How to Be a Conscious Parent

Lauren Pace 0:03

Instead of looking at the child's behavior to stop it, or to change them as a person, try to look at what the child needs in the moment, not just on the surface like obviously, maybe they're like, Mom, I really need a drink of water and they're like acting out. It's like not about the water. Why are they acting out? What's going on for them? What do they actually need?

Penny Williams 0:24

Welcome to the beautifully complex podcast, where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author and mindset, Mama, honor to guide you on the journey of raising your a typical kid. Let's get started. Welcome back to the beautifully complex Podcast. I'm really excited today to be talking to Lauren pace. And we're gonna talk about conscious parenting, which is so so important for us as parents of neurodivergent. Kids, we have to have that awareness and intention behind it. So I'm really excited. Lauren's been on the podcast before and in the shownotes. I'll link up that episode. But always a pleasure. And I'm really happy to have her back to share some more of her wisdom with you. Lauren, will you start by introducing yourself to everyone listening?

Lauren Pace 1:20

Hi, I'm Lauren Pace, and I am a mom of three, I have a master's degree in child development. And I am really, really passionate about just looking at the behaviors communication. And instead of just trying to extinguish the behavior, try to understand what supports our kids need. And then from there, we're really able to just connect with them better, because we're understanding them. And so it just strengthens all parts of parenting, and then you actually enjoy being a parent. So that's what I'm passionate about. That's what I teach on my website, my podcast, my courses, my membership. And I'm just happy to be here today.

Penny Williams 1:59

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to have this conversation, and to share it with everyone because you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to development and behavior. Let's start with just defining conscious parenting. What are we talking about when we say conscious parenting?

Lauren Pace 2:16

So conscious parenting, I feel like overlaps with a couple of different parenting styles and whatever it's like pieces of these things. But basically, the main idea is that you are conscious with your own self, that you heal your own self so that you can show up as the parent you truly want to be. And so what that kind of looks like is when you're triggered by your child, or like when you have an expectation for your child. And you put that on your child, a lot of times we're placing blame, or we're, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here. But like, say like my child's whining, and I am triggered by whining. Now I'm making it my child's problem that I'm triggered. Instead, I look at myself, and I say, Whoa, I'm feeling triggered, I need to take a break, I set a boundary for my own self care, because I'm being a conscious parent. And I'm not just a lot of times we parent from this place of this is how we were raised. This is what's expected of society and I just react instead of reacting. I'm actually consciously responding to my own things that are going on inside of me.

Penny Williams 3:21

And that is such a pivotal piece of parenting. We don't realize how much of our own stuff we put on our kids. And I didn't realize until way late in the game, and I wish somebody had told me a lot sooner. Because I had a lot of stuff, being someone with anxiety. And I really piled it on my kid, sometimes completely unintentionally. But it's still a problem, right? So how do we build that awareness of what's our stuff? And what's our kids stuff?

Lauren Pace 3:49

So, honestly, okay, so first of all, it goes back to generations, generations and generations. So when we were born and raised as kids, a lot of our subconscious mind was developed, when we were children when we were young children. And so like the patterns that we see about relationships, the patterns we see about boundaries, the patterns we see about emotions, all that we're taking in, and we're recreating these rules. Oh, I'm not allowed to cry. Because when I cry, I get sent to timeout. And, oh, I can't set boundaries with my family. Because for family, in our family, we do everything for everyone. So we're learning all these things, right? Then we become parents. And we're like, wait a minute, like we just kind of parent in automatic mode until we realized I don't want to parent like this. What am I doing? I said I would never do this. But it's so ingrained in who we are, that we have to take a step back when we realize okay, I actually don't want to have to do everything for my family just because they're family, not because I don't love them, but because it's taking up my emotional capacity that I need for my immediate family. Now you start to realize these things. And so I think the biggest part of it is like right Can I say like, this is before kids or even above? They haven't even talked about our kids behavior yet. It's just realizing, okay, who do I actually want to be as a parent. And then, like having these values like, Okay, I want to be flexible with my kids, I want to, maybe I have the value of independence. So then when a behavior comes up and coming from a value to replace a healed place, a place where I'm just not bringing in all these subconscious expectations of who I'm supposed to be as a parent, then I can show up consciously and be like, Okay, in this moment, how can I help my kids like my kids having this tantrum? How can I help them through this without the shame and the blame and the timeouts? And the things that were from before?

