156: New Year, New Parenting Mindset, with The Behavior Revolution

Picture of hosted by Penny Williams

hosted by Penny Williams

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Your parenting mindset is the #1 most important aspect of parenting kids with ADHD, autism, or other neurobehavioral disorders. Being the best parent you can be for your neurodiverse kid is 90 percent about changing yourself — it’s never about changing your kid. 

This episode of the Podcast is part of our Behavior Revolution series. Penny and Sarah outline the perspective you need to adopt to address behavior in a compassionate and effective way, while honoring your child’s neurodiversity (instead of trying to change it). Let’s start 2022 by getting your mind right for parenting your neuro-atypical child.

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My Guest

THE BEHAVIOR REVOLUTION
We’re Penny and Sarah, parenting coaches who help neurodiverse families like yours understand your child’s neurology and behavior, and shift your parenting to help your child thrive — without the frustration of trying to figure it out on your own. We’re also moms of boys with ADHD and/or autism, so we get it. We live it, too.



 

Transcript

Sarah Wayland 0:03

We have our kids in school and school expects them to go a very particular way down a very particular path. And if they can't do it for whatever reason, or nobody's taught them how to do it or whatever, like we have to stop in that moment, and figure out what they need and give it to them so that they can in the future, move ahead.

Penny Williams 0:27

Welcome to The Parenting ADHD podcast, where I share insights and strategies on raising kids with ADHD straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, ADHD a Holic and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your a typical kid. Let's get started.

Welcome back to The Parenting ADHD podcast. I am excited to have yet another episode on behavior for you from Sarah Wayland, and I and the behavior revolution. And today we're going to talk about ringing in this new year of 2020. To and adopting a new mindset for our parenting and for our kids, really taking the time to mindfully shift. And to be able to do better for our kids, right. And then when our kids are feeling better than they do better. And I have to say, when we as parents are feeling better, we are also doing better, right? So we just want to talk to you today about kind of where where that mindset shift needs to go to sort of create this revolutionary idea of behavior, which has a lot to do with seeing it for more of a brain based lens than the behavior lens, seeing it as a symptom. And we're going to talk all about that and more in this episode. Sarah, do you want to start just introduce yourself really quickly? I think most listeners know you. But just in case somebody new is listening.

Sarah Wayland 2:06

Yeah, I'm Sarah Wayland. And I am partners in crime with Penny for the behavior revolution, which is our online course that we created together. I also run my own business. It's a parent coaching business called guiding exceptional parents. And I work as a special needs care navigator, parenting coach, and certified relationship development intervention consultant, where I work with parents to coach them to figure out how to support their kids.

Penny Williams 2:35

Awesome. Yes, and we're definitely partners in crime at this point. And hopefully, partners in a new revolution, we're working hard at that right to get people to, to really see behavior in a different way that then is actually helpful. You know, it's really about being effective and compassionate, and honoring neurodiversity, not trying to change the essence of who our kids are, but just to help them to do better, and to feel better, like we all want to feel good, right? We all want to feel confident and competent. And like we have purpose and like we matter. And that kind of starts with our mindset with our kids with special needs and the way that we view them. And the way that we view their differences, it's really important to kind of set that tone. Let's start with just talking a little bit about general mindset. I think if you're good with that, Sarah, because I keep coming back to accepting that what is is what is, which is an old Buddhist principle. But I just think back so often to all the years that I was fighting against ADHD, I was fighting against learning challenges. I was, in essence fighting against who my kid is. And I didn't know any better. But the shift, the dramatic change, and my family and myself and my kids behavior was palpable when I started learning how to be settled in our reality, not to say that I just accepted everything. Of course, we still work on things, but just accepting that where we are right now is where we are right now. What can we do to make the best of it, but without fighting against it, because when we're fighting against it, we're spending so much energy that is wasted.

