I notice that I'm desperate in a parenting situation, I'm typically using tools that I would never suggest people using, right? So that's how I know, okay, it's time to get some perspective here, and the best place to go for perspective and information is straight to the child, right? It's straight to the child. And when you think about what is your vision for parenting, right? Most people answer that question, well, I want to be connected to my child. I want to I want to feel good inside of relationship. I want them to trust me and come to me, right? And so if that's the case, then we have to look at what's going on under the surface, and we have to come back to that relationship piece. And then we need to make a choice, right, and, and, and even before we make a choice, we have to recognize, how am I feeding this problem? How am I in the creation of this challenge? And some of you might sit up a little straighter and think to yourself, I am not creating this problem. Who is this lady to say that I am creating this problem? But I am here to say that power struggles and challenges in parenting really need two people, right? And so we are always influencing the situation. We're always influencing the situation and how we show up as parents and as the adults is going to either influence it and make things worse or influence it to make things better. So that's really where we get to make a choice. We get to decide, yes, I'm really angry right now. Anger is not going to get me where I want to go. So it's time for me to choose something. Different in this moment. It's not always easy, but it's absolutely a choice, and then action steps to take, especially, you know, really, any time of day where you're feeling this tension, you might want to think about routines and agreements, and I'm going to share with you what Christine shared about how she has found success with her daughter, and it's straight out of the routines and agreements conversation. So Christine shared, overall, the past four bedtimes have been beautiful. I remind her, after our good nights that we've made an agreement. She stays in her bed and all come to check on her after 10 minutes, and then after 15 minutes, except for this evening, she's fallen asleep either before the first check in, or, for sure, before the second check in. Tonight, she did come out to say her body was telling her it wasn't ready to sleep. So I suggested her headlamp in books. She agreed without a fuss. I watched her on the monitor while she read for about five minutes in bed, using her headlamp, turned off her headlamp, pulled up the covers and promptly conked out. She knows herself well, by the way, we still have the monitor because our bedrooms are on separate floors and I'm a heavy sleeper. She calls it the thermometer. So Christine, I'm so glad that you found success. There were so many amazing suggestions from the community on this on this thread, that were so powerful and just really show that we aren't living in our own private freak show, right? We are all having a collective experience, and sometimes, sometimes it just takes reaching out for some outside perspective for us to see that there actually are solutions. There are solutions to problems, even the ones that leave us feeling really exacerbated, right? So I'm so excited to get to share this with all of you, and I hope that you took away something helpful, one of the one of the gals in the live and love group shared with Christine an article by Deborah McNamara. And if you are a long time podcast listener, you'll remember her from Episode 45 she's fantastic, and she wrote an article about sleep and bedtime battles. And I'm just going to read one little paragraph that I loved, that I think is really important, and it speaks into that idea that we you know, sometimes the shift has to happen in us to create the success that we want in our with our kids. So Deborah writes I started and she'd had bedtime challenges with her daughter. I started by finding the generosity in me that she needed and accepted some things would need to wait, like housework or emails. I found my tears about the me time I craved and surrendered to the sacrifices that come with being a parent. I worked hard at not rushing her having warmth and delight as I put her to bed, sending her a genuine message that I loved being with her. When the desperation would sneak in on me again, I

would remind myself that I could sleep all I wanted when she eventually left home or when I was dead. So I will share a link to that article in the show notes. Please give it a read. Deborah is really, really knowledgeable about the parenting journey, and I just love the way that she uses words to support parents. So yay. Yay. Christine, make sure that you keep us up to date and up on the updates around your daughter and bedtime, and if you listener, are having a struggle with bedtime and you still have questions and you are not a part of the live in love with joyful courage Facebook group, head over there and join the tribe. We are there to support and love and celebrate you. So check it out.