Just starts with the awareness. I think most things with behavior starts with awareness.

Penny Williams 5:49

And I love that you brought up that it's generational. We don't often think about that. But we tend to parent either in the example that we had growing up, or the opposite may be of that example, if we did not enjoy that way of being raised, we need examples of things going the way that they should go. And sometimes that doesn't happen, right? Not everyone is raised in a healthy family. Not everyone is shown what it's like to be a calm, conscious parent. And so it really takes a lot of awareness. And I guess the sort of decision that you're going to parent differently, and that you're not going to be on autopilot.

Lauren Pace 6:36

And I think a lot of us don't even realize we're on autopilot, until maybe we get a really difficult child. And the traditional ways aren't working. It's clashing. They're not obedient, they're not compliant. And you're like, wait, whoa, like, this isn't working. And so I'm going to come at it harder, I'm gonna come up with those strategies that I learned about, because this is unacceptable, and we're triggered, because we're like, this behavior is not okay. But then if we really go into that trigger, we realize like, oh, wow, this isn't even my belief that I'm holding I'm parenting with somebody else's belief from before. I actually love this analogy that I heard from a woman, she was talking about how we wake up in the morning, and we put on this dusty ol coat, and it might have tears in it. And these patches, and it might just be ripped at the seams and has all these like, ugly patches all over it, and we put it on, we don't even realize we're wearing it. And it's because we have all these things, these beliefs ingrained in us that were just programmed into our subconscious because of the way that we were taught to be at church or the way we're taught to be at school, the way that our parents responded to emotions and all these things anyways, we have this codon, and then our child has behavior. And we are reacting from this place, we don't even realize we're wearing this coat, we have all these old beliefs that we're parenting with. And so when we start to realize like, oh, wait, I don't want to wear this sleeve or whatever, I don't want to pair it with this slave. I feel like I'm not doing this analogy, justice. But when we realize like, these beliefs aren't ours, that we're holding somebody else beliefs, and we start to just parent the child that's in front of us and, and show up in the way that this child needs in this moment, that's being a conscious parent.

Penny Williams 8:14

That's a great analogy. It reminded me to have, there's a young adult who works with other young adults with ADHD. And she described in her book that having ADHD is like wearing the super, super giant, heavy backpack that nobody else has. And you're told to run this race. But you're at a severe disadvantage, right. And I was just thinking, as you were saying that like, taking those pieces out and letting go of them, yeah, taking that heavy book out and letting go of it, taking out the bowling ball or whatever you want to put in that analogy. But yeah, and just sort of shutting all of those things

Lauren Pace 8:50

I love that too. Because like, say, my husband has his own coat, and you have your own coat, and somebody else has their own coat. And a lot of times we judge other parents, because we will look at them and like why would they act like that, but we don't know what baggage they're carrying from their own childhood. We don't know what example they had. And I feel like I had an awesome childhood. But I still have so many things ingrained in my coat because my parents were doing the best with what they knew at the time. And like I have learned beyond that emotionally. Emotional Health beyond that boundaries, beyond that different things. And so like, it's my job to take the coat and stitch up the parts that are broken, and then do my best with what I have.

Penny Williams 9:32

I love that. Where the parents start though, what we're talking about is a lot of difficult work. And it's a journey, right? It takes time. Yeah. And I can just imagine that some parents are asking themselves or us out loud, where in the world do I start? How do I start down this different path? I want to do it differently. What do I do first?

Lauren Pace 9:55

I love that so much and I have realized like so I'm a behavior coach, right? And so a lot of my parenting programs I talk about, okay, here's how we figure out what's going on with behavior. And here's how we help with our child's having tantrums. And here's how we listen, I realize that a lot of these strategies are amazing strategies. But if we haven't done the work on ourself, none of them are going to work, right. And so the work on our self is a lifelong journey. But here's how you start. I simplify it. But I think it's the most simple, simplified analogy or whatever, I use the volcano analogy. So I use my whole like parenting podcast is now surrounded around this volcano analogy. And what happened is one day I was super overwhelmed with my kids. And it wasn't about them. It was about everything going on for me, but I was just at the point where I was about to explode. Like, have you ever been there before?