Sarah Wayland 4:32

Yeah. And you know, Penny, one of the things that I was thinking as you were talking, I was thinking about Byron Katie's phrase, what is it when you fight with reality, you only lose 100% of the time. And my aunt actually used to say, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. And I think that mantra is what has helped me to help my kids is, yeah, you've got this brain wiring difference. And this is who you are. So now we have to figure out how do we you take the brain you have, and be the best version of you that you can be in the world we are in. So you know, both of those realities, the realities of who my kids are, and the realities of the world, they have to operate in those both matter.

Penny Williams 5:21

Right, right. And we need for the world that they have to operate in to accept neurodiversity, right, which we're working on, and the conversation is so much greater than it used to be, I really have some hope in that area. And we're modeling that to we're modeling that acceptance for our kids, teachers, their coaches, or schools and communities, right, we're feeling more settled with what is I think we're really modeling for other people in our kids lives to also be accepting. I know I'm overusing that word right now, but is really the crux of this. It's just accepting what your reality is. And then working toward understanding what you can influence and change and what you can't. And so often, when we're pushing against things when we're fighting against it, it's because we're not accepting where we have control and where we don't I think, at least that was true for me, in a pretty big way. There's this great quote from Amber Khan, that says, sometimes the best approach is to flow with the river instead of fighting the current. And you and I are both kayakers. And I think at one point, certainly we have both tried to paddle upstream, or against the current I know I did when I was trying to save my kid who got stuck on a rock way up in some choppy stuff. And my dad who I always kayak with an eye toward the end of the roughness and turned around and realize that he had gotten wedged on a rock and we were paddling so hard, right trying to get to him, he's panicked, he's standing there crying on this rock, trying to hold the kayak. And oh, my, fortunately, there was a tuber who stopped and helped him because he saw that we were never going to get back up this current to this kid. Like, we just couldn't fight that flow. And I think that's really indicative of probably the first five or more years after Luke was diagnosed. For me. I was really fighting, I really wanted to know how to make him fit, right, I had the absolute opposite mindset of what I needed, and we didn't make any progress. I was stuck right there paddling against the car, and I wasn't going anywhere. I was trying really hard. Right, but I wasn't going anywhere. And I think that's such a valuable lesson, especially for parents who are more new to this, maybe it took me a really long time to learn that.

Sarah Wayland 7:58

You know, it's funny, you use that metaphor of kayaking and trying to rescue him on the rock. And I actually one of the very first blog posts I ever wrote, was about kayaking with my kids. And I was in a tandem kayak with my younger son, who had never been a kayak before. He'd never used a paddle before. He just had no clue how to be in that kayak. And my, my other son was in a single kayak. And he's older. He's four years older. And so he was paddling along. We were actually at Chincoteague, and we were looking at all the horses, and that so we were paddling around with this group, it was a tour. And my younger son was doing all these things that were making it really, really hard to stay with the group, because he didn't know how to kayak at all. And I was trying to compensate for the back. And I was trying really hard to paddle so that it would counter what he was doing. And we were literally going in circles. Yes. And at some point, I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I'm just so exhausted. And I had to call the you know, the leader of the group and say, We can't do this anymore. Like my son wanted so much to be part of the kayaking thing. I couldn't tell them stop paddling. So I can just deal with this myself. And so the leader had a rope on the back of his kayak. And he told us for the trip, I kept thinking about how it was like a metaphor for life where we have our kids in school and school expects them to go a very particular way down a very particular path. And if they can't do it for whatever reason, or nobody's taught them how to do it or whatever. Like we have to stop in that moment, and figure out what they need and give it to them so that they can in the future move ahead. But if the whole group is moving ahead, you don't have the time or luxury to do that. And I just I was like wow, this is a metaphor. for school and life and everything for my kid, like, if we could have just taken some time, given him some lessons on how to use a paddle, or maybe just explored something by ourselves without having to be with the group, it would have been such a better experience.