All right, on to the young, living essential oil segment of the podcast. So this is going to be short, because I don't have more to say about any new oils, except for pan away, which is what I talked about last time. Oh my gosh. I had a long, long, long drive back to the Pacific Northwest after our big California Adventure, and I felt all of my 43 years in my back a few weeks later. I mean, days, not weeks. You

and it was really terrible. It was that kind of body pain where you think, oh my gosh, is this the way it's going to be now? And it's a little nerve wracking. And my husband totally gifted me with. With a solid 15 minutes of back rub with the pan away and the coconut oil and, oh man, it made such a huge difference. So again, if you're interested or curious about the essential oil thing, hit me up. I'd love to talk to you about Young Living. I'm really finding that my own personal exploration of the oils is making a huge difference in my life, and they're one of those companies where you can make a business out of it, which is crazy. I know some of you already do some of you are doTERRA mamas, but I also know that there's some Young Living moms out there, and if you're interested, just know you can talk to me about it. I'm here for you.

All right, And to wrap things up today, episode 103, solo show, I just want to remind you that there's lots of places to interact with me on social media, like the Facebook page, like the Instagram page, Twitter, joyful courage. Just search for joyful courage on those places, and you will find me also the live in love with joyful courage. Facebook group, I mentioned that a million times this episode, it's a great place for community and connection. Keep listening to the podcast. Subscribe. If you are not already listening through a podcast app like on your phone, then you are missing out. Because when you've subscribed through iTunes or Google Play, you automatically get each new show when it's published. So you don't have to wait to see the posting. You don't have to wait for when I tell you where to go. You just have it. It's automatic. It's really cool. So subscribe. Also, I'm so excited to tell you about a new offer that I am rolling out this fall. It's called a mother's journey to joyful courage. Sorry, dads. This is solely for the moms, and it is super exciting. I'm doing a whole Pacific Northwest run. I'll be in Bellingham, Portland and Seattle, doing the mother's journey workshop. And what it looks like is a one day, six hour in person experiential workshop that is going to knock your socks off. We are going to explore trust, we're going to explore encouragement, we are going to explore some positive discipline tools as well. But when you think about it, parenting is really one surprising moment after another, and it starts those very first moments of holding that little baby in your arms and knowing that their future is up to you. And then we're like, okay, yeah, we can keep this little, little person alive. And they get older, they get their own opinions about the world. Their temperament settles in and surprise that unexpected experience where the beliefs and ideas that we have held as truth no longer serve us. So the workshop is this amazing space for discovering and exploring the places that we're currently feeling stuck. It's designed to support you and not only broadening your perspective around behavior, but also shifting your mindset about around how to be in relationship with yourself and others, including your kids. We're going to talk self and soul care. It's going to be amazing and then, and then it's that's, it's not over when you leave the room. There's also going to be four weeks of supported integration. So we will meet weekly on the phone, on Zoom, actually, and you will get coaching around your practice of taking action steps from the workshop and putting them into practice in your life. So this is really a unique opportunity that embraces both the internal and external experience of raising kids, while also acknowledging that it takes time to learn new skills and new ways of being. It's really a wholeness approach to being a mother, and I'm so excited for the fall when I get to share it with you. So if you are thinking, Yeah, I'm super interested in that, head over to joyful courage.com/ mother's journey, all one word, and you can get more information, and you can sign up for an interest list, and when I have dates and venues confirmed, I'll shoot out an email and let everybody know. Okay, so that's my big announcement. I'm going to be talking about that a lot this month of August, because there's definitely going to be early bird pricing that happens, as well as more information as the time. Gets closer and always, always know that I am available for individual coaching. Thank you to those of you that have taken the plunge and said yes, please. I'm interested. I want that coaching. Individual coaching is my highest tier offer, because you get all of me, you get a whole hour of me and you and digging in and asking questions and really doing the hard work of peeling back the layers to design the life that you want.

Huge, huge. Thank you to everybody that listens to the show. Thank you to everybody who shares. I have some new awesome postcards. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw I have some new postcards. So if you're interested in me sending you some little postcards to put around your town to share my work, shoot me an email with your address, and I'm happy to send that off to you big thanks to my joyful courage team. Chris Mann, the man the editor, the publisher, the guy that makes sure that the show always sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Anna Proctor, my friend, my supporter, my show notes writer, thank you for all you do in support of joyful courage. Next week, my friends, I will be back. I will be back, and I will be sharing a brand new interview with you, so be sure to check back in next Tuesday, live show