Were you just wondering, like, yeah, and hope that everybody stopped doing it's like an explosion. So I was sitting on the couch with my kids. And I was like, Okay, we're 10 mom has a volcano. And when screaming happens, my love goes up. And when fighting happens, my love goes up. And when I find out bad news about a friend, my lava goes up, and all day long dishes, all these things, make my love go up. And if I don't have time, or space, or the emotional capacity to bring my lava down, it's going to explode. And I'm like, deep breaths up my lava go down, taking a break helps my lava go down. I'm like explaining the schmuck is on the capsular, five and three. And I was like Big hugs, like sitting with you guys brings my lava down. But when this happens, and this happens, and this happens, my lava keeps going up, it's going to explode. So then my son started to give me hugs. He's like, Is this helping your lava go down. I'm like, my love is right here right now. And he's like, Is this helping your love go down? I'm like, Yeah, it's like right here. But listen, I'm in charge of my lava, and you're in charge of your lava. And you guys keep fighting, your lava keeps exploding return, you have a volcano too. How can you bring your lava down? How can I bring my lava down so that there's not fighting and clashing and explosions all day long. And it's this analogy that they really understood. But what I really loved about it is I was taking ownership for my own emotions, like, yes, the behaviors you're doing is contributing to my lava. But it's not your behavior that's making me explode. It's a combination of all these things that are too overwhelming for me to handle if I'm not getting my own self care met. So I think like parents understanding what makes your lava go up, what helps bring your lava down. And then prioritizing. What brings your lava down every single day will help you show up better as the parent that you want to be.

Penny Williams 12:30

I'm so happy you brought up self care. So so happy because it is that important, it's so important.

Lauren Pace 12:37

Getting your needs met. So you can show up the way you want to show up.

Penny Williams 12:40

Yeah, if we are not feeling God, we can't do good. And that goes for every human being. And so as a parent, if I am showing up, and I don't feel good, because I haven't dealt with my stuff, I'm not taking care of myself. So my love is just boiling, then I can't do my best for my kids. It's so crazy that we sacrifice ourselves as parents, to show that our kids are everything to us and that we're going to do our absolute best. It's all about the kids, right? Because that's what's expected. And when we do that, we actually don't do as good a job for them as if we also took care of ourselves and make ourselves a priority too.

Lauren Pace 13:21

We're also modeling that the life that they need to live his life of self sacrifice. And when they become a mom or a parent, like especially for women, it's a disservice to them to not take care of yourself, because then we're modeling. Hey, when you're a grown up, here's what you have to do the rest of your life. Yeah. Your servant to your children.

Penny Williams 13:38

And no parent wants that. We don't just kind of sit down and take a step back and look at self care in a really accurate way. We just think that it's selfish. Yeah. And it is the opposite of selfish. It is exactly what you need to do in order to really show up and really do your best for anyone around you. Yeah, and

Lauren Pace 14:01

I think a lot of parents like moms specially we have this like guilt, like, Oh, if I take care of me, I'm not doing my job as a mom or whatever. And I mean, that sometimes can come up in the back of my mind, too. It's like, oh, like I'm sitting here doing this while my husband's out doing that. But like, hold up. No, mom, first of all, if you're a stay at home, mom, you're doing so much more than just keeping the kids alive. Okay, first of all, or working mom, any mom, every mom, but also like, self care isn't just about getting your nails done. I mean, it can be you can get your nails done, if that's something you need to like, feel awesome and happy or doing your lashes or doing your hair like I do all those things. But I think the biggest thing is, if you don't prioritize your own emotional self care, so that you have the emotional capacity to be present and to be regulated, even in the chaos of parenting, then that's where you run into trouble. Like, you can get your hair done, but it's not necessarily about having pretty hair. It's maybe about having that time away. Yes. Just for you, like, it's not necessarily like, Oh, I'm trying to be this pretty mom, I can be. But more. So it's like, are you taking the breaks? You need to have physical, emotional financial connection outside of just this role of motherhood?

Penny Williams 15:16

Yeah, it's so monumentally important.