Penny Williams 10:15

Yeah, who knew kayaking was such a metaphor for life. To me, it's just so much. Even when I take the boy because he loves it and seeing him do it is joyful for me. Even when there are problems, I have to say he surprisingly, he still cry acts after that experience, because there were many, many, many years of his life, that would have been the end, he would have never even let you get a sentence out about him kayaking, yeah. And he still goes, he did take some space, probably a year, he didn't go. And then he came to me because I figured, oh, he's never gonna go again. You know, and it was such a beautiful lesson in giving people time to heal, and the space to sort of recognize that history doesn't always repeat itself, that cognitive distortion of if it happened once, it's always gonna happen, which he's so easy to fall into the trap of, he was able to work through that on his own in time, and recognize that he really does enjoy it and want to do it some more. So wow, that's amazing. I mean, just that alone, there's so many things right, over the years, from our kids, because we've had all this time now we've had this time to shift our mindset, we've had this time to learn more about how their brains work. And we've really educated ourselves partly because of the work we do, I'm sure, but also, I think that's our nature to it was to dive in and try to figure things out. And so we have a lot of these stories and these experiences, just because we've been doing this for such a long time now to indeed, yeah, so I want to talk a little bit about mindset, because I think are an awareness within that, where we've talked about mindset. Now I want to talk about awareness. How often when you interact with your child, are you really acting within some mindful awareness? Are you really in control of yourself, right, and what you're doing and what you're saying and how you're saying it. Because that's really important. It's not just about the mindset shift, we also have to implement that right in the heat of battle, we still have to be able to use what we know, to be the most helpful to be the sort of place from which we should be acting.

Sarah Wayland 12:38

But it's so hard Penny, it's so hard. Like when your kid is losing their marbles, like, what do you do like you're, I mean, we're wired to ramp up with them. And it's very hard to calm yourself down to be going back to the kayak. The kayak metaphor, but what I do is I try to think of myself as a rock in the middle of a stream. And my kids emotions are the water swirling around me, but I'm just a rock, like, I have that vision of the water swirling around me, and I'm just stable and solid. I love that. And that helps me get through. But honestly, it's taken a lot of years to get to the point where I can just stop, take a deep breath. And think about what I want to model for my kid as opposed to just reacting.

Penny Williams 13:32

Yeah, when you ask the question, the first thing that came to mind was practice. You have to practice it. Like it doesn't just come naturally to us, obviously. And it's not a switch that we can flip. We have to really unholy adopt the mindset. And then we have to practice implementing it. We have to practice being able to stay calm, we have to practice being aware. And that awareness for me, you have this analogy of being the rock in the river. For me, I just keep reminding myself, my kid is not giving me a hard time. He's having a hard time. Yeah. And that, for me has been so powerful if I can remember that no matter how heated and painful and crazy it is, no matter how personal it feels, I'm really able to sort of stay centered, and be able to respond rather than react. But if I hadn't done all that work on my mindset, that wouldn't have helped, right? If I didn't understand that, that's actually true that he really is having a hard time. Even if he's saying I hate you, mom, which he hasn't said in a long time, thankfully, but, even when our kids are saying that to us to be able to know that they're dysregulated that they're struggling with lagging skills, but you know, there's some reason and the reason isn't to hurt me. It makes it so much easier to remain calm to remain aware and mindful of what we're doing and how we're interacting. I think too, Lucas said to me many times, you're not hearing me, or I'm trying to think of the ways that he phrases it. And that has been a lesson for me too, making sure that I really am hearing him that I really am thinking about his experience, and his brain and his body and the way that he works and moves to the world. Before I get upset about something that he might say, or do or get upset about his reaction, you so often we get upset because our kids are reacting in a more extreme way than we think is called for. Yeah, that could be true

Sarah Wayland 15:44

Those are there feelings, right? Those are their feelings.

Penny Williams 15:47

Yeah. And that brings up another point, we have to untangle our own stuff from our kids stuff. And I'm learning more and more that like, 90 plus percent of it is my staff. It really starts with me. And my own experiences, my own fears, my own anxieties, my own sort of preconceived notions and judgments, and all of those things. Like, it really does start with us. I was just listening to them the other day, I think, an audio book, and I can't remember what it was. But they were pointing out that when something happens, and we're really upset about it, our kid does something, and it's so upsetting. We had to stop and ask, what does that say about me? Right? Right. So like, if your kids spills milk all over the carpet, and you're freaking out and yelling, and just losing your mind over spilled milk? What does that say about you? Does it say something about the way you were raised? Did you have a strict parent? Does it say something about the value that you put into things are into your home and it being clean and well cared for? Does it say something about you maybe struggling with unpredictability, which it could be right, I didn't expect that to happen. And now I'm gonna flip my lid. There's so many things. But yeah, the more people I talked to, and the more I read, and the more I'm sort of out there in this whole mindset shift, and neurodiversity world, the more I realized how much was my stuff? And it's true for all of us.

Sarah Wayland 17:20

You mentioned that spilled milk example. And when I was growing up, like that was a major meltdown for my parents and my dad in particular. And what that meant is that when I made little mistakes as I was growing up, if I wasn't perfect at something, I was so so down on myself, like really, really had this thing where I would, I would make an L in the middle of my forehead. And I would say loser, I'm a loser. And I would do this all the time. And so I knew where it came from. And that was, I knew that was a problem even before we had kids. So I swore when we have kids that I would not get upset about little stuff like that. And what that meant is that I sent them to daycare to do art projects.

Penny Williams 18:14

But I think we need something like the circle of influence, which is like the circle of what's really important was not so important. Uh huh. Right, right, it'd be really helpful to do. And I'll tell you that shifted. For me, I was raised pretty strictly also, my parents worked really hard to buy us a nice house when I was in like high school, they finally had made it to that point, and they took really good care of it. And when something happened, they were really devastated. Right. Yeah. So you know, I am not as reactive of a person. But my husband really is. And so when one of our kids would spill something, he would lose it, he would completely lose it. And I worked to stay more calm. And I'll have to say now that our kids are older, he doesn't. He's learned that it isn't that important. But I watched there was a man who I'm really not going to remember enough detail about this, but he was dying of I think pancreatic cancer, and he was a professor somewhere. And he did this last lecture video, which was basically the stuff that he had learned in life and wanted to leave behind for others, right. And one of his stories was about his niece or nephew spilling a drink in his brand new convertible that he had just bought, and how the parents got really upset, really just were mortified that their kids spilled a drink in his brand new car, and he actually took the drink and spilled the rest of it in the car. So to say, this is a car it doesn't matter to me. You matter way more to me. And that has always stuck in my head. had my kids were probably super little when I saw that. And so I try to remind myself of that, like, they matter so much more than a stain on the carpet or, and that's not to say like, I wouldn't run around pouring things because my little kid would do that, you got to know your audience. But the message there was, what's really worth all of that energy and making a kid feel bad, and what's not. And most of the time, it's just not it's not worth it. You know, it's different. We always talk about how it's different in a safety situation, of course, but

Sarah Wayland 20:36

Well, if there's also a balance, though, Penny, because if you teach your kids that it's all about them, and there's no responsibility for the rest of the world. That's not a good message, either. So you have to teach them, yes, you spilled the drink on the car, and now we cleaned it up, like that's part of what happens when we make mistakes is we take ownership of it, and fix the problem. So it isn't just, oh, no, you did that for you. It's also Oh, no, you did that for you. And now we have to make it right, and figure out how to make it right,.

Penny Williams 21:13

Because stuff happens. Like I tell my kids all the time, things happen. Big deal. We're gonna get some paper towels, we're gonna clean it up. You know, and we're way over simplifying this by talking about spilled drinks. I know. But it's kind of an easy one to illustrate with. And there's just always ways to make our kids feel okay about mistakes. And there's ways to really harm them in the ways that we see and acknowledge mistakes.

Sarah Wayland 21:42

Well, that perfectionism thing is definitely one of the potential costs. It makes our kids afraid to try anything new, because they don't want to do anything wrong, because they're afraid of the blowback they're going to get if they do it wrong.