Lauren Pace 15:19

I don't know why I said financial, I feel like that doesn't work.

Penny Williams 15:22

I think it works, we can really be worried and about to explode about finances. To take care of that, you have to, there's all these different aspects of wellness. And financial is definitely one of those. I'm just so glad that the conversation went in this direction a little bit, because it's everything. And we're not even talking yet about the physical repercussions of not taking care of yourself or not managing your stress, right. There's so many things that can go on first, physically, I have fibromyalgia, I believe that it was probably triggered by a whole lot of stress and not understanding my kid at the beginning and how to help him and just being so overwhelmed, and so worried about him. There's not necessarily any scientific data to say that, but there's a lot of scientific speculation.

Lauren Pace 16:17

I believe that 200% I believe that well, not specifically that in your case, but I believe that emotions inside of us create disease if they're not dealt with.

Penny Williams 16:27

They really tear us apart. And you can have headaches, heart problems, weight issues, blood pressure issues, all sorts of things can come from too much stress and not managing your stress. And it's interesting, because when I started down that road of something's wrong, but nobody can figure it out, it took five years to get a fibro diagnosis. And every doctor would say, well, all your tests are clean, you just really need to manage your stress. And I remember thinking every single time I would get so angry, and I'd get out in the car, and I'd like have that angry cry, because I wasn't being heard. And because I thought, well, I can't manage my stress, I can't give away my kids. Right? That's what I thought, I thought like managing your stress was cutting it out of your life. And it's not. And I it took me a long time to learn that. And when I was able to learn how to actually manage my stress, which was all about those things you were talking about to tamp down the lava in our volcanoes, then I just did so much better, so much better. And I have this physical reminder, because every time I get stressed, my pain goes up, right? And so for me, I have a very tangible reminder, like, you must be dealing with us. But I think we all have that. Because I think when things start to fall apart in our families, it's kind of that signal. Okay, something's not going right here. We're not feeling good anymore. What do we need to look at?

Lauren Pace 17:54

Absolutely. And I think like in motherhood, there's always or Parenthood in general, there's always something we're worried about. Always. Oh, yeah, totally. Like, right now, I'm worried about my child making friends. A couple weeks ago, I was worried about leaving my kids for three days, like, there's always something that's going to come up that we're worried about. And it's like, we can't make the worry, go away, can't make the situation go away. Because we're parents, we have kids, we have responsibilities. But we can do things to manage our stress. Maybe I get a babysitter and just do a one on one date with my child. Or maybe there's different things too, that we can do to help aid us in our problems.

Penny Williams 18:31

Yep. It's about management, not about ending the stress. It's about managing a way that's healthy. Yeah. So how else can we be really aware and showing up for our kids? I think especially is is important to think about when our kids are having a hard time and things aren't really going well for our kids, but we want to help them like our intention is always to help our kids we love them. We want to do with the best by them. But sometimes we don't make the best choices to do that. Right? And how do we stay aware in those moments and stay conscious of the way that we're interacting with our kids and how we're going to affect what's going on? When things are really hard?

Lauren Pace 19:15

Okay, so I love I love that you brought this up. And I think, first of all, I'm gonna address it from the point of view that we did just explode on our child. Okay. Yep. So we just exploded like, stop. Right? So we're here we've exploded. This happens all the time. Especially, like when you're doing the work on yourself, because you're overwhelmed. You're like, Oh, my goodness, I just can't do this anywhere. So what do we do? I have this like acronym that's like pause and ABC. So pause, just pause. Okay, acknowledge that you're triggered. Whoa, I'm feeling really triggered right now. Or like, you don't have to use the word triggered. Some people don't like that word. But like, acknowledge Whoa, like, this is not How I want to act. Okay, acknowledge, then be curious, what's this really about? Okay? I'm stressed because I'm touched out, there's too much noise. My kids keep fighting, I have no one to help me blah, blah, blah, you start to be curious about what this is really about what's really going on in your lava, and then come back to calm. So then you're like, Okay, I'm going to maybe you go and walk around the house, maybe you just take a really deep breath. Maybe you like, if your partner is there, you say, Hey, I just need like a minute, can you take over for a minute, and I'll be right back. There's so many things you can do to come back to calm, like everyone has different regimen of how to come back to combat. But then once you're back to calm, then you step back in and address and you repair and you make it better because it's like, this example that I'm imperfect to, but also my behavior wasn't acceptable. And I'm going to make it right with you. Because it's not okay for me to act that way. Like, it's okay for me to be frustrated, but it's not okay for me to freak out on you. So then you enter the situation be like, hey, whoa, sorry, guys. My love has just exploded. And I am just feeling really overwhelmed because of this, this and this. How about we all go take some quiet time, and then we can go do something fun, but let's just take a break for a minute. And then we can, come back. So I think it's like, a really healthy example of showing them that sometimes we make mistakes, but it doesn't have to ruin a relationship, and we can make repairs, and we can try our best. And we can make changes in our environment to help our lava go down all together.