Penny Williams 21:57

Mm hmm. Yeah, there's no such thing as perfect. So why are we striving for it? Yeah. Because again, that's like paddling upstream. We're never gonna get there. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's hard. You know, there's this question I saw recently that I thought was so helpful. It's super great to ask yourself as a parent, am I observing the situation accurately? Or am I projecting how I feel? onto what is happening? Oh, wow. Again, that's kind of our stuff, right? Like, am I observing the situation accurately, the milk was spilled, we'll clean it up. No biggie, or am I projecting, my childhood and how big of a deal that was when I was a kid into now the situation or my kids don't have a lot of friends. They're not extroverted. They're not, the social kid in high school when they were in high school. And I always thought that, that was super important. And part of it was growing up social anxiety, but I just always really thought, it's important that you go out with your friends outside of school, and you do these things, socially with them. And for my kids, it wasn't important. And I had to recognize that it was me, I was thinking, because I valued those experiences. When I was in high school, I felt like it was so important for them to also have those same experiences. But it wasn't what was more important was really honoring who they are and supporting that. And that's not to say that it was okay for them not to have connection. They had connection. They felt fine with the situation. But I was thinking they needed more. Yep. When they really did it. You know?

Sarah Wayland 23:39

Yeah, a friend of mine, thank heaven very early on. Don't know what I was thinking. But I did it. Anyway, I took my older son to an orchestra concert because I thought he would love it, which was Stravinsky's the rites of spring, which is not an easy starter, classical music piece. And he was literally under the seat. Like he was so unhappy. And I was like, how am I going to like, teach him that music is fun and wonderful, and that he will love it. And a friend of mine, actually, her Meredith Warshaw. She was one of our parent experts on the parenting summit last year. She actually said to me, Sara, Was he having fun? And I was like, No, he was not having fun. I would have had fun, like if I were at the concert, but he wasn't having fun. And so I needed to figure out how to do this in a way that felt fun for him. Yeah, and not for me. Mm hmm.

Penny Williams 24:39

Yeah. And I think about all the times that kids have had to sit through things, and so many of us could do it. It was doable for us. I grew up going to church very frequently. I was able to go in there and sit and be still in quiet because that's what was expected of me and I was physically able to do that, right? Yeah, my kid would not have been able to do that. And so if I had still expected it, because I did it when I was a kid. And it's just part of being a kid, sometimes you have to do things you don't like, right? These are all the things that come out of our mouths with our kids, in trying to explain to them that oh, yeah, they can just do what they don't want to it's not always the case that they don't want to. So often, it's the case that it's not doable, because our kids really do want to please us.

Sarah Wayland 25:31

Yeah, they do. They do. Although sometimes, they get into a mode where the only way they've been able to get attention from you, is by doing something that makes you upset. So if you're distracted, just doing stuff to get through the day, and you're never really attending to them. As human beings, they realize, oh, I can get attention by doing something. And then they you know, whether your attention is positive or negative, like you're giving them attention, and they crave that attention so much that they learned the best way to get attention is to do something that makes you react to them. So that's definitely a thing that happens too.

Penny Williams 26:13

Yeah, you give life to what you give energy to write exactly what you focus on grows. There's probably 100 cliches I could rattle off about that. But they're all true, right? cliches become cliches for a reason. Because they're kind of universal truths, right. But yeah, when we focus so much on something, we're giving it the energy to make it grow. So we have to really be aware of what we're giving our energy to. Is it worth it again, back to that spilled milk? Is it worth getting angry? Is it worth all that negative energy and making our kids feel bad? No, just the thing that happens sometimes sometimes we spill things. And on we go.