Penny Williams 21:32

That's so important. It's so important that we're human. But it's also so important that we show what we do when things don't go the way we wanted them to. How do we show up and make amends and take responsibility for what has happened. So that was if you've already exploded, what happens if things are just getting intense? And you're having a hard time with it? You're feeling the heat, but you haven't yet exploded? Can you do something to keep yourself from boiling over?

Lauren Pace 22:01

So I would say in this situation, that you do some of those same things I just talked about you pause, figure out who you're gonna be who you're gonna show up in this moment, like, it can literally be five seconds be like, Okay, I'm going in, and I'm gonna be calm. And you, you have that moment of pause, where you're like, intentional, I think so much happens in the moment where we just react. And if we pause, and then respond, we're giving our brain a second to integrate with all parts. And so we're actually thinking logically and not just reacting to a situation that might be triggering for us.

Penny Williams 22:39

That's so important to bring in what's happening in our bodies to Yeah, we need that breath, or that pause in order to slow our nervous system so that we don't just react and explode.

Lauren Pace 22:52

Exactly. So what happens with triggers is our brain senses danger, right? And our brains like, oh, no, this is not a good situation. And so what happens is our amygdala is like, oh, activate, fight, flight, or freeze even. And then your body just reacts. Okay? So if we can get to a point where our brain starts to sense danger, and we're like, no, no brain, this is just the noise. I got this, then we can show up how we want to show up instead of letting our body take over and our impulses takeover.

Penny Williams 23:22

That's so so good. And too, we know about our brains that when our emotional brain or survival brain is flooded, so like you said, we're getting that warning of danger. Yeah, our thinking brain isn't accessible. It goes offline. Yeah. And now we can't problem solve. This is a conversation that I started having with my son several years ago, because I found that it was really important for him to understand his biology and why things were happening that often he felt like he didn't have control of, and how he could take control. And to be able to say, okay, neither one of us have our thinking brains online right now when things deteriorate for both of us. And so we're going to take that break. Yeah. And then our thinking brain is going to come back online, and then we're going to come back and we're going to solve this problem. We're going to help you out with what's going on, because then we can, it's really important for kids to understand that about themselves to not just parents.

Lauren Pace 24:14

Absolutely. I think you brought up a third issue. So like, if the kids are dysregulated, and you can be regulated, then you can just kind of CO regulate and work through a situation. But the third situation is if you're both dysregulated, nothing is going to be working, right? Yeah, it's not gonna work out. And a lot of times we go in our kids have just entered the point of no return and we go in with anger or even with logic, and we come at it. They're thinking brains are off. They're operating completely from their limbic brain. It is not a situation that is going to end well. And that's usually when we teach like even if we are regulated, that's usually the time we come in and we're like, Oh no, we absolutely do not do this to our sibling. But the problem is not what we're saying. They are what we're teaching or what our values are. The problem is the timing. So we can just be like, Okay, why don't you take a break? And we'll talk about this a little bit. And then we see oh, they're back to calm. Now we can talk about this, it's gonna go so much different.

Penny Williams 25:13

Timing. That's so crucial. I love that you said timing, because that is so true. And that's how we really figure out that timing. Am I regulated? Or dysregulated? Is my child regulator dysregulated? In our behavior program, we talk about, are you co regulating or CO escalating? Yeah, so if you're both dysregulated, guess what's happening, like the temperature of the two volcanoes, side to side is just going to explode. Right? But if somebody is calm, then you're offering some calm for your kid to borrow. But you still have to understand that their thinking may and may be offline, like you saw at the store may not be the time, because they also have to be regulated in order to work together and to get somewhere with an issue that you're having. salutely Yeah. What else do we need to talk about in the realm of conscious parenting?