Sarah Wayland 26:56

I was just realizing there's a concept in RTI, relationship development intervention, what you give energy to is what you remember, like that's what your brain encodes. And so they talk about spotlighting, and what are you spotlighting with your kid? And I remember when I first worked through one of these exercises with my own kids, it said, what, in the interaction was spotlighted and then there was this thing, hint, something is always spotlight it. Yeah. And I thought really, is something always spotlight but it's true. What you give attention to is what is spotlight and so if you spotlight on the fact that something broke while they were working on it, that's what they're gonna remember. But if you spotlight on the fact that it broke, and then they figured out how to fix it, and now it works. Mm hmm. They're gonna remember that piece. Yeah. And so what you attend to, is what gets remembered.

Penny Williams 27:54

Yeah, the things that we say to our kids is the little voice in their head, right. I know, I butchered that quote from a person. I'm not going to remember right now either. Welcome to my new normal. I can't remember anything. By the way. I looked up the last lecture. And it's Randy Pausch. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon. Thank you. Yeah. It's a really wonderful lecture. I love it. So we'll link to it in the show notes. Yeah, it was amazing. And I wanted to talk to you just a moment about a conversation that I had for an interview for our upcoming summit, which is in February focused on behavior, February of 2022. And I was talking to an autistic adult Paul Micallef and interviewing him for that. And he had said to me that we need to quit asking our children What were you thinking when x happened? And ask, what were you feeling when this happened? And that is so much of a better guide? For eight? Like the answer to that question, what were you feeling? It's going to help us know how to respond in an appropriate way, it's probably going to bring more compassion and empathy to the interaction. And it's going to help us to remain calm, because now we're going to see it in a much different light. So the spilled milk again, if I asked what were you thinking, the answer is probably gonna be I don't know, and they're gonna feel really crappy about themselves, right? Like it was a choice. It implies that it was a choice to make a mess. And if I asked what were you feeling when your milk spilled, then it's probably, panic or even shame. You know, lots of different things are mad at themselves are upset with themselves. And now we're looking at it completely differently. And we're really seeing our kid and who they are and what they can and can't do right where they are right now. Yeah, and it's so different, it's so different. And all he did was swap out one word and that question, instead of what were you thinking, what were you feeling?

Sarah Wayland 30:09

It reminds me of a scene from my own childhood, where I, I put my violin underneath a seat, that was one of those flip up seats in an auditorium. And I forgot that the seat had flipped up. And I sat on my violin and crushed it. And I came home. And my violin was utterly mangled. I mean, it was just mangled. And I was beside myself. And my mom said, a couple of weeks later, after we had figured out what to do about that, she said, her first instinct was to yell at me, and then she could see how wrecked I was. And she said, I couldn't say anything. Because you it was so clear, you felt terrible about it. So what purpose would it serve for me to get mad at you would just make you feel even worse, you know? So, anyway, it just reminded me of that. And I do remember, like, I mean, I was so upset, but I wasn't upset at my parents, I was upset at myself for sitting on the violin,

Penny Williams 31:14

Right. We punish ourselves for so many things as human beings, and our kids are doing the same thing. You know, when my kids spills a glass of milk, they're already feeling bad. And really, it's not the point to make our kids feel bad to change behavior. Like that's a really damaging way to change behavior, fear intimidation, right, making them feel less than those are all really bad ways to change behavior.

Sarah Wayland 31:41

Yeah, we want them to think, right, we want them to think, Oh, if I do A, then B will happen. Or if I do C, then D will happen. And to really think about is that the outcome I want, we don't want them to act out of fear. We want them to think about what's going to happen if they do that, to take that pause to think, Okay, what's going to happen here? And how am I going to feel about it when I do this?

Penny Williams 32:06

Mm hmm. Other people feel if I did this, I think we don't talk nearly enough about feelings. And that was kind of what you know, Paul shift. And that question is getting toward is, yeah, that's a much clearer picture of what our kids are going through. You know, and it's not accusatory, and it's not judgmental, right. But what were you thinking? I mean, I remember growing up, my dad said that to me all the time. What were you thinking?

Sarah Wayland 32:36

And very often, the answer is I wasn't.

Penny Williams 32:41

I was not thinking, I did something stupid, because I wasn't thinking exactly, you know. And instead, if he had asked me, Well, what were you feeling? I would have been like, well, I just wanted to be included. So I stayed out after curfew, because all the other kids were doing and you know, that might have been a scenario, I still would have been in trouble for it. But maybe he would have understood a little bit better that it wasn't about defying him. It was about, you know how I was feeling in my social world and within myself about it. Yeah, so many ways to pivot, right, so many ways to change the way we view things. I think we've talked about many, many more than we anticipated starting out, as conversations have a lovely way of growing and expanding and getting to some other really valuable insights and information to which I love. Anything else, you want to make sure we talk about Sarah in this conversation about kind of really focusing on our mindset and our awareness and making a fresh start for this new year.

Sarah Wayland 33:44

I think what I'd like to just, last thought is sometimes people feel powerless to change. They feel like they behave. And I'm talking about grownups here. Like, well, this is just how I am, so this is the way I am. And thinking about trying on a new way of being or responding in a different way. When emotions are running high. It's very hard to think about how to do that. And so I just want to say that you can try it on for a little while and see if it works, and see what the differences. And if you're having trouble implementing something that you know, will help. Be compassionate and just recognize that it's a process, and you're not going to be perfect at it. So just keep working on it and doing the best you can and keep coming back and trying again. If you think it's the right thing.

Penny Williams 34:43

It's taken me years, years to be able to stay home with my kid. Oh yeah. years of practice, years of doing the work on myself years of really trying to understand him and really seeing him rather than Trying to make him fit our world years. This is not a short process by any means. And you just make little incremental improvements as you go on, don't give up, don't think after a month, and things aren't magically different, that it's not for you, or you're not doing it right, or you failed, or whatever, awful things we tell ourselves. It just keep giving it more time, because it really is kind of magical. I mean, for me, I was very much a victim. I thought things happen to me, I thought, I have no control over anything. I thought this was happening to my kid. And it was terrible, and why us and really switching my mindset out of that space has been magical, not just for me. And it's actually really reduced my anxiety, which I think is worth noting as well, just that alone and being able to sit with what is and not be so worried about every little thing, because some things just don't matter that much, has really been so changing for me. And for my whole family. They were picking up on that energy.

Sarah Wayland 36:05

Exactly. I think that self compassion, and also just you said this at the very beginning, and I think it just is full circle here where you know what is is and you can either fight it, or you can think that there might be a different way. And I think that shifting the way we interpret the situation is one of the things we can do to navigate a different way.

Penny Williams 36:33

Mm hmm. Your happiness will not come to you, it can only come from you. So true. That's what the victim mindset is really your thinking that happiness just didn't come to you. For whatever reason, I had a million excuses why I thought that I just wasn't, it wasn't in the cards for me to be happy, right. And I was totally wrong about all of it. And I think we really have to realize that so much comes from within ourselves. And we don't give it that credit. And when we do it can be really magical. For sure. Well, we will be back again with another behavior revolution episode next month. And we'll talk about some other fantastic things that we have learned with our own kids and with our clients to help you to see behavior differently, and be able to really do better for your kids and that area and help them to feel better and do better. If there's any resources that we've mentioned, we mentioned that video and some other things. I will list all of that in the show notes for this episode and link it up for you. And you can find those at parentingADHDandautism.com/156 for episode 156. And we're not gonna call this a New Year's resolution because those never we're gonna self compassion. We're just going to call this the little bit of a lifestyle shift, right? We're going to do a little bit better as we can, an area that we know is going to make a big difference. Thank you Sarah for joining me My pleasure in this episode, and I will see everyone next time. Thanks for joining me on the parenting ADHD podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share. And don't forget to check out my online courses, parent coaching and Mama retreats at parentingADHDandautism.com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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I'm Penny Williams.

I help stuck and struggling parents (educators, too) make the pivots necessary to unlock success and joy for neurodivergent kids and teens, themselves, and their families. I'm honored to be part of your journey!

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