Lauren Pace 26:05

So one thing that I was thinking, so a lot of it is about us, right? But also our kids have hard behaviors. And I think you were asking this just a second ago. But then the other part I want to add to this is like, instead of looking at the child's behavior to stop it, or to change them, as a person, try to look at what the child needs in the moment, not just on the surface, like obviously, maybe they're like, Mom, I really need a drink of water. And they're like acting out. It's like not about the water. Why are they acting out? What's going on for them? What do they actually need? Do they need connection? Do they need a break? Do they need an earlier bedtime? There's like so many needs under the surface. And if we can be present to try to understand what our child needs when they have behavior. That's another way that we can be conscious parents.

Penny Williams 26:48

So you're diving deep and asking, What could this be about? Really? Yeah. And I think it's so important that we take that pause again, and ask ourselves, could it be something different than what it feels like? Yeah, yeah, we tend to take behavior. So personally, as parents, right. And I think our kids take it personally, when they get unwanted behavior from us, right? I mean, I think that goes two ways. Totally. But we have to be able to ask ourselves, okay, this feels really personal. This feels really bad. This feels really disrespectful. But what else could it be? And that's really getting to your point that then we're diving deeper on that. And we're figuring things out. And you have to be conscientious and intentional to do that.

Lauren Pace 27:33

Absolutely. I think, yeah. I mean, there's so many parts of conscious parenting, and I think I have a rise challenge that I do, it's like, basically, the idea is to baby steps to start becoming a conscious parent, obviously, you can't become a conscious parent in three weeks. But the first part of it is just kind of reflecting and figuring out like who you even want to be as parent. And then the second part is unlearning a lot of our old beliefs. And then the third part is like reframing behavior. So like all of these things that we've talked about today kind of fall into each of these different categories. It's like, okay, who do you want to be like, first of all, do you even want to show up differently for your parent, if you don't have that desire? You're probably not going to do it. So what are your values? Like? What's your family culture? What's your rules? Like? What do you consider is like, who you want to be as parents, and then we start to unlearn those beliefs. And we're like, oh, this is actually not my belief. I've been holding on to it for my grandma. But I'm going to let it go now. And then the third one is like when our kids have hard behaviors, instead of shaming them for their behavior or being like, you can't be angry, we understand what that anger is about and help them express it in a healthy way.

Penny Williams 28:39

And so I guess the takeaway for an action item for parents what they can do after they're listening to this podcast, is to really sit down and take some time to map out the parent that they want to be right. Yeah, that's the first step.

Lauren Pace 28:55

I think, yeah, that's the first step is just figuring out the parent you want to be? And obviously, that's kind of a broad question. But what I would do is just like, what are some values that you would like to incorporate into your family culture? And then you can Google a list of values and be like, Oh, I would like to show up with this, like one fighting happens, or I would like our family to have more cooperation. Okay, so now how can we have cooperation in our family in these instances, instead of the old ways that we used to do things?

Penny Williams 29:26

Throwing out that old rulebook again. Making it up in a better way? For sure. Well, we have covered a lot. And I know that there's so much more to conscious parenting, but I think this has been a great overview for everyone listening, and we will put links in the show notes to Lauren's website, social media, all that good stuff. Link up the RISE program, too, that you mentioned a few minutes ago, if anyone's interested in that, and I certainly hope that you will visit the page, visit Lauren online, learn more from her, maybe work with her as well, I know that you will get great benefit from that. And I of course, so appreciate your time Lauren and I always really enjoy connecting with you and talking to and just getting a glimpse of the way that you navigate motherhood is always inspiring, honestly. So I thank you again for being here and sharing some of that with us.

Lauren Pace 30:23

Thank you so much, Penny. It's been so fun to be here again.

Penny Williams 30:26

And with that, we'll end the episode. I'll see everyone next time. Take good care. Thanks for joining me on the beautifully complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share. And don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingADHDandautism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com

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